Wow, it's been an amazing couple days! I just got back from Women's Retreat yesterday. It was exhausting, but totally worth it. I got to help lead worship and also speak a bit about worship and what God has been teaching me. It was quite a battle for me to be up there and It was especially stretched when Jen, the worship leader, lost her voice and Elizabeth and I had to do quite a bit more singing than we were planning on...but God really worked it out and we all grew through that experience. :)God has been speaking to me a lot about direction for the future, and He has been giving me dreams that are bigger than the ones I have for myself. Haha! He even used one of the women at retreat to confirm to me that that dream is from Him. He is so good! I also had a lady prophecy over me and what she said was right on with what God has been speaking to me. It's so amazing to me that God can speak to us in so many ways. I've had so many opportunities to share with people what God has done in my life through YWAM and I know a lot of young people who are very interested in doing a DTS! I had a job interview with Discovery Outfitters (Which is now Peak7) about two weeks back and they hired me! Hooray!!! It's going to be another amazing, extremely stretching, wonderful summer on the river! And they are now based out of Prineville, so I get to be closer to my family. It's going to be very different that last summer and I'm so excited to see what God is going to do! I start working on May 30th. I've also been accepted at Northwest University in Kirkland, WA! I'm going to be heading up there in August where I'll be studying Nursing. One of the big reasons I chose NU is because of their emphasis on cross-cultural nursing. That's exactly what I want to do, and I'm excited that all of their professors have experience in international medical work! They even require that all seniors spend a month in a cross-cultural setting that integrates faith and nursing. I'm really excited about the next couple months, there's going to be a lot of new things happening and it's all going to be quite an adventure :)I just want to leave you with something I read that has really stuck with me:"We need to develop and nurture a passion, a hunger, a thirst, a longing, a love for the delight and thrilling enjoyment of walking day-by-day with our King and beholding His beauty and goodness which is found in the face of Jesus Christ."

I'm home! Well, I have been for about 3 weeks now :) It's taking me some time to get used to being here, but I know it's where I'm supposed to me for now. God is opening so many doors for me here in Prineville. I just wanted to give more details from outreach and some things God has been teaching me. I've been reading over my journal and notes from the past 6 months and trying to process as much as I can. There's just so much that happened!

This is a list I made of some things God gave me through DTS:

An amazing YWAM family who love me

Three very close friends who I love soooo much and am so blessed to have in my life!!!

The freedom to be who He's called me to be

A voice to proclaim His name among the nations

He taught me what it means to love and be loved

Open eyes to see what He sees

A broken heart for people I didn't even love

A desire to read the Bible

A longing to hear His voice

An understanding of what it's really like to be a missionary

A heart to worship Him with reckless abandon

A better understanding of who He is

He taught me to listen to His voice of truth and not lies

A prayer language! And He replaced my fear with amazing peace

A hunger for more of Him

The desire to learn more about the world

He healed my heart from pain I'd been holding onto

He let me see how blessed I am

.....and so much more! YWAM truly has ruined me for the ordinary. I don't even have the desire to live an ordinary life.

I'm speaking about my trip for the 1st time tonight.

That's all for now but I'll try to write out some stories later :)

We've been here in Jaipur for almost two weeks now. our ministry here is very different that it was in Hyderabad. We are mainly focused on a school where we get to teach and a slum that most of the kids come from. I love that we get to build relationships with the kids and their families :)
The YWAM staff here are amazing too!
I have so much more to say about India and these amazing people but that will have to wait. It's hard to explain what God's doing to my heart.... I don't know that I fully understand. All I know is that surrendering to Him is the most freeing thing you could do.
thanks to all who are praying!

Incredible India!

I cannot believe it's only been 15 days since I first set foot in India! I could go home today and be forever changed by the things I've seen and experienced. But praise God I get to spend 50 more days here! :D

The first couple days here were a little laid back because we were trying to recover from jet lag. We went clothes shopping because we cannot wear american clothes whenever we are doing ministry (which is 6 days a week). It's taken me a while to get used to the Indian clothes but it's kind of fun now. It was very nice to be able to wear jeans on our day off though!

I love the food here!!! It's not as spicy as I was prepared for. My favorite thing I've had is the homemade peanut butter the Vijaya makes us for breakfast sometimes! It's the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.

