Transfiguration trip

 A few weeks ago during spring break, I led a small team (three people) on a vision trip to East Asia. It was one of the best trips ever! For security reasons I cant be that specific on details. The whole trip was an amazing experience for me. Even planning and prep before the trip was a good learning tool. I helped make sure everyone had their passports and visas and help teach them a bit about support raising for such a trip. This process really helped me get more disciplined in being organized. A passport and visa process is very slow and annoying. :/ But it all worked out without a hitch. The Lord wanted us to go, and He provided and we went. :) ... On our second flight to our destination I watched 4 movies... thats right, 4!!The flight was 11 hours. I have never been on such a long flight. And it was a Huge plane! A B747. I was geeking out on just the flights.... anyway, upon arrival, I quickly noticed English was no longer a primary language. Luckily we found our way to our contact and introduced each other. We then proceeded into a funny little van. The team we met with that lives there calls them bread vans because they are shaped like loafs of bread. And it was a very tight fit for everyone.... a few minutes into the drive i noticed that driving there in east asia is insane... to put it simply. They cut in and out and honk at everything. No warnings, no blinkers, no traffic law reinforcements... though i was in a panic, i noticed everyone who lives there was perceiving all this driving behavior as normal.... took me a bit but i just let go on my understanding of this and put my trust in the driver.... Hmmm.... How often do we get distracted in the insanity in life and focus on others and forget whose in the drivers seat? I know i do this often and thanks to God Im growing more and more aware of it and trusting in Christ more and more. Its not that i lose trust in Him, its more i tend to avert my attention to finite things. This story just reminded me of this and its a good lesson, but back to the story... An hour and a half later and one trip down an on ramp in reverse (Yes... again, Normal in this area.. lol) we arrived to our hotel. We quickly unloaded our stuff and headed to dinner where we got to meet all the missionaries that serve there and live there. At this point i have been awake for 27 hours straight. So i was tired... very tired.... we ate at a giant round table with about 15 people sitting shoulder to shoulder around it. And in the center there was a giant glass lazy suzan. The waiters come in and put everything on this lazy suzan and we turn it to distribute everything... and yes, this whole week i used nothing but chopsticks. It was actually very fun... we ate, and heard the directer that lives there... on the return to my small room and rock hard hotel bed, i passed out. Thats all I remember.... the first day we toured, hung out and got acquainted to the culture and adjust to the time difference. I bought stuff using the ancient technique of bartering and realized im rather good at it. :) .... so, next day. Monday. I went to a college campus with a local missionary and he showed me around and taught me how to get into conversations there with the students. After this Krystal (she came up in our team from NMSU) and I went to and from this campus everyday, by ourselves and spent our time getting into spiritual conversations all week and gathering contacts for the team that lives there. The students there are so fun. They LOVE talking to foreigners. I have never made so much friends in such a short time. Shared the gospel about a dozen times, went to a karyoake place (KTV) saw amazing ancient history and locations, saw an amazing work the Lord is doing that i was previously unaware of.... at the end of this week i was starting to question if this trip was worth all the time and effort. Felt like it was a waste to come this far and spend all this resources for just 7 days in this country (including travel: 9). but on that last day i met with a guy who really wanted to have lunch with me. So i had lunch with him the day before we left. We talked, and talked.... and talked. We started talking about the gospel and really getting into it. So we moved to a little coffee shop and away from the cafeteria lunch rush and continued talking... and talking. I asked him deep questions that he has never thought through before. And the Lord opened his heart.... He took in every word. Near the end of the conversation, he told me that he wanted this life. He wanted a life devoted to Christ.... right there on the opposite end of the planet, i saw this student get transformed by the holy spirit before my very eyes. :) this trip instantly went from a waste to beyond worth it! That campus went from 3 Christians, to 4. My spring break trip to east asia was full of awe inspiring things but nothing compares to seeing a life touched for the first time by God..... His American name is Leo. So Please pray for his continued thirst for Christ and that he would grow and be a great salt and lite to his country.

A Wonderful Blessin

   First and foremost, I want to say THANK YOU! To all my supporters. Without you all, I would not have had this very incredible and life giving year. Saw three friends come to know Christ, been challenged and have grown immensely in my personal walk with Christ. This semester I've been out of town a lot, and my printer died, had my internet go out for a while, and my awesome desktop computer went down. :/ very frustrating. And it was all hard to fix or work around because I kept going out of town. But despite all that, I have traveled to boulder Colorado for a new staff field training. There I met with about thirty other new staff like myself and was very encouraged. On the first day we split into teams and wrote down what tough stuff is going on in our lives. And then categorized them. Was encouraged because I found that im not the only one having a hard time in specific areas. And the next day we had an amazing devotional and one of the regional staff talked about boundaries and how we can better prioritize our time. (where my main struggles were. Lol) we also had a 24 hr challenge. I was on one of the evangelism teams. We were given a location and some stats on the population of our location, and we got an idea and started planning on how to reach the students in this location with the Gospel. We built a giant chalk board for 12$ and set it up on campus the next day. We wrote a attention grabbing question on it: "How is your love life" we chose this because valentines day was very close. We also had surveys made up that asked relation ship questions and the questions led to whether or not one believe in true unconditional love, and if There was a God that loves unconditionally would they want to know Him?... I shared the gospel with 5 students and got 3 of them plugged into a local bible study. Two people on my team also prayed with a student to receive Christ as their savior. :) this all happened in an hour. One night and one morning of planning and one hour evangalising on campus..... It was amazing to see an impact one can make in a short amount of time. Christ really encouraged and lifted me up that week. There was a lot of other talks and such and heard a cool testimony by Andy Armstrong. On Thursday that week we went snow shoeing up in the mountains in 50 inches of snow. After three miles we got a group picture and prayed and thanked God for the day and each other...... when I got back I felt super recharged. Like I was on a month long vacation.... this was just one awesome week among many this year. God has blessed me and has used all of you supporters to do so. So thank you again. I really really really am thankful for all of you.