The Next Adventure

   
Hey Ya'll!

   I am so sorry that I never blogged at the end of my adventure in Costa Rica! At the end of my DTS time went so fast and before I knew it I was at home, and then again I didn't have much time at home before God had me moving on to a new and exciting adventure!

       So now I am back in Canada.  I have been here for a month and ten days (but who's counting...).   This time has been filled with so many mixed emotions.  A big part of me wanted to stay in Costa Rica and a not as big part of me wanted to come home, see my family and see what God had next for me.  It has been such a roller coaster ride.  It's been hard not to have my friends around, the people who I had grown so close in the months that I was away.  We were all put together so quickly, practically forced to become friends, but we didn't have just a basic friendship in the end, we became deep and personal friends, with the foundation of our friendships being God.  My friendship with my DTS family is like no other friendship I have ever experienced.  So to be thrown together and then in 5 months time say good-bye and split up, never knowing if your ever going to see them again.. Yeah, now you can see why it hasn't been so easy coming home.

     But my biggest struggle since being home is the distance I have often felt between me and God.  It hasn't been easy to connect with God the way that I did when I was away.  Unfortunately, most of this is my own fault.  I have come to realize that God hasn't changed, He is still as passionate about me as he was when I was in Costa Rica, He is still pursing me and wanting to spend that special time with me each day. The change isn't in me, I still want to be close with God, I still want those time with Him where we talk and share our hearts desires with one another.  I have realized the things that have changed, the people around me, distractions in front of me and location of where I now live.  

     People - I went from being totally surrounded by people who love God and are trying to pursue Him with all their hearts, people who encouraged me daily to be digging deeper into God, to having only a couple people.. a skype date away to encourage me, which unfortunately isn't able to happen daily.

     Distractions - While I was in Costa Rica, there were tons of distractions, some are the same as here at home and some totally different, but while I was away it took time to eliminate the distractions of that time.  It took time to get into a lifestyle where those distractions didn't distract me from getting personal with God.  So, I am starting from the beginning again, working to get rid of everything that distracts me from getting into that place where I can get deeper with God.

      Location - Home, Canada, not YWAM. I am no longer living in a community with people who are passionately serving the Lord.  There is no more Monday morning worship times as a base, no more Wednesday morning intercession times.  I never realized how important those times were to my relationship with God.  And now without them, I have find new ways to fill those holes so that God and I can have more time together

     I knew it wasn't going to be easy coming home, but I don't think I expected it to be as hard as it has been.  It's been a struggle, but because of this struggle God has been able to teach me, he's been teaching me a lot when I begin to think about it.  It doesn't matter where you are, who your with or what things you have going on in your life.  God will use it, he will teach you through it.  He will teach you the importance of fighting for Him.  He will show how it's possible to spend time with him, even when it feels like there's no time.  He can teach you anything and everything, if you just let him.  He is with you wherever you go, just waiting for you to make that first move..


"The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”  ~ Deuteronomy 31:8


Thanks everyone for your love and support!  I appreciate all of it.
Much love,
Hannah

From Puerto to Limon!

Hey Everyone!

     Today is our hours in Puerto! It's crazy to believe that we have been here for 4 weeks already! A month of outreach has passed and we are headed into our final month of outreach and DTS! It's all going by so fast! Our last couple weeks here have been awesome! We have had so many awesome opportunities here to reach out to people and make some awesome friendships.

     This last week we did bible distribution! There is a project at our YWAM Base called Bibles For Costa Rica. This project is to get a bible into every home in Costa Rica. Our outreach team leader, Rasta, is in charge of getting a bible into every home in the province of Limon. So this past week my team and I distributed about 1200 bible. It was quite the week. We had many good conversations with people, but we also had many people who rejected the bible and everything we had to say. This week was hard for me because I don't speak spanish, but near the end of the week we got to the area where there is a lot of english speakers, so things got a little better for me.

