Now That I'm In America

It is so easy to forget that America is a mission field just as much as any country. Now that I am back in America it is so easy to want to go back to that life style of relaxation. But this is not what God has called me or you to do. We always need to be sensitive to Him and ready to act when He tells you to. It's not about what people think but it is about pleasing our savior. I can't say this was the mindset that I had when I came back. I was already thinking about all the things I missed that I was excited to do. I wasn't really thinking about what my mission field in America was supposed to look like. Luckily God was not ready to let me live like that and started slowly reminding me just because I am in America and just because I am surrounded by Christians doesn't mean that it stops. I have had many neat experiences sense I have been back but I would like to share my favorite.

Man it is so funny how God works. So while we were in North Carolina we stayed in a church. Like slept on the pews, stayed in a church... real interesting night sleep. So some of the ladies that went there would make us breakfast lunch and dinner every day. We kind of talked with them but didn't get to know them too well. So on Sunday while we were in church God told me that I needed to tell one of the ladies that He saw her humility and He wanted to honor her and that it was ok for her to fell honored. Well I hardly knew her so I had made up my mind that I was not going to talk to her. Later during the service the pastor prayed for me and guess what he told me. He said that he felt like I had a sensitivity that I could be in a group of people and feel like I need to say something to one person. He said I need to not be afraid of that and do what I feel God tell me to do. Well, BIG CONVICTION! So I talk to her and tell her the word I had for her. And she doesn't respond much but her friend was like dang that was right on. So I left. I come back for dinner and she is there again. I talk with her and help her set up and she says how what I said did help, so that was good. So we finished talking and I started walking away then God was like pray for her. So I turn around and ask if I can pray for her and she asks me to when she is done so that she can focus on it. So I leave, then God was like ask to do her original design (Where you ask God to show what He originally made someone for and how he views them. Special things He wants to show them about themselves.) She was very excited about that. So dinner came around and we were done eating so she came to me to pray for her. So I got some of the girls and we went in a room and started praying for her. We started getting things about how she is not her past, that she is beautiful to God, and that she needs to know she is worthy. So finally we ask her if she wants to share some things about her past. Turns out she accidentally shot someone so spent 18 months in jail. Then her husband passed away so she had to take over the business, which she lost. The Dr put her on a lot of meds during that time. So her kids got taken away and she is called crazy. She is constantly degraded in front of her kids and she feels so lonely. On top of that she has such a child like faith and sees crazy spiritual things. Like she sees angels. One time one of her sons was cussing God off and she told him that was a bad idea. Then she took him outside and said not to mess with the angels. After she said that she said a huge angel just knocked him to the ground and he could not get up. I mean just the faith that she knew God would do that is amazing and she is afraid of using this gift because she has so much condemnation and guilt on her. There was so much more to her story but this is what I feel I must share. So we got to pray against a lot of that stuff and it was really neat.

So all of this was such a good reminder to me that it doesn't stop in Jordan. So I encourage you too, it doesn't stop in Jordan. If you are not called to go somewhere you are called to America. So maybe that means your work, maybe your school... WHO KNOW'S! But always listen to God. You don't have to be a super Christian and it's ok if people know you sin. We are called to something greater than just life, we are called to give life. So pray about this, and also pray for my new friend. She needs it as she enters this new stage of life.

Fun Things We Went To See

Israel… Now that was awesome. During this time, I got to go the the Wailing Wall, Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus' tomb and where he was crucified, well at least where they think that happened. It was just so amazing. The Bible came to life while I was there.

I also go to go to the Dead Sea and float, go to Petra, and see the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was such an amazing time that I will never forget. Hopefully I get to go see it all again one day.

Some Jordan Stories

So I have a few stories that I would love to share about my time in Jordan that I find pretty awesome.

The first story I would like to share is the story of my first date. I have a student named Dua'a. She is one of my younger students so I click with her well. Well she invited me and my friends Katie and Anna over to her house to hang out for a bit. In this culture, it is always polite to get who invites you a small gift, so I made her a coffee. Bad idea for so many reasons. One, she was on a diet. Two, we weren't walking to her house, we were riding there… in her brothers NEW CAR I might add. He was very excited about his new car too and they quite enjoyed talking about it. So I offer her the coffee and she doesn't want it. Well I'm a broke missionary so heck yeah I'll take it if she doesn't want it. Once again… bad idea. So we get in the car with this boiling hot coffee and disaster just slowly begins striking. The driving in Jordan is very, let's go with hectic. Yes, people swerve everywhere when they drive. So I'm getting this hot coffee all over my hands, and dang, it burns! The only cure I can see to this is me drinking the coffee as fast as I can, or dumping it out the window, which for some reason never crossed my mind. Well my friend Anna is just laughing so hard watching this happen, which then causes me to laugh. Well let me tell you, laughing and swallowing coffee at the same time is a REALLY BAD IDEA. Man, it triggered my gag reflexes real bad and I vomited all over his new car. Some how, the dated ended up being awesome and some how life went on. But boy did I learn my lesson.

