"You are all together beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you"  Beauty, love and identity are three things that God has been reshaping and redefining in my life and heart the past couple weeks.  He spent the entirety of both leader and participant training camps speaking to me about my beauty to Him and opening my eyes to the infinite amount of ways that He pursues my heart perfectly.There have been times this past week that I have literally felt Him staring at...

I want to talk about training camp, traveling, the amazing Kiwi people, everything… but what I keep coming back to is the beach. Primarily how beautiful it is, and how much I see God on the shore. So that’s what I’ll talk about. Waikanae Beach is about a fifteen-minute walk from camp. You have to go through a section of woods, walk alongside a river, and through pathways of grassy fields. After the short trek of vivid color and layered mountains and clear streams, you see it—the shore. Walking on the beach elevates everything: all senses, emotion, breathing, all of...

Oh, New Zealand. Where do I even start? There’s so much more to this place than I ever would have expected, and I think God will continue to reveal more – more of His heart for this land and for these people. His people – His creation;  His children that He loves so dearly. The more I’ve thought about it, the more sense it makes that the country the Lord sent me to is called New Zealand. See, all semester God has been calling me into deeper intimacy with Him and making me fall more in love with Him every day. The name itself shows me that this is the place...

As we flew to LA, we chased the sun. It seem that though we left at 8PM and flew for near to four hours, the sun was ever with us. As we flew to Sydney, we chased the moon. The flight over the Pacific was one of darkness always following along, even over the long 15 hours. Sometimes the night seems to last the longest. The darkness seems to overwhelm. The sun seems to refuse to rise. And relief seems to never come.  Take heart, He said, I have overcome the world.  You will have trouble. You will have pain and darkness. In the nights where the goblins of fear and deceit...

Well, I 've been slacking hard core on blogging this time around. Sorry about that. We've been busy and when we aren't busy I've been lazy. True story.   However, God has been doing some incredible things this summer (or winter here). Earlier this month we did two weeks of kids camp which was so great. And we just got back last night from a trip to the South Island which was so wonderful.    At kids camp we sang a song with some sweet dance moves, but when I really meditated on the lyrics I realized how much truth is actually in the song.   I...

It is impossible to write about everything amazing that happened this past week. We had an amazing trip down to the South Island in which God showed up every step of the way and increased my faith immensely. We prayed so much before and throughout the entire trip, and God answered in incredible ways. Our team of 10 people was unified, with expectation of God's power, and of course, laughing the whole way. We took the ferry to the South Island on Monday morning, with no accommodation or plans arranged.  We were completely dependent upon God to provide, and provide He did....