Week 3 - Holy Spirit

      This week was my favourite one so far, and it went by so fast ! We had the DTS from the Byron Bay base come up here to visit with us and do their last week of lectures before leaving on outreach to Papa New Guinea. We had so much fun with them and I hope we'll see them again before our team leaves for India !

     The speaker this week was Stefaan Hugo from South Africa and it was awesome to hear from him. God has clearly put an anointing on his life and the stories he shared were amazing. For me this week was really an eye-opener to understanding the Holy Spirit, what its purpose is, and what all the gifts really are. I've read about all these things in the Bible before, but it was so good to have someone like him explain things in much more detail and help us put them into practice.

    On Wednesday night we had a worship session planned, but instead of doing worship the usual way, Stefaan wanted to challenge us to exercise our faith and worship God by giving gifts. We were instructed to really dig deep and ask God for something we could give to bless someone else on the base.  The first thing I thought of was money, because I am trusting God to provide for me financially and I knew someone who was still paying off their lecture phase. We all arrived in the church and he made us sit in a big circle. One by one people went to the middle and announced who their gift was for and what it was. The other person would accept it and they'd go pray together. This was such an awesome night ! I teared up a few times because some of the gifts were sentimental, but I honestly couldn't stop smiling. It was cool to watch people give away both big and small and be so joyful! As the night went on I sarted to realize our earthly posessions are simply that. Earthly possessions. They might mean something to us now but in the big picture of life they're merely a second, and you can't take them into heaven. Matthew 6:21 says "Where your treasure is there your heart is also"and this has challenged me to live a lifestyle of giving and gratitude. I want others to see that my heart isn't attached to things of this world; that I invest in my relationship with God and sharing Him with others because that's what matters more.

     On friday morning we had a 'Holy Spirit party' where Stefaan and the leaders prayed over us to receive the gifts of the Spirit. This has given me more confidence in God's ability to work through me and I'm so excited for Him to use me to do miracles in other people. When that finished we headed down to the beach and watched 7 students get baptized (from both DTSs). This was an awesome finale to our week. I got to watch my friends publicly declare their love for Christ and choose to live a new life. I couldn't be more proud :)

In Him,
Becca