Long Week of Amazing Teaching

I can't even express how great this week has been!

And if you read the last blog entry you probably think I'm nuts!  But even though I've been various degrees of sick all week, the teaching we have had was amazing.  Reona Peterson Joly was our speaker, and she is one of the people who have been in YWAM since practically the beginning.  YWAM had its 50 anniversary this year, and she has been involved for over 4/5 of that!  She and her husband Albert were such blessings to learn from and even to watch interact.  I think Art's favorite part of the week was that they still called each other darling although they are approaching 70.  But I was overwhelmed by the faith that she has had following God's calling on her life.   It takes faith to smuggle bibles into Albania in the height of Communism in that country.  Her first visit to Slovakia was before the fall of the Soviet's, and she smuggled bibles into Slovakia.  I'm sure she only told us a fraction of the stories she could have.  But even those few were so inspiring!

And she wasn't invited to talk at the school about her experiences. Her actual topic was Intercession and the Character of God.  WOW. I want to just type all my notes for everyone to read. Because this is stuff that the world needs to hear!  Did you ever realized that prayer works better when you realize that you don't know how to pray? When you ask God to guide your prayers so you can partner with him and have the same mind as him?  Have you ever paused to question if maybe it was thousands, or hundred of thousands of believers praying that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union?  I have no doubt now that it was exactly that.

Did you know that 110 000 people enter the kingdom daily?  That 1000 new churches are begun each week?  You didn't did you? You didn't nearly that many people were finding Jesus.  But they are!  You have been believing the lies about Christianity.

So during this week we learned 5 keys to prayer/intercession.  We learned types of prayer. We were inspired for our daily quiet times.  We talked about the rights that you have to give up to follow Christ.  We went on some of the most inspiring tangents to these topics.  And one tangent that I thought was so entertaining was one about the number of single women in YWAM.  Apparently there is an unproportionate number of single women who take DTS courses and an unproportionate number of single women in full time missions with YWAM.  And Reona says its because these women are so committed to being radical Christians that they refuse to marry someone just for the sake of marriage. Their husbands will need to also be willing to do crazy things for God... and apparently there aren't that many of these men in YWAM. (We have been blessed with a DTS that is two guys and two girls so we aren't typical apparently).  So all you guys back at home... you think about that.  Is God calling you to do something awesome for him in another country?  Could you be one step closer to creating equality of the sexes in missions?

There are so many other amazing things that I learned from Reona this week but if I continue to type I run the risk of coming across even more crazy that I have already.  I can't believe its just the end of week two.  Its seems like its been months and months and months already!  Every day is so full and so much fun...

Today Art had jam filled perogies (pronounced different but similar...) for lunch.  So here is a picture of those...