Here is a quick video of the first week we've been here! I will be making weekly videos like this just to show you what we have been doing and updating you on prayer request!
Next week we will be traveling out to a village where we will be staying for three days and two nights!
No power, no bathrooms...NOTHING! It is going to be such an incredible experience for our students!
I hope you all are doing well and please keep Team Cambodia in your prayers!
It has been a crazy month trying to get ready for CAMBODIA! I cannot believe how quickly it's coming up...only 32 more days! I would love to tell you all about it, but I feel as if the Lord is telling me to show instead. I've put together some videos of our Engage students here in Kona during their lecture phase. I've also found a few more showing activities and how the Lord is moving here at the University of Nations campus .
On Mondays we have lecture in the mornings, and then at night we all meet together in the Prayer Room for Ministry Night. Here is a little look of what it is like...
The Lord moves in new ways every single week and is revealing to us who He is more and more. Some nights it's pure worship, other nights it's a time of prayer and silence. People are being baptized in the spirit and the Lord is revealing little parts of Himself to us all the time! Ministry Night is one of my favorite nights here on campus :-)
Every morning, Monday through Friday, we have lectures in our classroom for three hours. The topics that we have covered up to this point are Hearing the Voice of God, The Call and the Cost, Knowing God, The Nature and Character of God, Pure Heart, Sure Foundations, and then this last week we dug into the Bible and looked at different stories where God was making Himself known to His people. Our speaker, Trent Sheppard, had our students act out different Bible stories, which we will use on outreach, so here is a little look at one of those days.... (P.S. our students are AMAZING!)
Thursday evening is basically a church service called Ohana Court. The whole Campus comes together for worship and to hear a message from a speaker of one of the schools that is in session. This is just a great time to come together and worship as a community! This is also open to the Kona community, so we usually have over 500 to 600 people! This video was from last quarter:
This next video was from this last Thursday night...
At the end of the week we pray for our speakers and pour into them because they have poured so much into our lives during that week. This was the first week of our Engage Discipleship Training School and we had 8 different students praying in 8 different languages for our speaker. What a blessing it was to be apart of such an amazing experience. I love our students so much and God has amazing plans for this class!
At the end of the week we have Outreach Time! This is a time that our class breaks up into individual outreach groups and spends time together organizing and prepping for our time abroad, but also spending much needed time coming together bonding and becoming a family. For our outreach time last week I knew everyone was getting tired, so I wanted to take them to go do something fun and have some much needed bonding time...so we did this :-)
I adore my girls so much and I am so beyond thankful for them. They have been so great, real troopers in learning the Khmer language, and just bringing so much to this team already!
Here is a little video of UofN Cambodia that gives a brief description of Cambodia, the struggles the Cambodian people face, how YWAM is serving this beautiful nation, and showing glimpses of different ministries we will be helping them with!
I hope you all are doing well and I will be updating more next week once I have more information on our outreach. Please continue to pray for our team as we begin final preparations. I would also like to ask that you place our financial situation on your prayer list also. We are still in need of monetary support, so if you would like to help our little team of six in following God's call to serve the people of Cambodia it would be such a blessing. We still have quite a ways to go in having our needed funding...any little bit can help and would be greatly appreciated.
I’m sorry this is running so behind, but school preparations got extremely busy and there was just no time to sit down and write. The Engage DTS is now underway, we are in the middle of our second week, and everything is going amazingly well. We honestly have the best group of students you could possibly hope for. We have a group of 39 students from 8 different countries and they are all so on fire for the Lord! Even on their times off you can find them all together, without any prompting by staff, in the classroom praying, in the prayer chapel together, or assembled together at the Banyan Tree Café just worshiping and fellowshipping. I love them all so much already and they are truly an inspiration. God is doing beautiful things here in Kona.
