New Tools in my Tool Belt

( Mennonite Jazz Committee playing at the Mark Center where we served Chai Tea and their famous Hazelnut Cake)

Our training phase has now somewhat shifted gears from personal spirituality to team life. With everything that I have learned so far it is nice to switch tracks. We have had some sessions on entering a foriegn culture, and dealing with culture shock. They have been very informing, especially first hand from a missionary with lots of experience in that area.
We did have one session though that was still more individually based that was posponed to this week. Easther Corbet came to share on phrophecy. She is a very down to earth gentle person, and you could really see that she was here to serve with this tool God had given her. Prophecy is hearing from God and learning how to commuicate that by the holy spirit. The holy spirit functions in community and when someone has a prophetic word we have to discern as to how we can communicate it in a way to build up, or a way to serve the community. Sometimes that means holding on to it if the timing isn't right. Another point that Easther stressed was realizing that the holy spirit gives us significance, not gifts. Gifts are God with in us. After the first session Easther and her partner Wendy prophesied a few words over a couple of us. Wendy spoke some words to me, and said she saw a deep pool of water, and that God sees the deep well of hunger for him in me and he recognizes that. This was very encouraging. I do long for a deeper more intimate relationship with my heavenly Father, and I know he will fill my well. A thougth that has come to my mind though is maybe this well just has to get deep enough before water will spring forth from the bottom to fill it. We also met with Easther as a team so she could pray for us. Our prayer time with her was very good. She prayed for God to give us a heart for Egypt, for the guys in our group to be examples of men of God, and she also prophesied that I would be working with oppressed women in Eygpt. This was neat because in week three Cheryl Plett prophesied the same thing over me. This just makes me really excited to see what God has for us as a team in Egypt. God is also unifying our team. This last weekend we did an "amazing race" and our team found out that we do work really well with each other even in frusterating situations, and we were encouraged by that. I'm hoping to post some pictures and go a little more into detail about the race a little later once I have some pictures loaded on my computer. Over all though God is still doing Amazing things here, and this next week as we move into a time of 24/7 prayer I'm excited to see how he will work and teach.

(Valentine's Day all the girls recieved pink roses from the guys on our teams)