Nyhetsbrev Juni och foton från Israel & Etiopien / Newsletter June and photos from Israel & Ethiopia

 

Nyhetsbrev 11-06 Klicka på denna länken för nyhetsbrev på svenska

Newsletter 11-06 Click on this link to get the newsletter in English

Megan after getting kicked out from Boombamela, the New Age Festival

Woman from the Philippines to whom we got to give this painting to and pray and prophesy over.

All of us that went to the Boombamela Festival plus the Filipno woman we met on the beach there.

On our five hour drive through the desert to get to the festival we drove past the Dead Sea.

Orthodox Jewish family in the Old City in Jerusalem

This woman used to be a famous model for a clothing company in Israel. Through modeling she got addicted to drugs which lead her into prostitution. A while before we can to the shelter where she used to come her and her best friend had been in their apartment having withdrawals cause they couldn't get enough money for drugs. Her friend tripped out cause her body needed the drugs and she beat this woman to death with an iron rod.

This is where the women can get a chance to sleep and get rest during the day.

The basement where the shelter is is very moldy and run down but David who runs the place is trying the best he can to make it look nice and welcoming

At the Door of Hope they had a small beauty salon. Sadly this old brush was all they had there for the girls to make themselves feel beautiful.

The stairs is the entrance for the shelter and in the back to the right is the beauty area. On the fridge the girls can put up pictures if they want to to make them feel like they have a home.

This is the alley where you can find the entrance door to the Door of Hope shelter. On the door there is a big sign that reads: "No sex here"

 

Traditional Ethiopian Woman

 

Woman mixing spices

 

The Team

 

Simone, a girl from the YWAM kids home after a face paint session

Ethiopia Praise Jesus Story

Hello family and friends, I thought that the last update was gonna be the last one but Jesus had in His mind that we would finish our outreach with a bang so I needed to write and tell you all what happened. As I wrote before we have been going to visit homeless people that live under a bridge and we have been going back there several times since they have asked for Bibles and clothes. One man was especially on our minds. His name is Yosef and he comes from a rich background but when he became a Christian his muslim family threw him out and he now lives on the street. He wanted a Bible so desperately so we really had it on our hearts to give one to him. Could you imagine living on the streets and suffering like that cause of your faith in Jesus and then not even having a Bible to read? Last Friday it was our third time there and we still hadn’t found Yosef again and we feared that he might have been one of the many people that the government had cleaned up and taken to work in the jungle. Before we went we were praying that we would find him and that God would give us other diving appointments. When we got there Yosef was nowhere to be found so we sat down with a group of about 8 other men and we started to share with them about The Holy Spirit and about Jesus. More people started to gather and some of us started to pray for them since some of them were sick with HIV. Many of them men already knew Jesus but after some time I asked if there was anyone that wanted to receive Jesus that hadn’t before and if they wanted to be filled with the Holy Spirit. One man raised his hand. His name is Samuel and we got to pray with him to receive Jesus. It was amazing. I have never seen a persons face literally change. He had a sad countenance before but after the prayer he had a huge smile on his face and during the rest of our time there he was a lot more talkative and he was laughing. It was so cool to see. While this was happening two other people, one young boy and a man came to some of the students that were praying for the sick people and said that they also wanted to receive Jesus they were just too shy to put up their hands before when the question was asked. So these two people also got to receive Jesus that day. Yey, what a party in heaven! We also met a man who is Ethiopian who promised that he would take these people to his church. So praise Jesus for that as well. It is hard for them to find a church cause not a lot of churches around here would accept them because of they way they look and their poverty. We stayed for a bit longer and then it was time for us to leave and so we did. We had handed out all the Bibles we brought with us which was good but we were still sad that we hadn’t found Yosef. But God has a good plan. After about ten minutes of walking we hear a man shouting after us. We turn around and it is Yosef. The first thing out of his mouth is: Do you have a Bible for me? He wanted one so bad. Since we were close to our house by this time we invited him to come and have dinner with us and one of the youth from the orphanage gave Yosef his Bible since we already handed out all of ours. It was beautiful to see. We also took up an offering for Yosef so that he could pay a deposit for an apartment cause if he has a place to live he can get a job. During the evening he got to talk a lot with an Etiopian woman that lives with us. She is an amazing woman of God and I think she encouraged him a lot. The next day we went back to the bridge again and had a small Bible study with the men from the day before. It was good to see them again and we also brought some food for them. We got to pay for two bus tickets for two men that needed to go and visit their families and Samuel still had a smile on his face. It was a good day. The only sad part was that we wished that we could have done more for them. They kept talking about that they needed jobs and shelter but that they didn’t know hos to get it. And there was nothing we could do. I guess it just really showed us that the two handed gospel is so needed. We need to help people to come to Jesus but also with their practical needs. All we could do was pray for them but I know God cares and He will open a door for them. One of our translator that were with us shared his testimony cause when he was a kid he had lived in the same spot as they were living now. He got taken to the jungle but escaped and after some years some YWAMers found him and took him to the YWAM orphanage where he now lives. I hope his story encouraged them. Thank you all for reading and sharing in ours and Jesus’ joy over these people. See you all soon in California. Love, Paulina, Philip, Lea, Sarah, Alissa, Justine, Karman, Audrey and Marissa

