I Finally made aprons!

So after talking about making aprons for a very long time and only making bridal gifts for a beloved friend and her hubby a year and a half ago, I ventured out and made five aprons in the past two weeks! One full apron and four half aprons! Each has elements of old and new in them, a combining of the past and future, reusing or repurposing old fabric and buttons with new touches that pull them into the now fashion wise! I decided I love aprons! shocking I know! ;) haha! I will have to post some pictures on here soon! but I just had to share that they are AMAZING and SO FUN! I plan on make an Etsy account to sell them on :) as I continue to produce delightfully unique and one of a kind aprons! I'll post the link when I do create that Etsy online shop :) hehe! I love being an artist!

Dreams of My Future Fairytale

Ok so, I just watched Marry Me on Lifetime, and it's about the fairytale coming true and falling in love and it makes me want it to happen in my life, so I'm going to take Eric Johnson's advice and dream about the day that it happens in my life! In school we just started our series on dreaming and joined teams to make one person's dream come true which is awesome! Falling in love, getting married to and Incredible Man of God, and raising a family has been my biggest dream since I was a very small child, yes I was the little girl dreaming about the day when I was like Cinderella dancing with the Prince at the ball, and like Rapunzel being rescued from the tower by the Prince, and Sleeping Beauty falling in love and being awakened by true loves first kiss, and Belle from Beauty and the Beast having an adventure and discovering that love is not always what it first appears to be. I have dreamt about falling in love my whole life, and been content to wait for that one guy who will come along side me and I'll come along side and we'll dance into our destinies together... It will be a fairytale, but one that we write together, one that God writes with us, and it will out do every fairytale, and romantic movie Hollywood has ever produced because the God who created love, who indeed is love has been preparing our hearts to unite since before the foundations of the world, and when our hearts recognize the beat that is in tune with it's own beat, the world will never be the same.

The day when I fall in love will be delightful. It will be the realization of dreams, and the catalyst of more dreams. When I fall in love I am going to smile and my eyes will glisten with joy and I will dance and spin around as if I were in a musical on Broadway. I will jump with joy and my heart will beat quickly at the mention of his name and my stomach will flutter with excitement all the days of our lives as we continue to fall in love as we grow really, really old together. We'll be young at heart forever as we explore the extravagancies of love and life and adventure everywhere that we go. Discovering our destiny together as each day of our lives unfold. We'll dance together when there is no music except what our hearts make or we sing to each other. We'll sit at coffee shops and listen to aspiring artists sing their melodies and walk arm in arm down streets glistening with the joy of Christmas lights... We'll watch children play innocently at the park and dream of our future children playing there. My future husband and I will go on dates in the park, where everything can happen, from street performers, to Frisbee games, to picnics by the lake and swinging while watching the sunset.

We'll make our own fairytale and write it and illustrate it so our children will be able to read it and know their beginning... it will be a delightful tale of adventure, romance, and our pursuit of each others hearts. It will include the gentle but strong encouragement of each other being the best us we could be, calling out the gold in each other especially when it would be easy to overlook. It'll be about love that grows each day and love that can be expressed in new ways all the days of our lives. It will be a love that strengthens and encourages and edifies and grows deeper and expands and exemplifies the love between Christ and the church.

We will bring peace and harmony to the cities, circumstances and environments we are in. We'll passionately love cities into the Kingdom of Heaven, one person at a time until the inner city is a glistening beacon of Hope and Love and Joy and Abundant Life. We'll read books to each other as we cozy up next to one another by the fireplace lit so warmly. We'll drink hot cocoa and build snowmen in the snowfall. We'll write love notes to each other if ever we part for a few days, and keep them all in a box in our closet on the top shelf. We'll build things together and restore things together, creating beauty out of raw materials and bringing back the beauty that was hidden or seemingly lost, both with people and with objects. Our home will be a safe place where people can come when they feel as though their world is shaking and they will encounter the Peace of God that surpasses all understanding when they step foot onto our property. We will both have our own beautiful children and we'll adopt and foster beautiful children, or at least bring them into our home to cherish for a while. Our life will be a celebration where we purposefully remember to be grateful and celebrate the moments in life where we could let them be mundane, or take them for granted. We will celebrate FREEDOM with each other, with people, with God and we will delight in living in it, receiving it from each other and giving it out to people so they can be free to be themselves and know they are cherished and delighted in, regardless of behaviors because love is not conditional and true love brings freedom, because where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom! and God is love, so God is Love and God is freedom, so Love is Freedom and Freedom is Love, and that will be our mission in life to bring love and freedom to everyone we meet.

