Final Week... Already!

This is my last week of lecture phase. It has been so amazing here in Maui and I can't wait for OR to begin and to start putting to use what I've learned here. Last week was thanksgiving and we got to have a 4 day weekend, which was filled with much needed rest! So we started up this week with lecture, of course, and tonight we had commissioning night (prayer to be sent off to our selected locations). I am super excited to tell you that I am going to Thailand for the 1st week of OR with all the teams! I'm so looking forward to it! We leave on Friday evening so please keep me and the other students in your prayers, God is about to do amazing things! He has brought us all so far; He has refined us as silver (Zechariah 13:9) and is now leading us on our way after providing finances for everyone- some at the last minute! Only one student who had visa issues is not going with our teams, and instead going to do his OR in Hawaii. God is sovereign though, and has a perfect plan for him so at least we have hope in that.

Awe God really is so good!! I can't imagine life without him leading the way. Thank you for keeping me in your prayers the last 3 months, I only have 3 months left to go and then I'll be coming home!! This will be my last blog until I am back in the states, so thank you all for following my journey so far. I know it will only get more challenging from here but I know God is holding my right hand and guiding me through it all. He has prepared me and I am just so excited to serve and pour out to everyone I meet. Please pray for my health and safety on OR, and courage to do all God leads me to. I love you all so much!!! Goodnight =)

Isaiah 41
9 I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
10 So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

13 For I am the LORD your God
who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
I will help you.

PS~ Pictures of me on my 1st Thanksgiving away from home and without family, but it's oh kay cos I had my school family! =)

The Secret Life of Prayer

Yesterday I did my chapel talk and it ended up being on Prayer. I did an emphasis on thanksgiving and praise and added a little on the end about the power of prayer. I choose this topic because I have been so convicted of making my prayer life all about me. "God I'm really struggling with this, please help" and "Please help me Lord!" etc, etc. God's really spoken to me about the importance of praising him and thanking him for what He's ALREADY done and for who He IS. If my prayer life is all about me me me... what's the point of that? That's not love. Don't get me wrong, James chapter 5 talks about praying when you need to, but most of the time we focus on that and forget about the important things (aka praising God for his amazing-ness!) In Luke 11, the disciples ask Jesus how to pray and even teaches them to praise God FIRST when he states "Hallowed be thy name." Hallowed meaning to be regarded as Holy. PRAY PRAY PRAY, God answers prayers of the righteous. Remember to remember all He's done for you, when you need something again. Our view of God should not be based on the circumstances we are in but on the Truth of the Word, and we can even remember what we have experienced in past situations. This is what I have been convicted of over the past couple weeks and a little about what I spoke on during my chapel talk ; )

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
-Mark 11:24

Two more weeks flashed by!

So I guess I sort of skipped 2 weeks... Week#7 was on Basic Christianity, This week was on Holy Spirit, and I must say both weeks were absolutely incredible!! I've learned so much and also have grown so deep in a relationship with the Lord! I wish i could blog ever last detail and every note I took during lecture but that would probably end up as an epic novel. For everyone at home, you will probably get the whole spiel when I come back home ; ). God is working in my life beyond anything I ever imagined. He is just totally refining me from head to toe. Funny how "refined" happens to be the theme for our school... It's really cool too because you can see it in everyone here. I love it! I love being surrounded by people who are going through the same thing and not having to focus on any responsibility so we can completely focus on the Lord. So next week I believe our lecture is on Spiritual Warfare, which will probably be very good for me to learn on! So Monday I have to do something called Chapel Talk, which is a 30 minute mini sermon- I guess you can call it. AHH!! I'm kind of nervous but I know it will be good! First, I thought God wanted me to speak on Praise in a Thanksgiving way, but it's kinda changed to how we can make our Christian walk about us and what God can do for me, so from there we should change and be praising God and showing thanksgiving. So we will see how it goes...

Prayer Requests: I've been having killer headaches, so please keep me in your prayers. Good news and total blessing beyond belief!! I was able to go to the chiropractor today which will hopefully help a lot, compliments of my fabulous family!! <3
Also, just please continue to pray for unity of my team, it is getting a lot better but it will be really important on OR because boys and girls will be living in separate places, which is not the case for all the other OR teams. Thank you for all your prayers! It's been so great and you are seriously making a difference in my life and the work of the Lord.
Love & Blessings,
Samantha

PS~ Picture of all the girls on my OR team!! =)

...Another week...

