Week Nine!

Hola! What an amazing week last week was! The topic last week was the Kingdom. We spent the week drawing closer to God. Our teacher was awesome. His name is Kenny Peavy. He is a worship leader at his church in LA, and the leader of the School of Worship in the LA YWAM base. Kenny got through to almost everyone, even our staff, and helped us draw closer to God. I really feel I am building a stronger relationship with the Lord with each day. Most of this week we spent the afternoons working on outreach prep. We have found out the location of we will be in Mexico. For our first week (we leave for Mexico September 29) in a city named Pachuca. There we will be doing a lot of construction. Our next three weeks will be located in Mexico City. We are not sure what we will all be doing there but it is clear that for one week we will be working with street kids. Our last three weeks in Mexico will be a city named Uruapan. One of the DTS staff members is from Uruapan. We will be working with her church and also tribes in the surrounding area. We return to Costa Rica on November 15 and will spend our last week serving at a YWAM conformance here in Costa Rica. Things are really moving quickly now. In ten days it is the half way point. Before I know it I will be back in Saskatoon in the cold of winter. I hope everyone had an awesome summer, I’d love to hear about it, email me at bousquetd@hotmail.com

Hola! This past week was our eighth week here. As of Friday I have now been here for over 2 months! It’s almost half way done! It is going by so fast. This week our topic was Destiny by Design (Dreams, Experience, Soulprint, Identity, Gifts, Network). Our teacher was a new staff member named Ryan Bedenkop. We learned a lot about ourselves and how God designed us. And from what we learned about ourselves we came to understand what calling God had put on our lives. It was a really awesome week for me. I learnt that surprisingly enough, I am an inward person. Even though I am a really social person to recharge I need time and space alone. I also learned a lot about the areas that God has gifted me in, such as planning, organizing, giving and mercy. At the end of the week we closed the week with a ten year reunion, where each of us had to share with our class what we had done in the first ten years after our DTS. This week has really helped me understand myself better and my calling from God better as well. God has given me a lot of direction as to what I am to after DTS. This won’t be surprising to most people, but God has called me to a missionary life! I have even got very direct directions of the location and the ministry but I am not going to tell you guys yet until God has given me more guidance. It is very exciting to start looking into the future with a clear path of where God wants me!
On Friday this week instead of our usual Friday Fun Night, the whole base came together for a Prayer Night. Before the Prayer Night started a lot of were unsure about how praying for four hours straight would go. We spend the first 2 hours just praying individually. It was so powerful. Even though there was over twenty people in the room praying as well, it felt like it was just God and me. Than for the last 2 hours we prayed as a base. People would just share a prayer request and everyone would pray for it as a team. It was so awesome. Through the whole four hours I was never once bored or had a wondering mind. I was totally focused on God. At the end I was so drained! Praying with such passion takes a lot of energy.
On Saturday our base was invited to a BBQ at another YWAM base about an hour drive from base. This base is located on the side of the mountain. It is so pretty! It is set up like a camp (for anyone who has been to camp Kadesh, that is very similar to how this base was set up). Also the director of this base, Terry our teacher from week seven, is a farm and so there is a ton of farm animals on the base. Almost all the food on the base is grown or raised there. It is a very environmentally friendly base. We just spent the day chilling there. The guys played a game of soccer, but it started to rain and they got extremely muddy. We had a really good time there.
This coming up week the topic is The Kingdom, and it will be taught by Kenny Peavy who is from L.A. Including next week there are only 4 more weeks of classes.

Baby List!

Dear family and friends,
God has blessed me so much! Not only in the way had He given me given the opportunity to complete a DTS here in Costa Rica, but also because He has placed amazing people like Chris and Grace on my path. Chris and Grace are a young missionary couple from Kenya. They came to Costa Rica at the beginning of 2008, in order to gain more knowledge in the area of Community Development. Chris feels called to pioneer Community Development Schools opening in Africa. Through these Community Development Schools, Chris plans on raising up Africans to take leadership roles and to minister to areas in a direct way that gets to the source of the problem. Chris and Grace are amazing examples of living in faith. They felt God calling them to Costa Rica and so they went. Even though they could from a poor country that needs a lot of missionary work and they didn’t have to money to leave, they trusted in God that He had a plan for they lives. God does have big plans of their lives! In late November, Chris and Grace will be welcoming in to the world a new baby boy! Everyone on the base is so excited for them! They both has such a heart for God and will be awesome parents. But as many parents already know, babies cost a lot! Chris and Grace are still living by faith, trust in God that He will provide. I suggested that they make a list of all they would need for the baby, in hopes that I could help in some way. I am asking all of you who read my blog, please help me help them! I have never met a more faithful couple. Please help me bless them as they have blessed everyone they have met. If you feel called to helping, please leave a comment on my blog or email me at bousquetd@hotmail.com. If you have objects you would like to send, we could organize a box of stuff that is all sent at once. Or if yoou sent money I could purchase most of the things here in Costa Rica. Please keep Chris and Grace and their unborn baby boy in your prays.
Baby List
Clothes
· Outfit to wear hoe from hospital
· 6 to 7 “onesies”
· One- piece pajamas
· Sweaters, mittens and hats
· Pairs of booties or cotton socks
· Miscellaneous other newborn outfits
Crib Supplies
· Receiving blankets
· Contoured crib sheets
· Absorbent rubber crib lining pads
· Wedge for sleeping baby
· Night light
Diaper Changing
* Diapers and wipes
· Packages of diaper pail liners
· Cloth diapers and diaper pins
· Nail scissors with a blunt edge
· Diaper rash ointment
· Rubber pants
Feeding Paraphernalia
· Bibs
· Bottles with nipples
· Breast pump
· Bottle washing brush
· Burp cloths
Grooming
· Towels and washcloths
· Cotton balls and cotton swabs
· Baby shampoo
· Baby lotion
· Baby soap
· Baby comb and brush
· Infant bath tub
Miscellaneous Accessories
· Ear thermometer
· Nasal aspirator
· Pacifiers
· “snugly” or baby sling
· Car seat
Money
· Birth fee $2000

