Home again

I've been home since the beginning of April now and I must say that being back in Austria hasn't been quite as hard for me as I thought it would be. I've enjoyed being with my family and people about my experiences in YWAM and planning this next season of my life. I'm still kind of adjusting and missing my friends and the excitement of YWAM a lot but I know that I'm in the right place right now.

I had a really tough time finding a job due to the economic situation. After receiving one letter of refusal after the other I had almost give up on finding one at all. 1,5 months later, I have finally found a job and am now working as a shop assistant in a souvenir shop right in the center of Vienna. This job is a huge blessing and couldn’t be more perfect for me.

Next Steps

During DTS I felt to apply to several Universities in the UK and got accepted at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, which is one of the best Universities in the world for what I'm planning to study. I’ve already received notice that all of my tuition fees are being covered by the Scottish Government and I’ve also applied for a scholarship to help cover my living costs but still haven’t received notice on that. If I get one, I will be moving to Scotland in September and studying International Relations, Social Anthropology and Spanish.

How I arrived to my decision to study is a long story that I’m glad to share if you're interested.

I flew over to Scotland with my Dad in April and we both fell in love with that place. St Andrews is a beautiful, small town on the west coast of Scotland. The University has got an excellent reputation, the people seem nice and it’s got quite a strong Christian Union. But just because I'm going to study doesn’t mean I'm done with missions or YWAM.

New Zealand

Before going on outreach to New Zealand I was a bit skeptical about doing my DTS outreach in a Western nation and working with Christians. However, God reminded me of Paul and how part of his calling was to encourage and build the Body of Christ.

We travelled from North to South and our main mission was to call young people back into missions. New Zealand once was the largest mission-sending nation in the world but nowadays people are quite apathetic towards the Great Commission.

Our ministry in New Zealand wasn’t only working with young people though. We got to experience a lot of different aspects of missions that included anything from doing yard work to running church services and doing evangelism on the streets.

Everything started off in Auckland, the largest city in NZ, where we got to run the first assembly of the new school year in a Christian school and teach Evangelism classes there. We weren’t only able to broaden their worldview and speak into their lives, but also able to encourage their teachers.

Other than that we did evangelism in Auckland, a lot of intercession over the city, visited youth groups and helped with a project called “City Lights”, where a bunch of volunteers help out in their community for a weekend.

Our next destination was Tauranga, where we had the privilege of living in a Marae, a traditional house of the indigenous people of NZ (the Maoris). After giving us a Pohiri (traditional Maori welcoming ceremony) and a feed as they call it, we got a little introduction to the Maori culture. It was interesting to see how many Christian elements they have in their old and rich culture.

Most of our time in Tauranga we spent cleaning and repairing things around the Marae to bless the Maori people. The tribe we stayed with loved us and put on a Hungi (a traditional feast where the food is cooked on hot rocks) for us. We got to eat delicacies such as rotten corn (they hang corn under a waterfall and let it rot for 5 months) and fish heads.

We also got to help YWAM NZ out at a Maori kids camp where the main objective was to redeem the Maori culture and to teach the kids traditional dances and songs and how they can glorify God through their culture.

During our first week in NZ the Lord spoke to one of my leaders that we were to change one of our outreach destinations and go to Hamilton instead.We had no idea why He was leading us there but in the end it was a week of real breakthrough for our team and one of my favourite weeks of all of DTS.

One evening some former YWAMers shared their story with us and led us into a time of prayer, which ended up in an on fire time of prayer and worship. I have never seen the Holy Spirit manifest Himself in such a strong and powerful way before. People were vibrating as if they were electrified, laying on the floor, shouting to God for breakthrough, prophesying, running,… I personally had been a bit frustrated for a while and was literally shouting to God for breakthrough and all of a sudden peace overcame me and I knew breakthrough had come. This night didn’t leave me the same. After that I experienced one breakthrough after another, grew in confidence and knew what it meant to cry out to God in full desperation.

