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Week 8: Gulash and Atheists


We had prayed: To be a light in the city, to grow grass and bring a new season into Czech Republic.

But desolation greeted us. Walls of silence, spiritual silence, rose up in the depths of Czech Republic. In Chomotov, grass and roots grow through the park benches. No one really cares, that there is emptiness and blank stares. The image of a person yelling but not emitting a sound came to my mind. 

A cold chill went up my spine when we pulled over by the church building and the building next to it was a sex shop. And the children walk by, looking for something but not knowing what they’re looking for.

Bara, our host, she has deep blue eyes. The warmth of God makes her distinct in the crowd. She was selected by God among 500 students of her high school—where she is one out of four Christians.

We got to sit down every night with different groups of people in the church, believers and unbelievers, who had a million questions and doubts to ask over vanilla tea. They were intrigued.

I couldn´t help but to be thinking all the time about how life could be for a 18 year old teenager who wants to believe in Jesus but everyone around her tells her there is no such thing. It grieved my heart to see disbelief.

But God was faithful. At the end of the week, I saw smiles coming from those who had previously rejected the gospel. Now they looked at us, speaking about God´s love, and they bowed their heads in prayer.

One day, as we walked through the streets, a homeless man shouted to us words I could not understand. But then someone explained to us that he said: “You are different! You are crazy!”. God confirmed our prayers!

The denseness of disbelief did not disappear as we moved down to the center of Czech and into Prague. It seemed evident that everywhere we went, there was something that was coming alive. The Spirit that lived in Jesus that rose him from death, also lives in us.

We held on to that when we prayed on the streets of a full, yet lonely, abandoned, Prague.

There we saw that it was easy to settle for this state of spiritual sleep, once you´re surrounded by it for the longest time. You become numb in your senses, to the spiritual atmosphere.

It is that way for the students we visited in a English Club. They are numb to the existence of God, to them, there is no such thing. And even if there was, they don´t really care.

It sounded hopeless, but to me it felt like being a candle in a dark room. We took advantage of the freedom we had been given to speak, to speak words of truth into the hearts that are numb to the realness and aliveness of God. My heart jumped every time, to think that might have been the first time they heard about 
Jesus and it was coming out of my mouth. 

They stared at us intently. Some smiled and some others looked away.

Every night I prayed to God, his heart for Czech Republic became more and more sensitive to my spirit. I felt sadness and urgency to cry. But not because of myself, but because of the fact that there was nothing I could do but pray for them.

It struck me one day we talked to a teenager and he said that he didn´t care if there was a God. He would find out when he died, and then, if he had to go to hell, he would, gladly.

My mind raced. But God wants to be with you in eternity! He loves you so much he wants the best for you and he wants you to be with Him. He doesn’t want you to go to Hell, he wants you to be with Him forever, starting in this life, not wasting another moment! He loves you so much, he sent his only son to be sacrificed for your sins… But none of these concepts would affect this guy´s heart.

But right next to him sat a girl with fire in her green eyes. She smiled the whole time he was speaking, and then she said: “I believe in God”. I can see that even in these places, where hopelessness seems to overwhelm the population, there is flame, there is hope.

Český Těšín was something I didn´t see coming. That was: the revelation of God in a whole new level. My friend, Amanda, and myself, had different kinds of dreams that related to the church we were staying at.

I knew that when we were going around the block, lost about where to go, the church that stood in the middle had been in one of my dreams.

Jesus revealed to me that he can speak, and he has been speaking to me, through dreams. I feel inspired to discover more of His purpose in my life with this.

The moment I came to that realization I understood many things. God speaks, as a fact. God speaks to me, as a fact. God is commending me of things, as fact. God will reveal things to me, as a fact.

