Raw and Honest

I have to say that the past two weeks here have been hard, sticky, tearful, struggled through and fought for A LOT! I have felt beat up and knocked around more than I can even count. I have needed a major attitude adjustment and I think I have finally come to grips with the fact that this is my life for the next two months. I feel like I need to give you a real sense of life in the Islands. The food is different and maybe not as clean as we are used to, the roads have potholes, it rains a lot, trash gets burned, dogs run wild, and yet it is BEAUTIFUL! I don't say these things in a bad way, but I say them to give you an idea of what the environment is like. I knew it would be hard, spiritual warfare would RAGE, that my soul would be challenged daily but today I feel better for the battle. It wasn't that I was away from home or that I miss everyone, which I do but I know I am here for a purpose so that was the easy part. The part that was hard was allowing my mind to catch up to the reality of where I am. I haven't really been hungry, I have been so scared of getting sick that I have let that rule me, I have been so caught up with the records that I have had playing in my head for so long, that I just couldn't relax and take it all in. I am here and now more than ever I feel like my attitude has caught up with my purpose. Please don't mistake my words, it is still hard and I will still struggle but I believe that me being here is Gods BEST for my life and I only what His best!

I was presented with the option to go back to Auckland where it would be easier and where it would be more comfortable to live, and turned it down. My visa may not be extended and my plane ticket may be more than I paid for it so that would be my option to just go back and do something different. You may think I am crazy for this, but honestly I feel like I have more freedom than ever before. God doesn't want me to choose the easy way, He doesn't want me to go the way of more travel, He and I both want me to take the road less traveled it may be harder to find because it isn't traveled as often, but I KNOW that it is exactly where God wants me, so all the stuff that may get in the way for me to stay here in Tonga I believe God will move those mountains and I will get to stay. I trust God to make a way, where there seems to be no way.

I shared with you that God spoke to me on my trip back from the discipleship class on Tuesday night, well part of what He said to me was that I needed to stay, to push through the next couple of days by staying close to Him and in His word that He has BIG things for me to do here but I needed to be obedient. I needed to read His word, and write it down like it talks about making plain what God has spoken. I did that and then His words the next morning jumped out at me, my bible fell open to Hosea 6: 1-3, 
“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. 
After two days he will revive us; 
   on the third day he will restore us, 
   that we may live in his presence. 
Let us acknowledge the LORD; 
   let us press on to acknowledge him. 
As surely as the sun rises, 
   he will appear; 
he will come to us like the winter rains, 
   like the spring rains that water the earth.”

You can imagine the joy that filled my heart when I read this and that God is going to do a new thing in me. I am blessed to start this new adventure with a new outlook and attitude. I feel like all the ways of my thinking God wanted to change. He needed to start with me and He needed to make sure that I was willing to stick it out. I choose a better attitude and I choose obedience. Lord, please help me to continue on with being obedient and willing to take the hard way so that maybe for someone else it will be a little easier. I want you to know that after this choice was made in me last night and I went home to hang with the family I am staying with, we were watching Rugby and Willy jumps up, and starts yelling in Tongan. He picks something up and starts to hit something on the ground. I jump back on the couch and there is a centipede sitting there ALIVE! He starts to hit it and then his brother gets a shoe, they push it outside and then kill it out there. WOW, God is really testing my strength of mind and then I felt the Lord remind me that He is my protector and He is my Lord. It may come to the right and to the left, but it shall not come near me, like what God said to David in the Psalm. I pray you see that God is bigger than your circumstances and that God has a way, you just have to give him room! Ask God what He wants from you in the next two days.