I know that I am a romantic and a dreamer and an idealist, but I do believe all these things can come true, and especially if I make it a priority in my life to do so, all things are possible and this is one I will gladly pursue, and dream of and expand that dream as time goes on... So now you know just a bit more about my heart and one of the dreams I have inside it :) Dream on, dream big, then dream bigger readers, for life is a grand, and no one can take away the power of hope and dreams and that is one of the beautiful things about life, only we are responsible for happiness :) so let's dream big, and find the simple things to delight in, and find happiness in... the look of joy in a child's eyes at their first snow fall, or Christmas lights glistening in the night sky, shooting stars just as you look up at the sky, springs blossom unfolding in front of your eyes, the color of bark on a tree becoming more brilliant right before it rains, the shape and color of fall leaves on the ground begging you to admire them and then step on them for that delightful crunch under your toes... those simple beautiful things about being alive that bring smiles to our faces, and finding someone to celebrate those simple things with :) that is a pursuit worthy of the moment that lasts forever!

Inspiration

This week I've been challenging myself to find something in the world to inspire me, something that makes my heart stop and be amazed. One such inspiration was this beautiful tree extravagantly displaying it's beauty in transition.

Transition is something that often seems daunting and yet each year we are faced with the extreme beauty of the transition of seasons. It seems as if we must embrace the beauty of what we have now and let go of what we might have once had in order to fully enjoy the season we are in, and prepare for the season coming. This little tree was beside my car in a parking lot, to me it boldly displays how transition can look in our lives, in my life. It fills me with hope of the great adventures in my future and reminds me that this season in my life is stunning, and worthy of being captivated by. One day I too will have to let go of the leaves of this season to embrace the winter and prepare for spring and summer and fall and so on and so forth as the seasons of our lives continually change and present opportunities for growth. Today is a beautiful day full of hope and beauty it is our choice whether or not we will focus on it. Today I think I'll focus on beauty and hope and enjoy each breath I have and each moment, for life is full of little things that are easily overlooked, but precious when we remember to look at them and be filled with gratitude for the simple, amazing things about life.

Greenville, SC 11/5-6/10

This past weekend I was blessed by traveling to Greenville, SC to meet up with some AMAZING people and serve on a ministry team under Scott Thompson. We met some truly incredible people who are bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to their city. They blessed us by putting us up in this beautiful loft which looked like we stepped into a magazine and there was even a basket with delicious food and snacks for our enjoyment!
We arrived around 4pm and went to the places we were staying and got set up and then we met on Main Street and ate some delicious Mexican food where they had chips that were an entire tortilla! they were huge! I'll have to post some pictures! It was so much fun, I got to hang out with people that I had yet to get to know how amazing they were and now I love them even more.
The service was so fun, the church is called Kingdom Culture and it is full of people college age or slightly older, so it felt like I was worshipping with all people my age which is really fun for me :) I love seeing my generation hungering for God, there is something that fills me with excitement because we really have the opportunity to change the world and when I see a room full of people seeking out the heart of God then I know that the world will be forever changed and drawn closer to Father God! More than anything I think that is what makes me giddy with joy! We had a team of twelve people and we did some prophetic words for individuals and then Scott spoke and brought love of Father and challenged us to be who we are as God's children and what we can do here on earth to bring Heaven down. Scott has this amazing ability to present things that seem crazy radical in a manner that makes you realize you can do it, and it is easy and it is who you were meant to be and what you are meant to do and when you step out and do it then all of Heaven is backing you because you are doing the mandate that Heaven has sent you do and the entire world will be forever changed because you stepped into your identity as a child of God. Every time I hear him speak I feel like the entire world can be won over by the love of God in an instant, and we get to bring that instant by walking out filled with the love of God that just poured out on us.
After Scott spoke then our team went around a prayed for people in the church and after the band played like two or so songs I think that our team had prayed over all but two people in the church which I thought was pretty awesome, we prayed for the two ladies who had been missed as soon as we realized they hadn't been prayed for. :)
Lately I have had this revelation that it is not so much our words that move heaven but our hearts and how Christ is intercession for us, like He doesn't have to speak out intercession He embodies it. Same thing as God is love verses God loves. One denotes an action He takes and one denotes His nature. God is love, that is His nature, He can't act outside of that nature. Christ is intercession, it is not simply an action He takes but His nature is intercession, He connects us to the Father. It has been interesting because I have gone up to people to pray for them and sometimes I have no words and instead of trying to think of what would be "good" to say I simply feel the Fathers heart for them and stay in that mode, trusting that by me aligning my heart to the Fathers and by my laying my hands on them, the Fathers heart is be transferred to them, and I only say what I hear Him saying. It has so revolutionized ministry time for me, it is not about saying the right things or giving them wisdom disguised as prayer or what I think but simply lining my heart up to Father God's. There is no performance, or failure, just love which is incredible and overwhelming and melts the walls of self protection because being wrapped in His love is safe and peaceful and wonderful. He is comfort and when life is chaotic He is the only remedy worth pursuing. So by me having this revelation and by focusing on His love, then I can release it over people simply by walking into their presence or by touching them, or by speaking to them, but once they truly encounter Him, I don't think they could ever turn away from His beauty, once you taste how good He is, nothing else will satisfy, and that is true love.

