Meet the Team: Alexander S.

Alexander Sorensen. 17. Denmark. 

A faith- filled, zealous man of God. Though he is the youngest one on our team and hasn't even graduated high school yet, he is a man that desires to go after the heart of God with everything in him. He loves to be challenged in the things of the Lord, Will Farrell movies and anything Nutella. 

The day of thanks.

Well I know, it's a day late. but Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great day yesterday, with a lovely thanksgiving lunch with our entire school and some guests. There were about 160 people in attendance with six huge turkey's, heaps of stuffing and mashed potatoes, yams, green bean casserole and so much more. I left the day not feeling overly full, which was a great choice in my opinion. Later that evening, we had time of beautiful community with our fellow staffers, including a time of worship and possibly the best apple pie i have ever had. And if that weren't enough we have thanksgiving number two, at our home tonight. Let the thankful meals continue!

Even though the culture I am part of spends time being thankful both on a corporate and individual level daily, I still love that we have a holiday set apart in our nation to enjoy food, one another and a time of thanksgiving in some form or another. It's really what the Acts 2 church was all about, and for one day our entire nation takes part in it. Praise the Lamb.

I am thankful for my salvation, thankful that I have been adopted as a daughter into the Kingdom of heaven. I am thankful to be married to my very best friend. I am thankful to be part of a organization that listens to the word of the Lord, for a community that is all about seeing His kingdom come to earth. I am thankful for discipleship, both being discipled and refined and getting to disciple. I am thankful for every person that supports us, both financially and in the place of prayer, and for the radical provision of the Lord. Just to name a few...

We hope your day was filled with the joy of giving thanks to the Father in all things. Many blessings! 

Meet the Team: Emily J.

Emily Jones. 21. California. 

A women with one of the purest of hearts, I have ever known. She has one of the greatest friendships with Jesus I have ever seen and loves to be with Him always. She is one of the most fun loving gals who loves wild adventures with friends, photos of nature and a good cup of tea. 

Get ready NYC.

So I just thought we would share a brief little update about our team, with prayer points as we prepare to go in just a few short weeks. We have officially booked our plane tickets and for our entire team! We leave Kona on US Airways, the 19th of December and arrive the evening of the 20th at JFK airport. We are still trying to hunt down housing for the initial first weeks, but we do have it for the rest of our stay.  We as a team are still praying for a release of finances, with about three of our girls praying for $3,000 to come in, not knowing where it will come from and for us we still are looking at about $5,000. We all have so much faith for the Lord to absolutely do what is impossible to get us there. But please pray with us and trust the Lord for it with us! Or if you would like to give, please let us know. 

These are the ways you can be praying for us at the moment:

1. Visas- The two men on our team have just applied for visa extensions, which they need in order to stay in the US. Please pray for favor on them as they apply and get it settled. 

2. Housing- which I shared about already, we are looking for a low rate during the holiday season which can seem next to impossible, luckily that is not so for our God. Please pray that we would have clear direction of where to look around and the Lord would provide the perfect thing for our first few weeks.

3. Financial breakthrough- We love that the Lord always provides, but we would love if you would partner in prayer for us as we trust the Lord for all the finances for our team. 

4. That the Lord would continue to prepare the way for our team! We are trusting Jesus to break into hearts in a new and mighty way in NYC during our time there. Pray even now for an out pouring of His spirit over the city. 

My dear friend Vanessa made this little gem this week on her iPhone! It was a quote from David Gava, our speaker that is challenging us all to the core. 

who are you?

I have tons to share with you about our speaker from last week Eric, but for now I wanted to post a brief little bit from our speaker this week called David Gava. This man walks in wild faith, has crazy stories of provision and healings and miracles because he knows God commanded us to do so. He is wildly increasing our capacity of faith this week. One thing he shared yesterday was that God always speaks to our potential. When He talks to us, it's at the level of where we could be rather than where we are in that moment. And then, the loving kindness of God leads us to repentance and we realign our hearts with how He sees us. So when we listen to the Father, when we walk closely with Him and chose to put on the mind and likeness of Christ like we are taught, we should never not know who we are because we have our maker telling us at all times, our part is just to listen. 

David also shared with us four parts of what defines us. How God sees you. How you see God. How you see yourself. How you view and value people. 

Meet the team: Nikki

Nikki Scales. 20. Texas.

A very wise and honoring women of faith. She is down for anything as long as Jesus is being glorified, and ready to see people walk in deep levels of freedom. She is a trustworthy friend to everyone, and absolutely loves cute, cuddly animals. We love her. 

Meet the team: Emily M.

Emily Meuiner . 19. Kentucy. 

Emily is a fun loving, totally unique individual that we are just so blessed to have on our team. She has a very compassionate and pastoral heart for all people but especially the ones left out. She is not afraid to be fully herself, has really fun style and loves anything chocolate peanut butter. 

Meet the team: Ben

Ben Froese. 18. Canada. One of the most hungry men I have ever met, he eats up the word like no one I have ever seen before. He is a man of great wisdom even at such a young age. He has such a servant heart and is a natural leader. We are so excited to lead such a teachable man of God. 

The Passivity Plague

So I would love to start writing posts about what our teachings are on and what we as a class are learning! I have pages of notes, with not enough time in the day to put them online, but don't want to withhold anything from friends and family about all the Lord is taking our class through!

This week we have a speaker called Brian Brennt. This man and his family have committed their lives to seeing freedom breakout in families across the globe but even more specifically in America and are a huge leading role in the 'Circuit Riders' movement birthed out of YWAM Kona. They are a prophetic voice for our nation and commited to the word of the Lord over every other thing.

'PASSIVITY: It is the opposite of initiation. Passivity makes us move slowly and resist change and transformation.'  Definition from the Freedom Class Manual.

So in the last few days we have gone through, over and over again, dealing with our passivity. When Monday morning came around, I (Kenzie) had spent specific time in prayer for the passivity of our team (going with us to NYC) both as a whole and individually. I knew the Lord would be dealing with this thing, but I didn't realize how crazy it would be. Spending time in prayer the Lord highlighted how passivity effects relationships both in friendships, in marriages, in our families and many others. It keeps us from growing deeper in the Lord, from dealing getting freedom from other things that have come against us in our lives. It keeps us from even being able to share the gospel with the lost and disciple people into their fullness and destinies. So basically, passivity keeps us from being us and what we are called to. 

A beautiful student and I got to talking today about how for the last four years she hasn't been herself, though she didn't realize it. But now, as she allows the Lord to penetrate her heart in such a deep way, she is coming fully alive in Christ, her old self is coming back who is actually who she was created to be, but that little sneaky passivity stronghold kept her from believing and walking in that. She didn't desire to try to become that person at all because passivity crept up.

We corporately repented joyfully for these things that have been holding us back from what the Lord has for us, and immediately walked in the opposite spirit by getting in groups and yelling as loud as we could the beauty of the gospel and about how much we hate our sin ESPECIALLY our passivity. We are so free from these things, I fully believe it with my whole heart!!

Thanks for reading.