Traveling the "Road of Humility."

Today I was reading in “Compelled by Love” by Heidi Baker. Wow, what an amazing woman of God! She began to tell of a vision Jesus had showed her, saying, “I want to take you up to the mountain to a low place because the river flows to the low places.”
Being here in the Amazon I have seen the poorest of the poor, eaten their “delicacies”, and sat in the dirt with them. Through this entire trip, God has been calling me to a greater level of humility. I have begun to realize just how selfish I am, how self-absorbed I have become. After hiking miles into the jungle and spending the entire day with a family that lives completely off the land, my heart’s been broken. How could I possibly ever want again? How can I ever complain again? God is continuously telling me throughout this journey, “Go lower, and lower, and lower.”
Heidi continues in her book with this, “If you are in a low place and not concerned about your position, whatever trickling presence of God is in the room, you will be low enough to receive it.” I remember times of prayer in the House of Prayer at CFNI, where I just didn’t want to leave. The presence of God is so beautiful, so sweet, that leaving was just horrible. In Ezekiel 47, it talks about the healing waters and trees. Verse 12 says, “Along the bank of the river on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
I came here to the Amazon to give something to these people, but what good am I if I can only give them something five or six months out of the year? The trees in Ezekiel 47 bore fruit every single month of the year, why? Because they were soaked in His presence, daily drawing water from His waters. Heidi goes on to say, “You should want to be immersed in, and live inside, the very heart of God. From there, all fruitfulness flows…true apostolic ministry only flows from being immersed in the presence of God. This creates continuous supernatural fruitfulness.”
I must get lower, and lower; that I might be soaked continuously in His presence; that I may bear fruit daily; that the people I came to show Jesus’ love and to love would receive just that.

This week the team and I are headed to Islandia, Peru to do another purity conference as well as a VBS. We’ve been informed that the youth we will be dealing with this time are being influenced greatly by homosexuality. The spiritual darkness there is attacking the youth big time, and this will the be the hardest group by far we’ve had to deal with. In other words, I think God is really warning and telling me, “This is not the time, if ever, to be spiritually dry and fruitless.” Everyone of us has really been praying, and soaking in His Word. So please keep us in your prayers.
Right after spending a night and two days there, we’ll headed back out onto the river for Brazil. We’ll be there from Wednesday to Saturday, doing vacation bible schools with over 200 kids! It’s going to be an absolute blast!

This past week we went to Peru ministering to the youth and children. The first night we planned for the youth purity conference, however when the majority of the group was children we quickly had to change the service. When Paul spoke to Timothy in 2 Tim. 4:2 saying, “Be ready in season and out of season” he sure knew what he was talking about! Hahaha, we as a team have had to learn to be ready at any moment to switch things up, to preach, to do worship, or to do a VBS. I was asked to do the teaching at the purity conference, but when it was canceled that night I was so bummed! Hahahaha, I had prepared so much for that, and now nothing. But, soon the next day at the drop of a pin, we were asked to be prepared for the youth. I was already ready to roll! At the end I did a quick survey of how many of those youth had ever heard anything like that before, none of them raised their hands. Wow, that’s why we were doing this. This is why we were getting chewed alive by bugs and sweating our brains out. Because no one ever had, no one had reached out to them. I think Mother Teresa said it best, “When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. We have refused to be instruments of love in the hands of God to give the poor a piece of bread, to offer them a dress with which to ward off the cold. It has happened because we did not recognize Christ when, once more, He appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man numb from the cold, dying of hunger, when He came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home.”

Whew! What a busy, intense week!

This past week the team and I have been ministering to the local youth and children of Leticia, Colombia. It’s been awesome! Friday we did something a little different however. After a 20 minute drive outside of Leticia, we were dropped off at the side of the road on a trail. There were no markings, no signs, nothing but the trail leading off into the jungle. We were going to visit a family that was living off the land in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. The hour and a half hike in was incredible; hearing all the screeching sounds of the jungle was intimidating and exciting all at once.

Finally we arrived to an opening containing two small huts and a larger one. The entire family, including sons, their wives and children gathered into the larger hut with us. Then we began church! This family used to go to church in town, but due to the expensive journey (the cost of a taxi), they have been unable to attend. So we brought church to them. We began to sing songs they knew in Spanish, all clapping and singing in unison to the same, one true God. We then spent the rest of the day with the family, picking and eating fruits, coconuts and other jungle tasties. One of which included the “Mojojoi.” A very fat, short, white worm! Once again, I have eaten a worm…only this time it was alive! Ah! As my leader handed me the bowl of moving worms he told me, “They gave this delicacy to us and we must eat them. They will be very offended if we don’t.” I have to say, when they called telling us it was time for desert I didn’t expect this. I then got it out of my leader it was a joke, however I knew there would be a time where this might just be the delicacy, and I would need to eat it. After a long time of pondering, picking up the worms, eyeballing them, and more pondering…I finally said, “Ok.” Surrounded by cameras and camcorders from team members, I bit off the butt (one of the women demonstrated how to eat them), sucked the insides in, danced around squeeling a little, then finally put the rest of the worm in, and chomped down. “Eeeeeee!!!!!” Is all that could be heard on the recordings, hahaha! After the swallowing, and tongue being shown, it was all gone. “Whew…what’s next?!” Hahaha!

Yesterday we held our first VBS! Our entire theme was Noah’s Ark, and how we must have faith and obedience in God. We had an incredible time with the children, playing games, learning the story, eating snacks (which just so happened to be animal crackers!) and doing crafts! The kids loved it! Then in the end we brought them all back together and learned a memory verse, “ 2 Corinthinas 5:7, ‘For we walk by faith and not by sight.’” The kids learned how Noah listened to God’s voice and had faith and believe God.

