... Love The One ...

smile number one

2012-01-02T22:00:00.002+11:00

one of my new year's resolutions was to learn how to cook jams, chutneys, sauces and preserves, all things that i adore, hunt down at farmer's markets and envy other people for home-making... and, on january 2nd, i ticked off at least one! (actually, in some kind of sweet miracle, i actually made chutney last week too! but, in all honesty, it was so easy that it almost felt too easy, so knew i had to go after the jams!) ... jams intimidate me as you have to get the right temperature for the jam to jell and actually become jam, rather than compote (which is what i was getting half-way through this process!)

i bought a gorgeous preserves cookbook last week to help me actually attain this resolution (rather than leaving it dusty on the mind-shelf) and then discovered that yellow peaches were only 99c a kilo at Woolworths. so, yellow peach, strawberry (substituting raspberries, as they were only $1 a punnet!) and pink champagne jam it is! after a near-overflow of its sensuous juices from the pot and my having to reduce the heat (and then actually needing to turn it off completely to stop its sticky ooziness from ruining the freshly-cleaned cooktop), i was worried it wouldn't work at all and i'd have to palm it off as a compote. still delicious. but it's not jam. BUT ... i got jam! i had read that the cheaters way to check if it has jelled or not (as opposed to a candy thermometre) is to drop some off the wooden spoon onto a saucer that's been in the freezer. if, then, when you run your finger through it, you get a clear line where the jam doesn't run back into the little gully created, then you have jam! (squeals about now)

the entire house was perfumed with the sweetness of the strawberries and, as i was jam-ing at about 8am, it turns out that pink champagne tastes even better at breakfast.

it feels so sweet to do something - as simple as it is - that you've wanted to do for a long time. i've decided that i want this to be a year of learning. yes, i am going back to uni for my second degree, which is one kind of learning... but i want to learn all kinds of things about life, about people, about relationships, about the world, about politics (eep), about God, about food: how to cook food, grow food, choose food, love food for all it's worth and all its enjoyment.

an hour of panic over the rising bubbles and delight over the gorgeous aroma and "yummmm!"s as i shared the spoils with people i love and the learning of something new... all captured in a jar of jam that made me smile today :)

(for pictorial evidence (!) check it out at my Instagram (lovetheone) while i work out how to share it directly onto Blogger! at http://instagr.am/p/dr47H/ )

a smile a day (:

2012-01-02T21:42:00.001+11:00

one of my goals for this year (and in my life, really) is to enjoy big Joy, Love and Beauty in even the very smallest things. So, I will be sharing a "smile" a day of something - anything - that has made my heart happy (: I hope others are caused to smile from it, and that it helps my heart to continue learning how to see in the dark. I doubt this year will be perfect; but I'm going to choose to remember all the Loveliness from it.

cambodia: my teacher.

2011-12-12T00:14:00.002+11:00

I am sitting on my friend’s balcony watching the sun rise over the Mekong River. It is exceptionally beautiful. It is cold this morning (as it is now cool season here) on my last full day here (for a time) and all I can hear are the palm trees in the breeze, and the sounds of fishing boats putt-putt-putting along the river. It’s a pretty perfect place to spend some time digesting what on earth has happened these last two years.

When I think about it, the major thing is obvious: I was totally punked! i thought, when I came here, I was coming with something for these people; something to sow into them, to pour into their lives. I’m leaving, instead, with a nation full of teachers.

I’ve had over sixteen years of formal education (and I’m entering into another four years when I return to Australia!), but nothing has taught me more about the world, about life, about God, about relationships, about how to Love than these two years with these people who have stolen my heart.

Theary (an orphan) has no legs, with his feet joined to his hip; his hands are disfigured and he cannot walk or work in a typical job so he hand-makes bracelets to sell on the streets of Siem Reap. He also has the best smile I’ve ever seen in my life and a laugh that would silence the street. Theary taught me that True Joy has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your circumstances.

S used to be a male transsexual sex-worker. I met him about 18 months ago and he told me every bit of his love-less, painful, heart-breaking life. It is only his privilege to share his story, but what stood out to me most about him was this tangible, heavy shame that would hang off him, causing him to forever look to the floor; too ashamed to look anyone in the eye. My heart melted for this broken man who needed to know the Freedom of True Love that casts away all our shame. We began to meet together regularly to pray for his heart to be filled with this Love... until, one day, we said our “amen” and he looked up at me, right in the eye – for the first time ever – and just said “thank you”. If you met him today, you would not know his past life. Everyone who knows him as friend or has met him in passing can see how incredible he is, how he glows with Fullness. He Loves with his whole heart, Trusting in God with a depth that confronts me, giving himself vulnerably to his friends. S taught me that even if you have had hard circumstances in life… you can have the softest of soft hearts. And it’s about the most beautiful thing ever.

Mek is a twenty-something (maybe thirty-something; nobody knows here!) worship leader. On the first day I met him, he took up the guitar from my American friend who was leading (which was already powerful and beautiful) and he began to play, singing out spontaneous, prophetic songs in Khmer from the deepest parts of his heart. It was like the room began to melt and be swept up at the same time; God came into the room in the most tangible way and I just began to weep. In a moment, years and years of praying for Incense Warriors to arise in Cambodia was being answered before my eyes and I felt honoured beyond measure to be there to witness it and now to call him friend. Mek taught me that the vision and Hope that I have for this nation are massive and amazing; but the reality is even greater than I ever could have imagined. And it’s here. He also introduced me to the Purity and Beauty of the Khmer sound released in the Throne Room; it is like nothing I’ve ever heard. It is tribal, it is sacrificial, it is Free and it is so deep it’s like it comes up from their feet out through their mouths… and always, always causes them to dance.

Mom is in her early-thirties, is a mum and has acid burns that cover her chest and face, destroying most of her nose. She sells paintings, post cards and books to tourists at the local market. Everyday, she is smiling, telling me Jesus Loves me. Her burns have “sealed” off her sweat glands and so her body has lost its natural mechanism of cooling and she is always always hot in a country that is always always hot in a market that is like a sauna at the best of times… but you would never ever hear her complain. She’s there for the love of her children. She can send them to school and give them a good life by doing this arduous work. Her joy is infectious and everyone in Phnom Penh knows her; beautifully, not because of her burns, but because of her smile. Mom taught me that Love can make you do the hard thing; but it will also carry you through it.

Uncle is about fifty, married, with three sons. I met him on the farm, where we sat in the pig shed and talked for about an hour about our lives. His wife is sick in hospital and he now has no work to do as his job was to make wooden Khmer-style houses, but now everyone wants cement houses. But this was just a quick mention in the conversation… the rest of it was about his church of five families that he pastors in his house in his village. They meet there on Saturdays so that, on Sundays, he can make the (over) one hour drive on his motorbike to Kampong Cham to have church with the Heartlands family. it is $3 of petrol each week that he really cannot afford, I know (but does not tell me this, of course), but he says that he loves coming so much that it is so worth all the effort. Though I know he must have wondered how he will provide for his family, he doesn’t talk about this; he talks about how blessed he is, how much he has been given, how much he just wants to serve because God is so faithful to him. I know this man has less than nothing, but he speaks with such genuineness that I believe him, even though his circumstances say he should be saying the opposite. The way he talks about trusting God is at such a depth it’s like he’s speaking another language. Uncle taught me that Trust is nothing to do with what you can see. And that there is Joy in the waiting. (also, through beautiful connections, he has now – just a few days ago - received more than enough money to buy a fishing boat and nets to start the fishing business that he was praying for.)

These are just a tiny handful of stories from a very small number of people who have taught me so much. I could go on forever. But, instead, I will just share what the Khmer heart has taught me; this collective, shared understanding of what it is to live together as one people. The poor, particularly, have taught me more than I have words for. They have taught me how to see their bamboo shacks as palaces, their rice bowls as banquets, their empty hands as free to love and hold each other. But, they have also shown me what my destiny looks like in these places; to also see these things and to come in with skill and strategy to see them change, to see them made whole, to see them healthy. Spending time in these poor-of-the-poor places has shown me what my true heart is and has helped me make this so-difficult decision to leave, so that I can return. They have shown me that the people with nothing are truly the richest. And that things of value cannot be seen. They have shown me that when you receive, it is best to share it. And that people are the only things that we get to keep in this life. They have shown me the beauty of a whole village raising a child. And that time is an irrelevant construct. They have shown me that your situation and your environment need not dictate your Joy. And that a kite can be made from a plastic bag and string. I feel like if I could spend the rest of my days sitting in the dirt with my friends then I would be a richer person for it. I feel an envy rising in me everytime I see them, sit with them, walk amongst them… and I know that they have treasure that I’m still trying to work out. They have taught me what it is to have a childlike dependence on their Heavenly Father. And what it is to pray for Him to provide when you have less-than-nothing. (and how to daily celebrate when He does!)

Khmer people have taught me what it is to look after your brother, your sister, and also how to call a complete stranger your brother, your sister, auntie or grandpa. They have taught me that family is so little about blood. But, equally, that our blood is our blood. They have taught me how to be generous when you have nothing. And how to receive with thankfulness. They have taught me how to pray with passion and fervency, as though our lives depend on it – because it does. They have taught me that the best things in life are Free, and have given freely of it all. They have taught me that true, given relationship is generous beyond measure. They have taught me that Love is the most powerful thing in the earth and the heavens. And shown me what it looks like to live in that.

I have to especially mention my best Khmer friend, Dany, who has been a miracle in my life. There are no words, but to say that she changed me and has taught me better how to Love. My Khmer family in Kampong Cham who are a gift to this nation, lead by my most beautiful friends Simy and Channa, who live in the fullness of Grace, and the finished works of the Cross. Such a treasure in this nation! What they do and who they are is completely unparalleled in this nation and it is such an honour to call them my best friends. My uncle in Siem Reap, Ravuth, who took me in out of a rice field and welcomed me into his home and his family, no questions asked. I love you. Grandpa, who came in to save my heart when I lost my own beautiful PaPa in Australia. My little brother, S, who has shown me the most pure demonstration of Redemption that I ever dreamed possible. My beautiful friend, Chenda, who has been the answer to so many of my prayers for covenant sisters in this nation. My tuktuk driver and friend, Sokla, who has endlessly made me laugh over the last two years and tells me he loves me. My amazing church family, New Life, for being passionate Lovers of the Father.

And, of course, all my amazing “barang” friends. There are too many of you to name and so many who have come and gone over time, but are in so very many of my precious memories. I’m thankful so much for my covenant sister, Bethany, who shares this same love for this beautiful nation; who I will share it with, forever. For Jacqueline and Taryon: so many laughs and deep places and amazing times of journey and worship with you both that completely coloured my first year here in ways I can’t describe. Sabine, you know I don’t know how to thank you for who you have been in my life and will be. We have shared something so unique and beautiful together, this year, and I wouldn’t have wanted it to be with anyone else. I know we will adventure again; some place, some time. (I hope soon!) Francesca (and your divine family), I love you like family. I trust you with my life and am so thankful for all that you are and have given. To everyone else who I have not mentioned by name, please know that you are loved and I will miss you and am thankful for you! Beyond words. I love you.

i Love you, Cambodia. thank you for teaching me the Khmer heart. xx

thoughts from the back of a muddied-up moto

2011-09-30T23:54:00.008+10:00

(written in Ratanakiri, the jungle-covered northern-east province of Cambodia.)

(last week.)

the light breeze flows over the valley, making my hot coffee seem hotter again and my cold skin colder still.

it is green all around me and my heart feels at rest in it.

and i am full of observations, of thoughts, of noticings, of revelations from the back of a muddied-up moto... from yesterday's journey into the jungle.

cartwheels through the mud. naked. being pulled by your big sister in a big plastic oil drum, cut in half. (instant-wagon!) naked. hanging from a tree swing, made out of a rice sack hooked to a branch. naked. there is something so perfectly, wonderfully, beautifully simple about the fun of a child. the nakedness of it all; the innocence we all deserve to play in. these children so poor they had not clothes on their back... planted a jealousy in me i didn't know i could hold. my guts burned green; longing for their perfect simplicity.

they have not in so many ways, lack so much. but they have more in that lack than i feel in my have-everything-ness. it is (obviously) not right that they do not have good schools or hospitals or reliable water or any electricity... i want them to have. but even while they have not, their ability to enjoy each other and the sweetness of the simple things of the world is more valuable than any commodity. they walk naked through the rain, their bare feet deep in squelchy mud, towards their bamboo house, leaking... with smiles bright like the sun, arms around each other, laughter like peals of roaring thunder that tears through the dark skies of their poverty... do they even feel poor at that moment? do they know they are poor? i know they feel the pain in their belly, the thirst of their mouth... but do they know they are poor? or do they look at us, in all of our stuff, faces of melancholy... and pity us, the poor souls?

i felt jealous, at that moment. an envy for the poor of the earth...

... "for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs"...

i feel like they know things i do not yet know... and maybe i cannot yet know until i am ready to be one with them?

why do i care what i wear or what i own? i know that none of these things are wrong; i'm past that. the creativity of it, the simple joy of the expression brings me life. but what of the importance of it? do i need it?

i think that is the real question, for me.

but i don't think it's really about 'stuff'. i don't think it's about what i have. because i know that the life i left behind has more than this life here.

but of course this is only true of what can be seen.

all i know is that the poor have taught me more than any school, any one person. i owe who i - hope - i am becoming to the poor of this nation. i know it. i am not ashamed to say that the hungry, the jobless, the illiterate, naked and 'forgotten' have taught me the true currency of a real life...

... "blessed are the pure in heart - they will see God" ...

... they know how to live in a purity that compels them to feed their baby brother on stolen bread.

i want that. i want to live out of the kind of fullness that may look like nothing... but contains the Treasures of Heaven.

and i think i realised - as i prayed thanks for my family of many teachers; for the Khmer heart that has been transplanted into me and grows by the day - that this journey, these last two years in particular, has been about learning how to see.

it makes me laugh everytime i think that i came here two years ago 'to pour out'. i've given and i've blessed, i know... but i know, without fail, i am constantly owing to these, my people. the things and ways of the Khmer people, echoed in the Voice of my Father Who sees their every single blink. there are children who are born and who die, everyday, here without a name; never known, fogotten so easily, not even a trace on history... and yet, for each, You know their breath, You give them a name.

it is a learning of how to see. To See.

i used to see the TB. i used to see the ramshackle huts. i used to see the protruding bones. i used to see the empty pockets. i used to se the lack.

now i know it's not there. i'm not an idiot, i'm not ignorant or so faith-blinded that i can't see it for hope of something better.

i just know that there is more than we see. i just know that there are gems in there. like those i saw at the mine... they come out covered in dirt. caked. but it doesn't reduce the value of the stone within...

(collection of small gemstones - yet to be cleaned - found in the mines by little village boys)

... in fact, you have to go down deep into the holes of unimaginable darkness to find those muddy gems...

... and now i wonder why you'd choose to focus on the dust when you know there is a greater reality beneath it?

now? i see the miracle. i see the shelter, sometimes even a palace. i hear the laughter, see the eyes-lit-up. i see the treasures that you cannot touch. the abundance that cannot be seen with the eyes that see only earth.

there is an unearthly beauty in the mud.

this is the gospel called Love

2011-09-18T20:10:00.005+10:00

this morning i was lost deep in thought as i sat praying and grieving for a dear friend who lost her sister yesterday ... when i was interrupted by a text from some of my best friends who i used to live with in a village in kampong cham, cambodia, that simply said: "God loves you forever with His everlasting love."

Perfect.

yes. yes, You do.

i just never want to need 'more' than this! the simplicity of a gospel called Love is what makes me who i am, is what restores nations, is what raises the dead. i don't know why we humans carry the audacity to believe we can do it otherwise - either life as a whole, or 'religion' - but Jesus, keep me in the place of needing Your Love to feed me and only Your Love to feed me. for Your Love is not the Bread that feeds me now and leaves me to hunger tomorrow... Your Love fulfils and satisfies every hunger inside of me, for forever, because every hunger is rooted in the need for Your Perfect Love.

the Perfection of Your Love is astounding. i see myself failing so much, so often... but You've never tasted failure. even as You hung bloodied and emptied-out from a Cross on a hill... the sting was that of Victory.

Love looks like something. but the only time You were lifted up? exalted? it was to die a gruesome death. True Love will be found lower and lower again... the Love that heals the broken and restores the vagabond comes from the dirt. it comes from a Majesty that wraps Himself in rags. it comes from an Authority that rides a donkey. it comes from a barefoot King.

without a Love like this burning in our bones, i fear there is no Love at all...? a pristine Love, a comfortable Love, an easy Love, a convenient Love, a clean Love... is not a Holy Love.

Holy Love is a mess. a Holy Love mucks up plans and confounds the wisest human wisdom. it derails all our good intentions and sets us on course for a compulsive Love that bursts our skins and makes us reckless fools. this Love causes the eyes to look before us, not within us; we see not the nakedness, but the Innocence.

Purity.

this kind of Love is so Pure it gets itself dusty at every opportunity; it knows how to wreck itself - and its good opinion of itself - by untying the ribbon and letting it all tumble out... for a Love that is contained is no Love at all. it becomes Love when it is shared. Love, as a well-kept state of emotion exists only as a neutral potential until compulsively shared. if it is not in a place of desperate-to-infect-the-world... is it True Love?

Bathe me in Your Love again. purge me of any false love and keep the cup of Perfect Love tipped over and poured out in my belly. flow it out from my pores; don't let me keep my hands to myself... live and breathe Your Love into my very body; pumping in my veins with every pound of my heart... beating with the fullness of the substance of True Love poured out from Your side and into mine...

... this is the gospel called Love.

i remembered a miracle

2011-07-03T19:11:00.004+10:00

in worship this morning, He brought me to remember a miracle that happened almost five years ago. kind of paradoxically, the message that had just been preached was on not looking back, but looking forward... and yet, as soon as it was finished and we began to worship, He reminded me of this miracle:

when i was 14, i was in a car accident with my sister. we were driving home after school one day and a bit ahead of us a car had stopped to turn right, waiting for the cars on the opposite side to pass. normally, being quite a talented and vocal backseat driver, i would have commented, but mustn't have had the energy to fight it that afternoon, so i stayed quiet... until, at 60km/hr, we smashed straight into the back of the stationary car. her tiny little red Festiva crumpled up to our knees and the noise was deafening. then silence. until, a woman's voice from outside of my side of the car said: "are you ok?" and then, seeing that we were and being in total disbelief that we were, "you should have died..."

i was terrified to be in cars for a really long time afterwards. i would imaginary-brake with my foot in the passenger seat and the idea of driving freaked me out... but, like every other sixteen year old, i began to learn and had my own car and was driving at seventeen.

but ever since that first accident, i always thought that i would die in a car accident. the enemy planted this fear-seed and then grew it up. it's hard (and too long) to explain how this whole 'theory' developed, but it did, and from the age of 14, i believed i would die in a car accident by the time i was 21.

though it sounds depressing, i mostly made it motivation for me to live really well, for the present. but it meant that i had no ability to plan or Dream for the future. i literally couldn't imagine me being any older than 21, and though i had already felt like my heart was called to Cambodia by this time, i didn't know what to do with that because i couldn't see past my twenty-first year...

over the seven years between 14 and 21, i had numerous car accidents, all of which were relatively minor and only one little prang caused by myself, which caused no damage. but each one was like this horrible reminder that it was only a matter of time...

my twenty-first birthday. i remember it being an awesome day. i had dinner out with my mum and sister, who drove separately to me, as i must have come straight from uni or something. they drove home before me, i followed them shortly after... i remember it so clearly: i was driving on castle hill road and was only a few hundred metres off the country drive turn to go to my (now) old house in west pennant hills. i remember saying, as i drove: "Jesus, we made it. i never thought i would turn 21, but now i'm here, with You. thank You!"

in timing like out of a (terrible) movie, the instant i finished my "thank You", the car smashed into me from behind absolutely out of nowhere; i didn't see it coming. by this point, i had stopped to turn right, but there was the oncoming traffic on the other side, so i was waiting for a gap... but had already turned my steering wheel to the right... and so my car went flying onto the opposite side of the road and i couldn't brake it.

(this part always amazes me. i remember there being oncoming traffic - hence why i was waiting - and yet, when i was pushed onto the opposite side, i didn't hit another car, or even see any more coming... amazing Jesus :)

all i remember, after the hideous smashing noise was, yet again, the complete silence.

... broken, again, in some kind of weird film-esque book-ending device...

"are you ok?" ... (seeing that i am) ... "you should have died."

and in this instant, i "heard" with my spiritual ears the sound of chains breaking and the Voice of my ever-Winning Father say "it is finished."

... i sat there in my crumpled car in complete Peace. i was in this Bliss-bubble of Comfort that seems totally ridiculous for the situation. i felt a tangible weight lift off of me, a fear come out of me and i was Free. because it was Finished :)

my life came alive after this :)

i have never again felt that fear of dying young. in fact, i live in the opposite!! i know i will live a long long life. i will have babies, grandbabies and even get to enjoy their babies! i will see amazing things across the nations, as well as in my own nation, community and family. i LOVE to Dream, i LOVE to adventure, i LOVE to imagine the impossible coming true! absolutely nothing limits me now and i have more plans and Dreams and schemes with my Papa than i could even write about! i feel like this ability and the Joy that i have to Dream like this is one of the biggest miracles that has ever happened in me...

... and it has become such a part of who i am and the way that i "function" that i forgot, until this morning, that i used to be otherwise. i forgot that though i knew i was loved, i was wanted, etc... i was completely unable to Dream or to get excited for the future. i forgot that i woke up everyday for seven years, thinking that it could be my last. i forgot that i was fearful and trapped.

and it was the best little treasure, today, to remember this! i sat, for the longest time, nursing a coffee and trying to remember what i was like... and i barely can! He has emancipated me so well-and-truly from this hideous way of life that i can barely remember it...

... and He's made me a Dreamer :)

it's important to Dream, to plan, to get excited for the future. but don't forget to look back and remember His death-destroying Kindness that has brought us here, to today.

to Love a pearl

2011-06-26T19:20:00.004+10:00

this morning i put on my pearl pinkie ring for the first time in a long time. it was on display in a shop in the town square of darjeeling, northern india, and the man in the shop was frustrated with me for wanting that particular ring. the window display was complicated and it was hard for him to access it and he kept showing me other rings, trying to convince me to get another. no, i want that one.

i bought this ring the day after i lay on the cold concrete with a man while he bled to death on the main street of darjeeling. it wrecked my heart in a way that i cannot describe, with a pain that i had never felt before. i didn't know how i'd ever recover from that day, to be honest... it scarred me and hurt me and i didn't know where God was in that moment. but that's ok. i Trust He was there. i don't have to understand it. but i bought this ring because He showed it to me and i knew it was mine. i didn't know its significance...

... then i randomly put it on this morning. i instantly thought of that man, of his face, of the masses and masses of blood that surrounded his dead body, of the feeling of my heart breaking inside of my chest... and i felt Him speak into me that He has made me to live this life to find the pearls hidden in the dust.

"the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant
on the look out for choice pearls.
when he discovered a pearl of great value,

he sold everything he owned and bought it!"
- matthew 13:45

SomeOne has already sold everything - Blood and Body - for the sake of these infinite pearls. they just don't know that they're priceless yet. i want to pocket them and tell them. i want to live my life in a way that shows them. i want them to feel like they can reveal this incredible worth and 'great value' in other lost pearls around them.

and i think i found this pearl after this encounter, rather than after another kind of more joyous experience/miracle, because it is to remind me that, in this pearl-hunt, it's not a sentimentality that will cause change and it's not always easy... but it is with a True, bleeding Love that we are to Love these pearls. that we are to Love until it hurts and with a Love that puts that other person before us, because that is, after all, what Love is. i'll never forget the physical tugging i felt at my heart when i saw this man on the street, blood pooling. it was no conscious choice to go to him; my heart literally compelled me. and i got down on the ground and prayed and hoped and wept for him to be resurrected into glorious life.

but he died. absolutely nothing glorious about it.

but it doesn't take away from the fact that Love was sown.

i remember wondering, afterwards, as i sat for hours with terrifying flashbacks of his messed-up face infecting my imagination and every second... why did i have to endure it if he was only going to die anyway?

and i just got one answer: because we all deserve to be Loved, even unto death.

i don't have to understand any more than that: we all deserve to be Loved. and Love is enough.

and so i wear my ring. and i hunt for pearls.

each time i see this ring, i will think of this Love that lives in us to come out of us, that surpasses the grave.

... and even though that man met his... he was first valued as a pearl of great worth.

Hope

2011-06-08T21:56:00.009+10:00

(i had fun writing this :) i had this quote that had stirred something in my soul, but had no idea where it was going or why... and not sure there is a real 'arrival point', per se... but just lots of musings on the power of Hope to transform not just the way we see, but our future reality...)