Opelika, Al 10-29-10

I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Opelika, Al with school and serve under LeAnn Pearson just a few weeks ago. We went to a school down there and were able to teach the students about prophesy and why it is important and how to convey the heart of Father God to each other through prophetic words and art. I was given the role of teaching a prophetic art workshop to the students ranging in age from about 4th grade to seniors in high school. It was challenging to keep them focused and engaged and all but it was incredible the things that they saw and heard from God. It was such a blessing to meet these students and watch them hunger to know more of God and the beauty that He is and to seek out the mysteries of Him, it truly blessed me! I have found myself being given opportunities to grow in my hearts desire and leading prophetic art workshops was one such opportunity, it made me excited and nervous and wishing that I had more experience leading and teaching, which is awesome because it was one of those things that makes you realize what it is that you love. My love is leading people to encounter the Father, His heart for them inevitably pours out on them and forever changes them when they encounter Him, so whether I do that through speaking, leading them in a vision, or teaching art, it doesn't matter so long as it leads them into encountering His love I am satisfied.
One really fun thing was that I realized just how much what I say comes from the place I am with God right now, which is a romantic place. He has been passionately pursuing my heart and teaching me how to be pursued and loved, He does it through all the little things in life, by showing me clouds shaped like hearts, I have so many pictures of such clouds, and by saying things like look to your left, I planted those daisies there just so you could drive past them and know how much I love you right now. See He is the fulfillment of my hearts desire to be woo-ed and pursued and He placed the desires of my heart in my heart before the foundation of the world so He is the one who can fulfill those desires and I can look to Him for such encounters. Anyways since that is the way that I am currently relating to God it comes out in how I speak to people, that divine love that He lavishes on me pours forth onto others. It was revealed to me when two of the boys, probably freshmen or sophomores came up and asked me a question about the prophetic words that I had gotten for people before we met them, and I had written them down as I heard God speak. The boys asked me if that was how God always spoke to me, I said yes pretty much, and then one of them nodded his head and said, it just sounded so poetic, so romantic, and I responded with a smile, yes, that is how He always talks to me. It made me laugh and I realized that where we are with God really is evidenced around us simply by the way we talk. It makes me think about how in the Bible in Mark 14:70 Peter who is currently denying that he is one of the disciples of Jesus was called out, a girl said "Surely you are one of them; for you are a Galilean, and your speech shows it." This verse always made me wonder is my relationship with Jesus revealed by my speech or not, after this weekend, I dare say that it is revealed because the relationship with Jesus is going to pour out of us whether we realize it or not. If we are soaking in His love, then we leak it everywhere that we go, even if we are unaware of the effect we are having. Anyways that was such an amazing revelation to me, I wanted to share it :)

