Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss.

In response to this past week, all I can think to say is... wow, He loves us. 

Our savior is incredibly beautiful. And I sit here contemplating a way that I could articulate exactly how perfect He is and how perfect what He did on this earth was, and how incredibly real He is but my vernacular is not capable of it. When I reflect on my walk with the Lord and the moments with Him that caused me to stop in my tracks and revel in his awe, they are rarely because of how someone else worded the truth; they have most often been because of the word itself and the Spirit coming alive in my life. The cause of my submission to the Lord was not because of the words of someone like me or you, it was caused by the breaking of my spirit by the Lord and then the words I read from his Holy book, those words are the ones that have proven most effective in my life. They have slapped me across the face, taught me, held me in times of sorrow, made me laugh out loud, caused me joy, convicted me, made me feel so small and yet so important, they have given me salvation for my life and daily from my self. 
Every time I have opened the Bible lately I have had to stop and let those around me know the truth that I had just read. It is so relatable to our lives, it blows my mind. 

Life. 

I have been so busy lately with the beauty of what the Lord is doing around here that I feel like a whirl wind of life has gone on around me and I am caught up in all of it so much that I'm finding it hard to include things that aren't immediately apart of the day to day schedule I have going on. I want to apologize to anyone that is reading this, still waiting in expectation of a letter from me or a call from me...I want to say that it will be coming soon, but I honestly don't know... I do know, that I wish all of you could be experiencing what I am though. This may come off conceded, but right now I wish my life could be up on a movie screen and everyone watching it...not because I want to be the star or the center of it, but because I wish everyone could see the amazing things the Lord has been doing...it would be a testament to His word, for reals. 

Fireseeds. (the ministry team)

It has been good. (thats with a long "o", as in gooood) It's my favorite word lately I guess. When asked by others how my day has been or my quite times, its my general response; not because I don't want to elaborate, but because it truly is an articulation of how things have been. I also like it because when I think about it the Lord is great, right, and when He made the earth, he made sure it was good. (Genesis 1). So lately what I can say is that the Lord has saw that my life be good. But to be more specific with the details. I've been doing full time ministry on Mesa campus these weeks I've been out here, it's a community college with a smaller campus which has its up s and downs, but I like to think mostly ups. Because of the size the campus is really manageable, as far as being able to reach out to most of it on a daily basis and because its small once you've made contact with someone you are bound to run into them again. The last few weeks we've been on campus we've been doing a lot of personal outreach, walking around, asking people if they would like to do the survey we have, and sharing the gospel with them, and if they are interested inviting them to bible study and our friday night services. This way of outreach seemed like the only way we were going to be able to do things because the campus doesn't have anything going on in the summers, other than classes, literally no campus organization is doing anything, so our hopes of hosting an activity or event was very limited, but good news came about in the last week :) We found out we could table on campus in the free speech areas and basically do anything at those tables that we wish to, which I have really high hopes for because the other campus teams that have tabled have had awesome success in getting contacts and reaching people who are interested in bible studies and being apart of a ministry movement for their campuses. So I can only pray that we would have that same success mimicked at Mesa. Seriously being on campus and sharing my faith everyday, was not something I expected to do out here, as I wrote in a previous post, and its been challenging nearly everyday. Yet the Lord has proved so faithful through it all, even when I've lacked the faith that I should have, which just reminds me so much of Romans 3, when it talks about God's faithfulness. I love it when the word comes to life in my life and I can see tangible example of it. I think these examples have been present through out my whole life, but only now since I have an open heart to recognizing them and have been spending so much time in the word can I clearly see them when they arise. The word truly is living, which is a fundamental thing we as Christians are expected to accept and understand right, but is none the less a very profound thing which I think will be re-realized again and again as we live in God's spirit. 

Alright so, Women's times. 

This last weekend we had Women's retreat. SO GOOOD! The boy's left thursday for their retreat, so it was just girls hanging around the condo's and spending time with one another which was the start of the excellent weekend that was to follow. That day, thursday, we made decorations for the boys doors (encouraging verses from the Bible and cute name things, because that's what boys like right lol) and hung a huge banner that said 'Welcome Home Boys!" with Psalm 133:1 on it. Then Friday the boys came home from the desert and we packed up and left for it. I got to leave early and ride with Holly Allen, the women director who does all of our women's times talks, and I am so glad that I got to ride with her. Getting to know this women has been such a blessing to me. trust. She has so much wisdom and is so genuine in listening and speaking to us ladies, I will miss her greatly when staff leave this friday. But anyways, I got to ride with her on the way out there and back which was awesome. While there we had two talks from her and two talks from Marta, our other women director, who is also a legit lady that just spits the truth. The talks were so good. We wrapped up the women's study on what it means to be a distinguished women of the Lord by talking about Ruth and Boaz and THAT is a good story. Ruth is seriously only 4 chapters and I would suggest it to every women to read. Read it and then read Proverbs 31 and compare Ruth to the Proverbs 31 women, its just good to see how those qualities can be and were lived out in women. Other than the awesome talks the trip was also good on the level that all us girls just got to hang out and we go to do a wicked obstacle course. This obstacle course tore us up, ha literally my arm was scratched up pretty bad along with my knees, but it was so good because we got to get down and dirty and get physically competitive...which was just good. Then the last night we had a really awesome ceremony which I can't write about because it's top secret :) but just know that it was excellent. The weekend was overall just grand because the Lord loves His ladies.:)

Exciting and Startling news. 