Just the next day I was talking to a guy during evangelism who wanted to challenge me and prove to himself that all Christians contradict themselves and really have no idea what they’re talking about. I could tell that he had read some of the Bible before. He was constantly throwing verses at me and asking me the most difficult questions. On a former outreach I had been in a similar situation and last time I had no idea what to say. This time though, God gave me answers to questions I never could have answered on my own. After a while the guy got quiet and listened to what I had to say.

The same night I had the chance to pray with a young girl whose Dad was in jail, whose Mom didn’t care about her and who was heartbroken and had no idea about her true value. I got to pray for her, cry with her and just hold her and show her the Father’s heart for her.

After going back to Tauranga for a few days, half of my team drove down to Wellington, the capital of NZ, to run a church service, where I got to preach for the first time. I spoke on the Great Commission and the Great Commandment and how everyone is called to missions. To my surprise (I don’t know why I’m always surprised at the way God orchestrates things) the church had been focusing on these exact two things for the past few weeks. The majority of the church were Islanders. It was fun hanging out with a bunch of massive and buff Islanders for a few days. We got to learn a lot from each other, bless each other and get them excited for missions. I love the mentality of Islanders; their positive attitude towards life and their servant hearts.

After Wellington we took a ferry down to the South Island and our first stop was in Nelson. Here we did a lot of community work, helped out at a youth center, ran a programme for intermediate kids, did evangelism, intercession against the New Age stronghold in that area and all kinds of other things.

Next we drove down to Christchurch where we worked with some local churches.

The first day I helped out at a programme called “Music and Movements” where Moms and toddlers come to the church twice a week to sing some songs. It’s supposed to be evangelistic but they haven’t seen one single salvation in eleven years. When we asked them why they thought it was that way, they admitted they were kind of apathetic toward sharing the gospel and that they never really mentioned God because they don’t want the Moms to feel uncomfortable. They were ashamed to speak of God within their own church, where people would normally expect to hear about God. This is actually a quite common thing we experienced in that area of NZ.

Another example: A few of us were asked to run a 2 hour youth service. The youth pastor told us that they normally play games, have a 5-minute God talk and then hang out. We felt to teach on the Nature and Character of God and to touch on commonly held false views of God. I ended up talking for about 45 minutes and the kids paid attention the whole entire time. The youth pastor couldn’t believe his eyes; he said that they normally don’t even listen for 5 minutes and that he now feels encouraged to extend the God talks. Hallelujah.

Our last destination was freezing cold Dunedin in the South where we helped in a school.

One day we got invited to have some tea at a women’s art class,. Two of us went and I was asked to hold a Bible study on the spot. That was kind of funny, especially because I’m never able to remember references from the Bible.The only 2 references I know are John 3:16 and Hebrews 11:1, so I chose the latter and spoke about faith. Hebrews 11:1 (Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.) is one of my very favourite verses and I often need to remind myself of it.

After a two day road trip back up to Auckland we flew back to Perth where my whole school met up again for a week of debriefing. It was a bittersweet time for me to see all of my friends again, exchange outreach stories with them and to see them leave.

We cleaned up this woman’s yard. Her son on the right became mentally ill after his Dad tried to drown him at the age of three. He doesn’t talk to his Dad anymore but won two silver medals at the Beijing Paralympics last summer.

Christchurch

some friends

Most places we went to we tried to go to the High Places to do worship and intercession over the area. This picture was taken on One Tree Hill in Auckland

Cambodia

I've finally got access to the Internet and some time to tell you about the past 3 weeks in Cambodia.

After spending the first night in Phnom Penh we travelled around 3 hours south-east to the province Kampuchean where we spent 10 days in a small village working with Pastor Uee. The trip there was quite interesting. I sure wasn't used to travelling through rice fields on one small truck with 24 people plus luggage but we made it.