Trip to the Middle East May 2010

The third trip that I went on was to the Middle East, we went to two different countries and the trip ignited a passion in me I had yet to see till then. On our first day we were able to have lunch with this amazing woman who had recently dreamt of Jesus and our mutual friend but she couldn't remember anything more than that about her dream. After lunch and getting to know her she asked a question about the music that had been playing in the background. It was worship music and so we explained it to her and talked about how we pray and talk to God and get prophetic words. Then we asked her if she wanted to hear what God thought of her and she did so she sat in a chair and we laid hands on her and started praying and prophesying. I was able to lead her into a vision where she radically encountered Jesus and forgave her father and made Jesus her guide. So the first day in the middle east and we were already witnesses to something amazing! I got a new sister in Christ and she got freedom!! That alone made the trip worth it and that was only the first half of our first day. God is good!
I also got to experience my first sand storm and temperatures of 115 degrees which was hot. Thankfully we didn't do too much outdoors and everywhere had air conditioning. :) It’s pretty fun to say that I’ve been in a sand storm and experienced that natural wonder :) it was like a really foggy day but brown and dusty for a few days. Also it made your throat hurt if you breathed it in for a long period of time… but still a neat thing to experience!
One day in the first city we held a healing service and many people received freedom from their ailments. One lady was on a four hour leave from the hospital to come to the service, she still had her IV hook up in her arm and was in a wheelchair because she didn't have the strength to walk. After receiving prayer she was jumping up and down and running around praying for other people and she pushed her wheel chair out off the building she was totally healed. The lady I prayed for had previously had breast cancer and a mastectomy but then the cancer had returned and moved into her right arm and it was swollen and bandaged and she had very little mobility, she wasn’t able to lift it so it was straight out from her shoulder and could only close her hands about half way and doing that much was terribly painful. After about few minutes of prayer she felt some pain in her neck go, so we continued to press in to receive the healing that Jesus paid for on the cross and little by little she got better. After about an hour or more of prayer she was able to lift her arm all the way up and open and close her fist completely with no pain!!!! That was a very exciting moment! I learned that perseverance brings about a brilliant reward, we were faithful to persevere and continue seeking the reward Jesus paid for and He was faithful to deliver it. :)
There have been so many times this past year that I have prayed and not seen anything happen and there have been times when before a prayer was spoken God’s love came and healed and there have been times when it doesn’t take but a few seconds and the pain is gone and like the one I just wrote times when it takes persevering and I am still learning and I don’t know why sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. All I know is that God loves to heal and when I am told to pray I pray and I can only be faithful to do what He tells me to do when He tells me to do it and I don’t have to try to explain everything. I am ok with the fact that He is a big God who works in mysterious and wonderful ways and I only know in part and see in part, one day my eyes will be fully opened and I will see the magnitude of who He is and the fullness of His glory, but that day is still in my future. :)
One of the most heart wrenching experiences in the first city I experienced was when we went to a safe house for runaway maids. It is in conjunction with the Ethiopian and Nepali embassies and we were able to go and speak with the women there. I shared my testimony about how my brother was physically abusive and how I was able to walk through forgiving him even after he passed away. How I realized that he was just hurting and his pain spilled out onto me and wounded me. Many of the women had also been abused and were completely focused on me and the translators. It was the first time I had ever shared my testimony in front of strangers and the first time I had ever spoken with translators which was crazy! I kept loosing my place in my story and my amazing team helped to keep me on track and get me through to the end. The women had many questions and so in between moments of translating sometimes they would ask a question and then it felt so much more like a conversation rather than a time to speak to them. I liked that much better. After I was finished and their questions were finished we went into another room and split up into groups where we were able to bless them with prophetic art and just listen to what God was thinking about them and many of them cried and some told us their stories which broke my heart. One woman in particular, she was from Nepal and had been kidnapped and brought to this country. Her husband followed but was unable to pay the ransom so the kidnapper raped her and then released her. She however was unable to return home because she has no paperwork of entering the country or leaving hers so she was stuck at the embassy. She was able to open up and share with us and we held her and wept with her and prayed over her. She spoke conversational English and ended up helping us by translating with the other Nepali women. These women were so incredible and had such beautiful hearts, they wanted to bless us after we blessed them, so after we drew a picture for them of what God showed us then they started drawing pictures for us… it was so cool!
We also did SOZO’s, which are a type of inner healing the word sozo comes from the Greek and it means saved, healed and delivered. I discovered that I love doing inner healing and have joined with the team at my church to further my training and step into that love of mine! :) I know that inner healing and deliverance will be a huge part of my life and ministry, and I love teaming up with God to bring healing and freedom to His babies!
The second country in the middle east was a bit rougher because we were already exhausted and then had to readjust to culture shock mid trip. Our first day there we went to a gypsy camp and spent time with the poorest of the poor there. It truly was a culture shock to be in a third world setting after the first country which seemed quite rich. The children at the gypsy camp were beautiful, they were so excited to see us and we brought them candy and they hung on us and wanted to hold our hands and picked flowers from the trees for all of us. It felt totally different than the dump in Mexico that I had been to a few years ago though, because there wasn’t this sense of joy in the people here like there was in Matamoras, here it felt much more oppressive and heavy. We were able to pray for the sick there and they actually took us to the sick people in the camp, tent to tent, which was a privilege in that culture. The church that we met up with in this country was so amazing also, they were so hungry for the part of God that we carried. It was wonderful to spend time with them and be mutually challenged as each of us is strong in different areas. We met with the core group at our hosts home the first night and prophesied over each of them, which is a really cool way to get to know people. Asking God to reveal to you who He says they are opens you up to really be able to see them and honor them.
We also held a smaller but still powerful healing meeting here and were able to see God move once again and love on His children. The last night we were there we taught a prophetic art class which was the prelude to a night of worship and prayer kicking off 24 hours of prayer for the country. It was really fun, some people struggled getting a picture from God and some people got one instantly, some had to really press through some other things in order to draw any imagery out of themselves. Others struggle had more to do with pride in creating a put together piece instead of an exercise. It was really fun to watch the process of about 20 people start to create from the little pictures that God was giving them, and to see them prophesy over each other using a piece of paper. During the rest of the evening we were able to visit and pray with other members of the church body there and help them receive some breakthrough, insight and encouragement.
The trip to the middle east was incredible and eye opening and I truly believe I was blessed abundantly by this opportunity to step into the amazing destiny God has planned for me. He has put desires in my heart to love people who have never experienced true unconditional love and freedom in that love to be yourself, a freedom that releases you to be who you truly are, despite terrible circumstances or pressures put on you by your culture and situations, God’s love is bigger than anything and He longs to lavish it on every single person, they were all created to live an abundant life in relationship to Father God. That is what I long to bring to the world, I want them to discover His beauty and for it to restore them to the beautiful person they were created to be, the person that might have gotten lost somewhere in the wounds that happen growing up. That is why I went to the Middle East, that is why I loved every that I met, and that is why I know that one day I will travel the world loving people, transforming cities and nations with the light of the Kingdom of Heaven and the love of the Father. It is going to be a beautiful journey and I plan on sharing it here with you :)

