• I mowed the lawn of a future site for a church with a machete. I now absolutely appreciate everything John Deere has brought to this world.

• After being served chicken and a giant plate of rice first thing in the morning, I vowed to fast from rice for at least a year post race... lol...
• It rained every day. I'm pretty sure there was only 2-3 days during the entire month where it was sunny and perhaps only drizzled for a moment or two. Other than that, it was a fairly amazing downpour for our entire stay in Hauticocha which was great except for the massive amount of mud that got tracked around everywhere. Also walked through mud in the dark for a good few hours... lol...
•   Rain boots are a God send.

•  Ants also love to make nests inside of them.
• I rode a horse for the first time in my life atop a mountain farm which we hiked to in order to share Christ and our testimonies with a family. We also helped herd their cattle back into their pin.

 

• Isaiah 52:7 always came to mind for pretty much my entire stay in Ecuador.

• Constipation was at times, more ideal then enduring the stress of going to the un-flushable bano at our host families' house. Especially if you had to go in the middle of the night while it was raining (which happened to me).
• Ate a grub. It was pretty good actually.

 

• Ate all sorts of delicious fruit of which the name's I can't remember that were picked straight from the tree it was growing on. Guava and Cacao namely.
• The team was attacked by a giant moth. Katie saved the day though and captured it for our viewing pleasure.

 

• Proverbs 11:2 "When pride comes, then come's shame: But with the humble is wisdom." NKJV.

• Spent the entire month discerning the voice of God for prophetic reasons to suddenly have it come into fruition towards the end. Definitely learned that God's timing is divine no matter how crazy the task He might put before you is.

• Confirmation of previous prophecy's I've had.

• Started speaking in tongues while praying. Is still fairly new to me lol...
•  I touched a cow, lol...

 

• Hauticocha is a very spiritually oppressed place. And it was there that I learned that sharing the good works which the Holy Spirit has done in me has the power to bring joy and consolation to others (Philemon 1:6-7). This was a word I received from my awesome sister in Christ, Kaitie (who received from God, yay!) after God told me to bust out our simple worship repeat song "Let it Rain" and have everyone worship and understand the power of joy. It was extremely refreshing to see the Spirit rest upon us in that church that morning.

• Phillipians 2:1-15 - A scripture given to the team which was received by Kaitie from the Holy Spirit during our refreshing worship that morning.  Definitely concluded the humbling nature of the month for me. Also spoke to the power of joy and it's immense crippling power to the kingdom of darkness.

• Discerned a bit about spiritual oppression. There will be demonic oppression in the good and bad. They will try to bring a modicum of discomfort while thwarting you from going to God with it (praising, giving thanks, etc...) by allowing some sort of consolation within your flesh. Won't hurt you enough to make you run to God, but won't allow you to see the good and praise God either (fairly lukewarm)  Example...

o   Where are you God?

o   Why are you not using me?

o   My purpose here is trivial.

o   Feelings of disconnection from God and spiritual leading.

o   Fruits of the flesh magnified

•  "If I was God, I would do this..." - This is pride (the original sin), this is Satan speaking into your heart about why God isn't working and providing in the same way that Satan would.

o   Ezekial chapter 28.

 

• Started drinking coffee in Ecuador. I like it.

• Helped fix a flat tire.

• Have gotten use to playing guitar during times of worship. Still separating my hands and my mouth so I can sing without messing up the strumming patterns in the music, hehehe.
• Participated in various ministries from acting out skits for children (playing the role of Yeshua because of my long hair lol) and getting tackled by a vast majority of them, to house visits all the way out into the jungle up in the mountains and even soccer tournaments for the church.

•  Matthew 11:28, 1^st Peter 1-6:7

•  I beheaded a chicken with a dull blade... while it was alive...
•  Planted corn in a town near the base of a volcano called Pacto Sumaco using a stick to poke holes in the ground while my corn planting sidekick, Denise, dropped two corn kernels into it.

• Hiked for a good 2 hours in the jungle behind our machete man tour guide in Pacto Sumaco. Swung from a vine hanging from a tree too.

