My last AZ update

My next Arizona update:

May 27, 2007

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!!! WHAT A TRIP!!!!!!! I am on the airplane headed back to TN right now. Just left Phoenix. I was actually sad to leave! I have made so many friends there, and I enjoyed my time there so much. What a lot of memories I made at that place! I cant believe it!

So my last week was a lot easier than the first! For one thing, moral improved greatly. As each of us got more comfortable with preaching, and the routines got more easy, people were happier. I had an interesting second week!

I made friends with Ben, in our group. We ended up spending a lot of evening time walking and talking and praying together. It is a sweet memory for me. It is so nice when two people can talk together about what God has done for them, study the Bible together and pray together. It really builds up the faith. Scott and I had some really nice times together too as we ate food together each night at his church and drove together each night. We would often have prayer groups at his church before we parted ways. He is a good guy—he will make a great pastor. His church sure loved him!!

Kasey continued to be an “interesting” person in our group. I figured him out, and had some pretty nice time’s together going and eating out, and laughing and joshing each other around. We also did some pretty wacky things like drive in the lawn at Thunderbird Academy, make an airbag alarm go off in the rental at a drive-thru window at Taco Bell (Hahahaha! That was SOO fun! You should have seen the lady’s face!) God really worked in his life in an AMAZING way on our trip. You should have seen the change in that guy! It was pretty phenomenal. He and I have become cool friends.

Our team leader was the sweetest lady! I am going to miss her this summer. She did a great job with our oft times challenging group of people. I think she was definitely the person for our team—God is good, and He knows what He is doing. I hope that somehow she is richly rewarded for her efforts. She was such an encouragement to me.

We took a day off to go and visit the Natural Bridges---the worlds largest natural bridge. Ben, Josie and I went…. It was SO cool! The rock formations in that cave were incredible! Ben and I spent almost 2 hours rock climbing. It definitely was some of the most extreme rock climbing I have ever done! Lol At one point I had to jump about 20 feet down and have him catch me—I was pretty scared! But it was so cool! We explored a cave with bats in it, and I walked under the waterfall (and got REALLY yelled at by the rangers, but oh well!) It was pretty cool place. Kasey and Scott went to Mexico that day—guess they had a pretty interesting time. Kasey got a HUGE sombrero—it is about 3 feet across! Haha You should have seen him wearing it onto the plane today (he couldn’t pack it).

This last sabbath was just amazing. First of all, Ben had one person baptized, and Kasey had 5 people baptized and I had 1 person baptized!!!!! And Kasey’s church hosted a huge feast in his honor, and gave him quite a few nice gifts including an Aztec blanket and a Spanish/English Bible. My church gave me a beautiful alarm clock that is engraved with my name on it (It is GORGEOUS!) and they had me come up and thanked me for all that I had done there. Then the really strange part was: Scott’s church gave him $150, Kasey’s church gave him lots of $$$, Josh’s church gave him money and my church gave me $300! I nearly fell over. These people are so generous! I feel like they gave us more than we gave them. My translators wanted my email, my hotmail and yahoo messenger ID, etc. I think the kids were more sad to see me go than anything. They are all so sweet. I do think that Kasey’s church was the best church—he has been asked to host a series of mtgs for all the phoenix spanish churches! Plus they want him to come back this fall and do a youth series of meetings! WOW! He is pretty amazed by it.

God really blessed me with my sermons. Each night I got better and better, and was able to speak to the different people in my audience. The last 2 nights God really spoke through me in a way I never realized. I had a call for people to come forward the last two nights, and I had 3 more decisions for baptism. (I think I had around 12 people ask for baptism!) I cant describe what it was like to preach on the Holy Spirit, the Remnant church, and heaven the last 3 nights. I was not one bit nervous (even though on sabbath I had over 100 people there) and I was able to walk around the platform, and really get into it, and not even look at my notes for the entire hour. I am still walking around in a daze that it has all really happened. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do this—I know that God really worked overtime and worked in spite of me.