The Bridge trip April 2010

In April of 2010 I had the honor of going to “The Bridge” a youth center for boys ages 13-18 in Gadsden, Alabama. God shared with me His love for these trouble boys. Boys who come from a variety of backgrounds, monetarily, racially, and criminal pasts, and yet all of them are there because they have been listening to the enemy feed them lies about who they are and how they should behave, lies can only bring death and these lies entrapped them into pain and suffering and brokenness. That is why our main mission was to bring the love of God to them and love them where they are and prophesy over them who they really are, who God says they are, who He created them to be and to speak encouraging words over them.
There were three groups at the compound, divided up by the dorms where they lived and we had one meeting with each group on both Friday and Saturday. When we were told of the groups that we would get to share with, one in particular stood out to me, and I knew that was the group I wanted to minister to specifically, so I began to pray for them. I did get to minister to those boys more than the others without doing anything, the doors just opened that way. They were the ones that touched my heart the most, as I watched their hunger for the love of God and I watched them experience Him in beautiful ways.
Unlike the trip to New Mexico, I didn’t take the time to prepare and get a message, which is funny because I knew I was suppose to speak but I didn’t want to because I was afraid of speaking to these boys, afraid that what was inside me might not be relevant to a group of young men, which is quite silly of me to listen to that lie. Then we got there and were planning who was going to speak and Scott Thompson, our leader was taking volunteers and we needed one more speaker and nobody was volunteering. So he said something to the effect of who knows they are suppose to speak but is scared to do it, if your heart just started beating faster that’s you. I raised my hand and then because we have such an amazing culture of honor at school everyone cheered for me and I could feel their confidence in me and it gave me confidence. I did not hear what I was suppose to speak on from God until the next morning, the morning I was suppose to speak. I woke up early and spent time in His presence waiting to hear what He wanted me to share with them and I heard “Lead them into an encounter with me, I’ll do the rest.” So I led them into a meditation/vision and He showed up and it was just a beautiful time. It was the first time I had ever done that, and they really encountered Him!!!
We were the second team that our school had sent to The Bridge and some of the young men decided they wanted to get baptized after encountering the Fathers love with the first team and we got to be there to celebrate their baptisms. Six young men were baptized into the Kingdom of God on that Saturday. I watched as one of the boys family was there and one of the boys family was not, how the first boys family pulled the second boy in and prayed over him, blessing him and joining him into their family. It was such a beautiful picture of how the body of Christ is suppose to function together. The love and unity that was displayed on top of the beautiful time of celebration made the presence of Holy Spirit on these kids intensify! I can’t even describe it fully, but I could feel His joy and pride over them. He was pleased with them, these kids who had screwed up and ended up here instead of jail, and He was pleased with them, because they were His babies and His love covers their sin. Their sin was not enough to separate them from His love because He had already covered their sin in the blood of His Son, so absolutely nothing could separate them from His love. It makes me think of Romans 8 specifically this passage verses 28-39:
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It was His love that drew these young men to Him, His grace that covered them and taught them that they can be amazing despite their past, despite where they come from. His love that told them that they were born to be great and they can become the over comers and leaders that they were born to be. Some of these boys had never heard good things spoken about them, and probably never had anyone believe that they could be great and accomplish great things. Seeing them for who they really are on the inside and calling it out of them is so important in watching a person grow into the amazing person they truly are. We like to call this gold digging J because we are digging for the gold that is inside of them and we want to draw it out of them so they can see their worth and know who they are so when the battles come, their identity is not something that can be easily shaken.
When your identity is founded on who you are and who God is and who He created you to be, then when circumstances change and things look rough, your circumstances will not cause your identity to change, and you can be at peace in the middle of what appears to be a storm. That is what I am learning to do in my life, to find my identity in who God is and who He says I am and not in what I can accomplish or do. These boys and their stories and dreams are something I treasure and I look forward to returning to Bridge next year to meet new boys and start the process over again.

