Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Stateside

So, here I am at the International House of Prayer, Kansas City, Missouri! It has been an interesting journey getting here for sure - and Jesus has been so in it, every part of the way :)

It was in Nepal in April earlier this year, that I was praying about direction for where the Lord wanted me during June-August. I knew that I would be in Asia until May, and I knew that I would most probably be in Latin America starting from September. So I had this 3 month period of time free for I didn't know what!

As I was praying, the Lord gave me a scripture reference of Isaiah 56:7. I opened my bible thinking it may end up being one of those random scriptures about war and bloodshed, as often seems to happen when asking God for a particular scripture (its often just me, not actually him!) but it was actually a legit scripture and not only that, but it leapt out and grabbed me so I knew it was for real!
"These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
 The Lord had also been speaking to me about a period of 3 months and also about a season set apart for intimacy with Him. Through this scripture and other confirmations, I felt led to apply for the Fire in the Night internship here in IHOP Kansas City.

To cut a long story short, I ended up staying longer in Mozambique in order to apply for a student visa with the US embassy. This meant I had to apply for my Mozambican visa to then be extended. However to apply for that visa extension I had to leave my passport with the office. I realised after dropping it off that they wanted me to pick up my passport again on a Friday, when my visa interview with the US embassy was on the Thursday! I went back to the office on the Monday before the interview to ask for my passport back early. They said that maybe I might be able to pick it up on the Wednesday. So on the Wednesday, I went to the office planning to stay there all day if I had to, as I knew I had to get that passport back! I waited 4 hours and Jesus caused them to give it back! The breakthrough came when my mind stopped thinking like "if it doesn't happen then I can just stay in Pemba longer" and instead, started thinking like "I know without a doubt that my God has called me and therefore I AM going to walk out of here with my passport." I entered a rest, not of "whatever happens happens" but rather a rest filled with expectancy and knowing that something was going to shift. Other people were lining up and being refused their passports, being told they weren't ready yet even though they had been waiting since May (the receipt you are given has a pick up date written on it). So it really is a miracle that I got mine back! They had been telling me "no" all day but who knows that a human "no" is powerless when God has decreed otherwise!

The reason why it was so important I get it back is that my visa appointment with the US was the next day, and if I had to reschedule it would be another 2 weeks. Meaning it would be too late for school and I wouldn't even be allowed in the border.

So praise Jesus - He knows exactly where He wants me and has the power to get me there! My visa was approved on the Thursday, I booked my flights that same day, picked up my passport from the embassy on Friday, and flew out Saturday to arrive Sunday at school - just in time for the end of orientation!

I slept 3 hours over 3 plane flights and 2 layovers, arrived Sunday morning and went straight into the Night Watch that night... Thank you Jesus He has helped my body to adjust not only to a completely different time zone but a completely different schedule.

What does the Fire in the Night Internship look like?
Breakfast is from 2:30-4pm every day, and our first class is normally at 6pm. Sometimes we have another class after lunch (lunch is 7.30pm) at 9-10.30pm or a Night Watch staff meeting. On Fridays and Saturdays we go to Forerunner Christian Fellowship instead of having classes. We finish at the FCF meetings at 11pm and leave back to the main campus in time for Dinner. Dinner is 12am and we are to be in the prayer room by 12:45am, where we stay on the NightWatch until 6am. Curfew is 6.30am and Lights off at 7am. Our Sabbath is Thursdays, where we only have a 6pm class and then have time off until 4am where we go into the prayer room for the last 2-hour watch of the Night.

It is different missing out on mornings but it is so worth it as we get to stand our watch in the Night Season, worshipping the Lord and interceding for the nations.

We also have outreaches at Hope City - the inner city prayer room/outreach centre. At church services I will be serving from time to time as an usher. Classes cover topics such as Intimacy with God, the book of Revelation, Tools for the Prayer Room, the Existence and Majesty of God and the Forerunner Curriculum. I am loving the classes here as they do go so deep into the Word of God!! I have always had a passion for scripture and wanted to study at Bible school, and now God is giving me the chance without me even knowing it was coming! All the time in the Prayer Room too is all based out of scripture.