I had several interesting happenings the last week including one night I ended up with no translator, and so a guy said he could read English and translate to spanish… HA! Well, my notes only make sense to me, and he read my notes exactly as I had written them (instead of translating what I was saying) and not only that, he didn’t know half of the English/spanish conversion words and people said it was AWFUL! They hardly even knew what the topic was that night… haha It was pretty bad! Lol (The topic was the 4 horses in Revelation 12) Another night I had a guy walk in and half way through my sermon I saw him reach down and pick up (what looked like) a rifle. Now this guy came every night pretty stone drunk, looked like he never showered or combed his hair in a year type of guy. He began playing with this thing, and running his hands over it. The lights in the auditorium were dimmed so I couldn’t see for sure what he was doing with it. But at one point he picked it up and kinda pointed it at me. My first reaction was: Run Carol for dear life!!! But then I thought, I would rather die preaching than running scared, so I just stayed. At the end of the sermon this guy walked out and only then did I realize that it was his cane that was carved EXACTLY like a rifle—even the tiny details were engraved on the cane. Haha Talk about an adrenaline rush! Lol Another night the senior pastor walked in (he pastors 7 churches and only makes it to the church I was at about 2 times a year.) This guy is the best evangelist in the state and the whole area. I got pretty nervous, but when I finished this sweet pastor just showered me with compliments, saying I was the best student preacher he had ever heard, and blah blah. I am sure he was just trying to make me feel good and all, but wow! What a nice guy!

So now I am heading back…. Boo hoo! We left Ben behind, he is staying and working at summer camp there in AZ. I was kinda sad to say good bye to him—we had a lot of fun together. I bought his return ticket with my credit card before I left, so he has a way back, which is good. Once I get back it is going to a flurry of running around to get ready to leave for Oregon. I am super excited about that.

Wow! What an exciting summer, and what an incredible experience I have already had! God is SOOOO good! I cant wait to preach again! I hope I don’t have to wait all the way until next summer! Lol This has been the best thing I have ever done!

Update: I got back to TN, and my car wouldnt start cuz I guess I left an interior light on. It took campus safety 20 minutes of jump starting the car to get it going again. Talk about stressful! lol Then I stayed at Mayri's for the night. Thank you Mayri!!! You are a so sweet! Then I went over to my new apartment and paid the downpayment and first months rent ($810!!). It is such a gorgeous apartment in a GORGEOUS location so close to campus. I am really happy. But it is kinda expensive. lol

Then about 3pm I headed out of TN! I am now at Days Inn in Kentucky. I am about to hit the road again. I am having a lot of fun! lol

AZ Update

WOW! What a few days! So on Sunday it was my first time to preach. I had about 30 people there. I was really nervous but they told me that I had a good translator. But she only lasted about 5 min--she didnt know enough English to translate. So between about 4 people translating and helping each other out, I kept going. Then about 15 minutes into the sermon this dead drunk dude runs up and starts yelling: "Lady! Why dont you speak in Spanish!!" He also was running around the church yelling horrid things in spanish (or so I was told) to all the church members. I just raised my voice and kept preaching while the pastor wrestled him outside. But he didnt stay outside! He came back in and began running around again yelling and causing a huge disruption. Some of the visitors began to walk out and I began to worry. I guess the pastor was worried cuz he thought the guy had a knife. So about four church members carried him outside. But he came in again! It wasnt until the pastors daughter (who was doing the majority of the translating) yelled "Shut up!" to him that he sat down and was quiet! So that was my first night... whew!

So the next night we almost got hit by a REALLY drunk driver who was driving backwards all over the 7 lane freeway and almost hit us. But we got there safe, and I had an EXCELLENT translator. She was SO good! The meeting went great!

So yesterday I woke up with the worse sore throat I have ever had-- I mean it was horrid!!! I couldnt talk or anything. Nothing I used managed to make it go away! So everyone was praying like crazy. About 20 minutes before I was to get up and preach my sore throat went away! I was so happy--but I was still running 102 degrees fever too. But I had 4 people decide to be baptized! I was so happy!!!

Today the moral in the group is down-- four of our team members almost ran off with the rented cars and wanted to go to CA and leave the whole preaching thing--people are upset with each other, and stuff. People are mad at the conference, mad at each other, mad at the program, etc. But I am reminded of the disciples, how they argued about who was the greatest, and who would sit on the right side of Jesus in heaven, etc. Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray Him, and He knew that Peter would deny Him. But Jesus never gave up! And God used these normal, every day fisher men to win souls. If God can use Peter, He can surely use me too!

Gods workings in Arizona

Well, the saga continues! I am not starting preaching until Sunday night cuz my pastor is just finishing a series of meetings today--and he had 21 baptisms today! But he said (through his daughter who is my translator) that he has over 40 people who are interested in baptism! I am really nervous about my series--I feel that there is a lot at stake at this church. The Lord needs to speak there, not me. I just need to be His messenger.

The devil continues to be very furious. He knows how to work too! He has caused so much conflict among our group, and last night I guess there was a big fight among some of the guys of our group late last night in the mens dorm. This caused everyone to be discouraged and down. Man, the devil is clever! If he cant stop us from getting here, he is going to try to keep us from wanting to preach! But, wow, God is incredible! I have seen Him working behind the scenes to encourage, bring people to the meetings, and work to reach people.

