Week #9,10,11

Sarah Wennersten

November 8-13, 2010

Week in Review 9

This week the speaker has been really good. I missed Monday night but I plan to listen to the audio soon. I have always felt a pull toward travel and toward missions. The pull for missions has become stronger and stronger the last few years to the point that I am becoming convinced that I need to take action. God has put a longing in my heart to help people reaching back to when I was little and wanted to be a veterinarian and a police officer. I think He has been growing in me this desire to help the under dog for the purpose of missions. One thing I have never felt drawn to was going through a missions organization and doing all the training, I have never felt drawn to full time missions like that. But I still wanted to do missions so I wasn’t sure what God had in mind. Last night I think He made it clear to me how I can do missions without doing the whole schooling scene. We were in the Grill and the speaker was mentioning how he had spent a few years traveling around spending time with different missionaries all around the world. I was baffled how he could that because I always understood that you couldn’t go unless trained by a missionary school. So I asked and he said that he just wrote letter to a bunch of missionaries and asked if they needed help and if he come spend time with them. So he saved up money, got on a plane, and went. I am so pumped! I haven’t been this excited about something in a long time. It just felt right. I can do that! I would still like to do college maybe but I think at this point I may pursue spending some time in foreign countries with missionaries. I can’t explain this feeling inside of me. I am so excited for the Dominican Republic I can hardly contain it. I just feel myself bubbling over and it feels so right. I have been feeling this pull to do something for so long and now I feel that a game plan is starting to form. I need to stay in prayer and seek God’s will but right now I really feel this is what He may have for me. One fear I have is letting go. Some things won’t be hard but what will be hard and what I feel like I still haven’t given up all the way is my desire to get married and settle down. I want that so bad but if I am going to be traveling around then that probably won’t work for a few years. But, I know and want to give all of my life to God and His service so I need to be willing to give everything up. It’s the story we hear over and over: person gives hands over their dream to God, God uses them for amazing things, and then often God gives them their dream in a way that was unexpected. So many speakers have said that we need to go do stuff while we are young and strong and have energy. “Now is the time”. I am so excited to see what God is going to do with me. I want Him to use me. I have said “here I am send me” and if He keeps answering my prayers like he has been the last few months then I know He will. That is my next subject. Answered prayers. God has been showing Himself to me in ways that I have never experienced before and it has been amazing. He has shown Himself faithful to answer my prayers and then make it clear to me that He has answered them. The first time I experienced this was in the first few weeks when I gave up the baggage I was carrying from my high school years. I so badly wanted to give all that junk to God and so I cried out. A week or so later something happened that normally would have bothered me and made me start freaking out about what people thought. But I didn’t really care. It has been so freeing to finally live without a great fear of man. Second was when I realized God was answering my prayer concerning pride in my life. Once again this is something I noticed in high school and even prayed that God would take out of my life and help me change. But it wasn’t until coming here and giving up it all up on that first morning that change  really started happening. God  made it apparent to me that He was working on my pride because people started arguing and discussing calvinism, predestination, and all that. In high school I would often argue theological points because I wanted to people to know what was right and true, which is what I had to say. I had to prove my point and make sure people knew exactly what I thought to be right. But this time I wanted nothing to do with it. I hated even just listening to the argument. Later on I realized that that dislike for the kind of discussion that was going on was from God. Talking about stuff like that is so important but all too often people take to a level that I believe is not edifying at all. There is just a certain tone of voice and tenseness of muscles that happens in those talks between already decided Christians and I hate it. So there was a moment when I realized I wanted nothing to do with that and that that was a from God breaking me of my pride of always having to be right. Of course I will still talk about those subjects because I do feel strongly about it but I will not do it a group setting that shows me off instead of God like it should. Finally, a week or so ago I was really struggling with something and again cried out to God. I told HIm this year was all for Him that I specifically devoted all of myself these 9months to be used by Him and to grow. I begged Him to take away the distractions from my mind and prevent the devil from distracting me if he was. My heart was pouring out to express my deep desire for my focus this year. And God again proved faithful to answer my hearts desire and He totally did an awesome work changing my desire. It has just been so cool to be able to see answered prayers.

