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

Outreach team Pictures!

Outreach!

Hey Friends and Family! We found out our outreaches tonight! I am officially going to Mozambique and South Africa!! I don't know the details yet, but I do know that it is going to be AMAZING!! Here is the names of the people on my team! Please be praying for them all! We have a crazy adventure ahead of us!

Leaders
Brandon Song
Paul Kim

Students
Carlee Angell
Christine-Nicole Funk
Me
Briteny McClung
Seonkyung Yun (Emily)
Matthew Irwin
Eric Baek
Bron Caldwell
Katie McCullough
Bri Quiggle

Also please be praying about my finances! I still need about $3,500! I am getting so close! This number isn't to big for my Papa! Please be praying about how you might be able to help me! Pass this along to your friends and family! Maybe they would like to support me! :)

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

Ear to the Doorpost!

Hello my AMAZING family and friends!!
Ok so I have reached the end of my second week here!! I can't believe it! The first week went by so slow, but this week absolutely flew by! What a crazy week it's been! Friday I had the chance to lead worship for my class! It was a last minute thing and I was super nervous but I think it went pretty well. Also on Friday we found out the options for outreach! We got to list our top 2 choice and we will find out Tuesday evening where we are going! I will let you all know as soon as I know! I am sooo sooo sooooo excited!

 This week's speaker was Andy Byrd! We covered A LOT of things this week but I will just share what hit home the most. I felt like the topic this week, at least for me, was the love of God. God has been giving me revelation after revelation about his love. The first is that the foundation of Christianity isn't based on our love for Him, but instead it is His love for us. Our whole lives we strive to earn His love and find ourselves continually coming up short. This is what leads to guilt and then ultimately will lead to either apathetic Christianity or total rebellion. Unfortunately for me I fell into the apathetic Christianity category. I always felt so guilty because I failed to do what I believed I had to do to be a "good christian". This caused me to be burned out! I was living to try and earn God's love, instead of living in the freedom of His grace! But one thing I know now is that I am no longer complacent! I am not passive! I wouldn't be here in Kona if I was. I chose to have a tenacity for Him! I chose to fight the good fight because HE LOVES ME!! Haha!

The second thing is that I have been living my whole life believing a lie! MY WHOLE LIFE! The lie was this that I was ugly, that I wasn't good enough, that no one cared about me, and that I wasn't worthy of love! Lies! All lies! And I have believed these lies for so long that they were all that I could hear. They were drowning out the quiet whisper of God's love. I would wake up every morning constantly comparing myself to everyone around me and I developed this hatred for myself. I hated who I was, I hated who God made me to be. My thoughts were always negative and it ate away at my soul and left me broken and living in constant fear of rejection. My parents can testify to the fact that all you had to do is look at me the wrong way and I would fall to pieces and believe that you hated me! I realize now that these are lies that I am hearing and I chose instead to believe truth! I chose to get up in the morning and instead of hating myself I am going to hate the lies. I am so angry with Satan! Andy said that "God is worthy of us getting mad at the things that have robbed us of our inheritance!"  This is so true! I am tired of giving in to Satan and his lies! God's love is changing me! Now this isn't a automatic change! Everyday I am waking up heading into a battle! And there will be times when I fall back into my old habits, but I am just going to repent and then MOVE ON! Please be praying for me!

Also we talked about revival of the heart and reformation of the lifestyle. In my life I have had a lot of revivals of the heart. Amazing moments of intimacy, but never giving him the steering wheel! Now if there was ever a time of revival of the heart in my life this is it! Please be praying that I will give God Lordship of my life! I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the term bond servant, but this is an amazing concept. In Bible times when people would go bankrupt they would chose to be a slave of someone. It was the Jewish custom for Masters to treat their slaves like family. Because this slave hood was voluntary every 7 years all the slaves would be set free. During this time slaves would have be given a chance to get their feet back on the ground. But there was a second option. Slaves could say that they loved their Master and believed that they were better off with their master and so the Master would take the slave to the doorpost and place their ear against the doorpost and pierce their ear. They would then become a bond servant, a slave for live! They would serve their Master for the rest of their life! Amazing! So here I am! Ear to the doorpost! Haha! I am crying as a write this! I want to be a bond servant of Jesus! And even though it sounds contradictory I feel so free! Crazy! I pray that you all could experience this as well! It so AMAZING!!

Ok so that's all I got for this week! Please continue to prayer for my finances! I still need about $3,800! I know that God will provide! Our God is faithful! And no number is to big for my Papa!