The second story I want to tell is the story of my friend Eman. The Director there introduced me and my friend Joanne to her one day after we were done with our coffee bar shift. Eman had just joined the center and wanted to meet some people to practice her English with. So she prated with me and Joanne. We all slowly began to get to know each other really well as time went on. One day when I was praying, God gave me a word for her. I got this picture of her looking in a mirror and taking off her hijab. When she did her face went from smiling to a frown. I felt like God wanted her to know he thought that she was beautiful and that he loved her. This was a big deal to her sense they wait their whole lives from some sort of revelation from God. She therefore went to the director to get a translation. After that, the director asked me to maybe consider inviting her to do a Holly Book study. This meant that we would read from the Quran and the Bible and compare stories of the prophets. So I asked her and sure enough she said yes. So the 4 of us ended up having our study and started off by sharing our testimony. Turns out her Dad had passed away. ALSO, and this is where it gets cool for me, she had very previously been engaged. She had signed the contract and everything. But when they sign the contract they have 6 days to take it back. Well her husband changed his mind 4 days later and took advantage of her emotions and just really hurt her and was bad to her. After that she felt really unbeautiful and felt like God didn't love her. That was encouraging for me because it meant the word I had for her was perfect. After that I got to share more stories of how God had talked to me before. I never got to finish the studies because I left to soon, but her and the director are still doing them to this day.

Another cool story was one of my students met me one day to tell me about what he believed as a Muslim and I shared what I believed as a Christian. That was my first time sharing the Gospel and it all just worked out so well. One there was another staff there who spoke Aerobic and had a Quran with her and helped me answer questions I didn't know the answer too. It was just perfect how God worked the timing out.

One of my favorite things that happened there was Girls Night. God gave me this idea to do girls night there to show the girls how beautiful they are. The culture there is very hard on them when it comes to self worth. Families will literally introduce their children as "the smart one", "the pretty one", "the dumb one", "the ugly one"… They say it as it is. It's awful the death that they speak over each other. So I wanted to get to show them how beautiful they were. So we did girls night. It all ran so smoothly and God really just was there that night. We even got to do Original Design for some of the girls. This is where we prayed that God would show what He loves about them and why He crated them. It was so neat.

One time also when I went on a date to my student Dua'a's house, we tried a very popular Jordanian food called mansuf. I got so full and just when I thought I could eat no more the Mom takes some more and puts it in my mouth. It was so funny!

I also had many chances to just break down stereo types they had about us as Americans and chances to learn about them. I do hope one day I get to go back to Jordan and experience all of this again.

What Are My Future Plans?

Many are wondering what I will be doing with my future now, so I thought I would also throw that out there in a note. I will be taking the Summer off and hopefully be getting a job. So if you have any openings let me know ;). I also am planning on getting my license… Yes I know, it's a bit ridiculous that I have gone this long without getting it. But hopefully once I do, God will provide a car for me. I'm just having to trust His timing with that. I'm also hoping to find people who can support me and this life of missions I know I am about to throw myself into. So this means lots of letters and lots of phone calls. But once again, I know God will provide. After my summer break is over I will be going back to YWAM in the Fall starting my SOMD (School Of Ministry Development). I have to do this school in order to staff there one day. After I have finished my school I hope to come staff. Hopefully by then I will have enough supporters to start my staffing in YWAM. I hope to be able to help lead photography DTS's while I'm staffing there. So this is what I picture my future looking like. So if you ever feel the need in your heart to pray for me, all this stuff would be awesome for you to include.

A Promise I Made While In Jordan

A Promise I Made:

So I promised my class I would do what I could to break down stereo types America has made about Muslims. I'm not sure how exactly I will do this but I made my promise, and I like to stick to my word. I figured I would start with a note. I guess I will see where that leads me next.

