Chapter Six (of 6): The final leg…

Now I won’t go into the rest of the story, since it would take too long to explain it all (you can view my archived mission newsletters from my missions journey) but let’s just say that God works in mysterious ways, sometimes so differently than we would expect, and at times, He will move in ways that you had not initially planned or desired, but when you look back on it, you see that His hand was on it, despite the fact that it was HARD, CHALLENGING, NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED, AND DIFFERENT THAN WHAT YOU’D ORIGINALLY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.

YET WHEN YOU STOP AND LOOK BACK, YOU REALIZE IT WAS BETTER THAN YOU COULD EVER DREAM…

God works out His plan in our hearts and lives and does His thing, even when we’re kicking and screaming and throwing tantrums since He isn’t doing things the way we’d planned. Haha. God is funny that way.

To make a long story slightly shorter, in brief, I got accepted to the Performing Arts DTS in Kona, Hawaii in Sept 2005. After 3 months lecture training phase, where much healing and learning was done, I flew with a team to Asia, where I was able to meet relatives and see my roots, where part of me is from. It was truly healing for my heart.

Since the beginnings of my missions journey, I was led in 2006 to join the staff with the YWAM base in Oxford, New Zealand. I had a blast as the Registrar from August 2006 until March 2007 and then transitioned to join the April 2007 Around the World in 80 Days DTS Staff team, where I led the school and base worship team and World Awareness Mission Nights and discipled a small group of 5 gals. I then co-led an outreach team to the continent of Africa from July to September 2007 (amazing!) and graduated our students in Israel on the Mount of Olives! What an adventure 2007 was, that’s for sure! I returned in 2008 to direct the Ski + Snowboard DTS for 2 years. I was able to do an outreach in Jakarta, Indonesia where God moved powerfully. In 2009, I took a team of my own to a nation in the Middle East. I fell in love with that nation and hope to be able to minister there from time to time in the future.

In 2010, God very clearly had me “dock the ship” and take a whole year out (like a sabbatical year from ministry and leadership) and BE WITH HIM. This led me to move up to the North Island of New Zealand, to do a 3-month prayer and worship internship with Tauranga House of Prayer. It was during that time that God clearly spoke to give 2 years to becoming a part of the foundation of the Prayer and Missions convergence, and minister to Him in prayer full-time. I am still linked with YWAM, as it connects with the House of Prayer in ministry. I am spending my time and energy to pioneer day and night continual prayer in New Zealand, through the ministry of dynamic prayer, anointed worship ministry, study of the Word, teaching and preaching of the Word, and ministering to young people. God is awesome and greatly to be praised. I am overjoyed to be ministering to the Lord in this way, in this place.

Email me anytime if you want further details of the ongoing story.

Sincerely,

Alison

NAVIGATION:

• Go back to the previous chapter 5 (of 6): God Moves in Mysterious Ways

Chapter Five (of 6): God moves in mysterious ways

I was only going to be given a rental car for one day, until the car would be ready the next day, but I was set to go the very next morning to a 4 day Hearing God Course in Mississauga and I was needing to use my car the entire time. The manager looked at me for a split second and then said I could have the car rental for the full 4 days at no extra charge. Now THAT’S God! And then I mentioned that I wouldn’t be able to return the car until the end of the day on Monday since I had to head to work for a full shift that day, and so the Manager said that I could return it at the end of the day, instead of early morning. Wow! God was just paving the way for me. I was very grateful, to say the least.

Then I went off and got my rental car and headed off for this intense course on Hearing God. It was an amazing course. I learned a lot. But the coolest stuff happened when we were practicing prophetic stuff with other students. The woman who got me saw the words “Bird of Paradise” and “Snow” and she felt quite sheepish because it seemed so silly to her. But for me, it seemed SO significant, but I couldn’t quite interpret it at the moment. I mentioned these 2 words to some of the course leaders and some of the women I’d come with, and they all said it must mean something to do with traveling between Canada (snow) and a Tropical place (bird of paradise are flowers grown in tropical places), and that God was bringing me to a tropical place possibly. This started stirring up the YWAM desire with missions and so many people started mentioning the main YWAM base in Hawaii. One woman who did not even know about me and my YWAM desires, told me straight out she could see me at the main base in Hawaii with YWAM. Talk about what?!! So I left that weekend course with some renewed inspiration… but I went home and started asking everyone I knew what their interpretation of “Bird of Paradise” and ” Snow” meant… and I started getting a bit obsessive with this asking around. At one point about a week or so after I’d gotten the 2 words, I left my friend’s place and got in the car, and as I drove away, I kinda heard this inner voice say, “How many confirmations do you NEED, Ali? How many have you had to go off with YWAM?” and I realized I’d had about 30 or 40 (maybe that’s an exaggeration.. but it was a LOT), and then I heard, “And how many confirmations have you had to STAY in the Barrie area?” and I realized I had no confirmations to stay here. So a moment later, at the stoplight, I burst out and shrieked, “I’M GOING OFF WITH YWAM IN SEPTEMBER TO HAWAII ON THE MAIN BASE!” and this excitement burst out of me and I drove home sooooooo pumped! I’d finally made my decision. Boom, like that!