Ethiopia Update 3

Salamno,

Only one week left. It feels so weird.
But we have had a great time here and many of the girls have grown very fond of the 22 children at the YWAM orphanage where we are staying. Two nigths a week we are doing a Bible study with them which has been going very well. It is such an awesome opportunity to be able to disciple the boys and girls here. They all have crazy stories of how God brought them to the orphanage. It is amazing to hear about how God has saved all of them from the hopeless situations they were in before. We praying a lot for them that when they grow up and are ready to leave the orphanage that they will still follow God with their lives.
We have also continued to help put at different feeding programs around the city and we have had chances to preach and lead worship at different churches and youth groups.
And we are all looking forward to this last last week cause we will be doing a lot of fun and interesting things. These are some of the things we will do:
On Thursday we will visit a dump where YWAM has a house for teenage girls where they can learn different trades. The team will share testimonies and about a relationship with Jesus encourage the girls about how valuable they are to God. We have also started to do several murals at the YWAM orphanage and we will finish them this week. We are also teaching at a school again and in a youth group.
On Friday we will return to an area where a lot of homeless people hang out. We have been there twice before and have been able so share about what God has done in our lives and we have taken some people out for lunch to treat them as the sons of God that they are, to give them dignity again. Some of them asked for Bibles and we went and got some but when we returned a few days later the police had been there and taken all the homeless to the jungle where they are forced to do slavery work. They do this frequently but this time it was because the prime minister was gonna come to the city and they wanted it to look nice for when he got there so they cleared up all the people that they thought would make the city look messy. It is horrible to think that people are being treated as trash and cleaned up and taken away like garbage. We are praying that when we go back in Friday that some people will have returned and that the ones that were hiding from the government would have emerged again so that we can give the Bibles to the ones that asked for them.

Besides that God has done so much in our team. We have all grown so much and we thank God for the different challenges we have faced that have drawn us closer to Him. Thank you so much for all your support and prayers!

Love,
Paulina, Philip, Justine, Karman, Alissa, Audrey, Lea, Marissa, Sarah

Ethiopia Team Update 2

Salamno friends,

I don’t know if I spelled that right, but Salamno, that’s how you greet
people in Ethiopia.
And if you go here, you’ll greet people all the time. The people here are so
friendly and hospitable. It is amazing.

We have enjoyed our first week here so much. There has been some hardships
in the team with adjusting to the differences in being here compared to
being in Israel. God is also doing major things in the student’s personal
lives, which is amazing, but that can also be draining and not always an
easy process. Please be praying that everything that God has started to do
in our team would be finished according to His will.

