Spiritual warfare

This week we had a group of special guests from Kansas City come down to Mazatlan. IHOP, coupling with the Call Institute has begun sending out "Strike Teams" to different strategic locations around the world, partnering with YWAM to be able to greater reach the world. Last year IHOP sent a strike team to Culiacan (the capitol of Sinaloa) and before that they had sent a team to Juarez, so this year they are sending a Strike Team to Durango to finish off enclosing the Golden Triangle in prayer. The Golden Triangle is the area in Mexico between Juarez, Culiacan, and Durango where the majority of drugs from Mexico are produced and sold. This means that this area is quite possibly the largest stronghold in Mexico. So this last week we had the Strike Team staying here at the base before they launched out for the strike. We shared some great times of worship and intercession with the IHOP team and we also received teachings from Sam (the leader of the team) on spiritual warfare. He is a phenomenal teacher and has lived a lifestyle to back up every one of his teachings. His teachings really pushed me to live more of a lifestyle of prayer and fasting and made me rethink how I do spiritual warfare and how I can improve on it in the future.

Also, Monday was the first of three days of prayer here in Mexico. The government has gotten together and realized the situation the nation is in and actually called on the Church to fast and pray for the welfare of the country. This is huge! We fasted, prayed, and worshiped for 12 hours along with hundreds and maybe even thousands of other churches all over the nation. When things like this begin to happen we can see in the Bible that things start to change, and I believe that is what is going to happen here too. This is the beginning of the tides shifting here in Mexico!

Finally, my parents left here on Monday. They were here for about 4 days and it was really a good time for me. It was a little taste of home and a taste of rest as well. I am grateful for their time here, but sorry to see them leave.

Sozoed

This week was phenomenal. A team from Resurrection Church in Greeley, Colorado came to our base simply to bless us. Their church has started using a type of ministry called "Sozo." The word "sozo" is a Greek word which is most commonly translated as "saved" in the New Testament, but the true definition of the word also includes, "to be healed," "to be delivered," and "to be made whole" and this team really sets out to do all of that. In this ministry, groups of two of the team members sit down with someone who has requested to be ministered to and lead the person through an encounter with God that could literally change their life. The person who is being ministered to is lead through asking the Father what He thinks of them, what the Son thinks of them, and what the Spirit thinks of them. The leaders can then see from the responses which one of those connections is strong and which one is weak and then they go deeper from there in order to renew a good connection with the whole Godhead. This usually involves God coming in and healing wounds from things that have gone on in the person's life. This is an amazing ministry and I know that I came out completely changed.
This team came in not only to do this ministry with everyone on the base, but also to teach us how to implement the ministry with others. That meant that for the first part of the week most of the staff and the WISE school sat in on classes which taught us how to lead people through Sozo. The classes were fun and the team really brought new life to the base. Through God working through them I believe this base experienced a move of the Spirit which will keep growing from here.

Relationships

Have you ever thought about guy-girl relationships? Have you ever wondered about how a proper marriage is supposed to be? Have you ever thought about what the right way to lead people is, and then on the other side what it is to truly follow someone? I'll take that as a yes.
This week our speakers were Doug and Jan, a couple that has been coming down and doing work in Mazatlan for years. The teaching they gave this week was about relationships of every kind. We learned about male/female relationships, leader/follower relationship, relationships within the family, and many more. The students were really receptive to the teaching and I believe each person on staff received something new from their teaching. Although I have heard this same teaching before I got new things out of it, whether it was actually new information or simply being reminded of things the Lord has spoken to me about before. One big thing God spoke to me about this week was honoring those who are placed as an authority above me. We also talked about how there is freedom in Christ if you have gone too far in past relationships. We had a great time of ministry on Friday when we all had the opportunity to break soul ties we have made in the past and to get set free from lies we have been believing. It was an amazing time!

Please be praying for our students. We have met the deadline for all the Lecture Phase fees to be in and some of our students still don't have all the money they need. Also, we are all trying to raise money for our Outreach and I still need $1,200 so please pray about supporting me.

