Tomorrow: Hello Asia

Hi!
It’s late Saturday night here, the night before we leave for Nepal!

It’s hard to comprehend that 12 weeks have already gone by... wow. Time is so strange that way, it seems like a short time but then it feels like a very long time --all at the same time.


Well this past week has been an exciting and eventful one! (As is every week here). Yesterday we wrapped up the final day of teaching with a crash course on basic health care. We learned about simple, natural ways to teach others how to guard the body against infection, how to clean and wrap wounds, how to prevent cough and colds, fevers, malnutrition, and how to prevent/treat diarrhea.
(Seriously: one of the highest causes of death in children is diarrhea. Sounds ridiculous but it’s true. Their food is going straight through them at a very rapid rate, so they lose massive amounts of water and electrolytes, and they become severely dehydrated. If they are not able to get adequate fluids into their system, they die.

Drinking a simple mixture of clean water, salt, and sugar (ORS-Oral Rehydration Solution), replenishes the body with electrolytes (salt) and energy (sugar) and is absorbed more effectively and quickly than plain water. This simple teaching will stop many children and adults from dying from diarrhea via dehydration! Ahh! We are so over-educated in the West!

So we’ll be doing some basic health care clinics too! Yay! A little foretaste of what the Birth Attendant School will be like!
I’m in charge of carrying the stethoscopes and ear-checking kit.

(For those of you that don’t know or are confused about what school I am doing right now;)
I am presently completing the YWAM Discipleship Training School (DTS) with a Compassion Focus. This means that the things we will do on our outreach to Nepal and Cambodia will be more “mercy/compassion focused”. We will love on people in orphanages, care for the children that have been forced into the terrible child trafficking ring, teach English, do some basic health care, perform in the streets doing dances and dramas, and trekking up to remote villages where the mountain people have not yet heard the good news about a Savior who loves them and yearns to be in relationship with them. Most importantly, we will share our life stories with the precious Nepalese and Cambodians about what Jesus has done in each of our lives, the eternal Hope there is in Him, and the free gift of salvation He extends to all humanity. We are trusting God for amazing things to happen on this outreach. Signs and wonders to follow. I’ll keep you posted!

THEN, after this, I am doing an 11-month Birth Attendant School in July where I will learn how to be a midwife for women in developing nations. I will have 3 months in Perth, Australia (the YWAM Perth Base), and then an 8 month outreach to nations in Africa, Asia, and/or the Middle East.

So the journey has really just begun!

Anyway, it is the wee hours of the night here and I can hear the murmur of sleepy girls chatting as they pack their bags, and my little cricket friend is making his nightly cricket chirping noises... he must be in a crack behind the fridge.
I’m also listening to amazing music by Sigur Ros, their album called “Takk”. (They’re an Icelandic band who artfully use instruments and vocals to create quite a colourful, beautiful sound!) I recommend the songs “Glosoli” and “Mea Bloanasir”. Check it out on the iTunes Store.

So good music floods my ears and the satisfaction of having my clothes freshly washed and my backpack packed puts a peaceful smile on my face.
I cut my hair today, gave it a fresh trim, and added more layers... it looks really good!
And with a cup of yummy, free, donated-to-the-base Organic Soy Milk in hand, I can now sit down to write.

Well, I wont have my laptop with me on outreach for these next three months. It is too heavy and too valuable to take for the kind of trip we’ll be doing. We don’t know for sure the accomodation we’ll be having, but it is quite likely that there won’t be running water. Toilet paper is also non-existent there. We are advised to bring our own. And apparently the electricity is only on for 3 hours per day in some parts. It will be a different world...Welcome to Nepal.
I can’t wait!

So, having said that, I’ll try to update the blog when I can, but who knows when Internet cafes will be open, and if I’ll be able to send a little message within the 3-hour electricity time. It will most likely be little tidbits here and there, and hopefully when I get back in Australia I can edit my posts and fill out the details and add some pictures too.