We basically live at the YWAM orphanage so we have spend a lot of time just
hanging out with the kids and loving on them.
One afternoon we did program with them that Sarah had planned out. We did
crafts with the kids and sang songs and then told a Bible story. Then we
split up in small groups with the kids. They are all ages from 1 to 18 so we
split them up according to age. And in the small groups we taught them about
hearing God’s voice. It was amazing. A lot of the kids got to heard God’s
voice for the first time and they got to pray for each other and listen to
God for their friends. It was incredible how clear and accurate things they
heard from God. The teenage group also had an amazing time. Philip and
Justine and Alissa got to share their own experiences about hearing
God and hos He has worked in their lives and they go to pray for some
of the teenagers that wanted more of God. They were so open and they
also shared about how they have been seeking God in the past and
basically it was just a great time of encouragement.
We have also had opportunities to go and help out with other ministries
such as Hope Enterprise which feeds a couple of hundred people a day. There
we got to serve food to street kids and to elderly and other poor people. We
also got to visit a Mother Teresa home a we will probably go back there to
serve the sick there. It was a very hard experience going there for the team
and seeing the things we were faced with there. It is hard seeing so many
people in one place suffering with very serious illnesses or
handicaps. We also got to teach English at a school one day.
On the days when there hasn’t been too much planned we have prayed and
asked God about what to do. Like yesterday, we felt that we were
supposed to buy sandwiches and juice and hand it out to the beggers on
the streets. And it turned out to be a great experience which we will
do again next week since we got invited to go back to a bridge where a
lot of homeless people live. They wanted us to come back and give them
Bibles and new shirts.

So thank you all for your prayers and support. Keep praying for us
these last two and a half weeks. We want to finish the race well.

Much love,
Paulina, Philip, Alissa, Marissa, Karman, Justine, Sarah, Audrey and Lea

Israel Team Update 4

Leaving Israel!!

Hi beloved ones,

In only a few hours we will leave Israel. It is with mixed feelings we leave. We have all been moved by the people and the things we have encountered here in the land but at the same time we are looking forward to what is to come.

This last week here have been en eventful one. We have gotten to share our testimonies and lead worship at a the church of one of our contacts here in Israel. They really appreciated our willingness to do it and said that it really encouraged the rest of the congregation. We have also been able to continue some relationships we have built at our hostel which have lead to some good conversations and deepened relationships.

The favorite thing for most people though have been going to the red light areas in Tel Aviv and also to a day shelter for women in prostitution. It has been very moving to see these daughters of God being in this situation also accompanied with heavy drug abuse. One afternoon when we were out handing out hot drinks and sandwiches to people on the streets in an area where most heroin addicts and prostitutes hang out, the drug dealer came during our visit there. It was a crazy sight to see. People flocked around him like flies and immediately stared taking the drugs he brought. It was like seeing animals devouring a dead animal. We had to leave cause the of the tension of the situation but it made us all realize what at stronghold drugs can have on people’s lives. It was hard to see people that are created in the image of God being degraded to something that didn’t even seem human. We later saw one of the women from the street at the shelter and she was so bad off that we had to call the ambulance to come and pick her up.

I think all of us left from that day dedicated to keep praying for the women we met and the people that are faithfully reaching out to them.

Brandon and Kirsten and their daughter Shiloh have also joined us this week on a pastoral visit. It has been really good for the whole team. They have been such a refreshing wind for us. And the students are doing really well and we are all trying to daily encourage each other and build more and more love and unity in our team. Many people around us have commented on how unified the team seems and about the willingness to serve that our students have. And it is so true. They have all done amazing in all things. I am so proud of them as their leader.

I am short on time so I need to stop writing now. But thank you all for prayers and support.

Love,

Paulina, Philip, Karman, Justine, Marissa, Alissa, Lea, Sarah and Audrey

Israel Team Update 3

Hi family and friends,

Our time in Tiberias went fast.

Half of the team was there for a few days serving with our contacts. Most of what they did was handing out information to people about who Jesus is and what Christianity is. When people think of Christians here they think of very orthodox Catholics and not so much a personal relationship with God Himself. So it is an important thing to inform people about that Jesus is not a religion but it’s about knowing Him intimately. I know the team got to grow a lot as they were facing the challenge of doing something new that they have not done before and maybe never thought they would do.

While they were in Tiberias me and three of the students, Sarah, Lea and Marissa, were at a retreat for a missions organisation here in Israel.

We got to do children’s ministry during the weekend. It was awesome since I guess it’s not very often theses missionaries get to meet together all of them so they were very happy that we could entertain and teach their children so that they got to have time to get refreshed and built up.

We loved hanging out with the kids and it was also interesting to get to talk to some of the people that have served in this country for most of their lives.

On Monday morning last week we met up in Tiberias with the rest of the team and we continued with the ministry there.

One of our favorite times was when we got to walk around in an Arab neighborhood and hand out Bibles and information about Jesus. It was amazing!

