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

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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! :)

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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!

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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!