update-Maggie

This is Jody, Maggie's mom. I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas!
I pray for blessings for you for the New Year. I've included parts
of an email I received from Maggie. Please continue to pray for her
team as they minister in the heat, and for their plans to go to the
YWAM base in Mamputo.

I got to check my email again!!...Christmas was nice here! We got up
early to deliver
presents to the kids and helped serve them lunch. In the evening I
organized a white elephant gift exchange and a letter exchange. It was
a lot of fun. I don't think I have ever been that homesick though...It was
good though. Now we are preparing for new years. We
are doing face painting and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's going
to be fun. We leave Iris Ministries base Wednesday morning and are
suppose to be staying at the YWAM base in Mamputo, the thing is that
they haven't been returning Brandon's emails and so as of right now we
don't have a place to go. Our bus tickets back to South Africa aren't
until January 24th so we are kind of in a pickle. So yeah be praying
that everything works out.
Where we are working right now is in the big city and the iris base is
really nice. So I haven't really seen how Africa really is, that is
until yesterday. Yesterday we went out into the bush bush and went
from house to hut praying for families and things there. It was sooo
sooo hot and I got sick once. Everyone was just because it was so hot
and we were hiking everywhere....It's been about 115 here the past
few days and next month it is suppose to be even hotter!! But it was
an amazing experience to see how the majority of Africa lives.

OH!!!! Something else so Paul came up to me a few days ago and told me
that when Hanson recorded their The Walk cd, the one that I got just
before I went to their concert, they came here and recorded with the
kids for the cd (remember how it had the Africa children singing?)
Well the whole group knows I am a Hanson fan, but when Paul came and
told me I thought he was just messing with me. So yesterday I went and
asked a missionary here and they confirmed it!!!! How awesome is
that. My life is now complete :)

Ok time is about up so I gotta go. Tell everyone that I love them and
pass along any updates! LOVE YOU!!!!

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

SOUTH AFRICA!!

Hello from South Africa!! We landed in in Johburg safe in sound yesterday evening! We are all tired, but so ready to go! We are staying here till Saturday morning to get our visas for Mozambique. Please be praying that everything goes smoothly!! Miss you all!! Can't wait to share everything with you in March!!!

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

Mozambique and South Africa Here We Come!

Well family and friends this is post is probably going to be my last one for the next three months. I won't have internet at all the first month and the last two month the internet will be kinda sketchy. So I just wanted to take a few minutes to share some important things with you all!

First off I want to thank all who have supported me! I will forever be grateful for the sacrifices that you made for me. Know that everything God uses me to do while I am on the field you are a part of. I am going into this knowing that in everything I do I am representing God, my church, and all my supporters! I hope that I can make you all proud.

Ok so just to share a little bit more about what we will be doing and where we will be serving. Monday evening my team and I will be leaving Kona and flying to LA, We catch a flight from there to Atlanta and from Atlanta we have a 15 hour flight!! to Johannesburg. We stay in Johannesburg for a few days to secure our visas for Mozambique. After we have our visas and all our supplies we jump on a bus and head from Mozambique. It is about a 8 hour drive!! When we reach the South Africa and Mozambique border all the people have to get off the bus and wait while the bus is searched for stowaways and then the bus is driven over the boarder. We then have to walk through customs and cross through a bunch of fences and basically no mans land, into Mozambique. So I will be able to say that I walked all the way from South Africa to Mozambique. :)

The first two weeks in Mozambique we will be staying in an orphanage in Zimpeto! We will have chance while we are there to go into the "bush bush", which is called that because all that you see out there is a bush and oh another bush, and another....ok so that's probably not why it is called that, but it is the middle of nowhere. In the orphanage we eat, play, and live with the children! The second two week in Mozambique we will be staying on the YWAM base in Mamputo. While we are there we will be doing children's ministry.

The last part of my trip will be spent in George, South Africa. In George we will be working again with children! The organization we are serving with is called LIFE community services. Our team will be split up and we will working in several of the LIFE locations in George. We will be working with kids ranging from birth to their late teens!

In both Mozambique and South Africa we will have chances to be on both the radio and TV, we have been working on skits and dance routines and will be ministering through these! I am so excited about all the opportunities that we will have!

Ok so now I have some prayer request.
1. Be praying for my team! Pray for unity, safety, health, and that we would all grow in our walks with Christ!
2. Pray for open doors! Pray that we would be sensitive to where the Holy Spirit is leading us.
3. Pray for the ministries that we will be working with. They are Iris Ministries, YWAM and LIFE Community Services.
4. Prayer for our leader Brandon and Paul. Pray that God will continue to guide them as they lead our team.
5. Pray for me to be free of homesickness and anything else that might distract me.