Love you, Maggie

Iron Man

Well friends I have made it through my first week! And what a week it has been! I wish I could share everything that I have been learning with you! Amanda, I know now why you are so fired up about the Kingdom of God!!!

So yesterday the Iron Man competition took place here in Kona. Myself and a few other friends got up at 4am to go and watch the race start. I'm telling you what seeing about 1,800 people in the water swimming for their lives is a pretty crazy sight! Just miles and miles of bodies all fighting the waves. We watched the bikes for a little bit and then later my school worked the security from 6pm-12am. It was so crazy! We were right by the finish line and it was our job to make sure that the crowd stayed out of the athletes way and we also cheered everyone on. I woke up this morning and my arm was hurting, I didn't realize till just now that it is because I was waving it around in the air for 6 hours straight!

It was so amazing to stand there and watch hundreds of people cross the finish line after swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running a full marathon. As the people would cross the finish line the announcer would call out their names over the speakers. I couldn't help but imagine that this is what it would be like when we get to heaven. Scores of angels, family and friends all lined up cheering us on, telling us that we are almost there. Some people come in running, some walking, some crawling on their hands and knees, but no matter what shape they are in when the get to that line the reaction is the same. Jesus calls out our name and then we hear "You are mine!" I get goose bumps just thinking about it!

Ok so I am going to have to apologize again for there not being any pictures. For some reason they just won't upload. I will try to do a little bit here and there over the next week. I love and miss you all so so soooooo much!

God, Glory and Worldviews!

Hey friends! What a crazy few days. I have had a lot of information thrown at me over the last few days. I think I could leave now and come out changed. It's kind of crazy to think that I will be doing this for the next few months. There is so much information to process and so little time to do it in. Our speaker for the week is Don Stephens! He has already proven to be an amazing speaker and has challenged me in some many way.

 

Monday we tackled the subjects of the Glory of God and Grace. We learned that the Glory of God is God's invisible character reflected in a visible world. As human beings we are attracted to beauty because it is a reflection of Christ. 

"Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe." Gabriella Mistrel

 

So this got me to thinking of the David Crowder song that goes, "You make everything glorious. What does that make me?" Haha! I'm glorious! Isn't that amazing! It gives me and my life such value and purpose!

We also learned that the Christian life isn't about sin management, it's about a relationship with Christ and the freedom that comes from Him. We spend our whole lives trying to live by the law, when really we should be living our lives in freedom because of the gift of Grace! 

Grace is not the lowering of God's standards or ignoring sin, but it is God's empowering presence. (Philippians 2:13)

Today we began to dive into Worldviews. We were challenged to ask ourselves if we see the world how it is or as we think it is. Our worldviews are shaped by the news, by our families, by what we read and so much more. Our job as Christians is to strive to break free from our own worldview and see things how God wants us to. 

Gah so much to process and I am doing a terrible job of sharing. I wish you were all here to hear all this!! Well I gotta get to bed! Lots to do tmrw. Oh and by the way we each get work duties to do while we are here and mine is to help out in the on grounds pre-school! So excited!

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie

In HAWAII!

Ok so this blog is going to be short...maybe. Right now I am sitting in Ohana court which is where we have worship. Because we don't have internet in our dorms yet we have to venture out and find other hot spots. The best place would be to head over to the Banyan Tree cafe, but it is currently raining and I can't get over there without getting soaked. So here I sit in this big open space with my new friend Prisca from Switzerland.

So on to update you about how things have gone so far. My plane ride here was pretty nice except for the fact I had to spend 12 hours sitting next to a man who insisted I hear all about how he had been abducted by aliens. lol! When I arrived in Kona I began the 2 hour long process of registration. It was pretty ruff and by the time I made it to my dorm room it was about 2 in the morning in Indiana time. Needless to say I was pretty exhausted.

The next day was spent in different orientations and meetings. During one orientations they were talking about beach safety and told a story about how a girl had been at the beach and stepped on a sea urchin. This is very painful because of the poision in their spikes and the only way to relieve some of the pain is to.... well pee on it. Haha! Well anyway no matter how hard the girl tried she just couldn't go. Well no one else in here group was willing to volunteer except for one brave young man. Funny enough right? Well it gets better two years later they got married! So great!

Saturday was so much fun! We spent the day at the beach and had a BBQ! We played in the water for hours! I got talked into playing goalie during a game of beach soccer. Supposedly I do pretty good :) We ended the day by jumping off of some lava rocks. Of course I was the one who got pushed into the rocks by the waves. I got kinda cut up, but nothing to serious.

