Praises in Heaven

Good news!!!

Andreea, one of the gals that was in my room at camp accepted Christ the last day of the camp. I think that was one of the most sweetest moments in my lifetime! Pastor Raul provided a time for students to respond to the Lord and Andreea did! I was in the room at the time praying for the students and out of the corner of my eye, I watched her approach Pastor Raul and he spent time praying for her and then Cornelia, the student leader from our small group, came along side of her to pray and encourage her...what a blessing to have witnessed a life given over to the Lord!

Afterwards, I met up with Andreea outside and gave her a HUGE hug and told her that I was so excited for her and that she made a great decision. She looked at me after our hug and said "thank you" and "I'm so glad to have met you." That was such a great blessing for me to hear her say that especially since all week we relied on non verbal communication to "speak" to one another.

I'm excited to report that Andreea is a facebook friend now, so I have a way of continuing to encourage her through social networking (sometimes technology really can be a great thing)!

Home Safe from Romania

Friends,

I know it's be a little since I've blogged. Time has flown by since arriving back in the states. We arrived safely at O'Hare on August 9 from Romania around 8 p.m. We were exhausted from our trip overseas, but encouraged by seeing God work in the hearts of the students and in our own hearts during the week.

Camp was much different than I had anticipated...the language barrier was larger than we had expected, so conversing with the students was fairly difficult. We relied much on non verbal communication during the week and at the end of the week, it was clear that our non verbal communication reached the hearts of many...what a blessing to see the fruit of that!

I know the one thing that I learned most at camp was FLEXIBILITY! I don't think I've ever had to be more flexible with anything in my entire life! We hit many obstacles which we knew Satan placed in our path, so often, we were brought to our knees in prayer to combat his schemes.

The Lord has placed many challenges ahead of me after this trip and I know it will be difficult to adjust to those challenges, but I am so thankful for a God who stretches me out of my comfort zone and leads me to ways to live radically for His glory!

Hope to blog again soon and thank you for all your prayers and support while our team served in Romania. I hope to post pictures and things in the future (that is if I can figure out how to...being a new blogger has its downfalls).

Blessed in Romania

Hello from Romania!
Absolutely LOVE it here and the people and the land is beautiful! I am enjoying time with my host family...they are such giving and compassionate people! I can't say enough great things about being here. We're leaving for camp tomorrow morning (Monday) and have about a 2 hour drive to camp which is much better than the flight and drive to Arad (it took a little over 24 hours to arrive here and of course, delays and missed flights were a part of the fun)!
We've been able to tour the city of Arad and enjoy the culture. The food is fabulous and is in some fierce competition with the food I enjoyed in Israel (which says a lot about how wonderful it is here). We worshipped at the Harvest church here twice now and it was beautiful to worship the Lord in another language and partner with other brothers and sisters in Christ and yet know we are one body and one church!
Please continue to pray for us as we minister to the high schoolers. It's my understanding that there will be over 100 high school students and a third of them are not believers. The theme for the week is the story of God and I have been partnered with Cornelia for small groups and a different Cornelia will be the student leader with us to help with the translation from Romanian to English. One of the gals with us comes from a very poor background and is very shy, so please pray for us as we do our best to be Christ to her and provide her with a sense of unconditional love and security (she doesn't have running water or electricity at her home). It's also imperative that the girls in our group trust us to be able to allow them to share in group with us, so please pray that their hearts will be soft and ready to hear the Lord speaking.
VERY excited about the opportunity ahead, but also fearful of not being bold enough in my faith...please pray that the enemy doesn't silence me when the Lord is tugging my heart to say or do something for someone. Please pray that I am a woman of action in my faith.
hope to blog again at camp, but if I don't, I will do all I can to blog more about the changed lives at camp...I know mine will be one for sure...God is doing quite a bit of construction on me!