* * *

i was reading Time magazine the other day and found this beautiful passage in the cover article about optimism:

without optimism, our ancestors might never have ventured far from their tribes and we might all be cave dwellers, still huddled together and dreaming of light and heat... the only way conscious mental time travel would have arisen over the course of [time] is if it emerged together with irrational optimism. knowledge of death had to emerge side by side with the persistent ability to picture a bright future. - tali sharot, "the optimism bias"

such a simple truth and yet it really struck me. the power of Belief, of Hope, of Dreaming is even bigger than i knew: it causes us to traverse time in our minds and to numb the sting of death! without eternal optimism, how could it be that, everyday we wake up knowing that it could be our very last, but continue to study and work and cook dinner and have children and invest in relationships and laugh and Love? without this blood of optimism flowing through our veins, what is life? life can't just be a march on toward death... so it must be about this Hope, this irrational Optimism, this Dream that wakes our soul.

i love this stuff. i love hearing people's dreams and speaking Life over them until they become reality. i love calling forth out of shadowed places dusty hopes that have been long forgotten and breathing Love on them until they grow wings. i love being found in impossible situations and seeing them through lenses of Belief that say that all things are possible.

i have so many dreams for my life.

khmer

midwife

villages

healing

creativity

worship

cambodia

Oneness

beauty

marriage

empowerment

community

freedom

Love

flying

nations

family

children

joy

passport

release

intimacy

health

education

transformation

... i love the joy that these dreams bring into my heart. i love mentally traversing, say, ten years down the road and imaginging my life. i hope that most of these will be my then-reality. and that my heart will have expanded and have dared to dream further down the road for even bigger things that my now-mind cannot see.

but i am so aware that so many people don't know how to dream, even for simple things, and for so many reasons... here in cambodia i find that they have never been given permission to dream; to think that their hopes are good and worth investing into, or even the ability to look beyond today. when life becomes about finding rice for your growling tummy, how can you dream for twenty years down the road? how, when there is not even a glass to be half-full? but it's not just the poor. there are students trying to live out their parents' dreams. there are fifty year olds with their heads in their hands who lost the time.

and i'm mentally wading through all of the issues for both the rich and the poor, those in the West and those here in the East and all of us in each and every other 'category'... and all of the issues seem irrelevant. it sucks that that child in the village has never been given the opportunity to dream... but it doesn't have to go past today. it frustrates me that people are living in the shadow of other people's unfulfilled dreams and then perpetuating that cycle by leaving theirs hollow, waiting to be lived out by the next... but it doesn't have to go past today. i hate that that man is having a midlife crisis and wants to cut it all... but it doesn't have to go past today.

there are loads of strategies and schemes and plans and programs... and after various different experiences with these things here in cambodia i know that some can work really effectively. but this i know for sure:

Christ is the Dream-Giver.

He is Eternal Love wrapped up in the Hope for everything good for which our hearts desire.

psalm 23 says that His goodness and unfailing Love pursue me. He is not trying to make it difficult for us, hide it from us, cause us to give up in a lengthy process... no, He is pursuing us with all of His goodness and Love! out of this goodness and Love, we can dream! we can believe that He has good things for us! that our dreams are possible! that our ideas are great! that we are capable! that we can cause change! that we can be better!

so much of life is about 'finding ourselves' but i wonder if so much of what we are looking for has arrived already but we are numb to it by hopelessness and negativity? if we are being pursued - and Love always wins - then surely His goodness has arrived, whether we know it or not? are we all on these trajectories of discovery looking so far outside of ourselves when He has already put it within us, waiting for us to allow His Hope to shine onto it and show it all off for what it already is? that we have dreams as big as the world living in our guts if only we'll look?

... not discounting the journey. never discounting the journey... it's this journey of discovery that fuels this irrational optimism that fuels this journey. i can't seem to separate them as i think of them; i think they are intrinsically intertwined, this journey, and this optimism... without optimism, i think it's just a death march, day by day. but together it is a dance of Life as it causes us to forever anticipate tomorrow. and i think they just may lead us out into faraway places of newness and mystery as much as into the deep places that are already within me that already contain the universe.

... maybe, for these ones for whom hopelessness and negativity has caused blindness, our job is to shine the Light of His Eternal Optimism onto their hearts to show them the goodness and Love that has already been pursuing them all 365 days of this year and the year before? i just keep getting this vision of a little torchlight being shone into dark corners of caves and little winged things being woken up by the light and flying upwards... could it really be this simple? just shining a little Light?

if Christ is Light and He has filled every single one of my cells with His beautiful, luscious, glowing Being, in our Oneness, when i begin to speak the Truth of the Dream-Giver into hopelessness... is it really just enough for these little winged ones to fly?

... and then, if they can fly? they can change things. they are active participants, they are given Life. and then optimism changes into something vastly more powerful: Hope. Hope that not only the way we see is transformed... but that our entire reality - future - is also changed.

... all from a little Light.

"art nourishes a hungry soul"

2011-06-01T11:27:00.017+10:00

i bought the new SouthEast Asia Globe magazine yesterday, which I always love because it's such an insight into all things in our region here, across cambodia, thailand, vietnam, laos and off the mainland, too (indo, malaysia and elsewhere). but my favourite segement is the last page. the last page is a simple one-page interview with someone inspiring, every time. this time it was with La Jun, an amazing chinese artist who mixes water and ink and then digitally processes it...

"water plays the leading role in my works. water is the origin of life and a cradle for dreams. it's both tangible and intangible. it shapes the ink yet leaves no trace of itself. it takes in all colours yet water itself is of no colour."

and then he said the most simple and lovely thing:

"art nourishes a hungry soul."

and it sent me on a hunt for "art". not art you'd see hanging in a gallery (though i love this also, like his "waiting a thousand years" painting, above), but the idea of art in its most raw form: just something beautiful that makes me smile.

this is some of the art that is feeding me today:

... art is everywhere, should we look for it.

the shared human story

2011-05-31T17:28:00.006+10:00

the last week or so of really emotionally difficult and exhausting times (including the death of my beloved grandfather yesterday), i have had this endless desire - need, really - to read. writing? a bit of an ebb and flow. felt blocked until yesterday, and then i could barely breathe, let alone speak, and i was forced to write out my pain, page after page, rather than be trapped with it.

but i've just been needing literature. i'm certain there's elements of escapism - denial? - implicitly in this, but i've just been hungry for beautiful words. i've just needed to fill my ears, my mind, my heart with language that reminds me of Beauty; of the shared human story. i love when the overflow of an artist's experience makes it onto paper and we get to join in it with him in that most simple but powerful emotion that separates us humans from all else in creation: empathy. i love when this plays out in real-life relationships, but when you feel your soul ache for a fictional character on a page, for you carry their pain with them? it is the most beautiful testament to the ability us humans have to embrace the collective man as ourselves.

my drug of choice this particular week? the fabulous F. Scott Fitzgerald and his Gatsby. i first fell in love with Gatsby some ten years ago, on the second page:

"Gatsby... represented everything for which i have an unaffected scorn. if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life... it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as i have never found in any other person and which it is not likely i shall ever find again."

and then, yesterday, in the midst of grief and considerable pain, i found this medicinal treasure to elate my heart:

"there was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. in his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."

... and the simple beauty of it was enough, for that moment.

i almost began to pull myself out of this literary hub - for fear of, really, getting stuck in denial - until i read this in The Observer this morning:

"it is through literature, not simply literacy, that we learn to understand and empathize. as readers, we learn about the lives of others, other places and culture - other ways of seeing the world. we find out about the past, understand better how it made our present and makes our future. we learn we are not alone in our feelings and that though humanity is to be celebrated for its diversity, it is ultimately one humanity. through literature, we can find our place in the world, feel we belong and discover our sense of responsibility." - michael morpurgo (english author)

and so, i submerge, amongst the beautiful words, failed people and all kinds of familiar and offensive ways... to better celebrate both the pleasure and the pain of this, the shared human story.

... sometimes it feels good to lose yourself :)

my counter-act

2011-05-26T00:54:00.005+10:00

i am in some kind of a frustrated or tired or flustered or bored or some-kind-of-combination-of-these-things-and-anything-else funk, so...

i write my counter-act:

1. this morning in khmer class, my tutor and i got to talking about our favourite books and, before long, we were in a twenty-minute discussion about how, one day, you can think that that rich Englishman is really just a conceited fool, and the next, you are hopelessly in love with him. in a crash course on delicious english literature, period dress and perfect romance, she is already hooked and i have bought her the pride & prejudice dvd, essential viewing for all of the romantic at heart. equally satisfying as creating another austen-convert was having the entire conversation in khmer :)

2. after my lesson i went to my favourite cafe where my regular girl handed me the menu and asked, before i'd had a chance to look: "the lentil salad?" and when i looked at her confused, she smiled, "you always have the lentil salad." and a large skim vanilla latte, thank you. (not yet down to sugarless coffee; on my way.)

3. i felt like God said to go to my favourite bookshop and there would be a book there for me. on display, right in the middle, was the "penguin atlas of women in the world", now on my coffee table. i'm learning a lot about the role of women - the ones who "hold up half the sky" - in the way that the world is changing and needs to change. i'm getting such a deep heart to want to Love my sisters into their potential. i'm learning that every person can make a difference; everyone is created to exude goodness and Life from them. it was Mao who said that "women hold up half the sky." ... and it is this that excites me because, in the midst of getting swamped by His sweet Love for women all over the globe and for wanting to live and work to see them delivered into their Inheritance, i am being inundated with such a heart for men, and the men of cambodia, in particular. women will never be free, liberated, released, empowered, equal, admired, promoted and everything they/we should be until men are also given Fullness. i believe in the women's movement. i choose to live and work for us. but He is injecting it into me, right now, with a heart for the men who will be the ones who will send their female counter-parts into true Revolution of culture. i am learning to see that a true women's movement is as much about men as it is the women.

4. last night i was talking with a friend about William Wordsworth and i remembered how it was his Romantic (era) writing that first taught me to love poetry. i remember, in year eight, loving the way he wrote about beautiful things using only the most beautiful language, even when describing death: "she dwelt among the untrodden ways..." ... but it is our shared love of the springtime, all things beautiful and the natural world that made me love him then, and love him still. this poem makes me particularly happy, today (in my 'vacant or pensive mood'):

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

5. after apparently hiding under a cambodian rock for the last who-knows-how-long, i finally googled this Adele i keep spotting on statuses... in love.

heart? happy. counter-act? successful :)

The Girl Effect... what if it really is this simple?

2011-05-22T01:51:00.000+10:00

... love the one ...

how do owls sleep?

2011-05-17T01:01:00.007+10:00

last week i was chatting with a friend on facebook chat about my then-upcoming trip to siem reap when he discovered through illustrious google use that there are owls in cambodia and in siem reap, especially. i had never seen nor heard of owls in cambodia...

... i have since been hijacked. they are everywhere. flippin e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e.

firstly, i was going over my photos of when i was last in siem reap and had visited the temples and found this picture that i had taken and clearly not remembered...

... it seems that owls have preceded my being here in cambodia, as this was carved into a temple that was built in the 12th century (angkor wat)... khmer people have been enjoying owls all along and never told me!

so, upon my arrival in siem reap, i hired a bicycle (excellent for when slowness is an asset) and was determined to find some. and i did! i found a lady wearing a dress with owls embroidered on the hem (wanted a photo, but she already found me strange for staring at her mid-calf for like a minute, straight), a man wearing an owl t-shirt (similar situation with the lady) and then market stall after market stall with the below set-up:

... but no live ones perched in trees, hooting. or offering sage-like advice.

i keep hearing the same comment over and over from friends who approach it with sweet, (appreciated) gentleness, such as not to either embarrass or burst my bubble, but... "steph, you know they're nocturnal?"

while yes i do know that they are noctural, it turns out, that's about all i knew about owls. so, i figured that if i was going to find one, then i was going to have to find out the crucial detail:

if owls are noctural... how do owls sleep?

just because they sleep in the day, doesn't mean they disappear... right? what am i looking for, on my peddle-powered (day-time) owl-hunting expeditions?

when you google this exact phrase ("how do owls sleep?"), however, you get a range of smart-ass comments about sleeping during the day and everything we all know already... but no real answers.

(although i did find out how to make an owl out of three paper plates)

so, i proposed to my friend that they perch and close their little eyes and just nap. we agree that it sounds cute, but i want answers! this time, google, wiki and all the other legit information sources have truly failed me... but i did manage to find Mrs Marques' second grade class and their owl research. bless.

i am thankful for Cheryl's note that 'some live in airports', but it is Micah who has really come through for me. his thorough exposition is below:

An owl's lifetime is filled with excitement. The owl's body is unique. The owl's shape is designed to fly well. The owl's wings have special feathers to fly quietly. Their claws catch their food. Their neck can turn around. Their beak catches the fish. Their eyes can see better at night time. The owl can scare other birds. Owls sleep during the day. Owls have good habits. Owls love to eat. They can hunt for food. They cough up pellets. They eat live animals. They eat rats, skunks, mice, lizards, rabbits, and possums. Owls live in many places. Some owls live in the forest. They may live in a saguero cactus. They can live in the tree holes. Owls are interesting. I can't wait until I learn more about owls. Owls are wonderful.

he doesn't tell me how they sleep... (some mysteries are for the next life) but he did give me what seems to be the most likely and accurate description of an owl's life that i've read thus far and then dutifully illustrated it for me:

maybe i've been going about it all wrong. Micah was right about everything else... wiki also says that they like to choke up pellets and that their necks can turn... he must also be right about this? here i was, trying to find some cute little bleary-eyed owl having a kip on a leafy branch in the morning sun... but it seems like tomorrow morning's plans have changed: i'm out to find the space-invader-fighting-cambodian-owl :)

p.s. i want to be friends with this owl:

for more joy from Mrs Marques' class, check out their website :)
(http://www.hipark.austin.isd.tenet.edu/projects/second/owls/owls.html)

i love my cow.

2011-05-15T20:01:00.004+10:00

i had been pedalling down red dirt tracks, past wooden shacks & brown children for an hour when the road ended & all there was was rice fields.. then a quiet voice came from within long grasses; a smiley khmer man with a beautiful cow on a string: "what are you looking for?" "i am just exploring. what are you doing?" "i love my cow." and so, i met my new uncle, Ravuth, one of the kindest people i have ever met.

his cow was, indeed, beautiful. and one after my own heart, apparently: her favourite food is mango. she is, comically, a milky-coloured cow, and you can tell that he loves her just by looking at her. she's clean and fat and happy and let me caress her face and look into her big eyes. he left her outside to munch on the grasses and took me into his house. i figured i can trust any khmer who loves a cow with this kind of love.

Ravuth is "fifty-two or fifty-five" and he is married to a woman, Tira, who was a widow with a young daughter. they have not had their own children, but he has taken in Tira's daughter completely as his own and loves her immensely. his daughter is "thirty-two or thirty-five" and has been divorced twice and is now living, de facto, with her "fifty two or fifty-five" year old french partner. Ravuth has given them his house to live in because her partner teaches french to the village children and he wanted to give him a space to do so. in the shade of the balcony, we sat on small school-student chairs at a desk, surrounded by posters of the eiffel tower and french consonants while we talked about... everything, really.

Ravuth is originally from phnom penh and then lived in battambang for some time before settling in siem reap. when the khmer rouge came in, he escaped with his family to the cambodian part of thailand. he was able to return when he was twenty-one years old and, when he did, he met some christians who introduced him to Jesus and also began to teach him english. and so, this whole conversation we are having is a mix-up; an australian girl speaking khmer to a khmer man speaking flawless english with an australian accent in the middle of a dusty nowhere. he uses words like "cosmopolitan" and "reference" and tells me that he only speaks english to his eleven year old grandson and nine year old granddaughter who, i discover when i meet them later, speak even better english than he:

"what are you doing today?"

"oh, nothing much... just playing, y'know."

Ravuth loves Jesus incredibly, and was a pastor for ten years, ten years ago, but isn't anymore... i don't ask him why and he doesn't offer to tell me, in an easy way. he loved being a pastor and wants his grandson to be a pastor too. he has started taking him to church with him on a saturday (they are sevvies) and he is beginning to learn the songs and Ravuth is starting to teach him how to play them on his new keyboard which he uncovers to show me, with meek pride.

Ravuth is an english teacher at his own school that he started. he works five days a week from 7am - 12 lunchtime, then 1pm to 8pm teaching young khmer village students english. he took me to his school and i am so proud of how professional his set-up is and that he is doing so well for himself. he makes $450 a month, which he says is enough to live on (and it is) and to support his family and extended family, but not enough for him to save much for when he is too old to work. he hopes this is not for a long time, because he loves to teach, but he is sad that the cambodian government does not offer any kind of help for their old people "like they do in europe and britain." i tell him i am sad too. he says that his plan is to save up, little by little, so that he can purchase another small plot of land where he can build a house on it and rent it out and live out his 'retirement' on the rental money. i told him that if he built a beautiful, wooden khmer house on a leafy block in that area with lots of mango trees and space for my own cow, then i would consider renting it in the future and we could be neighbours... he said he'd like that so much :) where he lives is now heritage-listed area (because the Angkor Wat park is on the outskirts of this town) and so it is difficult to buy land and even if you can, you cannot build on it... but he "has faith that God will help me".

he also worked as a nurse for a time.

he used to be good friends with an australian named Brad. he loved him like family and he was very close to them all until there was a run-in with his daughter's partner. Ravuth admits "with her past, i don't know what the future of this one is..." and is sad to have lost his friend. but, he says, he is glad to have a new australian friend today! ... doi kinner (same) :)

he asks me if i know a man from australia who works with crocodiles and is on Animal Planet? he and his grandchildren used to watch steve urwin on the tv every afternoon, although it has stopped in the last year, and they loved learning about crazy dangerous australian wildlife from this australian with the very difficult accent. he was very sad when he learned that steve urwin had died... but is very proud of bindi, bob and terri for continuing his work. when i told him that steve had set up a zoo for animals in australia, he decided he'd like to go there.

after much talk and much much mango (refusing to eat any himself, but enjoying watching me eat the different varieties from his different trees), he decided that i needed more mango for the road. so he pulled out his mango-fetching device: a long bamboo stick with a little trap on the end that cambodians use with such finesse that are actually ridiculously difficult to work... and he pulled down a dozen or so swaaye dtoom (green mango) until i convinced him that i just couldn't eat anymore! so we loaded my bicycle basket up and hit the road, me peddling and him on his moto, following me, to show me the stationary shop that he and his wife run.

his wife, Tira, is a beautiful woman; so soft and sweet, and she immediately offers me jayk jien grilled banana in sticky rice, wrapped in banana leaves. this is one of my favourite cambodian treats, so i can hardly say no. she invites me in for fish, so many times, but i am meeting friends for lunch and i have no idea how long it will take for me to get back into town, so i have to decline... but i am already planning for a return to siem reap next month to rendezvous with other friends, so i am expected to join them then, and i will most definitely do so :)

we exchange numbers & blessings and i stand there saying goodbye to Ravuth completely unable to comprehend this new friend that popped into my life, without warning, right out of the grasses. as i leave: "i hope i know you forever." i think i am going to cry... "i hope we are friends forever too" and i hop on my bicycle & peddle down the dusty road into town, my heart almost-bursting :)

geek :)

2011-05-05T18:51:00.007+10:00

i am becoming a total geek.

and i'm totally loving it.

after a few days of existential crisis kind of mode of 'what am i doing here?! what is this season for?!' i felt like God really put it on me to use this season as an opportunity to sow into learning the language (khmer, pronounced 'kh-mai') and to really feel confident in it and have a good deal of it under my belt. i have always been pseudo-jealous of those missionaries who come here and spend their first year doing language only (whilst knowing that it would have killed me, which is why i didn't do it!) and saw that this was the opportunity that He was giving me... to spend the next few months sowing into this skill that i will carry with me everyday, the rest of my life in this place that i love.

in light of this new intentionality, a wonderful, wise friend suggested to me that i clarify to myself my motivation for doing this and keep it at the forefront... and it all boils down to this:

a single heart is worth it.

learning language is all about worth.

apart from crazy tribal languages of unreached people groups, a translator is nearly always available. in a country like cambodia, everybody school-aged and up to about 30 is learning english and is learning to a professional level (and always keen to practice on you!) because you cannot get a job here without english. all the menus are in english. all the transport services are dual-language. there's a translator radio system in my church, or you can go to an international church which is fully english. every international NGO operates in english. there are english tv channels, radio stations and newspapers. the market stall holders can bargain (or rip you off!) in english and the tuktuk drivers will likely understand your 'left, right'...

i've seen people manage to live here for five, ten and more years here without fully learning the language, and they run businesses, NGOs, churches and their lives very successfully and produce much fruit in their work and ministries.

and it's tempting to give up learning what is, really, quite an obscure language (only about 14 million people speak this language, which is miniscule compared to, say, both Hindi and Spanish which have up to 300 million speakers) and employ a translator to help me communicate while i focus on the thousands of other needs that daily capture my heart's attention..

... but then i think about why i am here in cambodia. i am here because i want to learn how to Love, and how to Love these people into wholeness, into the destiny that the Father has for each individual; to see these beautiful people rise up into Fullness.

and this vision, for me, has lots of facets... i am a dreamer and a schemer, and i have a number of plans, both long- and short-term, on the go at any one time and am ready to jump at a whistle. but all of them involve looking at the person who is sitting right in front of me and seeing Jesus in their eyes and asking Papa what He wants to do in and for them, today. i have big dreams, nation-wide dreams... but they all start with this one who is sitting in front of me, who needs. i don't want to address issues or policies... there are people who are diligently working at this higher level and i pray that they would be extremely effective at what they are doing in these realms.

but it is not my realm. my realm is this one, right here. just this one, right in front of me. this sex worker sitting in front of me who is pregnant and has now been disowned by her family. this little girl sitting, crying, in front of me who has stepped on a rusty nail and now has tetanus. this grandma sitting in front of me who has never been hugged, never been told 'i love you'. this extremely clever and promising boy sitting in front of me who could really make something of his life if only someone would tell him so. this man sitting in front of me who has been in a moto accident and will die if he is not prayed for. this family sitting in front of me who will go months at a time without seeing each other unless you give them a home.

and, without language? how can it be just you and this one?

so, it is this desire for the one right in front of me that causes me to wreck my brain learning this complex swirling of script and these tongue-twisting sounds...

... and if all it is is so that i can meet with people, face-to-face, on the most grassroots of levels and ensure that they know that they are Loved? they are not forgotten? they have promise and destiny? there is more than what they see?

... then it is worth it :)

... and all this has been exciting my heart as i go to class (second class at khmer school today!) and study at home and make a fool of myself practising on strangers on the street...

... and then i met my alternate-day teacher today. at first i thought 'oh man, she's going to drill me'... and she did. but then we got to this point at the end of the lesson where we began to talk. really talk. heart. she began to tell me that the reason why she teaches khmer is that she feels like God's call on her life is not to go into all the unreached places of her country to tell people about Jesus and how He has revolutionised her life... but that she feels like He has put the call on her to teach foreigners how to speak khmer so that they can then go into every corner and share that message with her people... wow. that floored me. i believe, big-time, that the move that will sweep over this nation will come out of a local sound, a national groaning, a khmer longing and push. but i know that i will get to be a part of it, whatever that looks like. these are the people that i was born to see revival with. but i love that her vision is to serve those who will get to go and serve her own people. i love such a selfless, hidden vision... that is going to produce endless fruit. she is, literally, pouring herself out to the one sitting in front of her... me! day in, day out, from early morning til late afternoon, she teaches khmer to missionaries who have come here to bless this country... and here she is, blessing us, to go out and do the work. love her heart. her want to do this makes me feel that this call on my life is worth it. when you know that revival comes from the indigenous heart, it's easy to wonder why you're here and what can you do, really... but when she can see that it's worthwhile? and is willing to lay down 'more glorious' dreams for the unseen sowing-in? it makes my heart bust with knowing that she thinks that my call is that worthwhile... that i am worth her everything.

turns out it's not as much about grammar and making mistakes... whether you're learning or teaching language, it just has to be about worth.

the Beauty of Life

2011-04-17T23:17:00.003+10:00

I wrote this a few months ago, back in january, when i was having some bliss-time down on the beaches and islands of cambodia in a treehouse with my mum... as i re-read this, this morning, it made my heart smile as it took me right back to that place of extreme, restful, perfect Beauty. mmm... the Beauty of Life - of water, of the dust, of a dark sky lit by sparkles, of a deep, rich belly laugh, of an achingly green dragonfly, of the rough fibres of a piece of wood and the smooth, addictive surface of a water-worn stone, of a piece of dragonfruit melting on my tongue, the fringe of a palm tree, the pained cry of a child soothed by loving coos from mama, the thud of a coconut - heavy with delicious juice - hitting the earth, the touch of a good pen to the best paper, the aromatherapy of the day's first espresso, the strum of a perfect g-chord at just the right moment, new leather sandals becoming one with my feet, no obligation but to enjoy - sustains me, refeshes me, makes me who i love to be; propels me, feeds me, gives me substance; creates a longing in my heart to have beauty dripped into my veins - drip, drop - for all the days of Eternity... a longing You created because You are the answer, the Source, the fix of my addiction. You are the fullness of Beauty, lacking nothing, completely undefinable, but always discoverable... not just a map to the treasure, but the Treasure, Itself; not only the Journey, but the Destination. i love this compelling that You are incessantly tug at my heart; the need-for-Beauty that feeds itself with more hunger... You will tug all the days of this small earth-life because You have more than enough to feed me on; You don't want me to miss out, to get to the end and realise that there was a sea of unopened gifts... no, everyday is christmas! everyday is the day that Christ enveloped the earth with His Splendour... everyday is a collection of encounters with Beauty. last night, Blissfully floating under the barely-there light of cambodia's star and a mangosteen's-slice-of-a-smiling-moon, i realised: what is Life, if not zillions of opportunities to choose to look at something ordinary, Delight in it, and call it Beautiful?

... what if a cool cup of water is really enough?

