Your Faithfulness and Graciousness Will Always Be Enough

Hey everyone!!
     I know it has been a while and I am slow to update you all. SBS is very intense when it comes to the amount of work that is required of me but the material is Gods word so I couldn't choose anything better to spend 12 hours a day studying. "But you, O Lord, are are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." -Psalms 86:15 God promises to be faithful and gracious and has not stopped short of anything less! Everyday it is a struggle to commit to studying and having an open heart to what the Lord says, regardless of my circumstances, but he meets me where I am at continually! His spirit guides me telling me when to push forward and keep working and also when to stop and take a break and relax and meditate on his word! I am growing so much in my relationship with God! I am amazed at the never ending joy and purpose you have in your life when you give it all away to God and put it in his hands! I may be stressed but my heart is never overwhelmed with anything but love! I may not know what or where I will be after this school but I never flinch knowing that God has it ALL figured out. He has brought amazing blessing to my life because I trust him and nothing or no one can shake my faith in him because I am his!
     I want to thank you all for your prayer support! Please keep them coming! God has answered them 100%! It is amazing the power of prayer. I can be having the worst day and yet when I share my heart with God and cry out to him, as my Father and Almighty King, mountains move in my circumstances. He is so faithful and loving! Right now we are still jumping into things learning the inductive method of studying the bible, so please pray for quick and easy understanding of the method itself. I also would love it if you all would ask God on my behalf for continual revelation of his word! "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edge sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." -Hebrews 4:12 Even though the bible wasn't written to us, it was written for us and God is always speaking the meaning of his words to us through his spirit. I want to surrender my heart and life to Christ and allow him to do crazy things through me by using his word!
    I am missing the breath taking land of Leelanau County and Traverse City. And even more, I am missing my family! But that is the beauty of the body of believers is that you can go anywhere and you have brothers and sisters and family to encourage, love, and support you! This is where God wants me and even though it wasn't easy committing to come hear, he has been holding my hand every step of the way and filling me with his presence, reassuring me that he has got me! What would I do without him and where would I be without him and who would I be without him? I don't have to worry about that because I know who I am WITH him!! Blessings to all of you and please know that you are in my prayers as well!

Me and my roommate Katie on top of the mountains!

Prayer Warriors!

I'm back friends and family!

     I would first like to update you on where the Lord is taking me this next fall and then I would like to share with you my heart for this blog in the upcoming 9 months!

     On September 12th I will be on my way to Colorado Spring, Colorado to participate in a secondary school run by the same organization that I went to Australia and Cambodia with! It is called, School of Biblical Studies or SBS. SBS is a 9 month course spent studying through each of the 66 books of the Bible 5 times. The instructors teach an inductive approach, where we will observe what the text says, then interpret what we believe it is saying, and then apply it to our lives and the world around us. This is a very intensive course with up to 10 hours a day spent studying and lectures every other day. When praying about what to do this upcoming fall, I told the Lord that I wanted to be stretched and challenged to trust in him and to completely surrender my life to him. Well whoever says God does not answer prayers should just come talk to me because boy did he answer this prayer! I will openly admit that I am a slower learner and get stressed about heavy work loads very easily... ask my teachers. But I believe this is an area of my life that God wants to have victory over. I also know that by committing to this program I will be putting myself in a spot where I can only trust in God and he will be the only one able to give me the strength to get through it. That my friends is a beautiful place to be that I would willingly sign myself up for in a split second! All this to say, this next 9 months will be very challenging but I know without a doubt it is where God wants me and as long as I am in his arms and at the center of his will it is going to be one heck of a year! Yay God!

     With such an intense work load, I will not have much time to give blog updates but I feel as if God has lead me to take a different turn with my blog for the year. I would like this to be a prayer blog! After Jesus had casted out a demon from a little boy, the disciples had asked why they were not able to do the same when they tried. In matthew 17:20-21 Jesus answers them by saying, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." I believe this same lesson applies to my next journey. I have much faith that this is exactly where God wants me to be and I have no doubts of what I can do through him! Though I may be a little scared and nervous I will hold on to the faith I have, even if at times it is only the size of a mustard seed. And with that faith I WILL move mountains... or plow through this course! But, as you all know, that is not always the easiest mind set to maintain when you are buried in books and have an assignment over the book of Genesis due the next morning. So that is where you come in! I want to have prayer warriors behind me during this season of my life! The enemy will try to tell me that I cannot do it but with faith and prayer, together we can stomp on him and let him know that we serve the God who created him, SO BOOM! Please join in praying for this journey that I am about to venture out onto. If this goes as planned, I will be posting prayer requests as I go through SBS and I ask that you support me through prayer. These request will be coming at some of the most humbling, vulnerable, and tough times in my my life. They will be honest prayer request so please know that I truly appreciate you taking the time, however long you have, to just simply lift me up!