It's Saturday today... We did our lectures this week on Relationships. There's not a whole lot to say other than that I learned a whole other perspective on relationships and I definitely have different (possibly higher) standards than I did before this week. Only 5 more weeks of lecture before OR!! I'm so excited and feel so blessed that most of my finances have come together quickly and smoothly, Praise the Lord!

I love getting mail here, it's often the hi-light of my day, so if you would like to send me a letter, I will return it with a postcard of a sunset or something ; )Today has been a very relaxing day, which is great for re-cooperating. Tomorrow is Halloween so instead of the typical American thing, we are having a talent show tomorrow night! HAHA.. should be fun.

Prayer Request: There's some students here that don't have all their OR money, if you would like to keep them in your prayers, specific names I know for sure are Johanna and Justin. Thanks for all your prayers, God is working! <3

PS~ Picture is from last Saturday at the beach, guess which pair of legs are me? lol

Life Happens...

This week of lecture was phenomenal! As I said last post our topic was "New Hearts". We went through things like wounds, forgiveness, judgments, curses, vows, soul ties, personal sin and generational sin. After learning what exactly the subject (wounds, forgiveness, etc.) means then we went into how it affects us and how we fix it. It was an intense week but so much applicable content. It was so good!!! I'm in such an amazing place spiritually! I've never been so full and overflowing with so much love from God, not to mention peace, joy and all that good stuff =) So.. I think tomorrow we start lecture week on relationships. We have a lot of homework to wrap up on weekends but it's really good content we will be able to use during outreach phase. We are currently reading Vintage Jesus. I'm not sure if I like it yet, but then again, I haven't read very much of it yet.

Yesterday we got up at like 5 am to get to Makena beach, on the other side of the island to volunteer at Xterra (5k and 10k practice runs for a triathlon). It ended up being really fun after we got over the initial early morning mood. Plus, we got a free shirt!

I'm getting really excited for outreach! We have just hit the half way mark for lecture phase, which means I've been here for 6 weeks-ish and have 6 more here in Hawaii. I'm still considering all my options for what I will be doing after this time. I've been praying a lot about it and I'm not too sure what God has for me next so I'm just waiting. If you would like to pray about it too that would be awesome! The prayer requests from last week are still requested ; ) And as always I appreciate your prayers more than anything.
Love & Blessings,
Samantha

Media Fast, CHECK!

So sorry it's been awhile since I've updated my blog. Last week Monday to Monday we did a media fast. The point was to not turn to our technological devices and instead turn to God and generally just cut out distractions of the 'world' from our lives to have a better view of God working in us. I wasn't sure how this was going to play out, but surprisingly enough one day I was feeling a bit homesick/ lonely and I went to lay in my bed. I started thinking "I wish I had my phone to text someone" and then BAM! I realized I should pray and tell God about this feeling and let him help me FIRST. You would think this is something I already know but it actually never dawned on me before in this way. Media (or friends & family) is something that I would go to before I even took problem to God, I knew I had a problem not going to God first but who knew this would help identify it in that special way.

My weekend: Saturday I got to go to Lahaina! What an amazingly beautiful place! So touristy, so there's big resorts and cute little shops and super nice beaches. I got to snorkel and I saw a giant sea turtle up close, coolest thing ever!

This week is New Hearts (aka Life Happens... and what to do when it happens to you). Such an awesome week already! We've had 3 lectures and there all amazing! There is so much spiritual warfare going on right now though, with personal stuff for a lot of people, which is super expected with such an amazing thing that the Holy Spirit is trying to do!

Prayer Requests: Please pray for this spiritual battle the school is going through. Please pray that God's will-will be done in each of our lives. Once again, I appreciate all your prayers! Incredible things are happening here!

PS~ The picture above is at Lahaina with my amazing friend Naomi! =)

Bible Overview

WOW! I can't even begin to explain how amazing third week of lecture was! I think it might be my favorite week yet. In 13 hours of lecture we did Old Testament and New Testament Survey: Promises Made & Promises Fulfilled. Never ever in my whole life has the Bible made so much sense to me, and now more than ever it's so exciting to me!! I can't even begin to describe exactly what I learned but now I have a deeper understanding of God's qualities. Ultimately, I have a much clearer view of God's love for us and the purpose for things that happened in the Bible.

