So last night Dawn and Elise both went to the hospital, and came back with the official news. Strep throat!! Right now they are the only ones that are sick, but a lot of people have been fighting sickness on and off and have sore throats and whatnot. Since strep throat is really really contagious, please PLEASE pray for the last couple of days. We really want to finish strong here, but Mrs. Heisler especially has huge shoes to fill so we are going to need a lot of grace. The doctors said she is allowed to work again tomorrow, so hopefully she will be able to come with us again. Her and Elise are both feeling a lot better this morning but they are still sick.

Thanks again for being with us in prayer. God is good.

Prayer and whatnot

Hello all

We are nearing the last few days of our missions trip... I can hardly believe it.

Things are going well, but please pray especially for these last few days, that we may be able to use every single minute and that every word that comes out of our mouths will not be from us but from God.

Also please pray for the team still, it really is hard to live with people in such close quarters for two weeks at a time, and often tensions build up over little things. They are all amazing though and I have an incredible bond with them. Amazing what the fellowship of the Spirit can do.

Pray for a release for the people of Okreek. We have seen and heard the devil in ways that are really scary. There are kids here who really do have demons living inside them. Pray for wisdom, and that if it is God's will, Someone may be able to cast them out. But more than that, pray that Jesus will come and live in these kids and completely change their lives and the lives of those around them.

The devil is so real. But there is no room for darkness when a heart is filled with light.

Wow.

Yep

You guessed it.

Monica got her purse back.

God is amazing.

I am so drained right now. Physically, but mostly emotionally. I can't even begin to tell you all the things that have happened even just in this day, but all I can say is God is amazing.

So amazing.

Please keep praying.

Ok so maybe not

Hello again.

Yes I was going to stop posting... hehe. Maybe not.

I just had another prayer request. Monica's purse got stolen today. A couple days ago a huge amount of money was stolen out of it, then today they took her purse. So please pray for peace for her, and if at all possible that she could get it back.

What do I mean if at all possible.

Good grief.

Let me re-phrase that... if God wills it in this amazing plan I am seeing unfold, that she oculd get it back. :-)

He has answered pretty much every prayer we've had so far. Today my small group went from 2 kids to 7. :-) Thankfully Kramer took some of them so I only had 4.

Anyway, on that note:

I wish I were a toilet scrubber
That is what I really want to be
For if I were a toilet scrubber
Everyone would want to scrub with me!

This is what you call, "working with a will" Courtesy of Joel and Kramer (yes he's my cousin)

hmmm

Hello!

Things are pretty awesome over here. VBS is going well, but yesterday we only had a couple of kids, so pray for attendance, but pray also that we look at souls not numbers. In a way having less kids gives us a chance to focus more on each of them individually.

Please pray for energy for the team in the next two weeks! We need it.

This is an incredible team though. (I think perhaps I've said that before maybe? lol)
The worship and stuff is awesome... they are sing-out-loud-people just like us. :-)

I am not going to post all our crazy stories on here right now in the interest of time, and just because it's more fun to tell you. Ask me about hall moniters... (which I didn't end up being because I am now on the cleaning and lunch prep teams instead) and about room cleaning...

The hotel we are staying in is AWESOME too... lots of stories behind that one. :-)

Anyway, now that you are all annoyed and curious... lol

I just wanted to let you know that everything is really going good. We are definitely having our challenges... (pray for patience for me!!! :-) But God is doing amazing work.

However, I am really feeling right now that I need to be here and only here. I don't know if you know what I mean but sometimes it just really hard to focus and for that reason I think I am going to try and stay pretty much completely off the computer... sorry to dissapoint you all! It will be very hard for me but honestly I think it's what I need to do right now. I may post updates if anything big and exciting happens.

But never fear! The On Call blog is being updated, so now you can get the "official" news!

http://blog.oncallforchrist.org/

I am not saying I won't post anymore, I'm just saying I need to be here. If you don't understand, don't worry about it. :-P

Prayer request

Hey everyone, just one more prayer request for you guys.

Mrs.Dawn Heisler was really sick this morning, she is feeling better now, but please pray especially for her and the other members of our team that are sick because there are quite a few of them. For those of you who don't know Mrs. Heisler she basically holds our team together... she does all the cooking and is doing some of the messages for site 1 and she just does SO much for our team. I think this is why the devil is especially targetting her.

Thank you guys SO much for your prayers, you have no idea how much it means to us that we have people at home being a huge part of this ministry and fighting our battles with us from home.

In Christ!

Heidi <><

Day 1 of VBS!!!

Hello again!