As I write this I look into some notes I took while we were in the last city before coming back to Herrnhut, and I think the following statement summarizes the main lesson I got out of this time:

“After having contact with different human beings, different backgrounds and beliefs, different thought systems and costumes; I realize, am I really living the freedom in Christ that was given to me? My conviction will certainly define my behavior and actions. I should love my neighbor and be honest in my relationship with God. Because actions matter, this is how I am going to be remembered. The truth prevails. God´s truth prevails.”
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Week 7: What does Spiritual Warfare really mean


Spiritual Warfare is not a set of dark forces moving around and hovering over people and places. It is about obeying God. 

The most impressive thing is that, spiritual warfare is not a place I get aware of, but a place where Jesus is fighting for me ever since I accepted Him in my heart.

I find this image specially compelling, and clear: Jesus already defeated the enemy. I should recognize there is a spiritual world that is real, but not be impressed by the acts of the enemy, but of how amazing God´s work really is. Exalting Jesus, not satan. 

I remember this week I was having my nice, warm coffee as Rogerio (this week speaker) hit his chest with his fist so hard it echoed around the room while saying “I AM TEMPLE OF GOD. GOD LIVES IN ME”. It made me ask myself, when had been the last time I said that to myself?

I felt the grief of the Holy Spirit. Asking myself that question was like hitting rock bottom. I felt tears welling up my eyes. When had been the last time I had treasured and acknowledged the fact that my body was a vessel, but dwelling in the presence of God in such a way that He is IN ME. If He is in me, then He should be my heart. I should be worshipping, all day, every thought and lapse of time. He and I, living together in one place. I felt urgency to pray and for forgiveness. 

But Rogerio kept talking and talking, and my heart was pounding heavily under my chest. I almost felt like running. As we walked out of lecture, I didn´t know what to do with myself. So I just climbed into my bed, prayed and sung. But I was not yet healed, I had to recover, and it took me a couple of days.

Along with this manner, I think God has been really speaking to me in Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” and 2 Corinthians 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”.

It all starts with one thought, and that one thought should be Christ. In the same way, in my heart Jesus must be crowned and be the first one, so that everything can flourish out from that. 

After having that rough day, I thought about taking captive every to Jesus and renewing my mind through worship. Not verbal worship, but attitude and being—always—in a worshipping behavior for the glory of God. 

At this very moment I feel peace. It´s just a few hours before leaving to Czech Republic and I feel that worshipping state of peace. I know God put me through that hard day, so that I could be more conscious of what it means to dwell in His temple through my life. Not just at certain lapses, but always, coexisting.
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Week 6: Thoughts of Co-creation



To think that I will reign, with God, above all living things, heavenly creatures and creation is a thought that overwhelms me to the point of non understanding and overall complexity realization. 

To think that God loves me and purifies me in a way that I will be standing next to Him, the invisible one, the Spirit and the Sacrifice… because of love and because He believes I am pure and worthy of being called His daughter, crowned in victory! 

It´s challenging to think about this and the fact that we will create, we are and we were creating together, God in me… makes me think about eternity and how I will worship unceasingly; what am I even doing, not worshipping Him day and night already?

This week Cory mentioned how we are called to co-create with God; this concept, continues to amaze me time after time. And if we are creating with God, then what am I creating? What kind of fruit is bearing from my tree? I almost feel a necessity to identify the fruit in order to not let it rot, but that it multiplies.

It remembered me about something the speaker of last week, Fiona, had told me in a time of prayer: Jeremiah 17:7-8, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit”.

This inspires me to co-create with God. 

And as mini-outreach peeks around the corner, I come to the realization that all that we have learned must be applied. Almost before knowing the locations I kind of knew where I would be going. 

I´m going back to Prague.

When I prayed I felt torn between Ukraine and Czech, but felt that it didn´t really matter where I was going, but where would I be more effective and happy about serving God?

It was Czech Republic, in the end. The team is perfectly composed in a way that just the Holy Spirit could have shaped. The more we prayed together as a team, the more excited I felt and something just stirs inside of me by just thinking about it.

On last Saturday prayer night at Jesus Haus, I felt something I had never felt before. Almost like an intense passion or need of expression to just declare God´s greatness, power, almightiness and love. 