      Then on Wednesday night I got sick. I was up all night, being sick every hour. I a stomach ache that never wanted to go away. It was horrible. So Thursday I stayed in bed, recovering. But then Friday I was back again and headed out to help in any way I could! It's a sad day for some of us leaving Puerto. We have made many good friendships with people here and we wish we could stay longer and pour into these people, but duty calls in another town. Our week in Limon is looking like a good time. Tomorrow we are helping out with a skate competition and then hopefully we will be helping out in an orphanage. I will let you know more about it when I know more! Keep us in your prayers as we head out into a new part of our outreach!

  Much love,
Hannah

Outreach in Puerto

Hey Y'all Week 2 of outreach has just ended and the start of week 3 has begun! It has been a good two weeks, we have had some good time, but we have also had some hard times. We have started to from some great friendships with the people here in Puerto. We have kids hanging out with us even when we aren't doing ministry! It's so awesome! The past 2 weeks have gone by so fast! They have been filled with ministry. We have attended church about 8 times since being here. We have been able to do dramas and many of us have been able to give our testimonies! One of the local churches has a lot of youth in it and we have been spending a lot of time with them. The two Saturdays that we have been here we have played soccer with them on the beach and then have gone to their youth group! We have some great friendship forming with them. The place that we are staying at in Puerto has a skate park in the backyard! It's has been an awesome tool for us to used to do ministry! We open the park 2-3 times a week and we have gotten to know a lot of kids through this! Last Friday night we had a skate competition! One of the guys on our team put the whole thing together. We had about 70 people here and about 30 kids went in the competition. We gave out free hot dogs and have some awesome prizes for the winners of the competition! It was great! We also painted a church this week! It was super some to do something useful for the local church. The people of the church were so grateful for all our help and it's so awesome to drive by the church now and see how awesome it looks! Another thing that we did was go out into the town at night and hand out some flowers to the ladies! It was such an awesome experience. My group was able to pray for healing over a girl who has had some stomach pain for many years, her doctors haven't been able to find out whats wrong. So we prayed over her and God healed her! Glory to God! We also came across some girls who were just talking about life and God, and we were able to talk and pray for them and they were just in awe that God had sent us to them! So we have had some awesome time of ministry and we still have 2 more weeks here! I am so excited to see what God is going to do! Unfortunately we have some had some harder times since being here in Puerto. There is a Jungle past behind the property and it is the place where most of the robberies happen here in Puerto. One late afternoon we were walking down the jungle path toward a look out point of the cliff and we unfortunately got robbed. The only thing that got taken was one of the girls camera. I had my camera on me, but luckily they didn't see it. Once we got back to our place we called the police and they went to the area that we got robbed at to look for the boy. The police luckily found some boys, so the next day, Ruth, the girl who's camera was taken, and Mason went with our leader to go identify the boy, in Bribri. After a long day they were able to identify the boy and so later on this month they are going to have to testify in court. Thanks for all your payers and support! Much love Hannah

Outreach Here I Come

Hey Ya'll!

I know it's been a long time, but things here have been pretty busy lately. A week ago we finished up the lecture phase part of the DTS. It was a great week, our topic was Spiritual Warfare. It was quite the week. We had 3 groups come, 2 of the groups were 40-50 people, and the other group was about 20 people. So it was super busy around here and there were SO MANY DISHES! Haha. But me and my dishes crew had a blast and really enjoyed our last week of dishes. We had a celeabration dinner on the Friday night, consisting of pizza, to finish off our time of dishes.

This is my dish crew and me on our last night of dishes! It was an awesome night!






So our last week of Lecture Phase was super packed. It was the graduation for the School Of Worship on the Wednesday night, it as a good night of celebration with them, but it was also kind of sad because some of them would be leaving to go home and then the other half were leaving for outreach. It was hard to say good-bye after 3 months of being together, but it is an exciting new part for everyone here at the base!

And yesterday I got back from NIKO. NIKO is a one week program that every DTS at YWAM San Jose has to do, its a program that challenges you and pushes you to your limits. It was quite the week of adventures! I can't tell you anything about it, thats how the program works. We didn't know anything about it when we went and we aren't allowed to pass on any information, just so that it stays a secret for the next people who do it.

