FIRST WEEK IN HAWAII!!!

Hello again, everyone!!

My first week in Hawaii has been incredible. I have such an amazing group of friends here and it blows my mind to see how close we all are in just the 8 days that I have been here! If you go onto the "pics n vids" page, you can see just a couple moments and memories from my first week! Last thing I updated you on was Thursday night worship when we first got here! So many things have happened since then! We have started our daily schedules of classes, work duties, tracks, etc. Monday was our first full day and it left me exhausted but totally full and refreshed also.

Monday's start with morning worship after breakfast. So rejuvenating and so powerful. We then went to class after for the rest of the morning until lunch! So far in our classes we have been taught about Happy Holiness, Celebration, Hearing God's voice, and being centered in Christ. It is so encouraging to me to see how much growth and progress I have made in my faith in this last week, and then to realize I have 6 more months of this gives me goosebumps:)

After lunch we split up into our tracks. My track is called Compassion Ablaze (other tracks are things like music, dance, media, and public speaking). In compassion, we focus on teaching and spreading the love of Jesus to those who are forgotten. We focus mainly on children and my team specifically is focusing on children at risk. Whether that means orphans, or children with sicknesses I am not quite sure but we do a lot of community work in Kona while waiting to go to the nations.

After tracks we have work duty which is basically like chores around campus. I GOT SO LUCKY! My job is helping out in foster homes around Kona making food, doing laundry, basically just making it easier for the foster parents to house children. We then have dinner after tracks and the day is done! We have the whole evening to go explore Kona, go to the beach, or just hang around campus.

Monday night we had worship and God gave me the opportunity to pray over someone who has been dealing with some spiritual warfare. I was worshipping and felt a hand poking my left knee. I looked down to see a girl crying on her knees and she asked in a very gentle voice if I could pray over her. My immediate reaction was fear and hesitation. My lack of confidence in prayer was a big struggle and I felt as though I was just saying random pointless things. I was getting way too into my thoughts and then all of a sudden this giant wave of peace came over me and I had all of these words spilling out of me. I just remember saying "God any fear or anxiousness or worry is not from you, that is from the Devil" and all of these words of life came flooding out of me. I felt the power of the Holy Spirit within me and was totally blown away with the idea that we all have the authority to pray for healing and see deliverance through the power of the Holy Spirit. Such a boost of confidence to see that I can do those things also!!

Overall the past week has been filled with growth and progress in my faith and I am falling more and more in love with Jesus every single day. It is so encouraging to see how much progress I have made in just this past week and then I realize that I have 6 more months of this gives me goosebumps!!!

One of the most influential things I have learned this week is how to hear Gods voice. That was our first lecture topic and I will never forget the things I heard in that class. We talked about the different ways God can speak. He can communicate with you through a still, small voice that you hear in your head. It will sound a whole lot like you but it's a thought you may not have had, or a voice you know isn't you. He can also communicate through scripture, dreams, impressions, visions, and worship. I think a lot of the time we turn our time talking to God into a monologue. When in reality we need to give him time to answer and continue into a conversation. We often get frustrated when we don't hear anything from God, but are we giving him time to respond? Are we putting aside all distractions to really dig into it and listen? God is way better at speaking than we are at listening, he is ALWAYS wanting to have a conversation! As I'm finishing off this first week, I want to encourage you to put all distractions aside and really listen to what God is wanting to say to you. I truly believe he has something he wants to tell us every single day and I wish I could preach the message to you but unfortunately that is a little hard to do over a a blog! If you're interested in me sharing about our messages more in depth and really explain what we're learning exactly please comment down below (I sound like a youtuber ew) and I will share my notes and what I learned!!

Thanks for reading:)

Talk to you soon!!!!

-jam