Rose with a Mission

  I finished filmmaking school!  This week we filmed and edited a music video, learned how to record and edit high quality audio, learned about green-screening, finished the short film that we shot last week, and had a showing of the short film. It was great fun to collaborate with these new friends and I learned so much. On Friday they handed out awards to the class. I got the Golden Smile award. I think partially for my smile and partly for my goldfish cracker obsession. Before I came home had the privilege of spending some time with Diane. She's an elderly single woman that has served the Lord all her life. It shows in her stories and conversation. She encouraged me by her calm wisdom and sweet faithfulness. I came away encouraged that you can serve the Lord faithfully and beautifully as a single. I'm so thankful for the people I got to meet on this trip. From the instructors that I learned so much from, to my hosts that cared...

  Last Saturday and Sunday God gave me so much perspective for what we have been doing here.  I confided to a staff member for YWAM Boquete that I felt like I hadn't really seen anything spectacular since being here. We had mainly done work projects and hung out with kids. Nothing huge or amazing as far as I could tell. "You don't know how much what you are doing helps." She told me. "Everything here is hard work. There's a lot of manual labor goes into everything. When you come in and clean, weed, or move rocks, it frees up a staff member to do ministry. Your team has been faithful to do the little things well. You don't know how much that means to us." It changed my perspective on the work we were doing.  Then on Sunday one of the girls who had been coming to the base to practice English came up to me at church. She gave me a barrette and thanked me for all of my help. I didn't feel like I had done that much, but the gesture was like God tappin...

  Sundays lesson went so well. I'm thankful that God led me to give a very simple message to the middle schoolers. After reading about the temptation of Jesus, I talked about how because Jesus knew who He was He knew what to do. I pray that God takes the seeds planted and uses them in these kids lives. I'm thankful I got the opportunity to teach and just hang out with them.  That night we had a time of worship/prayer on the beach. You couldn't have asked for a better night. It wasn't too cool and the setting sun and clouds did a color dance that was beautiful to behold. God is so good. It was good to praise the Lord and pray for each other.  Early Monday morning the Panama team woke up to get on the road to the Philadelphia Airport. It touched me that so many of my classmates woke up at 5:45 AM to hug us goodbye.  Saying goodbye was hard. We have become so close over the past few months. They have walked this journey with me and en...