     I know I will be blessed by all the answers to prayer that will come during the hard times! And I know you all are prayer warriors and I ask that you pray with the faith that God hears your prayers and answers them! We serve an amazing, faithful, and loving God and he wants the best for us, He would never set us up for failure and he will not start with me, he will be my rock during ALL hard times.

   Thank you so very much again for committing to join me in prayer. At anytime if you would like to leave and encouraging comment, know that your words mean SO much to me! I love you all and will miss seeing you during this time away!

-Autumn

Jum Reap Sour from Cambodia!

Jum Reap Sour Everyone!    

                                                                                                                                                                    I want to apologize for the delay. For some reason the blog has not been letting me type, but I found a laptop and am now able to write to you.                                                                                                           We flew from Brisbane to Singapore and then on to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We have been majorly blessed by God and have been privileged enough to stay at the University of Nations base. (UofN is a branch of YWAM that offers a large variety of courses you can take that are credited to most colleges.) We have been blessed with western toilets…and even toilet paper! The kitchen staff graciously prepare lunch and dinner for us every day that we sign up for it. As for breakfast we have toast with peanut butter and jam. Our meals consist of rice with some sort of meat and veggie to put on top. Lets just say I have had my fair share of rice.                                                                                                                                 As for ministry time, we have been at two different locations. The first two weeks we helped at a place called “Precious Women.” It offers jobs and training to women who are in the sex trafficking business. They can be trained and work at their beauty shop doing nails, hair, and massages. We helped them paint and move into their new building and built relationships with them. We also had the opportunity to go into the actual bars and restaurants where the women were selling themselves for sex. We talked with them and told them about Precious Women and offered them a way out. This week we are working with a group called “Children at Risk.” We go into the slums of Cambodia right outside of Phnom Penh. We teach them English, put together skits on different stories in the bible, teach them songs, and just hang out and love on them. Yesterday we had a day where we washed all the kids’ hair and washed there legs, feet, arms, and hands. We then brushed the girls’ hair and braided it. Tomorrow is our last day here and then we will head out to a small village to do ministry. After that we will head out to Sihanoukville where we will work with a prison ministry and another children’s ministry! Then my team and I will head back to Phnom Penh to catch out flight back to Byron Bay. After being in Australia for a week I will be traveling to New Zeeland with my friends Marissa and Kayla. Then off to Suttons Bay I go.                                                                                                                                       I don’t know how much internet I will have so I wanted to update you before I go. I want to thank everyone for supporting me. This has been a life-changing journey that I don’t want to end! God has taught me so much that will take with me wherever I go in life! All that is possible because of you guys so thank you!!!

New Journey

Hello Everyone! I just wanted to give a quick update on where I will be heading in this amazing journey God is taking me on. The team of 12 people and I that are heading to Cambodia will be leaving tomorrow! The time has come so soon but I am so ready!

At first I was really nervous for outreach because I never want to shove what I believe at other people but I want them to know about who God is. I am always really cautious and often afraid to approach them because I don't want to be too forceful. I praise God because after much prayer and asking him to shine his light on this area of trouble, he gave me an amazing revelation!

God told me to look at 1 Corinthians. "Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'" 1 Corinthians 12:14-22

I am extremely comforted by these words because I would always get upset at myself because others seemed to be good at what God called them to during our time of evangelism and felt that I could never meet the expectations of God. I wished I could communicate better with people on the topic of relationship with God. Through this passage in 1 Corinthians I realized that my mind set was wrong on so many levels. One realization that I had was that God does not love us more if we are "good" people or ‘bad’ people. He loves us 100 percent whether we are committing a sin or being completely obedient to him. Second was that it is ok that I do not function in the same way as others. I know that God created me the way that I am for a reason; he didn't create two Autumns.