2011-04-14T17:46:00.002+10:00

... what if a cool cup of water is really enough? this one question dive-bombed into my heart earlier today and is burning away within me and makes me then wonder... ... what if an infection, treated, is enough? ... what if a cuddle is enough? ... what if a sack of rice is enough? ... what if a lullaby is enough? ... what if a pencil is enough? ... what if a smile is enough? ... what if a cuppa is enough? ... what if a laugh is enough? ... what if a mosquito net is enough? ... what if an "i believe in you" is enough? ... what if a blanket is enough? ... what if a chicken is enough? ... what if Love, really, is enough? ... enough for revival, enough for transformation, enough for someone to believe, enough for someone to realise that they are known, enough for nations to step into true Identity, enough for children to come Home, enough for whatever it is you want to call it when simple Love invades an impossibly un-lovable situation... ... what if these simple acts, moments, things... what if they are enough? ... what if we are waiting for this massive "move of God" and God is waiting for us to make a little move on a little heart that needs to know that they are Loved, and not forgotten? i long to see a Love Movement of people who choose to Love with risk, vulnerability, great humour and simplicity. i want to see my generation be the one that changes everything. i want it to be us, so much. because i want it now. no more people committing suicide. no more depression. no more fear. these things are not tangible in the same way as hunger, disease and homelessness, but they are the evil that God intends to be undone by His gun of Love here in amongst the poorest of the poor and over with the rich who have their own, less-visible, but just as sticky mud to lie in. ... it scares me what a Love like this can do. it scares me how much we have no control over this thing, and how much i don't want to control it. it scares me how much it requires that i give up everything and throw out all of my plans... whilst engaging the wholeness that He has restored in me - sewn to Him - and the dreams that He has planted like magic beans in my belly. it scares me that a Love like this is a power beyond what we can comprehend with our earth-minds. but, with this mind of Christ? i know that a Love like this can make a cool cup of water change the course of history, forever. ... love the one ...

thoughts on Love

2011-04-13T23:16:00.005+10:00

As usual, God has been teaching me about Love. And, as usual, i am trying... but not entirely getting it. And i wonder how much of the not-getting-it is in the trying... ... "every spiritual blessing in heavenly places has found its definition in the fact that we are in Christ." - ephesians 1:3 (mirror translation) i am learning how to fall back into the 'everythingness' that He has already and always lavished upon me, His Beloved... He wants me to stop trying; He did enough trying for us both and He was so good at it that He succeeded so that I wouldn't have to; i'm becoming aware of how insulting it is that i keep trying to finish what He already did. He - His Love, His Blood, His Joy, His Light, His Life, His Everything - was enough to secure eternal Victory. But what is it, then, to step into the arms of Love, Himself, and to have Him invade not only your secret, unseen heart, but also your pumping, bloody heart of flesh? what does such a thing, such an event, such a state, such a transformation, gift, exchange... what does it do to us? it's causing me to realise that He doesn't want a list of promises from us... He just wants the kind of Love that causes you to risk everything; all money, all dreams, all your days. the kind of Love that makes you a fool, that puts your reputation to the ground, that loses all dignity for the sake of preserving others'. He wants the kind of Love that has forgotten self and is all about the one before you. He wants the kind of Love that makes you uncomfortable so that others can be safe. a Love so strong it scares you, yet brings people to peace. a Love that makes no sense to the eyes of the world, but earns you crowns in the next. a Love that's not about you. this Love cannot be manufactured, i know this. i know when i'm loving out of my own strength. it's pitiful and ugly. and completely transparent. people see right through it; your efforts just become bread, a drink of water, money for schooling... but when such things are bathed and saturated in a deep, luscious Love, they become powerful tools in releasing an encounter with the Father into someone's heart. and this lasts for eternity. and they know it. the poor know something about eternity. they know that this is not it. they know that no God would create them to live in destitution for all their days and have that be that... no, the poor know there is more. the poor know that there is life outside of the dumps, time beyond what we can understand, a realm that we cannot see. they believe that Jesus is inviting them into eternity with Him because they have no other choice... no one else has stopped long enough to enjoy them as He did. i think something in our hearts can change when we do like Him. when we stop. linger. we race and pulse through life and rarely actually stop to truly listen, to see, not just look. i wonder if, when He invades our heart for Love, He can slow us down? He can stop us from thinking that our stuff is so important and see the one who is most important to Him? the one who is least important to us. this is all so over-the-place - like thirty different topics in one - because I am all-over-the-place... i am absorbing, learning, enjoying so much right now, but not stopping to linger... so i have to wonder how i can write this, how much of this is purely for my own sake? (He's so sneaky! i sat down just to write write write... and here i am. punk'd by God!) but i have to wonder, even more, at His radical Grace that Loves me wildly in my freneticness. (... but He won't let me stay here!) ... love the one ...

getting my blog on :)

2011-04-13T22:43:00.003+10:00

After absolutely forever (almost a year) i am going to get my blog on again! i have missed writing, even if it be only for my own benefit/enjoyment/journey... and it turns out that a few people even read my stuff, so that just makes it even more lovely :) my old posts are suffering some issues with text and I can't be bothered going back to fix all the settings... but if you highlight the articles, you can read it like that... so lazy ;) hehe much love, s x

just life?

2010-05-20T00:29:00.004+10:00

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined. This is all i know how to think of right now. That and the fact that there is a solution... :) i'm in an in-between place, these last few days, of seeing my Cambodia change phnomenally in the MONTH that i was out-of-country (seriously... it's tangible, noticeable.) ... but also realising that just because there is less trash on the streets and more Lexus SUV's... doesn't mean that more people are drinking clean water from the tap or are able to write their names or feel confident that their houses will survive this rainy season. Hmm... learning and praying into what it means for poverty to be eliminated. There's nothing wrong with driving lovely cars and having nice clothes and going out for a meal; these things make life lovely and exciting and are ways that we connect and do community! These things in and of themselves are fine and are not my complaint, my confusion, my...?? ... what i'm just musing is this: what does the elimination of poverty actually look like? (at least here in my context in Cambodia?) When will I not have to brush my teeth with bottled water so I don't get cholera? When will fathers stop selling their daughters into brothels to pay for a new tv set? (for real.) When will US$90 a month not be a decent salary anymore? When will every single mama go to sleep with a full belly and a full heart, knowing that their children will get fed three times tomorrow? When will every road victim with their femur bone smashed through their skin, bleeding to death, be treated - without question - by qualified doctors? When will every kid have the guts to dream that they can be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, an accountant, a social worker, a counsellor, a... whatever... and that not be laughable... but what we dream for them too? Just musing... dreaming... getting excited :) ... love the one ... ... steph ...

pastor's conference! blitzing them with INTIMACY!!

2010-03-17T18:51:00.004+11:00

We have the incredible privilege of serving and leading a pastor's conference in a small town about 2 hours south of Phnom Penh called Chuuk (like 'chook' as in chicken... but not really... one of those same same but different kind of situations! hehe) with a Pastor friend down there who gathers all these pastors in great unity to get into the Word together, regularly. They asked us to come and do some teaching, prayer, worship and impartation with them.. so we are! We feel like we're just little and young... but God is the One we're giving away, and He's flippin HUGE, so we're going for it!! There are 100 pastors coming from every corner of Cambodia, from as far as 500 km away... (and 500km takes about 10 hours to drive in a country like this... they're laying it all down to come!) ... and we get the sweet honour of praying for and with them this weekend with some of our great Cambodian friends and apostolic leaders... it's going to be incredible! Just wanted to rally as much prayer support as possible! We head down Thursday morning for our first session on Thursday afternoon, lead by my Khmer pastor friend, Channa, who is a true apostolic leader in this nation... a wonderful man, the pastor of Heartlands who i was working with in Kampong Cham the last few times I was here in Cambo. He is doing a session on PASSIONATE WORSHIP :) Most Khmer churches outside of Phnom Penh use these old-school hymn books, which are wonderful, if Holy Spirit is present and bringing Life to it all... but it's often just going through the movements... Channa has a real heart to see the Khmer church set off into prophetic worship and is a wonderful worship leader himself, so i'm really excited for him to be sharing with them about this, something so close to his heart :) On Friday, both Chad and I are taking sessions on HEALING. Chad is going to be sharing about authority and that sort of thing, along with some of the practicalities... and i'm doing all i know how to do: affirming in them that God is good and so that means that He heals every disease every time! That it is about childlike faith (commanding flippin HUGE mountains to move before your eyes!) and intimacy with Him... that it's all about being in Love with Him, knowing His Voice, receiving the compassion of His Heart for a hurting hurt... and sharing lots of stories, of course :) On Saturday morning, Channa is again sharing on DISCIPLESHIP and how to raise up other leaders from amongst the church. He is tag-teaming with one of our team-members, Judah, who also has a real heart for this stuff. At each session, we're doing worship, then the teaching, then launching into ministry time at the end... ... Pray that worship would be ALIVE and FULL of Holy Spirit sweetness and power! Pray that God would give us awesome words, right from His Heart for these men and women who have laid their lives down, are suffering immeasurable persecution and ex-communication from families and everything for the sake of His Love coming into this land... and that people would get fully impacted and receive impartation from His Heart in the ministry time! We've also got the opportunity to share at two small groups the Thursday and Friday night. We're not sure about one of the nights yet... but, the second night, we're going to do a soaking night! get them to bring their mats, lie down in the dirt, tell them to stop thinking and just to open themselves to sponge all of Him up inside of them! Khmer people are wonderful at DOING (as so many of us westerners are too!), but I feel like it's so important for them to get the REST of the LOVE of the FATHER.. to grasp real, true INTIMACY. Love is, of course, what it's all about :) We've printed out music books and cd's and Randy Clark gave us his equipping manual (in deliverance, healing, discipleship and all manner of supernatural ministry!) in Khmer, so we're copying that for them all too! Please pray that they would all get totally ROCKED! These are pastors who may have only known Jesus a year before becoming a Pastor... and are still only so young in the Lord and need much encouragement and pouring into! Pray that this would be a weekend of breakthrough in the Spirit and that all those pastors would get rocked for the sweetness of His Wine and to see that it is all about LOVE. Even though we're talking about POWERFUL things... don't go after the power... go after Love. it's the most poweful thing in existence. :) Pray that we'd get great words of knowledge that would be keys and encouragement to them, that God would pour out His power on us as we minister healing into their own bodies and that we'd be so TANKED UP before we go in there that we've got sooooo much to give! yay! and i just want to do it all with JOY!!! these people need a serious injection of Joy... and they're believing that God is really sending us down there for them... and they're right! So i just want to take a Joyful, Love-filled, Intimate, Powerful deposit, whatever that looks like... as long as it looks like Him :) Thank you so much! Look forward to telling you how we go! ... love the one ... ... steph ...

Revival in Cambodia! (from March 1... God broke something in the spirit over this nation that day!!)

2010-03-17T18:49:00.004+11:00

So, we just finished a particularly fiery and anointed and beautiful and powerful and heart-changing team time this morning and I raced out the door straight afterwards to post this so we can gather the prayers and celebrations of our family across the globe..! Please read through this to really grasp what God is doing… yes, it’s about calling down revival, but this isn’t just any call… this is the kairos time for Cambodia… this is it! God is showing me a bunch of stuff… let’s pray in, in unity, what He’s showing me… for such a time as this ☺ God is doing something here in Cambodia that I have never encountered. I met with a friend for breakfast yesterday and we spoke about how everything around us is falling apart, about how many sick people we know, about how much crap is going on… yet we feel something spectacular in the atmosphere, I feel the earth move beneath my feet… there is a trembling in the ground here in Cambodia and, when that earthquake hit Chile the other day, I knew He was speaking… when the temperature markedly went up this week here in Cambodia? I knew He was speaking. When I first went to Sihanoukville and it poured down rain in the dry season? I knew He was speaking. When I went to Mondulkiri and it poured down raining (only where we were, not five minutes away…! That is, until we went there, then it also poured down there!) in the dry season? I knew He was speaking. When I found out that, only days after I left Kampot (2 weeks ago), a flash flood hit the town, accumulating 12cm in only 2 hours? I knew that He was speaking. God is speaking about Cambodia. He is not just going to sprinkle, not just bring on a little heat… there is a deluge of the River of Life and an outpouring of Consuming Fire that is like nothing this nation has ever seen! Randy Clark arrives in Cambodia tomorrow for a 6-day (2-meeting a day) conference… and the earth is shaking. People are expectant… and they don’t even know who this man is, what he carries… but God has told them to get excited, so they’re excited!! In case you don’t know, Randy Clark was the man that God used to ignite the flames of revival in Toronto in 1994 (obviously alongside the Arnott’s, etc, but you know what I mean!) and was also the one who prophesied over Heidi Baker and commissioned her into the Wonder-working, nation-transforming ministry that she is in now with her husband, Rolland, in Mozambique… now he’s here in Cambodia. It’s Cambodia’s time for revival. And I feel like we’re going to be commissioned for the Wonder-working work that it’s going to take to win this nation this week! ☺ They’ve been in Bangkok, on the back of a word from Bob Jones, and have had meetings with 2000 people a night, with hundreds of healings a night… we’re expectant, to say the least! Bob Jones, Randy Clark and Jason Westerfield have all prophesied that 2010 is the year that God is going to do radical things here in South-East Asia… I’m sure there are others too (including us!), but men of faith like this believing in what God is doing here is encouraging me no end! Seven years ago, God told me that Cambodia was my nation and that I’d see the whole of this nation come Home in my lifetime. Seven years ago, I began to get down on my knees to pray for a nation that I knew basically nothing about but wanted with an intensity and a desperation that shocked me… For seven years, I have been praying for Heaven to bust out over Cambodia, for the Khmer heart to rise up and stand in the fullness of all the Goodness and Abundant Blessing that God has for them … and this morning? “Steph, you’ve been praying for revival for so long… but will you know it when you see it? Will you have the faith to believe that’s what it is when you see it?” And I lost it… the weight of His desire to see the Khmer heart come Home to her Beloved hit me like a brick and I lost it, just weeping in the Holiness of the moment… and as I wept and cried out, I thought of the hours and hours and hours and hours I have spent, facedown weeping for this beautiful nation to come into the Fullness of Love, that all my prayers are about to be answered… and He just said… “Steph, your prayers are going to have to change.” Our prayers have to change when revival comes! Everything changes when revival comes! And I asked Him how I should then pray, once revival hits my home, here… … and I had a vision of me and my friends on the streets of Phnom Penh with children absolutely everywhere! It’s night-time and we’re out on the streets dancing and playing (you never go out at night here, it’s too dangerous), and the light is not from the sun… the light is from the Open Heaven! Heaven is literally open above us, like a giant open portal above the city! We can see the elders, the living creatures, the choirs of angels, the heavenly gemstones… Jesus. We can see everything. It’s not like how we are currently aware of our positional reality of being in Heavenly Places, but still being here on earth… this is a 24/7 constant more-than-awareness, actually-looking-into-the-realm-of-heaven, having heaven as real and normal and accessible as earth… totally indistinguishable. Extraordinary! But this is revival I’m talking about, not heaven. So there are still needs. But when the children come to us with their needs – I need a friend, I’m lonely… I need healing, I’m sick… I need rice, I’m hungry… I need money, I’m poor… - we don’t lay hands, we don’t get down on our knees and contend… we reach right up into Heaven and pull down… a balloon! Each balloon is brightly coloured and beautifully decorated, each one totally unique… and the second we put the ribbon of the balloon into their brown little hands, their face lights up and they instantly receive whatever they needed! And then some! This is revival: that the city smell of the Fragrance of Heaven, not open sewers. That the hospitals be empty, not overflowing with patients. That the Mekong River flow with clean, drinkable water, not water that gives you cholera, worms and diarrhoea. That kids can play on the streets under the moonlight, not in by sundown. That every belly be full, not begging for rice. That every temple be empty and the streets full of praise and joyful dancing! I really believe that this is it for Cambodia. It’s a “for such a time as this” season in Cambodia’s history… and during worship, we all felt the significance of today and have marked March 1, 2010 down in our calendars as a faith declaration that today is a day where Cambodia’s history changed. Where everything began to shake, rattle and roll in the spirit! … I wish I could articulate what I’m feeling… all I know is that, when I pray for Cambodia, I don’t just pray; I wait on what He wants me to pray. I’ve been praying for it for too long now to come up with new things to pray for… it’s got to be His Heart, His burdens, or it’s all just strivey and religious and yuck… so, for seven years, the call has been for Heaven to pour out, for revival flames to ignite… and today it shifted. It’s the best thing I can say… it shifted. It shifted from the place of just calling what isn’t what it should be to being more on the brink than it’s ever been! You know, we spend hours declaring this corrupt government righteous, and this down-and-out nation Prosperous and Abundant, and the sex industry done and dusted. Those things haven’t happened yet… but we know it’s God will, so we will declare it as Heaven sees it, not as the earth does. The job of prophecy isn’t to identify the problem… it’s to declare God’s Heart as the solution. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this government is corrupt. But there’s too many Christians here praying like that already, I don’t want to add to the number… instead, we declare them righteous men, who make decisions with wisdom and who will step away from corruption, leading other corrupt Asian governments to do the same. It’s not how it is… but it’s how Heaven sees it. Heaven doesn’t see from our perspective… Heaven sees from Victory, so if we pray with Heaven, then we’ll pray from the Victory seat from the perspective of One Who already knows the outcome… genius. And today? March 1, 2010? Something shifted. Revival isn’t a “one day in the future” kind of thing for us here anymore… we are more on the brink than I have English vocabulary for! And we need people to partner with us as we pray! At 6:30pm tonight, we are rallying people together to pray that God would do his thing as Randy comes this week and that revival Fires would fall on this nation… The whole thing of “Can a nation be saved in a day?” isn’t about getting an answer to a question… God is waiting for the nation that can prove that it can be done. We’re believing that Cambodia is it, right now. The Spirit is stirring hearts all across the nation and there is a change in the atmosphere and I have had nervous-excited butterflies in my stomach since I got the full blow of it this morning… it’s going to be wonderful! Decades and decades of prayer have been sown into this nation. Pastors and missionaries who had their last moment on earth looking down the barrel of the gun of a crazed Khmer Rouge maniac are now watching from the great cloud of witnesses up in Heaven, cheering us on as Holy Spirit descends like a Dove on this nation… and remains. This revival is for them. I felt, this morning, like I heard the cheers of the saints as we contended in our little Burn Furnace this morning… it was like, “Yes! They get it! They’re doing it! They’re running with it!” We felt all of Heaven behind us… every believer who died, rather than deny Jesus… they, together with the Lamb, are about to receive the reward of their suffering. Please pray with us. This is not just a call to pray in a general sense for some country… this is something massive, something that’s stirring me to think of nothing else, something that I’ve never felt in the seven years I’ve been praying for this nation, in the five years that I’ve been coming… this is it. Can a nation be saved in a day? Will keep you updated during the week… methinks we’ll have lots of good news ☺ (the first one is that our good friend, Eddie, is getting massively healed of malaria… he ended up in the ICU in the US and didn’t know if he was going to live. His brain is basically on shut-down, his blood was 34 – 40% infected, he’s on dialysis, ventilators, and they were considering doing a full blood exchange because his blood was so infected with the malaria virus/parasite. We got together that night and declared clean blood, that Jesus’ blood would flow through his very veins… and, the next morning? His blood is all but 1% free from the malaria virus! Absolutely miraculous! That is just the beginning… but God is doing good things already, even at a distance! Please also pray for Eddie, we are expecting a full, supernatural recovery… not in the weeks and months he has been given… but in the days and hours that we believe for!) ... love the one ... ... steph ...

prison-Love (from Feb 4)

2010-03-17T18:47:00.004+11:00

We went Kampong Cham (3 hours north of Phnom Penh, in the town where I used to live last year) for the last few days to go to the AIDS ward, the prison, the slums and the streets... and oh my goodness... radical. Absolutely incredible! God is so fun, even when you’re not looking for anything, even when you’re just going about your business... He comes. It felt so good to go back into that AIDS ward! I have seen so many people freed from that hideous disease in that one room, that it feels so sweet to be in there, to be in the place where so many giants have been slain, as Bill Johnson says. I can look around that room and, for almost every bed in there (most with more than one!) give you the story of how a person, a body, a heart was taken from death... into Life! It’s incredible. I always knew how awesome it was, but to be back in that place and to see the beds and remember those sunken faces that turned into smiling faces? Brought it all back to me and I can’t believe the incredible things that I have been a part of in my short life already; I am so crazy-blessed. Again, we prayed for every one: fevers fell, headaches went, belly pain is gone and the hopeless are given a fresh batch of hope! I’ve no doubt we’ll hear stories of these people heading home during the week... that’s just the kind of God He is :) That afternoon I went to hang out with my Heartlands family... ah i LOVE them! I knew I loved them, knew I missed them... but wow, they’re seriously wonderful people, I am sooo thankful that they are my family! Got to spend lots of time with Simmy and Ballina and Naraina and the farm boys, and it just felt like no time has past... I guess that’s what it’s like with family. Love is love, the end. I’m super busy for the next few weeks (til the end of March while the team is here), but I am looking forward to going back up there after the team has gone to hang and play and love and ministry and worship with them again! Naraina was driving me back to my guesthouse in town when a man driving a moto t-boned another moto and all I saw were two young girls flying through the air, head-first, into the road... argh. Immediately a crowd gathered and swelled and swelled... here, there’s no police telling you to stand back, give them space, the ambulance is coming... it’s just a crowd of people standing around, watching. Hoping, maybe? But mostly just watching. Just then, our moto runs out of petrol, so I jump off the moto and run over to find men lifting the girls off the ground and over to the kerb where they sit, emotionless, fully in shock, blood dripping down their legs, their heads miraculously without even a bump! Without considering what I even thought I was able to do for these girls, I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and just sat there with them, my arms around them praying for them, helping to ease them out of the shock... As the blood dripped from their considerable scrapes, what I already knew became a scary reality: what we think of as common sense is more advanced than their basic medical training or first aid. So, I get out my water and face masks that I had used in the AIDS ward and start to wash their wounds clean... and little Dr. Stephie came alive in me! My lovely friend, Tash, (who is a nurse) said to me, when I came back with a huge smile on my face, telling her what I got to do on the road for those girls said that only people who are made for the medical industry get off as much as I did from cleaning a wound! haha... and I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, and I know that being The Physician’s Assistant is the best kind of doctor I could ever be... but it’s been coming back to me the past few months, this whole wanting-to-be-a-doctor thing... or a nurse... I have a few ideas blowing around my mind at the moment and eight-year-old Steph who wanted to be a doctor is not gone yet... and I’m not sure what it’s going to look like yet, but... it’s not over yet. We’ll see :) The following morning we went to the prison. Wow. That place is a serious Open Heaven! With crazy, unheard-of Favour! All my tv-inspired nightmares of being felt-up were quickly dashed when we walked right on in, without a single security check, through a chicken-wire fence! haha... and came to about 100 prisoners in blue-and-white pyjamas sitting cross-legged in a field, waiting for us. Most of the prisoners are in lock-down or doing different projects such as woodworking, etc... but these 100 prisoners were free to come here from us. And my heart broken when I saw them. They’re all so young. The women could have been me. And as a bunch of our Khmer friends (who minister in their weekly) led worship, these prisoners sung their guts out! They clapped and clapped and had the biggest smiles on their faces as they sung to their Jesus Who Loves them through the bars. I then got up the front and started to tell them about how alive Jesus still is and so that means that He is healing as much as He did then... and then I released words of knowledge that the Father had shown me: vision and hearing problems, pain in the joints, constant headaches and gut issues. They raised their hands and, all across those 100 people, there were dozens and dozens of them with their hands up... and, from the front, I just released healing over them, with no one touching them. This is not something I’ve done before, but I felt really specifically that God wanted to show them that it is HIM Who is healing them, not these white people. They already have the perspective that westerners are above them, have more than them, know God more than them and that Christianity is a foreign religion, so I felt like God wanted to show them that it was just Him... and He did. As we released His healing over the crowd, they all started to yell that they felt better, that their pain went away, that they could feel God! We then called up the rest of them that weren’t healed and I continued to pray for them on the side as Chad used the platform of them already seeing the supernatural to share with them the amazingness of Jesus! Prayed for a lady who had constant ringing and pain in her ears, which stopped when I prayed for her! She also had bad vision, which was corrected too! And her breathing was shallow and painful for her... and she could breathe full breaths, without pain! yahoo! So we shared her testimony from the front and more and more came up for prayer... with lots more vision being corrected, pain leaving and people getting free! yay! Then our Khmer friend takes Chad and I away from the rest of the team to another part of the prison and takes us into a bamboo hut classroom and asks us to please lead a Bible class. what?! but God always always always forever fills our mouths... and I tell Chad that I had a vision for a very young boy when I saw him in the crowd and here he is, sitting in the front row, right in front of me! So, we lead an impromptu class on the prophetic! haha... it’s amazing how we think we have nothing to give sometimes, that we know nothing and need so much more training before we do anything... and there is, obviously, such huge wisdom and need in training and discipleship and all of that, and I’m totally thankful for the Deep End and all the other training that I’ve had in all this stuff... but when a bunch of 20-something (and older and younger) prisoners are sitting in front of you asking how to hear the Voice of God? it makes you realise how much you have to give. We taught them some on interpreting dreams, on seeing visions, and hearing His Voice and released impartation on them of the Spirit of Prophecy, that the ears and eyes of their hearts would be open... and as they sat there, their hands outstretched and their eyes shut, awaiting a heavenly gift from Papa... they were just sweet, broken, hungry, needy little boys who want their Jesus. It was so beautiful. And we released prophetic words over some of them, showing them what it looks like to prophecy over someone, to call out the gold in them. It was so powerful; these men all know what each other has done to be in there... and here we are, declaring prosperous and blessed and joyful and FREE futures into these men, things that they would never imagine for themselves, God showed us and we got to release over them! The most impacting thing for me was the word I had for the little boy in the crowd who was also then in the class... He’s 11 years old, in prison. And I saw him as a huge tree, with deep deep roots and lots of fruit on his branches for others to come and to feast off the blessing of the depth of his relationship with Christ. And I saw him as a teacher. He told me that he’s always wanted to be a teacher :) Turns out that, at 9 years old, he was imprisoned for rape. And has another fourteen years left in this prison. And it was the most radical, extreme way for God to show me His Heart for a lost world... and how much He doesn’t see pasts, He doesn’t see the circumstances, He doesn’t see the bad choices... He sees the real, prophetic potential of the deep heart. And He doesn’t see a rapist in this 11 year old boy. He sees one whose transformation means that his past isn’t anything on his current reality, on his real identity... He belongs to Jesus. And He is loved. With an incredible future ahead of him. We (along with financial support from other wonderful people from Australia and Thailand who know who they are!) bought bags of goodies (with clean water, noodles, hygiene products, etc) to bless each one of the prisoners. Often the women are given things, but with over 800 total prisoners, it's not very common that everyone gets something... but we know that our Papa is super generous and doesn't give a rock when His kid asks for bread! So, every single prisoner got a bag of goodies... so wonderful to bless them, even just in the smallest way. They may be labelled prisoners. But they are Loved. and not forgotten. After the prison, I went back to Freedom Village, to the slum that I used to go into when I was working with Heartlands, with my favourite little people in the whole entire world! ahhhhhh i LOVED seeing them! All year, I have been praying for little Leeza (the one with me in a zillion photos from my last trip) and hoping that, when I saw her again, she would remember me... but she’s so young, I didn’t think so... well, I walked into the slum and she saw me and flung herself at me, nuzzling her face into my neck and smiling deep into my eyes! ahhhhh I LOVE HER. She does something to my heart, this little one does... and I think I found out why. I mean, I love a lot of kids, there’s no question about that. And I could have adopted a million of them already, had it been up to me. But not kid has ever been as impressed on my heart quite like this one... and I knew I loved her with an unusually strong love... but I got a huge bomb dropped on me about her: she’s actually about 9 years old. Little Leeza, who I thought was 2 or 3. All year when I thought about her, I was sad that I was missing this fun, cute toddler stage of her life, the cutest time! And kept wondering how much she would have grown in the 12 months since I’ve seen her... well... none. Simmy told me that Heartlands has been going into that slum for five years and she has, physically, looked the same the whole time. And apparently she is something like 9 years old with the body of a 2 or 3 year old. We think her mother was drunk/on drugs while she was pregnant... and now it seems like Leeza will never grow up. We thought that her speech, etc, was delayed, though at least this time, she could understand me much more and we could communicate some... but, physically... she is the same. It has been just absolutely haunting me since I found out... that night, I woke up about 20 times thinking about it, wondering if it was a nightmare, dreaming about it... how does this happen?! What will happen to her?! and I had to keep going back to a conversation that I’d had about it that day to confirm that it was real, that this is actually happening... and it’s really devastated me, I’m not sure what to do with it... and I’m wondering what it means that I should have fallen in love with a little girl with such special needs that her family doesn’t want her... I’m not sure what all this means and what to do, and we’re going to look into her situation/condition more... but it’s really saddened me... when I saw her, my heart just burst into fresh love for her and I realised, again, how much I flippin LOVE this little girl. And now this... what to do?? Please pray for my heart and for wisdom and discernment... and for healing and restoration for her, whatever that would look like... I’m confused and sad and worried about it all and don’t know what God wants me in on this for... but He does. Ok... back to more joyful things :) So, we got an invite to go back to the prison by the prison’s manager who loved what we did so much that he wanted us back!! I felt not to just go about it all the same way... but to just listen into His Voice and see what He wanted... again, we walked in, all these pyjama-d prisoners sitting before us... and as they worshipped, the smiles on their faces got me! They’re just children! So, I got the worship leader to play this really popular Khmer worship song that gets people up and dancing and started dancing with all the prisoners, singing with them and clapping and running around and having FUN! Then I got up there and just shared with them how happy God is, how powerful Joy is, what a great mood God is in, how He wants them to be happy all the time, what the ‘fullness of Joy’ looks like, how God can heal in the simple atmosphere of Joy, without a single hand being on you, without a single prayer being uttered... etc... and released a fresh impartation to them for Joy! ahhh... I LOVE BEING A PRISON PREACHER!! hehe I never thought that this dream would actually come to fruition, to be honest... I remember being about 17 and wanting to go into prisons and people told me I was crazy, it was too dangerous, and I shouldn’t do it. And I listened to the words of fear and never did it... but this? wow, this brought LIFE to me! ahhhh it was amazing! As we released the Joy, we then called up people to be healed, and I got to pray for this one man who hadn’t walked by himself for 2 weeks; he would need assistance all the time. He went to sleep, fine. Woke up and couldn’t walk. Hmm. So, I prayed for renewed strength into his weak legs and broke off all spiritual darkness and began to walk with him, back and forth, behind everyone else on the team who was sharing... all the prisoners know that this guy can’t walk alone... and they see him going from walking with my both hands, to walking with one of my hands, to just the tip of my fingers, to... ON HIS OWN! Back and forth in the front of the ‘stage’, they listened to stories of grace and forgiveness and love... and saw it in action as this precious man took unassisted steps :) I feel like there are some serious spiritual connections into this thing... but he got some serious breakthrough and was so excited! Watching his eyes gaze into mine as I walked him back and forth in the dirt... he melted me. I just kept encouraging him and thanking Jesus in Khmer and, with every step, his smile broadened, and his eyes came alive again... Joy changes everything :) We then took hundreds and hundreds of loaves of bread to all the prisoners, cell-by cell... 20 or so prisoners in each cell, a dirty squat toilet in the corner, a single, high, barred window, and stinking hot... and they sat there in their corners, eagerly awaiting their small gift of bread... and as I handed it to them, saying “God bless you” in Khmer, they thanked me with such fervent, genuine sincerity, that my heart got lost in it all... all this thanks for a bit of bread? It’s just bread. But these are men who have nothing, who get fed slop like pigs. And we get to bring them fresh Bread. of Life. And the whole thing of “the least of these”...? it came to life. If we really believe that this is where Jesus is, why don’t do we do this? Why don’t we fight the war of complacency and western comfortability and give give give to these people who have nothing and who are (literally) barred by the enemy? Jesus was hiding in the eyes of these men and women. And those simple loaves of bread? They won the war. We left Kampong Cham yesterday afternoon to get back here to Phnom Penh... and we stopped at a truck stop to buy pineapples and snacks and, as I waited for my iced coffee, I started to talk to the girl, Srey Leap, about her day. She said that it had been bad and, when I asked her why, she said that her heart was sad. She jumped at the chance for me to pray for her and closed her eyes, drinking it all up... and she felt peace on her heart :) I told her that Jesus Loved her. “Really?! Why?!” And I got to share His extravagant Love with her... beautiful. Then she asked me if I was looking at Jesus when I prayed for her and when I said yes, she said that she wanted to see Him too! So, i prayed that the eyes of her heart be open to Him to see His Face and she got so excited to see Him! She asked how to talk to Him. “Just say ‘Preah Jesus...’ and then talk!” “Really? That’s so easy!” and she was so excited to start talking to Jesus! I didn’t have a Bible on me, but she said that she had a Christian friend, so she’s going to ask him for a Bible... and, in 3 minutes, this girl’s whole world has been revolutionised; Jesus Loves her, she can see Him, talk to Him and hear Him... wow. Love it. I know this has been huge, but thanks for persevering! (if you have! hehe) God is doing such flippin INCREDIBLE stuff here and I wake up seriously everyday and wonder if this can be for real. I live the best life in the world; I can’t imagine doing anything else. My heart is more alive than ever and Cambodia is changing before my eyes. Thanks for sharing the journey... Bliss to you xx