So as I said in the beginning this will be my last blog for a while. To stay updated on our team visit our team blog: http://mozambiquesouthafrica12.wordpress.com/
Please feel free to email me at fields.maggie@gmail.com but be understanding that I might not be able to reply for a while! I would love and appreciate any encouragement you might want to send my way.

In closing I just wanted to share a passage of scripture that has been spoken over my whole team several times. God just keeps putting Isaiah 61 in front of us! So here it is.
The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me.

He sent me to preach good news to the poor,
   heal the heartbroken,
Announce freedom to all captives,
   pardon all prisoners.
God sent me to announce the year of his grace—
   a celebration of God's destruction of our enemies—
   and to comfort all who mourn,
To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion,
   give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes,
Messages of joy instead of news of doom,
   a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.
Rename them "Oaks of Righteousness"
   planted by God to display his glory.
They'll rebuild the old ruins,
   raise a new city out of the wreckage.
They'll start over on the ruined cities,
   take the rubble left behind and make it new.
You'll hire outsiders to herd your flocks
   and foreigners to work your fields,
But you'll have the title "Priests of God,"
   honored as ministers of our God.
You'll feast on the bounty of nations,
   you'll bask in their glory.
Because you got a double dose of trouble
   and more than your share of contempt,
Your inheritance in the land will be doubled
   and your joy go on forever.

    "Because I, God, love fair dealing
   and hate thievery and crime,
I'll pay your wages on time and in full,
   and establish my eternal covenant with you.
Your descendants will become well-known all over.
   Your children in foreign countries
Will be recognized at once
   as the people I have blessed."

      I will sing for joy in God,
   explode in praise from deep in my soul!
He dressed me up in a suit of salvation,
   he outfitted me in a robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom who puts on a tuxedo
   and a bride a jeweled tiara.
For as the earth bursts with spring wildflowers,
   and as a garden cascades with blossoms,
So the Master, God, brings righteousness into full bloom
   and puts praise on display before the nations.

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

We have enough!

   Hello everyone!! It's been a while since I've sent out a real update! Things have been so busy around here and will stay that way until the day that I leave for outreach. And speaking of outreach I am going!! You guys God preformed a miracle and provided for me to get the remainder of my funds! One day I needed $3,500 and then by Monday it went down a couple thousand! God is amazing!! As of this morning God provided the rest!
   A beautiful friend of mine for Switzerland shared some scripture with me when I was in the middle of trying to figure how to come up with the rest of the money and it became a prayer for me. I am so excited to be able to share it with you. It is from Exodus 36:3-6. It says, "Moses gave them the materials donated by the people of Israel as sacred offerings for the completion of the sanctuary. But the people continued to bring additional gifts each morning. Finally the craftsmen who were working on the sanctuary left their work. They went to Moses and reported, "The people have given more than enough materials to complete the job the Lord has commanded us to do!" So Moses gave the command, and this message was sent throughout the camp: "Men and women, don't prepare any more gifts for the sanctuary. We have enough!" So the people stopped bringing their sacred offerings. Their contributions were more than enough to complete the whole project"
   My amazing church family I can say "We have enough!" Praise the Lord! You all gave selfishly and I now have enough to do what God has commanded me to do.  Words can't express how grateful I am! You are all a part of this trip and I can't wait to share with you all that God has done through US!
   Now on to just some highlights from the last few weeks.  Ok so two weeks ago our speaker was John Bills. He is probably my favorite speaker from the whole DTS! He spoke on the Father Heart of God. The whole week was amazing, but on the first day God brought up some things from my past that I realized had set up a barrier in my life and had been keeping me from truly knowing the heart of God. These things from my past were events that were out of my control, but had scared me deeply. I was on emotional shut down. I was broken, but it had become more comfortable for me to stay in a place of negativity then to allow God in. I believed that I wasn't worthy of healing. I believed that all the things that had happened to me were my fault. But deep down inside I knew that these things were lies from Satan. So in an act of faith I got up in front of the class and began to tell Satan that I wasn't going to allow those lies to be in my life any longer. Before I knew it all of the guys in my class stood up and just surrounded me and held me and began to speak truth into my life. Through their shouts and all my tears I really began to get a picture of how God felt about me. For probably one of the first times in my life, I allowed Christ to truly speak to my heart. I realize now that I am worthy of healing and that He longs to speak to me! Tell you what guys if I came home now, this trip would have been worth it. What an amazing breakthrough! 
  This past week was a ruff one for me. Our speaker was an Amazing man name Alesandro. He is a Brazilian who is a missionary in Afghanistan! What an amazing man! On Monday he just shared story after story about how God has worked in his life. On Tuesday I missed class because I had to take care of getting my finances in. On Wednesday I was down in bed sick :( But I heard some amazing things about breakthroughs my classmates had! Praise the Lord for that! I think God was especially moving in the lives of the men in the class! Continue to be praying for these guys! They are some amazing men of God and the world needs more like them!
   Thursday was Thanksgiving! Oh what a ruff day! I was really homesick and physically sick on top of that. But my school leaders worked hard to make the day special for us! I am so grateful for them! We had a nice Thanksgiving meal and then spent the evening at their house playing games and fellowshiping. Friday we began set up for the 50th celebration! Our class alone moved and set up a couple thousand chairs and a few hundred tables. It was crazy! What is even crazier is that we did it in only a few hours! Oh man did my whole body hurt after that!
   This weekend was really nice! Myself and a few of my friends went to what the locals call Children's beach. We rented snorkeling gear for $5 and spent 2 hours floating around on our stomachs looking at coral reefs, tropical fish and sea turtles. So amazing!!! I wish everyone had a chance to do something like this! As I am sitting here I still feel like I am floating around in the water! I was so stinking excited and the whole time I was screaming under the water! Haha! Apparently I didn't breathe through the snorkel right because when I got out of the water I had a huge ring around my face from the goggles, which stayed there for the rest of the evening :)
   Well guys that about it for now. I am sure I will have lots of stories to share about the 50th celebration! There are a couple thousand missionaries from all over the world that are going to be here! It's going to be amazing!
   I love you all and miss you with all my heart! I am so grateful for each and everyone of you!

