Pictures of this week

                                                                    Heidi Baker

                                                     Darlene Cunningham and my roomate Hannah

Roomate dinner night

Kansas City takeover.  Sasha, Jon, and Seth

                                              Seth leading ministry night in the prayer room with Jon

                                     Greeters for Ohana(family) gathering thursday

                                       Morgan Perry speaking on the dreams of her heart that God gave her

                                Me putting the Lei on Morgan as a guest speaker

                                   Water for Life tuesday afternoon learning. 

Learning to build a sink

Heidi Baker Week

This week has been CRAZY!!! We had corporate week with all of the YWAM family here in Kona, which included all the DTS schools and pretty much anyone else that wanted to join.  We got to hear from Darlene Cunningham a few times this week which was amazing and we got to hear from Heidi Baker a few times also.  I am sooooo happy that I got to hear Heidi speak.  I'm sure those of you who have been in one of her meetings can totally identify with that.  I actually forgot who was speaking and felt like I was hearing the heart of Jesus the whole time.  I have been in a LOT of meetings with great speakers and have never felt the presence of God in the way that I did this week.  From the moment she got on stage, she waited on the Holy Spirit.  She took her time and then bam, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit fall.  She spoke on John 15.  I would type it all out but its too long and I don't have a lot of time.  Abiding in Christ....she spoke on it but actually practiced it too.  It's not like Heidi is more special than any of us but I was actually really touched by the way she connects with Jesus, it's like she has an umbilical cord attached to the heart of Jesus and is in constant communion with Him.  Nothing flashy, she actually was the happiest, most joyful person I've ever seen.  She hugged like everybody there.  I went to the bathroom and she came in there barefoot and just hugged all of us in there and asked us if we were getting rocked by Jesus...haha.  "For without me you can do nothing."


The whole theme this week with all the speakers was "the dreams of your heart."  This is totally something that I am for because I love encouraging people to go for it with the dreams that are in their hearts.  I love when people risk big and realize that God gave them dreams, strategies, and plans for a reason.  For example, Morgan Perry spoke this week also.  Morgan helped produce the Sex and Money film, which is a documentary about child human trafficking in the US.   I grew up with Morgan and some of her team so I was really excited to see her up there speaking about the strategies and visions that God gave her and her stepping out against opposition and fighting injustice.  She spoke on keeping Christ the center of everything.  They had an intercessory prayer team wtih them the entire time they were out filming and researching. They worshipped together every morning and realized their main ministry was to each other and loving each other.  Their original team is still together and they are so unified which the enemy hates.  I love that!!! I totally know that the people on my team are my main ministry.  How can i pour out love on others in other countries if i first don't love God and then love my neighbor?  I love that the Sex and Money crew is working to abolish the sex trade against all opposition.  I know their hearts and they are setting Christ first in their lives and doing what they feel God is telling them and leading them.

This week was jam packed with schedules and meetings and I had zero free time until after 9pm every day and i just found my processing time at that time.  During this processing time, I just spoke to the Lord and told Him, "Lord, how can I live a missionary lifestyle when I am so tired right now and I'm in Hawaii, land of paradise?"  I just felt God taking years of weariness and heaviness away from me and all the years of taking care of myself and having to work hard to provide for myself and others away.  I felt His heart for me and He told me that I have dreams in my heart that He loves and I don't have to worry about finances and livelihood.  I will find joy when i live the dreams of my heart, because He delights in me and delights to give me the desires of my heart, in whatever way I want to serve Him.  So now I am praying for strategies and plans and dreams to make things happen. 

I pray that you abide in His love this week as I am right now :) I pray that God gives you dreams and that you risk your fear to go for it!

