I'm Here!

First of all, I'm sorry for how long it took for me to post this next blog. We've just been really busy all day every day and its taken me several days just to type this haha. 

So last Saturday I finally made it here to the YWAM base in Ensenada, Mexico! So far I've met all of the staff running this DTS, moved into my apartment, made a lot of friends, and am just loving it down here. We started our classes Monday, and we've just been going over some basic orientation and guidelines for this base and the school we're all going through. The director of our DTS also talked to us about YWAM and its core beliefs and values. Their primary focus is to know God, share God, and learn to hear is voice. There are many focuses for this organization, but those are the values that got YWAM to where it is today.

Over the past 2 days we've been talking a lot about prayer and hearing God's voice. Something I've never been really good at doing. Our speaker today challenged us to set specific times to get away from everything and be with God to just talk and listen to him. Like I said, that's something I've always struggled to do. But she explained how when you get in the habit of meeting God and spending time with him at a specific time period every day, hearing his voice becomes second nature. My mom is the perfect example of this since she always wakes up way early to spend time with God. She's told me over the years about scripture in the Bible she was led to during these quiet times and about things she heard God tell her that she was able to put to use in her daily life. So I guess its about time I stop finding reasons and excuses for why I haven't been disciplined enough to spend time listening to God every day and start doing it. I know that once I get into the habit of it, these quiet times in the morning, night, or free time during the day will become times I really look forward to and get a lot out of.

Tonight we had our first worship night. It only lasted a little over an hour but it was amazing! It was more than the "basic" worship I was used to which was consisted of singing to God the whole time. There were people sharing with everyone things that God had put upon their hearts, prayer and worship in different languages, almost everyone on their face in surrender, people coming in from outside the worship hall saying that the presence of God was overwhelming in and around the building, and a lot of freaked out people who weren't used to any of that at all. The most amazing thing was to look around and see people of different races, nations, and backgrounds all worshiping and crying out to the same God. It was just awesome to be a part of that and some awesome healing took place in a lot of people's hearts tonight. Some of my friends who were also a little worried about how the rest of the DTS was going to be like left that time of worship hungry for more and with the assurance from God that this is exactly where he wants us all to be right now. Its a pretty amazing feeling.