HELP!

Hey Friends and Family,
   So this is a urgent email! I need some help from you all. On the 24th I must have all of my money in for my trip to Mozambique and South Africa. If not I will not be able to go. As far a I know I still need $3,200. That's a lot of money and only a few days to come up with it. I believe that God has called me to these countries. While I am there I will be working in orphanages and ministering to people affected by HIV. I know that God wants to use me in amazing ways, but I have to get there first. So I am calling out to all of you and asking you to consider what you might be able to do to help me financially. When you support me you become my partner and everything I do while I am there you will be a part of. I know that God will provide and I am trusting that He will speak to each of you about what you are to do. Just take a moment to pray and ask God to give you an amount. Maybe $5, maybe $50, maybe $500.

  If you feel that God is leading you to support me please get the money into my home church Faith Family Ministries by Monday the 22nd. If you have any questions please find my mom or dad and they will be able to answer them for you. Or you can email me at fields.maggie@gmail.com Thanks! I can't wait to share with you all how God works this out!

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

And this is my prayer in the battle
When triumph is still on it's way
I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ
So firm on His promise I'll stand

Is it really November?

Hey friends! Another week has gone by and I can hardly believe it. Time flies around here! I can't believe that it is November and that it is already snowing at home. This week our speaker was Faith Dutton and the topic was...relationship! Duh duh duh! lol Just kidding! It was a really great week. I have been blessed to go to a church and have a family that loved me enough to encourage me to have good relationships and to have good boundaries on dating, so a lot of what was said I have heard before, but it was nice to have a refresher course on it. It was also really awesome to see my new friends and classmates break free from some bad relationships! There was a lot of renewal going on.

   Once a week every student participates in a community outreach. For the past few weeks I have gone every Wednesday and sat across the street from a local planned parenthood and prayed. Wednesdays are the days that they do the abortions, so we would just go and sit quietly and pray. It was really ruff to sit there and know that at this very moment babies were being murdered! Myself and a dozen other students went to war for all the unborn lives. We were actually apart of the 40 days of prayer that the Crisis Pregnancy Center was putting on, but that ended last week and I had to choose a new outreach. There are several that I would have loved to have done. Ones that I could go and play with local kids and I would have had lots of fun and I would have been very comfortable. But God has been really challenging me to step out of my comfort zone. So I chose to do the Treasure Hunt outreach. Basically it is street evangelism. SCARY!! So last week since it was my first time doing this my friend and I decided that we were just going to walk around and just pray as we past by people. I was definitely not going to stop someone and try to talk to them. I told God that if He wanted me to talk to someone they were going to have to stop me. Haha. Well we hadn't walked for more then 10 minutes when this guy sitting on the curb called out to my friend and I. My first thought was "run"! :) But I said a quick prayer and turned back to talk to the guy. We talked with him for about an hour about his life and about God. It was so amazing!! So this week I am going to be more bold about it and we will see what happens! :)

Ok so here are some prayer request.