My heart was pounding, I even found myself tapping my feet against the wood as we prayed for our team, I was burning from the inside out. Almost felt like dancing. 

I consider the above as a confirmation from God for the place I have for mini-outreach. And also as a confirmation, a reassurance of faithfulness, of the plan He has for me. 

Note: Picture above taken in the Charles bridge in Prague. 

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Week 5: Sin + Repentance + The Cross


It’s a wonderful mystery, defined and undefined. It has big fire eyes, speaks words of truth that expose your diluteness of reality, lifts up with his arms a savior with hands that uncover hidden eyes, dressed up in garments of purity, breaths life… 

 The Gospel, it’s what I’m talking about. I wish I could make justice to its endlessly intriguing nature.
According to the speaker of this week, Fiona, the gospel is about four main points: God loves, Sin separates, Jesus saves and then You decide. 

I agree with this statement, but the more I think about it, I feel like it’s also about motion. It’s about a living thing! As lions roar, the gospel kind of sways like wind waves of life. It’s the testimony of promise made flesh, standing over death and defeating it, raising up to open a door to the house of the “The big G” yeah, GOD. It is love.

And when I think about why would he? Why would Jesus do this? Why would LOVE sacrifice? Why the existence of the gospel? What does it mean to people in the world to have “good news”? 

I would say that by just admiring the things that surround us, we can see how it speaks about God’s glory.  And then, why would we live separated from this mighty Creator, if he created the world and everything above it, didn´t he created us as well and has a perfect plan for our lives? 

But as all things in this world: choices destroy our chances. And we chose, to be separated from Him. Because of sin we were set apart from God. Because we rebelled against his creation by destroying ourselves, while being away from his love. 

But God, in his loving nature, sacrificed his only son so that we could have intimacy with him and that is through Jesus. It´s like sin closed a door to which we didn´t have a key, but Jesus has destroyed the lock and opened the door wide open. 

He has big fire eyes, speaks words of truth that expose your diluteness of reality, lifts up with his savior arms and hands that uncover hidden eyes, dressed up in garments of purity, breaths life…

When I gaze up into Him I remember my own black pit of sin from which he took me out of. I don´t regret, but I am deeply grateful for having a memory on which I can look back and love him for extending his hand on my life. Because if I didn´t acknowledge His work in my life I would be resting importance to his power.

Independence and Pride are the heart of the sinful nature. Through the past months, God has revealed to me that I need to depend on Him, because when I do, things make more sense than without Him. And to abolish the pride parasite, I need to look at myself and everyone else through his eyes.
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Week 4: Bed-time stories


Sometimes when I´m sick I feel so out of myself. I hate not being able to feel good, it´s distracting and energy draining. Sometimes I just decide in my head I´m not sick, although I am, in order to act normally while others would lie down in bed the whole day.

Going out from there—this week has been very challenging for me in so many ways. While I tried to bear with my incapability to breathe normally, I was also being touched on the sensitive spots of my soul while I heard about the ministry of the arts and God.

I had always wondered, for years, how I could relate my art and God into one thing. I had a dream about a gallery, photography and arts merging together. That old vision I had put down to sleep during the last two years was kind of put up again into revival while I heard Liz, one of the leaders of Pick-a-Pocket (an arts ministry to fight extreme poverty), talk about their dream of opening an café/gallery that would be established on the purpose of using the arts to reach the unreached. 

Pum. Pum. Pum. My heart pounding! I felt the revival of my dreams stir up and give me the shivers. I couldn´t believe what I was hearing, felt how good it was to dream and to see dreams of others come true gave me joy. 

While we prayed during one of the intercession sessions, I could see how my future suddenly crumbled. All that I had been picturing disappeared and was replaced by this new white canvas that truly scared me. I feel excited but without direction of whatever God´s plan is for me. I am EAGER, to see what is going to happen.

God has not revealed to me what is it that I am going to do after DTS but I know that for now I have to take the best of that and apply it for this time. I can use my arts now to reach other people. 