Working

So I realized today that you can learn a lot about a person by how willing they are to jump in and do some manual labor.  My work duty every day from 3-5 is working on the Korean Organic Farm.  So this involves a lot of manual labor, shoveling, dirt, poisonous centipedes, and so forth.  It's hard work but I have found that this is a good time for me to not have to think about anything.  It's mindless.  Sometimes I need mindless hard manual labor that helps me just escape.  So, today our farm leader was asking people to turn compost.  There are like 15 large compost piles held together by wooden slats and it involves a lot of getting dirty, shoveling, using a wheelbarrow,  and bugs.  This is like the nitty gritty work on the farm and nobody truly enjoys it.  I didn't want to raise my hand because well, it sucks. Alas, nobody was wanting to do it so I raised my hand and bit the bullet.  It was then that God spoke to me and said, "Marianna, if you can't shovel some dirt and serve me, how can you ever help the poor and sick in other countries and serve me, do you think one is greater than the other? I am producing in you good character."  At that moment, my whole attitude changed, because I realized that in all things I want to glorify Jesus whether I'm shoveling dirt and nobody sees it or whether I'm serving the sick.  He sees all and knows all, and I want to have a servant's heart.

Matthew 25:45 says: "And he will answer, I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me."


1 Corinthians 10:31 says: "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

On another note, we find out our outreach options at the end of this week and maybe deciding where we want to go.  I still have no clue where God wants me.  So I'm praying about that for now.  I know a bunch of people have been texting me asking if I have a paypal account for you to support me during outreach, I am gonna figure out how to make one of those like tonight.  I'll try to figure out how to link it to here for you who wanted to support me.  Thanks for your prayers and encouraging words.  I'm finding out a LOT about myself this week and I'll go into further detail about that when I have processed it. :) 

Here are some pictures of Kona, Hawaii.  I am so blessed to live here for a short while! The first is the picture from my plane, the second is downtown Kona which is a 5 min walk away. The third is my view from our back porch of our room, the 5th is the beach that is 5 min away and the 6th pic is the Korean Organic Farm that i have to work at every day from 3-5 as my work duty.

So I’m guessing that most of you who think of me are wondering what I’ve been up to in the last week here in Hawaii.  That is unless you’ve seen those wonderful pics of me at the beach Well this last week has been interesting for me.  I’m used to a very independent lifestyle and it has been a very drastic change to be in a room with 7 other girls sharing one bathroom.  It’s also been very different for me to have a very scheduled out day…all day, every day. So, coming in to this YWAM Discipleship Training School, I asked God for some key things that I knew would assist me in this process.  I asked him to give me a teachable spirit since i surely have not “arrived” yet in my walk with God even though sometimes my self righteousness tells me i have.  I asked him to give me an understanding, discernment, and wisdom of His ways.  I also asked him to keep me humble and go as deep as He wants.
So, wow.  I did not realize that those were such challenging things for me!  This week we have been going over the “Father Heart of God” in class.  My class is a mixture of people in their 20′s and people in their 50′s so there’s quite a generational gap going on, but I am so thankful.  I surely do not always have a teachable spirit! God reminds me daily that I prayed for that and so I constantly am checking my attitude at the door and becoming tender for God to speak to me and use me.  So needless to stay He is stretching me and its painful but necessary.  I need to get rid of my self reliance and independence and become a child again so this can be a time that i receive all i can from God.  So I’m really trying to soak it all in.  I have pretty much cried every day because I realize how much God loves me and how much He delights in me and desires to be the first place in my life.
This week I will be learning how to built sinks, filters for wells, and pumps for good sanitation in a 3rd world setting.  I’m pretty excited about this bc I found this is very useful when you are trying to save someones life.  Clean water.  What a wonderful thing.  We will also be going over basic wound care and medical stuff…which may be not too new for me but that’s ok, I learn something new every day in the medical field so I’m sure there is more to learn.  We have like 20 doctors in my team so we will all learn together.  There are also counselors, psychologists, nurses, and med students (my favorite .
There are three choices for outreach sites.   They still could switch to other places since one place is kinda dangerous and the leaders are watching the news to make sure things don’t get volatile.  I’m not sure which place I’m going to put as my first choice, I’m praying about it and preparing my heart for things that I will see/experience.  I will keep you all updated.  Stay tuned for more! Shout out to my CMH crew, I miss you guys so much! I also really miss interacting with children on a daily basis Leave comments!