Journey Home

This trip has been sooooo amazing. God has moved in some incredible ways in the last month. We've seen and experienced so much that it would be impossible for me to sit down and write down everything significant that happened or everything we learned. It seems, though, the above anything else, God brought us to Sri Lanka to move in our hearts and reveal himself to us in new ways.

I have a lot of reflecting to do after everything that happened this trip, and i hope to update this blog at least one more time to write down in more detail how God was revealed through this trip, but i don't think i would be able to do it justice right now.

You can continue to pray for our trip. We will be home in about 15 hours from now--we are currently sitting in the Hong Kong airport waiting for our final flight to LAX (our layover here was 12 hours). We are all exhausted and under the weather, so pray for that. Some people are still experience spiritual warfare, even just on the flight home. Satan won't stop just because we are on our way back home. Also pray for safe travels, if you read this blog in time, that is. We are on the last leg of the trip, and it is so bittersweet because even though we are so excited to go home to our families, it feels like we are leaving another family behind. Thilini's family has become a second family to all of us, and the kids, widows, and teenage girls we worked with broke our hearts when we left because they were all super depressed. It was really hard to say goodbye, but God-willing, we will see them again here on earth.

Finally, i have a very specific prayer request. Uncle Adrian, the pastor of the church, prayed over all of us the last day we were at the church there and he was extremely spirit led during the prayer. He prayed specifically for each person on our team, praying whatever he felt the Spirit was leading him to pray. A lot of what he said pertained to things he wouldn't have known about the team members--it really was spirit led prayer. That being said, when he came to me, he prayed that God would use me in nursing. He prayed that God would empower me to heal naturally, but also to have the gift of divine healing. This is something i never thought of for myself, but now it is something that i really want to be praying for. I am excited to use God in nursing and hopefully be a powerful vessel of supernatural healing for those i come in contact with. Wouldn't that be so cool? Ya.... i thought so too :)

Thanks for all the prayers and support you all have given our team. We really couldn't have done it without you! I am excited to see you all again and share more details about this trip and everything that we did, saw, and learned!

Week #3 So Far...

So we have been updated on Dr. Gary and apparently he is no longer in a coma but he hasn't regained consciousness yet. He is in pretty bad shape because from what we have heard, he broke almost every bone in his body so it is a miracle that he is alive. His wife and daughter (who is 19) flew to Korea to be with him at the hospital but he has a lot of brain damage and they are estimating that he will be in the hospital in Korea doing physical month for at least 4-6 months. But praise the Lord that he is alive. Keep him in your prayers!

One of the things God has showed me through this trip is how big he is. This seems so simple and obvious but i have realized that they serve the same God here in Sri Lanka that we do back home. It just reminds me how amazing he really is.

I have been learning a lot of Sinhala. Thilini says that if we stay here a couple more weeks we would totally be able to speak the language, but unfortunately we only have a week and a half left to learn it. I ordered bread today for dinner... this is what i said "paan raathal tuna denna" (it literally means "give me 3 loaves of bread" haha). I enjoy the language. It is very different from anything i have ever heard before! Matt has learned so much already! He knows at least 100 words, because Thilini's friend made a huge list for him and he studies it pretty much every night haha.

This week the boys on our team went back to Madampe (to the farm) to work with the boys and girls again and us girls stayed at the teenage girls center. We have been leading a mini conference and each day one of us gives our testimony and leads a bible study. Our overall theme has been "identity" and we spoke about how important it is to maintain a daily walk with God, self-worth, relationships (which is when i gave my testimony), suffering, and tomorrow we are doing forgiveness. It has been a good week. These girls have been through so much suffering and haven't dealt with it or learned to forgive those who hurt them. It is important for them to realize why we suffer and how God uses it, and also for them to trust in God and place their identity and self worth in Him.

Tomorrow is our last day here at the teenage girls center, and on saturday we are having a single day for sight seeing. We will possibly be riding elephants and we are going to sigiriya, a huge fortress from about 500 BC that is in ruins but it is supposed to be really cool. We are going to hike up it! After that, we are going back to the farm for next week. We will be back at the girls home next friday, saturday, sunday, and monday, and then monday night we head for the airport to go home. I can't believe how fast the time has flown, but i am starting to be ready to come home. I don't have a lot of energy anymore and i think i might be relapsing in my cold, but God will sustain me! Please continue to pray for our team! Thank you!