Once I got home, over the next few days, I had to work through a few issues… such as the fact that I still had wanted to go to Latin America on missions, but the Hawaii base went mainly to Asian countries on mission outreaches. So I had to just surrender these desires to the Lord. I sent off my application and a few weeks later, after much prayer and waiting, I got accepted into the September 2005 DTS in Kona, Hawaii! I was off to YWAM!

NAVIGATION:

• Continue to the final chapter 6 (of 6): The Final Leg
• Go back to the previous chapter 4 (of 6): Breakthrough in the midst of utter despair

Chapter Four (of 6): Breakthrough in the midst of utter despair

Then the divine moments began! At the time, I thought that something or Someone (God?!) was trying to make me miserable, but hindsight reveals many things to us if we would just keep relying on God and seeking Him. You see, after this decision to stay at work, I began to get strangely dizzy the moment I would begin my day in the call center. It would force me to leave work and go home sick, but the moment that I would get home, I would be completely OK. No symptoms of anything. I thought it might be something to do with the stale air in the building at work, and moved desks to another area. I made a bunch of changes at work, but still nothing helped at all. I then thought that maybe I was sick, so I went to the doctor and had a physical and did some bloodwork because I was continually getting dizzy spells at work, but nowhere else. All of the tests showed nothing but that I was perfectly healthy and she said that it must be stress. People at work thought that I must be pregnant, which would make me laugh because if any of you know me, I am saving myself for marriage, so I could DEFINITELY deny that it was pregnancy! But maybe I was “pregnant with vision”, God’s vision for my life…! It did cross my mind. I got really miserable at work and I didn’t know how much I could handle. I had been sharing to others and to my manager over the past few months about how I wanted to pursue missions and Christian ministry, and so they all knew about this dream of mine. It was around this time when I was getting sick, that I started to wonder if I had made the right decision to stay because all these factors seemed to be driving me out of my job. I thought that the only way I could feel normal (not dizzy) again would be to leave the job. But I would push those thoughts aside. I had made my decision. YWAM was out of the question. It was just my dream, not God’s… or so I thought… You see, finally one day after a huge dizzy spell and some managers very concerned for me, I had to take a few hours off the phones so I could recuperate. I went back to work and still felt so lousy. I had my regular one-on-one assessment with my personal Manager, Kevin, and he saw that I was looking so miserable, but he continued to go over the various stats that we had to discuss and keep up to standard in a call centre. All of a sudden, I completely broke down. I started sobbing and bawling like a complete baby IN FRONT OF MY MANAGER! It was as if the dam had been unplugged and the tears were unleashed. I was sooo upset that I didn’t even care that my manager saw me break down in such a huge way. He felt awful for me and it was at this time he asked me that maybe I shouldn’t be working here anymore and he said,”What about that YWAM Christian thing?” to which I sobbed out the words, “I’m – Not – Going! That – Door – Is – Closed!” and then I began to sob again uncontrollably. I was a complete mess! My manager continued on, saying, “Maybe you should really think about it even though it’s closed. You obviously wish you could.” My crying stopped and I was able to gather my composure and it became SO CLEAR that he was right. This was not a done deal. I had unfinished business and if anything, I needed to revisit the decision since it had so obviously bothered me that I could not go. It was like I was mourning a loved one’s passing, but in this case, one that had never really got a chance to live…

