Jesus Freaks movie.

So some of you may have noticed the link i posted a few days ago on my facebook about the jesusfreaks movie. This is a documentary of a boarders dts that took place up here at eagle rock just month after the horrible shooting at the arvada base. I was able to watch the whole movie this past week and its pretty incredible. The movie takes you in depth into the students lives and you are able to see God's radical love transform the people apart of the school. I am honored to be apart of ywam denver's vision to touch my generation through this movie. The goal of the webisodes they have made is to make them go viral over the internet and just spread the word of Christ through these short videos. The heart ywam denver has for denver and this generation is contagious. They are sensing God's presence coming to this city and it so awesome to see the affects of it. God's going to start stirring up some awesome stuff through ywam denver and the jesus freaks movie and what makes this awesome is i get to be apart of it. I can't even express how grateful i am for the staff here that have awakened my passion for this generation and all the potential it has in God. It has been so awesome to see God confirm some of the things he has laid on my heart. So here is the link to the website of the Jesus freaks movie. Please check it out and spread the world. We want this to go big.

http://jesusfreaksmovie.com/

Thanks!

My last 2 weeks

To start with, my apologies for not posting in a  while. I got a little lazy :) Well since i got that off my chest now, let me tell you all what has been going on out here in colorado.

So 2 weeks ago was holy spirit week here. It was a good week for me just to see my beliefs on the subject grow and change some. It was definitely a challenge though just because this topic is sometimes a hard one for me. But it made me go to the Bible and do some good Bible study just to make sure what i was hearing was straight truth. I was so grateful for my high school Bible teaching just because I was able to simply look at scripture and check into the background of it all. Also this week they had a day where some people came in and prophesied over us individually. That was a very encouraging experience and also unsettling in a way for me. What i mean by unsettling is it challenged me to not become satisfied with where I'm at and who I've become. They told me that God had more gifts for me to discover. They also told me to come to a place of rest and peace about my future. Which is what had been on my mind heavily that week. It was a pretty intense week for me but i definitely got a lot out of it.

Last week. Last week's topic was spiritual warfare. Yet another intense week. But i really appreciated the way our speaker presented it. He first off started by talking about community in the garden of eden and how we are called to that community. He talked about how spiritual warfare isn't some super-spiritual thing that only a few people can do but rather its for everyone and its pretty simple. It was also pretty cool to even see some of the power we have in prayer. The week before we had a time of intercession for Haiti and the hurricane that was supposed to hit them head on. Then as we watched the hurricane avoided most of the mainland and went right between the islands. Sadly Haiti didn't avoid all the wind and rain, but a majority of the country was spared. That was pretty awesome to see the power of our prayers and thousands of similar prayers from around the world. Theres something about claiming our authority in the Spirit and seeing results that can unify so many people. Also God has been working within the my dts to strengthen our community. During one our weekly talks as a group someone encouraged the group that to dig deeper into God we need to be strengthened as a community. God has really been working in our group and its so amazing to be apart of this dts.

So that bring us to this week.
This week's focus is outreach prep. So basically all week we are learning skits and dances that we will be performing in Colombia. So far I learned a skit and a dance. Pretty crazy i know, Janelle, dancing. who would've guessed. Sadly folks i don't know if video footage will be available to you all. so sad. and this week started off great with a fun game of soccer. I get to play soccer or basketball at least once a week. it doesn't get much better than that.

O and also I have been privileged enough to be listening to christmas music while it snows out up here. I even got to watch elf the other night. Christmas spirit has come early this year due to the fact i'll be missing it at home. So i figured it was ok for me to start now.

Well thats all for now. P.S 8 days till i come home!! Goodnight all :)

Outreach in Albuquerque, New Mexico

So this past week was a crazy week. We left sunday morning for Albuquerque, NM and came back this past thursday night. It was an awesome time and God definitely did some awesome stuff while we were there. We split the whole dts into 3 groups and every evening we would either go to the local jail or the homeless shelter. Heres the day by day breakdown:


Sunday: a pretty uneventful day due to the fact that we were traveling for 9 hours in vans. It was  a pretty scenic drive though thanks to the mountains and the occasional antelope that i would spot. But we got there safe and sound without any mechanical breakdowns and such. We didn't really have any idea what kind of place we would be staying at for the next 4 nights but all we knew is we would be sleeping on the ground. However we were pleasantly surprised when we got to the church. We stayed at a huge church in the childrens area, and in this childrens area was a full blown play area thing like u find in mcdonalds but better. So as soon as we settled in of course we had our fun but sadly that was the last night we could play on it. Apparently it wasn't quite built for kids our age. Weird. But anyway the church had a very building and we were definitely fortunate enough to stay in such a nice building.