Also that morning we held our youth purity conference with the older kids of the La Alajaba. We had a time of worship and prayer, then began with our video and teachings. It went really good! I then began to share with the girls some of the things God had placed on my heart, just being very open and honest. Wow! The presence of God became strong, and soon several of the girls began crying as we began to pray for them all. In the end I could tell several of them had been set free of some strongholds they’d been holding onto. God is good!!!

Then at the end of the night we headed to a local pastor, Julio’s church. We had been invited to merge our worship team in with his for the service that Saturday night. What a great service! Also the night before (Friday night) we’d also done a youth purity conference with the youth and worship as well. Whew! Busy, busy, busy! There is no shortage of ministry needs around here for sure!

Today we had another service at Julio’s church, where two other team members and I were able to worship together with the worship team. We sang several songs in English and in Spanish. It was so awesome to worship together with the body of Christ!

I’ve gotten to meet several amazing women at this new church, and am excited to have gotten so close so fast! One of which speaks a little English and wants to learn more, and help me with my Spanish. It’s just been really awesome the people God is placing in my life already, so encouraging!

Well! That’s it for now, Wednesday we head out up river into Peru about 6 hours! We’ll be doing some ministry there, so please keep the team in your prayers!

Thanks for all your prayers already! We have been shown so much favor in so many areas, that we know without a doubt it’s God!

God bless,

Heather

Riding the Amazon

Today it has been exactly a week since I’ve moved here to the Amazon. Everytime I think about it, it just seems so crazy to me…I’m living in Colombia, in the Amazon! For the past two years I’ve dreamt of this day, sometimes bittersweet, but mostly I was waiting with bated breath.

Tuesday, May 11^th Amazon Xpeditions brought down a team of Christ For The Nations Institute bible school students to the Amazon. For the past week we’ve prepared for the upcoming VBS here in Colombia and filled ministry bags with toys, clothing, medicine, bibles and school supplies. We’ve held two purity youth conferences located in Brazil and Peru. Today, being a holiday in Colombia, we took it as our opportunity to “recharge.” So we took a boat along the Colombian side of the Amazon into Macedonia, Peru for lunch, then to a hidden lake to spend the day swimming and relaxing. On the way back we stopped at a village in Peru to check on the water filtration system installed there within the past few months. The system pumps the brown, toxic water from the Amazon and turns it into clear, clean water for the village. In Islandia, Peru the system supplies enough clean water for over 3,000 people! At the moment the system’s pump however has broke down, leaving only less than half a tank of clean water left. AX is working on getting that fixed as soon as possible, as well as trying to supply more pipe to reach down to the river. As the dry season has come, the Amazon has gone down greatly already, ‘causing there to be a need for more piping. Please pray for God’s protection on all the water filtration systems installed in Colombia, Peru and Brazil. It is extremely important to the small communities and villages that clean water continues to be readily available.

The youth purity conferences have been fantastic! The outreach team from CFNI has done such a wonderful job teaching, giving testimonies and praying for the youth of the Amazon. Our first trip was to Brazil, were we spoke to about 70 some youth. As soon as the boys and girls were divided up and everything was brought out into the open, we could see that there was allot of girls (I was with the girls) that had experienced and delt with these issues of rape, molestation and premarital sex. After translating at times from English to Spanish, to Portuguese, to Tikuna, about 4 girls came up for prayer. I asked one of the girls what she wanted prayer for, she said for her sick grandmother. When I was in Africa as the assistant youth pastor, I had experienced many times how students would come up for prayer for their families or schooling when the subject had been totally different. It was their way of coming up for prayer, but not telling you what was going on. I had always become so frustrated with this, but then soon took it as an opportunity to pray over them, bless their lives and speak life over them. Often times during prayer I would receive a word for them, or be given an understanding of what was really going on.

So I was prepared for this young woman the other day. Before I began to pray for her, I told her I would pray in English, but agreeing with her about her grandma and such. I prayed for her grandma, then went into praying over her, her heart and her life. I soon knew that there was so much hurt in this young girl and my heart ached for her. I just began speaking in tongues and God’s presence showed up. I’m not sure how long it was, but when I said amen and looked at her, there were tears streaming down her face. She’d been touched by God! I longed so much to be able to speak Portuguese so I could talk to her, but I will for sure continue praying for her. Later, through my lack of Spanish and her’s as well, we got pictures and videos, names and ages. I will be going back to live there for the month of July and hope to be able to somehow talk to her and continue to impart into her life.

The youth conference in Islandia, Peru was amazing as well! At the beginning, the church members had each brought a different dish of food for our team. They set up a table in the front of the church and served us some amazing Peruvian foods!

Soon after we showed them a video on purity, gave a teaching and had a time for questions. Several people had questions and we answered them biblically.

Finally, we passed out bibles and purity bracelets then had a call to prayer. Almost every single person in there went up for prayer. Then we had a time of rejoicing and praises! It was so amazing! Praise God!

Here’s my bible verse for this week, “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ…” 1 Peter 1:6-7

“En lo cual os regocijais grandemente, aunque ahora, por un poco de tiempo si es necesario, seais afligidos con diversas pruebas, para que la prueba de vuestra fe, mas preciosa que el oro que perece, aunque probado por fuego, sea hallada que resulta en alabanza, gloria y honor en la revelacion de Jesucristo…” 1 San Pedro 1:6-7