Pictures from the week

Just a beautiful evening on the Lake

I found this Nala hat in the boutique(like the goodwill of YWAM except free) and I just had to have it

The photographers(Daniel and I) on our skateboarding adventure last week

The next ones are from the Base harvest party we had last saturday. There were candy apples, pin the tail on the donkey, chili and corn bread, a fire pit, hay rides and great fellowship. This little man is the cutest elephant I have ever seen

Amy and I loving our carmel apples

How in the world could I pass up this challenge?

Andrew and I

We were created to be friends

                              Ben and I with the most adorable little Lily the Cow.

          
                       Brazil Ladies with our faces painted!(Me, Lisa and Leah)

Adorable little prairie girl : )

Photography by Kaari

My precious friends

Josiah - He is in my dance track and always has something hilarious to say or is talking in a voice you would never expect - always making me laugh!

Oh how blessed I am

So you want the 411 on how great God is? Okay i'll give it to you

      First off - God is GOOD! I think it's almost becoming tradition that those words cross the page each time I blog, but it becomes more and more evident to me every day.
      I want to share a little bit of His goodness that was revealed to me tonight during worship. Tuesday nights are night class. We start out with worship at 7 and then it moves into the speaker for that week doing a night session of his or her topic. This week we are talking about prayer and hearing God's voice. The things that Mike Phillips has to say are resonating with my soul in a way that I need so badly.
    Okay so take it back about two weeks during "angels and mortals week" - Randall a staff member had me as his "mortal" - so during that week He blessed me in different ways. One of the ways as I think I mentioned in an earlier blog was leaving a big orange pumpkin in front of my door. Little did he know, I had been wanting a pumpkin and was planning on going to buy one that weekend. My pumpkin has continued to become quite the part of me in the past weeks. His name is Stanley and has sat in my room for the past two weeks - gotten punctured by a pen and fixed with a band aid, as well as laid on like a pillow [breaking his neck(stem) off]...Needless to say we have been through it all together in the past weeks.
      Fast forward to tonight in worship. We had been singing for two or three songs and Randall comes over to me because God had laid something on His heart to tell me. He starts off by saying "I think God wants to give you a pumpkin tonight Eliza." We both laugh, because he was saying it symbolically to emphasize that He felt strongly God wanted to give me what I wanted tonight, and just bless me with what I desired from the Lord spiritually. He said he had no idea what looked like, but He just felt God was going to do it. Worship continued on and ended up being one of the best times of worship I have had so far here. God gave me what was on my heart tonight along with other confirmations and just a great time of being at the feet of Jesus worshipping Him for His goodness. Mike goes on to speak and an awesome service finishes. Afterwards I walk up to my room and what do I find but a little miny pumpkin on my doorstep! Our God is SO COOL! Randall didn't put it there, it was just there! With a face drawn on and the name Bernie written on the bottom. Man oh man, God just loves to take us literally sometimes and show His sense of humor. He is so great. I cannot stop praising Him right now. He will give us the desires of our hearts, even in the little joys like a pumpkin on your doorstep. God took a symbolic object someone used to encourage me and turned it into a literal sign - He is RIGHT there waiting for us to respond, waiting for us to love Him back.
       God isn't hiding from us. This journey called faith isn't a big game of hide and seek where we'll find the love of Jesus if we're lucky. So many of us have it turned right around to think there is some formula that can be followed, or a perfect prayer to be prayed to earn the love of our Father... God has created us with free choice - he stands at the door and knocks, LET HIM IN!

His Grace IS enough

Life here is pretty much go go go during the week. This weekend was the first time I've truly just relaxed and recharged since being here. The tiredness was finally catching up. The weather was gorgeous here this weekend. I went for a long walk and ended up down by the lake. It seems to just call my name anytime I am walking outside. It's one of the most peaceful and wonderful places I could ever want to be. Sitting on that dock and just listening to the silence or chatting with friends never gets old. Jessica, Lisa, Kaari and I went to the Somer's Bay Cafe for lunch and I had a super yummy wrap - GOOD food. After I had an even longer walk, up around the curve of the lake, next to all the lakeside homes. Listening to Regina Spektor and Misty Edwards finished out my walk by laying on the end of the dock. The cool lake breeze is the best feeling in the world. I wake up almost every day with sore abs - a combination of dancing and laughing all the time. God's grace and righteousness was the topic of teaching last week and some solid points made by Chris Lautsbaugh are still sinking into my heart. This next week we are talking about relationships - dating, marriage, friendship and with God. I am pumped to see what God has to teach me this week! Here's some pictures to show just a little bit of what life is looking like for me right now : )