Week #2

Since i last updated you, we have had a lot of sickness amongst our team... Caroline has been to the doctors twice because she has blisters/bumps all over her hands, feet, tongue, lips, thighs, and butt, and it keeps spreading. The first doctor said she had a virus but when it didn't go away she went to a second doctor who says she is having an allergic reaction... hopefully this is the case and the medicine he gave her will do the trick. Matt has been really lethargic and has had no appetite... today he also had trouble breathing when we went swimming. The doctor said that he is having mild asthma issues, due to the climate change. This is weird for him because he has never had asthma before. Almost everyone on the trip has had digestion problems (diarrhea or vomitting) at least once and most of us has felt symptoms of the common cold. Chauntae also got hives the other night due to an allergic reaction to something. But we know we are in the safest hands and that God is protecting us from any worse attacks from the enemy... we consider ourselves blessed to only have these sicknesses and nothing worse so far. Apparently many girls on the team last year contracted bacterial meningitis, which is the lesser serious meningitis but is still deadly. They all survived, but so far we have been fortunate not to have anything that serious. But we are all physically exhausted and don't have a lot of energy to work with.

In case you were wondering, yes, the swelling of my ankles and feet did eventually go down. They are completely back to normal but it took about a week for them to get that way.

In the past 2 nights we have killed 8 cockroaches in our room! The first night we slept in the rooms here (we relocated to the Teenage Girls Center, which is in Welisara, on friday), i woke up about 7 times sitting up and freaking out thinking cockroaches were crawling all over me... my roommates told stories of that night all day the next day haha. For some reason, i just cannot stand cockroaches. They are probably the most disgusting insects alive. (sidenote: write after i wrote this, Chauntae warned me that a cockroach was crawling towards me under the table i was using.... ewwwwww)

Ok, now on to the update:
Last week we repainted the boys and girls homes at the farm (where we were staying) and just got to play with them a lot more and go to their nightly pray meetings. It was really cool to see the older kids lead the prayer meetings and all the children honestly seeking God and worshiping him in song. It is really awesome to see what these children have been rescued from and how bright their future is because of this ministry and the new hope they have. One kid came to the Farm when he was 12, never having gone to school before then because he had no family. Now he is #1 in his class, he is 17, and he speaks really good english. He takes care of all the younger boys in the home and leads the prayer meetings. He has such a passion for the Lord and wants to be a pastor.

On Friday we relocated to the Teenage Girls Center, which is attached to the church we are working with. We haven't worked with them yet, because on saturday we drove 3 hours down south to go to the vocational school graduation (the ministry started a vocational school, teaching young adult girls to make clothes and pottery and paintings and things like that to make a living. Most of these girls are buddhist--actually all but 2 are--and it is a more subtle ministry to sew seeds of the Gospel in a very indirect way). This school was located right where the Tsunami took place, and we saw a lot of the damage that was done, as many of the buildings have yet to be repaired or rebuilt. The first wave was about 20 feet high and the second wave was about 50 feet high. It was hard to imagine a "huge black wall" (as surviving onlookers described it) coming toward us, but where we were driving was right along the coast, and that is exactly what we would have seen had we been there. We saw Buddhist temples everywhere on our drive down here, and there was even a HUGE (probably around 75 feet tall) that was built after the tsunami, because the people believe it is going to protect them in the future. It is really sad and the need for the Gospel is so great here.

Today was a 3 hour church service on missions. Our Biola team got to sing "Jesus Paid it All" during the communion and it went really well... we got a lot of compliments on it. But on a different note, the man who was supposed to speak, Dr. Gary, who is a close friend of one of the church's pastors and was his son's mentor for years, was supposed to fly in last night but he never showed up. This morning we found out that he was in a bus accident in Korea yesterday, in which the bus fell over the guard rail of a bridge and crashed 30 feet below. 12 out of the 24 passengers died instantly, including Dr. Gary's traveling companion. Dr. Gary broke many bones, including his hip, and has a lot of brain damage and is currently in a coma. Keep him in your prayers. He is a close friend of Biola's president and is a great man of God... he even has the entire Bible memorized! Anyways, everyone is grieving here, but we trust and hope that God will work a miracle in this situation and extend his life for God's Kingdom work.

The rest of this week we will be working with the teenage girls here. They are really struggling and have a lot of issues. From what i hear, they are really stubborn and set in their ways, so it is hard to get across to them. Every time progress is seen in their lives, the Devil attacks and brings them down, so they definitely need a lot of prayer. I hope our time here is very beneficial for them!

Keep praying for us. Spiritual warfare is very powerful but God is All-Powerful, and we trust him to protect us and to conquer in the end!

Recap of Week #1

Wow this week has been so crazy! It feels like we have been in Sri Lanka forever, but at the same time this week has gone by so quickly!

