Journey to Athens Part One

We left Italy by Boat to travel to Athen's the boat ride was 12 hours (which we barely made it in time )......We couldn't afford any rooms so we piled all our luggage and ourselves on the deck of the ship.......As the day came to end we said goodbye to Italy and prepared our hearts for Greece we were told we would be staying in the red light district......Sleeping on the boat was surely an adventure.......I woke up the next morning where water and black stuff covered my sleeping bag and I was already grumpy because it marked 4 years since my mom had past away......Not a morning to remember however God showed me beauty in the passing islands as we made our way to Greece........We arrived in Greece to meet our host.........where we traveled by bus a couple hours to reach Athen's......On our way we were able to stop by the ancient town of Corinth.........It was a sight to remember.......To be in the same town Paul shared the gospel and where he wrote Corinthians it was truly amazing.....I began to understand Paul's heart beat.....seeing the mountains behind the town and the large temple where they would sacrafice animals.............Then we stopped at another ancient place where Paul actually shipwrecked before he made it to the town of Corinth......there we ate lunch and made our way to where we would be staying....

We were housed in a 4 story buliding where they house a few refugee's from the middle east that are Jesus followers......the district we were in was directly around the Muslim culture......so we were not allowed to go out alone and most of the time we should take a guy with us.....We could see the brothel from our windows and watched men go in and out of the place.....At night the streets came alive and it was really noisy I didn't sleep much......It was so hot that I sweat all night long and I would constantly be having bad dreams I even woke up screaming once......I know God is bigger than any power trying to discourage me......:)

Outreach times: Our first performance was at a local church which was really fun and met a lot of Christian Greeks that were so wonderfully nice.......The next two performances were at a park square where alot of the illegal immigrants from the middle east live and do drugs........The first night was a little nervous because they gave cat calls almost the whole performance and at the end a local pastor preached to the audience and it wasn't presented in the way I think needed to be presented........It was a little direct and harsh and it made the crowd angry to a point they were yelling and booing all of us........After wards we got to share our hearts with the people and I think it was good........The second night was about the same except a recovered drug addict student in our DTS shared his personal testimony of how God brought him out of his addiction.....they really like what he had to say.....Almost the whole crowd stayed and listened and after wards I was able to meet some guys from Afghanistan and shared with them what little I knew of their culture from working at Barbur World Foods..........

The next Performance was at the place where we stayed......two times a week they fed the refugee's so we performed our show to them and they loved it and a couple of them even gave their life to Christ......after that ended we went up at night to the Parathanon and viewed the whole city of Athen's by night it was so breath taking.......Another place where Paul shared the Gospel........I was able to fellowship with one of the young men living as a refugee in Athen's it was really humbling to know how easy I live my life.....He has to wait another 5 years before he can leave the country so he can get his papers......He hasn't seen his family in 5 years and has a part time job and helps out at the building where he lives.......I am learning that the circumstances in my life may have been hard but their is so much blessing in my life that I never even thought about............

The next day we cleaned and packed for our next outreach adventure to the northern part of Greece where we will be teaming up for 10 days with Christian Greeks where we will be traveling to many different citys to share the gospel.........

Sicily

I am in Greece right now but I will try to give what it was in Sicily......We arrived in late morning where a lot of our team was able to stay on a Ship called the next wave a YWAM base......It was a total blast I slept almost every night on the deck of the ship :).......We walked in and out of the port....we almost got caught with out pass ports once and almost had to stay the night on the street lol......The other team members stayed in a house that used to be used by the mafia that the government took away from the mafia and gave to a local church.....lol so I can say I have visited a mafia house lol........The ministry oppurtunities were amazing.....We performed and helped hand out bibles........again it was a starving nation for the Gospel........very few churches are united together and by us performing we were able to bring unity amoung the local churches......they fed us a lot of good food....... my stomach is getting bigger lol........people loved our performance I think we planted a lot of seeds amoung the people of Sicily.......There are lots of more cool details but I just don't have much time these days we are go go go............Hopefully I can give you an update on how Greece has been so far.......... Love you and miss you all very much

Rome

We arrived in Rome on a really late night bus ride to a house that a local Korean Church provided for us........The very next day we performed our show to bless the people that blessed us so much......First Korean service I have ever sat in on and it was neat to see how another culture worships the same God.........We had no shows booked for the rest of the time so we did three days of touring historical places.......

Our first day we went downtown Rome and visited the collosseum where the Christians we fed to the Lions and the gladiators competed against each other, seeing the Roman historical city surrounding the collosium was amazing I felt like my eyes were too small to take it all in......Then we headed to the famous water fountain that was in the movie with Audrey Hepburn.....there I had my first Gelato......yummyness :) Then we headed over to the Spanish Steps and a Old Opera house with amazing paintings.........