If I connect better with people by first serving them and then later telling them that the reason I serve them is because I want to love them the way Christ loves them. It is awesome because that is the way that God has made me, with a servant heart! However, someone else might have been designed to connect with others by using their heart for athletics. But the bottom line is that God loves and uses all of his children in different ways and he does this intentionally because we are the body of Christ.

It is so cool because I don't have to feel pressure to function the way everyone else does. I can just go right ahead and serve other people with the love of God! Because if we all functioned as an eye then where would the sense of hearing be? The body of Christ needs all body parts and so we shouldn't be hard on ourselves when we don't feel gifted in the same area as someone else or feel as if we are not doing something as good as someone else. It says it perfectly in 1 Corinthians! So I am very thankful to God that he has given me this revelation and that I can head to Cambodia with a renewed heart knowing that I don't have to share who God is in any certain way, there is not right or wrong. God is so great!!! I am so excited to go!

     As far as updates go, I am not sure how often I will have internet access. I might only have a little bit of time. So I don't really know what that mean as far as blog updates. I just don't want to commit to something I can't fulfill. I promise though that I will try as hard as I can. I will love you all and miss you tons! Talk to you when I talk to you but until then my prayers are with you and God bless! Please pray for our team as we travel and serve in Cambodia!

Life!

     Okay, so I figured I would try something new for this blog update. I put up many different pictures and then I will write something under the picture explaining it! But as far as life in general goes, things are amazing! I am so blessed by God to be here in Byron Bay with all these amazing people! It just shows how God is for us and not against us! He loves to bless us and fill our lives with joy and happiness! Jesus himself says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10:10 I think this world has a misconception that God is this dictator that sits in Heaven on a throne telling people what they can and can't do and judging them if they mess up. It is almost hilarious because quite frankly that is the complete opposite of who God is. He loves us so much and sacrificed the most precious thing in someones life, their child, for us. Imagine having only one child, who is your everything and that you would do absolutely anything for to protect them and make them feel loved and happy. Now imagine that some random kid decided to steal the worlds most precious jewel and the punishment for this was death. However, instead of this kid paying the penalty of the crime he committed you volunteer the death of your one and only child so that this other random kids does not have to die. Crazy right, who in their right mind would do that... GOD would!!! This is the even cooler part, check this out. God didn't do this because he was told to, he did it because he loved and cared that much about the other kid that he would give up is ONE and ONLY son to take on the penalty of our punishment. This was all done out of love; in my personal opinion I don't think it could have been done out of anything else, certainly not out of duty! Let me blow your mind a little more, that kid who's life was spared is YOU! The kid who died so you didn't have to was JESUS! The parent who handed their kid over to die was GOD! I don't understand how the world can think that God is an unloving God who does not care for them and who is not real when he did such a selfless thing... FOR THEM! "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23 Everyone that walks on the face of this earth is a sinner, even the holiest people you can think of, and we all deserve death as a consequence for those sins. But Jesus died on the cross for our sin, he gave his life so that we wouldn't have to give ours. We are free from our daily sins. I have nothing to do but fall on my knees and praise God at the top of my lungs with thankfulness for sending his son to take the punishment of the my sin! I hope that the lost people of this world will some day realize that Jesus died for them too and that God wants them to realize that they don't have to be held down by their sin but can be freed of it because of Jesus' blood shed on the cross. All out of pure and selfless love! God is for us and not against us, he wants to bless our lives. So now I would love to share with you some exciting moments in which God has blessed me through this amazing time!
I love you all bunches! I hope you had a great holiday season and try to stay nice and warm. And hey
even though  know it can be miserable at times, enjoy the snow because once you have a christmas
without any it makes you really sad! God bless and hugs and kisses to you all!

Marissa and myself went to Sunshine
Coast for Christmas! We stayed 4 nights
and 5 days. Christmas day we walked
around the beach with our Christmas hats
on. We stayed in a YWAM house. For
Christmas dinner we had hamburgers
potato wedges and chips and dip!

Some more friends from the base
ended up coming to Sunshine
Coast. So on Christmas Eve
we decided to go to get a
girl from Switzerland and from
England their first slurpee from
7and11. Then went and got
30 cent cones from McDonalds
to put in the slurpee!  

This is part of our Christmas
part at the base! We split into
outreach teams and competed
to see who could make the best
gingerbread house... we lost!

Me just doing a little surfing ;)) I
don't go out a ton but I have
surprisingly gotten the hang of it! It
is a lot of fun!