In the village we stayed at Pastor Uee's church. It's built on stilts, gives a perfect view of a beautiful rice field and palm trees and was more than what I would have expected. Every morning we got woken up by roosters and loud Khmer music at around 4:30. Buddhist weddings last 3 days in Cambodia and they blast music and Buddhist chants from around 4:00am to 10:00pm (and you might have thought your neighbours were loud haha).

I feel priviledged that we got the chance to live and work in a village with Uee. He is the perfect example for how one man can change a whole village. Since he became a Christian 7 years ago, he's started a church in his village, brought his whole family and a lot of his friends to Christ, discipled many young people, has started computer and English classes in his village and is working with other pastors around his province. He's got a real servant heart and provided for our team so well. It was quite different eating rice and meat three times a day but "Mama" was a great cook and insisted on cooking for all of our team (all 16 of us!) three times a day.

Our ministry times in Kampuchean were incredible. During the day we visited different villages and did Christmas ministry, which included dramas, songs, testimonies, teaching and playing with the kids or doing evangelism in our village. In the evenings we all taught English classes. We spent a lot of time praying and interceding for Cambodia and our village and were able to experience the power of prayer.


I'll just mention a few of our highlights:

One time a few of us went to a temple to do some spiritual warfare. When I walked into the temple I got sick to my stomach and felt a great heaviness on my chest. After praying, reading scriptures and doing worship at the top of our lungs for an hour we could sense the heaviness of the place fade away and could feel how God's presence came into that place. The remarkable thing was that a bunch of monks were working right outside the temple and nobody kicked us out!!

I loved teaching English in the village and never thought that it would be such a great evanglism tool! I was able to tell the kids a lot about the Bible and one lesson was all about Jesus, sin, heaven, hell, the cross, repentance and salvation and after the lesson my whole class of 16 students gave their lives to Jesus! I was all excited to be able to share about hearing God's voice and having a relationship with God in the following lessons.

At one of our Christmas services a friend and I preached on John 3:16 and offered prayer for healing afterwards. We got to pray for one man who was deaf and had great pain in his legs and couldn't walk. After praying for a long time he still wasn't healed so we kept pressing in for him and the pain in his legs left and he was able to walk! He still couldn't hear though so we continued praying and praying for him and in the end a girl felt to blow in his ears and he could hear! Praise God! That same day a women was healed of a cough and another woman was healed of pain in her eyes and legs.

Many people we talked to in Kampuchean had never heard of Jesus before. They knew about Christians and thought Christians do good things but they had never heard of Jesus before..

Alltogether we saw 92 salvations, 7 instant healings (one blind, deaf and lame woman was healed!), taught hundreds of kids, did around 25h of intercession and experienced the glory and power of God in a whole new way. God gave us great promises for Cambodia before we left on outreach and he's been faithful to fulfill them one by one. This generation of Khmers is hungry for God and in desperate need of discipleship.

Other than that we hung out with Uee and the young leaders he disciples and went to their church services and prayer meetings, harvested rice, planted banana trees and did some prayer walks and I was able to have great times with God watching the beautiful sunrise and sunset over the rice fields from our porch.


I've been in Battambang now for a little over a week and am enjoying the benefits of a city again. We're staying at the YWAM base here and are working in many different types of ministries. Some are working at a baby house, some at the youth center that YWAM runs here (around 600 youth come to the center daily knowing that it's a Christian place to learn English, drama, art and sports) and others are teaching English. I'm teaching English at the only Christian school in Cambodia in the mornings, running a kids programm at an orphanage in the afternoon and teaching English at the Rapha House (a shelter for trafficked women) in the evening. It's been challenging to come up with 3 different English lessons every day, teaching ages 3-25, but I'm learning to love teaching. Before we left the village to go to Battambang God gave me a word that my work in Battambang might seem insignificant to me but that it really isn't and I've noticed how much you can encourage and build up people as a teacher.
I especially love hanging out and loving on the kids at the orphanage and they really, really need it.