The second day was probably the most humbling expirence I have ever been through as a Christian....our first stop was the water channels where they first built the water system to supply Rome and also the house that BBC films their T.V series Rome.......We went to the road Paul walked on to enter Rome where he would later be captured and beheaded because he was preaching the Gospel........It was a walk to always remember....... how a road could change the course of Christianity......Then we headed over to the actual jail cell where Paul wrote Second Timothy......Then we walked the walk where Paul was beheaded and historians tell us that when he was beheaed water sprang up from the ground and they built a church as a memorial for Paul's life and their is actual water still coming up from the ground then I went and read Second Timothy and was very humbled by Paul's life and how he risked everything to share the gospel with people and how in his last moments of his life he still was praising God and making sure Timothy knew His heartbeat sitting in that jail knowing that it was going to be the end of his life..........then we went to the place that changed my perception of what it means to loose your life for your faith.....This place we got the oppurtunity to see this very old burial site that was used as a underground refuge for Christians to preserve their faith.....If the tunnels were stretched out straight they would be 500 miles...someone could easily get lost and never come out again.....Christians were living in this place for over 300 years families were being made in these tunnels they lived in close to no light(when people came out of tunnels they were blind) or food the only thing that was keeping them alive was their faith.....

The third day we all had the chance to see the Vatican....Which a friend provided the funding to bless me......The paintings and sculpture were pretty stunning and my eyes could never take everything in.....Crazy to think that these painting and sculptures have been preserved for thousands of years........It was really cool to think about how people view Christ so differently....Some think of him dying nailed on a cross.....some think of him as a loving father.....some view him as a gentle man holding a baby lamb.....some view him just a face with a beard.....the one thing that brings all of us together Catholic,Methodist or Protestant is that we all believe in Jesus..........

Being in downtown Rome walking around was really awesome as well.....Passing little alley ways......little houses right by the Vatican with grape vines coming out of the wall......However the bigger picture of Rome is that it really reminded me of Mexico...There was a lot trash in the alley ways and grafiti everywhere........The city itself has a lot of needs their is also a lot of corruption in the Catholic Church in Rome..........Their city has a lot of Potential to be a vibrant awesome place but it is a city in deep need.......

The rest of the week was time we spent growing together as a team where we all took turns organizing the schedule for the day.........It was a lot of fun to be so united together as a team.........We also got a great chance to perform a couple pieces of the show at a local Catholic Church parking lot where we got to connect with a lot of the youth in the neighborhood where we were staying....It was awesome to love on a young group of people that were in so need of attention and someone to care about them...they hung out with us for the following 3 days after we performed and ended up doing the full show for them...part of me wish I could of stayed and started a youth group because they were so curious about our faith.........

All in all Rome was more than I could ever thought he would be for me........

Switzerland

So my time in Switzerland is winding down.....Its been an amazing time here......The landscape reminds me of home with the green hills and the large mountains....The German part of the country was very welcoming thanks to Joel a student from last years DTS.......Everything there was so interesting.....everything from the houses, the shops and the streets.......We performed at two different places a theatre and a church.....over a thousand people came to watch our performance :)......It was a great start to our outreach.....

After the German part we traveled to the French part of Switzerland where we stayed for 10 days at the YWAM base in Lausanne.........The beds are comfortable and the food is really good......however our team has been fighting off sickness since the moment we got here :(.....But we are doing our best to hang in there.... We are performing in a outreach called Regeneration at the famous Jazz festival in Montreux..... We perform and share the gospel with people for about 9 days.....I had the opportunity to share the gospel with my personal testimony.......The atmosphere is a little hard to be in at times.....lots of drinking and smoking.....we know that we had purpose being there....even when we worship in the park or when it rains and all we can do is worship till the rain stops we get a crowd.......I know that God is dropping seeds in peoples hearts through our production......:) Next stop Italy

