idaho 

*Nothing I hold on to (I will lean not on my own understanding, My life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven) - if you want, listen to this song to accompany this blog :)

When the world breaks my heart, what if I just surrendered? Just gave up?

Wait what if I did that? Then it would have to be God, then it would have to be God, then it would have to be God that was the solution, not me.

What if I gave up my eyes and heart for his? What if I gave up my life for Him

Journal Entry: July, 26th

“Show me your wounds”

Yesterday, like Thomas, I needed to see them due to the fact that my mind was existential, and my heart divided in fear. Somehow you can live like 7 years with endless wounds, aka endless proofs, of God and still doubt, you still sometimes find it hard to return to restful intimacy with your Savior. With your best friend; the only One who has been by your side leading you through the whole time

This journal entry marks my state of mind at the beginning of World Race America. After Idaho, I can honestly say that the wounds of Jesus’ crucifix and resurrection have never been so clear. In the desires of my heart, which God sees, I wanted more proof if I am really going to continue giving myself over to the “unseen” God.

I just didn’t think He was good enough to show me even more….

like supernaturally

like “always wrecked in Idaho” as our group chat with our hosts is now named

Simultaneously, I have never felt more loved and honored and seen by Him, tattooed with a permanent ink of identity. 

Taste and see that the LORD is good (Psalm 34:8)

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13)

to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory (Ephesian 3:20-21)

Kenz and I started doing a Bible study with our friend Joanna from Indonesia.

In Ephesians 1, we read “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight …with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us…he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ”

It is God’s pleasure to lavish us in love, and “the one who blesses others is abundantly blessed” (Proverbs 11:25).

Let’s start with…

The day we asked the Lord and did street evangelism

Watch this video Kenz made and see the beauty of spreading Jesus when it begins with letting the Holy Spirit go before you and through you.

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The Spirit leapt inside of me to talk to this blind man when I saw him cross the street.

Kenz encouraged us to go, and Raquel and I went walking after him. We helped him cross the street. He said he could find his way from there on. 

A little bummed out, I looked at Raquel. Suddenly, I remembered the note I wrote that morning...

John 10:10 popped in my head so I wrote it down, I also felt slightly led to draw a light bulb and right “in color.” The whisper came into my mind what if someone who couldn't see the note, received it? 

Raquel shed compassionate tears in that moment as I told her about it. Raquel moved me to see the note was clearly, abundantly for him. It was her that gave us the courage to chase after him again.

We prayed for him, and he was so receptive and eager to share about his life.

We had thought he was closed off from our first interaction, but in reality he was in the middle of a homework assignment for a school for the blind he’s attending. The teacher stood by the door as Raquel guided the conversation so beautifully. 

What really stuck out to me was his embrace of the cup he has been handed.

When we asked to pray for him, he said “God could make me see, but I have this so I can grow strong.”

I was sinking in exhaustion at the end of my backpacking trip this summer, meanwhile Mark has backpacked much more than me and raised up 8 kids and many jazz students. That’s amazing.

Our last night, we met a couple that has a refugee ministry in Boise. He couldn’t stop emphasizing how it is relationship over service (made me think of how amazing Indonesia was), learning over teaching. His wife, a counselor, found that people need a friend over someone trying to heal them. He prayed a portion of Grace over us.

He said “The poor are just waiting to bless you”…

Nearing the end of our day we went to a skate park with the poor lining the streets. There began hardened hearts to God, shattered souls like Z who just was released and has a daughter in custody of the state.

We came to a halt, but I knew we weren’t finished yet. God highlighted this other area earlier. Now was the time to go there and give out snacks.

All 7 of us walked up to one man sitting outside a rescue mission.

It was awkward at first, but one by one more filtered in. The ratio of 7:1 turned into like 7:7.

It was full on fellowship and breaking of bread like one of them said. The truck driver (Annie in the morning felt like we would meet a truck driver) prayed over Lauren and called her an angel after she prayed for him.

 N discussed theology of spiritual gifts like tongues. Kylie, Annie, and I sat on the ground looking up to him as he became our teacher. From Satan worshipping background, he found the Christ that calls us to be humble.

The Lord's outpour to us in previous days enabled us to outpour onto beauties like Sarah.

As I came running back with Annie and her letter, Sarah was already in overwhelmed and beaming with awe tears talking with Raquel.

Her frustrated day, on her break from working, turned into one where she was enthroned with specific words from God written to her in Annie’s letter, Raquel’s tiara, and Kylie’s flower. She couldn’t wait to post this picture on social media:

 Let me tell you, it was out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.

May we be willing to act on those inklings, because you never know what blessing is on the other end!!!!

For instance, I felt like I needed to write the verse about being a prized possession on the back of a watercolor I made for a teammate. I gave it to her and come to find out that exact verse my other teammate felt led to share with her that morning.

God wants to lavish us in the Truth of how loved we are!

Our day in downtown Boise began with Kylie proclaiming the armor of God over us (Ephesians 6). As she did, I imagined God dumping a bucket of water over us. Exodus is what the Lord led me to read, even when I didn’t want to. Lauren, Raquel, and I are all being fueled by this book right now.

