66 books, 1 story!

    So another week has came and gone, and boy did that ever go by fast! It has been a busy week! The days were packed with lectures with our speaker Tom the base director about the bible overview! Holy molly, so much info! But I learned a lot and I am proud and excited to say that after that week of a total of 15 hours of lectures (2 and a half hours long), I have never been more excited to read the Old Testament; like it came to life! We really focused a lot of our attention on getting the beginning story of how everything started straight before we went on to the new testament.
    Before we studied, we took a test to let us know how well we know our Bibles, and there were lots of questions on it. A lot of them based on order and length of events. I bombed! haha I believe I got a 9 out of 32! For many others: the same result! I've been going to church pretty much all my life, and i know lots of stories and sunday school lessons but it was crazy to think, wow i actually have so much to learn. and i did!  It was pretty hard, but i bet if I were to take that same test again i would pass for sure!  The first three days we pretty much studied Genesis and Exodus in detail. We went over the short summary of the bible 1. Creation 2. The fall 3. Redemption pretty detailed and then all the stories. I know i have tried to promise myself to do it before, but i would really like to read the whole bible. I have never got around to it but I would really like to. Not only does it help you learn more about God's character, it gives you truth and spiritual nurturing for the soul. I had never really thought about it before but our speakers have challenged us saying if you want to evangelize to non-christians, be prepared and a common question or argument that they can throw at you is, "how can you preach on something that you haven't even read?" another analogy that hit me was something like "you don't just start a book from page 125 without feeling like you missed something." ouch. so i have realized just the importance of being able to know why i believe what i know and how.  Of course you don't need to read the whole bible in order to be a christian. Our faith should be much more than that of seeing how much we can learn. It's not about knowledge! It's about having a true and genuine, best friend, honest, open relationship with the Lord.
    Don't hate me if I fail, but I'm going to try to read the whole bible in the next year! and ya'll can keep me accountable of that!
    We also focused a lot on God's holiness and Love. From the week before I had learned so much about what God's love is and it's been really cool to have a whole new revelation on this. God's holiness shows up all though-out the bible and how he is a just God who is patient. Especially with all of the patience He had on The people of Israel. He picked them as his chosen people in order for them to bless the nations. In judges (the "yuck" chapters), it's crazy to think that God waited THAT long before pouring His cup of wrath onto the nations.
    On that note: the cup of wrath is such a crazy subject! I am glad we as believers don't have to fear that anymore! :D And for him to send all of those prophets, signs and teaches to get them to stop, wow they did some crazy evil stuff!
    ALSO i found it really cool to understand that with the 10 plagues that they weren't just random. God wanted to destroy one by one all of the egyptian god's Showing them that His power succeeded all!
    Looking back through the Bible it is so cool to see how God fulfilled His promises and covenants and how we are in this exciting time of waiting for Christ to come back! Gosh it was such a sweet week.
    Last weekend, one of my fellow friends here from the Philippines  got in an accident while we were at the beach. We were doing some body boarding and some of us were just swimming and the waves were sooo big. My friend wasn't looking when one of the waves came down on him and his chin/face hit first and then his legs kicked back. One of my other friends who witnessed saw him get out of the water right after it happened, they called out his name and he fainted into the water. Immediately 2 of my friends responded and got him  out of the water. He had lost conscienceness but thankfully we had our madeline a nurse from switzerland with us and she new how to handle everything. Someone called 911 and the whole shabbot was there almost instantly. It was scary but, i always knew he was going to be alright. Our group was praying for him the whole time: on the beach and after we left. Madeline got to go with them so that he would be able to have someone be familiar with him while he went and she could be used. His cousin is one of the leaders here so when he first got the phone call he was scared but immediately the whole base prayed. My friend, Ben from the Philippines ended up only having a few slipped disks thankfully and we were all happy, with a minor concussion. Praise God!
     This week is so exciting! It is the hearing the voice of God week with Maria Daughtry! already we had our first lecture today and it was sweet! one person was prayed over and you could really feel God's presence in the room. it freaked some people out but once we get more into the week, i think we will all have a better understanding of how God speaks to us. :) God is moving here in Maui!
    ALso another fun thing that is happening this week is that it is Angle/mortal week! so we al selected a name from the people that are here and we are like their secret santa for the week! any suggestions for cool gestures are welcome!
     God will def provide for everyone. We are getting to that time where we all need to make our payments, and many of us including myself have to still get some in. Ben had to end up paying for the medical fee which took the place of a lot of his outreach money, but it will all work out:) God will provide. If you could support any of us here with our outreach fees that's be amazing but waaaaay more importantly if you could keep us in your prayers as we are preparing our mind, body, heart and souls to be able to reach people on our teams. thanks so much! Love you all!