HOT VS. BEAUTIFUL

Hot is admired from afar; beauty is to be held.

Hot is perception; beauty is appreciation.

Hot is smokey-eyed; beautiful is bare-faced.

Hot is an appearance; beautiful is more than skin deep.

Hot is the way she moans; beautiful is the way she speaks.

Hot is youthful; beautiful is ageless.

Hot is conventional; beauty is unique.

Hot is a one-night stand; beautiful is sleepless nights.

Hot is a state of being; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Hot is devious; beautiful is innocent.

Hot is a facade; beautiful is a woman.

- http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/the-actual-difference-between-women-who-are-hot-and-who-are-beautiful/ -

YAAY UPDAAATEEE :)

:D Hey everybody!

Thanks for checking in once again - or for the first time! 

i hope you'll like what you get to read :)

it has been SEVEN WEEKS?? what in all the world happened??
I'm sorry for being so slack on updating my blog - i guess after a couple of 'Lena, you haven't updated your blog in a while' it is finally time to go for it.

It has been pretty busy as you can imagine, we have homework and assignments, books to read and 'one on ones', class and other activities everyday till 3:30pm plus work duty.

We have different teachings every week and so far we had some pretty full one ministry teachings on walls of your heart, forgiveness and steps into healing.
Last week we learned about addictions and the upcoming week is gonna be about 'child development and bonding', which sounds very exciting to me.

the books we're reading and writing about are

'From Spiritual Slavery To Spiritual Sonship' by Jack Frost (haha i know!), 

'Ministering Cross-Culturally' by Sherwood G. Lingenfelter

and

'Walls Of My Heart' by Dr. Bruce Thompson

We have process-support-groups every Thursday, where our whole class is divided into 3 groups in which we get to share about how we're doing with the school, what we find overwhelming or challenging and what is helpful, how we're doing overall. We get to encourage one another and be part of each others lifes. I love it!!

Every Friday we have worship and intercession in the so-called 'Tabernacle' which is a place in the city that is always open for us to come, it has music playing and you can just sit and enjoy God's presence or sing or read or write or whatever you like. When we're there though, we have full on worship and prayer for the city and the compassion ministry that some of our students are involved in.

Saturday and Sunday are off, but we are asked to go to church, so I decided to go to a church called Vineyard, which is very cool, and open and welcoming. It's mainly in English, which is good since I still don't speak dutch. :)

I love you guys, please keep me updated with your life's as well, and feel free to ask my questions or just tell me what you've been up to! :) I'm always happy to hear from you!

pink-feedback-sticky-notes on my homework V

 Mr. Loren Cunningham was here, YWAM-founder! V

best friends.... V 

MADE IT TO AMSTERDAM!

Hey everybody :))
I am in Holland Amsterdam now! yaayyy. I'm here, doing another school with YWAM. It's called FCM and stands for foundations in counselling ministry. I've only been here for one day, so I really can't tell you too much yet but I love it very much! The city is beautiful and the weather has been such a blessing so far!
My Class is made up of 20 Students from 15 Countries!! How crazy is that?
Things I like most bing here are: Larissa my best bud from 'Straia is here with me, VLA!, the Buildings, my single-bedroom and the sink in it, the weather, that my parents dropped me off here!, the food, internet in my room, expectation and vision time, meeting new people, sleeping, getting a tour through the city, living in an old fishermanshouse, living on third floor.
Things I don't like .. nothing.

Here are some pictures and first impressions.

 on the way here.

 LARISSAAA

 ya...forgot one of my shoes. 

 serving god means serving people, and serving people means serving god.

our classroom. the stageroom.

Shane Farmer - O P E N for new ways

I think the thing that struck me the most was hearing that East-Germany is the most atheistic place on earth. And it doesn't quite seem like it's gonna get better, and with better I mean more hope through faith, it rather looks like it's becoming worse.Think about it, let it sink in...

For me, growing up in church and a family that served God for generations and living in an area where there is a lot of churches, peaceful nature and religion, I always thought, 'Guys, we need to send more people to Africa or where ever, really, to preach the gospel!!'. Couldn't have been more wrong. Well I still think God calls people into other countries to serve there and bring another perspective or different things.