Our school has now started their community outreach projects! Last night both Emily and I loaded up our vans and drove our students to their first community outreach project. We took them to a middle school where they worked with children in an afterschool program. Other community outreach projects we will be working with are an organization called Deep and Beyond and also with the homeless within our community. This is a very special part of DTS as it gets the students outside of the classroom, outside of themselves and just lets them selflessly pour into the lives of others. I have attached a video here to give you an example of what community outreach projects consist of. Deep and Beyond is an amazing organization that we will be doing work with…enjoy!
We will also be starting our training for the outreach phase of our school. We will have training in the areas of primary healthcare, world sports ministry, children’s ministry and my favorite of all which is Justice Water. These training classes will help us prepare for our trips and will get us ready for situations we will encounter while abroad. We want to make a positive impact on the communities we will be working in. In the country our team is being sent to the most urgent needs are primary healthcare, water issues and human trafficking. It is our desire to serve those we come in contact with effectively, so I’m very excited for these training opportunities. Also, to reach the children I’ve been informed we need to know how to play cricket! I haven’t played that since the first and second grade while living in Adelaide, so I foresee a lot of practice time coming my way. Here is a video that shows the ministry of Justice Water:
Well, we have made the announcements, so I can now reveal to you where I will be traveling to for our outreach phase. I am heading to CAMBODIA!!!!! I will be leading a team of 5 beautiful ladies and we will be working in the areas of Siem Reap and possibly Phenom Penh. Next week the six of us will sit down and start to work out the details of our trip and the area of ministries we want to work in. Sex trafficking and water issues are on all of our hearts, so we will see where the Lord leads. I will be sure to keep you up to date on what has been decided and requests for prayer we might be needing during our preparations. Here is a picture of our team:
These beautiful ladies are (left to right) Annie Rollins (Illionois) Grace Smith (Laguna Beach, California) Saida Sampson (Oceanside, California) Me (I have no home :), Esther Kang (Redmond, Washington) and sweet Hessu (South Korea).
Well, I have decided after this letter I will start making weekly/bi-weekly video blogs instead of letters and I’m hoping that will be ok with all of you. With all my staffing duties it is so hard to sit down and write. My day starts at 5:30am and I’m usually crawling into bed around midnight. Life is full of classes, one-one-ones, reading student journals, outreach prep, community outreach, errands, driving the vans, night services, and the list goes on and on…so very tiring for sure, but so incredibly happy at the same time. I’m just wanting to make sure you are all up to date on what’s going on, so I’m thinking this is the best option. Be forewarned that most of the videos will be made on the go, but on the bright side at least you’ll get to meet my students this way too!
As all of you know I was having a hard time adjusting at first to my life here in Kona because it was just such a huge change. I was dealing with different types of losses, missing my green/cool Salem, missing friends and family, but God has came in and has done an amazing transformation and my heart is full. I finally got to the point where I was willing to turn everything completely over to him, and with that complete release He took it and made it all new; all shiny like a new penny. Through the past six month I learned a very valuable life lesson; when we are finally able to let go and just trust, God can come in and do the most amazing things! Like I shared with a dear brother the other night, it’s just me, my little pink moped, the most amazing students, UofN’s awesome staff, places waiting to be reached, people waiting to be loved, sun on my face, wind in my hair and a heart FULL of Jesus…can’t get any better than that! Again, thank you all so much for your love and support. Like I’ve said before, this is a team effort and all of us together are training these young students, young missionaries, to go out and share the love of Christ and in fulfilling the great commission! Thank you for partnering with me :-)
Waking up to a beautiful Kona morning looking forward to another extremely busy day of school preparations…this pretty much seems to describe my life these days. As I am sitting here writing this I am thanking God for the view of my office. (The photo above) It is so nice to sit outside and work because if not you would probably find me huddled under my desk in a little ball just rocking back in forth singing to myself. I never realized just how much went into preparing for a Discipleship Training School. As of right now I am sitting here staring at a list of forty plus items that need to be attended to…soon. Before I left I prayed to God that He put me through fire, provide me with the opportunity to learn as much as possible, to be given as much responsibility as He felt I could handle, and be able to work to the point of being so tired at night that I could just fall into bed and sleep deeply. God is good; He answered my prayers and then some :) Right now we are eight and a half weeks away from the schools start date and there are only two of us working on preparations. The remaining four staff will not be here until December, so please put us on your prayer list. God’s grace is sufficient and I know everything will come together for a fantastic school for our students.
