This might be a thing of just the cultures I grew up in, but there was something I really love about the Mexican culture I grew up in, and I won't even limit it to Christian Mexicans because this was pretty common among everyone (because everyone was Catholic pretty much). Everyone thanked God. It was so common for people to just naturally add in "gracias a Dios" to the end of whatever they were saying. Gracias a Dios translates as "Thanks to God" so my grandmother would always say "We arrived safely! Gracias a Dios!" or "Gracias a Dios, I got my paycheck" It was even the little things like getting her paycheck on time. Another saying that was popular is "Primero Dios" which would translate as "God willing" everything is modified by saying if it's the will of God. People would say "We'll be there on Thursday, primero Dios" or "Primero Dios, I'll get this job" and I really loved it. I loved a culture where things were so strongly based off what God wanted, and things happening as they were God's will to happen. It's so easy for us to be thankful and happy with God when things are going our way, it's so easy to want to be with Him when we feel things are going as they should, but what if we forget to even do that? What if we forget to thank Him and spend time with Him when we're happy, What happens when we're down and out?

Luke 23:31 "For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" This is one of my favorite verses and it goes pretty good with one of my favorite analogies during DTS. There was an analogy that Peter Iliyn told us, he told us that sometimes we have to be like trees. When a tree is dry, its roots go deep into the land searching for water to feed itself. It goes as far as it has to go to get that water so it can survive, and when it finds that water, it's such a strong tree with big ol roots. We have to be like that with our faith, when we're dry we have to search God and feed ourselves or our faith and our spirit will rot. When we find God in those hard times though, we're gonna have such strong roots, our faith will be so strong.

In Matthew there is the story of when Jesus calms the storm. Jesus and his disciples hop on a boat, Jesus falls asleep and then a storm starts up. His disciples freak out and shout out to Jesus "LORD! Save us! We are perishing!" Haven't we all be in those shoes? When we're scared and we shout out to him "DON'T YOU CARE? SAVE ME! I'M IN TROUBLE!" Whether we can't find a job, we're worrying about finances, somebody close to us died, a lost relationship, whatever it might be. We lay there and without realizing it, we doubt God. We shout to Him "LOOK! Help me! Everything is going wrong! DON'T YOU CARE? WAKE UP!!!! LOOK!!!" like the God who created the universe, the God who knew you by name before you were even conceived is going to answer back "Oh snap! What's up Mickey? Forgot about you, let me see, oh dang haha my bad, you really do have it kind of bad down there, hang in there bud, sorry lol" God is the ultimate looker, he knows what you're going through. He understands your pain, your frustration, your anxiety, your fear. His son dying on the cross was his way of telling you "me too" when you go through troubles. Jesus answered the disciples by saying "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" and then he he rebuked the wind and the sea and there was great calm. GREAT calm, snap y'all, be still and know that He is God, Psalm 46:10. He WILL calm the storm, things will get better.

I'm going to tell you something we all hate hearing, everything happens for a reason. Things can only happen if God allows them to happen, and all things that God allows serve a purpose. Hosea 6:1 says "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds." and then in 6:3 "As surely as the sun rises, he will appear" You can count on God to take care of things, to help you through your troubles just as you can count on the sun rising in the morning. A lot of times it's hard to see what God's plan is during the hard times but we always look back and go "Oh, well I learned this and this. Silly me, God definitely had his hand in that!" I encourage you to ask God to help reveal his plan for you during your hard times. When you feel down and out, search God like you've never searched him before. Satan thinks he's winning when he brings us down, but when Satan attacks me, guess what I do? I search for Jesus, I talk to my daddy. Satan thinks he's furthering his own plan by attacking me, but he's just helping God's plan by forcing me to talk to God, strengthening my relationship with Him. When I got fired from my job, Satan was laughing, but getting fired from my job forced me to do my DTS and I fell in love with God like I never thought I could. When I wasn't getting money in for outreach and I was freaking out and starting to wonder if God had abandoned me, Satan was laughing, but I went and cried out to God on the beach and broke down the walls I had around my heart and allowed myself to get close to God and really just allow God to wrap his arms around me. When Jesus died on the cross, Satan was laughing, but now we are saved, now we are FREE, now we can look forward to an eternal life in Heaven. So really, Whose plan is Satan furthering?