 

•  Almost got my face smashed in a few times goal tending against our crazy, 15 year old missionary companion Marcelo while playing soccer.

• The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The places in the world where no one wants to go are going to be most likely be the most oppressing spiritually and physically.

o   Mark 9:33-37, 10:35-44

o   Matthew 18:1-5, 20:20-28, 21:4-11

o   Luke 9:46-48, 14:7-14, 17:5-10

o   John 4:1-26, 5:1-26

• Spiritual realm is the superior realm. We are a spirit in a flesh body, not the other way around.

• God's Spirit literally rests atop the winds of our praise.

• Psalm 91, always.

• God doesn't want your sacrifices, but a humble and contrite heart. Your sins were covered a long time ago by His son, Yeshua. Go ahead and have a relationship with Him and let religion be torn off of you :-)
  

o   Psalm 51:16-17

o   Isaiah 57:17

o   Psalm 34:18

o   Isaiah 66:2

o   Proverbs 21:3

• Salvation is by grace, but reward is by merit.

• Seek God's presence and allow the Holy Spirit to direct your life (Proverbs 20:24).

• Be careful what you pray for :-)

 

Today, though, Team Deliverance will be heading out to the jungle of Hauticocha for our month in Ecuador!

While there we will be doing street evangelism, vbs, and other stuff like eating worms (dead or alive) and possibly bathing in rivers with piranhas (which I heard, by the way, only eat dead things and actually avoid humans... I hope).

I will have very limited internet access this month so I will probably have a repeat of month 1 with possibly no blogs until the end of February, sorry, hehe.

I ask that you pray for heaven to invade earth in mighty ways as we stay with the community in Hauticocha. I can already feel that it's going to be an awesome month with the people in the jungle and can't wait to see what God is going to do these next few weeks!

Part of our ministry in the Dominican Republic was helping build a few parts of the church that our host contact Pastor Raul had planted in Buenos Aires. It was a small church that was mainly inhabited by children. There was a day when we arrived at the church in the morning and began praying over it. We were walking all over it and speaking life into it that it would become a light up on the hill and that this young generation would be loved and rise up as a Joshua generation. Midway into it the Spirit of God came into me and told me to grab my guitar and play the only worship song I know to play, “Let it Rain”. It's sort of funny because there were so many times (and many more to come) where we have used this one simple song and it was quite powerful. As I was playing I watched my team walk around and worship and the presence of God was suddenly all over the church literally flooding into it. Every time I saw one of my team mates touch the wall and rub it, it was like anointing oil came off them and washed the walls of this church, sanctifying it.

After I stopped playing the song and God's presence was thick as ever, we all gave some pretty loud prayers to God to set the church apart as a light on the hill, that all who would enter would leave with the love of God, that the children of Buenos Aires would rise up to be that Joshua generation and advance the kingdom violently. And by the time we stopped praying, there was absolute peace in all of us for the future of this church. God heard our cries and is excited that His children went forth and claimed this town for Him to do His work and pour out His kingdom onto it. It will be set apart for God's glory and magnificent things will come of it. The children will have a future there and all the hope, joy and love they will ever need resting in God's presence.

 

I debated whether or not I should bring a guitar along on my race. While I love to play and all, the extra weight and responsibility of carrying it around for 11 months kept me vacillating for a while. But after a little bit of prayer I felt it would be a good idea to bring it along.

That's a decision I'm glad I made because one of the first ministries (and most fun) I've been participating in since I was in the Dominican Republic was teaching beginner guitar to the children out in Buenos Aires. It's an extremely poor village set outside of Azua near where our host family's house was.  Most of the kids in the town have never had the opportunity to pick up a guitar (or any instrument really) and fiddle with it a bit. All month they have been playing guitar and having a great time learning the basic major chords. A few of them had a real talent for guitar and picked it up at a very quick pace.

 

(Soooo... I've discovered I'm not much of a blogger, however, I am going to make an effort to keep updates flowing as regularly as I can. However, our month in Ecuador will have severely limited internet access since we will be in the jungle so I can't update much until the end.)