I am going to be praying for the Dominican Republic because I am so stoked to be going there. I can’t get it out of my head. I am going to pray for some of the different job sites especially the Physical Therapy site where I will be working. Pray that I can be a blessing and that our whole group can be a blessing.

Sarah Wennersten

November 14-28, 2010

Week in Review 10

Wow. The last two weeks have been so eventful. I wrote so much in my journal about Mexico. But the first big thing that happened was on Monday morning at San Diego Christian College. We had the opportunity to tour the college and then go to chapel. Laila and I were talking before chapel about how we both have been feeling called to do mission work. Then we went to chapel which was an all worship chapel. At first I wasn’t really keen on it because it felt a little more like a rock concert than a worship service. But then God, in His way of doing stuff, had a series of songs that moved my heart like none other. I was a bucket of tears right there in the middle of the service.

From the Inside Out

A thousand times I've failed

Still your mercy remains

And should I stumble again

Still I'm caught in your grace

Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades

Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame

My heart and my soul, I give You control

Consume me from the inside out Lord

Let justice and praise, become my embrace

To love You from the inside out

Your will above all else, my purpose remains

The art of losing myself in bringing you praise

Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades

Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame

My heart, my soul, Lord I give you control

Consume me from the inside out Lord

Let justice and praise become my embrace

To love You from the inside out

The song that made it all come out:

I Will Go

To the desperate eyes and reaching hands

To the suffering and the lean

To the ones the world has cast aside

Where you want me I will be

[Chorus:]

I will go, I will go

I will go, Lord send me

To the world, To the lost

To the poor and hungry

Take everything I am

I'm clay within your hands

I will go, I will go, send me

Let me not be blind with privilege

Give me eyes to see the pain

Let the blessing You've poured out on me

Not be spent on me in vain

Let this life be used for change

[Chorus]

I wanna live for you

Go where you lead me

I wanna follow you

[Repeat 3x]

[Chorus]

Send me! [4x]

Reading these lyrics is still amazing to me. The song was perfect, perfect timing, perfect lyrics, and perfect everything. I’m not sure I have ever heard God speak to me so loudly as He did in that series of songs. I am ready to take action, to do something. No longer hear about the unreached and unsaved, feel bad, and then do nothing. What I felt and am feeling is far beyond just feeling bad about not doing enough. I am ready to do God’s work whatever that may mean. If it means giving up or postponing my dream of getting married and having kids then I (by God’s grace and continued work in this area of my life) will be ok with that. I am really excited to see where God is going to take me in these next years of my life... be it college, Africa, or somewhere completely unexpected.

I have just been so encouraged lately at how God has been answering my prayers and really speaking to me. I have never had such a clear line of communication with Him and now that I have experienced this I never want to lose it. When people would  talk about stuff like this I always thought they were just making it up and just talking “Christianese”. It used to bug me. But now that I have experienced such closeness with God I know it is possible and is real. I used to doubt if such clear communication was possible but now I know. I’m sure some people do just blow smoke when they talk about various religious experiences but now I feel like those stories have more weight with me since I have experienced something so cool. God is just so good. He has been so good to me, especially these last few months. But He has really blessed me so much my whole life. And like the song said I don’t want to waste all those blessings on myself, I want to use that blessing to do God’s work. I think that is how it is supposed to be. It is seen in tithing even, we give back. I feel that God has given me so many unique life experiences, and that He did it for a very specific reason. I’m excited to see what else He is going to do this year and how He is going to use the next trips to influence me.

This week I want to pray for Mexico. Spending the week there was great for me to see that way of life. I see how fallen the country as a whole is. Pray for real solutions to the problems of drug and human trafficking.