It’s 2 am here, in 14 hours we’ll be at the airport boarding a plane for Bangkok, Thailand. We’ll sleep on the floor overnight in the Bangkok airport, and then catch our plane for Kathmandu, Nepal at 10 am the following morning.
Then....?

Well, I’ll have to let you know.


Next time I write I’ll be wearing a punjabi.
!!!!


And here I am at present:
..... “thumbs up for Asia!”

Expecting great things from God,
Love Fia

Less than Two Weeks!

Hi!
How’s everybody doing in Northern Hemisphere?

It’s still rockin’ Down Under and time is going by so fast!!!

(<-- this is Shannon. Hear her roar!) She's a sweet heart from Texas. She's also going to Cambodia with me!

We have less than two weeks until we set flight to Nepal! I’m getting really stoked, we are only allowed to bring one backpack, so we will really be backpacking it! Love it!

In Nepal we need to wear “punjabis”. A punjabi is an Indian silk dress-type-garment, which I am very excited about. It’s a dress-smock with big slits and then you wear puffy pants underneath and a scarf on your shoulders. The scarf bit is very important... if you don’t wear it, you’re a “scandalous woman”.

Things are coming together in quite miraculous ways...
let me give you an example:
Our money.

So by March 4th at 3:00pm we had to have all our Outreach Finances paid in so we could buy the airplane tickets. All in all, we needed $104,000 for our whole school. (28 people). A few weeks before the deadline, we were needing $76,000, people were slowly paying in what they had, some people didn’t have all the outreach fees and were still trusting God with how the money was going to come in through donations and other ways of provision.

So things were steadily coming in, but the night before the finances were due, we still needed $11,000 as a school. My outreach fees were paid for, thanks to all of your contributions. I can’t thank you enough for giving. Honestly. It is only by your generosity that I am here.
But, we still needed $11, 000 as a team, so we had a prayer meeting and it was awesome. We’ve been praying for finances this whole time, but we just kicked it up a notch this night.

Then the next morning, it was 10 am and still nothing had budged. We had to buy our tickets by 3 that afternoon. Our leader, Rachel, felt like we should have a “time of giving”, where we waited on God to see if He wanted us to give anything to anyone. Not necessarily money either. Just to loosen the tension and bless each other and stop thinking about ourselves.
So we went away for 20 minutes, asked God, “what do I give? and to whom?”
Then we got what we needed and came back.

It was like Christmas! All these special gifts that were really meaningful because it was directed by God. People were giving their clothes, jewelry, precious things away to team members that God spotlighted for them. Also, God laid it on some hearts to give a financial donation towards some team members who still needed it.

You really disarm the spirit of greed when you come against it in the opposite spirit, cheerful, joyous giving!
The guitar was going, a joyous rhythm, and everyone was going around blessing each other, in the midst of huge need. I was so excited to give away the things that God told me to give, and I actually received some wonderful, unexpected things too!
It was quite a moment!
This lasted for about 20 minutes, and during this time, the number on the board kept getting erased and rewritten again.... $10,000.....$6,000.....$5,000.....$0. Outreach paid.


!!!
!!
!
What! How did that happen!?
20 minutes ago we needed $11, 000 and now with a little personal giving from people.... it doesn’t add up to me.
It’s a mystery.
A miracle!
Bottom line: our God provides!
But anyway, it was an amazing moment. It all took us by surprise and we were so excited! We let out shouts and praise and songs and jumps!!! Thank you Jesus!
So we bought our tickets that afternoon by the deadline. No sweat. Perfect timing.

And less importantly, we had a dance party on Saturday... circus themed! It was really fun! Good music and some people went all out!
We had people dressed as lions, gypsies, clowns, strong men, tightrope walkers...

I went as a trapeze artist!And this is our "Italian photo"; Shannon, Michelle, Ana, Fia.
We're all 1/4 Italian, so us four together, we make one whole Italian!


Shannon's a lion, Michelle and Ana are Gypsies.
It's funny, I was able to outfit 2 whole gypsy costumes (Michelle and my roomate, Mary) out of my own regular clothes. Lots of scarves and beads and earrings and necklaces and flowy skirts!

