Letter of Reflection

During debrief we had this lovely family of missionaries through Campus Crusade in Australia host us. They had a section of celebration, conflict resolution, encouragement & applying what we had learned here back at the States. During one of the sections, they had us reflect on what God has taught us & what God is calling us to take out of this trip. We wrote it on this paper that they would send back to us in 3 months. I wanted to share with you guys what I have learned.

When applying for Australia summer project, I didn’t even understand how much God would change me in the course of six weeks. I remember praying that God would reveal himself to me & change the areas of my life that He wants to make more like Him.

Before leaving for this trip, I had a fear of randomly sharing the Gospel with strangers. I felt like a secret agent looking for people are sitting alone so I can attack. Kind of lame picture to illustrate but I just really wasn’t comfortable with just going up to people even if it was to say the Gospel. However, since God is mysterious in His ways, I was given Outreach leader at UCLA. The upcoming sophomores can apply to a couple of different leadership areas and outreach was definitely not on my list. However, the staff that was choosing the leaders saw something in me. They saw my love for others and felt that I would be perfect for outreach. I prayed about it a lot and felt like God was saying “Trust me, I got this.” So there ya go! I accepted to be outreach leader despite my fear of actually doing outreach – crazy huh?

Oh don’t you worry, it gets crazier. So with being afraid to do outreach I apply to a summer project aka six weeks of doing outreach. God put Australia on my heart & by the grace of God I got in! Support raising was a huge trusting discipline that God has definitely taught me. You can read my other blogs to see how that process was (: Now back to Australia.

This has been the biggest amount of growth in faith since I decided to take my spiritual walk seriously in high school. These past six weeks will affect the rest of my life.

In Australia, I have learned the importance of keeping Him first. This might seem like a simple concept, but it definitely isn’t. I have realized that I have made so many idols in my life. What hit me is that God has blessed me with good things even biblical things – but those have become idols in my life. Friendship, biblical knowledge, relationships, academics, etc. All of these things are good but not better than God Himself.

Through putting Him first multiple truths and disciplines have been applied to my life. Most importantly for me, I have learned the power of prayer. Prayer has been a constant theme even starting at the support raising process. On project prayer has been key component of our spiritual strength as a team and myself as an individual. This summer when I earnestly prayed with my whole heart – He answered. I prayed for support to come in and money from people I least suspected came in. I prayed that He would reveal a glimpse of Himself to me and when He did I suddenly had this craving to read and study the Bible. I prayed that my fear of evangelizing would disappear and He gave me a new heart for the lost, gave me an eternity mindset and gave me courage to go up to random people to share the Gospel. I prayed that I wouldn’t miss my family, friends and boyfriend as much as I was and He reminded me that HE is my home, my father, my husband and my friend. I prayed for salvation on La Trobe campus and through His power four people came to Christ! I prayed for lasting relationships to be created on this trip and He blessed me with Pauline, Jerusha, Nina, Michelle & EVERYONE on my team. I prayed for Him to reveal to me what surrender looks like and He is current revealing that to me. He has shown me that I can dedicate my time at UCLA to striving after Him through outreach team, classes, working at Jimmys coffee, my relationship with Nate, with the freshman class, with my family & so much more.

This is just a glimpse of the things God has taught me over this summer. Not to mention all the things I learned about my faith when I was sharing on campus, organizing the One Question event, worshipping with my team, reading the Word in my bible study, studying the Word during date nights with Jesus, etc. This trip is so hard to put in words and I know that even if I was more eloquent with my speech – no one else would be able to understand how much God has shaped my life through this project.

It doesn’t stay here in Australia. I now have this new heart for the Lord. A heart that craves for Him. A heart that earnestly wants to strive after Him. I know that I’m not perfect & I will slip up – but now I have this new mindset. A new mindset regarding my personal faith & regarding my relationship with others. Through seeing so much apathy in Australia, I am urged to break down that apathy at UCLA next year! I know I can’t do that on my own strength, but the Lord is with me. If God is with me, whom shall I fear?! This project has created a fire within me – a fire burning for Him. I know I’m prone to wander, Lord knows I feel it, but I pray that He takes my heart and seals it with His. God is my FATHER, PROVIDER, and FRIEND. He is even more than just that! But that is what He has shown me in this short time.

