Songs for Every Season

Hey everyone! I hope you all have been well and have been feeling loved this past month. Sorry for the lack of an update, but I have safely arrived at the YWAM Chico training site and have spent the last 3 weeks training. I wanted to thank everyone for their support through prayer and also financially. I have been fully supported financially and it's been such a huge blessing to see how loved I am by God through the people around me. I wanted to shout out some friends of mine Justin, Leah, and Jinwoo for being such gracious hosts and opening up their home for me before I started the next season of my life. I'm glad our friendship extends beyond borders! For this update, I wanted to label each section a different song so it might be a little longer which is why I created collapsable sections so that you do not feel pressured to read it all in one sitting. Please feel free to come back and finish and ask me any questions after!

Golden Hour

This first song is a secular song called Golden Hour by JVKE. I like this song purely because it's so catchy and pretty. Feel free to listen along as you read this section. The base here is truly in a golden hour 24/7. It is always sunny and the lack of signal pushes you to explore the many trails near the site. It brought me back to the beauty of nature and how God is holy and transcendent above all things to have created such a large and gorgeous world. This season has given me a period where I can sit with God without the pressures of work, future plans, and finances and learn to be still in His presence.

Members of my team figuring out whether the sky is white and gold or blue and black

This new season has also given me new friends! I'm in a team of 9 other people who are all older than me from 25 to 80 years old. They are all hungry for the Lord and have a huge desire to help the community around them. We are also taking our program alongside a Family Discipleship School (DTS) where there are a dozen families so it has been a blessing to hear how even families from different background can come together to be missionaries. I had a tough time adjusting at first, spending a lot of my time in my room, but after continual encouragements from my brothers and sisters and a push from God, I slowly started to integrate myself into the community. We learn together, eat together, and go into town (5 miles out) to give food to the homeless, pray for the lost, and spread the gospel to the broken. I'll end this section with a cute video of one of the children at the Family DTS.

Make Room

This song is called Make Room by Community Worship. It was suggested to me by one of the very first people I met at the base named Sam who has an incredible testimony. The chorus calls us to make room in our hearts and lives for Jesus to do what He wants to do instead of letting our selfish desires take over. This song spoke to me because I was witness to a couple of families from Madagascar that lived out this song. Two of the families were having trouble coming to California due to financial and visa issues and one of the families felt that God was calling them to give the money they had raised to the other family so that at least one family could make it. An important thing to note is that one plane ticket from Madagascar to California cost 2 years of work in Madagascar so not only was this a huge sacrifice, to me it was illogical and something I would never do. I had put a box around God thinking that there couldn't possibly be a good reason to sacrifice your own finances to lend a helping hand to others. But this family made room for God in their hearts, giving control of their situation to the Lord. Amazingly, in the next week, we found out that the Madagascar family that was still in Madagascar were fully supported and could make it to California the coming week!

My face when God asks me to all my money to someone who I just met

In my own life, I've opened my heart to Jesus by letting Him choose where I would be going on missions. We had two options: Mexico and Romania/Ukraine. My family, my brain, and my own fears told me to go to Mexico. However, I felt the pull of the Spirit on my heart for Ukraine, and after a week of prayer, I, along with 21 other people (4 people from my team and 3 families) will be going to Ukraine and Romania in December!! We will most likely be aiding the refugee camps in the area and spreading the gospel as well. A personal vision of mine is to be able to sing the song "The Blessing" by Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, and Elevation Worship in everyone's native language in a large group similar to how I was able to lead worship in the video below with a student from Germany!

Clear The Stage

This last video is a long time favorite of mine. It spoke to me this season because the first 2 weeks at the base was filled with me replacing God with multiple different idols. The first idol God challenged me to break was my idol of music and worship. I had placed musically good worship over genuine worship towards God; the gift had become greater than the Gifter. I became easily distracted when the music wasn't played like it was supposed to or easily put off by my own worship as I compared myself to those more gifted in music than I was. I had trouble believing that the worship I was offering to God was worthy which is how it became my idol.

My face when God tells me my worship is an idol

Another idol for me was my desire to find a friend, partner, family, or community that fulfilled everything I would want in a perfect human. Someone that could relate to every nuanced reference I made, that would understand all of my infinitesimal issues or annoyances; someone that would accept me for who I was and would never be disappointed in my failures. God put these desires in front of me and asked where in the world I would be able to find someone like that, and the more I searched, the more I realized there was only one being capable of meeting my needs: Jesus.

These idols are still present in my life, but I am not discouraged by that fact because I am a work in progress. As the song says, "Anything I put before my God is an idol, Anything I want with all my heart is an idol, Anything I can't stop thinking of is an idol, Anything that I give all my love is an idol ", and I must continually give these idols to God and let Him take over.

Here is an accurate representation of me when God asks me to give up my idols

For those who made it this far thank you for reading! I appreciate your continued prayers, words of encouragement, and just your friendship. If you would like to know how to further support me throughout this journey here are a couple of new ways~

1) Prayer. I have updated my prayer requests in my partnership section so please continue to pray for me.

2) Conversation. Though wifi is spotty and there is no reception, I would still love to connect and talk more about my experiences and also how your lives have been going.

3) Vote! My hair is getting pretty long and I would love your input on the next haircut I should get. Please vote in the poll below to decide my next hairstyle and I will make a blog post before I leave for Ukraine/Romania with my new cut!

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