I've actually been here for 4 weeks now, and today's my birthday! It was very out of the ordinary but still good. It made it so much better having family and friends from home wishing me a happy birthday, and even having gifts from my family and friends to open today. Totally made it so much better! It was really cool yesterday cos Hospitality made me a very pretty cake and sang me happy birthday and for a birthday dinner a group of us went to a local pizza place that was amazing! Today we had premade plans for our school to go to Hana, which is home to the Seven Sacred Pools, and awesome underwater caves and cliff jumping. It was a good place to spend my birthday I suppose. Either way I feel super blessed to be here, learning what I am learning.

Prayer Requests: First of all, thank you to all who continually pray for me! Your prayers are amazing and much appreciated! I guess just the next week of lecture, that all our hearts will be open to what we will be learning on World View. Also, just please continue to pray for my head aches =/ They're definitely a nuisance.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! LOVE,
Samantha

Listening to the voice of God

Week 2 of lecture just finished and this week we had a wonderful speaker! She spoke on the voice of God. How to hear it, the different ways he can speak, things that can hinder us from hearing him and so much more! It's so amazing how just after a 5 days of lecture and really seeking after God's heart how much better I can identify the voice of God. Today, as an act of hearing God, we drew another person's name out of a hat and took a piece of paper, and were told to go find a quiet place and let God use us to speak to them. OH WOW!!!! It was so amazing to be able to be used by God in that way and have it completely witness with the other persons spirit. Also, the letter I received totally hit home. There were lots of little details in my letter that just amazed me, cos it spoke wonders about how God cares about the little things. For example, my letter was written with a purple pen (purple being my favorite color), it was signed Abba (my favorite name for God, and the biggest surprise of all the girl who drew my name started my letter with my full name(she did not know my middle name, except for possible overhearing it subconsciously)it was just totally a God thing and it was so beautiful! This is definitely a lesson I'm excited to hold on to and grow in as I grow in Christ. I have so much joy in him, and I'm so excited to be here.

Life in Hawaii is quite the adventure. Hitch hiking, and running around barefoot EVERYWHERE are just a couple of the things that are out of the ordinary for me. Dirty feet all the time is totally normal... haha. Theres always time for the beach on the weekends, so between the sand and being barefoot 24/7 I have to re-paint my toes with polish every week, but it's so worth it! The weather gets really warm some days, but because of the humidity its hard not to be sweaty in the sun. I love the wind here! We live up on the hill with so many trees, it's always amazing outside. So much beauty and when your in this kind of envoirnment learning about God is just that much more amazing!

Last weekend we took a trip to Bamboo forest! It was so incredibly beautiful! It's like a nature trail/hike/adventure course. You start walking through this bamboo forest and you're so tiny compared to it, you feel like an ant in blades of grass, but it is so amazing! Then you climb up rocks and theres ropes people hung to help here and there. You get to a creek/river and have to jump in and swim about 100 yards to where the trail continues and finally when you finish the trail you get to a huge beautiful waterfall! We all jumped off the rocks there, it was such an exciting experience! Our optional weekend day trips happen every once in a while but its so cool because it gives us a chance to get to explore the island we're living on =)

Prayer Request: My outreach team meets regularly and we all get along great! Please pray we continue to grow in unity as a group so when we leave for outreach things will go smoothly. Also, please pray for my health. I'm very prone to headaches and lately I've been having a lot of problems with them. I appreciate all your prayers more than you know!

Love & Blessings,
Samantha

First week of lecture..

This past week was our first week of lecture. It was totally incredible! It's really awesome too because it is so easy to see that people's hearts are already beginning to change here. As for me, this past week has brought on distinct confirmation at 3 different times and ways that the Father wants me to go to him for answers and then wait for his perfect timing to reveal whatever it is he is wanting to reveal to me.

'Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.' Jeremiah 33:3

There was a point where I got antsy and discouraged but after the second confirmation I was filled with an overwhelming peace and joy and just total understanding that God is with me, even when I'm waiting for him to speak to me.

MY LIFE VERSE
Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD
Psalm 27:14

Little Updates I emailed

Aloha!!