We hiked down to the base of a
rive/waterfall and got to swim around
and play under a waterfall! It was one
of the coolest things I have done in my
life!

Two other girls and myself
went to Mt. Warning and
climbed/hiked up! It was
intense and just proved to
me just how out of shape
I am! It was actually really
nice...once you got to
the top. It was stunning!

Guess who?! This is me
under the waterfall! It was so
powerful and I could barley
keep my swim bottoms on! 

        On the top of Mt. Warning! It was
actually really nice...once you got to
the top. It was stunning! It is 3,792
feet tall.

Red Frogs!

This is our whole DTS. My amazing new family!

Red Frogs! Me, Hannah, Marissa, Kayla

Red Frogs!

   
     Hello from Australia everyone! I want to give you an update on what I spent the last week doing. In Australia when the kids in grade 12 finish their exams they go out and party as hard as they can for about two weeks to relieve all the stress from the exams they just finished. I guess you could compare it to spring break in Miami or Daytona Beach. Byron Bay, where I am living, is a very popular location for schoolies to come because it is a very nice place to vacation. They said that they expected to have anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 schoolies. As YWAM we were a part of a ministry by the name of "Red Frogs." As Red Frogs we would go into town at night, all wearing the same tee-shirt, and would just walk around offering our help to the schoolies. We would walk them home at the end of the night whether it be because they were to drunk to walk themselves or because it was a girl walking alone and it wasn't safe for her to walk home alone. If someone was throwing up we would also just stay with them and get them up to our first-aid tent or walk them to the hospital, depending on their condition. The schoolies all know who the Red Frogs are, they know that we can help them and so many of the kids would come running up to us frantically and say can you please come help my friend, she can't get up and can barley even speak. We would asses the situation and see whether it was better to just let them sit for a bit, take them to the first aid station, call the ambulance, or walk them to the hospital. I think they find comfort in knowing that we can probably help them and they associate us with being safe. We would walk the streets from 7:30pm to sometimes 2:30am. Even though my feet heart and I barley had any energy I really loved these kids! God's heart hurts for them and he really loves them so regardless of how I felt I wanted to show them God's love for them! I remember one of my last nights there was a 19 year old guy who was just vomiting profusely and I went and stood behind him and held his head up for him and rubbed his back and wrapped him in a warming blanket. My heart flat out broke for him. I wanted to hug him and make it all better for him. I know that I want to spend my life loving and serving other people when they are in need and hurting because I am never happier than when I am loving and caring for people the way Christ did!! That would be the most fulfilling and amazing life ever!!! It was hard for me to watch them have a fun night but at the same time that fun be so temporary. I wished I could just share with them how they can have that same fun and fulfillment through God but it is only a thousand times better because it is not temporary it is everlasting!! But in their current state all I could really do was love on them selflessly and so that is what I did. I would go home after a long night and pray that God would show up in their lives and show them the love that he has for them and that no matter what they have done in their past and no matter where they are at in life God wants a relationship with them, HE LOVES THEM! I can't make them believe that, I can't open their hearts and eyes for them, only God can do that and only they can allow him to open their hearts. God is a gentleman and he would never force his love on them, God gives us the free-will to choose the amazing life full of love, happiness, and fulfillment he has to offer us! In the morning we saw the result of that temporary fun and this was our chance to show the schoolies even more of Christ's endless love that has no bounds! The schoolies could call a hotline number that  "Red Frogs" has and ask us to come to their accommodation in the morning and make pancakes and clean up their living space for them. So we would knock on their door and do just that and simply hang out with them and have a great time. One house we went to was GINORMOUS and it was a group of six guys. They were so kind and it was so much fun to hang out for them. They had a pool in their back yard and they invited us to go swimming but we had to turn the offer down reluctantly :(( One other time we made pancakes, our first appointment, was for a group of 12 guys... they were very polite and very easy to get along with. All the guys were much cleaner than the girls surprisingly. The pancake appointments are so cool because you hang out with these people and then you sometimes get to see them around town that night and you kind of build relationships with them. I miss hanging out with the schoolies and I will continue to pray for them. I hope they all do really well on their exams and know that they are loved by God!
     I hope that you all are staying very warm! It was 90 degrees the other day but it has been averaging about 82 degrees here the past couple of weeks. It is so sad not having snow or cold weather for Christmas. It is so hard to get in the holiday spirit without picking out a christmas tree with my family and decorating it, that is quite an event in my family hahaha!!! How many ornaments a piece this time boys ;)) love you mom! I will be heading off to the Great Barrier Reef for Christmas holiday to do some snorkeling, hike through the rainforest and of course to lay on the beaches. Thank you God for your amazing and beautiful creation! I will tell you more about that and how it is going when I am there and I will be sure to show you some pictures!! I love you all so much and please feel free to ask any questions if you have any. Hugs from Australia!

