An update at last...

It is far beyond time for a wrap-up of my experiences in Egypt, Israel, and the Netherlands from the spring of 2007. To be honest, this will probably be more about the call of the Lord on my life than my time in the Netherlands. It will be a lot about the pieces the Lord has been putting together in my life and the process that has taken. So, I apologize in advance for the length and expanse of subjects I’m going to try to cover. Hopefully, the picture will be relatively more clear in the end.

The last leg of my journey with Dr. Pat in April, 2007, was to Hardewijk and Amsterdam, Netherlands. My team and I stayed in Hardewijk, a little Dutch town a couple hours outside of Amsterdam. Hardewijk also happens to be the hometown of one of the most distinct examples of part of the call on my life: Brother Andrew. Brother Andrew is a man that was a forerunner of smuggling the Word of God into closed countries. Now, he focuses on supporting and encouraging believers in the Middle East as well as building bridges between Christian and Muslim groups and being a voice of social justice in the region. He is a man whom the Lord sends on special missions in His Name. As passionate as he is, he is equally humble and down-to-earth. He even let me borrow his bike to tool around town! It was a joy for us to meet with him in his home, and it stirred my heart that someone had already done something similar to what I want to do. It felt good to know that although it’s not a traditional form of ministry, it’s something that the Lord is raising up people to do (and I’m not crazy for thinking outside of the box!).

After a couple of days with my team, I left them to spend a couple days in Amsterdam. My friend John, whom I used to work with at First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry and is a grad student there, hung out with me and we had a lot of good times. Two things I had noticed about the Dutch were their love for bikes and their very well-trained dogs. Thankfully, my neighbor at the YWAM base where I stayed let me borrow his bike to get around. If I lived anywhere else in the world, I think I would feel the most at home in Amsterdam. The green, the bike paths on every major street, and the laid-back culture is beautiful!

The neighbor on the other side of my room was Iranian man named David. My last night in Amsterdam was spent with him and a bunch of other YWAMers. As David and I walked back to the base after watching a movie at a friend’s house and he shared with me his story about applying numerous times for a visa to the US to be with his family. He was on his 7th attempt and in a state of real confusion about his role at the YWAM base and the Lord’s purposes in delaying his entry to the US. He also shared about how Jesus tends to communicate to Arab people through dreams and visions and is widely accepted as a righteous prophet who healed the sick. To me, it was a divine appointment after coming from Israel and Palestine to meet a man from that region with a faith in the Lord and a hope for Jesus to be revealed in the Middle East as the healing Savior.
After my return to Minneapolis, a large number of new friends began traveling through. Two of these friends, Ben and Patricia were organizing a camp out in Montana to connect their traveling friends with one another. It was a joy and a privilege to help them make plans and pray for “Christian Summer Camp 2007”. We traveled to the mountains with a group of 12 people and made it only creaming one deer along the way. The whole week was amazing! I made 30 new friends from all over the US and got to see God move in people’s lives in ways they’d never experienced before. It was an adventure with the Lord that I will also never forget.

That fall, I began the Masters of Divinity program with an emphasis in Global and Contextual Studies at Bethel Seminary. Although I had cut down working to four days per week and was only taking two classes, the busy schedule was incredibly difficult for me. Trying to shift my brain to student mode after teaching the high school level for 4 years was rough. There’s no way I would have made it through except for the grace of God – for real. As the school year progressed, my job allowed me to cut down to just three days per week, another huge blessing. I realized that though I have a heart for reaching out to people from all over the world, I wanted to shift my focus to strengthening and encouraging those people. Despite the fact that I changed my emphasis to Pastoral Counseling, I still didn’t feel whole-hearted about pushing through what looked like would amount to five years of study. Then in the spring, I took a class in Spiritual Direction and it seemed like 2 of the biggest pieces of my life suddenly fit together! These were the pieces of intercession, set on fire particularly through my experiences at the International House of Prayer, and that of ministering to other believers. I cried, I was so blessed by the revelation.

(For a definition of Spiritual Direction, please visit: http://www.sdiworld.org/what_is_spiritual_direction2/what-is-christian-spiritual-direction.html )

With that said, I also realized that my life needed reorganization so that my top priorities – Jesus, prayer, and my house – could reclaim their rightful places in my life. So here it comes: I quit my job, put school on hold, and went out of town for a month. Ok, the going out of town part was mostly for enjoyment, but it sure was incredible. I went from Minneapolis to Glacier National Park, Seattle, Oregon, and finally to northern Idaho for Christian Summer Camp 2008. Now, I’m starting a new job as a tutor and a new role at my church as the head of prayer ministries. I'm also in the process of applying for the Steiger Leadership School on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand. Please pray for me as I try to reorder my life, begin a new season of work (I need another job, too), and trust the Lord to make my steps sure.

Photos can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hjael79/sets/