DOWNPOUR! (from Jan 31... sorry for the slack updating!)

2010-03-17T18:46:00.001+11:00

We had the best time ever up in the jungles of Mondulkiri! God came and we were wrecked and toasted and changed forever in the furnace of all that happened!

I’m going to preface this update by just putting it out there that, here in Asia? The weather patterns obey the seasons. It is dry season. It never rains. Then, one day, it just becomes the rainy season. The rains come one day… and it is now rainy season. That, however, is months away… we are in the dead-middle of the dry season… and it is always DRY in the dry season. But, let me also preface this update with this: God is hilarious. And He will speak and yell and shout and laugh until we finally get it, until we really really hear Him!!

Firstly, the 8-hour, ‘easy’ van ride turned into a 12 hour trip (with 4 of us crammed into 3 seats with no leg room in the back of the van!) with the final 3 hours being us standing there, barefoot (well, in mud-shoes) in the torrential rain (in the DRY SEASON) pushing our van out of mud-bogs up the side of a mountain… three hours. And you know what? We had the most radical Joy in that place! As our van got more and more stuck in the mud and this angel-in-a-red-ute towed all the stuck cars and buses up the precarious mountainside, we just got Drunker and Drunker on the side of the hill, taking out the tambourine and shakers and just worshipping like crazy as the glory loosened the mud and the vehicles would be taken up! We just released Joy and Ease and Peace on it all… and we came out the other end with the greatest injection of faith. Intra-venous. We saw a car going over the side of the slippery cliff… and as we prayed and tambourine-d and sent the angel army over… we literally saw the car come back up from over the edge of the cliff and drive safely to the top! We had cars of people stopping on the muddy mountainside to take photos of these crazy westerners, up to their ankles in mud, singing loudly through the roar of the rain. It was one of those times that makes or breaks you… and I have to tell you: I have the best team in the world ☺ there was not one complaint, nothing. We were freezing and dripping wet to our bones. Our feet were literally in mud-shoes, it was so thickly caked. We didn’t know if these hours of driving were in vain and we were just going to have to turn around… and everyone ditched the flesh and stayed full-tilt in the Spirit and kept Joyful and excited as we sung about His goodness! There was a moment when someone suggested that we may have to turn around and go back down the mountain and I knew that, as the leader of this team, this was a decision that had to be made; God, what are you saying? What is best for this team? Where are You in this? And He spoke very clearly: “I told you that if you came to the high places, I’d take you to the High Places. You’re only halfway up the mountain!” So, the decision was made… let’s keep worshipping! And as the fires all around us intensified, so did the Fire in our bellies… and we saw angels pushing our van up the mountain and pushing other cars back up over cliffs and… it was one radical Heaven-touching-earth experience that I’ll never forget.

We get to the Nature Lodge eco-resort that we were booked into and the lovely girl who owns it reminds me how odd it is that it is raining (full monsoonal) in the dry season. Strange. Same thing happened when I went south to Sihanoukville. Beautiful day, warm weather, clear skies, dry season… Steph gets off the bus in Sihanoukville? TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. And I’m left wondering how many other people’s weekends-away God has had to ‘dampen’ for me to get the prophetic significance of it all. So, we’re almost at Mondulkiri? TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. Then, on the third day, we set out for an elephant trek and to swim in the waterfalls… it’s sooooo flippin glorious, my goodness! There’s something so majestic about elephants that no other creature on earth can imitate and it’s so spectacular to be on them, around them… get Happy on them! Because, as the TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR came, yet again, on what had been a hot, sunny, clear-skied, dry-season day, you have a choice to make, just like in the van: flesh or Spirit? And I just felt like God kind of challenged me (with a wink!): “this could be the world’s first-ever Burn on an elephant, Steph!” So, there’s Shell and I on top of our huge, cranks elephant, who liked to snack on everything, and we just decide to go with His Happy… and He came, my goodness! In monsoonal rains, again saturated to the bone, on the top of an elephant, in the jungles of Cambodia… God came in all His Love-Drunk Fun and something happened to me on that elephant! I’m not even entirely sure what it was… but it did something to me, to take a ‘crappy’ situation like that to seriously celebrate Him in the midst of it! Meanwhile, we got picked up by Sokha, the guy who owns the eco-lodge, and he couldn’t believe that it was raining, as it was fully dry at the lodge, only 10 minutes away! We had been in the full deluge for the past hour on the back of the elephant and, only 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes away… bone dry. But, as we drove back, piled up into the ute… the rains followed us, all the way to the lodge! ☺ And God is just saying that He is not just going to sprinkle His goodness here and there throughout Cambodia… He is coming in TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR or nothing! Because that’s Who He is! He’s full and over-the-top and more-than-enough! He has no desire to let out some of His Heaven on this nation… He wants to fully consume it all! Drown it all in His Joy!

And that’s the place that God has Asia in right now… it’s TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR or nothing! I have never felt deep deep inside of me what is going on in Asia right now… and I can see and feel and be a part of so much of what is happening here in Cambodia; but it’s not just here. It’s Asia. The whole of Asia! Asia is ready to explode in revival Fires that are going to change this whole region forever! In a 12-hour Burn a few weeks back, God spoke very very clearly to me: when both India and China get saved, that will equate to 1/3 of the entire earth’s population in love with Jesus. Then it only takes them discipling two more people each for His Love to infect the whole globe… that’s it! And He’s sending me into China to pray with my good friend, Kim, in April/May, and I’m so flippin excited! We’re going to camp in a watchtower on the Great Wall of China and declare His Heart into the heart of a nation… and I also feel like He’s sending me back to India, which causes my heart to come alive again in those places that India seems to do to me, it’s beautiful ☺ not sure entirely when that will be, but I feel real purpose in going to both these massive countries this year, to call in this destiny for these places to come into the Bridal Chamber and to experience His sweet Love for them ☺

As you pray, as you burn… would you pray for Asia? If you’ve been here? You get it, I don’t have to explain it. And if you haven’t yet? Just ask Papa for His Heart for the place. Then you’ll get it and you’ll also want to waste your life calling them in too… because He Loves them like crazy and His smokin hot Asian Bride is His secret weapon in this Conspiracy of Loving-Kindness that God has towards the world… they are going to be carriers of the weighty Shekinah Glory to the corners of the world… so join us in praying for an increase in their weight-carrying capacity! For their hearts to be ravished by their King! For Asia to step into the fullness of the calling of 2010 in this region… because God is a glory-to-glory God, we know that 2010 will be even greater than 2009… but I really FEEL this one; everything’s about to change. He just keeps speaking out ‘big’ words of expansion and stretching and HUGE things and it’s happening! I mean, this week, we have been given access to a huge prison in a province up north and we are going in to throw a Love-party for over 800 prisoners! I feel like a HUGE, mass harvest is going to come Home into Love that day… pray with us on Wednesday, that we’d get to lay hands on every single one who wants prayer – even in the maximum security! – and that every single one would have an encounter that would change everything!!

Thanks for journeying with me… I’m sending some of that sweet, heavy Shekinah your way too ☺ xx

... love the one ...

... steph ...

giving everything away until there's room enough for Heaven to invade :)

2010-03-17T18:44:00.002+11:00

(from january 19... oops i'm bad at updating this! sorry!)

We’ve had a beautiful week here in Phnom Penh! Our yard has been filled with kids and the slums have been filled with laughter and the prayer room has been filled with many happy, Love-filled, pouring-out hours ☺

We had a 12-hour Burn (well, I made it to the 11th hour, but… not a bad effort!) on Friday night and… ah, it was glorious. It was our first all-night Burn and was a real journey of the heart for me! God is just coming in beautiful ways and He is flowing out from us really extravagantly into the people that we are ministering to and out from us in the prayer room… but this one was a real journey of the heart for me, personally. I’m drawing into that place where it’s that Spirit-and-Truth worship, where you worship regardless of where your circumstances or feelings or wherever are at… but where I need to come face-to-Face with Him, everytime, or it’s just not enough. The veil has been torn… I need to see His Face smiling down on me!! And I made a commitment to Him a year or 18 months ago that I would not come to meet with Him and leave before I saw His Face… and I’ve not been very good with that at all, to be honest! Well, ‘not good’ is not the best way to put it… I have not been very patient is probably more like! And so, Friday night, I just got down on my face, right at the beginning… and just told Him that He is worth waiting for. And I wouldn’t go until His Face was so close, He would be breathing my very breath… 9 hours later? He is so close my body feels like it’s self-combusting and my heart has sprung into new life and the air around me is thick and happy like jelly and all I can do is weep for His goodness to come… and if it should take another 9 hours, just to encounter Him for another moment in glory like that? It’d be all worth it and I’d be there, facedown, in a second… oh, He’s so beautiful. It’s a truth that I know in my mind and heart… but it was a real ‘test’ of my heart that night… would I wait? Do I truly believe that He is worth my cries for hours on end until He will come? And as I let go into the collapse of His Beauty in the midst of it all, I felt the sweet Smile from Papa: “you did good, darlin’.” … and it’s all worth it ☺

Later, He also gave me some really sweet revelation on it all… you can bet in the midst of those 9 hours that I was coming under some guilt and condemnation and lies as to why I was not entering into the glory as I know I’m created to, to experientially stand where I positionally am (in the Throne Room!) and He just spoke to me in a really simple, natural way for me to understand… and I thought I’d share it because I feel like others may also find themselves in this place and could receive the encouragement! He reminded me how, when I used to drink a lot of alcohol (back in my silly, late-teenage years), my tolerance to alcohol increased hugely and it would take me at least 7 drinks to get tipsy (scary!) at my worst point. And it’s kind of similar in the spirit… when you’ve had radical high encounters in the heavenlies with God, there seem to be 2 kind of results with it happening again (in my experience… I’m sure there’s more, but this is just me!). Basically, at some points, the entry is waaaaay easier. Because the glory releases ease on everything! And so, the higher you go… the more ease there is to slip in (and you tend to slip in at the higher level)! And I LOVE those seasons! But, right now, I seem to be on the other end of the spectrum… where, because of the wonderful, intimate encounters that I have had with the Lord, and because of what He wants to download into my heart, it’s taking me longer because the true character of my heart and the fullness of my hunger and desperation and desire is being tested… and hopefully coming forth… will I wait? Will I contend for the deeper revelation/encounter/experience or am I happy with a surface-level experience/knowledge? Do I really believe that He is worth another 9 hours worship just for a single touch from Heaven? Do I really believe in this higher reality of the Throne Room? And so it seems to be taking me longer, temporally, than it has for a while… but the Love-Drunkenness on the other end is just superb and fully worth waiting for! The Cambodian Wine is strrrrrong! I’m excited for the heart that this is developing in me… and I’ve been praying for a supernatural hunger… so, here it is! (careful what you pray for! hehe)

So, lots of that this week for me! I am just learning to give all of myself away… that, if I truly, really trust Him to fill my tank at the end of it all… why don’t I give ALL of myself away? Why would I want to leave an orphanage with something left in my hand? Why would I want to leave the hospital with some reserves in me still? Why? Do I trust Him to fill me or not?! So it’s this sweet sweet place of just trusting His filling of my spirit so deeply that I am just laying all of me down… and seeing beautiful Love come out of it. We’ve been seeing wonderful things the whole time we’ve been here (almost 2 months I’ve been here now, wow! Time flies!), but it’s been in this last week, since this revelation has gone DEEP into my flesh and bones that I have seen the really extraordinary break out as I give all of myself to Him and cry over and hug and kiss and love the ones that need Him…

… firstly, the 17 year old guy that’s in the coma in the hospital from the moto accident? Not in a coma anymore! Can’t remember where that was up to when I wrote last, but he’s out of the coma, off life support and when I went in to the ICU to see him again the other day (after they told me I couldn’t come back anymore… then we prayed in renewed favour… and they let me in the following day!), when I started praying, his eyes started to move and he tried to speak! I spoke to the head nurse there, who speaks English and was the first to introduce me to Pholl and I asked him what the prognosis is for Pholl… and he was just lost for words. He said that it is absolutely ‘amazing’… and when I told him it was a miracle, he said that he knew. He couldn’t deny it. The doctors have no idea what has happened, but know that it has only happened since we have been going in to Pholl to pray… it’s not lost on them ☺ Basically, when I first ‘met’ this kid, I asked God how to pray… he was brain-dead and was anticipated to die at any time, just never having come out of the vegetative coma for the 2 weeks since the accident (at that point)… and the Lord just whispered to me “his spirit has left his body. Call him back.” And I’m not sure how this all works, but when someone’s spirit has left their body… they’re dead, right?! Well, I spent half an hour or so just doing just that: “Pholl, come back. Spirit, come back. Pholl, come back into your body, your time’s not up yet. Come back.” … just over and over… and now they can’t see why he won’t live and they declare him ‘amazing’! Wow, Jesus!! ☺ Please keep praying for him – no permanent brain damage, for that hematoma to dissolve and the temporal lobe fracture to be healed and for him to come into full consciousness with tales of heavenly adventures during the coma!! ☺

When I had last been in to see Pholl, the lady with her husband in the bed next to him, asked me over to pray for her husband, because she had seen the improvement in Pholl (which, at that point, was fully coming off respirators, heart machines, etc). I prayed only for a minute or so for him because the doctor wanted me out, and I didn’t know what was the problem with him, except that he had some degree of brain damage and was in a coma… so, all I really got out was “be healed in Jesus’ Name.” Well, now he’s also out of the coma with full consciousness and is seeing and hearing and speaking again! Yay Jesus!!

We went to a slum the other day that our friend, Eddie, goes to to keep friendship with this deaf girl, Paulaa that he met in there a few months ago. I could feel it deep in my bones that today was going to change this girl’s life forever… and it did. She heard for the first time in her life! And the first thing? “Our God is an Awesome God” being sung in Khmer ☺ We were praying and praying and getting to that awkward stage where nothing is happening and there’s a lot of vacant expressions and weight-shifting back-and-forth… and then I felt Jesus walk into the slum. He left His perfect Heaven to come and tread through this filthy slum that smells like rotting fish to find this one forgotten by the world… and unstopper her ears. And I saw the moment that it happened: her eyes lit up and she smiled the widest smile and I knew it was all over… Jesus did not disappoint her that day; He is exactly Who He says that He is! Please pray for her as we pray for her tongue to be loosened and for her to learn Khmer with supernatural acceleration! I’d never thought about it before, but, if you’ve been deaf your whole life and you get healed… you may be able to hear, but you have to learn your language from the beginning too! But this can also be totally supernatural, and I’m just praying that in for her… join me? This girl’s life has already changed and been turned on its head… let’s keep it rotating!

And just another update on a precious little treasure I’d written about previously… when we first arrived, we went to this slum and met a disabled boy who could not walk, eat, speak, didn’t ever smile and was an angry boy laden with heavy burdens… sitting there in the wheelchair that first day, he was so pissed off with the world and couldn’t make eye contact… and when I told him that I loved him, he manifested like wild and wrestled to get out of my arms… Tash and I prayed for him and when we went back with Ben, Steph, Winnie and the crew? He was a different boy! Relaxed and even hints of smiles here and there! Then, that day, we just lavished Love on him and Ben sung over him for an hour or so and his body continued to stretch out and relax… and when we saw him again just the other day? He was sitting on his mother’s hip out the front of their shack, as though waiting for us. And when he saw me, he remembered me and jumped straight into my arms without any hesitation or worry and looked me right in the eyes as I told him I loved him and smiled back at me! He then sat in my lap for the next 45 minutes or so as Katie sung love songs over him (and our other precious little friend in there with Down Syndrome) and I realised that his legs and arms are fully stretched out and not bound up anymore! He is also putting on weight as he’s begun to eat heaps and is fully able to keep the food down! Wow! But the biggest thing is just the joy in him… it’s tangible and real and it’s changing him from the inside out. It’s like his body is following the progress of his heart and, as his heart gets loved on and healed up, his body is following… so… more LOVE!

These are just a few of the precious ones who I’ve felt compelled to give all of myself to this week… and I just don’t know how I’ve ever tried to do it otherwise. Like I said (and I have written), we have seen awesome stuff the whole time we’ve been here… but this week? Well, you have read for yourself. It’s new levels of glory here! Not coincidentally, we have really been calling in greater levels of His Presence this week and just spending hours with Him, unable to leave… then giving it all away… and seeing His Kingdom come. I have the best job in the whole wide world.

Tomorrow, I’m taking the team 9 hours north on a bus to Mondulkiri, to the jungles up in the north-east. It’s the ‘real Cambodia’. There are tigers and bears and elephants just wandering around wild up there (though seeing them? Pfft. Hehe) and we’re staying in this little eco-lodge up there for a few days … just to enjoy it! We’re spending the first day just playing, riding elephants, and swimming in waterfalls! Enjoying Him and His Creation, and enjoying each other’s company. The next day is a personal retreat day for us all, just us and God, one-on-One… face-to-Face time, yay! I just feel like it’s a really integral time to meet with Him and to hear His Voice clearly and to give a fresh impartation of His Heart and for what He wants for us in this season, for us here in Cambodia, for our hearts, for our futures, to heal our past wounds, etc… all of the goodness that happens when we set aside ourselves to see His Face. The next day (the Friday) is a full 12-hour Burn again! And we are just going to throw ourselves in the deep end and just press in and enjoy like crazy! We’re going to be in a geographical high place and so we’re going to step into the spiritual high places of this nation and claim back our spiritual inheritance! Yahooooo! I’ve been feeling like it’s really important to take geographical high places and claim them redeemed in the spirit… so I’m really feeling excited for this – good things are in store!

Making lots of divine connections here… met a guy yesterday whose ministry is to start cafes to minister to New Age travellers in India and Nepal yesterday. Ahhhh it stoked the love in my heart not only for India, but just for those exact dreams that He planted in seed form in my heart all those years ago… and was a great encouragement to me that I am getting back to India sooner rather than later! I am also looking at going to Turkey August 31 – September 12 with the Burn… long story on where all that came from, but, the crux of it is? Turkey is due for revival. And there are Asian revival mantles up for grabs… so I’m so there! The world’s first revival fires were released in Turkey… and they will come again. So, still praying… but feeling good about that one!! Also, just found out that Randy Clark is going to be here in Cambodia in a few weeks, so I’m really hoping to be able to connect in with him and the Global Awakening team and to come alongside them and be a part of whatever they’re doing! I just keep thinking how he was the man who God used to ignite revival fires in Toronto that are still blazing so strong today… and he was also the one to lay hands on Heidi and tell her who she really was. And it changed her forever. I want to be wrecked, forever. And I want this country to be consumed in revival flames… burnt to a crisp, please, Jesus.

So, that’s the long and the short of my news! Thanks for journeying with me… share your news with me!! ☺ xx

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #7 (from January 9th 2010)

2010-01-10T17:43:00.000+11:00

Since the team has arrived, I have been so busy that doing an update email has fallen to the wayside… so I’m back-tracking to New Year’s Eve and will fill you in on a few highlights since, and what God has been doing in my heart… J

So, we officially launched Burn Cambodia on New Year’s Eve! Gathered were about 25 people (Khmer and westerners) who came to worship and decree and weep and laugh and sizzle away in His fiery Presence and celebrate all of His goodness in 2009 and to call in the double-portion of it for 2010! Ah it’s so good to celebrate Who He is and what He’s done and not to overlook any of it…

2009 was radically good to me. One of the hardest years of my life… superceded by the greatest joy, intimacy, breakthrough, glory and Love that I have ever encountered. I have learned – and am still in the thick of learning-by-absorption – the highest humility and the heaviest weight of the Cross of the Servant King… and how to do it all in raucous laughter. I have cried an ocean of tears this year… in the brokenness of my own heart, facedown in the prayer room and, best of all? when You draw near. Lots of these. And I have seen, clearest of all, what it is to be truly, wonderfully, abundantly Lovd. And to allow Love like that not from God alone. This year was the year I really let people in. The year my fear of intimacy and commitments got smashed in the face and I learnt to hate fake. The year I really learnt to trust the voice of my heart, for You have taught it how to speak. The year grace became so very real… and not just to receive now… but to execute with more-than-enough measure. The year my pen became my favourite freedom. The year you taught my feet to love the dance. The year that drew me to lay down the big dreams for the love of the one. The year where my hug commanded louder than a word. The year where my future became my present reality. The year where the old, forgotten dream was resurrected in lacy finery. The year that a mother was birthed in me. The year that joy actually became my strength. The year that I learnt how to be carried. The year that I fell head-over-heels, crazy in Love. The year that I allowed myself to become my truest identity: the Beloved. The year I grew into me. He punctuated every moment of 2009 with His Beauty and sweetness…

… and so, New Year’s Eve was a cause for much celebration in my heart! As the drums and tambourines and shakers went crazy, I got a really clear revelation from Holy Spirit about how David was the only man identified as having a heart after God… and he was also the man willing to look like a fool and to dance on the streets, controlled by his Love. And so we cast the Michal mindset aside and danced like holy fools for our King, allowing Him to make our hearts look like His as we did! It was freeing and beautiful to see people step into a new thing… (and I still have a tambourine-shaped bruise on my hip! Yahoooooo! Branded! hehe)

Months ago, back in my room in Byron, I was praying about the Burn here in Cambodia and God told me to pour out a bottle of wine on the ground here. So, the first day after I arrived, I bought a bottle of red and have been dying to consecrate the ground of this place to Him. But every time that we have gone to do it, I have not felt the divine timing and have felt to postpone each time. I don’t want to do any empty gesture. In and of itself, pouring wine on the soil is just that: wine on soil. But if we’re moving in faith and obedience, then it can change everything. And I was waiting for this one moment. And New Year’s Eve was it… and it was so much more powerful than I could have anticipated.

