It's blog time again! Ending week 9 only a little over three weeks till we will be leaving for Kolkata, India, and we just completed our Visa applicaions and purchased our tickets! Super exciting! The anticipation is building every day!
I have an amazing story for you all! Soooo our team needed $48,000 for everyone to be able to go on outreach. A lot of us had raised the money before we came including me, however, some people weren't able to raise the money as they didn't know until closer to the time our DTS started that they were to come here so they didn't have enough time to save their outreach fees. So we have been praying and trusting God for Him to bring in all these finances. And this week we saw the last of it come in! How incredible is our God? Philippians 4:19 - And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. It's been amazing for me to see God providing all this money and the crazy ways He has provided this money. Personally I had all my finances before I got here and during Lordship week the Lord asked me to trust Him with $2000 of my outreach money and give it to someone else in my class who had none of their outreach money. To be very honest with you at first I was like.. I cannot possibly do that! That is so much money, there is no way I will be able to get that money before outreach, I don't have a job or anything. Then I heard a small voice Natalie, do you actually trust me with something as big as this? And I was like of course I trust you but where is the money going to come from? Then He reminded me that faith is believing in something we cannot see. It seemed like such a silly idea, giving the money I had for my outreach away only a few weeks before I needed to pay it in. But the Lord was like you can trust me with this Natalie. So I did it and ahhhh God has provided everything I needed and blessed me with overflow. So our outreach money needed to be payed in this Monday morning in order to secure plane tickets that were a really good price.Monday morning came and some people in my class were praying for me and one of my leaders felt that the money for my outreach was going to all come in that day. So morning tea came and I felt really excited and I went straight up to accounts thinking something miraculous had happened and some anonymous person would have paid my remainder of my outreach fees as you hear in the stories. At this point I didn't have all that much left to pay in as people have been very generous for my walk-a-thon fundraiser and our ticket prices had dropped twice. But I went up and the balance was what I had expected it to be, so I left feeling a little discouraged. THEN in the afternoon our class prayed some more. Now our class has these encouragement cups with our names on it for us to put encouragement notes in them. So we were praying and our leader said that if anyone felt on their heart to give that they could pledge the amounts and put them in the encouragement cups. I thought there was no way anyone would be lead to give to me because my number was much smaller than everyone elses. Behold I had $300 in my cup. Then My leader told me that she would pay the last $146 owing. I also had, had a discussion that morning with God about how I needed to pay a girl in my class back $5 and I didn't have enough money to pay her back... well yes indeed the Lord is a faithful father! There was also a $5 bill in my encouragement cup that day. Ahhh I was so excited to see the Lord provide for me like this! This experience has definitely taught me to lean on Him more and that He really does know what we need and He cares about the little things as well like that $5 I needed to pay back my friend!
The Lord has been challenging me in many different areas. This week I would put an emphasis on His word and Him challenging me through His word. This week He has been highlighting verses to me that I have never understood or kinda skipped over because I didn't like them very much haha so bad I know. But He has challenged me to look deeper into their meanings and making sure everything I read points back to the character and nature of Him and reading the Bible as a whole. Instead of thinking, oh I don't agree with that, or God sounds a bit mean in this verse but to look into it deeper and find out the true meanings and challenge myself. It's been very good! God is so good!
Last weekend some of my dear friends and I went to go see Watoto Children's choir! Oooohmygoodness those Children are so inspiring! They come from such hopeless situations and God has totally restored their lives and brought them so much joy and happiness! It's incredible to see and deeply touched my heart watching those adorable little children singing such heartfelt praises to Jesus! I was so excited to get the opportunity to watch them perform again.
Lecture Content:
Submission and Authority was the topic of this week! Our speaker has just been emphasizing how important it is to submit to God first then to submit to those that are around us and the people of authority over us. He also told us how to politely not submit to leaders who are asking us to do things that are morally wrong and against what we believe in. Also when we are placed under someones leadership we must not only do the task asked of us but to do it wholeheartedly and cheerfully as we would unto the Lord. It was a good week and our speaker was from Bangladesh, which is one of the countries I am going to for my outreach phase. It was cool hearing about what he is doing in Bangladesh and what it is like there.
Prayer Requests:
It would be really cool if you could pray for me. Just for my protection as I am getting quite tired and weary approaching the end of lecture phase and as we all know that's when the devil comes to attack. Also that everything in preparation for outreach phase would go smoothly and well and that I would get the most out of the last three weeks here in Perth!
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog! :D
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