But I woke up from this sweet dream, that Germany is in no danger, a bit more than a year ago, when I was on my DTS hearing from my Leader about Missions, God was really speaking to me that week. Somehow Buddys Lectures really upset me, when he talked about Continents that didn't include the one that Germay is on. Telling us how they need Jesus sharing statistics and leading us into prayer for those. After the last day of lectures that week, I grabbed him and yelled at him (well thinking back, I must have yelled, but I probably didn't) how he thinks Europe and the western world doesn't need Jesus and that not everybody was called overseas and and and...he just laughed at me (ha! Buddy I'm ruining your image! Guys, Buddy is a great man, with a lot of wisdom, as you'll here just now: ) and said, 'Lena! I never said Europe doesn't need Jesus, it was just not in my statistics, and just in case you didn't notice I only talked about India and (.. not sure what else..). So I stood there, probably pretty red by now, thinking how could I've gotten this so wrong?? And then he added 'well usually, the place that you're so passionately worried about, is the place you're called to, just saying'.
Well that then didn't make sense to me, good old Germany wouldn't need missionarys, would it.. so I thought well well, some western country must be in great need of..Jesus..and me. haha.

Dang I'm totally getting lost in my story.

Well I finally realized that what I though about Germany was a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty wrong picture. Yes, we had Martin Luther and yes we also had Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and they did change a lot here, but we also had some bad influences on our churches, politics and culture. What I'm saying simply is Germany needs Jesus more than ever, especially the youth! And I remembered all that this weekend when he told us the fact about East-Germay.

Back to what Shane Farmer was talking about. He pointed out that the church is not supposed to be in a defensive position. Gates are defensive. The church is to overcome the gates of hell!!
''WE SHOULD STORM THE GATES OF HELL AND TELL THE DEVIL TO GIVE US OUR GENERATION BACK!!'' We're not just meant to keep out of trouble, no, BE OFFENSIVE!
He then explained how important it is to be deeply rooted as christians, as leaders but also as followers!
In Psalm 1:1-3 It says that a tree rooted by water bears good fruit. We as christians are trees, but often we're watered by rain which in this picture are our circumstances. We need services and people to encourage us, then we bear fruit, but when that is gone, and we're in trouble and it's becoming dry around us, we're craving some rain and start drying up. FLIP! Get you roots deep!
If we as the church would understand that, it would change everything.
He said that spiritual growth is not first and foremost connected with church activities, but being close to Jesus will bring change, in our behavior, our character, it will simply change US. And they made a study he told us, where they tried to figure out how to be close to Jesus, what leads us right to the cross.
And it turned out to be, surprisingly (not really):
MEDITATION ON THE WORD OF GOD.

A short story :When Shane was younger him and his friend used to play rugby (or some other american sport) they would work out a lot and soon be pretty big. A boy comes along, a couple of years younger being amazed at Shanes muscles, asking what he did to become so big. Shane thinks, what a silly question to ask somebody that is older and does sports, and answers, well you know we eat grass, not just any grass, it needs to be i the shade, if possible of a tree', the boy doesn't really believe it. Then Shane says: Rick (his friend) and I found that out and it really works!' 'Rick does it too??' he asks, and that apparently really got him. So they find a shady patch of grass and the boy eats it, and Shane tells him the truth as soon as he swallowed the grass.

it's amazing what someone will eat if they think it's worth it.
GIVE YOUNG PEOPLE A VISION THAT'S WORTH IT!!!

He led or still leads a youthcamp from his church where the Kids or youth have to SOAP every morning.
Soap stands for:
S - Scripture (read)
O - Observe (understand)
A - Application (put it in your life)
P - Prayer (ask God to seal it)
It's teaching them how to meditate on the word, cause another statistic I heard this weekend is that i think it was 80% of youthgroupkids (in the US) turn away from God after graduating Highschool. He ran those camps for a while now and they encourage to SOAP not only when on holidays but always and he said from the Kids that did that and continued 50% are still full on walking with God. He related that to that simple principal.

IN SHORT:
- Germany needs Jesus!
- be deeply rooted!
- how? - meditate on the word
- flipping give young people a vision they can go for!
- and show them how to become as deeply rooted as (hopefully) you are.

