These past few weeks have flown by and I’ve had a lot of time to learn this week. Our week started out with the Purpose of the Church and writing newsletters. Writing my Newsletter was a blast, I had a lot of fun putting jokes in it and yet put a lot of thought into stirring up the body of Christ for good works. After writing an absolutely brilliant newsletter (opinions may vary), the whole team got ready for the outreach with Calvary Chapel Home X. It took us about an hour to set up and then the families flooded in. I then got to making balloon animals and boy those kids wanted those balloon animals. Left and right I was making balloon animals with my trusty assistant Jacob. The kids started to get crazy with their orders and it was difficult to know what they wanted without a translator and my approximately 11 words of Spanglish. Let’s just say I got a lot of blank stares. But apart from the confusion it was again such a pleasure to love on those kids and see their adorable smiles when they got what they wanted. But the kids didn’t just leave with balloon animals, they got to hear the story of Noah and the Ark taught by me. Not that my teaching was anything special or rivaled David Guzik or Spurgeon, it was such a joy to teach the kids about how God saved Noah and gave him a promise to never flood the Earth again and how God has a plan to save us through faith in Him. Not only did they learn about how God has a plan to save us, but by what means He plans to accomplish that. Just like God delivered Noah by means of the Ark, God delivers us by means of Jesus’s death on the cross. Just like God made Noah a promise to never flood the Earth again, God makes us a promise that if we believe in Him He will save us (John 3:16). After the time of teaching the kids did some crafts and ended the outreach after we ate nachos.

Class Time

During this week I had the pleasure of listening to many workers in the 10/40 window. Unfortunately, due to the sensitive countries they work in I cannot share names. Nonetheless, God used one of the pastors to remind me of how you and I need grace. This was so refreshing at a time in which I was beaten down by condemnation. It seemed as though everything I did or thought, the enemy used as ammunition to condemn me. This weighed me down for days and days until the pastor began to go off about grace. This may have seemed like a tangent during a class about ministering to Muslims but the Lord used it to minister to me. Not only was my soul refreshed but also challenged to grow in establishing good spiritual disciplines. The pastor called this tool R.P.G and no not a rocket launcher, it stands for Real Plan for Growth. It’s a simple tool for establishing practical disciplines for spiritual growth. I encourage you to look at it and see what the Lord challenges you to grow in. Not only did the pastor teach us how to grow in spiritual disciplines but taught us about our sin nature and how the new nature that Christ has given us is at war with the old nature of sin. The pastor taught me that in Christ we are new creations and therefore we have a new nature however, there still remains the old nature. This is where the conflict comes in. Often times our sin nature will act up and give us sinful thoughts that make us feel terrible. The pastor taught me that because I am a new creation in Christ these thoughts are not from me but from the un-redeemed un-regenerate side of me that all believers have. These thoughts can often be used by the enemy to make us believe we aren’t saved or condemn us. With this information the pastor taught us that the way to combat this is to remember the truth about ourselves as well as surrender these thoughts to the Lord and recognize that the enemy will use it to condemn us but to remember that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Prayer

One thing that you and I need is prayer and lots of it. I appreciate all your prayers and would love to partner with you in prayer. If you feel led please share with me some of your prayer requests so I can know how to pray for you as well. With all that said these are some of the ways you can be praying for me and the people around me.

• Pray for the CSOM team for healing of a stomach bug that’s going around
• Pray for the outreaches this week
• Pray for me that the Lord would give me the words to speak at the next outreach
• Pray for blessings for the Connections house who have blessed us with a lovely place to stay
• Pray for the teaching of the Word in the 10/40 window
• Pray that the Lord would raise up people from Mexico and the U.S to go to the 10/40 window
• Pray for the missionaries who are working in the 10/40 window

Thank you all again for your support and prayers. If this newsletter encourages you then please do reach out, as I love receiving praise reports. If you would like to partner with me financially, there will be a link below you can use to give. God bless you all.