 Sunday was kind of our day off. In the morning my roommates and I tried to catch the shuttles to church, but there were to many people and we weren't able to go. Instead I spent about 2 hours in the prayer room and it was so amazing! You know it's kinda sad but I never have really spend a chunk of time just praying and reading and listening to God like that. It was so fantastic! I had been having a really ruff morning and wasn't feeling really good so it was just amazing to just take a moment and sit and remember why I am here and what God was doing in my life. If ever there was a time in my life for me to be stressed and worry now would be it. I am in a place where I don't know anyone and thousands of miles away from my family and friends, but I know that God is in control and is taking care of me. He kept leading me back to Philippians 4:6-7 which says, Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all that He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." So that's exactly what I did and am going to strive to do. Especially in those moments when I don't think that I can keep on going.

Obviously I didn't keep it short and because I don't have the time I am not going to go back and check spelling and what not. So I apologize! Lectures start tmrw and I am so excited! Keep the prayers coming!

Also continue to pray about my finances! I still need a little over $3,000. I know that God will provide and I am NOT going to worry about it. Thank you all so much for your prayers I love and miss you soooooo much! God bless! Maggie

P.S. I have lots of pictures but I won't be able to post them until the internet is working!

Here we go!

Hey everyone! The bags are packed and lined up at the door! I've said goodbye to my amazing church family and said goodbye to my beautiful niece. So in just a few hours it will be time for me to leave! I can't believe that it is finally time for me to head out. It was fun to be able to say "see you tomorrow" to all my new YWAM friends. I am so nervous but know that God is taking care of me.

 

Cliff's lesson at youth tonight was about the spiritual battle that is being waged all around us. He mentioned that Christians who are on fire for Christ are continually attacked by Satan because he sees all that we could be and it scares him and so he will do everything in his power to make us stumble and fall.

 

Acts 19:13-16 says, "A group of Jews was traveling from town to town casting out evil spirits. They tried to use the name of the Lord Jesus in their incantation, saying, "I command you in the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, to come out!"  Seven sons of Sceva, a leading priest, were doing this. But one time when they tried it, the evil spirit replied, "I know Jesus, and I know Paul, but who are you?"  Then the man with the evil spirit leaped on them, overpowered them, and attacked them with such violence that they fled from the house, naked and battered."

 

How sad. The demons knew Jesus and they knew Paul, but they had no idea who these Jews were. My prayer is that Satan and his demons will know my name and that they will be afraid of what I am doing for Christ Kingdom. I know that this is like putting a target on my back, but I know that God is in control and no matter what comes my way I am His and He will always be all that I need.

 

In closing I wanted to share a quote from the missionary Jim Elliot:

We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are 'harmless', and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are 'sideliners'---coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!  

 

So the next blog post will be from Hawaii! Woohoo!! I am going to miss you all so much! LOVE YOU!

2 Days To Go!!!

Hey everyone! So this is the first of many blogs! I can't believe that I leave in just 2 days. I remember when my countdown was at 150! Well my bags are almost pack. I just need to leave them alone! I keep taking stuff out and putting more stuff in. I'm terrified that they will weigh to much when I get to the airport, but I have already figured out what I can leave behind if I have to. I have never been very good at packing and really wanted my sister to come and do it for me, but oh well.

 

I have to be honest and say that I am really starting to get nervous. I don't try to hide the fact that I am a homebody! I love love love my family and I know that I am going to miss them like none other when I am gone. I just have to keep telling myself that it isn't goodbye, it's just see you later! Maybe that will help? Not likely.

 

So I have this terrible tendency to dwell on the negative, so in the spirit of "taking every though captive" I decided yesterday to look at the positive! So I am going to share some of that with you! For starters, the weather forecast for Kona is 82 and sunny ALL week long! Second, I watched a video that my school director posted and it was of the school staff all dancing around and acting goofy. I showed it to my mom and her comment was "looks like you'll fit right in"!

 

The last thing is the most important. God's presence and love in my life is so thick! Even though it is easy to get discouraged and scared I know that He loves me and without his love I would be nothing. My life would mean nothing. As I step out in faith I know that I had better brace myself because I have no doubt that He is going to blow me away.

 

So be praying for me over the next few days! Be praying for my family! Be praying for safety and peace! I will let everyone know that I made it to Kona as soon as I possibly can!

 

P.S. I have an emailing list going so if for some reason you are not on it send an email with your address to fields.maggie@gmail.com and I will get you added!

 

--
Faith + Hope + Love
Maggie