Going Higher, Going Deeper

The past week, as I mentioned before, was conference time. We started the week with a soaking school on the Monday and Tuesday. This is basically a very short version of our 'core value month' with soaking time to let God deal with the stuff that came up. Most of it was repeating stuff from our first month, but even so it was very useful for a number of reasons, 1- You always have more stuff to deal with in your hear, so another opportunity to work it out is a good thing, 2- I am writing my sermon on hearing God's voice and so to hear someone else preach it was really helpful (I took plenty of notes!). We all got to catch up on a lot of our missed rest as well, what with the 45 mins we had at the end of most of the sessions where we all just grabbed some floor space, listened to some gentle music and just soaked up God's presence. God loves it when we are willing to just be with him, not trying to do anything, not striving to get closer, just resting in his presence and soaking him up! I did find that it messed up my sleeping patterns a bit though because I was so rested that I wasn't tired come bed time!
Come Wednesday it was time for the main conference. The soaking school was for those who were going to be on the ministry team (ministry team meaning those who have been given permission by the church to go and pray for people). The rest of the week had hundreds more people from all over the world who were there for the “Going Higher, Going Deeper” conference. So 9am Wednesday morning I was there reporting for my work duty. I was once again in the kitchen with Francis. I must admit that I was quite disappointed when I first found out, because I did that for the last conference and wanted to see something different. However I love working with Francis. He is an absolute sweet heart and we were some of the very few who ever got let off early from our shifts. Mikayla and I were chopping tomatoes and celery, unpacking chicken & salmon, and defrosting about 50 packets of mash potatoes for the 4 days we were there. I am now an expert at chopping tomatoes!
After kitchen duty I was always off to get some food and then go to the afternoon sessions. Since being here we have had about 40-45mins of worship at the beginning of every week day. The soaking school was the first time we hadn't had it and I missed it so much. It came as a relief when the conference started up and I could leave my shift and go to worship. I'm not quite sure who I'm going to survive when I leave. I guess I'm going to have to get up half an hour earlier each morning and have my own little worship session!
It was really exciting getting a chance to hear all about the things God has been doing all over the world. We had people from England telling us about the string of nightly meeting they had been having because God was showing up so powerfully that they just couldn't get enough. Reports form Iceland about how the country is lighting on fire for Jesus. Patricia King (on of the speakers) had actually just come from Lakeland in Florida, so was buzzing with all God is doing over there in what has become the largest healing revival that we have ever seen. But then God showed up in a powerful way here in Toronto. We saw a lady who hadn't walked in 4 years, due to Lupus, get up and walk with help one day and the next day she was running and jumping and preaching the power of Jesus. She had been a Christian who most definitely didn't believe in the power of the holy spirit – God sure showed her how wrong she was. We saw other people healed of muscle pain, back ache and headaches among others. One of my friends had a set of prominent scars on his fore arm and God completely removed them. I was standing next to him at the time and his face was an absolute picture! Other people (including a few of the other students) had supernatural money appearing in their wallets and bank accounts. It was crazy cool.
The talks were good, my favorite was a talk Duncan Smith gave on Boldness. He was talking about a fairly obvious thing really, that if you want to blind healed, you need to pray for the blind! So he was talking about stepping out and trusting God to fill the gap. He also prayed an impartation of his boldness to us. There was a lot of impartation at this conference actually. The thing with the holy spirit is that whatever you have can be given out. So Duncan Smith has been given a real spirit of boldness by the holy spirit, so he was giving it out to us.
The hardest thing about the conference for me was probably not singing. I was trying to take care of my voice and not damage it so I was limiting myself to talking. But when you are so used to singing in worship it is really hard work not to sing. Thankfully the school has taught me enough about being creative during worship that I just sat there drawing pictures instead :) Actually the Saturday morning I was described as a female Barry White because my voice was so low when I woke up.
We finished of the conference in the normal fashion, with one of the student's favorite pass times- fire tunnels. They are so much fun, but absolutely exhausting. I was very ready for bed when it came to it.

End of an era

So after a wonderful year, Charl and I have decided to call it quits.
Part of me is really sad about this, but the other part is just incedibly grateful for the time that we shared together.
We have parted as friends though and I pray that we remain good friends for many years to come.
So thank you my friend for the best year ever

Jesus you’re my superhero

So right after our prophetic evangelism on the streets, we had a school social and the theme of this social?... Superheroes!!

So everyone in the school dressed up as a superhero, it was an absolute hoot. At 5pm we all assembled in the fire hall (the hall in the SoM building) and got the hilarious chance of helping with announcements.

Each week at TACF there are video announcements made. These announcements are then given to each of the 7 churches and get played along side of the normal announcements made by each church. These announcements get funnier and funnier each week. The guy that does the filming and directing for them is a guy in the marketing department called Mark who is originally from Sheffield!

So anyway the announcements were following 'Announcement Girl' as she was teaching at the superhero school. So we were prominently featured learning about the up and coming encounter weekends, how to throw cartoon punches and slow motion fight.

I think all of the announcements are up on the web so you can check them out at http://www.tacfvideos.com/. And it's "Leadership in Action". You can see me a bit, but I have a mask on so you would never know it was me!! MWAHAHAHAAAAA

So yeah, I was Super Sixties Girl. The name sucked I know, but my costume was amazing. I am not one for dressing up normally and was stressing a bit about this, but the day before I found some amazing shoes and a sparkly dress and I was away. I actually didn't get anyone to take a picture of me with my camera so I can't stick a photo up at the moment. Those of you on facebook should be able to see a couple though. My shoes though are platform heals and make me about 4 inches taller (no joking). My dress was a very pale pink sequin covered miniskirt dress which I wore over leggings of course and I had a green cape and black eye mask. I was so chuffed with myself.

We had some amazing costumes; Dan- a smurf (OK so there wasn't as much of Dan's costume as everyone else's- more blue paint than anything else), Shawn- Jesus (best superhero really), Jonathan- Aqua man, Candice – The Super Sleeper, Amy- The Invisible Girl, Otis and Jon- Jedi knights, Team Mozambique- The Power Rangers

My favourite though was Faith who was one of a couple of Super Grannies, but she was so well made up that it was very hard to recognise her. It took me a good few seconds to work out who was under the big pile of tea towels.

The prize for best entrance though goes to the boys from 207. We were halfway through filming the announcements when we heard this Spanish guitar starting up and suddenly in runs the Mask of Zorro pursued by two musketeers, each with big hats and coat hanger swords. The trio (Johnatas, Mark and Andy, with Justin on the Guitar) fought their way round the whole room, up onto the pool table and everything. It was fantastic.

So we all had dinner and then, in our outreach teams, we had to do a photo scavenger hunt. Basically we had a list of tasks and each task was worth a certain number of points. Each of these tasks required either a photo or a video of the task being performed.
The tasks included
• Take a photo with a Tim Horton's staff member
• Take a photo of the whole team up a tree
• Take a photo of the whole team with a dead animal (though you can't kill it yourself)
• Take a photo of the whole team with hairnets on and with a worker at the bread factory
• Get a video of one of the team singing to a stranger
• Get a video of one of your team break dancing on a box

So we all traipsed along the highway in our costumes getting stares and honks from the passing motorists. It's amazing how many people were willing to smile and wave when a crowd of superheroes waves at them. It was a hoot. For peace of mind for all of you worried souls, I did change my shoes before heading out. So with our efficient German leading the way (did you know that if you select very carefully which tasks you perform at which time you can maximise what can get done?) we went through and did quite a lot of the tasks on the list, including filming Otis (bless him) snorting Wasabi through a straw! Thankfully he only got a tiny bit, but even so he was reeling from it.

Once everyone was back we all gathered and watched all of the pictures and videos on the big screen, while totting up the points. We ended up coming in 3rd which was pretty good really. But at the end of the day it was a hilarious fun evening and a good old team bonding experience! lol

Prayer request

Hey All

Well we are once more mid-conference. So life is hectic with long days and lots of work. I however don't feel up to doing any of it as I have the scratchyist throat ever. It hurts to swallow, let alone sing or pray for people. So if you could pray that God would heal that supper fast that would be great.

If you are interested to see the conference you can subscribe to the TACF 'Revive TV' and watch it live or recorded.