So Monday morning I leave for Outreach! I am head to Puerto Viejo for a month! I'm super excited to be headed to the beach where the sun is hot and the ocean is blue! We are going to be pioneering a YWAM Base there and working with the local churches. Its going to be awesome, I am super excited! A side note: we aren't going to be able to take any computers, so I won't be updating much. we are allowed to go to internet cafe's on our days off. So hopefully I Will get in a couple of updates to let you know more details about what we are doing there.

Well, I have so much to do before Monday morning. Cleaning clothes, packing bags, and enjoying my last weekend with everyone in the DTS.

Much love,
Hannah

Night in Panama

Hey Y'all

So this weekend marked 90 days of me being here in Costa Rica. So that means my VISA needs to be renewed. So all of us in the DTS, headed down to Panama for the night to get another 90 days in Costa Rica.

It was quite the trip. We left Friday morning at 8am, we got on the bus and left San Jose just after 9am. This started a 5 hour bus ride. The ride was great, I love traveling so it was a joy for me to do this. We got to drive through Limón, which was exciting, only 3 weeks and I will be living in that area on the beach!

Karlene and Me on the bus to Panama

Banana Tree Farms

So we arrived at the boarder of Panama, this was a whole new boarder experience. Nothing like the Canada/USA boarders. For us to all get through it took us almost 2 hours, without any problems. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like if we had had a problem. Oh, and it was so HOT and HUMID. Oh man, they told us it would be hot, but not one of us thought it was going to be like the way it was! Haha

Once we finished at the boarder we got back on the bus and headed to a small little town called... I don't actually know where I was. We got there and checked into our hotel and by that time it was 6:15pm (Panama time, an hour ahead of Costa Rica time). So we headed down the street to find a place to eat.

The main street of the little town in Panama

We found this little place just down from our hotel and I had a plate of French Fries and Fried Chicken. It was my first time having this since Ive been here and it was SO GOOD! I enjoyed it way to much and it only cost me $3.50! With a Coca Cola! Panama is so cheap! Then the next morning we asked the lady at the check in desk if there was a bakery so we could get something for breakfast, she gave us some directions and that lead us to this little place that was no a bakery.. but it did the trick. My plate of food was, one fluffy flour tortilla thing (SO GOOD), one pancake, and a piece of chicken. Hahaha. It was so good, but such a bad breakfast.

After that we got on the bus and headed back to San Jose, Costa Rica. It was a good, hot trip. Panama was great, I hope to one day go there for longer and get to see more of it. Until then I am just satisfied with saying I've been there.


Much love,
Hannah

My Outreach Team's Video!

Hey Y'all!
This is a video made by one of the girls on my outreach team.  This video gives you a little bit of information about why we are going to Limon, what we will be doing there, and it will help you get to know the people on my team!
Hope you all enjoy it, Joanna worked super hard on it!
Please watch it and consider supporting us with your prayers or financially.
You guys are awesome!




Much love,
Hannah

Hey everyone!

God is doing crazy things! He's been speaking a lot to me lately about what His call is for my life. Most of you may already know that I have a huge passion for children and some of you know that one day I would love to open an orphanage somewhere in Central America. So since being here God been showing me that He has called me to look after orphans. Yesterday He told me this:

James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

I asked God, what is this suppose to mean to me? He told me that I am to look after orphans and widows, he also said that I am to do it differently then most people. I am to do it Gods way and stay out of the pollution of the world. And after he said this He showed me another verse:

John 14:18
I (the Lord your God) will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you (the Holy Spirit).

Again I asked God what does this mean to me? He told me that when I reach out to the orphans and the widows, I am to tell them this verse. I am suppose to tell that they aren't orphans, I am to tell them that they have never been left alone, that God their Father has been there with them, He gave them the Holy Spirit so that they were never alone. And I am to tell them that they are a child of God.

Wow, right. Some of you might think Im crazy because I say God spoke to me. Some of you can't even begin to understand this. But I tell you the truth, I can't come up with something like this. Something that has impacted me like this can only come from someone who is bigger then me, then us humans.

So my past week has been amazing. We learned all about godly relationships, and not just with boys, but with our friends and family. It was a good week. I took a lot from it and I feel like God gave me SO many new revelations. Its so exciting.

Yeah so, I just wanted to share what God has been saying to me.

SO much love,
Hannah

Ps. Here is a picture of my outreach team!