Albuquerque and Santa Fe trip April 2010

In April I was blessed to go on a ministry trip to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and wow… was it an unforgettable trip for me! This was my first opportunity to be the ministry team and really put into practice all that I had learned over the year, and the leaders of the trip Steven and Tracy Cooper were also my preaching teachers, so I knew that I had to be prepared to speak. A few days before the trip I went to Starbucks and I spent time with God and He gave me all kinds of stuff and I had no idea how to put it all together into one message but it turns out it wasn’t suppose to be one message but it was for multiple conversations with people and for the Q & A time. Papa God really did give me everything I needed, in advance and on the spot… it really helped me learn to trust Him more, and to trust that I do hear His voice.
When we arrived in Albuquerque our team met at the pastor’s home and then we all drove to the church plant in Santa Fe. At the first meeting in the Santa Fe church Cody Wahl, one of the team members and school pastors, came up to me and told me that God was going to point out a specific woman to minister to one on one that night, and to look for her. I had already started talking to the woman because she sat down across from me at the potluck dinner we continued talking even after the service started. She was asking me questions that God had given me the answers for while I was praying and preparing for the trip. Turns out that Danielle, Cody's wife who is also a pastor at school, had a dream about this same woman and saw what happened the next day. The woman asked a question during the Q & A time and Danielle knew who was supposed to answer and then how we were suppose to pray for the lady so Danielle orchestrated the team so it went exactly the way that God had shown her in her dream. The lady was able to receive so much freedom from things that she had been carrying since she was a child, it was beautiful to watch and be a part of God bringing His child freedom.
Another lady I connected with and had prayed and prophesied over the first night, we ended up ministering to the second day. It turns out she had fibromyalgia so Barbara Johnson, another team member and schoolmate, felt like we were supposed to pray with her to receive healing before we headed back to Albuquerque. We went into a quiet room to pray with her while the end of the last meeting in Santa Fe was wrapping up. It was awesome because God started to talk to me about what was really going on in her body; how there were emotional problems that stemmed from her childhood and were manifesting themselves in her health. In order for her body to receive healing we had to go after the root of her pain. Holy Spirit guided us through some memories and forgiveness and the woman experienced a physical release in her health as well as in her spirit. We received an email from her a few weeks after the trip with the progress she had made! Thank you Jesus!!!
Probably the coolest experience of this trip though was getting to know Crysti Naylor, who I roomed with the entire trip. God totally set up this amazing opportunity for healing the brokenness in the two of us that occurred when we lost our brothers as youth. We discovered this on the first night talking before bed in Santa Fe. Then the second night we stayed with this incredible couple in Albuquerque, they were also hosting three men in their living room that weekend, they gave us their bedroom while they slept on the floor in a sitting room. Both Crysti and I were exhausted that night but wanted to get to know the family we were staying with and the guests that were staying there too. I knew that God was doing something and that I was suppose to meet these people and discover His plan for randomly bringing us all together for that one night. Turns out after hours of conversing that one of those men had also tragically lost his brother as a young adult.
God had brought the three of us together all of whom had lost our brothers in relatively the same time period of our lives. We were able to share that pain with each other and pray and prophesy over each other and take another step in the grieving process, we even shared in a vision which was incredible. Truly a moment I'll never forget. We recognized God was doing something and chose to be a part of it and we were all blessed and received emotional healing. We knew that what God was doing with us wasn't just for us, so at the worship service that next morning, we called out words of knowledge and Crysti and I shared what God had done with us the night before and prayed over approximately a third of the congregation who had also lost loved ones tragically or suddenly. That was my favorite moment on the trip, Crysti and I were blessed and healed emotionally, we shared the testimony of Jesus in our lives and God did it again with the congregation. To me that is beautiful. That is an extravagant expression of His love. That is what being a child of God is about. Being His child is about seeing His goodness and love and sharing it with others so that we can all fall more in love with our Heavenly Father. He is beautiful, His love is extraordinary and it is moments like this that solidify my decision to go anywhere that He sends me because it is His love that moves my heart to live passionately for Him.