That morning, I read how Moses went down from God’s consuming presence and glory to bring Aaron back up to it. I felt as though God was calling us to the same; the days preceding this one had been an overflow of His Love, more known and honored than we could have dreamt up for ourselves…

The day Candace and Patti claimed us royal

The best of times happened as a result of divine appointments, not planned by man.

Candace will always be one of the most important divine appointments to me.

She is the most radiant, on fire for Christ, prophetic, infectiously joyful women I have ever met.

Our new friend Jey, at the food pantry – you’ll hear more about her, invited us to her church (her son’s the pastor).

This woman introduced herself to Raquel and I at the beginning of a refreshing church service. Little did we know, she would shoot arrows of prophecy hitting the center of the target every time before we left the building.

The crazy part was that this was hers and our first time ever going to this church.

Read my about me tab, if you want to read about the prophecies she spoke.

Knowing nothing about me, she said my creativity and painting on canvases isn’t commonplace but holy; it will release people into God’s freedom.

Candace and her friend Patty then proceeded to invite all six of us over for an “activity” days later. Oh how we underestimate what the Lord has for us.

After she met Raquel and I, she saw a vision crowning our team with tiaras, washing our feet with red roses scattered, and chocolate bars.

Patty’s house and testimony are novel and inspiring. The lunch she made filled us to the brim. And never could I have imagined that God loved me this much. His heart for all of us is royalty as His children.

They played worship and served us, claiming it is a blessing to bless others. Candace went around to each of us and like a translator for the King of Kings told us what God has to say. I’m telling you she knew none of our stories, yet she knew all of our stories.

From one’s love of dancing on her own time, to Annie’s call of writing love letters that has been spoken over her 4+ different times, to living water like an ocean that she saw in my belly which has been spoken over me now like 5+ distinct times, to one’s exact family situation that God wanted to breathe hope into, to an exact lie that God wanted to shatter with truth, she showed us that God hears and cares about the cries of our hearts and the smallest details of our personhood.

He is the Good Good Father.

Some of us were brought to tears of healing, some just awestruck.

She made me abundantly excited to live this life.

She starts with “Radiant Splendor” over me, funny enough splendor = lavishly decorating/adorning, magnificence.

In Utah, I had just decided to begin praying for a husband again, when I felt God asking me to make a decision if I wanted to choose singleness forever (1 Cor 7)…and at the lunch table, she saw an image of my husband, man of God, with big letters “Adventure” over his head...

Can I tell you that the beginning of Idaho the enemy’s lies started creeping into my head like they had in Malaysia? That, before all this, I just prayed that God would help me to see prophecy how He wanted me to, because I was weary of it?

He allowed everything bad that happened to happen, because He knew eventually, I’d be here

Not only do I believe that the Bible is the living Word and truth to depend on daily for fullness of life and identity, I also believe God is still speaking and the sheep will know the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:27).

The Holy Spirit can move in our imaginations.

Our hosts, Jace and Lo, are incredible World Race alumni.

Lo had us do an imaginative exercise where she set up the scene and we let our imaginations go.

Every part in the exercise symbolized something; we didn’t know until after. We were shocked once we found out the meaning, how accurate and deep our imaginations had gone.

For instance, she had us imagine a body of water.

The depth of it symbolized the depth of where we will go with our emotions. If we crossed the water, we are willing to face/deal with our pain and emotions. This is what I imagined:

…The body of water that appears is a large lake, the moon beams have a wavy reflection in a line towards me. I start to walk in, my feet sink into the wet sand. And there’s a canoe and a man pulls me into it. He disappears and it’s just me paddling across. One side after another you can hear the splashing sound, but the landscape seems great. You seem small but big. You know you have to keep going, a high level of wonderous alertness. My canoe beaches the shore and the water slips past the sides. I step out of the unsteadiness and see the bright gold key hanging. I wonder if I should take it, and I hear “I want you to have it” and trumpets sound in a row of people…

One day, early on in Idaho, I felt like I need to cry hard before an important dinner our host planned for us.

I almost sat the night out, but I went outside and asked the Holy Spirit to give me strength and the fruits of the Spirit to enjoy the night, and not miss it; to choose my team rather than the enemy’s lies. (fyi anything that is condemning or self-deprecating is not of God!).

It was amazing how much I would have missed if I didn’t rely on God as my strength when my flesh is weak; I think the man in the canoe is God helping me to deal with the depth of emotions I feel.

Lo made us a Mediterranean meal of fellowship in a conversation over racism and the state of our country with a humble African American man of God named Malcom. 

The Food Pantry

They served 300 families during Covid, which is more than triple what they usually serve. The days we were there we fed around 79 families.

Samuel, the leader of the ministry, proclaimed that they give physical and spiritual food, that prayer is the oil to our lamps, that we can’t neglect Nineveh’s (read Jonah).

The first day working at the food bank caused me to write: There’s a quake in Boise Idaho of the Kingdom of God.

Raquel immediately connected with two volunteers Delores and Jey.

The two insisted that some of us come to work in the back with them, loading up a month’s worth of food per family. 

Meanwhile, everyone, but Raquel and I, got to ask people receiving food if they needed prayer.

Kenz, Annie, Kylie, and Lauren had moments with and visions for people that were supernatural (Read about them in