I am sad to leave Australia but I’m more excited to apply all of the things I’ve learned to my home in California.

Supporters, family & friends – I can’t explain my trip with simple words. Just know that I am truly thankful for all who supported me. You not only changed my life with a simple donation but you have helped me to plant a seed in over 50 people’s lives. With my team we had around 250 spiritual conversations and saw 4 people come to Christ! Praise the Lord! Thank you so much for all your prayers and your donations. The Lord sees that and looks down on you with joy!

Our God is great! Please continue to be in prayer for Australia – there is still a lot of apathy in this country.

I will never forget Australia.

Prayers Answered!

Thank you all so much for your prayers this past week! I cannot even begin to explain how grateful I am for your assistance through prayer! The ONE QUESTION event went wonderfully! Seven people at different times came to the event from completely different walks in life. They were all non-believers and the Gospel was presented each time. Overall, it was a very encouraging event and it was definitely an answer to many prayers. I seriously felt the Holy Spirit in that place during the event – it was so great! So much rejoicing and praises were lifted to our king that night!

Our team has been actively praying for salvation & many other things. We have prayed that our friend Mike would contact us back (He went a week without responding to anything), we prayed that our friend Will would respond back to a guy on our team & finally we prayed that lives would be saved this week!

This blog is called prayers answered for a reason – OUR GOD IS AWESOME! First of all, Mike responded with a joyful heart! He wants to hangout with us one last time before we leave! Will ran into us at La Trobe & we got to schedule a time to hangout with him as well & tell him the Gospel! And finally – the greatest news of all!!! Today (August 16^th, 2011) 3 people have came to Christ in ONE DAY. Talk about prayers answered! One girl Tan was a girl that two of our members met today – she prayed to receive Christ & she wants to actively walk with him each and every day. Another girl Lily who a couple girls have met before prayed to receive Christ & will actively be meeting up with a STINTer every Tuesday to make her faith in God solidified. Finally, a girl Ashlie that has been hanging out with all of us for 3 weeks finally has accepted Christ as her Saviour! Talk about beautiful! We all were rejoicing, laughing, crying and praising our God! He is so amazing and really does answers prayers!

SO KEEP PRAYING! (:

Pray for more lives to come to Christ! We only have two more days on campus. Pray that God will use us! Pray that we will find more brothers and sisters of Christ!

One Question

If you could ask God [ ONE QUESTION ] what would it be?

That's the outreach that we're doing on campus at La Trobe Bundoora this week. Bryant & I are in charge of this event. Boy has it been an up & down experience. God has definitely revealed to me that this event is according to His will & not my own. Some things that I have had in my mind regarding this event have been totally changed by God - but in a good way I've found! We were planning to have our event in a classroom but we didnt end up getting one. A challenge at first but then turned into a blessing. We changed the event to a more personal setting. Now we're having 3 different speakers from our team in a coffee shop on campus that will be having small conversations answering their question about God! It should be an intimate way to share the Gospel and really get to the heart of the people asking the questions. Little challenges have been coming up. And the rainy weather sure doesn't help! However this whole experience is reminding me of why I am here. Not to go sightseeing, not to hangout with friends but to spread the Gospel to the lost souls on this campus! As we were figuring out the most popular question & trying to answer it we actually found ourselves straying away from the Gospel and clinging to apologetics. Apologetics are definitely useful and amazing things to know but we had to bring it back to the heart and souls of the people we are talking to. We all talked and figured out how we are going about it but it's going to be a very Spirit filled conversation. The speakers are going to try and answer their most popular question and going to answer it with the Gospel!

So basically this event requires a lot of prayer. Please be in prayer for the speakers that they will be filled with God's words & not their own strength. Please be in prayer for our strength today as we fast for the One Question outreach. Please be in prayer for students to come!! This event could be very powerful but only by God's Spirit will it be done!

Please continue to be in prayer! I love you all!

Prayer

I am very sorry that I am the worst at updating this blog - However I will be doing a long update very soon! (:

However, I would love if you would be in prayer for the ONE QUESTION outreach event that I am putting on this week.

I will update you on the event - Put please pray for these things:

• That my team would rejoice that God is using us as a body of Christ to do His work
• That there would be thirsty hearts & souls for the Lord!
• That people would show up & want to listen!
• That we would turn to Lord to have Him help us figure out what to say

Love you all!