Testing, One...Two...Three...

Alright, I feel the need to have a disclaimer opening before I do anything else. So bear with me, ya'll.....

      First and foremost, this is my first EVER blog (whoop, whoop!), so everything at first is going to be messed up a bit as I experiment with the layout &features of this site. I am not the most computer savvy, so I apologize if anyone gets a headache from the coloring and such.haha. I'll try to fix things as I go along.Same with the writing skills: I’m a bit rusty, but hopefully I’ll get my ol’ rhythm back quickly:). Okay, now that we have all the boring stuff out of the way...

     So what's this blog going to be about? Well currently I am in the city of Las Vegas at a Discipleship Training School with YWAM (Youth With A Mission for all you outsiders :D ). This is a 5 month course that focuses on human trafficking, both sexual and labor. This issue has always been a passion of mine, and I'm thankful to finally be doing something that helps more directly. I've never been good at just sitting around, so when I heard about this school I jumped at the chance. Until the end of November I'll be here in Vegas, then I'll be going overseas to Thailand with a team. The details on what we'll be doing there are not definite yet, but I'll let ya'll know when I find out. In the meantime, this blog will mostly be just keeping everybody up to date about my time here. Aaaaand so my parents don't think I've dropped off the face of the earth (sorry, Mom and Dad! I probably should try to call more often...)

While the school’s main focus is helping victims of trafficking, this stateside phase is more about personal growth and Biblical studies. And to be honest, when I signed up for this school I didn’t really care that much about what I would get out of it. Yes I expected to grow in my faith, but it wasn’t really my deciding factor. I just wanted to help make a difference in this issue God laid on my heart. And while there was nothing wrong with that, I was forgetting one important factor: my own need for personal spiritual growth in certain areas. And from the very first week I got here this need has been brought to my attention again and again. You see, my main spiritual gift is being a servant in anyway I can. Be it through encouragement, helping out with random jobs, or just being a listening ear I’m usually there. Which is what makes it hard for me to focus on myself in any area of life when I know there are other people who have greater needs or hurts then I.But from the first week I was here, God hit me with a sobering realization: if I really do want to serve Him in the most effective way possible, I need to let myself be poured into before I can pour out to others. It’s such a simple truth, yet one I chose to unintentionally ignore up until that moment.

So now I am in the process of being poured into. It’s not always been easy to accept, but I am learning to not stress and let Him do all the work that needs to be done. Each week has a different speaker and topic, and through this I have had to do some serious “house cleaning” in different areas of my heart. More often than not it has been a painful process to see just how filthy I am in so many ways. Yet God has been carrying me through it all and I can now rest in the fact knowing I am not alone in this season of tearing down and rebuilding.

 In future entries I will expound more personally on these issues I’ve been dealing with by covering the different topics we’ve had each week.It won’t always be easy for me to share this with everybody, but I believe I am called to do so as an encouragement to others who may be struggling with the same issues and questions I had when I came here. And don’t think that I