What I learned about myself and God this past year

I want to thank each of you for your support, financially and with prayer over the past year and especially for the three mission trips that I went on in April and May of 2010. I have been so blessed by the people that I met on each of these trips and have been forever thrust further into my destiny with Father God. I want to share with you the testimonies of what God has been and is doing and how He has and is moving in, through and around me. I have learned so much and experienced so much over the past year that to just share the testimonies of what I saw on these trips feels cheap. I do not want to give you just that, I want to give you a taste of the goodness of God that I have had the honor and privilege of experiencing this last year. The testimonies that I experienced on the trips are wonderful but equally important is what He is doing in me, who He is molding me to be, and the dreams we are sharing together now, simply because that is His testimony in me. I simply want to share my heart with the people who I love and who have played such key roles in making me who I am today. So this is a piece of my most recent adventures with Papa God, the one who holds my heart in His.
Stepping into the fullness of my identity and destiny is wonderful. I have been on this journey of discovering who I am and how I fit into the Kingdom of God my whole life, but this past year I feel like I have finally discovered myself. One revelation about myself is that I love to teach people about the love of Papa God, how He is the epitome of love and we can never disappoint him. It sounds crazy right because I grew up with this thought that if I make bad choices then I’ll disappoint God and that is a bad thing to do, so it was really important to be a good little girl. Here’s the thing though, to be disappointed means that you were expecting a different result, but God knows the choices we’ll make and already has a plan for us, so He really can’t be disappointed. He knew Judas was a thief and yet made him treasurer. He knew Judas would betray Him and yet kept him on the inner circle of His disciples. He knew Peter would deny Him and yet made him the corner on which His church was build. He knew we’d reject Him and yet He died for us. All God wants is for us to come to Him and fall on our faces before him, repent or change our mindset and then forgive ourselves because He already forgave us, over 2000 years ago, mind boggling isn’t it?
This revelation of His forgiveness and love has been quite freeing for me, challenging too as I look at how I relate to others. He forgave us for everything that we’d ever do already, more than two thousand years ago. James 5:16 says confess your sins one to another and pray for each other that you may be healed. We do it so we can receive healing from the death that sin brings, not to tell God so He can decide to forgive us, He already did that. There is simply healing when we share our burdens and forgive each other and our selves. This is a beautiful thing. It is through this confessing, or sharing that we are able to join together with each other and with Him in an intimate relationship knowing that there is nothing that can separate us from His love, no action, no thought, nothing can separate us. The tough part is trusting in other people because we as broken people forget that there is no condemnation in Christ and we don’t know how to truly honor someone when they do bring us their brokenness and sin, because it has so rarely been exemplified.
It is one of my dreams to really learn how to express this part of God and His love. One of the things I discovered this year is that I LOVE leading people into an encounter with Him, through prayer, conversations, meditation, visions, or inner healing. It doesn’t matter the format, just that they attain a love encounter with the God of love, the one who died for them, so they could experience freedom, choice, love. One of the most life changing things I have learned is that love always has a choice. Bill Johnson explains it as the two trees in the Garden of Eden, God had to give Adam and Eve a choice for it to be love. They were given an opportunity to “fail” so that they could truly “succeed” and that is love. I have heard so many times that in order to succeed you must be willing to jump out there and fail, and it makes sense, if we live our lives in fear then where does that leave us? It leaves us in a mediocre lifestyle always dreaming about the ‘one day’ because we are too scared to jump into our hearts desires because we might fail.
I decided last summer that I was no longer going to live my life in fear. One of my life verses is 2 Timothy 4:7 which says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind.” This verse has meant so many different things to me through the years but this past summer it really hit me, if I am scared to do something and act based on that fear then I am submitting myself to the enemy. Once I had this revelation I decided to stop listening to fear and when I felt it rise up I realized it was the enemy trying to stop me from walking into my destiny. Some of my first decisions to break this cycle of fear were that I decided to apply for Bethel Atlanta School of Supernatural Ministry (BASSM), and get involved in the church I had been going to for almost a year but had yet to connect to anyone new because I was afraid, intimidated, and insecure because I didn’t know who I was. Going to BASSM was the best decision I have ever made, because it opened the door for God to rock my world in ways I never imagined He could.