We are staying at a YWAM base here in Hyderabad. Some of the ministry we've done in Hyderabad is: We went to a Christian AIDS clinic (I can't remember the Hindi name but it means Hope in english ), we will be going there every week to help out with different things. We've been to two different slums here. The first one we went to I got to do house visits with a couple other YWAMers and a translator. We prayed for a few people and had a good talk with one lady (who is married to the same man as her sister!) she was very open to Christianity and she has a pretty amazing story! We went to another slum this week, which is one we were planning on going to last week but had to change our plans because a 17 year old girl poured gasoline on herself and set herself on fire because of some family issue. I got to play with the kids this time! I love them so much......they were so precious. I braided the girl's hair, played guitar, danced with them and gave them piggy back rides. My favorite thing was just holding them. One baby girl I held for a while and finally got her to smile! They call us Acca which is a term of endearment for and older sibling. Joseph told them my name was Jyoti (which is the Indian name he gave me a couple months ago), it means light. I love when they call me Jyoti :) I really hope we'll be going back to that slum.

We went to two orphanages yesterday (where I got to play cricket for the first time), my heart was broken for the children. Many of them are sick and almost all of them have been affected by AIDS in some way.

We did some house visits this morning and got to share testimonies with some families.

We just got back from Mumbai a couple days ago. It was a 15 hour bus ride there. We spent 2 days with a bunch of girls whose mothers are all in prostitution. These girls have all been saved from living the same lives as their mothers. I really bonded with a girl named Mumtaz. She was the oldest and she stayed in my cabin. We got to take the girls kyaking and rock climbing and do other fun stuff like painting their nails :) It was hard to say goodbye to those girls!

We also had the oportunity while we were in Mumbai to go to the red light district.

I have so much more to say but I have to go practice with Kevin for worship tonight....

please be praying that we'll be able to process things the right way and that we'll continue to let God break our hearts.

Christmas in Pennsylvania has been wonderful :) It's so beautiful here! I will definitely be coming back soon....because I love the people and the beautiful country! It's snowing right now but hopefully it'll stop soon because we have to drive back to North Carolina on Tuesday so we can fly to India on Friday!!! I can't believe I'll be getting on a plane headed for India in only 5 days. This is going to be an incredible experience! So much has happened in my life over the past 3 months and I know there is so much more God wants to do in me in India! I'm so excited for all the new things I get to experience. I get to eat with my hands (well only my right hand because you use your left hand for something else....) and yes, I'm even excited about the squatty potty :) I know God is going to break my heart for the people and humble me through that experience and I can't wait! I will try to update my blog every week while I'm there. Thank you for praying!

Well, I've done it again....it's been like 20 days since my last post. I don't know what to do to change that though because I've been so busy, and I'm going to be even more so as I get closer to leaving for India.
So, I just had a nice hot shower and a cup of tea, now I'm sitting in the living room surrounded by people doing their homework and listening to my friend Emily play guitar and sing :)
We did our Thanksgiving outreach this afternoon. We gave away over 200 Thanksgiving dinner boxes and turkeys! It was so wonderful to surprise people with that and just bless them!
We spent a week in Orlando, Florida for a conference and we celebrated the 50th year of YWAM! There were about 400 other YWAMers camping out with us. It was a great time of team bonding and getting to know some other YWAMers :) And I got to meet Loren and Darlene Cunningham, the peole who started YWAM!
We bought our plane tickets this past week! We leave on December 31st and come back to the states on March 7th. We also found out what teams we're going to be splitting up into....it was bitter-sweet. My team has 11 students and two staff. It's going to be good to be able to bond more with such a smaller group, but I sure am going to miss my 10 friends on the other team.
We're all starting to get excited about Thanksgiving! We are having a family dinner on Wed. night, then a bunch of people are going home for the weekend. There are going to be about 7 of us students staying here.
I have to go now, thanks again for praying!

Okay, I really need to get better about updating this thing because there's just way too much to catch up on after waiting so long. I'll do my best to remember whats happened.....
So, on Thursday Oct. 21st at RESET, one of the DTS students named Cassie, shared her testimony and afterwards they said to come forward if you want prayer. For some reason I felt like I needed to go get prayed for but I didn't know exactly what for....a couple min. later Chris said to come forward if you need physical healing, as soon as he said that I knew that I needed to get my leg prayed for (my right leg was shorter than my left one and it caused back problems and stuff), so I told Alyssa and we went out in the hall where Cassie was praying for someone else (part of Cassie's testimony is that her leg grew just a couple months ago, so I felt that God wanted me to go to her for prayer). So, Alyssa and I run out to the hall and they start praying for me.....I don't know what to say, all I know is God healed me! My leg grew!!!! Isn't that amazing?!?!? God is so good! 16 of us were physically healed that night.
God has been doing so much in my heart,and really getting to the roots of some things. It's been good but slightly painful.
Our speaker this week has been talking about pride and an "Excellent Attitude". It's been really good.
We are buying our tickets this weekend,so I should be finding out my outreach group and where we are going in India, very soon!
Please pray that I'll have an open heart to receive whatever God has for me and that I'll be able to build more good friendships. Thank you for reading, and for your prayers! God bless you