Hello family and friends!

Before I share about this past week, I want to fast forward to Friday and what happened on that day. We, as a school, were in our lecture room, anxiously waiting for our leaders to share with us the location of our outreach. We had been anticipating this information all week long; it was a suspenseful time. The leaders of our school did not tell us straight up where we would be going; instead they sent us on a journey so that we could find our destination. We were put into pairs and given instructions to walk to different spots on the base and pray about different things, such as the nation we were going to and the people we would meet and the people who would be on our team. As my partner and friend, Pia, and I were walking through the forest we prayed earnestly to God about all these things. Eventually we came to the rest of the group, where they were already waiting and had the knowledge I desperately wanted to know in their minds. I heard the words “Welcome to Team Ethiopia” and I literally jumped for joy. I was so excited to learn that we would be going to Ethiopia for our outreach, and that we would be going together as one group! God has been so faithful to me in this and I feel honoured that he is giving us the opportunity to travel to Africa do be able to share his love. I am seriously so excited! But first, before I run away with my excitement, I need to remember to focus on the now and to not let myself be distracted by anything; I must keep my eyes fixed upon God. So tomorrow I leave for the Czech Republic for two weeks for mini-outreach and am excited for this trip. I find myself being more anxious about this two week outreach in the neighbouring country rather than our twelve week outreach in the heat of Eastern Africa. Once the three different outreach teams get back from our separate locations, we have three more weeks of lecture phase in Germany and then will be on our way to outreach phase already! We leave April 7^th and will return June 30^th. Then we have a few more weeks in Germany and the graduation date for our DTS is on July 20^th. Wow! SO much happening! So much excitement and experience and expansion of myself. It is all wonderful and I am so thankful to God for placing me here and for all he has done and will do; he is so good to his children.

Anyways, on that good note and with much more excitement in my heart than last time I wrote, I will tell you about my week. I am less exhausted, which is nice; I was able to sleep in today and that was definitely nice! We had Rogerio, a man from Brazil who is completely dedicated to God and to this base here in Germany, as our speaker this week. He spoke on spiritual warfare, and I am again astounded by how much I can learn from one person. Rogerio taught me a lot about more than just spiritual warfare, and he is an incredible encouragement and inspiration to me. I wish I could tell you all that I have learned but then you would have to read for days. I will try to just give you a few main points that really stuck out to me:

The biggest defense to the attacks of the devil is to be fully obedient to God in all that we do. We must not be ignorant of how the devil works, or else he will be able to fool us with less effort. We have to know that spiritual warfare is real and that it is on-going, but we have the victor of this war on our side, so as long as we stay connected to him, we will be alright.

God is always for us and has what is best for us. God values us not because of what we do, but because of who we are. When our identity is in him, we are connected to him. When we are connected to him, we can have a relationship with him. When we have a relationship with God, we are able to know what he is saying and be obedient to him and therefore stand strong against the ploys of the devil. I am learning more and more about who I am in God, and it is so exciting and lovely to learn of how he knows me. God is also challenging me to learn more of who he is. For how can I have an identity in someone I don’t even know? I need and want to learn to trust that God is who he says he is, just like Moses did. With that, comes spending more time with him in prayer and silence. Reading his Word is crucial as well, for the Bible is his words to us. The well of Scripture within me is very dry, so I have been trying to fill it by reading the Bible more and more. This past week, I along with my Bible reading group, memorized all of James 1. It was a good challenge, yet memorization comes easily to me, so I was able to conquer it with enough work. For a bigger challenge, I may push myself to memorize the whole book of James. I will let you know how that goes. There is so much within James that we can learn from, and I know this applies to whole Bible. There is so much to know, and I feel a thirst within me to know it all. As I continue to push myself to spend more time with God and his Word, I pray the for the same hunger within each of you.

There is so much more that I have learned (and more I want to share with you!). At this point, while I know I have learned so much, I realize that I still have so far to go and so much more to learn. But this is not scary nor discouraging, instead I am looking forward to all that God will teach me on this DTS and throughout the rest of my days that he blesses me with.

Prayers to keep myself from being distracted so that I do not miss out on what God has for me and prayers for focus and discipline are needed. I need to also just take one outreach at a time; I need to concentrate on what God has planned for me in Czech Republic, and then once I am back I can set my mind to Ethiopia. Please also pray for the people that my team as well as the rest of my school will meet in the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, and Germany. Prayers also for preparation of our hearts for mini-outreach and big outreach are appreciated!

If there is anything I can pray for any of you, please do not hesitate to let me know.

I miss home dearly, but I am loving being here. I am unsure of any consistent internet that I might have for the next two weeks, so I do not know if I will be able to update you while I am in the Czech Republic, but I will be sure to let you know of all my adventures with my team and with God when I get back to the Castle in Germany!

Take care, and may God bless.

Love always,

Fina