Sam McDaniel Update

Samantha McDaniel is in the final portion of her Youth With A Mission trip to Brazil. Sam reports that it has been a time of growth and stretching. On her webpage, Sam writes:

Not gonna lie, this outreach has been extremely stretching for me. Who would have thought that God would continue to minister to you while you minister to others? I know some of you are thinking, "No duh Sam". But I guess in some sick way I thought you had to be perfect with God to minister to others, yet He still uses you in our weaknesses. I think that´s pretty crazy, but who am I to question God´s ways?

God has hit some areas of my life that needed to be nailed down. I´ve been going through some tough heart surgery during this outreach, more so then I ever did during lecture phase. But thankfully I have an awesome team who prays for me, and awesome leaders to guide me. I am sooo grateful to have a team that is united in Christ. Everyday I think, "Wow! This is how the body of Christ should act!". We are able to serve each other and humble ourselves, which isn´t always easy for someone like me who likes to be "calm, cool, and collective". Like I´ve said, outreach has been a stretch. This outreach just hasn´t been easy, but I know that it will produce fruit in the long run.

Jesus said in John 15 that He is the vine and we are the branches. For every branch that doesn´t produce fruit, He cuts off. But for every branch that does produce fruit He prunes. Sounds kind of silly, right? Yet pruning produces even more fruit. And that´s exactly what God is doing in my life right now, particularly in leadership, worship, and life in general. He´s pruning stuff so that more fruit will be produced. And all I need to do is to remain and rest in Him, and He will remain in me. And quite honestly, I´m still trying to figure out how to "rest" in Him and yet still minister to people. Somehow I think that defeats any purpose that He is trying to do in my life.

I could go on and on about what God has taught me on this outreach. And it´s amazing to see how people are receiving us, and how they are receive the Gospel. Ministry wise, I´ve learned not to depend on what I physically see. Who knows how many people have been impacted by the Gospel, and we don´t even know it? So I´m learning to depend on my spiritual eyes, and not what I see in the physical. That´s a tough one for a lot of people, I think. But I could be wrong.

Anyways, we´re here in Brasil for another two weeks, and then we have a week of debrief in Denver. I´ll be back in VA in three weeks.

Isn´t it weird how time flies during DTS?

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S-a-m of the J-U-N-G-L-E

Samantha McDaniel has finished the first part of her Youth With A Mission trip to Manaus on the Amazon river in Brazil. She wrote home:

Just to let you know that we are out of the jungle. I had diaherra for a week, but nothing too bad. It´s all good. Everyone seems well,except Trey still feels like crud. We´ll be in Manuas for a week, and then hopefully we´ll fly out to Forteleza next Wednesday. The boat ministry was awesome!

Living on the boat was pretty cool,and we worked with a few villages off of the Rio Negro. We helped them with simple tasks, and presented programs in the evening. In Latin America, people don´t do anything during the afternoon, so we basicallly had free time every day. I was kinda discouraged at first because it didn´t look like we were producing any fruit.

But apparently, according to the base director at YWAM Manaus, we did exactly what we were supposed to do. It takes at least a year to see any fruit at all. In the Amazon, it takes time and relationships to lead people to Christ. At one of the villages we visited, a group of people from a local church tried to preach the gospel to them but not in a loving way. They were chased out with machetes. But that didn't happen to us! People really see the love that we have in this team,and our unity is very strong.

Please keep praying for us, especially for out health and for the Varig flights. Last I heard, Varig is now flying but they could cancel our flight at the very last minute. Who knows? I´ve learned to be very flexible on this outreach.

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An Update on Deela

In Step Al Dyck of Christian Associates - who visited Clear River last year - writes on his blog:

It doesn't appear as yet that the chemo is making an impact on the cancer so we need to go 4 more weeks before we can determine it's effect. Her markers had continued to rise. The good news is that Deela's red blood cell count is healthy and she can now stop having to take the epo injections. She is also getting some relief from the hydrocortazone on the rash and blisters on her feet and hands. You can read the whole article by clicking on the title of this post.

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Pray for Iraq

One of the links in the sidebar menu at the right of this page is Operation World an extensive prayer guide edited by Patrick Johnstone. The book is a listing of countries arranged alphabetically.

It features information on the population and demographics of each country as well as its religious background, economy, ethnic makeup and other information. For June 30th and July 1st the country is Iraq. The need for prayer for this nation is obvious.

The Operation World text was completed in 2001, before the September 11th terrorist attacks, so some of the references are dated. However, the information gathered up until that time - people who have never heard the gospel, the percentage of the national population that is Christian, etc., remains important. Click on the link for more information.

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