Just a super-quick update to let you know that our first day at Okreek went amazingly well.
Usually the first day is one of the toughest so we were prepared for the worst but everything went super smooth and we were able to totally reconnect with the kids! There weren't a lot there, but it helped to have lots of 1-on-1 with the ones that were.
To be honest, I was a little worried that my little friends wouldn't remember me, or would pretend not to, since that is what they do a lot, but as soon as I stepped out of the car Brailei was there with a hug and Mallory went running off to hid between the vending machines and make me come find her. :-) So needless to say that was awesome. I only had those two in my small group, plus Katie, my awesome assistant who is seriously one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet. Apparently though, my group is supposed to be the biggest by the end! I have like 5-6 year-olds I think. Site 2 with the older kids also had a great day, I think they started with no one there at all, then prayed and ten minutes later 6 kids showed up! So that was good. I think they had a really good day.

Please keep praying for:

Structure (once we have a lot of kids and everything gets a little less "new" it gets a lot harder for things to run smoothly.)
The people who are doing the messages/puppet shows (give them a good message... I know some of them are a bit nervous right now about it.)
Unity on the team!! This one is very important because I think the devil is going to try his best. This is an awesome team, and we get along super well, but when 10 girl are sharing one hotel room and one bathroom... yeah. Especially since everything went so well yesterday, we really can't let our guard down for things like that.
SALVATION FOR OKREEK!!! Please pray especially that we get a chance to witness to the adults there, and just for a bigger vision than these two weeks that we have here now. God can do amazing things.

So I guess that update wasn't quite as "quick" as I thought, lol

I need to go get our hotel room clean... we have a little competition going on... winners get taken out to ice cream, lol. Except Kramer (Andrew Williams) and his room just spent about as much money as the ice cream would cost buying a massive bribe for Monica, our "judge"
:-D She took it, but they didn't win. hehehe

Yes, this is an awesome team. We have a lot of fun.

We're here!

Hey Everyone!

A couple journal entries from our trip so far!

Sat June 14-AM
So here is my first noble attempt at keeping "updated"!!! Apparently I have the official role as a "hall moniter" so keeping a journal shouldn't be too hard... :-)
So, we are finally on our way to SD!! WE had a really nice couple of days at the Haines', just relaxing, hanging out, and doing some prep work. Thursday night we walked down to the retreat center in the dark and did some praying and singing. I reall can't say enough about the prayer times here. Everything and everyone is covered in prayer, and everyone at home is praying too, it really is an amazing feeling. God is with us in an awesome way. Sata is fighting hard against this trip though, a couple people were and are sick, people got stranded/locked their keys in the car after the retreat, and both our major routes are flooded right now, so we're taking a detour! We really feel it too, people are tired and feeling kind of oppressed. Even I am, after being so excited, finding myself looking for fault in everything, thinking that the schedule is not as good as last year, and even.... *gasp* missing everyone at home! :-P But there is also definitely a spirit of excitement, even more so because we can see the devil working extra hard against us. I think God has something incredible planned for this year, especially because Melany is going back in the fall to do her student teaching and Leah-Beth and a bunch of the guys are actually going out too, to work there and do mission work. I am really excited about what God is going to do, and it is AMAZING to see the On Call team and especially our wonderful cousins!!

Sat June 14-PM

Well we are getting close, we are very much definitely in SD nopw. I had forgotten how absolutely amazingly gorgeous it is out here. Especially now, when the sun is setting in the huge expanse of sky and giving the grass as far as you can see a sort of golden glow... It's been a long day, but thankfully I have in my posession the amazing talent of complete laziness, so spending a day sitting around, eating, sleeping, talking, and being amused by my ridiculous cousins is not entirely beyond my capabilities. :-) I will be very ready to get there though... with the detour we are going to be driving for 15 hours. :-S Oh... and I HATE JUNK FOOD!! Right now I am craving mashed potatoes like never before... :-P

Sun June 15-PM

It's been a good day... I usually did not like Sundays here because they are so very different from ours... but today was good. We had "team church" where we spent a couple of hours in the word and Andrew "preached" a sermon for us... it was good. Not like your sermons though Dad. :-) Then we spent most of the day so far doing orientation stuff and now I think some if not all of us are going to Okreek for a while. They are figuring that out right now while I type. The schedule is definitely different this year, and at first I was not too happy with it, but it helps to hear all the logistics behind it so I think it should be pretty good. I really miss the team members that aren't here this year though... :-( But it's a good team and I really am having an incredible time. There is something very special about having your life completely and totally focused on God for two weeks and spending all your time either worshipping or serving. I hope I can bring some of that back.

Anyway, congratulations if you got through all of that, and I will try and keep updated whenever possible, but the schedule is pretty crazy here so yeah. I always love emails though! :-) Thanks to everyone so much for their prayers, and please keep praying especially for health in the team! It is getting better but still there. These next two days are going to be huge too, it always takes a couple to getting everything running well and I'm sure things will be pretty crazy.

I love you all!

Heidi <><