Happy New Year!

“From His abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.” (John 1:16)

This morning I was thinking about how much God has blessed me over the past year and even just in the past week! Another week in Thailand has flown by and we had an amazing time celebrating the new year along with another YWAM team from Australia and the Abba House kids!

Some of the blessings of this week:

1. Sharing the love of Christ with 150 kids

We went to the kids’ school on Thursday morning and had the opportunity to play with about 150 kids and tell them about our Saviour! We sang songs, played games with them, did a Christmas skit, and Ivy shared with them about Jesus. This is pretty incredible since Thailand is only about 1% Christian – pray that these seeds will produce fruit and that these children will be drawn to Jesus.

2. Rich times in God’s word!

On Wednesday, I shared during the Bible study time that we have each day with the guys here. I spent a lot of time preparing and spoke from Ephesians 2:1-10 about who we are in Christ – alive, raised up, and seated with Christ! Through this time of preparation, God has given me an incredible hunger to know Him more through really studying His word so I’ve been digging into the book of Ephesians and it’s been amazing! God’s word is alive!

3. Great internet connection

That sounds lame but it is seriously a blessing! It is helpful in communicating to friends and family, updating my blog, researching ideas for English lessons, studying the Bible, and googling random things that I NEED to know right at that moment! Thank You, Jesus, for internet!

4. Worship!

On New Years Eve, a few of us girls had been talking about how we missed Monday night ministry nights in Hawaii. Ministry night is always an amazing time of worship and focusing in on Jesus – and we always come away from it with increased passion and excitement about how God is moving! God knew how much we needed that so on the same day that we were talking about it, He blessed us with an incredible time of worship. That night, we had a worship service at Abba House and the music time was led by two of the guys from the YWAM Australia team. It was exactly what we needed when we needed it – God is SO good! He knows us and loves us so wonderfully. :)

5. Agape House

Our team and the Australia team headed over to Agape house (a home for kids with HIV/AIDS) today. I spent the morning hanging out with a beautiful little girl named Miley – we had so much fun together with piggyback rides, playing on the swing set and see-saw, a game of ‘duck, duck, goose’, and letting Miley style my hair (it was an interesting look…but I’m not sure that it really suited me).

6. Amazing, fun, crazy team

My team is such a blessing! They are so fun and crazy and we are always laughing at/with each other! We make up random songs and dances and raps together and have quickly been learning and picking up each other’s mannerisms and sayings. “Do you know what I mean?” (Marissa) “Ice-cream?... What?... Who said that?” (Abbie) “Oh mamachkee!” (Gulya)

7. Cuddling with kids

Oh my! Between going to the school and Agape house and being with the kids at Abba house, I’ve had so much good cuddle time this past week! I love running around and playing with all the kids, but I also love just holding their hands or sitting with them in my lap and tickling their backs (or bellies – lots of laughs!).

I am so blessed! God is so good! I am overwhelmed by how He has blessed us in so many ways both physically and spiritually.

Since yesterday, this line from a song has been stuck in my head: "Let us fall more in love with You." This is my prayer for myself in this next year and also for you: that you would fall more deeply and passionately in love with Jesus in 2011. He has blessed us abundantly and is so worthy of our worship and devotion and love!

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)

Happy New Year!