Week 7...in two weeks i'll be leaving for South Africa...weird. :) I'm so excited though!! This week was crazy, stressful, and amazing all at once--finances were due on Wednesday (the 19th). My DTS has been gathering at 6:00a each morning for the past week or two to pray specifically for our finances and we'd seen some movement in money but on Wednesday only two people had the money for the trip. I still needed about $645. Wednesday night we met at 6:30p to have a prayer session but right before that i checked my mailbox for receipts from the accounts office (online donations) and i checked my email as well. It was all there!!! Between receipts and emails all of the money i needed was in. God is so amazing!!

I've never had to trust for so much money before and I've definitely learned a lot from it...for one, God is so incredibly faithful--if He guides, He will provide. I also learned that obedience is so important--throughout the week, God gave me names of people to contact for support and i had to do my part and obey Him--and He provided!! If i wouldn't have obeyed, though, i would probably still owe money. Trustworthiness...that's something that God has been working on in my life during this DTS and the fact that He provided this money is just another indication of how much better God can take care of me than i ever could...why would i not trust Him with my life?!

Even though I got all of my money on time, unfortunately about half of the people on my DTS still don't have their money. We're still trusting God for a little over $22,000 for the rest of our group. We're hoping it comes in the next couple of days so we can get plane tickets booked... Today my school started learning one of the dramas we're going to be performing on outreach...it's to the song Everything by Lifehouse. It's a pretty powerful drama. I'm definitely not a drama person but it was fun!! Some of you i'm sure will find it amusing that I'm doing dramas...you know who you are! ha! :D

This week's lecture topic was spiritual warfare and our speaker was actually videos--Dean Sherman is pretty popular on this topic and we watched his sessions on DVD. It sounds like a pretty intense topic--i thought it was going to be all about casting out demons, etc, but it really wasn't. Dean really emphasized that there are two systems against each other--the kingdom of heaven and the world which lies in the control of the enemy. He stressed that we're fighting principalities and the strategies of Satan...NOT flesh and blood. If we're in strife with other people, we're actually aiding the cause of the devil...that really hit home for me!

Dean defined spiritual warfare with the three R's: recognizing the strategies of the enemy, refusing to cooperate and resisting those strategies. We as humans leave gaps in our spiritual armor through 4 different areas: 1. the mind (fear, pride, judgement, discontent, etc) 2. the heart (attitude, negative emotions, not dealing with sin, etc.) 3. the mouth (coarse language, venting to people--that was huge for me!!) 4. relationships (strife/argument=open gate) If we can identify these gaps, we can stop cooperating with Satan, and we can close those gaps.

One of the biggest keys from the lectures for me was something that Dean really highlighted-- #1 because we are children of God we are secure and loved in Christ...but... #2 we as God's children have commandments to follow. If we get lazy, we open the door to the devil and his strategies begin to take ahold and prevail over us. The scary thing is that when we leave gates open for satan, it not only affects us, but other people involved, as well as the rest of the human race! Dean said numerous times throughout the week that the devil has exactly as much authority in the world as humans give him. That's scary to think about because i feel like our world and society is only becoming worse...but we can help change that! This week provided a lot of "food for thought". :)

Well, thanks again for reading...i'll let you know next week how the financial situation pans out... :) We'd appreciate your prayers for finances!! Thanks so much.

Love you all,
Rachel