Youthconference - Willow Creek

O P E N

This last weekend I attended my third Willow Creek Conference. This time it was in my neighborhood, Wetzlar. The topic was being open. 

Before I start sharing things I learned and God put on my heart, I want to tell you about the amazing people that so passionately shared their heart for Jesus and this generation with us. Those we learned so much from. Those we got challenged by simply listening and testifying that God is doing something in this nation and around the world! 

First there was Thorsten Hebel who is an incredible youth worker here in Germany and started the blu:boks which is a ministry for Kids in East-Germany. 

We also had Jefferson Bethke and I think most of you Guys know him from his 'Why I hate religion but love Jesus'-Video. 

Phil Dooley is an Australian bloke that moved to Kapstadt, South Africa a couple of years ago and started a Hillsong Church there, before that he did youth work at Hillsong in Sydney.

Shane Farmer led AXIS which is are young adults, at the Willow Creek Church in Chicago. And he heads the 'spiritual-growth-part' at Willow.

Then there was this incredible woman, Kara Powell which leads the Fuller Institute in Los Angeles.

Rob Mitchell (Wells Fargo) shared his testimony, how he grew up, found Jesus and the trasformation he took part in.

Worship led Brandon Grisson, which definitely was one of the highlights for me!

MORE TO COME!

canoeing.

peace everybody. 

we've been canoeing on our local river, which is more of a really long lake cause it doesn't have any current, hah. it's been our tradition. we go for a camping & canoe trip every year for maybe around 10 years now. 

choose a river plan a route and up, up here we go.  

it's been a whole lot of fun, paddling, camping, bonfires, good talks and acapella music in the boats. 

we talked about the sermon on the mount and forgiveness and trusting god. 

we only had two peeps under eighteen, which was crazy, cause our ''youthgroup'' is more of a young adults group..which makes it harder cause everybody has opinions on everything and knows 'everything' but it makes it easier at the same time cause everybody also knows what needs to be done and we get to dive deep. 

god has really blessed us wit the weather, although it was raining all thursday - which was the only full day - we've had warm weather and while building up the camp it was dry. and looking at it now with a weatherforecast that tells us there won't be any sun till next week - there is a lot of reason to thank God.

i was really challenged cause it was a lot to organize and a lot of decisions to make. we were pretty late planning everything. i kinda freaked out about the whole thing cause i couldn't do it. 

but then i realized AGAIN that God CAN do it. in our weakness he is strong. he's been carrying me through so many storms and i've always learned stuff from it. he's a good one. 

If you're reading this and feeling like everything is too much and you just want to break out, run away, hide and cry. read 2. corinthians 12:9 again where it says,: 

~ BUT HE SAID TO ME, 

>>MY GRACE IS MADE SUFFICIENT IN YOU, 

FOR MY POWER IS MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS.<<

THEREFORE I WILL BOAST ALL THE MORE GLADLY ABOUT MY WEAKNESS,

SO THAT CHRIST'S POWER MAY REST ON ME. ~

i am so grateful that this is the God i'm serving! he is the one that stays faithful to his word even if we doubt and lose faith. he gave abraham his promised son after abraham tried to do it all himself and made a baby with another lady. god is faithful. 

trust, pray and persevere. 

he keeps bringing me back to my knees, everytime i think i know what to do he shows me  that he's the one with the plan and the ability. and i so love to be used by him. how great is it to be a part in his puzzle. 

sorry (tom) for not taking any good pictures.. hope you get to enjoy those anyway :)

love you guys heaps! 

1. May

The first of May is our national day of work, therefore we get one day off. 

Everybody goes outside and wanders, cycles, simply tours around the woods, fields or does sports. In my opinion it's suuper important to have a barbecue as well. 1. May is one of my favorite days of the year. 

Being outside with friends in spring and eat pretty much only meat..there is not much that's better than that. 

For me and my friends the tradition is a tractor tour. One of us is driving and the rest sits in the trailer in the back. 

We're having music, beer and a lot of fun.

So as you can imagine its a fun day to have! 

I took a couple of pictures, not to many cause that was not the main priority - haha. 

here a little taste of it.