Family

This week began with me heading off Sunday morning to Guadalajara for the YWAM National Leadership Conference. The National Leadership Conference is a time when people in leadership from all of the bases in Mexico get together to cast vision and to talk about what the Lord is doing in the country. This year the main focus of the conference was family. We talked about how we need to embrace the family unit as YWAM Mexico and also how we have been called together as a YWAM family. I could feel the sense of family within YWAM Mexico at that meeting as each base shared what God was doing in their area and as we all got to know each other and praised God for what He has been doing and asked Him to do more. It was also a special time for me and the YWAM CMC base plant team because at this National Leadership Conference we were recognized as a team and were prayed over and commissioned to do this work God has put on our hearts. It was amazing to have all these people who have given their lives to furthering the Gospel here in Mexico praying over us as a team. I could really tell from the conference that all of YWAM Mexico is behind us and wants to see us succeed. It was great to feel the support of our YWAM family.

the Father's Heart

God is a Father. However He's not a father who will leave us and fail us like our earthly fathers. No, He will never leave us or forsake us and everything He does toward us is only out of love. This is just a small bit of what the DTS learned about this week with Ricardo, the base director for the YWAM Pachuca base. He has a son and a daughter and really loves being a dad. He has such a father's heart and when he taught you could really feel it come through. He is such a loving man and really cared about each one of us. He was praying for us even before he came to the base and you could really tell in his compassion for us. The teaching was so good and Ricardo teaching it just made it better.
One of the main purposes for teaching on the Father Heart of God is that we as humans naturally seem to link God to our ideas of our earthly fathers, which leaves us believing false things about God. If our father was abusive we may believe that God is going to hurt us as well. If our fathers were hard on us and demanding we may have trouble believing in grace and that our salvation is not by works. During this week we went deep into these beliefs and pulled up our false ideas at the roots. Because of this I believe everyone received healing in one way or another during the teaching and ministry times. It was amazing to watch as God worked in all of our hearts! I can’t wait to see what He is going to do next!

True Worshippers

Have you bowed the knee to the ruling Greek culture, or are you a son of Zion who will stand against this culture which says that it is all about me? This is just one of the topics we covered this week of teachings on worship with pastor/songwriter Saul Morales. We talked about what true worship is and how we could be transformed into true worshippers. True worshippers are those who seek first and foremost the glory and majesty of the King. The problem is that in our culture which is majorly Greek it is taught that the only thing important in this world is oneself. What’s more this culture has also infiltrated the Church in some points and taught us that worship is about what we can get out of it when in all reality this view is completely unbiblical. We are to worship Him for His Glory because He is worthy of it, not because of what we can receive.

On another note we have been talking more and more about Outreach and had our first Outreach team meetings this week. In our meeting we shared a bit of the vision for the base plant and a little bit of what the Outreach would look like in relation to what we have to do for the plant. This Outreach is going to be different from most others in that we will actually be working on getting a brand new base started and as such we will be doing things a little different. For instance we will have a lot of needs starting this base and we will be asking everyone to use the resources available to them to help provide for these needs. We will also be asking the students to help us do things like talk to realtors and get settled in our new base location. Although we know that parts of this Outreach will be difficult, we know that it will be good because this is what God is calling us to.

So now that we know the locations and teams we can all start raising the money we will need for the Outreaches, which will be another step of faith for all of us. Please be praying for all of us to have all the financial provision we need for the work God has put before us. The Mexico City Outreach cost is going to be 15,000 Pesos, which is about $1,200 US. Please pray for God to provide this amount (and more) for me and also please ask the Lord if He would like to use you to provide for some of this need.

Lectures: Week Two

This week for lectures we had the base director (Brent) come in and talk to the students about the Character and Nature of God. It really opened up a lot of doors to see into our hearts and minds. Talking about His Nature allowed us to ask the Holy Spirit to search us and tell us where we had been believing lies that are contrary to His Character and Nature. Many times we start to believe things, sometimes even things we are taught in a religious setting or things we are taught about the Bible, that are contrary to His Character. God desires for each of us to have a correct understanding of Him and who He really is so that we can begin to reject the lies we've been believing and replace them with His Truth.
Also this week we announced the Outreach teams. For the September 2011 DTS we will be having two Outreach teams, one going to Mexico City and one going to Haiti! The DTS staff who are also helping plant the Mexico City base (which includes me) will be staffing the Mexico City Outreach and Tasha (one of our DTS staff people) will be going on the Haiti Outreach. The Mexico City Base Plant team will be commissioned from here in Mazatlan and will be sent out in December before Outreach. After that we will go on Outreach with the team during which we will be doing most of the normal things people do on Outreach along with some of the things we need to do to get ready to plant the base such as finding a location. After the Outreach the Haiti team will come meet us in Mexico City for the last two weeks for graduation and debrief. Then after that the base plant team will be staying there and officially starting the YWAM CMC OP-LOC (Youth With a Mission Centro Mexico City Operating Location). I am so excited to finally get started on this!

-On a side note there was a woman here to speak to the WISE school named Katherine who I had the opportunity to speak with a few times who is really amazing. As I was talking with her it came up that I was a worshipper and a worship leader. When she heard that she said that I should go to Cuba sometime. After she said that I couldn't seem to get Cuba out of my head for a couple days and still haven't really been able to. I wonder if God has Cuba in His Plans for me sometime in the future. I guess only time will tell...