Final Update... Better Late Than Never, Right? :)

Loved ones,

First of all, I would like to apologize for how long it has taken me to get around to writing this.  I have no excuse, only a deeper realization of how fast time really does fly by (especially summers!). 

Second of all, there are no words to accurately articulate how truly grateful I am for you and the support you offered me during arguably the most important time in my life thus-far.  I wish I could sit down and chat over coffee with everyone who supported me. But due to lack of time, I will use this to attempt a brief summary of my Discipleship Training School experience with YWAM Denver, focusing on the outreach portion of it.

The three months I spent in Denver (January-March) were invaluable. I feel as if I had a lifetime of Godly wisdom poured in to me in three short months.  One of our speakers described this time as “drinking from a fire hydrant”.  We not only trained and prepared for our specific outreach locations once a week, we also dedicated 4-7 hours each day in class learning about fundamental Christian issues, such as: the Holy Spirit, missions, the character of God, the father heart of God, relationships, the fear of the Lord, and many others.  In addition, we made regular trips to downtown Denver to minister to the people through street evangelism.  I will never forget this unique time of learning to hear God’s voice in preparation for a life lived in obedience to Him.

The next two months were spent overseas with a portion of the group I was with in Denver.  I spent half of the time in Jordan, and the other half in Israel! This was such a special time of not only living in and learning about other cultures and serving the people there, but of learning to live in total community with a group of twenty of us.  The latter is a priceless lesson, and truly rewarding when done in a biblical manner. I may have had a slight advantage coming from a family of seven! 

Our time in each country was spent quite differently. In Jordan, we spent the majority of our time teaching English to children and adults in Amman, the capital of Jordan. This was our platform for building relationships and sharing our story, which was ultimately our goal.  We did not go with the sole intent of “converting”, but to love and to share our personal story of how Jesus transformed our life if the opportunity presented itself.  Eman is a local Muslim lady who I got to build a strong relationship with and eventually share the Gospel with. I plan on keeping in touch with her indefinitely. (See picture below). Countless relationships like this were built, and it was heart-breaking when the time came for us to leave and head to Israel.

We spent the duration of our time in Israel in Jerusalem, just outside the walls of the Old City in a place called St. Peter’s of Gallicantu.  Interestingly, it is the place of Caiphus’ house (the High Priest during Jesus’ life), and the location of Peter’s denial of Jesus on the night He was crucified.  While there, we did not have one ministry we focused on throughout our time, which made it more challenging to form quick relationships with locals than it was in Jordan. God truly redeemed this aspect of Israel by causing us to “randomly” run into the same people almost daily! In a city of millions, this was truly astounding and encouraging! In addition to relationship-building, we spent time serving with a few different local ministries, such as a food-packaging organization, and an orphanage in the West Bank. A unique ministry we got to do quite often was prayer-walking and Bible-reading around the city of Jerusalem.  The spiritual realm is quite heavy there, for obvious reasons, and we spent countless hours engaged in spiritual warfare, claiming the city back for Christ! On multiple nights, we went to the rooftops of Jerusalem, which overlooked the entire city and worshiped and prayed- often with curious onlookers!

I could write forever and never truly convey how intensely life-changing these five months were to me. I never expected to come back so deeply impacted. My heart really is just overflowing with gratitude for you and everyone that supported me- financially and prayerfully. God used you in a hugely powerful way in my life, and I will never forget that!

Farewell!

     Well everyone, I owe you an apology. It has been WAY long since I last posted on here. The last month here has been amazing. IHOP was incredible, my mother and two of my wonderful aunts came to visit, and this last week we has been full of preparations for outreach. Our bags are packed, our rooms are clean, and we are ready to go. Our flight leaves tomorrow at 3:40, and we'll be in the Middle East on Tuesday! I know God has amazing things in store for my team over there, and we are all ready to be used by Him! We expect God to do big things there and I can't wait to come back and share testimonies with y'all. Unfortunately, I won't be keeping a blog while on outreach, but my team leader will be sending weekly updates to my mom's email (owennwa@aol.com), so if you'd like to read those, contact my mom at her email address. I'm going to keep this short and sweet, but I love you all and I'll see ya in two months!