There was a poem one of our teachers read to us, from memory it was along these lines. A man had a dream where he was walking along the beach with Jesus. He saw different parts of his life flash across the sky and he could see footprints in the sand during each part of his life. He got pretty angry because he noticed that during the hard times, the times where he felt down, there was only one set of footprints along the beach. When he felt sorrow, when he felt defeated or when he felt pain, there were only his footprints in the sand. Angry the man shouts to God, "WHERE ARE YOU?! You promised me to always walk with me, you said if I followed you, you would never leave me. When I needed you the most, Why weren't you there for me? You abandoned me!" that is when the Lord gently replied "You only see one set of footprints because I'm carrying you, you only see one set of footprints because I'm protecting you, I have you in my arms, I'm keeping you safe"

Isaiah 41:10 "Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." Fear not, God is with you, always. He will strengthen you.

First, I'm adding a photography section so if you haven't seen some of my photos I'll be adding my favorites there but if you have me added on Facebook you can check them out in my photo albums. I'll also be adding a section where I'll keep people updated on my goals, what I'm working towards and what I have planned for the future, that kind of stuff. Also feel free to leave me some comments with what you thought, I love hearing feedback, I love writing so this is my practice! A lot of these blog posts, until I finish up DTS, are going to be just sharing what God taught me during the DTS, so it might come off as preachy, but that's not my intent. If you feel like I'm preaching to you, then I guess you're aware of what conviction feels like, just kidding :) Near the end of DTS, during outreach and even after DTS  and just being home and doing a lot of reading online and listening to podcast I've learned a lot. This wont necessarily be what I learned on THAT week and THAT week only, because God has continued to show me new things regarding the subject. And to be honest, I didn't learn much the first few weeks of DTS. It wasn't until later in the lecture phase when I really started devoting myself to God and caring about Him. That's when everything started to sink in. I was completely lazy and felt like DTS was just a way for me to kill some time so I didn't care that much at first, then at the end and during outreach God just hammered everything back into my mind and it all started to make sense. It was almost like DTS was a puzzle and God was showing me where all the pieces went, it was amazing.

The theme for our first week of lecture was The Father Heart of God being taught by Jack Kody. I can see why this would be the first theme during DTS, at least now I can. If I really would have understood what Jack was trying to teach us this week, my DTS experience would've started off on a much better path than it did. It didn't hit me how important it is for me, for all of us, to understand (or try to understand) the love that God has for each and every single one of us. Of course, with my background I always thought I loved God and God loved me, it was just something that was engraved in my brain growing up in a very Christian family. Sometimes I think that's why I walked away from church in my teens, I wanted to figure out what I believed, not what I was taught to believe, but that's a story for another time. I never truly tried to figure out what God's love meant, or accepted its meaning. During Jack's week he gave us an exercise to do that made me realize I had no idea who my God was.

I'd encourage you to do this exercise as well, it's a lot of fun. Jack told us to imagine we're just relaxing in our room, doing our usual thing. We go to our window and look out to see a man across the street looking at us and starts making his way for our door, and then we realize it's God. God is making his way to knock on the door of our house. How do you react? What goes through your mind? What really hit me about this exercise was how much it matters what your reaction is. Your perception of God greatly affects how you read His word. After all, we all know the Bible is the word of God, so when we read it, we're going to read it differently if we think a God who loves us wrote it for us than if we think a God who invokes fear wrote it for us. After the exercise a few people stood up and shared what they had put down on their paper. Some said they would be filled with excitement! They would invite Him in for coffee and share stories and ask questions. Others said they would panic and clean up their room so it looks nice for God. Some said they'd run out the door and not even wait for him to knock. I looked down on my paper, What would I do? Run, damn. I wrote down that I would be overwhelmed with fear and shame. This was big for me for two reasons, it revealed what I thought of God, and it revealed what I thought about myself and where my life was. I rarely thought twice about what I was doing, I wasn't hurting anybody so who cares? God does. And I realized that, finally. The only thing that kept me from feeling completely crappy is that another student stood up and read his, he also said he'd be filled with shame. Cool, I was normal, I wasn't this unholy kid at a Christian missionary school full of holy people.