Well, one morning this past week as Joanna and I were sitting in the café doing our Bible study we decided we needed to pray for our school and ask God what He wanted to show us. As we were praying Joanna received Isaiah 63-65 and as we read through it what struck me most was Isaiah 65:1 which says “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, “Here I am, here I am.” That verse struck home for me for two reasons. These past couple of weeks with moving and transitioning into a new “home” while dealing with the loss of my old one, my focus wasn’t completely on Him where it should have been. As I sat there pondering that fact I prayed more into what God had just placed on my heart and I felt He was telling me that there are students who are going to be coming to us who would be going through the same thing and we needed to disciple these individuals, see them through and help them understand…He is wanting us to come to Him. He is wanting us to come to Him with our everyday life struggles; He’s wanting us to talk to Him like we talk to our best friend, spouse, family member, the way we talk to those closest to us. He waits so patiently for us to come to Him, but most of the time we are so oblivious trying to figure things out on our own that we don’t go directly to Him or rely on Him to see us through. Yes, it is a two way street, He does come and pursue us, but we need to constantly be pursing Him. He wants that close intimacy with us where we come to Him for everything. As long as we are pursuing Him and have that intimacy everything else will flow from that. These next eight weeks are going to be crazy busy, but I know some amazing fruit is going to come from it. I’m so excited to see what God has in store for our students.
We have some exciting things planned for our school that I know are going to really stretch our students. We have just been approved to take our entire school together during the last two weeks of lecture phase to a top secret location. I’m sorry I can’t say where this amazing location is at this time as some of our students might be reading this, but I will be announcing it in the newsletter I’ll be sending out at the end of the month. Our speakers are confirmed, outreach contacts and preparations are beginning, and materials are being collected. We are now up to 25 accepted students and in the process of approving more applications in the next few days! Two more staff joined our team last week and now we’re up to six, so thank you all so much for your prayers. This week along with all of the paperwork we will be working on we will also be putting together videos for our students so they will be familiar with our campus and staff when they arrive. The ages of our students range from 17 to 29 so for a lot of them this will be their first experience away from home and we want to make the transition as stress free as possible for them. There is so much to do, so much to learn, but I am so thankful for the opportunity. What an amazing God we serve.
I’m in my second week here in Kona and I’m getting familiar with the campus and learning my way around town. I am now the owner of a pink moped (yes, pink ;D thank you Christine for all your help) and we have managed to attached a shopping basket to the back for trips to the nearby Famers Market where I’m able to shop for the most amazing fresh fruits! (I’m working extra hard at getting healthy as I’ll be leading a team on my own for outreach, so I want to make sure I’m in the best health possible!!) Joanna was just the best and bought me a pink pancho to match for those random afternoon rain showers, so I’m all set. I’m all settled in my apartment and I have four wonderful roommates that are just the sweetest girls. They are all staffing various schools that are in session right now, so it’s nice to be with people that I can ask for advice since I’m the newbie. Joanna (the school leader) and her roommate Christine have just been amazing helping me get acquainted and settled in here and I am so thankful for all their help. The leadership/training team here on base has also taken me under their wings and spending time with these people and their families has just been a huge blessing. Now that I’m getting settled in I have found a ministry I want to get involved with off campus. There is a Crisis Pregnancy Center here in Kona that is doing amazing work and I’m excited about the possibility of working with them. I’ll be updating you all later this month on how the process is going on getting involved with them. Well I had better sign off I just wanted to catch you all up on what has been going on since I got here.
Love you and miss you all and I’ll be in touch soon!
Allie :-)
This is a picture of our Thursday night meeting in Ohana (family) Court!