Something is happening!

Something is happening!

This week, week eight we had a speaker come in and speak on Lordship. What it means to have Jesus as Lord. To follow Him with radical obedience, and to experience the freedom, grace and love that comes with that.

Earlier in the week, I was getting frustrated because I felt like I was operating below the potential that God has for me. I was trying to become level with the people around me, but we’re all at different levels and and different points in our walk with God.

God spoke to me and said, “Fia, be the thermostat, not the thermometer.” Don’t measure the temperature, SET the temperature.

On Wednesday afternoon, I felt like God wanted me to write a song, and dance in the classroom. I felt a very strong impression from God to do it, and do it THAT afternoon! I grabbed the guitar, got inspiration for lyrics, melody, everything, within an hour. I haven’t written a complete song in maybe 1-2 years?

Then, we had the afternoon off so I went to the classroom and was in there by myself. I put on the Ipod, and began to worship God with my everything, with song, movement, dance... it was great yet scary because I had not danced here yet. Things have been a little conservative lately. I was praying for our class, for the students, and pretty much doing dance-intercession in there! Worship-dance is so powerful!

So here I am dancing in the classroom, and some of my classmates walk in, and they want to stay. Uhh... okay....

Courage: not being fearless, but looking fear right in the face and going for it anyway.

So I dance like they aren’t there. After all, it shouldn’t matter. I’m not performing, I’m dancing for an audience of one and that’s Jesus.

Our relationship with God is deeply personal, but should not be private.

So I’m just going for it, having so much fun and getting more and more breakthrough in my own life as what usually happens when I worship. Fear of man being looked straight in the face and broken off! Yes Lord!

The two that stayed were both blown away and so encouraged....they’d never seen anything like it, and thought that I was following steps, but I told them I didn’t know what the next step was, I just did it.
One of them wrote me a note saying, “Your dancing really touched me... I am so amazed at your passion and that you go for the Lord 100% all the time no matter what!”

Then, one guy who was really shy about playing the guitar, picked up the guitar and played the coolest acoustic freestyle music! In front of people!

THAT afternoon,
IT RAINED.
A downpour.

It was the first rainfall since I’ve been here.
Something was changing...
Thank you Jesus.

On Friday we had the coolest day yet! It was the final day of Lordship lectures and it was the application time where we laid down at the cross things that were hindering us from Jesus truly being Lord of our life. Some people surrendered their past relationships with ex-boyfriends, visions/plans they had made for their future, pride, control, etc. “I step down from the throne of my own life, and I want you to be rightly Lord.”


We also got to give back to God the gifts that He gave us and lay them down saying, “They’re yours, not mine. Thank you for them, and I want to consecrate them to you!”

(1 Corinthians 4:7 “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”)

We laid down bank cards (symbolizing money/ bank accounts),
pictures of family and those dear to us... I also laid down all the gifts of creativity God has given me that are precious to me:
sketchbooks...
writing...
art...
sewing...
calligraphy...
musical ability/songwriting.... I played the song on the guitar that God had just given me two days before,
and dance... I danced to a song that I love, it was full of freedom and joy and fun! God’s grace was surely on me to do that with all my team in the room. But I didn’t care! It HAD to be done! One girl told me later that she was almost in tears.
And most importantly... my self. I am so thankful for my life, but once again it belongs to Jesus, there is no other safer hands that I would want to hold it.

After we all did that, we were so aware of the presence of God!
It was awesome. Yet very humbling. I was confronted with Jesus the King. Not just Jesus my buddy, but also Jesus the King of kings, Lord of lords, worthy-to-open-the-scroll Jesus. He is Worthy.
God brought me to Revelation chapter 5, the description of the Throneroom, and I couldn’t get past the 2nd verse without weeping. I thought I was worthy. I was so humbled.
(Go ahead and read it for yourself!)