The night before, we were in prayer, and God brought me, yet again, to the passage that He has given me as His eternal and coming-to-fruition Promise for Cambodia:

The people who walk in darkness will see a great Light.

For those tho live in a land of deep darkness, a Light will shine.

You will enlarge the nation of Cambodia, and its people will rejoice.

They will rejoice before You as people rejoice at the harvest

and like warriors dividing the plunder.

For You will break the yoke of their slavery

and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.

You will break the oppressor’s rod, just as You did

when you destroyed the army of Midian.

The boots of the warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned. They will be fuel for the Fire.

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us.

The government will rest on His shoulders.

And He will be called: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

His government and His peace will never end.

He will rule with Fairness and Justice

from the Throne of His ancestor, David, for all eternity.

The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen.

- Isaiah 9: 2 – 7

And as I read and He spoke, it was as though the words in my Bible were highlighted, just as I have done above… and He started to speak about the blood that has been wrongfully shed on this land and how repentance is the key to the breakthrough. I’ve never fully understood the whole concept of repenting on behalf of others before… but I’ve known how important and powerful it is and can be and He just downloaded it to me in a second, not by information, but by experience… suddenly, my heart came into awareness of the pain of the Father for having seen all of the lives cut short and the blood shed on this land that He created to be beautiful. And I all of a sudden felt so repentant, as though it had been by my very own hands that millions had been slaughtered… and He was calling out the Khmer heart in me. I love who I am and where I have come from… but my heart of hearts is to be here, with these people I love and identify with and want to see grow into their true destiny. And He began to tell me that, if my heart is to be Khmer (even if my Passport or skin will never concur…), then I have a messed-up bloodline and a bunch of forefathers who really screwed up, and it’s now up to me to come before God on their behalf to repent for their sins like they were my own… and to cover the bloodshed with His.

And so, at the stoke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, we stood out the front of our house and I declared the promise of Isaiah 9 over our beloved Cambodia. Then, as our hearts repented of the sins of our Khmer fathers, of the innocent blood shed on this soil… we stood in their place of their guilty, bloodied hands… and poured out wine – Blood – over our own hands, dripping onto the soil and onto Isaiah 9 below… Your Blood cleanses the guilty hands of all wrong bloodshed and, in doing this one simple act, just ten or so of us, just little people in the dirt, repenting on behalf of our long-gone fathers… the boots and uniforms bloodstained from war will now be used as Fuel for the Fire of the One Who longs to consume Cambodia in His enveloping Flames of Love.

And it was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever been a part of. Something changed in that moment. And I may not understand it for a long time, if ever… but to obey Him is to Love Him and He deserves extraordinary, obedient Love. And, by faith, the wrongfully-shed blood has been covered by the ordained Blood that changes everything… and I have to believe that, somehow? everything is now different.

Since then, the first full week of the Burn team has kicked off, and it was great! God has showed up, as He Loves to do (!) and we’re having fun getting to know each other, learning and making mistakes and growing and playing! Our little kids club that we’re running for the local street kids is not so little now and, yesterday we had almost 20 kids in and out the gates… and the word is spreading! We’ve just been building relationship with them and helping them to feel comfortable and safe and having lots of fun! We’ve been spending the mornings going into the hospital and praying for the sick and seeing loads of people encounter God… I think every person that I have prayed for that had pain in their body (and I’m not just talking about headaches… these are very recent amputations, broken femur/thigh bones, third degree burns, etc) has been fully set free from the pain! I keep finding amputees and I keep praying for creative miracles… and I keep not seeing them… but one day I will J We are going through Bethel Healing Rooms training DVD’s right now as our “bible study” on Thursday nights and Joaquin Evans was saying that every one of the great healing revivalist fathers that have gone before us (John G. Lake, etc) have made that promise of “I’ll pray for a thousand people before I see even just one healed if I have to” to the Lord… and I feel like that is this for me. Lots of other things come with ease and great expectation… and while I have great expectation for hands and legs and fingers to pop out of stumps, the ease has yet to arrive! Hehe… but the promise has been made: I’ll get my hands on a thousand stumps before I see even just one grow out, if I have to… because one day I will. Because the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!

We also spent an afternoon at an orphanage with kids with hearts so grand… that the measure of Love coming from mine was pathetic and very convicting, to say the least. We walked into the place and they hugged us like we were the most important people in the world to us. And it was completely genuine. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered Love so pure as this… it wrecked me. They are beautiful, precious, joyful little ones and my heart is sold. The man who started this orphanage is training these kids as worship and prayer warriors and they are going to be massive in the Kingdom. I really felt like God showed me that these particular kids are going to be monumental in what He is going to do here in Cambodia… and I can’t wait to see them run in it J

I had organised to take the team to Genocide Museum, Toul Sleng or S-21, as it was called during the war on January 7, which, it turned out, was the anniversary of when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge… perfect timing J we went in and just allowed God to wreck us, more and yet again, for the broken heart of this nation… but to also see His Beauty and Redemption coming over the hopelessness like rain. You see, there is a fear amongst the Khmer people that the Khmer Rouge will happen again. Because, when they invaded on April 17, 1975, it was just like any other day. And then their worlds changed forever. And that of their children. And their children’s children. And so, in their eyes… why would it not happen again? And so, as I walked around, all I could see was rainbows… everywhere. That morning, I had (unintentionally) read about Noah in the flood and the rainbow just became so much more beautiful to me in that moment; it’s not just about promise, as I always relate it to. It is the specific promise that a place will not be destroyed again. And I saw rainbows everywhere… behind every door, in every corner, in every face of every murdered one… rainbows. Nothing like this will ever touch Cambodia again.

But what will touch them – and not only touch them, but overtake and possess them! – is radical JOY, because that is their redeemed Inheritance! When I first went to S-21 five years ago, on my first trip here, I found this little corner where someone had written on the wall “our revenge will be the laughter of our children”… and while I didn’t fully understand the prophetic significance of it then… I do now. And I also get the significance of the fact that, when I went back last time (and so, still now), it had been painted over, with only faint remains showing… but God has not forgotten. And as I, again, stood in that place of that prophetic promise scrawled on the wall of the place that destructed a nation, God told me that the Isaac generation is here and they will change everything.

And then, in worship that night, I had this vision/revelation…

An army of veilless faces and in-Love hearts. Mouths full of laughter. Eyes full of Light. Bellies full of fresh manna. Inheritance in their footsteps. And fistfuls of Fire.

This is Your plan. You have no plan B.

This army of blessed-out, tranced-out, Loved-up ones will

dance across the battlefield in the ease of the yoke.

This is the Isaac generation.

Joy is their (our) food and drink.

They look to the heavens…

… and laugh!

They look to the barren horizon…

… and laugh!

They look to the enemy camp…

… and double-over in laughter!

Laughter – big belly laughs and old-man chortles and snorts and under-your-breath giggles – are a bullet between the eyes of the enemy…

… Laughter be the divine revenge.

Come laugh with Me?

Joy is breaking out here in Cambodia like never before and we’re loving drinking from the River called Pleasure…!

I hope you all have had the best start to 2010 and are in great health and happiness and shing-ding-ding glory fun! Thanks for journeying with me… LOVE YOU ALL!! xx

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #6 (pre-NYE 2009)

2010-01-10T17:42:00.000+11:00

It’s been a busy and productive and fun and hilarious week!

First off – amazing, amazing THANK YOU JESUS! So, on the bus back from Sihanoukville last week, I got really nauseous and sick for a few hours until I just drank myself silly (water!) and hit the sack. I often get motion sickness in cars and whatnot, but this was different, but I couldn’t tell what it was, though I knew it wasn’t a regular food poisoning or contamination. Didn’t think much about it afterwards… then, a few days later, I noticed this mark on my arm and thought to ask Tash (who’s a nurse) about it…. Spider bite. There were loads of spiders down in Sihanoukville, but I just didn’t even think about it (this is what happens when you move to Byron – spiders no longer phase you!)… but there they are, two little bruises on my forearm… ‘little’ to my perspective, but must have come from a fairly sizeable spider because the fang marks are quite far apart… eep! So, big THANK YOU to Jesus that a) I didn’t see the spider biting me because, if I had, I would have had a lot of fear about the possible results of a spider-bite in a foreign country while I’m travelling solo (eep!) and b) that I was fully healed of whatever affect it did have on me… and the rest of it? Now null and void because of the promises of my King that no harm will come against me and I will tread down the cobra (and all his poisonous friends!) (Psalm 91)

I bought an electric moped the other day! It is bubblegum pink and white with panda stickers on it and is thus called the Pink Panda Express. After seeing too many moto accidents (including Sam’art in yet another… that’s 2 in the month that we have been here) and going into the hospital and seeing that about 95% of patients are in there from moto accidents, I decided to get my own. You could either take all the signs and promptings that I got to buy one or to steer clear from them forever. Problem is, they are your mode of transport here. And you need to get around. So, at least if I’m going to be on one, I can at least be safe and make my own cautious decisions. Also, God has been really speaking to me lately about how He wants to see this country develop without exploiting either the people or the land and for me to take a stand for the natural environment of this nation which is, currently, being slaughtered. Because of the extreme poverty (and poverty mindset), they only think of the immediate cost of things. In their minds, the Khmer Rouge genocide, which was only 30 years ago and is still recent memory for many Khmer folk, is something that could be repeated any day now… so why invest in the future when you may not have one? Though I can, intellectually, understand their viewpoint… I believe in my heart for more than them and see a shiny, beautiful, joyful future for this nation that I love J So, I am feeling really convicted to put my money where my mouth is and to spend extra, when required, in order to get the ecologically responsible/sustainable option of something and to at least make every choice count. So, I wanted to go electric. In a city of millions of motos, I wonder what difference it could make… but this journey and the call that God has put on me is to ‘Love the one’. I don’t need to look huge-scale… just the one before me. So, if I can drive an electric scooter and make the thick air cleaner for one more little one to take in a deep breath of fresh air? Then it’s worth it. So, the day after I decided for sure to buy one and after all this revelation on how important it is to treasure the natural environment here, a friend told me she saw a second-hand one being advertised. I never wanted a pink one, as I feel like Barbie and so ridiculous… but I feel safe on it and last night took it out for my first cross-city trip with a passenger too! Have been out a few times now and love the independence… and how cheap it is! To charge it to go about 50 – 70km distance (at about 35 – 40km/hr, which is as fast as you can drive here!) costs only about 30c… so, once you’ve bought the scooter (which is cheaper than a regular petrol moto anyway) it basically pays for itself! Am feeling confident on it and safe, too, but please pray for my safety on the roads. Almost everyday you see or hear of heinous accidents and the problem is not necessarily your driving… it’s everyone else too! So please pray for me! I need all the backing I can get!! J

So, Sam’art did have another accident… it was a hit-and-run. Then Sam’art saw the car drive off and hit another two people and keep driving. Argh… His brother smashed his leg and is in Vietnam being operated on and the other guy lost all the skin on one side of his body. And Sam’art got a few grazes. And, when the car hit the three of them (on one moto), the other two landed in front of the car, as you do when you get hit… Sam’art landed behind and off down a corner, fully away from danger. Miracle or what?! He was the only one of the three who wasn’t unconscious and so he ran over to his brother and friend and laid his hands on their chests and began to pray that they would come to… the crowd around him were taunting him and telling him he was foolish and to just get an ambulance… and he just kept on praying. And they came back J

And just the other night, Sam’art’s “best friend brother” (like Hannie is my best-friend-sister!) was in an accident. He is a security guard at a restaurant/club and a guy who works at one of the big embassies here was drunk and got into his big SUV and, as Sam’art’s brother was directing him out of his parking space, he reversed straight into him and smashed him up against the wall. Though he was irresponsible in drunk-driving, he has taken full responsibility for the accident and got him to the best hospital in town and is paying for all of the medical costs… but that doesn’t really offer much comfort to you, as the young wife of the 23 year old man whose entire body is bleeding internally and who the doctors say will die. As he projectile vomits pure blood down the walls and has blood dripping out of every orifice of his body, his face double the size with swelling and now totally blind (one eye was already blind from a childhood accident)… we pray from a distance, at home, rejecting this assignment of death and destruction and declaring His goodness and restoration! And then we visit him the next morning. His face is almost back to regular size. He has stopped vomiting blood and it is no longer dripping from his ears and nose, etc. He can open his eyes. And, the more we look into his eye, the more it looks like it is just full of blood and should drain out so that he can see again. And the eye that was blind already? Well, we’re praying for that too! And the doctors say that he will live!! J yay Jesussssssss!!

In the same room as Sam’art’s brother, was this middle-aged man who was struggling with every breath, his family gathered around him… ahhh I just felt so much for him. And then I saw, perfectly neatly folded at his feet, clean shirt, pants, belt and hat. And they knew he was going to die. They were prepared for him to die. And my heart broke. I felt so strongly that the Lord said that this man would die unless we prayed for him and proclaimed Life over death. We told him and his family that Jesus loves everyone. We know. Can we pray for him? No. And I wonder if that man, in the last moments of his life, would have answered differently, but he was given no choice by his family… and even though we prayed outside his hospital room for him to be released into Life… I soon found out that he had died. It is a weird thing to be with someone in the last moments of their life. And I’m not sure if I can ever get used to it. And I don’t think I ever want to. I never want to be immune from the pain… because I know that, when it wrecks me to see this, it means that I have loved well, even if only for a minute… and all I want in my life is to love well. I may not be able to do very much in the next 80 years, in the grand scheme of it all… but I can LOVE really well with the Love that He gives me to give away.

On a lighter note, Christmas was wonderful! All my girlfriends came over in the morning and we did a special brunch together and listen to some fun Sufjan Stevens Christmas carols! Hehe we then hung out in a café for the afternoon (bonus of Christmas in a Buddhist country – everything’s open on Christmas!) and then we all went out to a buffet dinner at an NGO/charity called Hagar, who works with women post-sex-trade, etc. And it was FABULOUS. We ate sooooo well and just laughed and enjoyed good company and getting a little dressed up!

Today we decided to invite the neighbourhood kids over to scrub them down and feed them up and love them like crazy! We set up some craft stuff and put some bubbles in the pool and and bought 20 waffles for $1 (ahhh Cambodia!) and I put holes in the bottom of all our water bottles so we could use them like super soakers on each other and we went to the neighbours and rallied all their kids together to come play! No parental consent forms here… just “we’ll be back in two hours with your kids!” So, we got 6 kids over and they were a little shy at first and didn’t want to go in the pool or be silly… but once I got Tash painting some (sparkly!) warrior paint on me and painting silly things on this huge paper that we did as a collaborative mural together, they just started to have the best time! Once we pulled out the ‘water guns’, it was all over… the kids were in and Tash and Isa and I are in, fully-dressed (!) with our new Khmer buddies, splashing each other and seeing our sparkly, colourful bodies getting washed clean in the water! Ahhh they LOVED it and I LOVED having them there with us! We just told them how much we loved them and how much Jesus loved them and asked them, if we did this once a week, would they like to come over and play with us? “Once a week?! We want to do this everyday!” J I took them, totally saturated, back to their parents and the father just pointed at me, confused, this dripping-wet “barang” (foreigner) bringing his kids back like the Pied Piper, a dripping line of kids following me in the dust…! When he saw their beaming faces and wide smiles, he just smiled at me and the parents all thanked us for blessing their kids! The kids also want to learn English as none of them are learning it at school, so I’m going to start teaching them some! When I did the weekend TEFL course in Brisbane a few months ago, I had a vision when I went in that day of going into slums and dumps and teaching kids… and then inviting them back into my house to sit them in the cool of the shade of our mango trees and to teach them English and, as they would be in the space that we have set aside as a place of Peace and Joy and Safety and Love, that they would feel all of that radiating off of us, from the Father, to them! So, I feel like this is the seed of that coming to fruition… and I love my little friends and cannot wait to have them over; our house = their home.

In the last few days, two members of the 3-month team have arrived, Donnae (from South Africa) and Julia (from America). It has been so lovely to meet them both after months of emailing and it feels good to get to know each other in the flesh!! J Lisa arrives in a few days and then Shell and another couple, Katie and Judah (who will be here for Jan and March). So, it’s all happening! We are officially launching the Burn on new year’s eve and have, so far, about 30 people coming to burn away in our little furnace and to usher in the new year with glory! Meeting so many kindred spirits everywhere I go and people are hearing of the heart and vision of all this, even before I meet them and people are tracking me down everywhere I go, it’s incredible… both the locals and the westerners are hungry for more and He’s just pouring it out without reserve! 2010 is the year of enlarging and expanding and stretching out the tent pegs… and the people are ready to call it down and to sing and to dance and to twirl and to laugh and to weep and to get face down in the midst of it all… it’s glorious J

Thank you everyone for journeying with me and praying for me! Please pray that loads of people would come to the Burn so that we can begin this new year in incredibly glorious unity together as one in-Love Bride and give Him all that He deserves! Please pray also for the team, Donnae, Lisa and Julia, as they settle in and get used to all that is a part of living in a third world country! And please, as I have already asked, pray health and protection over me and the whole team, particularly as we travel (and particularly as I am learning to drive! Not just driving a moto… but driving a moto on the wrong side of the road in Asian traffic! Unless you’ve been to Asia, you cannot imagine the traffic… hehe… but please just pray angelic surrounding!)

Much love and belated Christmas greetings to you all… and early happy 2010!! J xx

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #5 (pre-Christmas 2009)

2010-01-10T17:41:00.000+11:00

We have a major hospital only a few minutes down the road that we have really felt like God is releasing us into to pray for the sick and, in His sweet humour, it’s called the Friendship Hospital! It’s a really huge public hospital, serving most of the poorest people who are still able to access medical help. So, we just prayed for radical favour and set off on Wednesday afternoon to talk to the manager of the hospital to see if he would give us access to any of the wards. All we could get out was that we wanted to come in to pray for sick people and see Jesus heal them and he was telling us that, if we come in the mornings, we can come as often as we like, with as many of us as we like and do whatever we want!! No questions asked! Talk about radical favour! So, we have full, unrestricted access to an emergency room, trauma ward (amputations, compound fractures (where the bone protrudes through the skin), third-degree burns, head injuries, etc), cancer ward, pre-op, the kids ward and the general wards (broken bones and every type of injury imaginable from crashing off a moto and then general internal diseases, etc).

We couldn’t stay for long, as we had lots to do that day, but we took a quick look around to see what we’re in for... and I just couldn’t pass by this one room that had three of the sweetest people I’ve ever met in there. When we walked in and told them that we loved them and just wanted to pray for them to be healed, their three faces lit up and the father of the young girls, pulls out his camera-phone and videos the entire thing! haha... so we just went for it, telling them of His goodness and prophesying into them all! The two girls were sisters who had been in a moto accident. One had fractured her left femur bone and her leg was at this heinous angle (operation is planned) and was in considerable pain. As we prayed for her, all of the pain left her leg!! Her sister had lost all of the skin on her left shin (knee to ankle) and was scheduled in for a massive skin graft, taking skin from her right thigh, which is a massive and very painful operation. She was in constant pain as it was... but not anymore :) The other person in the room was a man who had just recently had his leg amputated... My Khmer is still limited, so I don’t know how he did it, but I told him that Jesus loves him and wants to heal him and he was excited to let me pray for him! I love praying for amputees because it tests my faith like nothing else. I can pray for cancer or AIDS or any internal diseases to be healed with full faith because I cannot see them. It is not looking me right in the face. But here, in these precious moments, this man has only one leg and I cannot not look at it. But what I can do is look at the leg that Jesus has purpose-built for this guy in the spare parts room in Heaven and pull that one down... and nope, I didn’t see a foot and leg grow out of a stump (yet!) but, as I laid my hand on the stump of his leg, which was still bandaged up after a really recent amputation, I could feel buzzing and heat all in the end of it! He could feel it too and started to smile and if all he got was an injection of hope? Worth it.

As I walked the wards and saw infected wound after tumour after amputation after burn... my heart came alive! Literally, a fire burst in the depths of my heart and every part of me just came into a re-awakening, a re-birthing into what I know I’m made for! The last time I felt this alive, I was praying for a friend in the hospital in Kampong Cham. He was a 12 year old boy whose dad died in the same accident that he had smashed his femur (thigh) bone in... and I loved him. I would come and visit him on my day off and I’d just hold his hand and be with him, seeing the sadness in his heart... This one particular day, he was going in for surgery to pin his leg back together and, as I prayed for a supernatural knitting-together of his femur bone, his leg was overcome in extreme fiery heat and it began to pulsate under my hand! And the smile that I had been longing for, praying for bust out on his face and I knew he’d be ok! In that moment, it was like I wasn’t there anymore, and I was watching from outside myself... and God spoke very clearly, one of the clearest words I’ve ever heard from Him: “Would you give up everything for this?” and, without missing a beat, and without even requiring my mind to make a decision, my spirit leaped inside of me and declared a yes that I can never deny... and I knew that I was made for this. And I’ve looked back on that moment a lot these last 9 months or so, and knew it was significant... but as I walked those wards and saw people dying and hopeless, a Joy that was completely uncontainble exploded inside me and I thought I was going to spontaneously combust, right there in the hallway! The death? the hopelessness? It’s all about to get booted out of that place! Whenever I ask God what revival will look like? He says that hospitals will be empty. And there’s so much that’s going to happen to this nation as revival fire takes hold... but I know that I’m made to spend my days emptying the hospitals with my hand in Jesus’ Hand. And these early days are the first-fruits and it’s glorious :)

A few weeks ago, a precious friend gave us $500 to buy Bibles! Only the day before we had prayed for money for Bibles... and there it is :) So, on Wednesday afternoon, we picked up a special full Bible for Sam’art for Christmas, 10 full Bibles, 100 New Testaments, 140 gospels of Mark, 140 gospels of Luke and 62 (yup!) gospels of John! We decided to spend the first $400 and save the last $100 to buy what we find that we run out of the fastest and need the most... and I really felt to just order what we wanted, not think about the money. So, we order this many of this, that many of that, exactly what we wanted... and it came to $399.95 :) I am also drafting up a tract for us to be able to give to people in the hospitals and slums. There are loads of tracts around and I am most definitely not a tract person... but they are really effective here, and it’s so good being able to give people something that they can keep to remind people of His goodness! Unfortunately, many of them are not too focussed on His goodness... so I’m going to write up a draft of a tract and have my Khmer pastor friend look at it and translate it so we can make copies of it to give out something that is congruent with what we share with them. It doesn’t make sense to tell them how loved they are, how extravagant Jesus is, how supernatural He is... if we then give them a tract about a fiery hell and an angry Jesus. Not cool. So, I’m going to write up one that’s something like a “Are you depressed? Jesus wants to make you happy! Are you lonely? Jesus wants to be your friend! Are you sick? Jesus wants to heal you! Do you have nightmares? Jesus wants to give you peace!” etc etc and talk not only about eternity, but also the fact that Jesus has beautiful, radical blessings for people right here, right now! It’s not about getting your eternity sorted and then just holding on for dear life until then... it is about living a life of blessing and abundance and intimacy in friendship with Jesus! And there is just nothing like that here... so we’re going to make one! And the cover graphic is a picture of Jesus laughing His head off! hehe :)

So, on Wednesday afternoon, I decided that I’d leave Thursday morning for a few days down south on the coast. God has been speaking to me a lot about the southern region, so I thought I’d go check it out and see what He’s doing there, and just get some time away to myself to get prepared before the team arrive this week (yayayayyyyyyy!!). As I pulled into Sihanoukville in the bus, it starts to sprinkle with rain (it is the dry season; and their seasons obey the ‘rules’ here!) and, by the time I’m on the motorbike going to my mountain retreat, it is a full deluge and the rain is in my eyes and I feel free and like my heart has room enough to dance and dream and believe and I can only wonder how many people’s beach weekends have been ruined for me to understand the prophetic significance of it all and what is happening in this region! ha! Ahhh there is so much going on, so much promise, just abundance and enlargement and expansion and stretching and... all things huge and good:) I had a wonderful time in my bungalow in the forest! I LOVE swimming in the ocean... it always reminds me of the day that I got baptised by my beautiful Tribe family down on the beaches of Byron and that was one of the best days of my life :) it just feels like fresh baptism every time I’m in the ocean... and that’s about all I did! I also did a trip to Ream National Park and hiked through mangrove forests and swam at deserted beaches and... it was a lovely few days! I came back with a journal full of dreams, a heart full of Peace and a belly full of Fire, ready for whatever this season brings!

