I graduated DTS!! I can't believe it has been almost 8 months since I first stepped foot on Norwegian Soil.  It has been an incredible life changing experience, full of spiritual & personal growth, as well as challenges.  I have learned so much about myself, who God created & intended me to be, and the areas I still need to work on.  It has been humbling, it has been confidence building, faith confirming, patience testing, life changing. The best 8 months of my life. I have encountered not only the Holy Spirit, but I have met people who have become some of my closest & most trusting friends.  I have been to two different continents, four countries, and have increased my passion for travel & missions. I witnessed 14 salvations, the restoration & healing of a man on the streets of Chiang Mai, my heart was broken for the Shan refugees, & it grew with love for the kids at the school.  As I get ready to go back home, I am in awe of God's faithfulness, His provision, but most of all His eternal, abounding, love as well as His heart for every nation, for every individual.  I feel so privileged, so grateful, that I serve such an incredible Lord & Savior, one who allows me the responsibility of bringing His story to the unreached, one who shares His heart with me, & breaks my heart for what breaks His.  I am so in love with our God, so in love with missions, and am so ready to dive into what He has planned for me next.  Great is Thy Faithfulness.

Our Amazing Team!

We have been back in Norway for two weeks now! Which has been wonderful, seeing all of our friends and some family, & living in a big community setting again has been a huge blessing:) We were welcomed back with a delicious breakfast and lots of warm smiles & hugs!  We then had three days off to get back in the swing of things, and recover from jet lag.  That was really struggle for me and it still is a little bit.  We found out the you go through Post Adrenaline Stress because while on outreach you are constantly trying new things, meeting new people, going to new places, it's a constant rush of excitement, and when you come back from outreach, you have time off, you're able to relax, but your body has no idea what to do with itself because it has been running on adrenaline for so long! So I will have times where I am super energetic and then I will just crash and have to go take a two hour nap.  It is a lot better now, I have energy until about 8:00 or so and then I feel incredibly exhausted, and have to go to sleep if I can.  but one thing that is great is that it is normal!:) It takes about 3-4 weeks to wear off, so that is comforting!

The first week we had debrief, we talked about all the things that happened in outreach.  We discussed the highlights, the disappointments, expectations, and just everything we had experienced over the last 9 weeks.  We then ended it with communion which was very nice!

Now, since Tuesday night we have been on mini outreach in a town called Burr, and are staying in Johanne's house, one of the students.  We have gone to a sports meeting called Krik, which is like fellowship of Christian athletes, we met with Johanne's friends and just invested more & tried to build more friendships.  We also went around in teams in the town to see who we could bless, and that was a lot of fun.  Tonight we will go to a youth meeting, where I will preach!! so please pray for me:) and then on Sunday we will go to two church meetings, and Monday it is back to Grimerud!

The last week of Grimerud is sharing stories from outreach with the people of the base, having our graduation, and having a party to celebrate the end of DTS! We will also be working a little bit with a teenage group from the churches who will be going to Fang, Thailand for a short term missions trip!

Then! After eight incredible, life changing, adventurous months, I will board a plane and fly home to my beautiful Colorado, where I will get some much needed R & R with my parents, brother, and other friends and family.

However! The adventure is not over yet! I will be continuing to serve the Lord in Norway in Youth with a Mission with the Justice Discipleship Training School, so please continue to read & share my blog, as well as pray for me! :)

My updates in the next month may be few, as I will be spending as much time as possible off of social media and instead with my wonderful family and friends at home.  But check back on May 10th for my next destination.... :D

A few of us were sitting together one night, talking about God, asking & trying to answer the hard questions. We were having really great conversations, just enjoying the time to be free to share, free to ask.  We decided to start praying into what God had for us in these next weeks in Thailand.  When we were finished we asked if anyone wanted to share,  the son of one of the ladies in our team, spoke up.  He said he was reminded of a dream he had of a lady with a green face.  He thought she was Asian maybe old, the details however were a blur.  We were grateful that he decided to step out in boldness to share, but we weren't sure what would come of "The lady with the green face".

As a group we decided to pray into it, just to see what the Holy Spirit would reveal to us.  As we were praying some of us got the word 'witch craft', I personally heard "You will meet her in Fang".  So we wrote these things down and kind of left them be.  We went to Fang, and for 5 weeks, no green lady, and after all what is the likelihood you are going to meet an old lady with a green face? We thought that maybe it was supposed to be a metaphor for the the spiritual warfare going on in Fang, but nothing prominent came up.

We then traveled from Fang to Tachileik in Myanmar. It was one of our last days of outreach and we were at a children's home for the day, sharing bible stories and teaching English.  I glanced out the window and saw an old woman just standing outside looking in.  I asked the person next to me who she was but they were as oblivious as I was.  We then went outside, where the sun was shining, and then I saw the woman again. The group who had prayed over this were standing together and one said "She has a green face! It's a lady with a green face."  We decided we had to find out her story.

It turns out that she was the pastor's mother.  She was part of a people group who were abused by the military.  The girls who were targeted would tattoo their whole faces and tattoo tribal marks on their legs to scare away the soldiers because the soldiers then thought they were involved with witch craft & filled with evil spirits.    

As I was praying over what this meant, how although we had heard an interesting story we hadn't connected with this woman.  God then revealed to me that it's purpose was to build & strengthen our faith.  A teenager who wasn't even in dts, he had the boldness to step out and to share this picture, and we decided to pray over it.  God was honoring our obedience by rewarding us with an incredible story that grew our faith in Him.  I am sure the percentage of seeing a lady with a green face after you received a picture and prayed over it is very low and highly unlikely.  What an awesome testimony of the reward in obedience!