At the beginning of this week, we met the kids and the widows and have gotten to spend a lot of time with them. There are a couple kids here who have really grabbed onto my heart strings and i already don't know how i am going to say goodbye to these kids in a few weeks. I have learned a lot about letting myself be vulnerable this week because these kids need us to show them so much love because they have been through so much and have really been hurt. It is cool because the little girl that i was praying for prior to coming on this trip has apparently changed so much since last year and has really opened up to us. Her name is rajakumari and she used to be really aggressive but shy, but now she is super open and friendly and (despite her being sick) she decided she wanted to give me a kiss on the lips last night haha. There is another little girl name Sawandi who is about 2 years old and she is the most beautiful baby i have ever seen. She blows me kisses when i leave and has the cutest little laugh you could ever imagine. Then there is Dilshan. He is 8 (i think) and has the best smile and is so cute. The first day i met him he just grabbed onto my hand and wouldn't let go. He held it all day. I love these kids so much and i don't want to have to say goodbye to them, but i am trying not to think about it too much so that i can just let myself be vulnerable and love these children like they need to be loved.

Starting thursday of this last week, the ministry we are working with hosted a youth camp for boys and girls ages 15-23. About 200 people from all over the country came and stayed at "The Farm" with us and most of these children came from non-Christian backgrounds. The camp addressed the innate desire in all of us to feel loved and accepted, yet most of us go about finding that love in the wrong places, such as addictions or unhealthy relationships. They also addressed the importance of youth and their individual importance as well, because in Sri Lankan culture the youth is seen as less important and there is no encouragement here so children grow up thinking they can't do anything because that is exactly what they have been told from the time they were little. They think they are failures and have big self-identity issues. This camp addressed that and yesterday, Sunday, we had the alter call. Of the 200 kids here, i would say about 95% of them responded to the alter call (which was way more than i was expecting, especially because less than 1% of the Sri Lankan population is Christian so many people wouldn't be open to Christianity). During this time, they all went up to the front to pray and it was cool because the pastor prayed over each and every one of them individually and many of them fainted in front of us when he laid hands on them. It was almost a visual representation of the chains of their bondage being stripped away from them and the power of the Holy Spirit overtaking them. We also witnessed him cast out a demon--one of the boys who wanted to respond to the alter call was being oppressed by a demon and although he went forward for prayer, the demon inside him was fighting him and wouldn't let the pastor touch him. He was crying out in weird noises and 4 people had to hold him down as the pastor commanded the demon to come out by the power of the Holy Spirit. Eventually it did and the young man committed his life over to Christ. It was a very emotional experience but I am so glad i got to witness it, and i know that my perspective on a lot of things has changed because of this youth camp.

I also learned a lot about God's sovereignty this week as i have seen it unfold in front of me. The testimony that God has given me--the things i have been through and learned--seemed to all be leading up to this trip and, if for no other reason than this, i know that God brought me to Sri Lanka to share my testimony with a couple people... one girl in particular though. She has been through a lot in the past year and when i told her my testimony, she told me that the stories are identical and it helped her out a lot. She told Thilini that our team helped her feel a lot better, even though she is still hurting, and that she misses us already and is very thankful for all we have done for her. I am glad that my story was able to comfort a girl who was in deep pain, so much so that she tried to commit suicide about a month ago.

So far our team hasn't had any major health issues, although a lot of us has felt sick for a brief period of time but then soon felt better. Please continue to pray against the enemy's attacks on our health and our team unity. We haven't seen much spiritual warfare as of yet, but we know that the enemy is relentless but the Lord is all-powerful and wants to do a great work in us while we are here.

In all, this past week has been a huge eye-opening experience for our team. We have learned so much about the Sri Lankan culture, about the hurt many people go through, and about the nature of God. I can only begin to imagine what God has yet to show us while we are here but I am excited to find out! Please continue to keep us in your prayers!

Ayubowan!

(Ayubowan is a formal greeting in Sinhala, the language the people speak in Sri Lanka. It literally means "may you be blessed with long life.")