Desserts at Blue Canyon Restaurant with the girls

Walking off of the dock

 This past week was called Angels and Mortals weeks. Pretty much like  secret santa. We all had the name of someone else in the DTS school and had to do something thoughtful for the person every day for the week and then guess who it was at the end. Randall one of the staff members had me and one morning I woke up to this "Fairy Conversion Kit" on my door step, it was complete with all of the above, chocolate, fake flowers and glow sticks. Pretty exciting I must say. But the icing on the cake was the last morning when he left me a pumpkin in front of the door. I screamed I was so excited!

This is my wonderful small group

                                     This is Lisa - We were separated at birth

Early morning sit at the dock

                                           Hiking at Glacier National Park

Beautiful Beautitful Lake at Glacier

More Glacier

Brazil it is!!!

Ohhh goodness gracious. All i can begin by saying is wow wow wow. Class tracks and picking my country has kept us all going very busily and there is hardly time to do much besides what is going on here at base. This whole YWAM experience is unlike anything I ever have or will do in my entire life. I am surrounded by over two hundred people a day who are bustling around campus, but all with the same vision and goal in mind - to walk with Jesus. Yes it looks very different and unique for every person - from the preschool teacher of the YWAM kids to the School of Biblical Studies students to my DTS classmates. We are all seeking God and trying to worship Him in our own way depending on what we are doing. It's amazing really, that God can call so many diverse people all in different ways to come all the way up here for a YWAM course. Last Thursday, the five target nations were revealed. Guatemala, Haiti, Thailand, Brazil and Turkey. We then were given an hour to go pray and listen to the Lord about what country He has in store for us.  Can I first say that in that moment the mix of emotions goes from sheer panic to elation about the journey ahead. It's a scary yet exciting feeling when you have no one to tell you what to do except God. Just listening to His voice and waiting for Him to reveal where He wanted me to be was a trust and patience growing experience. He is so good and faithful and I loved the opportunity to just trust in Him to speak to me - however intimidating it may have been at the moment. Something I am continually learning at a deeper level about the Lord is the personal level we can talk to Him at. I've learned about prayer and talking to God my whole life, but in the past week, the way I talk to God and think about talking to Him has taken a different tone and it's the most freeing thing ever. I feel like I'm just at the tip of the iceberg of what He wants to reveal to me about prayer, but it's definitely a new spark in my heart that understands better than before what it is to just talk and trust in God.

           ANYWAYS. After praying we were supposed to write down our top three choices and turn it in on a sheet of paper. I didn't have any big revelation or vision about why I was supposed to go to Brazil, God just began to solidify it in my mind and give me words like "life" - that represented both the culture to me and also the colors of the flag - green and yellow. I kept praying and finally wrote down my choices, putting Brazil at the top. Our teams were not revealed until the next Monday, so the whole weekend of waiting was SO LONG! Some people were asked to switch or pray about going to their second choice, either because of the staff not having peace about where they had written down or just for numbers sake to make up the teams for a little more even number. Brazil is the biggest teams - there will be 12 team members and two leaders. We are going into the Amazon jungle for hopefully the first month of the trip. Sleeping in hammocks in the rainforest and riding on a boat into where we have to get. Please be praying for God's hands to be on the Visa process as our team tries to get those sent in and processed. The process for getting a Visa accepted from the US to Brazil is pretty complicated so we really need prayer that it will all go smoothly and communication between YWAM and the agency we are using will be clear so that everyone's papers can get in on time. My team is AWESOME. I am so excited about everyone going on it, and I think God has some really cool things in store for those two months.

            Montana is gorgeous, jumping in the lake is refreshing, laughter has filled my life to the brim, friendships are deep, the Love of God is everywhere, just simply living life and enjoying people is precious and easy here, dancing for Jesus is taking on a whole new meaning and God confirms more every day that He has me exactly where He wants me.