I think we all, without knowing it, sometimes feel fear when we hear that someone is Muslim. Before I went to Jordan I would have been very frightened to share what I believe as a Christian to a Muslim. I know they will not kill me and I know they don't run around with guns, but I didn't expect them to respect me for it. I expected a could shoulder. Well I got the opposite of what I expected. All the Muslims I met in Jordan are some of the nicest, most hospital people I have ever met in my life. They always were inviting me over, buying me coffee, and giving me gifts. They are a loving people who have a big heart. They love to hear what you believe and love to share what they believe. Every time I shared my faith as a Christian I earned their respect even more. They were sincerely interested in hearing what I had to say. After being in Jordan, I would say that if you have never shared your faith really before, a good place to start is in a Muslim country. They take it way better than Americans, that's for sure.

My life has been drastically changed because of these people, and for the better on that note. These are people I will forever strive to be more like. Because of the way they treated me, I feel more safe walking around the streets of Amman than I do downtown Orlando. I wish sometimes us as Americans were as welcoming and hospital as these people. The world would be such a better place if we were. And if us as Christians had the dedication that they have as muslims I think everyone in the world would be a Christian by now. They pray 5 times a day NO MATTER WHAT! They do what their book tells them and not only that, they memorize it. Do you know any Christians that have the Bible memorized? I don't! And yes I know that it's not about good works, but they sure do make you feel closer to God. We all have a straight path that we are trying to walk and though they don't believe in Jesus I feel like the path they walk is sometimes straighter than ours. It is amazing what you can learn from them when you put aside your pride and embrace what they believe. What's even more amazing is watching someone who was Muslim be a Christian. They know what dedication is and what it means to REALLY LOVE YOUR GOD!

The only place where I do see that they are wrong is that they don't understand forgiveness. They know God forgives but they don't know when He will. They are always redeeming their sin with good works because if not they will pay the consequences in Hell. How scary is that? If only they knew that righteousness has been covered over them because of what Jesus did, it would bring so much freedom to them. Instead they live a life of condemnation and it breaks my heart to see. So stop being afraid of these people and pray God will give you heart from them. IDK, maybe you don't have to go to Jordan, but at least you could pray for the Muslims once a week. That isn't too much to ask is it? So forget what the media says and just learn to love these people man, cause they are so ready to receive your love. And also just learn from them. Ask God to show you what He can teach you through these people. I did that and man, God blew me away.

Well I had to say all of this sense I made a promise to my class. I hope God gives me more chances to get this word out and be the voice of my class and many others out there. And if you get a chance, maybe you can help me by also being a voice.

Jordan Through The Eyes Of Victoria

You know it's funny how God can make you fall in love with the same things you started off hating. I'm not gonna lie, my first few weeks in Jordan were probably the most miserable weeks of my life. I had not prepared myself at all for the task at hand. I thought I had, but I hadn't. I mean I had been to Haiti and Honduras before this and loved it, so why would I not like this? All those reasons why I wouldn't like it started hitting me as my plane trip to Jordan began. Was I ready to spend 2 months in a country I didn't even feel called to? I knew I was suppose to be there for that time but I didn't feel much more than that. Was I ready to hardly have any communication with the outside world? Was I ready to pour my heart 100% into these Muslims? Was I ready for the spiritual warfare that would be going on? Was I ready to teach and be sick at the same time? Was I ready to learn how to live in a small house with 12 girls and a small family? Was I ready to die to my rights so that others could be happy? The truth is, I wasn't. But you know what else is true, God was. God knew what I was doing, and He knew what He was doing.

One of the fist things we did in Jordan was write a small journal entry of our first impression. My first impression went something like this:

"So this place is really dirty. To be honest, there isn't much good that I see. It all is so bland and I feel like time has slown down. All I want is for time to speed up. I kind of feel paranoid about a lot of things, like my interaction with the guys. I just really miss home already and 2 months is going to take a really long time. BUT I also know God will change that. The good thing is the people here are beautiful. Other than that though, God is going to have to change how I feel. It all just feels so gross right now. And EVERYTHING here is just hard. But I also know that every hard thing can get easier. So God I'm trusting you to change my heart about this place."

I really was really starting to think though that God maybe wouldn't change how I felt about these things. But He came around. My heart slowly but surly started changing. And here is how that story began. It started with orientation. In orientation, we learned what exactly our time in Jordan would look like. It sounded scary but it was a challenge, a challenge I was excited about. An average week in Jordan was going to consist of teaching on Monday and Wednesday and working behind the coffee bar on Sunday and Tuesday. On the weekends we would spend time with students and help prepare for class the next week. On Thursday we also had Treasure Hunts (walking around different places just listening to God and acting on what He tells you to do). Who knew that all these things would be some of the things that changed my life forever! I surely didn't.

