A Changed Heart Ready to Obey

I just realized that I have not updated you all since Sunday! So let me try to select the highlights and give you the readers digest version...

God has done a great work in my life in the last week. He has transitioned me FROM merely surviving and feeling as if I am floating through this trip in a cloud watching what God is doing rather than actually experiencing it and soaking it all in TO experiencing the work that God is doing here and growing in my walk with Him each day. Sunday night, I told the Lord that I was done praying survival prayers and would not on being praying for growth! The past 4 days have been drastically different. Praise the Lord!

Praise- Monday we had a great day at the school in Santa Monica. The children really seemed to GET IT! Today, while Rick and the Jessicas (two journeyman) were out visiting us and going with us to do our work and take pictures for the website of some of us working in some of our regular places, we saw some the the children from that school and today- 4 days later- they were repeating the story! We got them into a group and they could completely retell the Bible story!!!! So encouraging! They also said they had told their families like we had told them!

Keep praying- We were unable to meet with Cristina yet this week to study the Bible. However we do have plans to meet with her on Sunday morning at 11am (12pm NC time).

New opportunity- Tomorrow (Friday @ 2pm - 3pm NC time) we will be evangelizing/talking to kids in the park here in Tabacundo with the local baptist church. After an hour & half or so we will invite all the kids to come down the street to the church for a Bible Story Movie that the church is going to show! This is the product of us talking to the pastor after church sunday night. He is very thankful that the missionaries want to join in the with local church to do the Lords work rather than just come in and do our own thing. Pray that the church will catch the fire of the desire to see their town come to know Christ and continue the work on their own. Also opportunities have opened up in our home with our host family. The father, Papi Luis, has been a believer for 1 year and has a huge heart that is broken with the desire to see his sons, brothers, sisters, and parents come to know the Lord as well. His consuming desire, more than any I´ve ever seen is to KNOW the scriptures well enough to teach it and explain it to his Catholic, lost family. God supplied ABUNDANTLY the spanish words on Monday after dinner for us to help him with some questions. PRAISE GOD! I experienced just want many of your promised before I left, that even in spanish God would give me the words to say. HE DID! I could not even believe what was coming out of my mouth! An Acts 2 experience for sure! Something I will NEVER forget! Please pray for Papi Luis as he studies and for courage to share the truth with his family even if he does not have all the answers! And also for us to be used in his life to help him grow and be examples to him. Also pray for Carlito, their 19yr old son who is not a believer and for our influence on his life.

Today after visiting with Rick and the Jessicas, I feel as though God is about to require more of me! With them today we walked around and talked to and witnessed to everyone we saw, or Rick did. I WANT TO...NEED to do that! Both now and when I return home. I want that to be the uncontrollable desire of my heart. I want to pray to fight off the evil ones holds in their lives and hold nothing back! So please pray for me as I try to finish the race (at least this last 16days in this area) here running much stronger than I have been up to this point. Pray for me as I try to read my Bible in Spanish daily, study the message of the gospel in Spanish, and study the difficult subjects such as praying to the virgin Mary and idolatry! This task once again seems overwhelming...HUGE! But as we have seen thus far, God is able to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20,21)!

The days are busy here now pray for endurance and an extra dose of provision for opportunities! I know that we will leave here with much more work to be done but I want to be confident that I have done ALL that God has set before me, not letting a single opportunity slip by!

Hear the words of this song that has so spoken to my heart on Sunday night as God built a monument in my spiritual walk with Him...

I need you like a hurricane,
thunder-crashing, wind & rain
to tear my walls down
I am only yours now.

I need you like burning flame.
wild-fire untamed
to burn these walls down
I´m only YOURS now!

If destruction is what I need. I´ll receive it from Thee!

Though the first week was so hard here, I would not trade it! Praise God for what He taught me and for what he is currently teaching me...

I know I said this would be the readers digest version but really...It´s Katie! Is that actually possible?!?! So before I close let me share with you what God is currently teaching me...If you want to sign off now...that's all the updates for now! Keep praying....

Obedience is difficult. Sometimes obedience means suffering. I look for a life of comfort and ease but that is not the obedience that God has called us to as believers. Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus learned obedience through his sufferings. Jesus cried out in a loud voice and tears to be saved from death. He WAS heard but still he was obedient and thus he suffered. So does that mean that it is God´s will for us to suffer? If that's what it takes for us to obediently fulfill His will. To me, to be lonely and away from my family is suffering. I struggle with what God is going to call me to do after graduation. Then I go back to the responce of a friend when asked what would he do with a christian studies degree. He confidently responded, "I´m going to be obedient." And in that I will also find my hope and peace! Pray for me to delight myself solely in the Lord so that as promised in Psalm 37:4 my desires will become whatever His desires are for my life. Whatever he calls me to, I want to be obedient, even if that means suffering. For we can find our hope in knowing that even my whole life is small in comparison to eternity which God has prepared for us and invited us to share it! Please pray that this will become the solid foundational beliefs of my heart so that I can come through with obedience WHATEVER He calls me to do!

Okay, if someone could talk the ears off of a group from 5000 miles away it would be me! Thank you all for your love and support. I am indescribably gratefully for you all going through this journey with me!