On outreach I don´t want to separate my love for photography and the arts from God´s purpose, I know he has placed it in my heart for a reason, so that I can love others through this dream.

I keep reminding myself what Dave Nevard said while he was here, “You have to make things happen on outreach, they are not just going to happen by themselves”. And so I know that whatever God´s plan is for every single one of us in the DTS, we have to move our hands to make things happen and not just settle for what is laid out for us.

Bed-time stories make you dream, and although they seem impossible, they are inspiring. I am so excited for what is yet to come, but for now I will just continue to dream.
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Week 3: Who are you God?


A million images fast forward in my head when I hear the sentence “Nature, Character of God and Father´s heart for us”. I can´t find the words to explain this endless mystery by which I continue to be amazed and intrigued. 

And that was how it begun: a whirlwind of questions and answers we didn´t understand or had. The speaker of this week, Peter, was kind enough to place doubts and questions of subjects I hadn´t really analyzed before.

But one thing, Pete said, was fundamental: Jesus is the son of God. It does not matter how many questions or doubts rise as we engage in conversation, it is elemental to know in a factual manner, that Jesus is the son of God. Because only then we can be able to filter our questions through this statement.

Going back and forth on that subject I couldn´t help but to admire God´s greatness—I know it sounds old “Yeah God is so amazing and vast as the universe and beyond”; but truly He is. Sometimes we go by the smallest things that really speak about his character.

One of those things that struck me was Eclipses. The speaker was just shifting some images of the universe when the collapse of the sun and the moon hit my eye. A perfect moment where these two celestial bodies cross one another in such a perfect way that the sun forms a ring around the moon, and the light that the sun gave to the moon is no longer visible, but instead invisible, forming a perfectly-fit image in the sky.

This really spoke to me about God´s perfect measure. His perfect measure of life, how he carefully takes care of our past, present and future, so that everything will fit, shaping our lives around his purpose, so that He might be glorified and worshiped by us. It´s the perfect fit between the moon and the sun.

This—I´m still trying to understand, but at the same time, strangely intrigues me. The way God moves and how He is just makes me think of a prism. There are so many sides to it, and so many ways you could appreciate it, but He will always project light in whatever position to look at it. 

He is love, justice, righteousness, discipline and much more other qualities merged into one being. I could never cease to know him, but that just increases my desire to follow Him.
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Week 2: Hearing God´s Voice

45 minutes of silence.
All you could hear was the silent murmur of the heater in the background. The simple pace of breathing, the people going up and down the stairs, the wooden floor never seemed to crack so loud, all these sounds but the sound of His voice.
God´s voice. Is it Him, my head or just imagination? This thought balanced in my mind like a leaf falling from a tree. Forwards, backwards and just all over the place.
I wondered how many times I could have just murdered the voice of God, thinking it was nothing or just intuition. How many times could I have taken out the importance of his message to take all the credit or simply ignore his calling?
During this week God showed me how sometimes I haven´t trusted His Spirit.
The interesting thing is when you feel something stir up inside of that secret, undecipherable process of quieting your mind, that you see words or images but you think it is just normal brain activity and you can’t tell how thin is the line and how easy it is to cross over to the path of unbelief.
But then someone raises their voice and talks about that exact image you had in your head, and literally takes the words out of your throat, that’s when you realize, you didn´t trust the message of the Spirit.
This got me thinking into the moments of my life when the voice of God had been very clear and loud, through the haze of my dreams, through words of knowledge, and mostly through creation.
It was awesome that, sunk deep in the silence between my mental prayers and the attempt to hear God´s voice, I felt loved. I could feel His love overwhelm me, and I felt bad that I hadn´t quieted myself to hear His voice more often. His voice of peace and loving touch.
I say touch because I had gotten the image of God coning my hair, just running his fingers through my hair, counting every one of them. Smiling, twisting his fingers among my curls and treasuring me. I just felt like falling in love.
Through the week, God confirmed me this message through different people. All had the same loving message, a kind of loving dedication from God. This is what I have to say:
The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.