Well, I can’t believe I’ve been here almost a month! When I realised that last night, I seriously had to get my phone out to check what the date was! I should have guessed, considering everyone’s Facebook status updates are constantly all about Christmas, hehe... but here, in a Buddhist country? Not-so-much Christmas! Though definitely more than last year when I was living in the village! There, people had literally never heard of Christmas... I mean, it’s not even a holiday here, and Cambodia has more national holidays than any other country! (i think that’s still right!) It’s kind of funny, actually... one day you’ll go to go to the bank. Closed. Why’s the bank closed? Holiday. Oh... what holiday is it? Um... I don’t know. But yeah, Christmas is here in Phnom Penh and, last night, on the bus on the way back from my few days away, we passed all the nice hotels and they are all definitely in Christmas mode! Fairy lights and Christmas trees and people everywhere on the streets... so I might grab me some pirated Christmas cartoons from the market today and watch some next to our makeshift Christmas tree!!

Happy Christmas lead-up to everyone, I hope you’re all enjoying family time and some time off work (or good Chrissie bonuses if not!) and the general merriment of it all! Thanks heaps for journeying with me! Love you!!

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #4 (from mid-December 2009)

2010-01-10T17:40:00.000+11:00

am loving being back here in Cambodia and getting settled back into life here... i just can't get over how different it is living here to visiting. it's a whole other world.... and i love it. knyom sroline nul srok khmer. i love living in Cambodia.

we're worshipping heaps and hanging out with our new friends, having people over as much as possible and just getting into the Presence together! in the middle of the glory, the day-to-day cambodian shenanigans continue... ahhhh this country makes me laugh!

to sum up my goings-on...

* the rat situation continues. Sam'art is buying "bad rat food" today and we're going to lay it through my room and into the ceiling (interesting when they do not have man-holes over here!) and i'm going to be making a bed up in the prayer room to stay in there so the rats don't think i am going to help them in their dehydrated death and die on my chest while i sleep or something... ew. (ahhh the things you think you'd never need to think about!)

* i have given up on my current khmer tutor. though she was lovely and was great in that i was learning heaps - as in 150 words over 3 days - my brain is about ready to explode (especially considering i am also studying a TEFL certification online at the moment too, and the pressure is on!) and it was just so impossible for me to be learning 50 new words a day... AND remembering them! also didn't really connect with her style, so am, once again, on the hunt for a new khmer tutor (#3 for this trip!). All-in-all, i just have to learn not to be hard on myself... i am learning really well and quickly and am learning conversation as well as lots of medical terms and the vocabulary for internal organs, etc, for when we go into the hospitals.

* the team arrives in the next few weeks.. yay! exciting stuff! much to do before then: buying beds and setting up the house, getting up advertising for the place and all the admin-ish kind of stuff :) am also needing to have my TEFL certificate finished by then (about 15 hours left... yay!) and have been to all the hospitals and slums and whatnot that we are hoping to get to with the team. We are also oragnising two provincial 'outreaches' for the 3-month team time that we need to get some more info/details down for, so that'll be fun too!

* am hoping to get up to Heartlands / Kampong Cham, where i was working last time, to visit my Khmer family up there! am desperate to get into the AIDS ward and the Freedom Village (where you would have seen all the photos of me with the kids last time! ahhhhhi miss my little muffins!). am looking at heading up next week, depending on timing with it all... am kind of looking forward to getting out of PP as i need my eyes to see some green :) but also love staying put... so... will work it out shortly :)

* love the day-to-day things:

* zooming around town on a moto, zero fear. i just FEEL angels surrounding me as we go... it's beautiful.

* getting a delish dinner for $1 on the street. yummo!

* love meeting so many wonderful people who inspire me. sooo many people here doing incredible things... and so many kindred spirits. finding lots of hungry love-drunk ones who just need more more more and want to come and get messy together!!

* $7 massage. $2 pedicure.

* we leave near the biggest garbage dump in cambodia. :)

* huge Christmas party this sunday with my church and then carols next friday and... cambodia is feeling the christmas spirit! last year, in the village, there were so few westerners up there that they just didn't care about christmas... but here in pp, it's like being in the west with all of the glorious tacky chrissie deco's everywhere! we even have a christmas tree in the backyard!

* eating mangoes and bananas off our own tree? delicious, free, organic treats!

* Jesus. loves. this. place. :)

* an exciting thing is that i really felt to change the name of the Potter's Place (the previous name of my house/prayer retreat) but hadn't been given a specific name... over the years that i've been dreaming of all this happening, i have had many ideas and even felt very set on one of them... but i just felt zero peace on it now that i am actually here. then, in worship last sunday, i was so distracted and trying to get my eyes into His... but He just let me get 'distracted'... and took me to the corner near our house where we'd need to sign-post directions to our place... and there was a sign: "The Well" with a picture of a well there.

Well, done and done :) So, we are The Well! Ahhh there is so much heart-back-ground as to where this came from, from this year in particular... and yet i so never would have thought to call it that. All year, God was talking to me about wells. i'd be seeing wells over people, over plots of land, and hearing the sound of water being scooped out of them. I turned Bay FM on one day in Byron and it was the Indo program and this woman shared an Indonesian proverb and it just reverberated in my spirit: "fill your well before it becomes dry". And it was so my heart for what was to be happening here... we have to stay perpetually filled up so that emptiness is just never even an issue! like the oil in the lampstands... always filled, ready for whatever is coming :) the story of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well is also the story where I first found myself falling in Love with the man of Jesus... His Heart is so exquisite, i was blown away. i wanted to Love Someone who could Love as extravagantly as that. And I do. and I want others to come into that place, too, of complete Heart-abandoment into the loveliness of our God Who adores us... *sigh* Wells are also a place of community in asian (and african, etc) culture, where people come together to talk and just 'do life' together... it's just a normal part of the goings-on of their day ... and it's the source of Living Water. enough said :)

so, we are The Well.

always drinking, always in Love, always learning to Love out from that place...

... and it's good.

What that looks like is this:

* our house and garden are open for people Tuesday - Saturday to come and get in the Peace of His Presence any time they want...

* worship at 7:30am from Tuesday - Friday (so people can come on the way to work, etc)

*soaking on Monday nights (there were 5 of us this week for our first one! it was lovely!) where we soak and then journal and share what God was showing us...

* a gathering on Wednesday nights where we worship and then listen to a teaching that we can really get our teeth into (as most of the teaching at Khmer churches are quite basic as it's geared towards new believers... so it's great to be able to dig into the Word together!). We're going to be doing the Hem of His Garment DVD series together (Joaquin Evans from Bethel) in the new year!

*and Burn on Friday nights! We are having our first official Burn on NYE as the one that we were planning for last week, we decided to postpone as it was the day after Ben, Steph and Winnie & co were here and we were blasted... and rest is good when going into 12 hours of worship! hehe... so, Burn launch is NYE and then we will go for late-night prayer meetings (leading into 12 hours, etc) starting every friday from jan 8...

... all exciting! so much is happening!

... and that's not even including the outreaches we are planning into the provinces in january and march, and the daily trips to the slums, dumps, hospitals, streets and schools to just freely Love as we have been Loved!

Awesome, miraculous answer to prayer! last week, we were talking about getting Bibles to give to people in the slums and dumps who love Jesus and dont' have one. (because, when you make $1 a day, you can't buy a $5 bible!) and i just felt really strongly that we weren't actually going to have to buy them ourselves but that someone would give us the money for it, that it would be someone's heart to get the Bread of Life into hungry hands! well, the very next day, i got given $500 to buy Bibles, specifically. and the best part? they had intended on giving me the money before had even prayed for it! He just knows all our needs hey?!

Sooo much radical favour!

We're also now needing money to buy fruit to take it into the hospitals with us when we go to pray for people. It's an awesome open door and gives us a tangible blessing to leave with people... and, on a practical level, the vitamins and minerals also help accelerate the healing! (because, if your family does not take you food... you starve.) So, we're praying for this one next... pray with us?!

well, this has been long enough.... and that's the general gist of what's going on! it's glorious, Jesus flippin Loves it here and i flippin love Him. GREAT combo!

love you all, thanks for the emails/messages... keep them coming :)

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #3 (from early December 2009)

2010-01-10T17:39:00.000+11:00

Ben and Steph and Winnie and our friends, Alex and Anna, who I met on our last trip in Thailand (plus a new friend, Francis) have been with us the last two days and… well, it was a slum-hunting, trash-sifting, spider-eating, miracle-dishing, feet-washing LOVE-fest!

Ahhh I just love the way Jesus does things! We would just go into dumps and slums and just love them. That’s all. There’s no complicated ministry strategy here… it’s just love love love. And it was sooo good for me to have these guys here with me, right at the beginning of this season (which is the beginning of the rest of it all!) because they taught me just so much last time. I knew, last time, that just Love, extravagant Love? It is enough. But to see it played out before my eyes and to see that yep, it really is? Wow, it transformed me. Just a hug and a “knyom sroline niak” (I love you) is enough to change someone’s heart and put a smile on a saddened face. And so, after months and months of God assuring me that I did not need to scheme and plan ‘ministry trips’ and stuff for this season and for this team who are coming over, but just to get filled up on lovey-dovey Love and then burst it out of me and all over other people? That that was enough? It was so good to get dusty with some of the ones God used to bring me here…

At the first location on the first morning, we tracked down this little disabled boy that we had found when we first went there a few days ago. He is thirteen but has the body of a 4 year old and has some kind of mental impairment as well. Tash and I had prayed for him and he had been fully unable to receive love, or even make eye contact, and had a steely gaze of well-held anger. But we just picked him up and loved him and kissed him and told him how loved he was… and when we saw him the other morning with the crew? Wow. He’s a physically different boy. Sitting on the step, not in his wheelchair, he had a lightness about his countenance and all of the anger was gone. The hardness of his eyes? Gone. And as I looked into his eyes and told him how much I loved him? He looked back into mine and gave a tiny stretch of a smile J So, we brought over Ben and his guitar, and we just surrounded him with Love. He couldn’t get away from it if he tried! Hehe just singing over him and giving him water to drink and prophesying into his body to rise up! The day before, I was at the market with my friend, Taryon, looking at jewellery, and I saw this most random, tiny ring with a deer’s head on it. It’s cute in only an unconventional way and no one else would want to wear this thing! But I saw it, and just knew I had to buy it and keep wearing it til I figured it out. Well, as we’re praying for this little guy, Ben just prophesies over him that he’s going to leap like a deer! I just really grasped God’s heart for this little one and now I have a reminder – and, I believe, a promise! – on my finger for him... we’re going to celebrate with this kid! Anyway, as we were praying, his legs stretched out and got stronger and his fingers, which had been all curled up and always shoved into his mouth, were stretched out flat too and he was clapping along with the music! We tried to help him walk, moving him foot-by-foot, but his little legs are just sooo skinny and are just seriously skin and bone, with zero muscle mass, that the new creation of muscle is going to be the real miracle in him walking, so that’s what I’m praying in! We’re going to keep going back to this slum. This place and these people have seriously stolen my heart… and we’re going to Love that boy all the way til he’s dancing!

At a different slum, there was this 80 year old woman there who was about the cutest thing I’ve ever ever seen! And all she could do? Sniff us! We’re just going to choose to believe it’s the aroma of Christ… hehe… but man, she was just gorgeous. The older women are usually quite affectionate in that they’ll hug you and hold your hand and stuff… but this one? Oh, I think I’m in love. And I think it’s mutual! All she could say over and over was how much she loved us and, as she was smelling us, her eyes closed, this huge smile would come over her… and we just held her and kissed her and told her how wonderful she was and how much we loved her! At one point there’s about half a dozen of us on her, just bathing her in Love… and, with watery eyes, she tells one of our fantastic translators, Bopha, that she has never been kissed and loved like this in her life. In 80 years, no one has ever kissed her or shown her affection like this. And she can’t stop telling us how much she loves us and I just don’t want to let her go and… well, it’s official. I’m in love. And her slum is so close, we’re basically neighbours, so we’ll be popping over as much as possible!!

Yesterday, we went to the old Phnom Penh garbage dump. It’s not in use anymore, which means that, in theory, nobody is still living there as there is no more potentially ‘valuable’ (5c?) goodies amongst the trash in there for them to discover. But, we felt to go in anyway… and, on the tip of the mountain of trash… one house. One family. One woman who, two months ago, had an accident that gave her paralysis down the left-hand-side of her body and now she has constant pain all the way down, particularly in her feet, and cannot walk. So, we pour out our water on her and Anna and Winnie massage her feet with suncream (you live and you learn… we’re all going to be carrying massage oils with us now!), Francis on her shoulder, Ben singing over her, and the rest of us prophesying… yep, to leap like a deer! We stood her up and aided her to walk and she walked further than she had since the accident, but then got tired, so we sat her down to rest… she was so lovely, such a sweet sweet heart… and she believes that Jesus has a full miracle for her… and I’m sure she’s right J

One new friend that just about broke me was this blind man that Winnie and I found yesterday. His family had done the right thing and barred off the front of their property with wooden bars so that he cannot walk out onto the road into a moto or something… but oh, it just broke my heart. This beautiful man, with one of the sweetest, softest hearts I’ve ever encountered… standing at the gate, his arms out, just waiting. He has been blind since birth and his eyes are almost hollowed-out… but, the extraordinary thing? They are bright, ocean blue! I’ve never seen a Khmer with eyes like this! Incredible!! As we prayed for him and just held his hands, he started to open his eyelids and my heart just broke for the faith of this one man… and all I can hear is “Son of David, don’t pass me by!”. This man believes enough in the Love of His King for him that, every few seconds as we pray, he is opening his eyes to see if he is healed yet! And he wasn’t… and I don’t know why… but I just choose to keep relishing in the Kindness of our God. And so is he. His sweet tenacity ruined me, this one man… he has every reason not to believe, to choose to give up… but he doesn’t. Because he knows that he is Loved.

So many stories… but a picture tells a thousand words… so check them out J But I think it’s just all summed up by Bopha, our translator, when she told me that, when we first went into the slums and just loved and kissed and hugged them… she was just thinking of how much more we could do and why weren’t we doing it? But then she saw, when we loved on them, they’d smile. Their whole countenance would change. And they’d receive a download of Hope. And she realised that Love – pure, simple Love – is the most powerful thing we have to give. He, Himself, is Love. And He is always enough.

(As an aside huge huge HUGE praise report (!!!!!), these guys answered an incredible prayer for us. The day before they arrived, Chad and Tash and I had been discussing getting Bibles to take into the slums and dumps and villages… but they’re about US$5 each which, although cheap, gets expensive when you’re thinking about how many we need! And I just didn’t feel like it was us, personally, to give the money… of course, I’d be happy to. People need the Bread!! But I just felt that there was someone whose call in life and whose love is just to get the Word of God into people’s hands… so we just prayed it in. The very next day, Winnie gives me a bunch of money. To buy Bibles. And when I told her that, only the day before, we’d prayed it in, she just smiled and said that God knows our need so much more than we do, because she knew she was going to do it even before yesterday! Plus, as an additional beautiful blessing… when they were in the Philippines, they took up love offerings from congregations amongst the poor… and they gave it to us. Wow. The poor from the slums of Manila… gave to us. Humbled beyond belief… and I don’t tell this stuff to big-note anybody and I don’t even think Winnie would want me telling people… but it’s such an awesome (and quick!) answer to prayer to encourage you… I just love love love the heart of these incredible people and their generosity and the way that they just… love. It’s the simple gospel.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #2 (from Late November 2009)

2010-01-10T17:38:00.000+11:00

So much has happened these last few days and I don’t really know where to start… so I’ll go from where I left off last time… and tell you about our first miracles! YAY!!

So, Sam’art, our guard and friend (or, our ‘bodyguard’ as he told Tash the other day! Last night we were talking ideas of dressing up all in black like ‘jows’ – thieves – to see what it would look like for tiny little Sam’art to be our bodyguard! Hehe) is definitely moving in with us and his family! Yay! I love how God works! The day that we moved in, he came to me and, very timidly, asked if he could keep his job. For some reason he had assumed that we were going to fire him and hire someone else… and was carrying around this huge burden of wondering how he was going to support his family. Only about two days later, you cannot wipe the smile off his face and his big brown eyes are just beaming with His goodness! He called his wife and told her the idea of her and their son moving in with us onto our property so that Sam’art can keep working full-time but also be with his family… and she is so excited to be a part of this sewing business idea that has been brewing in me! So, prayers answered on both sides of the fence! We are also going to have her cook Khmer meals for us at dinner-time in exchange for the free accommodation and have Sam’art teach us some Khmer! We are so excited for our little family here to be constantly growing! This house is going to be overflowing with people… but that also means that it will be overflowing with the fun and happiness and generosity and kindness and excitement of many hearts in Love! We have just taken Sam’art in, and love him to bits, and he’s part of the family here, now. He worships with us in the morning and, oh… to see him encountering Jesus is just so beautiful. Sunday morning we were worshipping in the mud hut and Sam’art kind of poked his head around the corner to see what we were doing… so, we invited him in and, within about 3 minutes, he was on the floor, crying in the sweetness of His Presence. Every morning, he is praying with us now and said that, even though he cannot understand everything that we say and does not know the songs that we sing… he just loves to be in the family as we worship and be before our King. It’s beautiful. After that first morning, we then went to church and he just LOVED it (especially being able to sing along in Khmer!)… and, that afternoon, only two days after learning that God can speak Khmer and hear and answer his prayers… Sam’art was in the hospital praying for one of his best friends who had broken his neck in a moto accident and was being air-lifted to Vietnam that afternoon. Full of faith, he left the house to the hospital… and, where the doctors had seen no response from his friend and did not think he would make it… as Sam’art laid his hands on his friend’s chest and just prayed… his friend opened his eyes and began to speak! The doctors were amazed and, after this, they said that they thought his friend would be ok! He was so excited to be used by God and said that he could feel the power of us praying for him back home! And then, as I was about to go to sleep at 11pm, I get a tap-tap-tap from Chad on my door… “Sam’art has been in a moto accident, we’ve got to pray for him!”. Driving home from the hospital, Sam’art, himself, was in a moto accident… and ended up with all kinds of random scratches and grazes over him (soooo lucky – his driver ended up with half his face on the ground) and at-least bruised, if not broken ribs. He went to the hospital and they refused him treatment because he did not have enough money on him to pay them up-front. Pretty much nothing else in Cambodia causes a righteous anger to rise up in me like this ridiculous, unjust system. It absolutely makes my blood boil and, when I found out about this my first time here, five years ago, it set me on the course that God has had me on to lay hands on the ones that the hospital refuses… and to see them receive free, perfect, loving care from the Best Doctor. And, of course? God did not disappoint! As Sam’art hobbled home, whimpering with every breath, blood dripping from his wounds, we got him inside our house and just got our hands on him and prayed peace and protection over him as Tash (who is a nurse) cleaned up his wounds and dressed them. Within about a minute of praying, he had no more pain anywhere in his body and could breath with ease! He could even poke into his ribs with no pain anymore!! We just love love love our friend and believe that God brought him to us as His firstfruits for us in this season. He was the first one that God entrusted into our hands… the first one that we got to really Love extravagantly… the first one that we got to make decisions over that will open doors and change his life forever… and our first miracle J Please pray for Sam’art. That day when he had the accident, we had been fervently praying for him and had received many words from the Lord that he will be an influencer in the nations and is not only a firstfruit in our lives, in this nation, but is also the firstfruit in his family and village and, like all those that encountered Jesus in the Scriptures, he will go back to his hometown and tell everyone of what He did for him!

We had a great day yesterday! We went slum-hunting and playing in the garbage dumps! Ben and Steph Dunn, John Crowder and Winnie Banov are coming to hang with us at the end of this week and so we went hunting to find the perfect places for us to give an injection of Joy! We spent the afternoon with our poor tuktuk driver who could not understand why we wanted to go from slum to slum, dump to dump, hehe… we met up with Chad and Tash’s friend, Tira, and his brother, Pia, who are both in wheelchairs and have one of the most devastating conditions I’ve ever seen. Their mother said that when they were babies they fell out of the hammock, but we can’t buy that… their bones are curved and fully disabled and Tira’s chest and back bones are so high up around his face and they are so tiny; their growth has been stunted to that of about a five year old, though, mentally, they are twenty-something and seventeen, respectively. They sleep in a temple at night but, through Chad and Tash’s ongoing friendship, they are starting to long for more and want real ‘se’rei peep’ (freedom). So… we’ve asked Tira to be one of our translators when the crew are here! Nothing transforms you like seeing the Kingdom of God at Joyful, Loving, Powerful work!

The very first time I came to Cambodia, I drove past a slum on my way from the airport after first arriving, and it was just huge. And I wanted in. My heart burned for this place and knew that Jesus was just busting to get in there. Every single time I go to and from the airport, I see it and long to go in, but feel like God has held me back, waiting for the right time… well, going to the airport to fly home last time, I looked longingly in again, as usual, and felt God say that He was going to release me to go in there when I returned! Yay! So, when I came from the airport the other day, I spied it again, but saw that there was a huge wall put up around it so that you couldn’t see in it anymore… and God just said “I walk through walls”. So, we go there yesterday and… it’s empty. Basically, in Cambodia (and Phnom Penh particularly) at the moment, there is a huge thing going on of ‘relocating’ all of the slum communities out of their current ‘real estate’ (which is often prime, as they were here before all the current infrastructure) and into parts much further out of town so that they can build on their old slum sites. I say relocating very very loosely… they are just getting kicked out. There are displaced slum communities everywhere and it’s this treasure-hunt to find where they’ve gone! Some organizations like Habitat for Humanity are doing incredible projects to help them and to bring gold out of this crap situation by building new villages out to where they have been forced to relocate… but there are just so so many, that the problem cannot be solved by one organization doing incredible things. So, we started wandering around and found a guy who told us where they’d been relocated and it’s only around the corner! So, we rock up and the first person we meet is a Khmer man with perfect English… who turns out to be a pastor of the church there in the slum! Almost the whole slum community, even in these horrific conditions… love Jesus. It shook me out of some serious complacency! These little communities are houses joined by board-walks that grow out of a huge trash-heap. What’s bizarre, though, is that, even though their houses are built on sludge and trash… there is no smell… and, what’s more, a lush crop of taro (a popular, sweet, root vegetable) is growing out of the trash and is a joint crop that the whole village shares and is sustains on! God can even grow goodness in the (literal) trash! It says in the Psalms that God lifts the poor out of the trash heap and turns them into princes! And we found some princes in here, above the trash heap J We found a bunch of kids who just need some lovin’, including a disabled boy in a wheelchair (who seems to have severe autism, amongst many other things and, like Tira, is thirteen but looks about 3) and a Downs Syndrome girl who is just beeeee-autiful! So affectionate and sweet and such a darling! J As we prayed for her, she held out her hands and was just lapping up the kindness of God! And as we prayed for him in his chair, I saw that there were things shifting… so I lifted him out of his chair and rocked him in my arms and just gazed into his eyes telling him how much he is loved… It’s rare to find people with disabilities in Cambodia because they hide them away for the shame and stigma of it all. This is a Buddhist country; if there is something ‘wrong with you’? You deserve it. That’s karma. It sucks. And Grace destroys it to smithereens. Please pray for us as we go back into this village with Ben, Steph, John and Winnie that He would just lavish upon us radical Love to pour into this place, and into these two little kids in particular… His Love, alone, is enough to conquer both of their conditions and set them free into full healing, and we are believing for it! We also saw our second miracle in here: a lady had been having headaches every day of her life for 20 years… and she was healed, instantly. The pain not only left her head for the first time in 20 years, but she said that she could feel God all over her and all through her body! Yahoo!

I’ve met two really beautiful girls, Jacqueline and Taryon, who are just firey, passionate, burning hearts... and there is covenant written all over this connection! They have both been praying for something exactly like what God has sent us in for… and are just wanting to get into the Presence with us and Love on the poor with us! Taryon came around the other night and the two of us just got to pray and prophesy over each other and love on each other for hours and it was sooooo good to get our thirst quenched!! Then, we worshipped together (Taryon, Chad, Tash and I) and we just got absolutely… tanked. Blissed out. Messy. Love-Drunk. Joyful. Ecstatic! It was soooo awesome! The three of us worship everyday at home together, at least once, but God just broke out that night and the four of us broke into a new level that I have never experienced in Cambodia! Ahhh it was glorious and long-awaited and… only the first. J

We have actually scheduled our first Burn for this Friday night! Burn Cambodia is going to become a reality! Yahoo! Even if it is just Jacqueline, Taryon, Chad, Tash and myself? God has ordained it and the time is NOW! We just felt not to wait until we had loads of connections or this-and-that practicality had been sorted… but to dive in and swim in His glorious River that is flowing like rapids right now! Just by word of mouth, there are already about 20 people who are interested in coming, but even if it is just us 5? God will come. Because hunger stirs Heaven. And we are desperate. There is a cloud of Living Water poised above this nation and I see God with a giant needle in His Hand, just wanting to prick it and bust it open all over the place… but the bowls need to be filled and Heaven has to be stirred. So, at 7pm (11pm Sydney time) Friday night, Burn Cambodia is kicking off with a 12-hour Burn! Pray for increased Fire in our bellies to burn through the night watches and to give Heaven what Heaven wants! And for the release of signs, wonders, miracles, trancey encounters, Love, Joy, Oil in the dry lamps, New Wine in the belly, all the goodness of God to fall over us! We are also ‘baptising’ the house on this night! I felt from the Lord to buy a bottle of red and we are going to bury some specific, Spirit-led Scriptures in the ground around our property and then cover them with wine, sealing in the four corners and claiming this as a place of the New Wine, of intimacy with Jesus!! Yay!

I have also started Khmer tutoring again and was kind of scared about it (as I really feel like I lack confidence in speaking Khmer…), but my tutor really encouraged me and said that I sound like I have been speaking for ages! He also said that I should be near-fluent in about 4 months if I really work hard on it with him… rock on! Please pray for supernatural recollection of all that I learn and that God would even fill my mouth with sounds and words that I do not know yet!!

That email is massive enough…

… thanks heaps for your prayers and encouragement! Jesus is fun!