Prayer points for our team:
-team unity
-open doors to share the Gospel
-boldness
-God to prepare hearts of those we will reach
-safety in border-crossing
-travel safety

A Well That Doesn't Run Dry

     Hey all! I thought I'd check in this week before we head out to Kansas.  Our school is road-tripping to Kansas City for 4 days to visit the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and we leave 6 o'clock Thursday morning.  Don't ask me what IHOP is, because I'm not quite sure... hopefully this weekend clears that up! I'll be sure to let y'all know in my next post.
     Before I leave for Kansas, though, I have an important meeting that I'm extremely excited about!  Tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM Mountain Time, 8:00 AM Central Time, I will be skyping with Josh (a.k.a. Mr. Menke) and the rest of the students and staff at the school he teaches at in Iowa.  They have graciously decided to put their March chapel offering towards my overseas outreach! I am blown away by this awesome opportunity and I cannot wait to talk to them during their Wednesday morning chapel service and tell them a little bit about YWAM and what I'm learning here.  Thank you, Trinity Lutheran School!
     My plan is just to speak out of the overflow of my heart tomorrow morning with the school, for 2 reasons. 1. I'm too lazy to plan anything tonight, and 2. it just seems to make sense.  Something I've been noticing lately is that certain things have just become easier, more natural, as the weeks here progress. I spend time with God because my heart longs to, I read the Word because I'm hungry for it, I do things for other people because I love them, and I have much more joy because I know my Father's love for me.  Still, I have to discipline myself in these areas, but as I seek the presence of God, it just has started happening more effortlessly.  Guys! This is how I yearn to live my entire life! My bros can make fun of me for using so many exclamation points, I don't care!  My primary concern and desire in life is to LOVE GOD and SEEK HIS HEART and have everything else flow from that.  I don't want to go through motions, I don't want to work my spiritual muscles, I don't even want to do ministry or mission work if it doesn't flow from The Well that does not run dry.  Sinning even becomes less and less attractive as I grow in my desire to please His heart. I feel so much freedom in this because it takes all the pressure off of forming myself into the person I want to become and making sure I live the life I want to live.  God will work out the details.  I'm just gonna love Him through it all.

This is my current prayer: Even if you never do another thing for me in my entire life, Lord, I will love you because what you have already done is more than enough to be worthy of my deepest and eternal love. Amen!

Wedding Bells

     Well, we're down the mountain for good. It is good to sleep in a bed again, but I was definitely sad to go! We built some great relationships with the snowboarders the past couple weeks, and I don't think waking up in the mountains could ever get old.  The students up there are awesome people! For example, the morning we left to go snowboarding, one of the girls who decided not to go that particular day offered me all of her gear, including: board, bindings, boots, helmet, goggles, gloves, and a mouth-warmer-thing!  Total, it ended up saving me about 50 bucks. In case you hadn't picked up on it yet, I snowboarded and am still alive to tell about it! Not a scratch on my body (several bruises, but no scratches!).  I had tons of fun, even though I spent most of the day on my butt. It turns out, I had been doing it completely wrong the entire first half of the day.  Snowboarding tip #1: you should never actually be riding with the bottom of the board on the ground, you should always be riding on one of the edges of the board... who woulda thought?!?  Not me.  But I learned a couple hours in and was good to go after that. :)  I could not have asked for a better 21st birthday!  I believe I got sung to a total of 5 times throughout the day.  AND all of my brothers texted me... woohoo! 4 for 4. It made me feel important and loved (cough cough).  That was somewhat passive aggressive, I apologize... like mother like daughter I suppose. :)
     Okay, enough revealing of the family secrets.  What is God teaching me? To be completely honest, I don't have one specific answer for you this week.  We get pounded here with so much information day after day, week after week, that I feel like I am learning SO MUCH I can't even narrow it down.  I'm learning so much that I don't know what I'm learning... make sense? Someone here once compared DTS to drinking from a fire hydrant, and I think that is a perfect analogy.  Our school director, Jacob, told us the other day that if you count all the hours of lectures and ministry we do here just in the first three months, it is equivalent to going to church on Sundays for 4 and 1/2 years! That's a lot. Like, a lot.  So, my goal here is not to regurgitate the hundreds of pages of notes I have taken and all that I have learned, but to keep it personal.
     Something I shared with the group here the other day is that I feel as if God is romancing me.  I love that word!  In worship on Wednesday, I had a revelation about my love for God.  I have realized while I'm here how much God is truly in love with me and I have shared that some with y'all.  I am finally realizing His commitment to me.  But what occurred to me Wednesday is that I have not fully committed myself to Him.  Allow me to explain.  Now, as the mature, wise, just plain brilliant 21 year-old that I am, I have known for quite some time that the word 'love' in regards to marriage has less to do with feelings and more to do with commitment.  When I tell a significant other in the future that I love him, it will mean I am committed to him for a lifetime.  Now, for some reason, whenever I have told God how much I love Him, it has been when I was feeling close to Him.  Why has my love for God never been about commitment, the way marriage here on earth is?  So, this past week, God and I got married! You can send wedding gifts to my YWAM address. :) Seriously, though, when I tell God I love Him now, it means I am committed to Him in the easy times and the hard, the good and the bad.  Right now, I am in the honeymoon phase of my love story with God.  I am totally obsessed with His love! I can't get enough of it.  Looking forward from the honeymoon, I know there will be difficult times, but now I know that my love for Him is not determined on how "in love" I'm feeling at each particular moment.  He's not going anywhere, and neither am I.  I can only make this commitment to Him because of the commitment I know He has to me.  1 John 4:19 says, "We love because He first loved us."  Any amount of love or commitment I have comes only from the amount I realize He has for me.  I could go on with this analogy forever, but I'll let you try and figure out other ways the word 'marriage' works for our relationships with God. :)