My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone.

Let me see your face,
Let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is lovely.

My beloved is mine, and I am his;
he grazes among the lilies.

Song of Solomon 2:8, 10-11,14 & 16
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Week 1: Arriving into Herrnhut


Midnight invited me into a sleepless night. Through the window, a full moon swayed brightly in the middle of the sky. I couldn´t help but to get lost in its consuming light in awe as I thought about those who looked up at the same moon without thinking about you, God. 
Before the candle melted to darkness, I questioned, why? Why stand still and repeat words of an inherited faith? Why leave the bible open in the same page gathering dust? Why false words and testimonies? Why dance in the dark but hide in the light? Why go so many years looking at this harvest moon and not reaping the ripe harvest? Why let life go by taking for granted the full moon instead of listening to its soft whisper reflecting the glory of God? 
I hadn´t realized by then that Revolution by the Beatles played in the background saying, You say you want a Revolution, well you know, we all want to change the world. And sitting there, bathed in the light of the same moon, God spoke clearly to my heart. 
Well, you say you want a Revolution, so why are you not doing anything about it? Why are you not being obedient? 
Scripture came to mind, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Peter 2:12). 
If God was going to use me on something, it had to be something I was passionate about. But possibilities seemed invisible and far, this is why encountering a Photography DTS seemed to a perfect casualty. Testified how Jesus guided me through this new phase of preparation.

I knew this was no casualty, it was God´s perfect plan. My dreams were no longer dreams, but now it was a possibility. And more exciting, a possibility that could turn into an instrument to reach the nations, a subject I had been learning about in the past year. 

So I got on a plane and flew towards the moon, to find myself seeing something like rain falling from the sky. Thicker. Whiter. A dreamier sight than the normal horizon in the tropic my eyes were used to. The air against my skin felt foreign but strangely real. Yes, it was no longer my imagination.

That sleepless night seemed so far now, as I immersed myself into a new world of snow. The unknown German landscape made evident how far I was from home.

Trying to keep my eyelids open on the train caught the glimpse of the brown mountains slowly turn into white ones, making my way deeper and deeper into a small German town—the smallest, indeed—called Herrnhut.

The tripod case suddenly felt twice as heavy on my back. The fat luggage next to me whispered: You are on your own now. It is real. You can depend on no one but God. You did a 16 hour flight to get unattached from yourself and know God deeper. What are you doing? What brought you here?

As soon as my head hit the cold pillow of the bed that I would use for the next three months—it hit me. The window framed a perfect view of falling snow and grey skies. The trees, with its naked branches, got dressed up in sparkly white. Truly, God was real, and alive, showing me his greatness and calling for my love as I lied silently in the bunk bed.

I felt hugged and overwhelmed. It was as if he had said I wasn´t far, but mostly, I wasn´t lonely, because He was there with me, all the time. He hadn´t left one single second.

During the first week, God placed in my heart one word: service.  Serving a new body, a new community and being a true servant of this new family. I didn´t know where to look because it seemed like such a premature concept—given the situation—however, later I understood, as we prayed for each other, that God meant I had to serve my new sisters and brothers in the way of love, as in caring for their needs.

One day, I remember, as I fought with my eyelids in an act of consequence of several jet lagged sleep; that we were being taught about “Passion”. I took several notes:

Live. Compromise. Becoming Jesus. Burn. Everything. Will only get it through sacrifice. Suffering. Extreme. Radical. Brings change into the world. Being good because of passion. If there is no conflict, there is no passion risk.

I reviewed the phrases and words when the clock ticked it´s way to 11PM,. I felt fragile. I silently wished I could have that burning compromise in my heart, and prayed that God would place this zeal that he wanted me to have deep within my soul. I could almost feel the Holy Spirit stirring within me, calling and calling me, to search more, encounter, discover and know God in a whole new dimension that I had not yet unveiled.

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