Thailand!

We woke up at 4am and left for the airport on December 13th! Our flight left at 7 and we stopped briefly at the honolulu airport and then 10 hours later arrived in Tokyo! Weird thing was it was Tuesday(the 14th) at like 4pm! We basically skipped the 13th! We then flew about 3 hours to Taipei and had a 5 hour layover there! And finally arrived at our destination, Bangkok, at 3 AM... SO MUCH TRAVELING! but i slept seriously the whole time on the plane.. well other than one of the landings and about an hour and a half of watching like mike.. I didnt even realize i was tired! haha. At every stop someone would make a comment about how they were scared at some point because the plane was shaking so much... but i guess i slept through that too :P

The base here is actually SO nice.. The rooms are nicer than the ones in Kona! There is air conditioning!.. Definitely not used to that anymore! We woke up at around 9 and had orientation (not really sure why because were only here today and tomorrow) but it was fun! Learned a lot about the Thai culture! They took us to lunch at this place called the turtle or something? SERIOUSLY SOME OF THE BEST FOOD I'VE HAD SINCE I LEFT GEORGIA! SO good. I seriously feel spoiled here... but that'll end soon! We are going to nong khai to visit the villages.. As weird as this might sound i would way rather be there in the villages than here! That is where my heart is.

I am so excited!!!!

I love being in Asia.

The end of dts.

Wow what a journey it has been! Sorry I havent written anything in SO long.. They have been keeping us busy! But today was our last lecture day! Bittersweet for sure. Sad its over BUT SO READY TO GO ON OUTREACH! We leave in 3 dayS!!!!

Please keep my team in your prayers.. Our leader still does not have all her funds. I believe that God will provide though. Also, for unity -- so far we are the only team that hasnt had any bumping of heads or anything which is awesome! Pray that continues. I will try to update this if I ever get the chance while I'm over in southeast asia.

I will get email more than anything else though so please feel free to email me at RMCooley92@gmail.com

Have a merry christmas!!!

Blessings :)

Overcome

Another week has FLOWN by! Seriously where does the time go?

This week we were privileged enough to have Don Gillman come speak to my DTS and compassions! I've been asked several times what the topic was this week and honestly, I dont think there was a specific one! Usually when someone doesnt have a main topic its all over the place.... but he was amazing.

The first day he asked us to give one word definitions of what we thought of our grandparents generation, parents generation, and our generation... As we discussed each generation the definitions got worse and worse.. He asked us to imagine what the next generation was going to look like -- it was a scary thought. We all talk about changing people all around us and yeah thats great but change starts with us. We need to make sure we are praying for them and settting good examples... He also talked about setting our priorities straight.. 1)Jesus 2)Others 3)Yourself -->JOY.

We are called to be different, NOT NORMAL! God has called each one of us to something HUGE!...

He also talked a little about testimonys.. I never really went off the depend so I always say that I dont have that big of a testimony.. BUT THAT IS NOT TRUE. He taught us that the best testimony is not what we were pulled out of but what God protected us from! Which is kind of nice.. because I thought wow i have a terrible testimony.. and honestly thats a TERRIBLE thing to think.

One of the most commanded things in the bible is to be courageous! It is used 366 times. But remember.. Courage without wisdom is foolishness.

There is a statistic that 95% of christians will NEVER lead someone to Christ.. Imagine if each christian would just lead ONE person to the Lord!.. The world would be a completely different place.. And quite frankly, it's not too much to ask.

We all have fears in life.. Fear of rejection, vulnerability, loneliness.. Just fear of man in general.. How many times have we missed something HUGE because we were afraid to step out in faith and never even know about it? I dont wanna miss being a part of something big God is doing because I was afraid.

Relaxing

Well last week was VERY relaxed! We had Connie and Craig Kline as our guest speakers! I'm not exactly sure the topic because we talked about Spiritual gifts, Authority, Finances, and other random stuff but it was still good! They are two very amazing people! The first thing that they told us, the thing they live by, is people are way more important than things in any circumstance. They truly live by that and God has definitely blessed them because of it.

Connie is actually our health care teacher (which i'll tell you about in a minute).. Also, she has a HUGE heart for Cambodia! :)

I dont know if I wrote this in an earlier blog or not but justice dts has three different things they wanna equip each team to do. We all got to choose between water purification, health care, and education! I chose health care! We meet every Wednesday for a little over an hour. This previous week they taught us different things on HIVs/AIDs! Then she told us some stories about Cambodia! One was about a hospital we'll be visiting.. I cannot begin to tell you how excited i am!

Daniel got baptized today! We were all so excited for him... I cant even begin imagine the party that was going on in heaven!!

Haiti

Please please please pray for Haiti... There is a tropical storm about to (hit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11696626)

A whole lot of everything

Matt Rawlins was our speaker last week! HE WAS AMAZING. My brain was spinning. He really challenged us in a bunch of different ways. The hardest one for me is to be vulnerable. He started off saying we need to be vulnerable to God because he makes himself vulnerable for us... Let me just tell you, I HATE BEING VULNERABLE.. I know most people do. But I rarely make myself vulnerable, and when i say rarely, i basically mean NEVER. So I was like all right.. You know, I'll try for God.. Then he was like not only do you have to make yourself vulnerable to God but also to people.. I was like DANGIT! haha. But I'm going to try my hardest.

Another thing he taught us was about intimate reverence(respect). How people from asia rarely have an intimate relationship with God because theyre so used to having so much respect for their fathers and God.. To the point where there is no intimacy. but how the westerners have less respect for their parents and we're used to having a super intimate relationship with families and everything.. but how most people are not used to both. And we need to have both with God. He also talked about how women should submit to their husbands so that their kids can see respect and learn from it. And the husband must love his wife like Christ loves the church so the kids can see intimacy. I love that! I've never heard it put that way..

This weekend was great. Friday night we got dressed up and went to David Cunningham(Lorens, the founder of ywam, son) house(which was incredible) to work a halloween fundraiser. It was a blast! I was in charge of the bean bag toss! Saturday me and mary ran(literally) to safeway(a grocery store) which is only like 1 1/2 miles away but its up this HUGE hill.. I was pretty proud of us. Then we bought some SUPER healthy snack foods and then went to subway where i had the most amazing salad! We came back and cleaned our room SPOTLESS. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor.. It gets prettty gross really fast having 8 girls in one room. Then we went to "candyland" where the compassion dts was working.. It was a huge free halloween party thing. Today we hitch hiked to Magic Sands beach. It was the most amazing day for the beach! We were there for a few hours and then went and got icecream(Half baked -- aka the most amazing thing you'll ever put in your mouth). Then went to the pier and just sat and talked and took goofy pictures :) we were gone literally ALL day.

I'm looking foward to another busy and exciting week! :)

Break my heart for what breaks yours

Since the cholera outbreak in Haiti we've REALLY been interceding for them... But today, it was to a whole new level.. I really felt my heart break for the people of Haiti... Theres an opportunity to go help staff at a base in Haiti after my outreach.. Maybe Gods calling me to that? I dont know.. but please pray for Haiti, they're desperate.