Love you! xx

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Cambodia Update #1 (from late November 2009)

2010-01-10T17:36:00.000+11:00

When I arrived at Phnom Penh International Airport (which looks like a Bowlo), I went through the regular visa procedures: hand over a photo, give US$25, smile politely with a quiet “soksabbai” which makes them think that I speak waaaay more Khmer than what I actually do. And then I get this whisper from around the corner. “You want one year visa?” The regular protocol with visa extension in Cambodia is that, you get your first one-month business visa (which I was doing) and then you go to a travel agent at the end of the first month and pay them a generous commission for them to extend it for you for a year. But this woman, Chun Thy, in her official uniform, one of the line who do the passport stamping and whatever else is happening behind that counter, assures me that, if I pay her US$310 cash, she will take my passport from me that very moment… and I’ll have it back tomorrow, with a one year visa, “no problem”. It’s funny the things that Lonely Planet tell you to never fall for, but, when you’re in that moment… you just want to trust them so much. So, I did. And I now have a one-year visa (dropped off by her moto-driver brother – who then drove me home – outside a random café near a market yesterday), taking me through to Christmas Day, 2010! Yahoo! Sometimes it pays to trust J

It has been so fun settling back in… and, the weird thing is, is that I feel like I never left. Actually moving here and living here for an extended time puts an entirely different spin on it all… and I love knowing that I’m not leaving in 3 weeks or 3 months. I LOVE having my own place, and having a room and a fridge and a bathroom where you put your stuff and leave it. It’s one of those things that make it hard about travelling, is that you’re living out of your pack all of the time… and all I ever want is somewhere to put my things and leave them there, even just for a bit. Well, I’m unpacking, and it’s for a year and it’s the longest time I’ve been in any one place for 3 years now and I’m so so excited!! And I’m doing all the things that make me realise that this is a settling thing… I have a motorbike helmet (that’s how you get around the city, on the back of moto’s: motorbike taxis! It costs about US$1 for about 5 or 10 minutes on a moto) a guard/gardener, a PO Box, a phone with Khmer characters on the keys, a one year visa, friends to have coffee with this afternoon, a church to go to tomorrow… oh, and the house lease. Possibly one of the funniest things I’ve ever done! They sign everything here with a thumb print. Which requires ink. Orrrr… a bright orange lipstick in the event of no ink! The lease is about 6 lines long, stamped with my orange thumb. Pictures below with my cute landlady J hehe

And the house is even better than I imagined J Jesus is so flippin ridiculously kind! I have put up photos and a video ‘tour’ of the place, but it can’t do it justice… to walk onto the property and FEEL the Peace that laces every tree and every room? Ahhh it’s like nothing I’ve ever encountered in Cambodia before. It’s so beautiful. Phnom Penh (as you’ll see in my pics and vids) is brown and beige and tan and dusty and dirty and… well, it’s not a particularly pretty city! The only green that you see is some very neatly manicured sets of lawns near the riverside that, if you sit on them, a cranky policeman will come up and blow a whistle in your face and tell you to get off! This grass is only so good to look at, not to roll in and picnic on! Well, now I have rolling-on and picnicking-on grass! And mango trees (which I asked God for and didn’t know they were here!) and banana trees and jackfruit and custard apple and soursop trees and… beautiful colours of flowers in every corner and... a little water feature in the trees and… little bamboo huts to hide away in with Jesus and… a big, family-size dining table to have friends over to FEAST and… the mud-hut that started it all J This was where, when I first found this house 18 months ago, and knew it was mine, that I wanted it, and when I asked God if He wanted Burn to start here, the whole hut filled with smoke and all I could smell was smoke, and His answer was simply this: “where there’s smoke, there’s Fire!” and… here I am J We’re still in cleaning stage (and the kitchen is being painted today), and will be doing decorations and all the fun stuff this week, but, we will be setting up the downstairs as like a dorm for everyone to sleep in (got to track down bunk beds) because it’s tiled and cooler and the upstairs space will be the Burn space. This place is literally my dream house… I.am.so.happy. I have always wanted to live in a Cambodian treehouse… and, well, the first morning I woke up here, I just smiled to Jesus: “Thank You for my Cambodian treehouse”! The upstairs is wooden and much hotter but…. Oh I love it. I feel like this is the place of dreams being birthed and new realms being enjoyed and dry tanks getting filled filled filled! God is just soooo present here. When Chad arrived yesterday (Tash and I already had been here 2 days) and we started praying and worshipping together, Chad said that he was about to invite God into this place… and then realised that it was opposite: God has been here all along and He is inviting us in to be a part of what He’s doing J and it’s totally right… you can feeeeel Him when you come through the gates! Oh, it’s extraordinary! But words can’t do it justice… even my pages and pages of emails ;) you’ll just have to come and experience it for yourself!

We live near my favourite and one of the most popular markets in town, close to my church, near a whole bunch of other ex-pats, near all of the cafes that I love and, most importantly, near a bunch of slums, garbage dumps and Svay Pak, the biggest brothel district in Phnom Penh. God has strategically placed us, among many others in our area here (we have a few churches, Bible colleges, Christian schools and missionaries also living on our street! Methinks something is boiling!) to bring Light and Love into this place… and we are ready and excited for His delightful, life-changing, restoring, redeeming, joyful ways!

So, we had an exciting (potential) ‘development’ emerge this morning in talking to our guard, Sam’art (he’s on the beginning of the video that I uploaded today). We love this guy and he’s been here for a few months and met Jesus only 2 months ago. He is our friend, Pov, her nephew, and he’s a lovely guy and a great worker. But… his wife and 3 month old baby are in a village an hour and a half away and he sees them for 2 days per month. This is a really common situation in Cambodia, as there are just no job opportunities in villages… most people in rural areas are making US$1 or, at most, US$2 a day, and it’s just not enough. So, he moved to Phnom Penh 3 months ago to make money so he can send some back to his family… but it means that he barely sees them and isn’t seeing his son grow up… This just broke our hearts… we want to keep him and support him, financially, as much as we can… but we also know that family is priority (especially within Asian culture) and we couldn’t bare the thought of his little boy growing up without his dad around him. Especially because he’s such a beautiful dad!! Cambodia has the highest rate of widows and orphans in the world… and if we can help this family, by giving them back their husband and their dad? Then it’s all worth it. So, we sat down with him this morning to give him some ideas: working part-time and seeing his family part-time, which he didn’t like because he needs the money of full-time work. Us helping him find a job in his village… but there are none. Us helping him with the family’s farm in his village… the money you get back is not worth what you sow into it… and the whole time we’re talking and throwing out ideas, all I could think of was to bring them here, to live with us. We have this spare shed out the back that has a squat toilet in it (which is what they would have at home anyway) and, once it’s cleaned up, we can get a bed in it, put in a window and a fan and space for the bub… and they can live with us, rent-free, which means that he gets to keep his job… AND the family gets to be with him!! J when I suggested this, all of us were so stoked; it just feels so right! He is just so beautiful and needs family here in the city too! This way, we can help him in his faith (we just got to spend the morning telling him how much God loves him and hears his prayers… he didn’t even know if God could understand Khmer or not, or if He only spoke English and didn’t know if God was listening to him when he prayed!) and help her, as a new mum, provide them with free accommodation and he can keep his job. Plus, I have had an idea of something brewing in my heart as an opportunity to produce money to keep me here. I know that I need to be heading towards being somewhat self-sustainable, and I have an idea of having some garments sewn and selling them back in Oz… well… his wife is a good sewer! So, if they definitely decide to move in with us, I am going to look at buying a sewing machine… and she can be my first sewing friend for this ‘business idea’ that’s been growing… oh it’s so good! I knew that He would work it all out, because He put it in me… but this fast?! Wow! Plus, this gives them extra income, takes the pressure off him being the sole bread-winner, brings them into loving, safe community and into the many more opportunities that Phnom Penh has over their village. This is my first situation/family/heart that God has me on (on this trip) and it is so my heart: I want to see this nation turned-out, for sure. But I also know that it is all about the one right in front of me. And God has given me Sam’art… and now we get to bless them and hopefully open up doors and give them deposits into their lives and hearts that will never fade. It has just shown me so much, again, that it really is just about loving the one. This one man has such huge promise on him, such rich, pure joy in his heart just busting out in his wide smile… and to sow into one man? I know this is Daddy J

Well, must run… but photos are up… video didn’t work, for some reason… will need to work this out and post it asap… hope you enjoy J

Love to you all xx

... love the one ...

... steph ...

... just awhile?

2009-10-21T16:42:00.000+11:00

I just love to be near You.

I love to be surrounded in the praises of Your people that establish Your Throne, celebrating Your relentless Kindness.

I love for my ears to be infilled with Your Whispers

... and my eyes, Yours.

To meditate on Your Loveliness and shout it over cities and into rain clouds that release over dry lands...

... You are shockingly Beautiful.

To be close to Your Beauty is wonderfully good for my soul.

Draw me closer, right in, right in here...

... can I stay awhile?

Just while I fall a little more in Love with You?

... love the one ...

... steph ...

2009-10-16T14:02:00.003+11:00

Burn here in Byron this past weekend as monumental is o many more ways than I can give language to right now... but God used it to re-kindle some beautiful things in my heart... creativity = so central to His Heart. this is some of the journey...

I will not partner with the fear of needing to be perfect in the creative...

... release me into a heart for extravagant, excellent offering where the opinion of man is null and void...

... and the smile of my Papa is the greatest seal.

* * *

And so, from this vulnerable, fearless place...

... I write.

And I will write this 'project' that You have planted as a baby seed in my heart. I will step into the greatness of this offering and embrace the severe kindness of the call embedded in every letter of every word of every Love-soaked page.

It will bring Hope.
   Redemption.
   Sweet intimacy.
   Freedom.
   and, always above all - Love.

Thank You for the words that You flow from my pen that source from the Fingertip of the One Who lets lightning spring forth and light the darkened sky.

Your Design, Your Mouth, Your Flow... You astound me. To be saturated in Your Flow that be enough to turn some thing from nothing... it is what I live for. To swim and swirl and bathe in Your supreme Beauty be the glorious drink for which my soul sings!

My insides, my guts... they cry out for the authentic You. The real Beauty of Your Heart that causes mountains to rise up and rivers to bend and eaglets to crack their mysterious selves out of darkness and into the new realm... I need this Beauty to feed my belly that rumbles.

It's not enough to behold... I have to DIGEST Your Beauty. It - You - has to flow through my spleen and pancreas and lungs... my guts have got to get this!

Feed me on You.

I want to feast on You. Oh Your Beauty tastes like fairy bread and honey joys and chocolate crackles and fairy floss and jelly babies and... all sweet deliciousness!

You are the Banqueting Table.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

the Womb

2009-10-16T14:00:00.002+11:00

... this little musing came out at about 6am in the 20-something hour of burning on sunday. i saw in the spirit the walls of the circular room expand and contract as Love was birthed in the bellies of the hungry ones... and a beautiful heart sang out a Love-song to her Beloved... i've borrowed some of her words as nothing could say it better :)

This place is the Womb of God.

You're so close that I can feel Your every breath...

... and it shakes the very walls of this place.

You inhale and the walls constrict, taking in all the need of a humanity, of every orphan in every garbage dump at every latitude...

... like incense, our burning lives release a fragrance that stirs. And when we swirl here in Your Womb of Loving Creation, our perfume agrees with the most perfect perfume of Your Name and You exhale the symphony over the land...

... and the ribs of the furnace release until wide.

And again.

This cage is energised, is mechanised, is driven, is compulsed, is spurred on, is compelled by the whisper of the One Whose Name is like honey on my lips.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Fireball

2009-08-27T09:17:00.003+10:00

I want to be a Fireball of Holy Flames!

There is a Fire going inside of me... burning away...

... sometimes a little, barely-there spark... othertimes a blazing interno.

Either way... stoke it! enlarge it! spread it! pour Wine out on it that the however-small flame would bust out into a bushfire - untamed! - to consume me for all else but Jesus...

... a pure heart, made new. To see God.

And where is the Fire? Where is the Wine?

The Fire is held in the Eyes of the Keeper of the Cellar.

All I need is Your Eyes. I just need to be consumed in Your alive gaze that wrecks me for all else...

... I am Yours.

Consume me.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

The Lost Place

2009-08-17T18:56:00.003+10:00

I want to lose myself in You.

And then?

You can find me in there.

Take me to the deep, mysterious places... and give me Your tree-leaf-rustling Voice as my road map... not out... but deeper into the Lost.

Take me into deep wells that are yet to be explored... that have been so boarded-over in the spirit, so covered... that I would never find them but on a holy treasure hunt.

Take me in...

... let me be foolish enough to just throw myself in?

Heart first.

I want to find the treasure, the Living Water, the secret trap doors and realms hidden in the bottom...

... I don’t want to be satisfied with knowing that mystery, that adventure and deep, precious treasure are around for the discovering, for the plundering, for the enjoying...

I want to discover!
plunder!
enjoy!

I may be the only one peering into the well...

... perched on the edge...

... eyes wide at the possibility...

... not sure about how unknown the unknown is...

... reconsidering?

I throw the doubt in like a coin for a wish...

... and I get my answer in the vibrant splash of a Running River and an audible smile from all of Heaven.

A moment.

A nudge.

(A cheeky Messenger makes it easy for me!)

... and I am free-falling into the abyss of kindness
  mystical encounter
  newness
  Love
  wholeness
  unending, ridiculous Joy
  the Lost place... where I am undoubtedly found.

Poetry

2009-07-12T08:39:00.001+10:00

Love, every utterance from Your mouth of Fiery sweetness is Poetry.

It doesn’t always rhyme.

And people don’t always get it.

But it’s Rich

Full

Beautiful

Perfect.

And water to my soul.

Speak stanzas of swoony sweet Wine-Love over me.

I don’t need to understand; I’ll deposit it in a heart-shaped Treasure chest til I do.

But would You write it on my eyelids, so I can meditate on it as I slumber?

And on my left ventricle, to pump out the irregular jungle beat to my lovesick flesh?

On my palms, too? Each line a line. Read them. They all spell Romance.

(let me hug the world with those in-Love hands?)

And please don’t forget my feet... each blade of grass I tread, each field I explore, each river I trip through... taken for Love.

Scrawl Your kids with sweet-nothings.

Holy Love-Graffiti.

Woo Creation through the Poetry of Your Divine Love.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Your Voice

2009-07-08T17:55:00.003+10:00

I come back to my source, today. The Source. Today, I feast. I merrily eat and drink of the goodness of the Tree of Life. I see me sitting beneath the Tree of Life, nestled amongst the enveloping roots, breathing in rainbow-coloured air… green, purple, blue… and as I inhale, there is new life going in… I am refreshed. I am made new. I think it is Your FRESHNESS that my spirit is lapping up… You give me Your fresh self, fresh Love, fresh mercies, fresh grace, fresh revelation everyday…

I love how I never need go on an old word; You speak every moment. But am I hearing? I want to know more of Your languages… I dedicate my life to the love and simplicity of devotion to Your Presence: Where You speak. God, I love Your Voice. I love Your still, small Voice. I love Your Voice that thunders and shatters the cedars of Lebanon. I love Your Voice that moulds clouds. I love Your Voice that calls me into Dreamtime. I love Your Voice that spoke the rose to bloom and heaves mountains into the sea. I love Your Voice that is silent. I love Your Voice by the mouth of a brother. I love Your Voice by Your Story. I love Your Voice by the Wind blowing the tall grasses. I love Your Voice by the bare foot on pavement. I love Your Voice by the phosphorescence by the shore. I love Your Voice by lullaby in the night. I love Your Voice that urges. I love Your Voice that fills my mouth. I love Your Voice that calls me up. I love Your Voice that beckons. Closer. Higher. I love Your Voice that is enough. One word. And nothing can be the same.

I want to be devoted to Your Voice. Treasurer of Your Voice. Carrier of Your Voice. Releaser of Your Voice.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

I love the way You move me

2009-07-04T20:41:00.003+10:00

I love the way You move me.

I love the way You move me to passion, to destiny, to beauty, to unseen riches.

I love the way You move me to live outside of myself so i can fall into the depths of You.

I love the way You move me to abandon the known, the measurable, the logical, the done...

... and into the unquantifiable corners of Impossibility.

I love the way You move me to paint when "i can't paint"
  ... to dance when "I can't dance"
     ... to sing when "I can't sing"

I love the way You move me to see Treasure Troves in dust; Princes in rogues; Wisdom in babes.
Soldiers in dollars.
Wine in water.
Life in a dead man.

I love the way You move me to the beat of an instrument I've never seen in the arms of a twirling, glowing Messenger.

I love the way You move me to be weak so You can fight for me...

... as I sit in Your lap; beard tickling my cheek.

I love the way You move me to grow small so I can give big.

I love the way You move me to call me as You do.

Beautiful.
Beloved.
Daughter.
Friend.
Holy. Pure. White.

I love the way You move me to laugh as fire is poured out on the alter of my life; to radiate peace as stones rain down.

I love the way You move me to Your side.
  Your heart.
  Your open arms.
  Your wide smile.
  Your Life-breath.

I love the way You move me into You.
   all You.
     only You.
     forever You.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

... to have your heart in another land...

2009-06-23T18:34:00.008+10:00

How strange a thing to be born in one, but destined for another land... that your body can be in one place, your heart 5000 kilometres away in another?

I have no resentment or even lukewarmness toward Australia. It is the most beautiful land and I am one of the most priviledged people on earth to have been born and raised here. I've never had to fight for the right to vote. Or to beg for food. Or to sleep in the dirt of the streets. I am an educated woman, with a university degree that I did not have to contend for. I've not had to watch loved ones die of hunger or sleep to the lullaby of bullets raining down... This nation and its liberties, its opportunities and its sheer beauty have helped mould me to be who I am to

day. I love this place. I am so thankful. Yet...

... my heart lies all dusted in the streets and slums and brothels and hospitals and orphanges of another nation. And as I plaster photograph after photograph on my wall of children that, in three months, I got to love more fully than their own broken mothers... I realise that these are my people. That that eclectic garble of sounds is my langauge. Those filthy, beggar-lined, rubbish-covered streets are my streets. The three-times-a-day-rice is my food. And those big brown saucer eyes, those wide smiles and that burnt caramel skin... those people are my people.

A few weeks ago, one of my favourite people ever asked me if I was a different person here from who I am when I am in Cambodia. I am most definitely, was my quick reply... but how, exactly, I wasn't sure...

... photograph after photograph, today I realise why. As I laughingly struggle with a wiggly worm of a two-year-old in my arms as I preach the LOVE of Jesus in a slum of some of the poorest people on earth... I fall in Love. I am more in Love in that place than at any other time. More in Love with Jesus, more in Love with His kids... and I am where I'm supposed to be. What should be 'hard' and gut-wrenching is drowned in oceans of grace. What should repulse me, intrigues me. What should break me, only wrecks me for Love. So many tears shed, not one wasted... in the place where I'm meant to be, the groanings of my spirit and my belly-laughs move heaven to come to this reality to play. The realm of miracles is real and frequent and God is stirred by the hunger of the poor.

I love my people. And I am loved by them. I love to leave this beautiful paradise place of perfect weather and friends and English and chai and riches... to Love from the dirt to the ones who've never seen beyond it. I've never had to experience a life like theirs... yet God, in Your humour, You have chosen a rich little university-educated white girl to be and bring You into that place! And sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I miss my friends and travelling safely in cars and chai and hot showers and drinking tap water and crunchy food and being in the majority.

But sometimes - like now - it hurts to have all that. As I plaster photographs of slums all over my room full of mountains of clothes and books and beautiful things... my heart is stung. By guilt? hypocrisy? ... and I know it's not wrong to have things... (when I'm back over here, it's nice to wear different - clean! - clothes and have a beautiful room... and things, in and of themselves are not the problem... it's how we hold them in our hearts...)

... but please never allow them to be more important to me than the slums, the eyes peeping out from the slum... create in me the woman You want and need me to be to see this nation be restored. Humble me. Strip the importance of the things, the stuff. Increase the Love in my heart.

And keep me one who longs for my people.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

My Cambodia

2009-05-08T12:19:00.003+10:00

Cambodia is a war-torn country under one of the most corrupt governments in the world right now... the hospitals are full with people dying of HIV/AIDS and people are hungry for no good reason... i could go on about the injustice forever...

... but it seems much more fitting to share the whole truth. They may be poor in the eyes of the world, but these are a people rich in spirit: full of Love and Joy and who are Freeeee in Christ!! I love this nation, these people...

... and these happy faces are my Cambodia.

Stories of Love from Cambodia! (January 18, 2009) - blind eyes open!!

2009-04-13T12:27:00.002+10:00

So, i saw my first "blind" eyes open last week :)

Firstly, I want to explain the " " around "blind" ... I have no desire to give false testimony. Jesus is great enough and powerful enough to speak for Himself, I need not give false or inaccurate stories to make Him sound more impressive... He's impressive enough on His own :) He does the miracles and we can share what happens, but in situations like this, it is hard to be accurate with what to call a condition when you're dealing with translators who aren't completely fluent and so they cannot accurately describe their condition using the proper medical terms so that we can be really accurate with our testimony... and with a boy who doesn't actually know what his condition is called... So, this is what i CAN say: he actually wasn't what we would think of as completely blind in that he could still see random messes of colours but he could not distinguish any kind of shape or faces or see where he was going or anything other than a blurry mess of colour... But the community all call him blind and so does he, and he is "legally blind" in that he wouldn't be allowed to drive or anything... ANYway... just wanted to clarify all that...

This was such a divine appointment. The first time I went into the slum where this boy is from I felt like God gave me a word to bring out the blind and the deaf and that they would receive healing. The community said that there were two blind boys but that they were not there...I keep asking about these boys and they're never around... but January 12th he was, and he got his miracle :)

He's about 7 years old and has been blind since birth and has never seen any complete or clear picture in his life. When I saw him and my translator said that this was one of the boys, I grabbed his little hand and he stumbled clumsily along behind me to sit down on a rock with me ... as just two mustard seeds of faith sat in the dirt in a slum in Cambodia ... the Father made Himself known in His mercy and power. He is such a darling and wanted me to pray for him so much and he loved the Presence of God on him as a swirling heat came upon him and this most beautiful peace... I placed my hand over his eyes and prayed simply that Justice would be done and that these eyes would be open to perfect, 20/20 vision. I lifted my hands off his eyes and he sat there for a moment, eyes shut, and i wonder what is going through his mind... Will i be disappointed when i open my eyes? is Jesus not really who He says that He is? Or will my life be forever changed because He is EXACTLY who He says that He is? Then, because God is forever and always good, my little friend slowly opens his eyes... and a beautiful beaming smile breaks over his face and it is a moment I'll never forget. I know that he can see, i don't need my translator to tell me anything... His eyes have been opened and he can see clearly now. Pefect, 20/20 vision. Because Jesus is who He says that He is.

I want to remember his smile forever. He goes into my bank of memories that I will pull from when i wonder what the heck life is going on about and i feel lost, my eyes blurry like this little boys' once were... so that I can remember that all this is all about the goodness of God. No more, no less. His crazy passionate Love for us is all there is worth living for, dying for. This little smile - fruit of a beautiful, loving God coming down to earth before our eyes - will forever remind me that this is what i am made for.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Stories of Love from Cambodia! (January 7, 2009) - One of the most incredible miracles i've ever been a part of!!!

2009-04-13T12:19:00.006+10:00

Being given access to pray, without restriction, through the trauma ward for whoever i want, when i want, is pretty much the most incredible favour you can imagine in a buddhist nation. So when that door opened, I knew it wasn't just for kicks ... God wants to do some incredible things and He wants us to be a part of it. After (i think) only three visits into the trauma ward, we have seen more healings and people set free from pain than I would be able to recall... but there is one guy that i've got a real heart for that I would love to share with you what Jesus has done in and for him, and get you to join me in praying for full restoration for him.

This guy's house burnt down about 10 days ago, taking the lives of all of his children except one. His hands, feet and face suffered terrible burns, which we have been laying hands on and praying for since the day after ... when I met him on this first day, his entire body was swollen and he was covered in inches of bandages that had been soaked through with blood from the gaping open wounds that were quickly becoming infected ... his head, burned all down the side of his cheeks and chin, was wrapped up in thick bandages with padding and all that was visible was his pained eyes, nose and mouth ... his eyes filled with tears that first day as he told us about the fire and losing his children ... i felt God said to tell him that, even though God did not want his children to die, there was purpose for Him preserving this man's life, but it pained me to tell him, because I knew that he did not want to hear it ... but it was Truth that God was depositing into his spirit.We have been praying for this guy every time we go in ... the first day, God told me that He is the healer of the brokenhearted and that, as He heals his heart, his body will follow ...... and then yesterday I got to see one of the most glorious miracles of my life.

I walked into the ward and he caught my eye, straight away, right from his bed at the end of the ward, and gave me this huuuuuuge smile and i saw a sparkle of life in his eyes that i've never seen before. And I knew that everything was somehow different. At first he didn't say anything and I didn't ask ... I just looked into his eyes and I knew that Jesus had been there ... and then it clicked: his face is totally, completely healed!! Where there were weeping open wounds and dead skin falling off his face from deep deep burns ... ALL THINGS NEW. He has brand new skin. The exact same colour as the rest of his beautiful brown skin, without a single scar. You would never know that he has been burnt. Perfect. His hands and feet are healing well - much better than the doctors anticipated - and I felt like the Spirit was nudging me that He wanted this guy to be a part of the miracle that God is doing in him. And so I got him to lay his hands on his hands and feet with me and, together, we prayed an acceleration of healing and prophesied "all things new" into his hands and feet ...... today is a random public holiday over here, but I really felt to get back to the hospital, asap, to get this guy a Bible and to share the gospel of the Best Doctor with him. One of the first things he shows me is that his foot that was more severely damaged than the other that, yesterday, was covered in a huge open sore, oozing with infection ... is, today, closed over and healed up and has new skin!! This is that beautiful, brand new, pink, baby skin ... and it is healing perfectly. And he knows that there is no - earthly! - way that that could have occurred overnight! And he gives me my new favourite words: "ot chew" (no pain!) yahooooo!! So, his hand with mine, we lay our hands on the rest of his burnt body ... and declare the same healing power into him. We also shared the gospel with him and gave him a Bible and he shared that he already has chosen the Way to Eternal Life (his words!) and has invited Jesus into his heart and knows that He has purpose for him. I love that those words that were so very sucky to speak over someone when they have just experienced more loss than I can imagine can be buried deep within your heart to be raised up when you are ready to hear them in your mind. And he is ready. He knows that he is a total miracle. Please pray with me for this guy. He is trusting Jesus as the healer of his broken heart and his broken body ... and, as God is always true to His Word, we are seeing his body healed as Jesus first ministers Love into his broken heart ... i love that God heals us in all dimensions - not just body or heart or spirit ... but in all. He is our every answer. He is Restoration. Everything that is robbed from us will be returned by His Love and awesome power.

