Arrival & Restoration...

Before I got here, I feared a lack of community, but the opposite has been the case. I love the interns in my internship and then Julie, Angie, and Hakeem are in the Pursuit (young adult day time internship) and I enjoy spending time with them as well! Everyone I have met here is so honest and after God’s heart.

Staying with my Aunt June has also been a blessing. I LOVE getting to know her. She has such a beautiful, kind, and generous heart. And I’ve been able to see my cousins a bit. My schedule is pretty busy…but hopefully I’ll see them more. I did spend my first snow day with them!!

So, when I first got here, a couple people heard my testimony and said that they really felt like God was saying Song of Soloman 2: 10 - 13 to me…"Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in or land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.” Some people even gave me this verse as they felt God saying it over me - when they had not even met me or heard about my testimony. This is a verse I often read and in spring of 2007, I thought, ‘ok – the winter is gone and the rains are over, but the debris is still here and the flowers are not yet in bloom.’ This season has been a season of mending and restoring and removing the debris (more on that later!). The first few days here, singers in the prayer room would sing songs related to Psalm 84:5 (which God gave me in spring of '07 in a cool way that I described in that long story about my heart coming out here. It says, "Blessed are those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage") and Song of Soloman 2: 10-13. In one song, the singer was singing, “It’s been a long, long winter, but you say come away…” I was in shock and tears just streamed down my face because these words seemed like they came right out of my prayers and were being sung over me. There were also songs about restoration in the first few weeks that spoke right to me. It was so good! Our first week started with a 12-hour day of consecration in the prayer room the entire day and then the week exceeded my expectations. During the first two weeks, the Lord really spoke to me through the gospel of Mark as I was finishing up my study through it. I can share more on that in another entry. It’s good stuff!! Then the second week, we started all of our classes, and my mind felt like it was on overload! I have since become used to the plethora of teachings and have come to digest some of it and accept the fact that I can process and study some of it at another point. So, I think that should suffice for a description of my arrival and first two weeks here. Hope it works for you! Any questions, feel free to ask!

(This picture is of all the interns (The Watch, Pursuit, & Intro interns) and the leaders of the internships).

Adventure Time! :)

Hi, friends!
Sorry it’s taken me so long to finally write this. I think I was trying to figure out how in the world to start this. I still don’t think I know, but I thought I might as well start and we’ll see where we go! It’ll be a bit of an adventure, eh?
Actually coming out here has been a bit of an adventure for me! (I didn’t even plan for that segue!) I remember asking myself a few times on the long ride to get here, “What am I doing?” Then I would laugh and say, “I don’t know!” I had no idea what to expect! A couple times in this weird dialogue with myself and God, I felt like He was saying, “You’re going after my heart.” Oh, right! But even though I knew my desires were good, I had so many uncertainties and fears flooding me. I think a lot of that comes from my lack of trust with His perfect leadership (which I will share more about later). His leadership truly is perfect and I see now how He worked every detail out for me in this season with Him. (I’m also seeing His purposes in a lot of the other seasons I didn’t like as much…but more on that later!). I absolutely love it here.
OK – with all of that said…lets go on some twists of our adventure.
I wrote a whole thing on my heart coming out here, etc...but it was SUPER long. If you want to read it, let me know and I'll e-mail it to you. I just decided it was taking too much room. I need to learn how to be less detailed. :) If you don't know the story and don't want to read a lot, just know I needed to be restored by The Restorer! :)

Why a Blog?

Hey ya'll! (Yeah, I'm adopting some of the southern lingo!)

As you probably know, I am in Atlanta, GA (technically Lawrenceville). I'm doing an internship with the International House of Prayer - a 24/7 prayer house. The internship is from January 5, 2008 - April 6, 2008. I sit in the prayer room and pray, receive God's love and love on Him in return, listen to His heart for me and others, intercede with Jesus for the things on His heart, study His word, etc. I also am taking a few classes out here - The Sermon on The Mount, The Life of Jesus, Thirst (an intern- only discussion based class), and Foundations (an intern-only class). Both of the intern-only classes are on a variety of topics. So far we've had Thirst classes on The Knowledge of God, Mary of Bethany, and Intimacy with God. We've had Foundations classes on The Father Heart of God, Meditating on scripture, Song of Soloman Overview, The Beauty Realm of God, and Enjoyable prayer. We also have helps ministry hours. Mine are split between children's ministry, front desk, and babysitting the kids of the director of my internship. We also have a church service with teaching and worship every sunday night. The people here are amazing - so in love with Jesus and so real! I love it!! God has been so good to me in this season. He even had it snow for me to see snow for the first time! :) I'm so thankful He led me here and I said yes to His invitation to come.

All of that said, I want to start this blog to share a bit of what God is teaching me and speaking to me. There is so much just in this past month, so I wanted to be able to share some of it with anyone who wants to read it. Also, it'll help me process main themes He's working on, etc.! I might post some of my homework assignments as well, if you want to read them... they are in response to what I'm learning. I also might post a few other things like pictures and just thoughts on life and my Zambia update. So it might be miscilanious...but search for what you want to read and I pray that it will encourage your heart to go deeper with the God who is so in love with you! Enjoy! And thanks for listening to my heart and thoughts expressed in whatever I write here!
love,
Kelly