End of Week Seven!

Hola! Week seven has come and gone! Only 5 more weeks of classes left! On September 29 our team will be flying out to Mexico, where we will stay for 8 weeks. There is not a lot of details of our outreach that we know yet. When I know the names of cities we will be working in I will let you know. This past week our topic was Spiritual Warfare. It was taught by Terry Keith, an American rancher. Terry has been living in Costa Rica for the past three years. He is the director of another YWAM only an hour drive from our base. Two students on our base are connected to the base Terry works at. Mario’s parents and two older sisters are staff members on the base and Mario living on the base before coming to our base. Paola lives very close to the other YWAM base and her brother is a staff member there. It was cool to have someone from here in Costa Rica but not a staff member of our base. The topic of Spiritual Warfare was very intense. We learned about the power we are given through being a believer and also about the differences between angels and demons. Another interesting thing we learned this week is about the nature of the enemy. Usually people shy away from talking about Satan but we learnt that it is good to know who are enemy is so we can better protect ourselves from his attacks. This week for local outreach we planned on painting at a community center in our neighbourhood but when we got there we realized there was no paint yet and the walls still needed to be sanded. So for almost three hours we sanded the uneven walls of the community center. We managed to keep ourselves entertained by playing ‘guess that song’. Hopefully next week everything will work out for us to paint!
Another exciting part of the week was Friday night when I got to teach Chris, who is from Kenya, to cook pizza. Our head chef went home early for the weekend, so that left Chris in charge of the kitchen and that’s when I suggested pizza. Chris had never cooked pizza but was very excited to learn. We made the dough from scratch and had fresh pineapple. I was unsure at first how it would turn out but in the end it was a great success! It was the perfect ending to a great week!

Half way done phase one!

Hola! The lecture phase is now half done! We only have 6 weeks of classes remaining. This week we did not really have a set topic. Everyday we had a new speaker and a new topic. All the speakers were from here in Costa Rica. On Monday our topic was our tongues and the good or the poison that comes out of it. On Tuesday we studied the character and nature of God. On Wednesday we looked at group worship, mostly worship in song. On Thursday we studied prayer. And on Friday our topic was the Holy Spirit. This week was the deadline for money and we still had three students missing money. So they extended the deadline to the end of next week and we spent most of the week working on fundraising. We baked cookies, cup cakes, and bread to sell. Also we organized a fundraising concert for Friday night. Mario’s (a student from here in San Jose) father song at the concert. There was a large turnout but not a lot of money was raised. Today we also held a car wash. With all of our efforts this week we raised about $350 to $400 dollars. We are still missing $4328. It is difficult fundraising here in Costa Rica because it is not a cultural thing to donate money. They only give when they get something for it. Please continue to pray for our team. We trust that God will provide the money that we need.

Hola! Week five has come and gone! Soon I will be starting week six, which marks the half way point of the lecture phase! Exciting! Before I know it I will be heading out to Mexico! This week was an amazing one! Our topic was the Divine Plumb Line. Our first three classes we learned about things that hold us back from God, such as rejection. We study the attitudes and behaviours of each area. Then on Wednesday afternoon we begin freeing ourselves. We took turns shares things from our past that have held us back from God. Stuff such as sins we committed, things done to us by others, or mind sets we were stuck in. Most people shared for area an hour (it took three days to get through all of us). After they shared we spent about half an hour to an hour praying for them and helping them forgive and let out. I shared about my struggles with self esteem, and how words I had heard as a child from people at school had really impacted me. In my life the enemy continued building on my self esteem issues, continuously telling me I didn’t belong. It was amazing how free it felt after people had prayed for me and shared words God had given them to tell me. I still have a lot of work to do with my beliefs of myself but for the first time that I can remember I am just happy with me. It really was supernatural how God freed us all. We now have a new found freedom to seek God in ways we never could before. It was also amazing be a witness to other being freed. The compassion we felt for other as their shared with us. And several times as we were praying for the person God spoke to me, giving me words to share with them. One time as I was sharing what God had spoken to me, four other people said God had spoken the same thing to them! It was so amazing! It was such a time of growth in faith in God. When we finished on Friday at 7pm we all felt emotional drained. We have just been spending the weekend relaxing and recharging. There is even talk about spending Sunday at the beach! I have been out of San Jose yet, so it would be great to see more of Costa Rica. As we enter into our sixth week please pray for us because all money is due by the end of this week. We are still missing a lot of moneyL but we have faith that God will provide what is still needed.