Prophetic Evangelism

All this week our teaching has been from a lady called Patricia Bootsma and has been about prophetic evangelism. The whole idea of this is that we use prophecy (asking God what they want to say to someone and then telling them) as a tool in evangelism. If someone came up to you and knew something about you that no one else should know, you would probably want to know how wouldn't you? So sometimes God gives people what are called "words of knowledge" which are things that no stranger should ever know, this gets people attention and then gives you the opportunity to talk to them, tell them whatever it is that God wants to say to them and maybe pray with them and if they are ready even lead them to Jesus. It's all very cool, and when Patricia talks you get these images of these amazing bang, bang bang encounters where everyone one gets saved and everyone gets healed and it's all amazing. So on Thursday morning, we were given the opportunity to try it all out. Once again God taught me a lesson in my expectations- never expect God to do the same thing twice, to work the same way in two people or to say the same things to different people. Before we went out we prayed and asked God for words for the people he wanted us to speak to. I saw a lady with bright pink in her hair, others saw a yellow jacket, a certain type of hat etc. So then we went out to the border of the Chinese sector by Kensington market (yes Ontario has a London, Stratford, Kensington). We first started chatting to this homeless guy, got him some food and a couple from the group talked to him. I was with another student called Dan, and we started talking to another guy, funnily enough called Dhan (pronounced the same though), who was hanging around. This guy could have talked for Canada. He was on about Shakespeare, the English and the Irish not getting on (or leader was an Irish guy), loving Dan's accent, telling Dan he needed an English wife..... on and on. Occasionally we got to talk and he seemed to really like what we said, was well up for praying, but then got distracted again and again. It was really frustrating because from what he said, he knew stuff about Jesus and believed much of it, but didn't really know him as a friend. Eventually though Dan suggested that he pray with us. So we prayed and the guy repeated, and his attention was fixed rigidly on us and on God which was really cool. We prayed for a deeper relationship with God and for release from his alcohol addiction. Then he went off and we wandered on again. As we were walking along I suddenly saw her- the lady with the pink hair. She was sitting at a cafe on her phone. Not wanting to interrupt her phone conversation, we went and got a drink, sat down and waited. She was making call after call while we were getting our drinks, and so we ended up spending about 20/30 mins waiting for her to finish her call. After waiting that long, there was no way I wasn't going to talk to her, so as soon as she had finished on the phone I was there. "Hi, my name's Sarah. I'm from a school near here where we are learning to hear God's voice. I was praying before asking god who to talk to and he showed me a picture of you. I really feel that he want to tell you that you are not forgotten, that he really cares for you and has not forgotten you" Woman nods politely whole way through, "I was wondering if I could pray with you" So you ready for the amazing, life changing answer, with which I can rival Patricia in her amazing stories? "No, sorry I don't pray!" Well there's not much you can say to that is there? So I said that was cool, wished her a good day and turned back to Dan and my milk shake. l was a bit disappointed, but at the end of the day I did what God asked of me and, even though I didn't see it, I have no idea how much what I said might have actually affected her. Now I had approached one person (me doing the initial talk as appose to letting someone else start and me jump in) I was raring to go. So we went into the flower shop next door and chatted and prayed with the lady in there which was really cool. Then we wandered down the street and joined the others who were talking to two lads a bit older than me. One of them looked so down and quite ill really. Simon, the leader, was just chatting to them and as is his was he leads the conversation as the Holy Spirit leads. Patricia is very in your face direct about the fact she has words about you from God, Simon, however, is much more disarming. He strikes up conversation and then if God gives him a word of knowledge he just prompts them to talk about it, so for these guys he simply asked "What is your dream" and the guy just lit up totally and was talking about his dream of opening an eco-store selling solar panels and educating people about renewable energy sources. As he spoke I could see him doing it- it fitted so well with even the little I had seen of him. His friend was also interested in doing that, but much more in being an advocate for the cause. So we were able to pray with them that God would open doors for that dream and he would guide them through. Finally it was time to think about heading back to the van, but first I saw something that just made me laugh. When we had been praying for pictures of who to talk to, I saw a picture of someone on a bike. I remember telling God just how stupid that was because of course if they were on their bike I wasn't going to be able to talk to them- he was silly to even suggest it. So we are standing on the street corner and low and behold browsing the display outside the shop across the road was a lady and her bike! I didn't even question that I was supposed to talk to her, I dashed across and went and started explaining who I was, what I was doing and asked if I could pray with her. She looked rather shell shocked but agreed and suddenly I was stuck- I now had to say something, so I called Marta over and told her we were praying for this lady 'Sarah'. So we started praying and I got a picture of God holding her really close so I told her that God really wanted to draw her in close and tears started to fall down her cheeks. It turned out that she was a Christian and new God, but was just really blessed by the fact that we came and prayed with her. It was a lovely end to the morning :)
So although the morning didn't pan out the way I expected, it was amazing fun and I am just waiting for the next opportunity to go and do it again :)