Monday: In the morning we had class and some skit practices before we went out in the afternoon. That day i was in the jail and some other people went to a halfway house for women just coming out of jail. Both ministry times were very powerful. We went to three different pods that day and ended up meeting up with the other group in a pod called God's pod. Apparently this was a pod that had a strong group of christians in it. They even played a few songs for us. It was  such an awesome experience to see these guys even though they were in some pretty hard situations, still worship God. At first when we started our little program in our first pod it was pretty unnerving. I had never done skits before not to mention in front of people. But as we got going i could see that these guys were interested in what we were doing and God opened my eyes to the need in there lives for God. So once we had finished putting on our skits and dramas we had time to talk and pray with the inmates. They were very open and honest with us which made things easy.


Tuesday: We started off the day with class time again. The topic of this week was fear of God and Donna (our dts leader's wife) was the speaker. Again it was some great teaching. After that i left with my group to go to the jail again. This was probably my favorite day in the jail. In the first pod we went to me and another girl from my dts talked to this one guy. He ended up telling us that he was in jail because he had killed a man but was hopefully going to get out soon because it was out of self defense. This man during our whole drama presentation thing was watching very intently. So when we went to talk to him he told us how we were such a blessing. We were able to pray for him and he started crying and he ended up praying to rededicate his life to Christ. It was so awesome to see God get a hold of his heart and really just touch his life. I was also able to pray with a lot of people in different pods. God gave me lots of confidence to really reach out to people.


Wednesday: This was our last day of doing our outreaches there. This day i went to a place called joy junction, this was a homeless shelter that took in families. Its a pretty awesome ministry they had set up. So when we got there we served lunch to the people there. After that we did some odd jobs. Then we did our skits and dramas for the people there and had some ministry time afterwards. Me and another girl prayed for this one mom. She told us that she hadn't felt God like this in a long time and its just what she needed. Her daughter was going through some hard stuff and so we were able to pray for her for that. It was again awesome to see God touch her situation and give her the boost she so desperately needed.

Thursday: Another travel day. Not too much happened.

So then we got back and had class friday as usual. And that brings us to today. A few of us went to a state park about a half hour from eagle rock. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the park was amazing. Its a popular spot for rock climbing. I took a few pics but they just don't do it justice.

Here are some pics of the park and of outreach--

Enjoying the slide :)

It was pretty awesome

A little vista we passed on our way to the park on Saturday

This is why rock climbers like this park. If you look close you can see them climbing

theres a climber on the far right side.

pretty mountain stream. 

It was such a beautiful place

Well thats about it now. Another week down and i've been here over a month now. Time is really flying! Hope you all have an awesome week!

relationship week

So i realize that i haven't really updated in quite a while so i'm going to start where i left off and that was right before relationship week. 

So this was last week and it was another good week of teaching. A couple from the arvada base came up to teach us this week. Sadly i missed the first day of class on tuesday due to a stomach bug. So that was a rough day and kinda boring but it did give me an opportunity to catch up on the last few chapters of the book i'm reading called radical. I even got to listen to a few lessons that my church sent me :) that was a huge blessing. But then i was back in class on wednesday which was good because i don't think i could have took another day just laying in bed. It was kinda boring. It was another good week of teaching, and i learned a lot about friendships and guy/girl relationships. They offered really positive teaching about healthy relationships which was really uplifting. I feel like too often its easy to get caught up with the bad and hard parts of relationships and then ignore all the great uplifting things that are there too. They also really allowed us to think for ourselves when it came to boundaries in relationship. They would present what the Bible said about certain issues then let us discern it from there. It almost felt like i was in bible class at school again listening to Mr. Cote teach on PMRs (potential marriage relationships) so it was nice to hear what i already knew be reinforced. 

On a separate note. i was struggling with some feelings of depression due to the phillies... they let me down big time. I was looking forward to watching the world series and bragging on the phillies the whole time but noo they lost. It was a sad day. 