I have never heard His voice more clearly or felt His presence like I do now. I am able to hear what He is saying to me and what He is saying about others, which enables me to give them a prophetic word, which is just God telling them something about themselves. It is not a scary thing because He only always has good things to say to us. I am also able to recognize Him speaking in lots of different ways, I get words of knowledge which is God showing me what is going on in other peoples bodies, or facts about them. Sometimes I get a pain in my body or a word pops into my head and it is something that God is doing to share that He knows and loves the person. Hearing and seeing Him in these new ways has furthered my love for Him and I am completely wrecked by His love now and there is absolutely no going back.
This past year has been many things for me, stretching, challenging, a year of discovering who I am by opening up my heart to His healing so my past not longer controls my future, and relearning thing I thought I knew but had wrong. It has been an awesome year of overcoming fear, in it‘s many different manifestations. About half way through the year I discovered that the fear actually took on a new manifestation when I started to respond by turning to God when I felt it. It shifted the feelings of fear to feeling awkwardness, which is simply the fear of man. So now I am learning that when I feel awkward I just have to pause and focus on God and who He is and then His love washes over me and I realize, I am loved and beautiful just as I am and that is truth, regardless of my emotions and I can stand on that. When I focus on His love then fear has to leave because, “perfect love casts out fear” 1 John 4:18. So when I get lost in His love, then the fear I felt has no choice but to leave.
My ever expanding dream for my life is to live a life full of the love of Papa God to abide in His presence. I dream about how it can be evident that He is always with me, like walking past a sick person and then they are healed. I dream about dwelling in His presence so much that everything I create carries His presence like the handkerchief’s and aprons that touched the apostle Paul and were taken to the sick and they were healed and evil spirits left them like in Acts 19:11-12. I dream about going to the nations and sharing the love of God with people, setting them free from the things that hold them prisoners. I have a huge desire to go to the places where the darkness of the enemy seems to be prevailing. It is those places where I want to go and shine the light of God’s love and watch Him restore that which has been stolen, heal what has been broken and radically love people into the abundant life He died to give them.
I dream about my art carrying His presence so that when people look at it, the walls around their hearts that they have built up to protect themselves are disarmed and the love of God can break into their souls and they will be rocked by the extravagant love of God and it will bring life to them. One of my favorite things about art is that it has the ability to break into the viewers hearts and they are able to find a visible expression for what is going on inside of them. The viewers can interpret their own meaning because art often takes on a life of it’s own, and everyone sees it differently, because it draws out of each of them different things. I want my art to carry both physical and emotional healing because it is what Papa God and I do together and healing is a part of His essence which can not be separated from Him. I want to create specific works for specific galleries/ stores and for the person who is going to walk in and see it. I want each of my pieces to express and release creativity, courage, hope and love always. I want to donate works to museums around the world to release the aspect of God that I carry, and I want to pray over each of my pieces for the things that the person receiving them is in need of. I plan to write books about what God is doing with me and use my photography to show the world what He shows me. His love is too big not to share it with people, I cannot hold it back anymore. I want to use my art to support my ministry as well as be ministry.
I have recently decided to jump into the dream of being a full time artist and continue in the second year program at BASSM. I know that the second year here will catapult me further me into my destiny and help me be able to walk in my dreams further. One way it will do so is that I will have the opportunity to travel with the Pastors on staff and serve them as they are serving other around the world and the US. I am very excited to be able to travel and serve under them, I know that what God has put inside of me will grow in extraordinary ways through their leadership and that excites me! I know this will happen in ever increasing ways because of how much it happened this past year on the three trips I had the honor of going on.

Purpose of my blog

Hello dear people, old friends and new friends :)
I wanted to write a purpose statement for my blog so you may all know why I write what I write and share what I share. Months ago, I felt led to start a blog and actually signed up but never posted anything, until now... it was with the leading of the Holy Spirit to be obedient to the direction He had given me and with encouragement of people who did not know that was something that He had been speaking to me about that I finally have decided to begin this journey with you, the people who read my story as it develops. I am an artist beginning the journey of my hearts desire which is to release the love of God through creativity and I am also a carrier of the love of God everywhere that I go and my dream is to take His beautiful light to the darkest places in the world releasing the Kingdom of Heaven onto Earth. I am going to post what was going to be a missions update letter that turned into a mini book about what I discovered about myself, GOd and the things I watched Him do around the world last year. I will also post new pieces of art and things that I am working on and the journey of stepping into my dreams and my destiny :) I hope that this blog inspires you and brings hope to every area of your heart! May you be blessed by my story and experience the ever increasing love of Father God!