We finally arrived in Sri Lanka at 10:30 last night (which was 10 am Monday morning for all you Californians) and got to the place we are staying, Ape Kadella, at about 1 am. We are staying at "the farm" and we got a tour today. We saw some pretty HUGE pigs and really cute piglets, lots of chickens, quail, dogs, coconuts, exotic birds, ate some delicious pinapple, curry, and green bananas, and saw some of the children for the first time. We are actually going to go meet to boys (who will be home from school soon) in about 35 minutes! Pray for the little girls, because 22 out of 30-something girls are sick with the flu, so we aren't able to meet or play with them yet. It was REALLY interesting to see that one of the girls we met, who was 15, looked 10 ten years old. We would have never guessed her real age, because all of them are really malnourished. That is one of the focusses of the ministry we are working with... they really want to help get these children healthy, and educated, giving them a passion for life and redirecting their focus and their future into one that is God-focussed, and not just karma based. These children are not taught to think for themselves, and therefore have been indoctrinated to think that what their current situation is like is based off of their previous life. They have been through so much and we don't even know the half of it, but it is definitely culture shock and I am realizing how privileged we really are! We have learned so much already, and we haven't even been here for a whole day yet... I am expecting my eyes to be really opened by the end of this trip.

On another note, it is really humid here, and we are sticky all the time from the mixture of humidity, bug spray, and sunscreen. But it feels surprisingly comfortable! Not sweating too much.... yet haha. But today has been a day of rest and we have construction and Kid's camp to run starting this week. Also, i don't know if it was from the 36 hours of traveling getting here (and the altitude on the plane) or from the humidity here, but i lost my ankles... i think i left them in Hong Kong..... no but really... my legs and feet (and hands to a lesser degree) are so swollen that i literally have kankles and balloons for feet. I wouldn't be surprised if i could walk on water with these things. I am the only one on the team who has had this problem so far... it is really weird. Hopefully the swelling goes down soon and i am not left with floaties for feet for the rest of the trip haha.

I can't upload pictures from this computer, but as soon as i get the chance, i will update the blog, so look out for those!

P.S. Keep praying! :)

Arrival in Hong Kong

Our flight for from LAX to Hong Kong landed about an hour ago, and we are sitting in the Hong Kong airport just blown away by the beauty of this place, but also intrigued by how different it is. Far off in the distance we can see the city, but every building looks exactly the same. It is very uniform and organized... definitely not something we are used to! The flight here went by so fast! It was 14.5 hours long, but i slept for probably 10 or 11 of those hours haha. Now we are just waiting for our flight from here to Singapore, which leaves in about 2 hours. We still have 2 more flights until we reach our final destination (Colombo, Sri Lanka) but we should be in Sri Lanka around 8 tonight... which would be 8 am monday morning for you guys back at home. Keep praying! We are all excited to be here, but even though we are here, we still can't believe that we ARE in China, a communist country, or that we are headed for Sri Lanka! SOoooooOOOoooo many mixed feelings going on!

2 days til take-off...

With only two days left before i leave, i am feeling a lot of things. I have a ton of things to do before i go, and i don't feel quite ready for it, but i am so excited to go that none of that seems to matter. I have been waiting for saturday to come since before Christmas break, and now that it is almost here, this is a little glimpse into how i am feeling:

Nervous - it's always nerve-wracking when you get streched out of your comfort zone. Sri lanka is more than 9,000 miles away from my comfort zone... you can imagine how nervous that would make a person.

Excited - i know God is going to do BIG things this next month, and i am excited to be used by him and to see those things revealed!

Stressed - i have a lot to do before i go... a to-do list that just keeps getting longer. I feel like i am forgetting everything too.......

In pain - for some reason my hip has been hurting really badly for the past 2 days, and i have no idea why. Spiritual warfare? stupidity on my part? a combo of my job + running 20 miles a week + having a bad back that effects the nerves in my hip? I don't know, but it just keeps getting worse. I am limping around everywhere. It really is no fun. Having to pack and work (yeah,... i am still scheduled to work as a server tomorrow night... how is this gonna happen?) and shop and do laundry and pack more and clean and even think is not fun when every little movement hurts. I am really praying that it feels better before i have to get on that plane headed towards hong kong... God can work miracles! I hope he does...

Disbelief - i really can't believe the trip is 2 days away. Really? this is so crazy...

Unsure - am i packing too much? too little? is my luggage under the weight limit? am i gonna be able to limp around the airport alright? am i bringing enough stuff to last me a month (i.e. shampoo)? how hot is it gonna be there? Will i get really sick like i keep hearing people did on last year's trip? Will i die from boredom/exhaustion on the 2 day plane flight to sri lanka? am i gonna be ready in time? will i be able to find covers for my job this weekend?...

Trust - amidst the uncertainty, though, i have complete trust in God. I am so excited to be used by Him! The uncertainty only fuels that trust in God, because when i can't be in control, it really is easiest to trust God to take the reigns. I'm trusting you Jesus.... lead me and use me for your glory!