God Speaks

Okay, being in Atlanta has been NOTHING that I expected it to be. I totally expected our training time to be all informational, talking about culture shock and whatnot. Nope. Not at all.  God has already blown me out of the water, and I'm not even in Africa yet! 

"When God speaks, Life happens." 

How does God speak to you? Is it through a dream or a picture? A movie or your emotions? Do you hear an audible voice? God can speak to a person in so many different ways. This is what we learned about tonight in our training, and it's actually very powerful. Specifically, we talked about how God can use other people to speak to you through Him. This is a practice called prophesy, with a lowercase p. If you think about it, this is really kind of cool. As brothers and sisters in Christ, why wouldn't God want to use us to communicate His words to each other? I think that's a really special bond that we all have. If you feel as if God has laid it on your heart to speak truth in a brother or sisters life, He is going to honor that. Every one can do this! You don't have to be a special person, or have a special gift for God to use you to speak His words. 

^" For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged."

1 Corinthians 14:31

We did a really cool exercise that absolutely rocked my world and opened my eyes to the Power that God has!

(I'm going to try my best to explain it!)

I sat in a circle with five other people on my team. We were instructed to close our eyes while one of the staff members tapped one of the people in each circle. Once the person had been chosen, we were instructed to begin praying that God give us something to say to or about this person. Keep in mind that while we're praying for those things we still have no idea who the chosen person is! So, after a couple of minutes of prayer we are instructed to voice the things that God has given us to say. After we all voice what God had laid on our hearts we opened our eyes and gave the chosen person a chance to share how they felt about the things we said. Being able to experience this was absolutely amazing. 

This experience just gave me so much confidence in God and His power to speak to people. 

I can't help but think that if God has already taught me this much in the few short hours that I've been in Atlanta, that He is absolutely going to rock my world in South Africa. 

Prayer Requests

We board our plane tomorrow night at 7:35 that flies straight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Please pray that we have safe travels!

I found out tonight that Kendra and I will be doing ministry (no specifics yet) at a church in a small town called Cookhouse which is near Capetown. Pray for the people that we will encounter and that God would soften their hearts to the Gospel! 

Last thing, I've had a yucky cold for the past week! Pray that God would wipe out all the nastiness from my system. 

Thank you for the prayers! 

Thanks for reading, friends! Love you all! 

Hayley