Here is a short little clip of my ENGAGE DTS team on outreach :)
It was such an amazing outreach and my team and I were blessed to meet such amazing and beautiful people. I know I will never forget them.
Well, I will be making my way to Kona in 3 days. This past month has flown by so fast and the moving day has snuck up on me! Once I get there I will jump right in and start preparing for the Engage DTS school with the school leader Joanna Mutch. I cannot believe the start date for the school is just over two months away. As of right now we have 20 plus students with more signing up everyday. We have four staff right now, but with the number of students growing so fast we are are for sure going to need more staff. If you could be praying for those individuals to join our leadership team those prayers would be greatly appreciated! Here is the site for the school if you did not see it below...http://www.uofnkona.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=677&Itemid=745&lang=en.
We have some pretty amazing students so far who are so on fire for the Lord! I cannot wait to meet all of them in person and watch them grow and transform into the people the Lord has called them to be. That is the most amazing part of a Discipleship Training School. A DTS is split up into two parts. The first three months is the Lecture Phase. The students have lecture 5 days a week learning 12 different subjects. The learn about Hearing The Voice of God, The Father Heart of God, Holy Spirit Week, Spiritual Warfare and many other subjects. After the lecture phase is over we go on to the Outreach Phase which is 10 weeks long. Locations are decided by the staff coming together and praying about where they feel the Lord is leading their team. There are usually a few teams depending on how many students are in the school. Students are split into teams of between 6 to 10 people. For me this was the most life changing part of my DTS. It is where I grew the most in my relationship with God and learned to trust and become dependent only on Him.
In those six months you become a totally different person; as YWAMer's say you are "ruined for the ordinary." Everyday you learn how to "Die To Self" which basically means to put yourself aside when you wake up every morning and to put the Lord first, others second and yourself last. DTS is the most life changing/growing experience you will ever have. I have so much joy and excitement for these students because I know what is coming for them! It is the most beautiful thing to watch :)
As a missionary I raise my own financial support, so if you would like to come alongside me monthly, or even with a one time gift, your help would be such a blessing. To make a donation you can go to
Well, this has been the craziest month of my life! I got home from spending 2 1/2 months in Romania and Moldova. I was so blessed to have such an amazing outreach and the Lord worked in so many ways. There were many healings, many people were saved and helping new ministries get started. My favorite ministry was a place called Cold Valley which was a gypsy village. We played with children and just showed them love the whole time. I met some of the sweetest children and I will never forget them. They will always be near and dear to my heart. As I said above, God worked in so many ways...more than I have ever seen Him work. It showed me how big our God really is, how blessed we are to live a life with Him, to be His servants to go out into the nations and proclaim His name and to make Him known.
With all the children at Cold Valley
Gypsy Village
Our team the last night in Romania
After a week of debrief and graduation in Salem, Oregon I came back home to help my parents move. They made a big move back down to Southern California. We have been down here for about 3 weeks now.I have been helping them get all settled in and also support raising like crazy which brings me to where I'm going next....
A lot of you might not know but I am going to Kona, Hawaii at the end of this month. I am going to be staffing the Engage Discipleship Training School which focuses on injustice .http://www.uofnkona.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=677&Itemid=745&lang=en. (Here is the schools webpage so you can see what I will be doing!) I will be overseeing the students that are taking this school and then leading an outreach somewhere in the world. We are still praying about where God is wanting to send us :) I am so excited for this new chapter in life and feel so blessed to be staffing this schooll! I seriously cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store for all of us!
Thank you for all your prayer and support. I love you all and please feel free to write back with any prayer requests or questions as I love hearing from you all. Thank you to those who responded to my financial needs this last month; you have made a big difference! http://uofnkona.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=652&MN=5697
Thank you also to those who are also supporting me through prayer and please know it means the world to me as well! If you would like me to send you a newsletter every month, please let me know and I will add you to the list. I will write again once I get to Kona and let you all know how it is going, how the school is coming along and let you know about our outreach destination!