  1. Please be praying for my eye. I am not sure what is going on with it right now, but it is really red and feels like it is bruised. I haven't been able to go to the doctor yet because I am having some trouble figuring out my insurance. So please be praying that God will heal my eye or work everything out with my insurance so that I can go to the doctor. Also I haven't been able to wear my contacts because of my eye, so I haven't been able to see. So I have been dealing with headaches from it. So yeah I need lots of prayer.

   2. Please be praying for my outreach team! Pray that God will give us a passion for the people of Mozambique and South Africa! Pray that God will give our leaders Brandon and Paul wisdom and discernment as they plan our trip.

   3. Be praying for my finances! I had some money come in last week and I now need $3,000. Be praying for God's provision and my patience! :)

Ok well that's all for now. I love you all so much!!!

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

One month later :)

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay in blog updates, but we have literally been going non stop for the pat 2 weeks! So I am going to highlight a few things from the past few weeks.

Ok so two weeks ago our speakers were brothers, Trent and Tre Shepperd. They are both pretty intense! Normally the speakers just speak to one school at a time. Well this week was corporate so the whole campus came together for the whole week. It was defiantly a crazy week. So here are a few things from my notes from the week. The first thing is about boredom, beauty and pain. You know how many times when I was at home did I say that I was bored? I hear it from other people all the time. Well guys and girls I am learning that the world is full of to much beauty and pain for us to be bored. The biggest danger for Christians is that we have become desensitized to the pain in the world and we have lost our amazement with Jesus. Are you bored? Get up and do something! Beauty is the wonder of sharing in Christ dreams and pain is the privilege of sharing in God's aches. The second thing that really stood out to me is that we have become so focused on what we have been saved from that we have forgotten what we are saved for!!! We have become so focused on saving people from hell, that we have forgotten about saving people for the kingdom! I don't know if that makes sense to you all! But this gets me pumped up! Oh how I wish all of you could be here!

That weekend was a BLAST! All the boys left to go on an overnight camping trip so all of us girls had a girls only day! Oh what fun we had! We went to the beach in the morning and swam all day! We had a picnic on the beach and just chilled! Then in the evening the staff got out a chocolate fountain and TONS of food! We all left with chocolate all over out fingers and faces! LOVE IT!!

This past week our speaker was Matt Rawlins. Let me tell you this week was very challenging! Matt is a great speaker but he through some things out that I didn't totally agree with. So I really had to practice discernment! This isn't a bad thing! I am so tired of just being spoon fed things all the time! I want to struggle and wade through tuff things! It was so much fun! Everyone was in the same boat and so we spent our evenings in small groups with our Bibles open, searching for what God wanted us to hear. If we walked away with this new hunger alone it would have been a successful week, but there was also a lot of really great stuff in Matt's lectures. The main subject was the Fear of God! I don't have time to share all my notes, but it had a lot to do with destiny, intimacy, grace, vulnerability, truth in tension, the nature and character of God, and the love of God. A lot to cover in one week :)

On Thursday the tickets were purchased for my outreach team!!! Woot woot! We leave the 13th of December! I don't have the itinerary yet but as soon as I do I will let you all know all the details!

On Friday the down payment of $2,500 was due. God worked it out so that I had enough to make this payment! PTL! But there were a lot of students who were short. We needed over $20,000 to cover everyone's fee! We got together Friday evening and just started praying. We just asked that God would provide and that He would shows each of us how He wanted us to contribute. Ok so sit down people! Within 20 mins we raised over $16,000! No joke! And just from the students and staff! How that is possible because none of us have money. Most of them are like me and scraped by to make the first payment! But somehow God took what little we had and multiplied it! By the end of the evening everyone made the first payment! Isn't God AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! So I am telling this story 1 to give God the glory and 2 to pose a challenge. If my class of Youth Without Any Money (YWAM) lol, then what could He do through a church full of people who don't have money? hehe :) I still need $3,500. That is only a fraction of the $20,000 that my whole class needed. It is really nothing to my God! So church what do you think? Please just be praying about what God wants you to do! $10? $5? $3,500? The next due date is Thanksgiving, but I am praying that the money will come in so that I am not waiting till the last minute. I can't wait to see what God does. Also just so you know I am claiming the word ABUNDANCE! I believe that God is going to provide more than what I need and I in turn will be able to bless others!

This weekend we did a community outreach! We help put on this thing called Candy Land! We worked hard all day setting up and then past out candy and talked with kids for hours during the evening! Over 6,000!!! kids came through!!! So amazing!

Well that's all I got for now! I love you and miss you all so much! Please pass this along to everyone! I only have a few email address right now!

P.S. I apologize for spelling and grammar  mistakes :) I just don't have time to reread everything. lol

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie