Sunday, October 12, 2008

Do you want to perish in safety?


Today at church the pastor read this quote. I thought it was some good food for thought so I will share it with you.

(On one hand) I'd like to be brave, but I'd also like to be safe. My heavenly Father, on the other hand, loves me deeply enough to tell me the truth. He tells me I can't be both brave and safe. He wants me to be clear there's a choice, he wants me to choose to be brave. And choosing to be brave means choosing not to be safe.
In a fallen world, following the will of God will generate suffering in our lives. In fact, there are two things that are always the will of God and always dangerous in a fallen world: telling the truth and loving needy people. In fact, if my life of following Jesus doesn't feel dangerous , I should probably pause and check to see if its Jesus I am following. If I'm playing football and nobody is hitting me, I might check to see that I'm actually out on the field.. Football is about contact and following Jesus is about loving needy people, it turns out, its not safe. In fact, I generally try to keep neediness away from me. Think about those in your family who are the most needy and hurting, those in uor church fellowship who are hurting the most, those in our community who are in the most need, those on the other side of the city who are most vunerable. Them. Serving them and loving them is uncomfortable. It''s mesy, it's untidy, it's unsafe and can even be dangerous. And yet paradoxically, Jesus tells us this is where the deepest joy is. - Gary Haugen, President of International Justice Mission

Blessings..


Its strange how I've only been here for 9 days but it feels like three weeks and at the same time it feels like it went so fast. I feel so comfortable here. Like it was made for me. Like family. As if I was really coming home when I left, not leaving home. The first few days seemed like I was in a foreign strange place. Everything seemed weird. In this particular organization the interns(aka me) are essentially thrown into the program immediately. I think thats why it seemed so weird. I was walking up the street to the girls house the other day just basking in how much I do not deserve this. I mean it is such a huge blessing. I just can not understand what I could have possible done to deserve something this awesome. I love the people. I love what we do here. I am absolutely in love with the landscape. I can always find something beautiful in nature to be in awe of God. Im on the college ministry and we do a bunch of outreaches with the college students, a bible study and get to hang out with them. On Thursday mornings we go to help out the Feeding the Hungry ministry. They feed tons of poor and homeless people in Honolulu. Basically when we get there everyone who wants prayer gets in this giant line. Sometimes this can be over 250 people and we,as a team, pray for them individually. I had a hard time with this concept at first. Not that I had a hard time praying for them. It was a true honor and joy to get to do so. I think it was as much of a blessing for them as it was for me. It was hard though to be genuine. I felt like I was praying the same sort of prayer for ass of them. And altough I genuinely meant everything I was praying for for them individually I wished so badly that I could peir into their hearts and see what they really needed prayer for. This put me in a rut. I really cared for them but it was hard to pray general prayers for people I really have a heart to pray for. All of that praying can be draining but it is such a joy. We pray so much here! I have never prayed so much in my life. We pray internationally and domestically weekly. We just pray so so much. It's awesome. I am really loving getting to be dependant on God through prayer. The other night after talking to some of the girls in the house about demonic stuff I started to freak myself out before going to bed. I was sitting in the dark just freakin out. Scared. So I grabbed my bible and turned to Psalms 71. Totally directed by God. It was perfect. It was about God's protection. I started to pray after reading it for peace and contentment. It was like a flood. I know it wasnt of me because it was unlike any sort of peace I had ever felt before. It was powerful. It was the single best night of sleep I have had since being here. So there's some of my week. I also wanted to let you know that I need $1650.00 more in support to go to Israel and my due date is October 29th! If you want to email ,wewolpert@hotmail.com, me I'd love to hear from you. I have a hard time getting time to email people back but I love you all!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

I'm here!


Wow it was a long night. I went to the airport at 12:00 last night for my flight that departed at 2:30 am. Once I arrived I was greeted by Kezia ,my RA Hawaiian style (an amazing smelling lay!). Once I got to the house most of the girls were still sleeping since it was only 5:30 am. Once everyone was up though the day went into full blast. There was an hour quiet time and then and hour of international prayer. We prayed for Nepal and for our team in Bangladesh. Three of the interns gave their testimony(sidenote: I too am an intern and will have to give my testimony to be able to graduate from the program). It was awesome to see how they had been wooed by the Lord. After that we went to do an outreach at the beach. I have already surfed! Woohoo!!! I was awful but it was fun! Everyone has been so awesome and welcoming. I feel like I have been thrown into the mix but it's a good feeling. I am ready to get this show on the road! Sorry no pictures this time hopefully I will get some up soon so show you all how awesome everything is going!!