Yeah from there, God really got to grab hold of me in a deeper way, and revealed areas that I still wanted control of on my life.
I felt like I was in a refiner’s fire, and small yet significant impurites were being brought to the surface and the gold (which is me) was becoming purified and more clear. It took till the next day for me to finally yield. And with that, an increased freedom and joy! God is so good!

Later that day, the girl who almost cried during my dancing said she wanted so badly to do worship dance in the classroom!
And other girls wanted to join her!
I got so excited that they were taking initiative and going for it!

Later that night, and I went to pop in to see if the worship session was still going...
I was so blessed to see what I saw.
About a dozen people were in there! They had been going for 2 hours! Music blaring, singing, dancing, praying, prophesying...

Oh and guess what,
for the 2nd time this year,
It RAINED that day.

!!!
Come Holy Spirit!


2 Cor 3:17
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Be the thermostat, not the thermometer. Obey God, and see what happens!

More News!

Okay where to start....
It has been such a long time, Honestly there has hardly been a spare moment to even check email!
I feel like my heart has been on a refining journey over the past few weeks!

Well, okay I have some more news.

So the YWAM staff have been keeping a lookout for Sri Lanka, because they are in a civil war. We were told this after the team was formed...So then we had to let our parents know about this, ask their permission to go, and honour their decision if they didn’t want us to go. Mostly all of our parents said yes, they wanted to release us and trusted YWAM to make good decisions and not be foolish if the situation got worse.

During this time, God was dealing with me on not having my heart set on a specific location, but on Him, because that’s the main thing. I had to let go of any hope I’ve put in my team or the country we were going to, because the team may lose some people depending on the decisions of the parents.
I loved my group and I couldn’t imagine us not going somewhere together! Now everything that we thought was solid, became up in the air.
So the whole team went through a heart- refining process, clarifying our expectations and hopes, laying them at the altar and waiting for the next step.

During the time of waiting, there was a humbling of us to be willing to obey our parents above our own decision. The people on the team whose parents weren’t Christians were more reluctant/strongly refusing to release them to go to Sri Lanka, and it really impacted them that their children would honour them by stepping down from the team and going to either China or Thailand, if that's what it took. It was actually really cool how in these tense moments, the real feelings came out, and Christ could be shown. So praise God! He is all about restoring families and reconciliation.

On Feb 20th there was a bombing in the capital city where we would go. Usually the ruckus was in the North (far from where we would be) but this was a little dodgy. A little close to home.
SO, the staff continued to pray into this, and more and more parents of the students became tense. On a DTS, they don't want to send us into a war zone, that's not what they do. They sought God more, and felt a release to pray again for a country, due to the downward change of circumstances.
So it was an interesting situation, and God brought us to deeper levels of being flexible, not attatching ourselves to anything but Him. What a good place to be!

So we had a full team... but no idea which country! Talk about being okay with anything! Our leaders met with us after some arranging and phone calls, and the place where we would be going...

CAMBODIA!

we will be doing work with children, slums, practical skills, work in schools, working with the community to guard against child trafficking (a HUGE problem in Cambodia/Thailand).
We were asked to still pray, and see if we were okay with that. If not, there was still room on the China and Thailand teams.
I still felt like I should stay with my team, and I had no strong pull to the other destinations, so Cambodia it is! Really, God has tested and purified my heart with this Sri Lanka ordeal, and I have gotten to the place where it doesnt matter where we go because we have the Holy Spirit.

Oh, one thing: When she announced Cambodia,
I got a picture of a temple against a red sunset and as I later prayed into it, I got two words:
Ancient Kingdom.
(I know nothing about that country)

Turns out, I went on the internet later to check it out, and Cambodia is....
an Ancient Kingdom! Go figure!
And their flag has a picture of a temple on it!

Well God is speaking, isn’t He!

I also got the word Photography, so I believe God wants to use my photos from there.

Our whole team got the go-ahead from our parents, and we all get to stay TOGETHER (yay!), and we are in expectation for the things to come!
Anyway,
God is good, He is so good!

Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes ALL THINGS to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”