Scott Cronin had around 19 people come to his meeting last night, but for sabbath sermon he had around 30-40! An answer to prayer! We have seen the devil attack one of the girls computer and make it not work, but when she prayed over it, ta da! It worked! Pretty amazing!
This is being quite unlike any trip I have ever taken! I wonder what will happen tomorrow at my church when I get there to preach?! Pray for me everyone! It is so hard not knowing a word those spanish people are speaking. It would be really cool if I knew just 5 words of spanish! lol But I know that God is in control, and He is going to do some amazing things!

Arizona blog

Wow! What a crazy day to get here to AZ!

To start off with, I had to move out of my apartment by 5am on Tuesday morning to be ready to get on the shuttle going to Atlanta (which left at 5:30am from Hackman parking lot.) By mid afternoon Monday I had NO idea how I was going to get done. All of my friends I tried to call were either busy or didn’t answer their phone. My main problem was a 100 pound box I had to carry up that steep flight of stairs outside my apartment. After trying to call about 15 different people, I had to (inch by inch!) carry it up the stairs myself. And that was not the only heavy box I had to carry up those stairs! I had a total over 10 boxes (all of them over 30 pounds) to carry up those stairs. In the evening, Mayri came over to my apartment (THANK YOU Mayri! You are an angel!) I would have never lived if she hadn’t come and helped me! I got the last box out of the house and the last suitcase up the stairs at 4:55am on Tuesday—five minutes before I was to leave for Hackman parking lot!!!! I did a lot of praying that night—around 3 am I really didn’t think I was going to get moved out on time!

But that wasn’t even the beginning of my interesting trip! We got to Atlanta to find out that our flight was cancelled. So the 6 of us had to wait almost 12 hours in the Atlanta airport before we finally left at 7:30pm!! An airplane NEVER looked SO good! We got here to Phoenix only to find out that we needed to rent rental cars (we were told we would have church members transporting us to where we needed to go) and not only that, but that we weren’t going to the Mariott Hotel, but Thunderbird Academy! Well, driving in Phoenix when I hadn’t had any sleep for almost 3 days was quite the adventure, and it was quite the adventure when we got here to the Academy only to find out that they didn’t know that all 8 of us were coming (we joined the other 2 team members here in phoenix) when we arrived at the Academy at 11pm! (Or 2am EST… which is what our bodies that the time was!) Hmmm, more adjusting! I wonder what will happen next!

Arizona Day 3

So I have been here a total of 2 days now. WOWO!!! What a 2 days! SOOO many unexpected things going on! I think the devil is so mad that he would do anything to shut us up or harm us—anything to keep us from preaching. I found out that half of the churches didn’t even know we were coming. My pastor only speaks Spanish, so I couldn’t understand him, (but I finally met my translator, a cute 17 yr old girl, and that made my life a lot easier!), and my church is almost 75 min drive away from here!

Not only that, we are having a lot of moral problems here in the team. We had one team member run off with one of the rented cars and threaten to leave, and another team member refuse to talk for a morning (cuz he was made at another team member) and all sorts of craziness. Our team leader has never lead a team before and got super stressed out and yelled at another team member today, and last I saw, 2 team members were headed into downtown Phoenix tonight because they wanted to get away from here and all the conflict that is going on.

I have been learning how important adaptability is, and calmness. When everything is falling apart around me, and everyone is so stressed out and running around blaming everyone else for stuff, I have found that it is SO important for me to double my time with the Word and my prayer time. My one desire is that others (including my fellow team members) not see me, but Jesus in me. I am nothing, but Jesus is EVERYTHING. How I pray that I may be one with Him, and that I abide continually in Him—and never separate myself from the True Source of love, and peace and joy. I pray that I may be filled with His holiness that I have something to give to others. I need to be continually filled with His love, so that I can share it with others.

Ok it is 3am, gotta hit the bed! Had to stay up late to try to combine two hour long sermons into one 35 minute sermon!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone, I am here to announce that I am done with finals and I am still alive!!!!!! Whew! What a relief to have all those tests over with! And to think, no tests, or quizzes, or hundreds of pages of reading until end of August! Yipppeee!!! Of course I am sure I will be super busy this summer, but it is sure nice to be done with school for a bit.

My chemistry final was the hardest test I have ever had in my life! I dont know when I have been so nervous about a test! I will know how I did later on this afternoon. I know that I didnt know all the answers to all the questions, so that kinda worries me.

I will write more laterz after my nap. ;)