Rocky Mountain Heidi- Literally

     I am currently sitting in my new bedroom for the next two weeks- on the floor in a room with 10 other girls! YWAM Denver has a campus at 8500 feet altitude called Eagle Rock.  A snowboarding DTS is taking place up here this quarter, so we're going to hang out and get to know them better.  My school (Compassion DTS) consists of 21 girls and 4 guys, and the snowboarders DTS contains 9 girls and 31 guys... not complaining ;) Of course, that is NOT why I'm here... my focus us Jesus and Jesus only! What I'm really not complaining about is the beautiful views, hiking, sledding, and snowboarding! I'll have my birthday while I'm up here too which is going to be a blast because that is the day they're taking us snowboarding and/or skiing.  I haven't decided which I'm going to do yet.  I'm conflicted. Half the people here say I should try snowboarding for the first time and the other half warn against it saying I'll spend the whole day on my butt and feeling frustrated.  Opinions? Either way, I'll be wearing a helmet (Mom). Regardless, it will be a memorable 21st birthday, that's for sure (unlike most 21st birthdays... :))
    These two weeks up here will be somewhat of a preparation for outreach for several reasons. We are sleeping on the floor, we could only pack in a backpack, and there is no cell reception.  I am especially excited about the backpack part! Over the weekend, our school directors took us shopping to REI and a couple other outdoor stores. At REI I found a super awesome 85 liter backpacking backpack! I got it on sale for 60 bucks, I'm totally stoked! Purchasing one has pretty much been my life dream.
     Back at the other base in Arvada there are currently about 350 people roaming around.  It is mass chaos! This trip could not have been timed more perfectly.  Outreaches from the previous quarter's DTS all returned over the weekend.  Walking around the past few days has felt like swimming in an ocean of people.  I'm not an exaggerator I promise.  Needless to say, I have not been spending much time alone.  Yesterday, I knew that I needed to get alone with God.  I could feel Him tugging at my heart and wanting me to listen to Him.  So I searched... and I searched... and I searched for a place to be alone.  Finally, I found a small room in the administration building (which I'm pretty sure is off limits), but about 5 minutes into my peace and quiet, a group of people came stomping up the stairs laughing and playing music.  I left feeling frustrated and pretty discouraged.  I genuinely was desiring to just be with God.  And I simply couldn't.  As I processed everything the rest of the day, I began thinking about my times with God. I think lately He's been gently nudging me to be able to listen to Him in a crowded room.  I need to learn to focus my mind on Him because I know He is there listening and waiting.  He does not require that I be the only person within a 75 yard radius before He speaks.  His presence is here with me even in a room of 11 girls.  I'm feeling pretty encouraged because I prayed about the ability to do this, and this morning my quiet time with Him was totally fulfilling, even as I sat on my sleeping bag flanked by two girls on either side.  God is faithful. :)
   I'm sorry that I keep making these so long, feel free to skim or just skip the boring parts... but I am totally loving sharing my life and my heart with y'all.  Thanks for reading. :)

