There is much rejoicing in Heaven!!

There is a party going on in heaven right now! Adena, whom I always write about and is in my pictures, has decided to follow Jesus!! She along with 6 other people were baptised this Sunday. There were also two others there very dear to my heart as well, Katrin and Rosanna.

Adena, Katrin, and Rosanna are the only ones who stuck out Recovery all the way to the end. Of the 16 women who began, these ladies are the ones who have gone through the battle of sin that wages within and held out to the end. (For all of you out there thinking "Uh...isn't recovery supposed to be confidential??? Don't worry, I have been given explicit permission to proclaim to the world what God has done!!!)

That day my heart swelled with joy and pride for these women and such gratitude that God chooses to use me in their lives.

With Adena, how crazy is our God that He sent Adena from Canada and me from Texas all the way to Hamburg, Germany, to meet in the city when we both lived in the country. He didn't put any friends in our path for the first two months so He could bind our hearts together and make us desperate for friends; thirsting for something so much bigger. BAM!! IBC came along and Adena was desperate enough for fellowship with people that she came with me to church and fell in love with the people's love for one another. Started going to a bible study on Tuesdays and hanging out with all these Christians... Then her being such a good friend to me, she decided to help me organize Recovery when it first got started. She also figured since she was my secretary she may as well go too. She had been reading the bible off and on and praying to God, but I really think that having to do the study and getting into the word and having to truly look at her life, had such a huge impact. When I first met her, she told me this was her year to find herself and that is why she came to Germany because something big was going to happen--she could just feel it. When she told me that, I wanted to tell her it that she was going to find Jesus! Only now does she know how true those words were. My favorite thing to hear out of her mouth is " I cannot deny God is real. He has changed me. I am not the same person that I was and I don't even know how it happened, but I know it was Him."

Our God is so extravagant and He will use whatever means He pleases to reveal Himself to mankind. He just asks us to trust Him with the crazy and come out and play with Him. I have had fun playing!

Katrin is a very special woman to me. I am training her right now to lead the recovery ministry here in Hamburg. She has only been a Christian for a year now, but God has called her into deep waters already and she has been obedient to follow. I have never seen a young christian so obediant and faithful to the things that He has called her to and takes delight in it. This woman seeks God with all her heart and wrestles with Him until He wins...

Rosanna has been a believer for a long time. Her baptism I can relate to. She was baptised at 18, she is now 38. After going through this step study and going through her 5th step, she felt like she was truly alive and God had become real to her. All the things that haunted her are gone and she feels free to live and rejoice and see God for who He really is! So amazing! Many people were quite stunned that she was getting baptised because she was well known in the church and people knew her for being a strong christian who had already been baptised....

I praise God for this day and how awesome He is that He would call us to Himself; that He would choose to display His glory in such broken vessels like us. Blows my mind. I am at a loss for words to end this blog. There is not enough praise I could give God for what has happened...