I'm also enjoying getting to know the Khmer culture. I've already mentioned the weddings and truck drives but there are many more interesting cultural differences I was able to observe these past 3 weeks:

- I've seen 6 people riding on a moto

-People love physical touch here so it's not unusual to see guys holiding hands, to have strangers touch and massage your thigh or to have strangers spider-grip your shoulder. It's just a sign of friendship here..

-Cambodians are very honest people and it's not considered impolite to ask about your weight, relationship status, shoe size or how much your bag cost. We've also had women and kids poking our stomachs and asking if we were pregnant!

I've also loved getting to know my teammates better and better. It really is incredible how well you get to know your teammates on outreach! Most of my team has been quite sick lately but I've been healthy and doing great. Thank you for your prayers and thank you you God!
On Friday we're leaving Battambang to go to Auckland and I'm hoping to be able to update you guys more often there.

Thank you for all of your prayers. Please continue to pray for us and for Cambodia. Please pray for the seeds we're planting to fall on good soil, for disciplers in this country, against the spirit of fear and the spirit of confusion, for the YWAM base in Battambang and for the health of my team and for God's protection on us.

Time to say Goodbye

Outreach has begun! Last week our other two outreach teams took off to Ethiopia and Sri Lanka (it was a super sad good-bye). We are leaving tomorrow evening. This past week we’ve been busy doing prep work for outreach. We’ve done a lot of worship and intercession, practiced dramas and songs, research work and learning how to give a sermon, done evangelism in the city,..

Evangelism was great. I was able to visit Carrie-Ann again (remember, she was the first door I ever knocked at and whom I’ve visit a couple of times after that). It was a great time, we had a long talk with her that left her in tears, we prayed for her, gave her a Bible and got her facebook so we can keep in touch with her while we’re gone.

The same day a friend and I felt to go into an art gallery and started talking to a security guard from India. His name is Amandeep and he is a Sikh. We asked him loads of questions about the Sikh religion and after that he wanted us to share about what we believe in. He had tears in his eyes when we shared about God’s love and how you cannot earn your salvation or his love. He couldn’t believe that God can and wants to speak and was very interested in everything we had to say. In the end we got to share the gospel with him and pray for him and we definitely were able to plant a seed that afternoon.

By the way, Matty who is one of our leaders has been sick for over a month now with some mysterious sickness that makes him feel tired, nauseated and dizzy and the doctors haven’t been able to find out what it is. Last week we found out that he won’t be able to go to Cambodia with us because of that. It was a very tough decision for him to stay back but he also strongly feels that God wants him to stay in Perth and rest. We are praying that he recovers and will be able to join us in New Zealand. Please pray for Matty’s health and that his strength and energy will be restored so he can join us in NZ next month.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m taking off tomorrow afternoon. We’ll be staying a day in Thailand before we fly to Phnom Penh. I’m stoked to be able to go back to Bangkok, even if it’s only for a day.

We’re going to be living in a small village about two hours away from Phnom Penh for the first two weeks. The pastor we’re going to be working with already told us that we’ll be working in orphanages, doing a lot of evangelism in the village (around 300 people live in that village, mostly Muslims and Buddhists) and doing CHRISTMAS MINISTRY! Yes.. that’s right, I’m going to celebrate Christmas all over again because Cambodians don’t care about the date, it’s the event that counts! I never would have thought I would have to bring my Santa hat on outreach haha

After that we’re going to Battambang to work with the YWAM base there. I’m not quite sure what we’ll be doing there though. I just know that that base has a great variety of ministries there and that we’ll probably be working in orphanages again and building huts.

After that we’re flying to Auckland on January 30^th where we’re going to travel the main cities from North to South and working with different churches and youth groups and also with the Maori people for a part of it.

I won’t be taking my laptop with me so I don’t know how often I’ll have a chance to go on the Internet but I do hope that I’ll be able to send you an update every once in a while.