It is so fun because I did not know much about IHOP at all before coming. I just came because God said go - yet as soon as I got here it felt like home (notice how I say that a lot - it changes everything when your home can be wherever the Lord is)! All the content here and the way that they run everything directly relates to the desires the Lord has been giving me since the early years of my relationship with Him. It is like He is picking up a lot of the desires and things I had forgotten about and just handing them to me all at once... It is hard to explain and I don't have the time to go into it properly - but just be encouraged that it is in the place of obedience to the Lord that you will find all your desires fulfilled and you will be brought into the place of His dreams for you... old dreams once forgotten that you had as a child, and new dreams which He gives us and delights in seeing them come to pass! Obedience to the Lord, even when you do not understand it or like it, praise in the place of despair... I could go on... God is good and desires the BEST for us!! Most of all He desires intimacy....

More later

Sunday, July 3, 2011

How DO I do this?? Jesus. 
He is the reason, He is the why. 
He is the leader, I am the follower. 
He is the romancer, I am the romanced. 

The answer is.... 

JESUS.

HE is WORTH IT ALL :)

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Just a few pics... More coming later

 
Lunar eclipse!! Pemba is the perfect place to view it from!

A couple of our amazing guards :)

Breakfast time with the boys - one of my favourite parts of the day

The Greatest Commandment

Visiting the "Baby House"

Such cuties!

These beautiful ladies became my friends last year during school. They are still here and their kids are growing!

Hugs are huge part of life here in Pemba!

Sweet, sweet presence of God... My last Sunday for this visit

Goodbye Pemba!


Friday, July 1, 2011

Snapshots of Pemba

Thought I would share... :)

Church: at least 1000 people made up of local mozambicans, mozambican bible students, international students and visitors. We sit on wooden benches or grass mats on the floor... energetic, sweaty praise and then time spent
saturated in God's glorious presence... Picture beautiful mozambican children lost in the presence of God, just wanting more of Him and so thankful for all He is and has done in their lives. Picture international students from many different nations including the states, Brazil, Australia, Nepal, Madagascar, Holland, the UK, Germany
and many others just pressing into all God has for them as many of them have given up everything just to see what He has for them here... Picture mozambican bible students, both young and old some of whom have walked days just to get here for 3 months and have left their families behind for the sweet privilege of learning the bible, learning to read the bible and growing in the ways of God...

We had a guest speaker from Texas a couple weeks ago, she was talking about Love. About the incomprehensible love of God.

So she did an altar call at the end for everyone who wanted more of God and who needed his LOVE and his STRENGTH.

So I was up there, on my knees and my face was just like blergh, wet. I opened my eyes and there was a little moz girl (about 6 or 7) in front of me holding a little moz boy (under 2 years) and they were both staring at me like they were concerned. Then this little boy starts trying to gently take my glasses off my face. I didn't want to
lose my glasses because I only just got them in Malaysia, to replace the frames that broke in Nepal. So I put my face on the floor instead. Then I feel a little hand just gently patting my shoulder... ohhhh Jesus loves me! After a while I had to sit up a bit because my nose was trying to empty just like my eyes and I didn't want it to. So I sat up, opened my eyes and there are these two boys (around 7 yrs old) on their faces before God. hehe one had his pants falling down so I could see his obama undies, and the other one had this rip in his pants right in the middle (not too big so you could see anything)... soo cute. Only in africa...

Village outreach. I spent a few days in the bush bush with a team of Mozambican students and mission school students. We visited the village of the Mozambican pastor in charge of our team. He had lived there as a boy. God also organised it so that I was on outreach with another Australian girl who is here to help out, and 2 other people
from my school last year! One of them was on staff at my school and now she works long term here with Iris. The other was a student on my school and is now staffing. It was so great to hang out with them and catch up! The Mozambican bible students on our team were also a lot of fun and we all got along great :)

It was the most peaceful outreach I had ever been on. It seriously felt like a holiday. It's like that - the dirt feels better than a nice comfortable home with everything I could need and a lot of stuff I actually don't! Not that I don't appreciate those things too, but there's always something about going out to a village that I love.

