Mission Made Possible

Hi everyone! Sorry it has been awhile since my last blog. I am absolutely loving every minute here at YWAM, EVEN the getting up at 5:30 every day! Okay, I don’t love it…but you know what I mean. This is the 6^th week I’ve been at YWAM and our class just keeps growing closer and closer. My parents were afraid that once I left I wouldn’t want to come back, and I hate to say it but its coming true. I don’t want to come back! I know I still have 2 months and a couple weeks left but after doing something like this, sitting in a classroom and donating plasma isn’t really something I’m looking forward to!

          The lectures we’ve been through so far are Godly relationships, spiritual warfare, clear conscious, identity/pride and humility, and this last week was father heart of God. The father heart of God lecture was really great, it helped you see God more as a fatherly figure, friend and counselor. We had a speaker that was originally from England but has been living and married to a Filipina for… I think 22 years. He was a really nice, affectionate, excited to teach person. And when the lecturer is excited to teach its easier to learn. This topic was especially touching to some of my classmates who grew up fatherless or their fathers were the ones that hurt them the most. Sometimes I really wonder how some parents can be so terrible and then I realize how lucky I am to have grown up in such a loving family. The past week we were learning about our identity and what our “unknown gods” are. At first I was like well, I don’t really have any “unknown gods” because I don’t worship a pig or like believe in the god of rain or anything. But unknown gods can be materialistic things, money, yourself, your best friend. Anything that you love more than God and that you use and fall on when God isn't enough for you. Like I said the lecture was great but what happened on Friday was so much better.

          Some of my classmates still hadn’t paid for the lecture part of the school and the dead lines have been creeping up on us unexpectedly. Well…we always knew they were there but came up faster then expected. At first there was a total of five people who still hadn’t paid their fees and if they didn’t raise enough money by one Monday they would be sent home. And here in the Philippines its pretty different along the lines of preparing for things, I worked for 6 months before this DTS to pay for my fees but, most Filipinos are ‘the last minute’ kind of people. Some of my classmates only came to the school with $20 in their pockets.  So on Wednesday (the fees were due on the next coming Monday) we started to plan for a huge fundraising weekend. So us, a class of 9, were really struggling to come up with such a large amount of money. At first the total for the five people was P85,000 which is about $1,923.  Yes, we had the same reaction as you.  How in the world would we raise THAT much money in one weekend? I was so so so negative about the whole fundraising because, to be honest I already paid my fees but I wanted to make sure my classmates were able to stay because we are like a family now! We had one garage sale/baking sale and brought in P13,000 and some really generous YWAM lovers donated P10,000, so that totaled us at P23,000 and  the staff of the school decided to push back the dead line because we were making progress in paying the fees now. After that garage sale we really were scrambling to get money doing anything we knew how to do. One day we even auctioned off the boys of our school to be people’s personal servants for the day! Haha! People were doing body massages, we were making cheesecakes to sell left and right and almost every weekend we were doing something to help us raise money.

So this last Thursday we had an intercession for two of the boys that were looking at being sent home because their fees hadn’t been paid. We just prayed for encouragement and for God to somehow provide the remaining balance that was now P40,000. We prayed for ideas on how to fundraise in the future but, to be honest, we all had pretty much lost hope. Somehow we had to get P40,000 in one day because if that amount wasn’t paid on Friday May 21^st, four of our classmates were going home. So we went to class with heavy hearts on Friday pretty sure everyone was going home that hadn’t paid. Our director, Kuya Jothan came in and started talking to us “So, as you guys know, today was the dead line and people will be sent home if their fee’s aren't paid.” As he is talking he grabbed our white board marker and wrote on the board, “This is what we need = P40,185 and this is what we have= P4,505”. And I started to cry instantly because with four people going home, that is almost half of our class and the school would definitely not be the same without these people! And then Kuya Jothan grabbed the marker again and said “Oh wait, I forgot a number.” And changed the P4,505 into P44,505! Somehow, after ALL our hard work and all the praying we did, GOD provided the P40,000+ pesos with some EXTRA money. My class just lost it. We were all crying hysterically and laughing and then crying some more. We were just sooooo amazed what God can do. And for us, it just reassured us that we were all meant to be here together as a team, a unit, a family J.

For me, it just rocked me. I felt so ashamed that I had so little faith in God. People kept saying “oh God will provide in the end! He can do it!” and I’d always be like yeah…. I agree…. But in the back of my mind I really thought everyone was going home. After that day I will always remember that God should ALWAYS be enough for us. He can do things that we think is impossible and we should never have doubt in God. I felt like God provided this miracle for so many different reasons. Some of us just needed a boost in our faith and believing, others really did need the financial support but most of all it really brought us back together as a class and showed us how great our God really is. You know, you always hear God is a provider but you never really grasp the meaning of it until you see it firsthand. I can’t tell you the number of stories I hear about God providing for YWAM and people individually here, but now I experienced it first hand and it really revived my faith in God. We call it “The Miracle of May 21” and we built a little circle rock monument in our front yard to symbolize our unity and in the middle we have a rock that says GOD PROVIDES 5-21-10. I hope you guys understand the greatness of that. Because words cant describe what it meant to us for that money to come in. It just wasn’t the money it was the lessons God taught us along the way.

So this weekend was a breath of fresh air. All the lecture fee’s are paid so we had a chance to stop fund raising for a couple days and go out and have some fun! On Friday nights we always have family fun nights and have different activities like a disco night, movie night, and this Friday was comedy night, so we all dressed up funny. My roommate, Cherrie and I were sumo wrestlers along with two of the boys and one of the girls dressed as the Filipino president and there were a bunch more funny things. On Saturday I ran a few errands. My lap top is broken, the motherboard broke in it, so I’ve been running to internet cafes and trying to borrow one other girls lap top so that is why it’s been awhile for me to write. I will just get a new one when I get home so I don’t have to deal with anything here. It’s nice not constantly having a distraction with me too! And then my roommates and I went out to dinner at a Mongolian restaurant and then to the night market and it was such a blast!! Dinner was so delicious and we had a crazy taxi ride on the way back. It was literally like I was riding the Wild Thing at valley fair. The roads in Baguio are so curvy and windy and he was driving really really fast. Haha!

My chores here are sweeping the front yard and washing the dish towels so each day I sweep the front yard and it takes me 45 minutes because the brooms here are not like the ones back home! They are little bamboo sticks tied together. I don’t even know how to explain it. But then I make a little bonfire everyday and burn what I sweep up so that is the rewarding part! The weather has been good. Hotter than usual but still WAY nicer than Manila! It’s getting into rainy season so it rains everyday at the same time. So that’s what I have been up to. Everything else is going really well. Everyday I’m learning a ton of things that I can apply to my life and I’m being challenged and growing in my faith and as a person. I love every minute I’m here and have made some really great friends along way.

Love you all.

Ash