So thats about it for relationship week. It was a pretty simple week but it was yet another quality growing experience. :)

Father heart of God

Boy. what a week. The internet finally decided to work up here now so i decided now would be a good time to do some updating. This week we were able to have a speaker named Jeff Pratt come and teach on the father heart of God. He is an excellent communicator and was a walking quote book almost haha. I don't even know where to start with his teaching. I'll try to explain it the best i can. So tuesday the subject was on the passion and dream. He talked about the importance of being impassioned people as followers of Christ. Then he went over the many different faces of passion that God embodies. He is the lover/bridegroom, husband, friend, mother,  and father. Then on Wednesday he spoke on the wall of divide. He was saying that its through our hurts and wounds that we can create this wall of divide between our Creator and ourselves. It is never about God reaching to us rather its about our past hurts or sins that hold us back from truly loving God. He also talked about our times of darkness or captivity that we often find ourselves in. He defined those times of captivity as the times where God seems distant and living a christian walk seems so difficult. He talked about how when we go through those dark times that is when God is able to do some pretty challenging but life-changing things in our lives. Then came Thursday. Wow. that was a very intense day. We had a long time of ministry that day where we were able to surrender some areas that we had held onto and had created walls in our lives. Then on Friday our last day with Jeff, he gave practical ways to walk out this freedom we had experienced from tearing down those walls. I really enjoyed this week a lot and learned a bunch too. It also brought us much closer as a school. It was awesome to watch students reach out to

Then friday evening i went down with some of the people here to the arvada base to take part of a thing called kingdom night, Kingdom night is a ministry they more recently started where they do ministry in downtown denver. There was about 30 or 40 of us that went and it included people from the different schools at the arvada base. So we went down there and we could either walk around with signs that say free prayer or we could just walk around and talk with people. So me and another girl from my school started talking to this one guy who was checking out what was going on. We ended up talking to him for over an hour but got no where it seemed. He was very open to sharing what he believed and he would listen to what we had to say but yet he still didn't quite buy the whole Christianity thing. He believed that putting and name to the whoever created everything limited that being. I found myself feeling really sorry for the guy. He really thought he was living a pretty full and amazing life, but he still had such a huge part of himself missing. In some ways its always harder to minister to the ones who are well off and satisfied with life because its so hard to see there need for Christ. Its even the same for those Christians who are just as well off. They are so easily caught up in there success and having celebrating that success that they forget that with that blessing comes responsibility in the church. 


So as of now i'm still leaning toward going to columbia for my outreach. So its time to start practicing some spanish i guess :). And we leave for Albuquerque, new mexico next sunday to do some outreach there. So yeah thats about it for now. Next week's teaching topic is relationships so it should be another good week. So goodnight all! keep in touch! and GO PHILLIES!!!

observing.

Theme of this weeks teaching: Characteristics of God. We learned about God as the creator, risk-taker, trinity, father, lover, and a few others. The teachings on the trinity were pretty mind bending and in depth. This whole week was full of information and got a bit overwhelming at some points, but thats why we have the weekend. I've pretty much spent the whole weekend at eagle rock which is nice. Currently I'm sitting by a nice cozy fire in the dinning hall. It's so nice to have some down time finally. All week we are doing something from 7:30 till 6ish. The day can get long fast. But I'm starting to learn ways to keep relaxed and make the most of my time here.

Today was definitely not an all relaxing day however. For one thing my day started at 5 in the morning. Thats right 5 AM. A bunch of us decided to do a sunrise hike to eagle rock which is a rock formation type place that overlooks eagle rock. So we started hiking up this mountain while it was still pretty dark out. So my little headlamp was pretty handy-dandy. The hike up was pretty difficult i can't lie, but the view was TOTALLY worth it. We got up to the top in time to watch the sun change the appearance of the landscape. We could even see the continental divide from where we were. Despite the cold wind and whole fear of heights thing I was able to enjoy it all. Well i was going to try and upload some pics for you all to see but its not working at the moment. So I'll try some other time.

Well thats about it for now. Enjoy your weekend!

birthday pics (a little late i know)

so i got some pics from someone else of my birthday and figured u all would enjoy them a little :)

So yes mom they did sing to me and have  a cake for me. Don't worry :)