Back in Gunnison - Long Overdue Update

God has been blowing me away lately. He has definitely been releasing His Spirit in Gunnison in a totally new way. My church, Community Church of Gunnison, put on a Big Tent Revival event for 4 consecutive nights in September. It was fantastic to see how many people came out for dinner, fellowship, and raw worship. I loved how free I felt (and sensed the same for many others) to praise and worship the Lord in a setting different than our standard pews.

Since then, I've felt God's Spirit move drastically in my small group. I feel that we are all coming more alive in Him and are sensing His presence and what He desires for our time together. This is so exciting for me because last year, before YWAM, our group never felt "deep." I loved the girls in it, but it was always very surface level conversation about what we were reading, but we never deepened our times together to Experience God.

I am also super excited for wonderful reunions with Sisi and Corlize (both friends from Kona) in the next couple of months. While I was out in Kona debriefing in June, I really felt that God wanted me to invite Sisi to Colorado for Christmas. She was very excited by the idea, so we went forward with plans. Now, we have extended our plan to include a trip to Kansas City for the OneThing Conference (hosted by IHOP - International House of Prayer) at the end of December. Ericka Smiley (also from my DTS) is going to meet us there and we already feel that God is preparing a time for us to be His princesses :) God even had a wonderful "royalty" coat at the front of the rack at the thrift store when I went to look for something warm for Sisi to wear while she is here visiting. I love Him so much!

My reunion with Corlize will come in January. She's invited me to come visit her in South Africa when she goes back home for awhile. God has spoken to both of us that this will be a time of healing and redemption of Africa in my heart. I am so blessed to have her open her life back home to me in part of the healing process that God desires in my heart! God has told me that He wants me to travel again and even confirmed it by providing a wonderful (nearly new) rolling suitcase set at the thrift store for an incredible price. I feel so loved and provided for!

AND God has been speaking to me more about Portraits of Papa, the children's book that He put in my heart last October during my DTS. I was praying fervently a couple of weeks ago that He would break down the wall that went up preventing me from hearing his guidance as I move forward with this dream. He brought my attention to an incredible "story" of scripture that I found online weeks before titled "The Best Dad in the Universe." I read the whole thing out loud and then was flooded with ideas of how God wants me to word parts of Portraits of Papa. While I was in Kona in June I felt inspired to create a set of paintings called "because He love me." I never painted them, but I feel that God is incorporating that idea into Portraits of Papa.

As of now, each page is going to start with "My Papa loves me so much that..." and then I describe some wonderful, incredible, beautiful way that Papa shows his love to me through His creation. I am so excited about this! The very next day I was meeting with one of my clients for work, and we got talking about my plans when my job is done in a few weeks. I shared about my book and he said, "Sounds great. Write it, bring it to me, I edit it for you, and my publishing company will publish it." WOW - thanks GOD!

So that is a quick update of my life in the past few weeks. I am so glad that God called me back to Gunnison to be part of this monumental time for our city. His Spirit is alive and moving big time! I am here offering myself to be used for His Glory and bringing His Kingdom to the heart of all those in the Gunnison valley :)