It's Samantha! I just want to update you on the happenings here at Maui. We have an amazing group of 36 students, 8 outreach leaders, a school leader, 2 dts (discipleship training school) leaders, and 2 base leaders. We have 21 girls and 15 guy students. I share a room with 15 other girls. We have 8 triple bunks in one bedroom, where I sleep on the middle bunk, and the other girls room has 5 people sleeping in it. Most of the girls get along really good. I have made about 5 really close friends! We are currently in the first week of lecture phase. We have a new speaker each week. We have to attend lectures Monday - Friday and twice on Tuesday. We have been split up in 4 groups. Throughout the week, our groups have work duties and community outreach hours we have to complete. I work in the kitchen 3-4 times a week, and for my first kitchen duty I did a lot of cleaning and got to help prepare dinner! Yesterday was my first community outreach. My group, of about 18, was split up and did different things in the city of Paia and Haiku. A friend and I got assigned to go to Paia, where we went to a Buddhist lady's house named Karen who is a handicap. We washed a large van for her and helped her with some tedious tasks in her house that she wasn't able to complete herself.

So, I am going to a large city for my trip! Family and friends can feel you in on those details, because there is some specific information that goes along with it. I am very excited about it and it is totally where God called me to. I also found out that here at our base our outreach will last for 3 months. Outreach will cost a minimum of $3500, but because it's a costly city it will most likely be a total of $4000.

Please continue to pray for my spiritually growth, along with unity in our groups. Our base as a whole could definitely use unity. Also, I have been completely blessed with receiving a donation for outreach for $2000! This means I still need between $500- $1500. I would be so blessed for you to continue to pray for me in these areas.

Love & Blessings,
Samantha

The Beginning

It's finally been a week here, and it feels like I've been here for months. It's truly amazing though. I feel so blessed to be here, and to be surrounded by such amazing people all whom have made sacrifices to be here. God has been speaking to me so much in the last couple days about me making Him my number one. Before I left for my trip, I felt God touching my heart as 'husband'. He has been romancing me with all his beauty and on a daily basis since I've been here, I can hear him whispering "You are beautiful" to me. It was kind of funny, cos at first I would here him say that and I would start singing that song that goes like... Lord, you're beautiful, Your face is all I seek. Then, on Tuesday when I started singing it, I heard him say "No Samantha, you're beautiful". It was like OH!! But I just had such an overwhelming joy from the father speaking so tenderly to me. I can definitely feel that this is going to be a huge thing over the next 6 months. The father lavishing his love upon me.

On another note, I also see spiritual warfare arising. There's always little things that happen and big things, I suppose, that happen when you put a group of 80 people together who are seeking and serving. Please remember me in your prayers. For my whole team as well. There are so many obstacles we must overcome, and we will need the Lord by our side every step of the way. Thank you all!
Love and blessings,
Samantha

Exodus

Hello! So I'v been in Maui for about 1 week now and things are already so amazing! Saturday night was our opening night, we had a little get together with dessert and drinks and got introduced to everyone. At the end of the night, right before we left, there was an announcement that we were venturing on to something called "Exodus". Exodus was a wilderness 'adventure' where we ventured out for 3 days and 2 nights to a country like chunk of land right on the ocean. We got to bring the clothes on our back, a sleeping bag, a swim suit, and 4 pairs of under garments. No deodorant, no toothpaste or toothbrush, or hair brush. It started out with a scavenger hunt near our base and ended in a valley where we heard a speaker and had quiet time. From there we went to our campsite and set up camp and had our first Top Ramen meal. The next day we had oatmeal for breakfast, and we went on a hike in the most beautiful mountains. We all took turns giving our testimonies throughout the 3 days. By the end we were all stinky. So it worked out well the last day we played mud games, which were pretty much amazing! All in all, I had amazing quiet time on exodus! and by the end being completely disgusting when everyone else is also gross isn't bad at all.

My Mission

Hello! If you are reading this, you probably know I am doing a DTS (discipleship training school) for the next six months. I am so excited you want to journey with me and share in my experience as I head to Maui! In 1 week from today I will have just arrived in Hawaii and will begin my school experience.

I'm so excited to have this opportunity! In the past year God has completely changed who I am, and with that He has cultivated a seed that was planted in me from childhood for overseas missions. This is the first experience I will have overseas and I feel so blessed to have been given this experience! There is always room for growth spiritually and I am so ready to embrace everything God wants to do in my life to challenge me, and ultimately grow me in and through Him for the benefit of his kingdom.

As I prepare for my trip over the next week please continue to pray for me. Please pray for my trip to HI, my transition into the lecture phase, and my group as we begin to bond and grow in Christ together. There are so many things that God is doing already and I know there are more to come. I am still short financially for my outreach phase, but I know God will provide! If you would like to help me financially you can make a check payable to me, Samantha Ellis, and send it to my home.

I thank you all so much for your support, and I will continue to keep you updated as my venture begins!!

Blessings and love,
Samantha