The heart of worship

My outreach group is amazing. When we were first put into outreach groups I really didn't know any of my group, however since being put into outreach groups we have spent a fair bit of time together, and now I love my team! We play silly games in outreach prep, all go to the same church each Sunday.
The most fun time I have had with them has to be leading worship. Some of the outreach teams have got fully formed bands from the worship school. We however don't have anybody from the worship school. Many of us don't have much, or any experience in playing in a worship band. However when we lead worship one Thursday in the school it was amazing! We were not a perfect band, we weren't always in time, we weren't always in the right key- but we worshipped! It was really cool because at one point everything pretty much fell apart musically, so we all gave up and just sang. However I have never seen everyone get into worship so much! Everyone was shouting and cheering and dancing and just having a great time with God. We then kept it together when we started the next song, and actually were pretty good- if I do say so myself :-P We had those members of the band who weren't playing, come forward and give hugs to anyone who wanted. We were singing "Arms of Love" and basically the idea is that although God shows himself to us in many different ways you can't reach out and touch him in the same way you can a person. So sometimes he asks people to be his physical arms. Our team was there to give a hug to anyone who felt they wanted or needed a hug. This is something we have done in the school a fair bit, but never during worship. People responded though and most of the school came forward- some a couple of times. I felt incredible privileged to have been part of that band as we just worshipped God regardless of what happened. Apparently the worship school all went into their class afterwards and said "See, that's how you let go of perfectionism and just worship". It was certainly a lesson I learnt, that God doesn't care how you sound, he cares where your heart is at.

After leading at the school, the next Sunday we lead worship again at our church. It was really occasion for God to teach us another lesson - "Never assume that God will work the same way twice". We used the same set of songs, but with a completely different group of people. The school are very really to jump and shout and really are open to doing anything as part of their worship. North's average age is a bit higher than the school's and some there find it hard to jump and shout, some just don’t feel comfortable and some might want to but just don't quite know what to do. So the reaction was very different, and the way that the Holy Spirit moved was different. We did the hug idea again, to see how that went down. Once Amber had explained that they were there to be God's arms of love and give a hug to anyone who wanted on, the others stood at the front. Apparently not everyone understood and this one lady came up to Amy and gave her a hug, thinking that she was there to receive one! Even so it was good and we had a chance to see what work with different groups of people, what looked like it had potential and what really wasn't so appropriate with the different groups. At the end of the day though, God showed up and really touched people- including us- so it was all good!

Revival in Florida

Hey Guys
I am so sorry I have been so bad at keeping this upto date. I still don't have my own internet, though my laptop now has a new hard drive and is semi working (won't recognise my wireless card yet though). I don't have much time either, we have sermons to write and class and outreach prep and everything. I though this would be easy ish, this is called a school for a reason- they work us hard!

I am part way through an update, so hopefully should have something for you soon. However in the mean time I have to tell you about the revival that is happening in Florida. Google the great florida revival. Todd Bently is in Florida and there is a HUGE healing reval going on. We have been seeing this happen in africa and india etc, but we don't see this in 1st world contries. It is amazing. If we have the chance, some of us would love to go down and get some of that. The most exciting thing is that IT IS GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!!! So guys keep your eye open and your ear to the news. If you hear where it is going on- then get there if you possibly can.

Wow, God is amazing!!!!