Awake My Soul

Its been a while once again but I can assure you all who have been reading my blogs that you will understand why it has been so long since my past update. A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of having the father of one of my staff leaders speak about the Father Heart of God. Bob Hamp is everything you would expect to see when you think of a father. A kind smile, a welcoming face, a compassionate look in his eyes, and a gentle spirit. He has hair to match his enormous amounts of wisdom and is truly a man desiring to become more and more like God in a fatherly way. During this week, Bob mentioned some great points that my friend Sarah and I liked to call, "Facebook statuses", because each thing he would say, would hit us like a ton of bricks because of the revelation it would have to it the more we thought about it. A few examples of were these, "God trusts you more than you think", "God gave you the will to choose him as a source of life". Boom!! What?! God gave me the option to choose him instead of living my own life of misery? Seems an easy choice to make but everyday we sometimes choose to live our own lives without him. Sad but true. Also! Don't ever take a nice long hug for granted. Have you ever hugged someone for a good 5 or 10 minutes? If you haven't, then you need to find the net person you see and ask them if you could hug them. A hug is so incredibly powerful. At the end of this week, my roommate and I both decided that we wanted to get baptized. Long story short, my roommate and I were sitting in a church sermon and we both had a revelation about being baptized because we couldn't remember when we really chose to do it to proclaim our love and our commitment to follow the Lord God the rest of our lives. So on May 11th, 2012, I was baptized in the Pacific Ocean on the shores of Hawaii by my amazing school leader, Jonathan Zerkle.

Being baptized was the best thing that I have ever done. One way to describe what the meaning of being baptized was is best decried by my dear friend Cammie Bullock. She said, "Being baptized is our way to respond back to what Jesus Christ did on the cross. An act of his proposal of dying for us. The only thing we can do to correctly respond back to him is to live our lives for him. Accept his proposal". So thats what I did. I said yes to spending eternity with the one who created me out of dust. The one who died for my sins and desires nothing more than to have me love him back for as long as I am on this earth. Week five: Amazing. 
One way to describe week six: Wow. This week was called Revival week. Our speaker, Andy Byrd, spoke to us about the revival of the heart that needs to happen in every Christian. Then he drew a cycle that better explained what he was sharing. For each Christian, there needs to be a revival of the heart. From the revival of the heart comes the reformation of the lifestyle. When that happens, things start to change. When that one individual changes, they influence others. Through that individual and those people that were influenced, a community may change. From the community, a city. A city, a state. A state, a nation. It all starts from that one individual that things start to change. It may not happen in their life time but it will take its place in history, the reformation of the world. A Global Awakening. One thing that stayed with me through out the week of lectures from Andy was this, The biggest injustice is that God crated man out of dust, breathed his breath into him and man turning away from him. Holy cow! That definitely made me think a little bit. How could we do that to the one who made us out of nothing?! God so graciously made me so that I would love him every moment of my life, yet I turn away and say that I am more important. I can take care of myself. I can do it alone. When in reality, theres no possible way I could. Thankfully, God has grace over me and his mercies are renewed every morning so that I can always turn back to him.
Week Seven: Devastating. This week was a big wake up call to what is not known about abortion. This week was about biblical world views. Heres a crazy statistic on what rocked my world. Did you know that there are 200 million girls missing from our generation. Two Hundred Million Girls. All because of abortion. One reason for this is because of the Chinese culture. There is an underground trend that families that only want boys as their first child so that they're name is carried on and they can help support the family by working. This injustice is called Gendercide. So if the woman in the family has a baby girl instead of the desired boy, they either leave the baby girl in the hospital for it to be taken to an adoption agency or the take it and kill the newborn and forget it ever was born and the family keeps trying however many times to get that one son. But China isn't the only place where this tragedy happens. It also takes place in India. These two are the only places that have a major affect on the nation that are known but who knows how many more children are not living on this earth because of selfish desires. A way to help stop this from happening is to start in our own country. Everyday there are thousands of babies being aborted because the mother simply doesn't want the baby. The only possible way to prevent this is to spread awareness. Tell others about how much affect this is taking in our nation and how much of an injustice it is to take a life that doesn't even have a fighting chance to say anything. Great things start off small and through the years, things will change. All it takes is one individual. 
These past few weeks have been killer simple because of all the information I have been getting from all the speakers, but it has been amazing to learn all these things. I can see now that I am better being prepared for my Outreach, which is only FIVE weeks away!! I still cannot believe that I will be living and serving in South Africa with seven other close friends that I consider family. 


Prayer Requests!!
1. That those in my group, including myself, receive more than enough money to be able to pay the rest of our Outreach fees.
2. Safety while we are in South Africa. Theres major spiritual warfare going on over there and we only ask that you pray that we are mentally and spiritually prepared for whats to come. 
3. Guidance from God. 
4.That he brings those people that need help to us and that we are prepared to lead them to Him.


Also, I am still in need of $3,000 for the rest of my Outreach fees and I only have a week to raise it. But I know that my God is bigger than money and that he will provide for everything. This verse spoke to me so personally. 
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me."
Isaiah 6:8
God asked and I answered. Money will not stop me from going to South Africa and teaching the word of 
God. He will get me there.


If you would like to donate anything please contact me ASAP at cpayala21@yahoo.com. I will talk to you more in detail how you can donate. 
Thanks so much for reading and your prayers. Love you all very much.
Blessings!


Enjoy!