post #200!

this is my 200th post on here! kinda cool.

we are watching Deadliest Catch - Behind The Scenes right now. its about the cameramen filming Deadliest Catch. just watching the greenhorns and seeing them get sea sick makes me nauseous. haha ugh thats a horrible feeling to be sea sick.

in other news, this morning i gave my testimony at the church! it was about 30-40 people. it was a lot smaller than they usually have because of the weather and also because of sickness. i was ok with it being smaller. :) i talked about the fingerprints of God and how i love taking time to look back over my life and see how He has led me from place to place, even in the bad times. i felt such peace leading up to it and during it! praise God! afterwords, i just thought about all that i have done over the past 4 months that i never thought i would be able to do - public speaking, leading worship, etc. how am i doing it? the only answer is God. it is by His strength and His grace that i am able to do it. i love relying on His strength in my weakness!!!!

tonight we will go to the local YWAM base and do a church service there. im stoked to go - i have quickly discovered that when you meet fellow YWAMers, there is an instant connection. friendships come naturally. its so encouraging and fills me.

oh! dude! so yesterday we went to Talsi to visit a safe house for children and their moms. i loved getting to play with the kids - as crazy as they were! it was so much fun! it tore me apart to not be able to really communicate with the moms. there was such sadness on some of their faces and i just wanted to talk with them so badly. afterwards, we were hanging out in the bus station and there was a woman there who saw our guitar and found out we were Christians and she was also a Christian. she was so excited that we were there and asked if we would sing worship. there was a man in the corner of the room and (in Latvian) she stands up in the middle of the room and shares her testimony with him! then she joined us in singing. she had to leave, and then the guy had to leave but he said he would be back. believe it or not, he came back and sat down! Elizabeth, one of our translators, continued talking with him and he ended up inviting Jesus into his life! it was amazing!!!!!!!!!! i am so stoked how God threw that opportunity into our lap!

that woman is inspiring and our team could learn a lot from her. to summarize in 1 word: INITIATIVE.

when we were flying to Estonia, i asked God what He wanted to teach us on outreach. the one and only thing that came to mind was 'CHOICE' in big, bold letters. it quickly became clear in Estonia what that meant. without bags for 10 days, attitudes sucked. over and over again, from different outside sources, we were reminded of how we have to choose the attitude we have in every situation. we choose how we react. we choose if we give God our all in every situation or if we just do enough to get by. choice.

i feel like the word for our time in Lativa is 'initiative". it is greatly lacking in all of us on our team. i am trying to allow God to build confidence in me to take initiative. i dont do very good at it. but im trying to grow in this area.

keep it real.
-jen

PS i apologize for wrong punctuation - still havent quite figured out all the keys on the Latvian keyboard. :)