A Revelation of God's Love

     God's love cannot be learned.  You can be taught about God's love for an entire lifetime and never really, truly know it.  God's love must be experienced to be known.  It must be revealed by Him and Him alone.  It turns out, I have spent most of my life hearing about God's love, and even sharing about it, but not experiencing it.  This doesn't mean it wasn't there, of course.  God has always loved me (and you) as much when we were born as He does now, and at every point in between.  You all know this because you have heard it many times.  But have you ever had a revelation of God's love?  A revelation of God's love comes from God, not a teacher or a pastor or yourself.  It is too great to put into words.  I don't think I ever realized that.  I would acknowledge God's love but then remind myself not to dwell on it, therefore ignoring His "wrath" or judgment. I am telling you right now to DWELL ON IT.  Soak it up, take it in, accept it, experience it.  This is what He wants for you.  Once God's love is revealed, you will not go away unchanged.
     Ephesians 3:17-19 says, "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."         
    I am not writing as an expert about this by any means, but I pray everyday for God to reveal His great love for me even more and I have gotten a glimpse of it this past week.  There have been a few things that have held me back from ever truly experiencing God's love, and God revealed one of them to me this week.  For me, in order to enjoy my down time or be lazy, I feel like I have to earn it.  I think there are a lot of us out there like this.  If I work hard, stay busy, and be productive, I feel okay about taking a few hours to just relax and turn off my brain.  But if I get to a point where I am being lazy all the time and not doing anything productive, I feel sad and I do not enjoy it anymore! There is nothing wrong with being this way, in my opinion.  In fact, I'm sure it's a good quality! But this mentality slipped into how I view God's love for me.  That same principle does not apply to the rest we have in God's love.  We do not need to be "religiously productive", meaning in prayer often, serving others, and generally staying away from sinful things, before we can enjoy His extravagant love! His love never changes! And His love is not small.  It is incomprehensibly big.  He loves the most Godly person you know just as much as He loves you and the prisoners in jail.  What an awesome revelation this is! Think of it this way: if we had to have our ducks in a row before God bestowed love on us, that would totally discount and limit His great love.  Is His love not big enough and awesome enough to reach us as we already are?
     God loves you as you are, not as you should be.
     Here is a humbling thought that I heard this week in class: we can only have as much affection and passion for God as we realize He has for us. What a powerful statement! It makes me yearn to experience His love so badly, because I want to better love Him.  1 John 4:19- "We love because He first loved us".
     God so badly wants to reveal His love for us.  He wants us to experience all the good things He has for us.  He is a Father waiting to lavish (Ephesians 1:8) His children in love: not just a dose, not just enough to keep us going, but a complete overflowing of it.  God's love is not a general gift that looks the same to every person.  He knows how to love each of us as individuals. God loves us each the same amount, but He loves us differently.  He has given us each different personalities that desire different things.  If God decided to show His love  for me one day through a Starbucks barista offering me a free latte, I would feel extremely grateful and joyful, but if He did the same for one of my brothers, I'm not so sure they would experience the same amount of joy.  How awesome is it that God knows you and me well enough to bless us in specific ways?! It gets me pumped! Not for the specific blessings, but for the opportunity to experience His love!
     I want to challenge each of you this week to ask God to reveal His love for you.  He will do it.  Be patient, chill out, don't stress, just wait for Him and He will give you a revelation of His love.  I pray this for all of you and for myself!

A Day In The Life Of Heidi

Because I know you are all so deeply interested in even the slightest intricacies of my daily life here in Denver.


...But really because I know most, if not all, of you are still wondering to yourself "what the heck is YWAM anyways... and did she say she is doing a DTS? Does she expect us to just know what that is? I'm tired of pretending I know what Heidi is doing right now".  :) Don't deny it.  The reason most of you are still feeling clueless is because I was still clueless about the details of the program before I got here.  And on some days, I still feel clueless.  I know more than I did before, though, so allow me to share a typical weekday schedule:


7:00 - wake up
7:30- breakfast
8:00- quiet time (time with Jesus)
9:00- worship and prayer (on MWF)
11:00- session
1:00- lunch
2:00- session
3:45- work duties (I do housekeeping)
5:30-dinner


What are those sessions about, you ask? Each week, we cover a different topic relating to theology, faith, missions, or just God in general.  Some of the topics include: the Character of God; the Father Heart of God; God's Intentions for Individuals, Peoples, and Nations; Inductive Bible Study; Building and Maintaining Godly relationships, and 6 or 7 others to make a total of 11.  One week toward the end of my time here in Colorado will be devoted entirely to outreach preparation.  For those of you who don't know, there are three outreach locations that we can choose from for the second half of this program.  The locations include: Costa Rica, London/Romania, and Israel/Jordan.  There is one that I am leaning toward, but I am continuing to prayerfully consider all three.


I'm keepin' it short and sweet today, thanks for reading! I love y'all and miss everyone tons :)