So as I kind of mentioned when talking about Holly. The staff for project and all the student staff leave this friday. Which is so saddening because I will genuinely miss my growth group leader Riane (such an awesome name, right?) I don't think i've written much about her on here, but she is an amazing lady of the Lord who is just bold, honest and wise; and has built into me these weeks I've been out here, challenging me and pouring the truth into me. So why wouldn't I miss her? I will also miss Hilarie who has been out here with me and just in general all the other staff members that I have grown close with, but this is not the exciting or startling news because I've known the staff leave July 3rd since I got here June 1st. The news is that before they leave the staff has to pick Student Leaders to fill their positions. Since what I've been learning a lot from the Lord is humility and brokenness, I hadn't thought a lot about leadership honestly. I've been learning how to be a leader through encouraging others and building them up as leaders...so the idea of actually being a designated leader seemed out of the question for me, mainly because these lessons of humility and brokenness and being a leader through encouragement hadn't come easy; my nature inclination is to be a "head-honcho" kind of leader, always immediately stepping up "the leader" and the Lord has definitely been breaking me of that mentality through teaching me how to submit to guy leadership and not always take all the responsibilities on myself but allowing others, even if I don't think they could do it "as good as me" to have opportunities to take things on. So anyways the thing is I've been learning to be "a leader" but not "the leader" and it's not been an easy lesson, but it's been a good one and much needed one and I am a much more humble person because of it, so as the staff leave I was not expecting a leadership position AT ALL. But the Lord completely proved himself to be rewarder, by offering me a position on leadership as the women leader of the Fireseeds team. (I don't mean the Lord literally came down and offered me the position, but he led the staff to offer it to me, ha just for clarification) The whole situation just showed me that when you stop taking things into your hands and start submitting to what the Lord has for you and has to teach you, He will reward you and give you ways to serve Him best. I feel so blessed to be on Leadership with the group of student leaders that we have. The team is full, FULL of people who are just chasing after the Lord with teachable hearts and a will to do His will. It's so beautiful to be around and to be apart of. So beautiful. 

Quite times.

So this summer I've gone through Mark, Ephesians, and 1 & 2 Corinthians. I just finished up 2 Corinthians actually and am about to start Romans. This is the most I've ever read for the word and when I think back on it, it doesn't seem like I've read that much, but I honestly have gone through quite a few books in a short amount of time. I've just been eating it up learning and absorbing as much as I can. One thing I wanted to leave you guys with is something that has just been impressed upon me lately...there's so many more things than this that I have learned, but I thought it better to just pick one than to ramble on and on, I might loose the few of you that are still reading all the way down to here if I were to just keep going and going ;)

So anyways. What I've been learning is, and I'm going to put it in a very sunday school fashion, but it is that we can ONLY boast in our weaknesses, because it is in those that the Lord is proven strong. 2 corinthians 12. check it. Also 2 corinthians 5-6.  It just ties in perfectly to what I've experienced with the whole leadership thing. When they asked me or invited me to be on leadership, I was shocked because this has seriously the first time that I've felt and known in my heart that I am inadequate to lead others. This inadequate feeling though has made me rely on the Lord so much for what leadership I have had to do, and I can honestly say that all I have learned and done has been from Him. When I look around our leadership team, the consistent thing about each of us is that we are all at this place of recognizing that WE are WEAK, and He is strong...so sunday school, I know. But so true. We all are at a place of teachability because we KNOW that none of what we have done that was seen as GOOD, was of us, but was of the Lord. The only thing we can boast in as leaders is that we are weak and that the Lord is stepping in for us and being strong and leading through us, which totally takes me back to 2 corinthians 3: 4-6. 2 corinthians was such a good book for me, if you want to know my heart right now, read it. :)

That's all I really have as far as my update goes...you're basically caught up now. I'm confident there will be more to come and more news of the Lord's crazy awesome power and glory being demonstrated out here in San Dan. I'll apologize in advance if it doesn't get posted in a timely manner :/ I'll try my best to make time to do this more often. 

OH. Prayer request.

I am currently $700 short of all the support I needed, which I look at and am just so thankful because that means the Lord helped me raise $2300 plus my plane ticket and most of my food money while i've been out here. I have been blessed for sure. But if you could keep in your prayers about the 700 more dollars i'll need to finish up my support raising, it would be much appreciated. I'll be sending out some support letters soon, so you could just be praying that those would be well received that people would just be drawn to donate support :)

Thanks so much guys! 

much love to ALL!

-Rae