Im the Dread Pirate Roberts

Hey!
So lecture phase just ended today. We had a great speaker John Stenson from Wisconsin speak to us about Evangelism or more about how to show God’s love to others. Sunday we will be leaving to Puerto Viejo then from there on Monday we will be going to this four day camp called NEKO. They are very secretive about what we will be doing there but it is in a very rural part of the country and we are packed for wilderness survival.
After NEKO we will spend two weeks in Costa Rica probably Puerto Viejo, a beach town on the Caribbean side, doing outreach. After that we take an 18 hour bus ride to Panama City and work with the YWAM base there for a week. Annnndd then after that we go to Peru and Bolivia for 4 weeks then we come back and graduate.
In this paragraph im going to tell you where we are going and what are some of the things we might do while in Peru and Bolivia. If you find that boring you can skip it and move on to the next one where I hope to tell you some things I have learned. So we will be staying in Lima for about a week where we will work with the YWAM base and some local churches, possibly working with mentally disabled people. We will also be most likely working with Veronica’s House which is a house that brings prostitutes off the street and works with the organization Not For Sale. After that we will go to Cuzco for a week where I believe we will work with the coffee shop Meeting Place and a YWAM base that is just starting up there. From there we will head to La Paz, Bolivia for another week and also work with the YWAM base. This whole time we have been riding in buses for countless hours and are pretty far from Lima where are departure flight leaves. So this outreach is backpacker focused and we are going to head back to Lima but stopping on the way to enjoy some sights and spend some time with backpackers at different hostels. It might sound boring but you can googles some of the places I have mentioned if you want or ask me for more details also  Side note we found out there are two Starbucks in Lima Yay!
So God has taught me a lot of things and removed a lot of things during this DTS. These last couple of weeks I have felt that I have finally reached a point where I can start figuring out who I am and who God wants me to be. Throughout this DTS I felt I have had a lot of problems I have had to overcome and I have realized that they were probably symptoms of a bigger problem. This problem I have deduced, and I am about to be quite open over the internet haha, is the perspective I have of myself or the lack of value I see in myself. God has been teaching me this week I should not look for my value in others or even. I am “crown jewels” in God’s eyes. It’s a pretty tough subject that I don’t feel im going to be freed of immediately but God has already helped and picked me up from places I had struggled months to get out of. So I would appreciate your prayers. Thanks
Praise
I have all the money to leave on outreach!
God being my joy and my identity

Prayer Requests
Protection on Outreach and NEKO
That the rest of my group gets enough money to go on outreach
That God paves the way on outreach and we follow his path not our own

The Tides Are Turning

Hey! Sorry these last few weeks have been quite busy and amazing haha.

I have learned so much about how God forgives your own past and makes you a brand new creation. I feel like all the weeks before these last few weeks God had been giving me revelations and working in my own life but until now I have not felt any major changes in my life if you know what I mean. God had torn down walls but I had not started to lay the foundations.

We started the week that we learn about spiritual warfare and the weekend before I really started feeling pressure and doubts. I felt that some of my sins from my past were too large, that they were going to keep me from where I had thought God wanted me to go in my life. I think the devil knew the changes that were about to take place in my life and tried extra hard to stop them.

Fortunately for me I am surrounded by a great community here in San Jose. If I ever need prayer or a friend they are all right here around me. So I prayed and I waited for God and the thing that I really never had done with God was I trusted him to show him self to me when he knew it was the right time not when I thought it was the right time.

After what I felt like was forever, I feel like I was able to free my self completely from my past sins and I knew God forgave me but I had to forgive my self. That was really hard. I had secrets that I was ashamed of and I had to open my life up and air it out to people I really did not want to. What has been so amazing is how they responded. I am so blessed to be surrounded by all these amazing people and I want to thank them for being in my life, it means more than they probably know haha.

I let my fear rule me but not any more. My life is a new creation completely. I am ready to start building my house for the LORD and I cant wait to see what he is going to do.

Praise-
For where my life is at today
For being able to participate in Freedom Street
For the amazing men and women of God being used by God in my life
For His love that has washed me white as snow

Prayer Requests-
That I would become more bold and increase in faith and trust
Protection
That our group outreach would have unity and receive all our finances

So it was a pretty brief overview of what happened and I probably did not make my self pretty clear. I also did not bother to proof read this fyi so that excuses any/all mistakes I made including theological ones (a joke…except I really did not proof read this haha…)

Thanks for all your prayers!