Each day was a new challenge, that is for sure. The biggest challenge was teaching. When I heard I was teaching English I thought it would be like singing some little songs or reading some stories then asking questions. NOPE! That's not what it was at all. I was teaching English just like my Spanish teacher taught me Spanish, except I was teaching 2 classes for 2 hours each (so 4 hours straight all together). My first class had 15 students and my second class had 13 students. As a teacher I had to have lesson plans prepared and had to figure out how to cover units 6 - 12 with time left to review for the final test that would determine if they could go onto level 7. I was teaching them things like the verb to be and all sorts of other things that I didn't even know existed in the English world. They had a Student Book and a Work Book that we worked from every day. I would give them home work at the end of the day and sometimes they would even give presentations in class. The crazy thing was that I was teaching engineersres, other teachers, mechanics, doctors, and parents with kids my age.

Who knew teaching would be such a joy though. My class became my family and close friends. They always showed so much respect for me and could not wait to show me what they had learned. They were always inviting me over to their house. Some of them would bring me coffee every class. The girls always wanted to ask me about life in America. I got to reach into so many girls life because of teaching. I loved getting to even talk about my promise ring and how I had promised God to stay pure. Countless times I got to share the Gospel to students in my class and during class I got to teach Biblical lessons over and over again. The awesome thing was the more I shared about what I believed, the more they respected me. Through teaching I got to tear down stereo types they had created about Americans and Christians, and at the same time they tore down stereo types I had about Muslims. It was such a beautiful thing.

Working behind the coffee bar was my favorite. I loved getting to just randomly buy students coffee and them buy me coffee. They would always ask you how you were and make friendly conversation. Sometimes we would sing back there or make beats with all the random supplies we had. Other times my friend would start dancing back there. Either way, every day in the coffee bar was just full of fun and excitement. I also had some good talks back there with the people I worked with when no one was there to buy coffee.

Treasure Hunts were awesome because God showed me a lot about my life. I enjoyed praying for Jordan and starting to get God's Heart for those people. Also other people got to pour into my life a lot during those moments. Not only during treasure hunts though but just in general. I grew so much because of team meetings and people just encouraging me. God also used many people to just show me His character. As you are pouring yourself into other peoples lives, God really uses other people to pour Himself back into you. I really enjoyed experiencing that.

So over all my time as all of this happened, I slowly began falling in love with Jordan and the people. God did huge things in my life and as a result I didn't want to leave in the end. All of this hit me when we almost didn't get our visas to finish our time there. When that happened, it hit me that I was there for a reason and I had a mission to complete. From that day on Jordan became my mission and it was so wonderful. Though I am very happy to be back in America I will miss Jordan and I hope to come back one day.

Jordan

It's funny how when you ask God for something He gives it to you. For some reason, I never expect Him to do that. I also never expect Him to give me what I ask for the way He chooses to. This has been my Youth With A Mission DTS life story. My whole life I have asked God to teach me how to give Him my heart. Slowly He has been doing this. Even though I had been trying to do this for a while, He still didn't have all of my heart. The start of DTS is I guess what you could call "Mission: Give God ALL of my Heart." DTS started pulling out the heart that was inside of me and bringing it out into the open. I had nothing to hide it behind, which though it sounds scary, was one of the most amazing feelings ever. I learned what it meant to be open and how to trust. I learned how to let God pour into me so that I could pour into others. I learned how to give God my heart. This took God slowly taking away everything that I found more important than Him out of my life. How can you give God your heart if you have already given it to other things? YOU CAN'T! This is where Jordan really comes into play. God basically found everything that was "too" important to me and took it away. As much as I hated it, it was awesome! I learned how to depend on God and love Him no matter what. Dying to your rights is one of the most beautiful things that can be done. It sounds so awful and miserable but it's one of the best feelings ever. When you give your life to God, you feel so fulfilled. As odd as it sounds, if God were to take everything away from me, it would be amazing. Not because I would have nothing, but because as a result I would learn how to replace EVERYTHING with God. When you can learn how to do that, life becomes better than you could ever imagine. Even though God has not taken everything away from me, He has taken what I needed Him to take away from me. As a result, I feel so close to Him. And don't worry- He is giving me those things back, but now I know how to have those things in my life yet still give God the glory He deserves. Now of course I could never actually give God the glory He deserves and never actually give Him my whole heart. I mean, if He had my whole heart I wouldn't sin anymore. But I feel like I'm getting so close and I know that I'm trying my hardest. That is what is the beauty in all this. After seeing what all this has done for me, I want to push you to ask God to teach you how to give Him your whole heart. It may be a crazy journey that is really hard, but I can promise you that you will have no regrets when He has finished with you. So God I ask you, please keep on teaching me how to give you my heart.

Victoria