So I left that one-on-one session with the knowledge that I had to really pray and ask the Lord again if He really did want me to go to YWAM after all. I left work that day and went to drive home. As I was driving through Barrie to go home, my car, which had just had its regular check-up a week prior, COMPLETELY BROKE DOWN in the middle of the street! It just went ka-put! It would not start at all. A COMPLETE PEACE SWEPT OVER ME. I KNEW GOD WAS IN THIS. I looked up to Heaven and I said to the Lord, “OK GOD. I get it now. I reallllllly am getting the strong strong strong feeling that You want me to reconsider my decision.” That phrase kept going through my mind, “Alison, you need to reconsider your decision.” With this revelation and the peace that God was in all of this, I got out of the car and called CAA to come and tow the car, and God brought along some men who helped push my car out of the middle of the road and onto a side street, and then I just sat on the lawn, feeling better than I’d felt in a long time. CAA came and drove me to Orillia to the Ford Service garage and they were JUST getting ready to close. I had gotten there within minutes of closing time. THAT WAS TOTALLY GOD! But it gets better…

NAVIGATION:

• Continue on to chapter 5 (of 6): God Moves in Mysterious Ways
• Go back to previous chapter 3 (of 6): Facing the Challenges of Change

Chapter Three (of 6): Facing the challenges of change

I first decided to go part-time at my well-paying job with Telus Mobility, and although I thought I was going to pursue my business Live Creative, I took the time instead to go through all of my life belongings I’d accumulated and get rid of things that I really didn’t need, and begin to develop a generosity in giving, which I’d always avoided. I began to organize my entire life. And I mean ORGANIZE. It became CRYSTAL CLEAR to me that God was indeed preparing me to leave my employment with Telus Mobility and that He had some big plans for me and that He was wanting to take me somewhere to do mission work, but I just had no idea where. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking about YWAM. A LOT actually. It kept surfacing, and then I’d shove the thought down again because I was afraid of leaving my job. REALLY AFRAID. I had become so DEPENDENT on my salary and my lifestyle, despite the fact that I was dissatisfied with this status-quo living… There was a huge division in my spirit, a real battle!

During this time, I began taking some language courses (Spanish) because that was where my heart was. I wanted to return to the Dominican since that was where my heart first came alive to the idea of missions. My heart was set on this, and so I began doing research about YWAM bases in Latin America. I could not get any peace though whenever I would pray and consider leaving my job to go with YWAM to Latin America, specifically the Dominican. I got really confused and frustrated, as I could not seem to shake this mission desire and heart to serve the Lord in full-time ministry, yet I could not get any peace about it. I also had another element to contend with. I’d told everyone I was starting a design business and here I was with no heart to do it, and my heart was leading me into missions, yet I felt I wasn’t released yet to pursue it. This was in the Winter/Spring of 2005 when I got a bit discouraged, stuck in this transition stage and getting rather confused.

At this time in March of 2005, I went to MissionFest in Toronto and discovered that Loren Cunningham from YWAM was the main speaker for the event! My heart could not help but leap for joy as I knew that I wanted so badly to join YWAM and do a DTS. During the course of the 3 day conference, a couple from BC who were with YWAM in BC, came up to me about 6 times and ask if I’d applied to do a DTS yet. Little did they know that I had been praying about this for months now. I got really excited that maybe, just maybe, God really DID want me to join YWAM! I just didn’t know where and when… but I knew that I needed to go!

So, when I got home, I got serious and began to really research and pray and seek the Lord if this really was the time for me to GO FOR IT. I also decided to lay my business down. I had done the groundwork with the business but had never officially launched it or done any business yet, so it was as if I put that dream down at the feet of Jesus, and He placed a new dream (or dusted off an old dream from years ago) in my hands and gave me permission to pursue it.

Then the real battle began! I knew God wanted me to do a DTS but I was paralysed with fear! I would attempt to leave my job, but I just couldn’t. I wanted to leave it so bad because I did not enjoy it, but I would feel this total inability to resign. It was strange. I also had a church that I was involved in and they were having me do more and more and starting to lead worship. I wanted to stay and take the opportunities at the church that were opening up for me. So, all of these factors stalled me. By this time it was nearing the end of May 2005 and I was miserable because I felt so divided and stuck. Because of feeling so divided and pulled in so many directions, I decided to just give up the dream to go to YWAM and do missions. I decided that I would just stay in the Barrie, Ontario area and work and stay involved in my church. I felt relieved that I was no longer divided and that I could just be single-focused about doing things for the Lord in this local area.

NAVIGATION:

• Continue on to Chapter 4 (of 6): Breakthrough in the midst of utter despair
• Go back to Chapter 2 (of 6): Out of my comfy world, God rocks my world