All things new in Jesus' Name.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Stories of Love from Cambodia! (January 3, 2009)

2009-04-13T12:18:00.001+10:00

On Wednesday afternoon, before going into the slum to pray for the sick, i was asking God for some words of knowledge of some specific diseases/conditions to call out and pray for. The very first thing He put in my spirit was the words "the issue of blood" and the story of the woman (in Matthew 8 or 9) who, in her faith to believe that only the Messiah could heal her of her 12 year issue with blood, reached out from the dirt to grab just the hem of His garment, knowing that if she could only touch Him, she would be healed ... and, in His kindness, she was. Instantly. But, when i arrived at the slum, i did not feel that the timing of the word was right and i held onto it ... then pretty much forgot about it. Then, when i was worshipping and hanging with God just before going into the trauma ward yesterday afternoon, i came across that story in Matthew and i allowed the Spirit to write it on my heart, afresh ... and then i met this woman, in the flesh, at the trauma ward. i had walked straight past her, my eye on a man who was more bandage than visible skin, but, this little woman with only a small patch on an open wound on her neck, caught my eye as she let out a 'soksabbai' (how are you?/greeting). i gave her a smile and almost kept walking, seeing people all around her who, to my eyes of flesh, seemed in such greater need than she ... but then i lost that inferior vision and caught, in my spirit, her Father's heart for her. and this was her day. and her calling out to us was her reaching for His cloak ... As she was telling our translator all about what was going on in her body, she kept pointing to her abdomen and i could see a lot of blood on her sarong ... and i just saw the lowly woman in the dirt, reaching out to the hem of His garment ... my hand on her stomach, i shared this with her, we spoke out the testimony of Jesus instantly healing this woman in the Bible and believed for the same miracle for this lady who believed it was hers for the taking. The bleeding stopped. The pain went away. And she is able to sit for longer than she has been able to for a long time ... but, the greatest of all is that she knows that she is not forgotten. People getting healed and having a touch of God invade their body is always extravagant and beautiful; but when they have been pre-selected and God has shown their face or their condition to someone and we can identify them as especially chosen by God for a miracle today? She is so very loved.After eaves-dropping in on this miracle from the bed next door, a 14 year old boy who'd been in a bad moto accident caught my attention. He had been driving his moto (at 14 ... argh ... it's not illegal here, but you see so many kids in moto accidents in the hospitals you wonder why the hell not) and another had slammed into the left side of him, breaking his left thigh bone (the femur?) and skidding him off the right side of the bike, slashing up his right arm and shoulder ... his broken leg was so swollen and he was in so much pain, with huge bruising and he couldn't move it ... the doctors say it is broken all the way through, two completely separate parts now, not just splintered ... but, as i lay my hand on his hand on his leg and we commanded the bone to supernaturally and instantly fuse back together ... he is instantly in no pain. His leg is strapped down in all kinds of splints and stuff with rough plaster all over him ... but i had a picture of him walking freely around the hospital this morning while i was praying for him, so i'm excited to get back on Tuesday :)I also got to pray for my guy without the fingers again. I can't remember if i got a chance to blog about the trauma ward yet or not, but i really love this guy. He couldn't be more than 20 and he lost his pointer, middle and ring finger in an accident about 10 days ago. The first day i came into the trauma ward, he was right there and he caught my eye and then, in the week that followed, everytime i prayed about going back into the wards to pray, i saw his face, i saw his hand ... and i knew that God had a miracle for him. Nothing much happened last time except that he was really encouraged and, after i'd finished praying for him, i turned around and, standing around (people don't have rooms ... it's one open room with about 20 or 30 beds in it) was a crowd of curious khmer people watching me get down on my knees and hold his bloodied hand in mine ... this time was different :) As soon as he saw me, he got this big smile of faith on his face and held his hand out to me, ready to be prayed for. As i prayed, his head was bowed low and i know that he knows that he's got no other option but Jesus ... i felt like God was saying that He first wanted to set him free from the pain, and we can worry about growing his fingers back next. I knew that, if this guy who has just had three fingers chopped off in an accident can sit there in hospital with zero pain, that would be a huge testimony to him and everyone around who - wonderfully! - nosily watch my every move. So, his blood-soaked, bandaged-up hand in mine, we pray ... i look him in the eyes. "ne chew tde?" (terrible english "translation"of "do you have pain?" in khmer - they don't use our alphabet). Bewildered, he looked down at his hand, turning it over and over. Gazing at the front. At the palm ... at me ... Astonishment: "ot chew" ("no pain!") It is one of the most precious moments of my life. His face is the face of someone who has just had the power of the Creator of the Universe invade your body to bring you out of pain and into Love. We then call in a creative miracle from heaven, for his three fingers to grow back. No fingers, yet. But, he and his mother told us that, after we prayed for him last time, they could hear popping and crackling noises in his hand where his three new fingers will grow out ... !! Jesus is doing things that we cannot even see!! And, where he lost a chunk of skin in the accident on the top of his palm, after we prayed last time, brand new skin has grown. And we didn't even pray for that. It is the divine kindness of Jesus that He heals what we do not even know!! He loves to use us, but He also works in spite of us!! heheAlso prayed for a guy in the slum who had been in a moto accident and has his chest all scratched up and, when i was sussing out internal injuries, i felt like God showed me his ribs ... so when i asked him if it hurt to breathe, he said that it was terribly painful ... so we assume he's got broken ribs, maybe even internal damage to his organs. As we lay hands on him, the pain disappears immediately (healed broken ribs!? he never had x-rays, we'd never know for sure...) but, whatever it is, it's totally healed. And, when we went back two days later, he's got brand new skin.Needless to say, i'm loving it here :) I"m thinking it could be an option to come back here, longer-term, to really invest into praying through the hospitals ... it's rare to get such favour and open doors into these departments and i just love what Heartlands is doing here so much and i feel so honoured to work alongside the pastors here who just love Jesus and love their nation incredibly ... I have so much to learn.bless you all ... and know that the hem of His garment is always enough.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Stories of Love from Cambodia! (24 December 2008)

2009-04-13T12:15:00.002+10:00

First off, I’ve been learning and encountering, anew, that God is insatiably Good. He just can’t help it. He is so faithful to His Promise to always be Good that life can never be dull or mundane in Him, because, in His Promise of Goodness is the Promise of Life, healing, restoration, fullness, abundance, provision and joy. He is always more than enough. I’ve been back in Kampong Cham for a few days now and am settling into some kind of a routine ... Every morning we get together, as staff and volunteers (both Khmer and Australian), and worship for an hour/an hour and a half ... there is no better way to start the day. The days here are just give give give, so if you don’t start in the right place, then you end up exhausted and striving and giving out of your limited self, rather than out of the limitlessness of God. We each then have our own jobs and, out of God’s fantastic humour, my allotted job is to feed and bathe pigs. And scoop their poo. (For those of you who don’t know, my dad is a pork wholesaler!) So, at 11am every single day, I put on my pig clothes, which are now perpetually covered in pig food and slobber, regardless of how much I scrub ... and Crocs. I have caved to the Crocs phenomenon. And they are as comfortable as everyone says, dang it! One of the girls from the short term team that I cruised with last week left a pair here when she went back home and I succumbed to the promise of comfort ... and I’m glad I did, because the pigs love to nibble at your feet while you wash them down and feed them ricey slop, so Crocs are the superior choice over Havaianas. While it sounds like the worst job ever - and, at times I wouldn’t entirely disagree - God speaks to me a lot in and through it ... He was talking to me about how this is where Jesus was born: in a dirty pig pen ... about how Jesus is the Servant King and how it is better to serve than to be served ... how the low will be made High ... and it’s just plain humbling. I’m sure the novelty could wear off soon, however, so my roomate, Lane, filmed me with the piggies on my first day, while the smile was still authentic ... it’ll be on facebook for your enjoyment :)The afternoons are outreach time, whether we go to the AIDS ward to give food, to the slums to give rice and baby formula, or Windy village to do a discipleship course with the women. And everywhere we go, we pray. I got to share with one of the pastors last week about some of the incredible miracles that we have seen in the Healing Rooms at Byron, at Tribe meetings, at new age festivals and, best of all ... on the street. I just shared with her my heart, that Jesus would reach people on all level of need: to bring them into relationship with Him, to provide for them practically and to heal their bodies and hearts. And so they have decided that, whenever we go anywhere, to always pair me up with a translator and to let me go off to call out words of knowledge for healing and to pray for the sick, while the rest of the team does the awesome practical stuff of giving out the food, etc. So, on Monday, I went off with the Senior Pastor, Channa, in the slums to pray for the sick ... and we had people being set free from chronic headaches, stomach pain disappearing, fevers lowering ... (and then, today - Wednesdsay - one of the women that I prayed for who had lost kilos in only days, was suffering terrible dehydration from chronic diahrrhoea and vomiting and could barely move ... she ran up to me today and grabbed me with a huge smile and said “I’m healed already!”, and has already put on weight). I then saw this boy, about 15 years old, who, the second he saw me look at him, shoved something under his shirt ... and God said “he’s addicted to sniffing glue”. And so I asked if I could pray for him ... without hesitation, he fell to the ground with his head bowed low and we got to pray that he would be set free from that addiction ... just three little people in the dirt, God’s Presence was so tangible ... and he looked up at me afterwards, a different boy. Hopefully I’ll see him again so I can continue to pray for him ...The AIDS ward, as I emailed/posted the other day is amazing. And there was such a noticeable shift in the atmosphere when we went in yesterday. There was a tangible joy in the air. Normally there is this stench of death throughout the ward as these people lie in their beds, silent as they await their own demise ... but yesterday was different. We walk in and there are little groups of men and women having little picnics together on mats in the ward; patients walking around to visit each other and to sit on each other’s beds for a chat; smiles. These are people who, only on Friday, could not get one spoonful of food into their mouths, who could not move their arm enough to swat away a fly at their face, who could not form a word ... now, in hope and new health!! I did, however, meet a lady, Dai, who has yet to receive her miracle ... Dai is only young and has just had her third baby only two months ago ... she is now in hospital with her beautiful, doting husband looking after her as she fades away to barely anything ... her body is all skin and bones and she cannot speak anymore or swallow food ... as she looked at me, I could tell that she has been so overcome by the work of the enemy that it was not even her looking back at me with wide, unblinking eyes ... we prayed for her for a long time and, as I looked her in the eyes and commanded Freedom into all spiritual bondage and oppression, her eyes began to soften and she managed to speak a few words .... :) There is more for Jesus to heal in her, spiritually, but I know that she got a measure of Freedom yesterday ... and we will continue to contend for her. If you think of her, please pray. We know that it is God’s will to heal every disease, every time. We have seen people healed of AIDS and we know that it is always the Father’s will to do so ... so please call this miracle in with us.I love going to the AIDS ward more than anything else ... and yesterday we got released into an even greater measure of favour. Two of the pastors went to pray for members of their congregation who were in the trauma ward. This couple had had a domestic and figured that, the best way to get back at each other, was to burn their house down (strangely this is not so uncommon in Cambodia...). But, they missed, and burnt themselves... luckily, the children were unharmed, but the wife ended up in Kampong Cham hospital, in the trauma ward, with severe burns to most of her body. (Not sure where her husband is ... I assume they probably didn’t want to have beds side-by-side! haha). When I call this a hospital, please don’t think that this is a sterile, white hospital environment ... the trauma unit is an open-air floor on the top of the building where there are dozens of hard wood beds with mats on them. Heartlands met one of the new church members here at this hospital when, in her “theatre” - the dirty, cobwebbed area under the stairs - they operated on a tumour in her breast with no anaesthetic. The reality of the health system over here is disgusting and Jesus is not only their best option; He is their ONLY option. Anyway, we were waiting for the pastors to pray for their friend and then come back for us to go home ... but then they come racing down the stairs to grab us to pray with them, urgently ... so we put on face masks, grab anointing oil and head up to the trauma unit, walking past a man who has just cut off his two middle fingers and has blood pouring through his bandage; a boy who has just broken his arm and has pins sticking out of it, holding his elbow together; a baby whose face has been burnt by acid and has bandages all over her beautiful face ... and we pray for this lady whose entire body, except her chest, neck and face (thank You, Jesus) has been severely burnt ... and they have old, dirty-looking, torn bandages stuck to it and the rest of her skin is open to the bugs and dust ... argh ... as we pray for her, I realise that this is what I’ve been contending for: to get into the emergency department at hospitals, here, and to pray for the sick and injured and dying ... and to see Jesus be magnified in the most extraordinary way!! I asked the pastors if we could come back to pray for people here, in the trauma and emergency departments ... and so they spoke to the hospital authorities ... and they have granted us permission to come in, in pairs only, to pray through the wards here!! They have heard of the people getting healed of AIDS after we have prayed for them ... and now it is these peoples’ turn. This is so huge for me. I emailed a few people before I left, but I haven’t told everyone, but, before I left, God gave me three things for this trip. Three Promises, three things to expect, three things to contend for ... the first was that I would see people consistently healed of AIDS. Not sure about the consistency yet, that will be a matter of time ... but I’ve seen people healed already ... the second was that He would give me favour to get into the hospitals here to pray with people in the emergency department. Ever since I found out, four years ago, that, if you do not have money on your person when you rock up at the hospital to be treated with a broken leg or an acid burn or whatever ... they will not treat you ... I knew that I wanted to pray for these people who had no other choice. I want to see Jesus meet the needs of those who society rejects. But I have never felt that the time was right ... until this trip. God said that He would send me into these places and I would lay my hands on the sick and dying and injured and they would recover ... and so, the favour has been granted, and we are being sent in, and I know that we will see miracles. Can’t wait to be able to send home stories!!

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Stories of Love from Cambodia!

2009-04-13T12:07:00.002+10:00

I'm finally putting up stories of miracles and Loving abundance from my most recent trip to Cambodia... so these are a few months old now, and just as good to my spirit as when i first wrote them :)

Written December 20, 2008 (from Kampong Cham, Cambodia)

When i left for this trip, there were a few things that i knew i would see ... and i knew that i would see more people healed of HIV/AIDS ... well, yesterday, I received news when i went back to the AIDS ward to give out the food bags and pray for people ... that two people that i prayed for last week have been totally, supernaturally, miraculously healed of HIV/AIDS and have been sent home, in perfect health!! they both also invited Jesus into their hearts before they left ... :) (with us when we were with them last time) i love this because it shows how much the Victory that Jesus bought for us on the Cross brings Victory and Redemption and Healing and Love to every part of us: body, soul and spirit. These guys are going home in perfect health, with hearts that know that they are adored and sought after, and in wonderful relationship with God! Both of these guys were critical, in chronic pain, were just skin-and-bones, were being fed through a tube and could barely move, with one on an oxygen tank ... his family had to massage his chest, constantly, as he coughed in breaths of air, so that he wouldn't choke ... and the hospital staff were, essentially, waiting for them both to die so they could free up another bed. but then Jesus walks through the door, changes an atmosphere and people get set free from death and released into new Life! yahooooo!! i didn't get to see them, myself, because they went home on Thursday and i was in there on Friday ... but the hospital staff and all the other patients saw them go from death to Life ... and wanted us to pray for them!! So i'm excited for when we go back in on Tuesday to see them all also be healed! The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy (uh... somewhere in Revelation! haha) and when we share the testimony of someone getting healed, it releases a powerful anointing for that same miracle to be repeated ... so, as we shared the healing miracle around the wards (which, news proceeded us, and everyone knew already!) people's headaches and fevers and chronic pain and fear were dropping off them instantly and I know that we'll see more miracles when we go back in there next week!! My friend, Amanda, prayed for another lady last week who was about ready to die ... she was saved and was ready to go home to Jesus, but, apparently, He has other plans for her!! She has put on weight in only a few days, has no more pain in her body and they suspect that she will be going home within the next few days ... she's not totally healed, YET, but the doctors will re-test her this week and I know that they will find the results clear! what was really cool about her was that, when Amanda prayed for her last week, she had a vision of a hearse pulling up next to her bed at the AIDS ward, ready to take her into death ... but then, just before it took her away, Jesus came down from the sky and stood between her and the hearse and touched her and she knew that she would be healed!! So, yesterday was just laying hands on everyone that we could ... I prayed for this woman who, because of the way that AIDS reduces your immune system, had constant fevers and headaches ... we prayed for her to be freed from any oppressive spirit (which often manifests in headaches) and commanded the fever to subside instantly ... she said that the headache left instantly and, as i continued to pray, she felt her body getting cooler and cooler from where my hand was on her head, all the way down to her feet, until the fever had completely gone and she had returned to normal temperature!!We've also been praying for this guy who has been very sick for quite some time and the hospital staff have not had much hope for any improvement ... he's about the skinniest adult man I have ever seen in my life and could barely breathe on his own or keep any food down. well, he got saved with some of the other Heartlands people a few weeks ago and they gave him a Bible. He's been reading it everyday, just wanting to learn more and more about this Jesus that now lives in his heart :) and he read that Jesus said to share the good news of His Life to the world ... so he has started sharing the gospel with everyone in the AIDS ward, in the beds around him! There was a buddhist woman next to him who started to ask him about Jesus ... as he shared story after story with her, she then felt to give her heart to this God Who Loves her so unfathomably!! She then got radically healed and sent home to her family ... on the day that she was sent home, this guy felt to give her his Bible because he couldn't let her go back to her village without a Bible to read stories to people from, not knowing if he'd ever get another one again (of course we'd give him another one, but this nation is under such a poverty mentality, everyone stores up for themselves ...) ... so, last week we brought two more Bibles; one for him and one for whoever else he felt needed one. By yesterday, the extra Bible has been given to someone ... and his body is the strongest it has been in a long time and, as we prayed for this chronic stabbing pain in his belly, it left instantly and his body felt peace for the first time in a long time. He has Jesus all over him, just pouring out of his happy happy eyes ... he's about one of the most joyous people I've ever encountered and he's in hospital with AIDS ... just shows that it's about where your heart is, not your circumstances :)God is just really really good. His kindness just blows me away ... as we drove home in the tuk tuk, face mask on, dust blowing in my eyes, i just had such a revelation of His kindness ... He doesn't have to be this kind, really ... it's just Who He chooses to be. I love that He doesn't just save us from death, but then leave us to dwell in our sickness and disease and hopelessness ... He heals every part of us, soul, spirit and body, because He is more than enough. I love praying for these people to be set free from this curse of AIDS because there is NOTHING whatsoever that I could do or offer to be able to make that happen ... it is all the kindness of a Father Who desires His children to know that they are not forgotten ... they are His.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

... the face of a generation ...

2008-08-18T13:59:00.001+10:00

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Christmas in Cambodia Project

2008-08-17T11:58:00.000+10:00

I am helping out (both on the fundraising side and on-the-ground) with a two-part project with Heartlands that we’re calling Christmas in Cambodia.

In Cambodia, the “lowest of the low” on the socio-economic ladder are the people who pick through the trash for recyclables, which they can then redeem for a few cents... this job is often palmed off to the children of the family, who are then bullied and picked on at school by the other (only marginally more affluent) children for being so poor, dirty and smelly. They then often feel so ostracised by the other children that they do not attend school at all and thus completely forfeit their education, often just sealing a relentless cycle of economic and emotional hopelessness. One of the little girls, Srey-Vy shared this:

"I walk everywhere in town to collect cans and plastic bottles each day. My mother doesn't have enough money to feed the family. She loaned somebody's money to open a little shop in front of where we live. But the money she makes can't help us to live a better life. She has to pay the interest everyday.

"I want to go back to study also. I want to study Khmer and English but when I go to school lots of kids at school mocked me. They criticised me and looked down at me. They called me the rubbish girl. They said it's a shame to be friends with me. Nobody wants me, but I want to be a teacher in the future."

Heartlands started the New Start Program as a response to kids like Srey-Vy and has “adopted” twelve children out of these circumstances to give them a new start, with new friends who understand. They are taught Khmer and English in the classroom and have their nutritional needs met by a cook who feeds them substantial meals every school day.

On December 15 2008, a bunch of us will be taking these twelve kids away for four days that will radically change their life. We will be taking them to the capital city, Phnom Penh (about two hours south of Kampong Cham, where many of these poor village kids would never have been), where we will eat wonderful food in fabulous restaurants, take them to the Royal Palace and give them a place to rest their heads where they feel safe... this trip is about blessing these kids with fun experiences and good memories; but more than that, it is about showing them that they are worthy of being treated as Royalty. The world knows that every person should be treated equally as human beings... but I believe that, in Jesus, every person should be treated as Royalty. Once we’re one with Him, we are adopted into the Royal family and God sees us like that... but we don’t want to simply explain that to them as a theological concept; now we want to give them an experience of it. We want them to know that they are worthy of being treated like Princes and Princesses. We want them to know that people all the way in Australia (and beyond...) are contending for Kingdom justice in their world. We want them to know that they are not forgotten. That they are precious. That they are loved. For only $50, a child can experience four of the best days of their life, and a lifetime of seeing themselves as worthy of more.

The second part of the project will be held on one of the days closer to Christmas in Windy Village. Windy Village is a local village that Heartlands “adopted” and goes into twice a week to feed approximately 300 hungry tummies, distribute clothes and educational materials, teach the women how to read and write in their own language and to pray for the sick (and see them healed!!). For Christmas we will be radically blessing them with a huge feast of rice, curry and fruit, catering for at least 600 people who will hear the “good news” of free food and will no doubt join in the festivities! Each meal will work out to be approximately 50 cents (that’s $300 to feed 600 people Christmas lunch!) and will fill their bellies and put hope in their hearts.

We will also be giving out Christmas gifts to all of our friends, with toothbrushes and toothpaste, combs, a dolly for little girls, a toy truck for boys... etc... totalling about $2.50 a package, maybe the first Christmas gift they have ever received. By buying all of the supplies in Cambodia, your $2.50 stretches a lot further, as we are buying locally and in bulk and are also supporting the local economy, rather than sending in products from Australia, which are much more costly. This is $1500 to lavishly bless an entire village with a practical encounter of the Love of God, filtered through the generosity of others.

I would like to offer everyone the opportunity to support this project. Whether it is $50 to send a child on a four-day holiday, $10 to buy four kids’ Christmas gifts or 50 cents to feed someone their Christmas lunch, your gift - whether large or the shrapnel after your coffee - is so so appreciated. Please contact me via a comment on this page or email me on stephinthewilderness@gmail.com and I can give you more information on giving and/or helping us raise money for the Christmas in Cambodia Project :)

I feel really honoured to be a part of this project and that I get to, first-hand, see the effect that our generosity, all the way over here in Australia, has on a heart in Cambodia that longs to be loved. I really look forward to being able to post videos and photos of the holiday away with the New Start kids and the Christmas fun in Windy Village so that you can see that your money, even your spare change, really can change lives.

... love the one ...

... steph ...

Back to Bodia!

2008-08-08T07:27:00.006+10:00

I am going back to Cambodia in December!!

I met with Andrew from Heartlands the other day and we've worked out a "plan", realising that Kingdom "plans" are really just dreams before a big God Who will make them even more glorious and fun and effective than we could ever. So this is the "plan"...

... over the last few weeks I've been asking God when I should be going back, for what purpose, for how long...?? and He began reminding me of one of the greatest days of my life. I was in India for Christmas of 2005 so two of my friends and I decided to pool our money and buy little packages of coloured pencils, drawing

paper, balloons, plastic toy animals, etc... and make one hundred little Christmas blessing packages for yet-unknown-kids. I told my tuktuk driver friend, Vee, what we were doing and he said that he knew of a really poor village

of kids that would love it... so, early on Christmas morning, the three of us piled in one hundred

newspaper-and-twine-wrapped packages into V's little tuktuk and headed off to the village... where we were met with huge smiling faces, hungry for whatever we had for them! It took us all of about ten minutes to hand out all of the parcels... and then

there we so many kids left over... my heart broke. But then God spoke into my heart: "Just love the one. Love the

one right in front of you." And so I did. We spent the whole day playing with the kids, drinking shotglasses of chai in the chai-dens with the old men, sharing stories with the lonely women... and I clearly remember thinking that there's nothing else in the world that I'd rather do.

At that time, I had only ever felt that once before. I was

in Cambodia, for the first time, in December of 2004, and my friends and I took in a bunch of street kids for the day and just radically blessed them with free meals, games, gifts, face painting... but it was as a lonely little homeles

s boy pressed his tiny body against my knees as I painted his face - the first moment of loving physical touch he had experienced for who-knows-how-long... - and I breathed in his sweetness and caught God's Heart for this forgotten one... that I first ever knew that I was ruined for anything else.

And so I'm in this place. I went back to Cambodia a second time in January of 2006 and spent days on the beaches of Sihanoukville playing in the sea with kids whose innocence had

been stripped from them after years of abuse in the sex trade... but on this day, they got to be kids. I didn't spend a cent, I didn't lay my hands on them to pray, I didn't teach or impart anything to them... I just loved them. And it was one of the greatest lessons of my life. I experienced the saddest joy of my life that day as I realised that I could love on them for a weekend, that I could protect them for a day... but who will hug them tomorrow??

In May of this year, I went back to Cambodia. I'm hungry to see where God is taking my heart. And the whole trip was to love the one right in front of me. Whether it was my barely-pregnant landlord who was being pummelled every morning by her alcoholic, twice-her-age husband, patients dying of AIDS (who later got healed of AIDS...!), the tiny premature baby, Lena, with the skin that would never heal, or the forgotten kids of the streets... Father God just kept showing me how to love the one.

And now I know that this is it. And this is the "plan": to love.

I will write about our Christmas in Cambodia Project next time :)

... love the one ...

... steph ...