The first night, I stayed with the tents to help keep an eye on our stuff (we didn't stay in a yard this time, we stayed out in the open but I felt safer than on previous outreaches). There were around 1000 people at the Jesus film that night. We were told that because we only arrived after it was dark, most people didn't know it was on and so to expect a lot more people from surround areas later. The second night, I spent mostly just loving on this one teenage village girl while the Jesus film was showing. Her friends came around as well and braided each others hair. We were also joined at different points by some more friends who smelled strongly of alcohol and kept asking the girls to go with them. Eventually the girl's friends left, but she stayed and ended up accepting Jesus that night! She also came to find me the next morning, just to hang out and be loved on some more :)

We went house to house praying for people during the day. There was one lady with a racing heart who was 6 months pregnant and her husband and whole family of another religion came to Jesus. Her heart rate also went back to normal. We prayed for a lady with a migraine who got better. We also took part in a church inauguration (made of mud bricks, wooden posts and mecuti roof with dirt floor) where all of us - pastors, students, villagers - got to walk around the church anointing the outside with oil and praying over it - we got a joy party on! That is something so great about this particular village - during our whole outreach they would randomly get the drums out and start going all out - voices raised, dust rising as feet pounded in the dirt in energetic praise to our king! There were a few hundred people hanging around us and our tents constantly. We bought a pig for lunch and shared it with the people.

We walked 1/2 hour to the river on our last morning there, meeting many women on the way with water pots on their heads. We walked through stalks of corn at least twice my height, with thick morning mist all around us. This river is where the villagers get all their water. One of the guys said he prayed for someone who had gotten bitten by a crocodile and that was why he needed prayer! We sat on the bank and just rested in the peace of God...

My time in Pemba so far has felt like a gift that God gave me, where I'm getting to process a lot of things and just be saturated in his presence... This place is just such a place of his Love and His presence... I think I've mentioned that word "presence" a lot already in this email but it's just so true. The night before outreach we had
a complete lunar eclipse where the moon turned red... the ocean is just, there. All the time and so blue and sparkling and it feels like you could just lose yourself in it and in God. I keep catching myself thinking, how did I get here? and thinking how much of a privilege it 
is to be here! On Saturday we had a wedding! We had it at the beach about 20 minutes by cameon away from the base. Anyone who wanted to could come! So we had over a thousand people - Iris kids, Iris workers, Iris missionaries, Mission school students, bible students, visitors, villagers who wanted to come, village kids from the area around the beach, the groom's family from the states and the bride's family from down in southern Mozambique. It was an absolutely GORGEOUS wedding with the waves rolling in from the ocean being the backdrop. God's presence rained down as we prayed for Him to come. His Love was so there!


The database went well - there is so much more that I could do with it than I originally thought! I think I got more done that what I thought I would, but not as much done as what I wanted to and what the base would have liked me to. I ran out of time, basically. If I had made Pemba completely about the database and nothing else, I may have gotten more done... but the Lord had other things for me there as well. Connections with people, friends old and new, a lot of heart surgery and processing... Pemba was truly a gift!


This visit has been so peaceful. I am staying in the visitors centre and so many groups and people have come through while I've been here. There was a team from Holland, a team from Scotland, a team from Virginia, a couple from England and a family from South Africa on sabbatical from their ministry :) Now there is a team from Prince
Edward Island (Anne of Green Gables!!) and a team from Texas, as well as a brother and sister from texas - one of whom is a missionary in Burkina Faso and a few people from Australia - so if you notice me coming out with any Aussie-isms its because my roommate was from Queensland!

Just another story to share and then I'll end this "newsletter". Our outreach team went out for lunch after outreach, to "Frango Assada" for chicken and fries. As we were waiting for our food to come, I noticed a young girl probably in her teens come in with an older man. He could have been her dad but she didn't look like she was having much fun. He sat her down in the corner on a crate and bought her some food, then went and started playing pool. She looked unhappy and I felt to go over to her. Me and another girl who spoke spanish (close to portugese) talked to her for a bit. She told us her name and said she was okay, but then the man came back. So we introduced ourselves to him as well, then our team had to leave... I asked one of the Moz pastors about it and if there was a chance it was a bad situation. He said yes it probably is. A lot of girls here have not many prospects or ability to provide for themselves so a man who wants her can just come and take her. I asked if he would marry her or just use her and he said he would just use her...

Please pray for people of Mozambique! If God wanted me to stay in Pemba, I would do it in a heartbeat. My heart is so there and so for the kids there and the people there. I feel like I have some great friends there who are long-termers... This time has been both a gift and also a re-surrendering and re-laying down of everything. It sounds
adventurous and fun to travel the world for Jesus and that is so exactly what it is! But it is also not without it's sacrifices. I want my life to be a continual "yes" to God no matter what he asks me to do, or when or where he wants me to go. He is my constant, my only one who is always with me :) He is everything I need and more!