These last couple of weeks have been a little on edge but really awesome. No one ever said trusting God with your life was ever easy.....Not sure what the end of the road really looks like but I know whatever He has instore is completely amazing....Because the feeling of being inlove with Him is so overwhelming that I can't deny that He loves me very much and He will direct me to the right path of my life.......After being honest with God about how I lack trust in Him.....He showed why I need to trust His will no matter what circumstances I am in.....He put me in the right place at the right time and blessed me with a friend of a friend that knows a foundation that loves to give money to mission work.....and provided me with nearly all of my outreach money....God is truly amazing.......I know God's purpose for my life is far above my own purpose for my life.....Seeking time with God is priority to seek what He wants me to do......I truly know that God wants me to stay longer in Hawaii after outreach....My father is showing interest in my faith and is starting to feel more comfortable coming up to the YWAM base :)......I miss many friends from Oregon but I have begun some new friendships here and I just heard God telling me to wait upon Him to grow me and refine me...not to say that can't happen in Oregon but I notice things about myself....When things get uncomfortable or hard I tend to run to places where things easy and comfortable.....People think I am having a blast in Hawaii....... and that has been very far from the case....This season in my life has probably been the hardest thing I have ever had to go through with my relationship with God....Confronting lies about myself that I have believed for so long......Pain that I have been bottleing up my whole life.....Batteling things out that come between the relationship with my Savior..........There is still more to go......I know things have just begun and I am excited for this journey I am on because I feel like I am on a honey moon with Jesus and I never want it to end..... I have has a couple of panic moments here because I feel very poor....I have no stable fall back plan no future plan at all......Unsure of what my future holds.....I need a lot of spiritual support this next season in my life and I need fiancial support as well....I am really discouraged when it comes to finances because I feel like I don't have a lot of people in my life that want to support me financially....However my God works in mysterious and powerful ways........If God calls me somewhere He will make things happen that need to happen......
So I am writing all of this in probably the most beautiful country I have ever been to......Its no tropical island but its very green, very clean, and everyone speaks another language.....oh and the buildings are so amazing only can be seen in the movies :) The coffee and chocloate is so good its hard for me to describe other than amazing.......have you guessed it yet.......well its Switzerland :)....I have been here only two days and I have already felt major peace and joy being here at outreach knowing God loves me and I want to be a light to the people I am around........I wish I could write my mom and tell her about this amazing place so I am writing to you faithful followers instead :).......A couple of us walked into this little bakery shop and they treated us like royalty......they gave us free chocolate and pastries.....pretty amazing people here so far :)

This is my heart as is......

Lord God your are my creator I am sitting in your room of prayer right now crying out to you to show me where you are right now.....I have a half an hour for my outreach fund to be covered a amount of 3600 dollars.....These have been my honest feelings and emotions in the last couple of weeks.......I feel I don't have a lot of supporters a total of 4 people have called me from Oregon to see how I am doing.....Many times I have felt a distant from you and alone in this world I am in.......My road has been really broken......Life growing up was far from easy.......Going from teenager to adulthood was incredibly difficult.....I have never felt more alone in my life when my Mom got the disease that took her life......I think that is why its so hard for me to trust your ways.....God you have given me restoration and begun a healing process of the suffering I have endured and my heart is so in love with you God.....I can't imagine a life with out you in it......Because of the things that I have endured its hard for me to believe that you are going to take care of my needs......I closed my eyes and you showed me where you were.....you were there at the hospitals.....you were there when she went into a coma....you were there in the months upon months where I sat and watched my mom struggle to speak and move her body....you were always there I may not of felt you because of my own suffering but you were you never left me....You are here now.......You will direct the right path I need to take....If you provide the funds for outreach that is your will if you don't you have something amazing in store for me and I am excited to be in this place of intimacy with you.....Outreach won't change the fact that your are my God.......

lastest buzz of life in YWAM

Hello..............Its been awhile since I have updated but God really loves me and I am now embracing the fact that Jesus thinks I am a beautiful creation......He loves me and adores me so much that I can truly embrace the Destiny He totally has planned out for me.....These last weeks have been really hard on my heart......There was a lot of pain in my life brought out into the open......especially the emptiness I feel with my mom and the pain that my dad has caused in my life.......I felt like I was in a bottomless pit with my Father I felt like the pain he caused me was always going to be in my heart till he left this world or no longer wanted me to be part of his world......But the Lord has taken hold of my heart and showed me the life and pain I have endured in the past has been put on the cross and that He wants me to break the bondage between me and my father......For the first time in my entire life I have seen my dad through the eyes of Jesus and that He loves and cares for my father deeply.....I now enjoy spending time with my dad.....I look forward to taking walks on the beach and talking to my dad about my life and about how God is in my life and what has happened........The emptiness that has been plaguing me with the death of my mom has been starting to be filled with God's love I still think I have a long way to go with this one but knowing that God has come in and shaken my heart for His glory brings me to a place where I am surrendering every part of my broken heart over...allowing God to move in the places that need to be moved..................
I also experienced how God provides........I needed a down payment of 2000 dollars last week and had no money.......less than 24 hours I had all of the 2000 dollars.............I am so thankful to the people that love me and God tugged on their hearts to give money to my outreach I still need 3800 dollars by Friday but I know whether God provides or not I still have Christ has my prize....Philippians 3:7 -15 this changed my life.......I am ready to lose my life just so I can find it.........