Please keep me and my team in your prayers. Pray for safety on our trips, for team unity, that we’ll all be able to draw closer to God, for our ministry times, that we’ll be able to impact the village and tell every single villager about Jesus, that we’ll be a blessing to them, that we’ll learn to love and to serve selflessly, for wisdom and cultural sensitivity,…

I would appreciate your prayers a lot! Thank you!

Love,

Steph

MERRY CHRISTMAS

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

More pictures

me and my Indonesian friends

cavemen on their way to the city

carols by candlelight

cottesloe beach

These are pictures from commissioning night, our caveman's christmas party, carols by candlelight where I was part of the choir, the beach,... 

Last week of lectures

I just finished my last week of lectures can you believe it?! Sorry that I haven’s updated you in a while, it’s been crazy busy lately with Christmas, getting ready for outreach and all.

As I’ve mentioned before last week’s teaching was on relationships, not only romantic relationships but relationships in general. The leaders of Island Breeze (a YWAM ministry) Shaneane and Ray Totorewa spoke and they were fantastic! They work with Maoris, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and my outreach team will be working with them for a while, while we are in New Zealand. Ray is a Maori himself so he was able to teach us a lot about the Maori culture.

The week was great, maybe even my favourite week because I learned a lot about relating to others. Some key points for me were:

 * The test of loving God is loving your neighbour.

 * The four main elements a relationship is built on are love, trust,  understanding and honour. Shaneane took a long time to explain each element because they are so important. If one of them is missing the relationship is fragile.

 * Difficult people show us who we really are by our reaction towards them.

 * Caring is the action side of love. You can give without loving but you cannot love without giving.

 * We learned a lot about integrity. People of integrity have nothing to hide. I am who I say I     am, no matter where I am or who I am with.

 * The enemy’s success is based upon ignorance.

 * Courtship is the journey not the destination.

 * Courtships is like romance with wisdom.

 * Set boundaries in areas where you are weak, not where you are strong.

 

Then God challenged me with the question if I am ready to give him the best years of my life. Am I?

 

This week David Gustavesson, the YWAM LA base director, spoke on Lordship/Spiritual Authority. It was great having an older YWAMer share on this topic because he has a lot of authority to speak on it.

I taught us about different worldviews, how to become like a child, about the old and the new man and that we need to bring the old man to death DAILY, a lot about destiny and how we can go after our calling, rebellion, brokenness and submission, humility and faithfulness. We also studied different characters of the bible to see how God shaped their character so they were ready when their full ministry was released. Jesus’ was prepared for 30 years until His full ministry was released and Moses was 80 when his ministry began!

Some other key points for me were:

*Feelings are the enemy of faith.

*Meekness means strength under control

*What do I want in life- position or authority?

*God is going to test all of our works with fire.

*Humility+Brokenness=Authority

*There is nothing God gives you that you don’t have to lay down at one point before He can give it back to you.

*Finding your destiny means WAIT (worship, attitude, intercede, teachable).

*Faithfulness to today’s responsibilities brings opportunities. And the biggest killer of opportunity is a bad attitude and being in a hurry.

*Doing things you don’t like for a season forges character.

And I could add many, many more….

 

Other than lectures we had a caveman’s Christmas party last Sunday where we all dressed up as cavemen and women and after the party we went down town in our cavemen outfits. Some people even crawled up to the Mc Donald’s counter and ordered caveman style haha We had quite a laugh.

Our commissioning night was on Wednesday. Everybody dressed up really fancy; we shared about our lecture phase and then were blessed and sent out. We prayed that our outreach would be the best one YWAM has ever had! Amen!

A part of my school leaves on outreach next Friday and I am taking off to Cambodia on January 4^th and after that to New Zealand on January 30^th.

In the midst of all that Christmas in next week! It will be quite and experience to celebrate Christmas in summer with nearly 400 other people.

I hope you are all doing well and that you’re having a nice and blessed Christmas season!