Pass It On Tour!

                 

Marissa and I. Marissa is my
roomie and she is from Canada

Hannah and I.

Team Cambodia!!

    

Jason, Hannah and I. Jason
is from Canada.

  

Jess and I. Jess is from
England

    Hello friends and family! I know it has been awhile but things have been just so crazy here and it has been quite a bit since I have had the opportunity to just sit and update everyone. I want to tell you guys about something that I had an opportunity to participate in. So about two weeks ago we participated in this tour called, "The Pass It On Tour", for a little over a week. The tour was started by the YWAM group in Brisbane, Australia. The object is to pass the word of God through Australia, Europe, and the US by physically running with a baton over 17,000 km from town to town; the baton represents the word of God. Each team would then stop in a town and hang out there for a week and just simply love on the community members like Christ did. So it started in Brisbane and they will be traveling four different paths all through Australia. Different YWAM groups will join the tour on different weeks and kind of host for the week. So our group joined up with one other group and we travelled about five hours to a town called Kingaroy! It is an amazing little town and the people there are so loving and so passionate for God; it is crazy. I loved it! But I will back up and take you to the first days. So we got in the car and drove to a town called Chinchilla where we stayed the night in tents at a little ranch. They had two tents, one for the guys and one for the girls. Our night was interesting to say the least. We had 9 girls packed in one tent and my roomie and I forgot our bedding at the house so we had nothing to sleep with. My AMAZING friend Hannah so graciously shared her blanket and pillow with me but it was still a bit cold and I hardly slept at all that night. But with the night behind us we got up on Sunday morning to go talk to different churches about what had happened with the tour during the past week in their town. We did this so that they could be informed and encouraged about what God was doing there. After church we drove to a town called Oakey and there we stayed the night at another church. In the morning we got up to start running our 67 kilometers to Kingaroy. It was a hot day but it was very cool to say that I ran through a bit of what looked like the “outback”. The locals would laugh at the fact that we call it the outback but if I see a dead kangaroo on the side of the road then I consider it the “outback”. In each town they set up a huge white tent where we host kids days and evening services all throughout the week. On Friday nights they have a YWAM group from Island Breeze and they put on a show that entails tribal dancing and fire throwing. We also went out and helped an elderly widow lay mulch and spent time at a food shelter. It was amazing to just get up and die to yourself and dedicate your whole day to simply loving others! We should be doing this everyday, even though it can be very difficult. I think as Christians we have so much love for God and are so passionate about Him that we can’t help but tell others all about him. I loved being able to love these people with all of my heart regardless of what they believed or their social status. We as God’s children are called to love EVERYONE! We loose sight of that when we give ourselves agendas about how many people we are going to talk to about God that day. But in doing that we can sometimes come off as if we are forcing it down peoples throats. I personally really struggle with this because I am always super self-conscious that I am forcing my beliefs on people and I know how easily people can be offended and I definitely never want to do that. God is a loving God and is a gentleman and he would never force himself at you, He has given you the free will to follow him. IT IS AWESOME, but he will not force it upon you. People will see God through us when we love like Christ loved! God opened the eyes of many youth to His love for them throughout the week and many lives were changed. We left Kingaroy knowing that God’s hand was upon that town and that He would continue to give them a fresh revelation of His never-ending love. Our whole team was very happy to be home and sleeping in our own beds. God is truly amazing and is constantly reminding me that there are people out in this world that He wants to reveal himself to. He is waiting for one of His children to stand up and say they will go to these people and tell them about His amazing love for them and how He desires so much to enter into a loving relationship with them. I have told the Lord that I will do that. I will give up my hands and feet to Him. I will give up my future to Him. I will go wherever he wants me to go and I will not fear for I know that, “I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13 I live by this word from God, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ- the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” Philippians 3:7-9 With that I leave you until next time! I love you all more than you know and I continue to pray for you. Please leave comments, I love to hear from you.
In His Name,
Autumn