Weekly Teachings and Phase 2 Fun

Well, it's definitely time for an update. I apologize for the lengthy delay between updates, but I have been having problems with my laptop, and I only get about an hour's worth of use out of it everyday, which I have been using for homework. So, this will be a lenghty update to let you know what has been going on the past few weeks. I will start with a brief overview of all our weeks of teaching so far, and conclude with a bit of an update about China.

The first speaker we had was Dan Thoemke, who spoke on Spiritual Leadership from the book of Esther. The theme I took away from that week was: God has a place for you in His presence; from the perspective of Esther it was a fairytale of a peasant becoming a Queen as well as the redemption story for the Jews. The second speaker we had was Doug Toller, who spoke on Lessons in Leadership. The theme I took away from that week was: True leaders always persevere - we looked at the life of Abraham Lincoln and how he failed or was defeated several times in 29 years before he was elected President. The third speaker was Dean Sherman, whom I also had in DTS, and he spoke on Effective Personal Ministry. The theme I took away from that week was: Ministry is a choice to serve from a motivation of love and a flow of the Holy Spirit through you to meet the needs of people. The fourth and fifth speaker spoke on Wholiness (Wholeness and Holiness) and Public Speaking. The theme I took away from Wholiness week was: Focusing on becoming who I really am as being set apart for a significant purpose as a believer in Christ. And the theme I took away from Public Speaking week was: to quote JFK - "Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary." Or, to create your own style and "groove" to speaking. And this week our speaker has been Chey Foran, a YWAM Denver staff member, who taught on the Strengths Finder 2.0 book. The theme for this week was focusing on discovering your strengths and learning how to "walk in them" effectively. For those of you wondering, my top five strengths in order are: Belief, Responsibility, Developer, Includer, and Positivity (if you would like a brief description of those sometime let me know).

China........well, as long as their baby does not choose to come early, I will be having lunch with the leaders on Tuesday (May 19th) to discuss details of China. While the one of the leaders did teach in my school for two weeks, as well as the Multi-cultural DTS this past week, there just has not been an opportunity before now to sit down with them and discuss work, life, and details of China. I know some basic information based on the leaders sharing during class times, so I will fill you in on those details. It is a pretty amazing story of how God began to put the plan into motion several years before the leaders arrived in China. They especially felt called to China and knew God wanted a specific city, but didn't really have clarity as to where specifically that was. They felt God laid on their hearts for three criteria to be met to know that it was the right city for them to be in. So, a scouting trip to China was taken, and through a conversation, a city was mentioned (to protect the leaders and the work they do I will not place it on here, but it is the one I have mentioned to many of you) that fulfilled all three criteria and to which they felt was God's leading. Later that night when one of them opened their Bible they found a piece of paper with that city's name and part of the map of China from a time when they had torn apart of map of the world to pray for the people of those countries, and not knowing it would be used years later as a confirmation of their calling to China. So, that is the basic story of how this team ended up in China. I look forward to sharing more with you as the rest of the story unfolds.

Last week we went bowling as a class, and were as a small group to "dress up." My small group went for the "gangster" look, while some of the other groups dressed up to look like our guys, or wore one of our Director's shirts that had been borrowed from his wife without his knowledge (pretty funny to see his face when he saw all of his shirts). I have posted these pictures for your amusement. I have also posted a few pictures of snow that we had here a few weeks ago (snow usually still occurs here until after Memorial Day). I also had the chance to go to a Colorado Rockies game (I have been to a spring training game for the Minnesota Twins, but never a MLB game during season before) for $15 - that price included parking, ticket to the game, magazine, and a hot dog and coke. Not too bad!! I had a lot of fun and posted these pictures too!

Thank you for your patience with me this past few weeks with blog updates as well as for your continued support of me. It is my heart and desire for the blog updates to again resume weekly. I pray God's favor over each of you and that you may be blessed beyond measure for the blessing that you have been to me. God Bless.