"Come to Me"

The last week has been a very full week.  We had our 48 hour silent retreat.  This was a time to listen to God's voice and hear what He had to say to us.  It was a time of rest and restoration.  We were allowed our Bibles, journals, and that's about it.  It was a powerful retreat for all of us and we all received word from God in various ways.  Throughout the retreat I felt Him calling to me, all the passages I read were an invitation to come to Him.  I have been memorizing Isaiah 55 and it spoke to me, especially the parts of it that say "Come to me all who are thirsty.  Come to the waters, you who have no money, come buy and eat.  Come buy wine and milk, without money and without cost...Listen, listen to me and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.  Give ear and come to me, hear me that your soul may live!"  On the silent retreat He called to me and I came.  He restored my soul and made me alive again.  Taking time for silence with God, to pray, listen to His voice and to read His Word is such a gift.  I know as well as anyone that life gets busy and it is hard to take the time out of our days to just be in the presence of God.  But I would encourage you to make it happen. Be intentional and He will be faithful to meet with you!  Even being at a place like the Mark Centre that is designed to be a place to meet with God, life gets busy.  The schedule gets full and the days go by quickly.  No matter where we are, what we are doing, who we are with, we need to be intentional in our relationship with God.  Please pray that I will be intentional and continue to hear His voice and take time out of my days to spend with God. 

So that is what the end of my last week looked like.  And now the moment you have all been waiting for ... on Tuesday they announced the teams and where we will be going.  I am going to Portugal!  My team is Joanna (who is our team leader), Rebecca, Brittany, Kenny, Justin, and myself.  It is an awesome team and I believe that God will bless us as we serve Him and the people of Portugal.  I feel such a peace about the place that I am going to and that God is already stirring my heart with a passion for the people!  Thank you all for your prayers as the teams and locations were discerned.  God is good and there is much peace within our group as a whole about where we are going and who we are going with.  May the name of the Lord be praised!

My New Home

My Room

The Mark Centre

Outside my door

The view from my doorway

So I have been at the Mark Centre for two and a half days and it seems like much has happened in that time.  The pictures above are where I am staying.  I am in a room with two other girls, Kara from Langley, who I knew from CBC and Judy, who is from Germany.  I have a nice bed by the window and am enjoying the setting sun as I write this.  There are 19 TREKKERS in total, 11 girls and 8 guys, it is an awesome group and I am very excited to be a part of it.  It has been a busy few days, getting settled, getting to know people and going over TREK stuff.  Yesterday we had a time of worship and I was stuck with how blessed I am to be able to be here once again.  It is a once and a lifetime opportunity and God has blessed me by allowing me to do it twice.  That is how I want to see this time, a time of blessing, growth, and service.  A time to allow God to challenge me and mould me into the person He wants me to be.  I will be here at the Mark Centre for 8 weeks before we leave on assignment, please pray for me in this time as we will be gaining a lot of information and instruction in a short amount of time.  Pray that I will be open to learn and have the energy and focus to absorb it all.  Pray also for our teams and locations that still need to be decided, we will be finding out where we are going and who is on our team in two weeks today (September 25^th), please pray for this, that we will be at peace with where we are sent and that we will all be sent specifically to the place that God want to use us.  Thank you for your prayers and following my blog.