Leah's YWAM Updates: Thankful

I am so blessed because of you! A huge thank you to all of you who have been emailing me and sending me mail. It's so great to hear from you! I miss seeing all of you, but I am having an amazing time here in Oregon. God is teaching me so much!

First, I wanted to let you know that we have a new staff person on our DTS. His nameis Amos, and he isn't doing too much with us yet, because right now he's coordinating the Go Conference. He's from Hawaii and is married to Ellen, and they have 3 children: Camden, Kayla and Cassie.

The weather here has been awesome. It actually didn't start raining until this past Sunday! I was kind of excited to see the rain, because I had heard so much about how frequently it rains here. But today is gorgeous-- probably in the mid 60's, the sun is out, clear blue sky... just awesome! There has been so little rain, but even when it does rain, it's more of a mist than anything.

Last week our teaching was "Nature and Character of God", and it was so powerful! I really enjoyed our speaker, Kip, who is from Tyler, Texas. He was very genuine and really took an effort to get to know us. He talked a lot about God as the Father and also we looked into a lot of Hebrew words about how God grieves over sin and things that have happened to us. The bulk of the lectures this past week though were about the Holy Spirit and the gifts that come from it. It was a great week!

Last Saturday we did the ropes course here on base. I was not looking forward to it at all. I don't mind heights, but dangling by just a rope very high up makes me so uncomfortable! I was the only one that was really fearful of things, but I'm happy to say I overcame my fear. One of the things we had to do (that I probably won't do again) is the "giant swing" where you swing 75 feet up in the air. SCARY!!! But we really bonded as a team because of it.

This past week was probably the hardest week I've had here: Plumbline. Ever since I arrived, I heard so much about plumbline. "Just wait for plumbline!" or "I cried every day during Plumbline." So needless to say, we were all anticipating this week. So what is plumbline? A plumbline is a tool used for building things straight, and it was used as a metaphor of us living our lives aligned with God's principles, values, and plans for us. Our speakers were Terry and Linda Praetzel, who are from Salem. They taught us a lot about different kinds of "walls" that we put up between us and God and/or us and other people. We had to allow God to examine our lives and speak to us about the root of the walls that we've put up... usually because of things that have happened in our childhood. Needless to say, it was a very emotionally draining week, ending up with all of us going through a public confession and healing process. It was so scary to be so vulnerable with everyone, but I'm happy to say that God demolished some of my walls! If you have more questions about this, email me, and I'll be happy to talk more in depth about it.

Right now we are in prayer about where we're doing our outreach in Thailand. God has spoken a few things to us: 1) We'll be working with children 2) We'll be working with refugees 3) We'll be going to more than one place (probably 3 places) and 4) we'll be going east and then west. Right now we're focusing a lot on the borders of Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. I will let you know as soon as I do about where exactly we'll be going! I am so unbelievably excited! :D

Thank you so much for all of your thoughts, prayers, letters, emails, etc etc. I miss you all, but what a blessing to have your support! I love having you be a part of this. And please let me know how I can involve you even more.

Now I'll leave you with a few pictures...