I realized I don't need to feel shame when I come to God, I don't need to be afraid of God. God loves me, unconditionally. UNCONDITIONALLY. I really had to allow myself to believe that. One time during outreach there was a street dog, it was a really cute puppy, but it was freaking gross. It was dirty and had some wounds, I did not want to touch it. My friend Paul didn't care though, he picked that sucker up and pet him, and made that puppy feel loved, he didn't throw a rock at it or hit it like some of the neighborhood kids had done, he loved on it. And something that silly allowed me to get a better picture of my situation. I'm gross, we all are. Nobody is perfect, we all sin, we're all disgusting inside, just like that puppy. And when we're out in the world, the Devil takes advantage of that, he throws rocks at us, he kicks us, he fills us with lies. God is always there waiting though, He doesn't care how dirty you are, you are clean through Him. He's always there to pick you up, hold you in His arms and love on you, unconditionally. We're lucky to have a God that cares that much about us, a God that doesn't relent until he has us safely in his arms. How great is it to know that the same God that created everything around you, the trees, the earth, the planets, the universe, loves and cares about you so much that he came down to Earth to be one of us to show us just how much He loves us. 

This reminds me of a story, I don't know how popular it is, but I heard a pastor telling it to somebody, the gist of the story is this. There was a man who worked at a turntable station for trains. His son LOVED trains, so he decided to bring him to work with him so he could watch the trains go by. Later in the day, all of the sudden he notices his son out on the tracks, his son is stuck, he can't get out. In the distance he hears a train coming towards his son, but remember he has control of the turntable! If he turns it so the tracks go off to the right, he will save his Son, but the train will go off a cliff and crash, killing everyone on board. He has another option, leave the turntable where it is and allow the train to continue through safely, killing his son but saving a train full of hundreds of people. It's a hard choice, that's his son out there, his flesh, his baby, his kid, his life. That train could be full of disgusting people, it could be full of thieves, rapist, pedophiles, adulterers, liars, murderers, anything. What would you do? Would you save your son? or Would you allow your son to die in order to save the lives of all these hundreds of people? "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16. Hearing this story rocked my world, of course you can kind of see where the story is going from the beginning, but crap man, God really loves us. This is when the cross finally started meaning something to me. How great is our God? We can mess up a million times and we can come to Him and ask for forgiveness without shame. God always forgives us and will never stop loving us, not even for one second.

Two different Greek words were translated as "love" in the New Testament, and they are more specific than our English word "love." One of them is agapao and agape. "Agape means affection, benevolence, good-will, high esteem and concern for the welfare of the one loved. It is deliberate, purposeful love rather than emotional or impulsive love." The part of that definition that I love is "welfare of the one loved" God wants to take care of us, protect us. That's who He is, He is our protector, our savior, our healer, our counselor, our guide. Paul tells us a little bit about love in 1 Corinthians 13 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." God is love. Love never fails, God never fails. How great is our best friend, our pal, our father. How great is our God?

I'm in love with God and God's in love with me.

So I decided to join the bandwagon and make a blog to keep you all up to date. I didn't think it was that neccesary at first but now that I'll be heading on outreach and wont have much time to be on facebook, or atleast I dont think I will, I figured I'd make a blog so that I could post some stuff to keep you guys as up to date as I can. I really wish I would have started the blog when I first got here so that I could go a bit more in depth on what I've been learning and how each week has been, but oh well, I'll be able to do that for outreach now. I'll also be able to post a ton of pictures, I decided to dust off my camera and start taking some pictures.

I'll give you guys a quick summary of my time here. It's been amazing. I've learned so much not just about God and his character, but also about myself. First and foremost I've never felt this close to God in my life. I feel that right now I have an excellent relationship with God and it's all due to this experience. I've gotten a way better understanding of God's love for us during my time here. Back home I wasn't involved with the church at all and the time here has just been so nice. It's almost like Jesus was this childhood bestfriend I had that I talked to every now and then and since I've been here it's just been like this reunion with Him and I love it. I am so glad I ended up coming here, this is one of the best experiences of my life and it has really reignited the fire in my heart for missions. I cannot wait to see what outreach has in store for me.

A quick word on my finances. I came here without enough money to pay for the school, I came with the faith that God would provide the calling I felt he gave me. I owe about $769 still for lecture phase and $3,000 for outreach. I need to have this money by... soon. The school is looking to start booking flights in a week. If you could help me with prayer I would greatly appreciate it. If you would like to make a donation to me you can e-mail me at [email protected] or contact me on facebook.

I have the story on how I ended up coming down here to do my DTS up, I'll have my full testimony posted soon.