Bedford Outreach

 This last weekend all of the Lifehope teams came together and did a big outreach in Bedford! It was a wonderful weekend to get away from our routines and evangelize as a group. The night we got there the church had a prayer night which lasted until midnight. The worship was amazing- I love those times you just really feel in the presence of God. After that some friends and I walked around the beautiful city. There is a lake which runs through the main part of town was gorgeous with the street lights glistening off of the water. Although it was difficult to get out of the bed the next morning, it was well worth it. The sun was shining, breakfast was prepared by our lovely host family, and we were able to eat outside! We gathered together at the church to pray and afterwards we went to the city center called Pigeon Square to set up everything. It was a large rectangular area with benches in an oval. We had the dance, drama, and mime teams in the center. The majority of the day, people filled the surrounding place and watched the performances. We also had free balloons, face painting, books, coffee and cookies! Worship music was another activity that went on in the square... That was amazing and was totally lead by the Holy Spirit. There were many conversations with the people and several got prayed over! My favorite part was the music... At one point I casually played worship songs on the guitar, then I looked up and people from all over were coming to listen. As some of you know I am no expert on the guitar. I know a few chords to get by on some songs. Through this God showed me this weekend that it doesn't matter how skillful you are at something, He will still use it to show others His love. It was such an amazing feeling to let God use me to show people joy! Not only were we evangelizing through music, but we all had a lot of fun in doing so! Overall it was an incredible experience.

Trials and Tribulations

This past week has honestly been the hardest week since coming to England. Our team seemed to argue about everything, there was drama at the base, there were way too many sessions and everyone was exhausted, I felt like our ministry here in Liverpool is going nowhere... Everything seemed to pile up and I got to the point that I wanted to go home. I was so frustrated, not understanding why all these things seemed to not work out. You could say I felt "in the depths of despair." But God gave me hope...

I took the train back here to Liverpool from Birmingham last night so I could stay with friends longer.  When I was on the train there were two college aged girls, one of the girl's dad, and his son sitting across the isle from me. They asked me a random question, instantly noticed my accent, and we ended up talking the whole two hour train ride. They asked me if I believe in God and I was able to share the gospel with them. To be quite frank, I was terrified the whole time. I had to continually pray that God would give me the words to say to them... It was such an AMAZING feeling. They asked me all sorts of deep questions about the bible and somehow I was always able to give them an answer. One of the ladies, is saved and the other is not. The one who is an unbeliever told me she would like to know more about God and meet to have coffee sometime! Then I rode the bus home with the girl who is saved and we shared our testimonies with one another! I was so encouraged throughout the whole experience and I really felt that God was reminding me He has me here for a reason.

These verses have really been on my heart...
James 1:2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Thankfulness is most definitely something God has been teaching me. I have taken so much for granted in the past, and I have been so blessed with my home, family, church, friends, upbringing, community, environment... So many things I have taken for granted. Thank you for all of your support and continual prayers. <3

Seminar Week

Hey everyone! Just a quick update... last night we were able to take five teenage girls from the church to a christian concert! It was a blast and really great to get to know them. Lots of laughter! Jeffrey and I are hoping to start some sort of youth group or bible study with the girls. As of now they don't have any younger Christian women to look up to, so I am excited to continue those relationships! As our week comes to an end, my team and I prepare to head back to the base for seminar week! It will be great to spend time with all my friends and have grand adventures! Pray that we can all have good attitudes in all the sessions and we can learn a lot. :)

The Fantastic Four

Just a quick introduction! 

        Peter      Rahel       Jeffrey,     and    Me!
This is my team... (left to right). They are amazing people and it's such a joy to get to know them! :) Peter is from Hungary, Rahel is from Switzerland, and Jeffrey is from Holland!

Life in Liverpool

      The past two weeks have been filled with study, study, and more study. We have two large assignments; Culture project and Jonah essay. The culture project has many questions about our culture and several interviews to ask about the community, health, the environment, politics, publications, history, religion, and tourism. It has been an extremely time consuming project! Hopefully we will be finished with that on Friday! The Jonah essay is an essay of how to apply the book to our lives. I have learned more than I had expected from really digging into the book of Jonah! Along with these two assignments we also have a core study book, which we read through and discuss as a team. It has been interesting to look at different passages and share various perspectives and what we can take out of them.
    Thursday is prayer emphasis day at the base. It will be my first time attending one so I am excited to spend a whole day fully devoted to talking to God! We have also been doing our typical ministry in the church. It's nice to finally feel at home in the church and with the people we have relationships with. We have also started brainstorming various things such as starting a youth group, leading an OM service on Sunday, our "international food" days, leading one of the "cooking clubs", school assemblies, and reaching to youth in the community.

This picture sums up what we have been doing! 

On a side note, the weather has been amazing!! We've been able to study, eat, and have meetings sitting outside in the sun! This is our "picnic table"... we actually found the pallet at a lake we visited and asked if we could bring it back. It didn't fit in the car of course (The car's here are all very compact;) so we had to use our purse straps to tie the back door of the car down... It was quite the adventure!

Ministry

This past week has been quite busy! We have started helping in different ministries in the church such as cooking club for kids, bible studies, "Mom's and Tot's", Tuesday's club, and school assemblies. Yesterday the church had their first "table sale" (rummage sale) and it went extremely well! There was some money raised and we were able to get to know people from the community. It is such a joy to get to know everyone from the church. There are several older ladies that we have gotten to know fairly well, they are absolutely hilarious!
One of my teammates, Peter, and I help with Tuesday's club. It is a club for kids, around 7-12 years old, and they play games and share a bible story or message. At the beginning of our first night I was standing, talking to someone and this girl (about 11) boldly came up to me and said "Hi!! What's your name?!". So I said "Kaela... What's your's?" "My name's Molly!!" She says and then gave me a big hug! The rest of the night she clung to me and always wanted to be on my team in the games... It was the sweetest thing and totally made my day!