We all got invited in to several homes and got fed, sometimes full three course meals. They are so hospitable and it was such an awesome opportunity to hear people’s life stories and to be able to share with them about Jesus in an environment they felt comfortable in.

After the week in Tiberias we moved on to Tel Aviv and we have been here now for three days.

We are working with a couple of different contacts here. One of them is a church that has a coffee shop where they serve free AMAZING coffee and it’s a place to sit and talk and share about Jesus and get to know people. We have enjoyed that a lot so far. We have also helped out to cook and serve food for a soup kitchen which serves about 130 people. This was also an amazing experience. We really saw Jesus in the eyes of the poor as they got to sit down around nice tables and be served by us as if in a nice restaurant. One night we also got to go to the less nicer parts of Tel Aviv to reach out to the heroin addicts and prostitutes on the streets. We got to pray for some people and speak truth over them and hand out hot drinks and sandwiches. It is crazy every time you see girls your own age in awful situations like this. These two experiences were very touching and eye opening for a lot of the students and we are excited to go back to the street to love on people again with God’s love. Please be praying that people would receive His love for them.

And on a personal note. The girl I got to talk to when we were on the streets, her name is Tali. She is an Italian Jew, 24 years old and she is so beautiful it broke my heart to see her. I found her outside laying on a piece of cardboard outside of a couple of sex clubs. When I sat down next to her I could tell that the whole place she was laying in reeked of urine and other not so pleasant things. The first thing we got to do was to pray for her cause she had pain in her body and she immediately started crying and her whole body was shaking and I could feel the presence of God so much. She shared her story with us and I got to tell her how loved she is by God and that she is a princess and a daughter. She felt so shameful about the situation she was in that she didn’t think God wanted anything to do with her and she thought she couldn’t believe in Jesus since she is a Jew. But I got to tell her that Jesus is the same God as the God of the Jews and that He came so that she can freely come to God even though she has ended up where she was. I could tell she listened and she said she wanted to keep in contact over internet so I got her contact information so I am praying that that will work out. Please pray with me. As we walked away my heart just broke for her. It is so wrong that people have to live that way. Please pray that she will call on the name of Jesus and see Him coming to her rescue.

Thank you all for your prayers and support.

Shalom,

Paulina, Philip, Audrey, Lea, Marissa, Justine, Alissa, Sarah and Karman

Israel Team Update 2

Shalom,
 
Yet another week has gone by and much has happened.
In Jerusalem we have continued to spend a lot of time in intercession and worship in the mornings as well as learning about Israeli culture and history. The evenings have been spent downtown Jerusalem talking to people about the Messiah and praying for people.
The team have been amazing at coming up with different creative ideas of how to draw people in to our family and into conversations.
They are amazing girls.
So it’s been going well and Jesus healed a man’s knee the other day which was amazing and many of our conversations have been very frutiful.
The biggest thing for me personally have been when we have told Jewish people that we are here to pray for Israel they get very surprised cause what many of them have learned is that Christians hate the Jewish people. So it has been very good and healing to be able to share with them that we love them because we love Jesus and Jesus loves them. People have been absolutely astonished, jaws litterally drop when telling people this. Being in Jerusalem has really laid a good foundation in all of us for the rest of our time in Israel. We have learned so much and we are ready for what God has for us in Tiberias och Tel Aviv.
 
Mine and Marissa’s time at Boombamela, the New Age festival, also turned out great thanks to Yeshua. Too many things happened to share them all in this little update. One of the first things that happened was that we got followed everywhere we went by a religous group which later had us kicked out from the festival by the police. This turned out to work out to our advantage since we got to witness to a lot of people about Yeshua because of that. The rest of the time we spent doing creative expressions of who God is, mainly through painting. This also went extremely well as many people, both Jews and Arabs came to see our art and we got to give away some of our pieces after explaining what we felt God telling them through the art. We got ti share the full gospel with a lot of them as well and many responded well and we gave them Bibles and encouraged them to go home and ask God if Jesus is the Messiah.
 
Yesterday half of the team went to Tiberias to join a couple that is working up there. As you might have heard we are going to Tiberias insteas of going to Ashdod since the congregation in Ashdod couldn’d receive us anymore due to persecution. Me and the other half of the team will join them in three days after we are done doing children’s ministry at a church’s retreat.
 
Please keep praying for us. Pray for unity ib our team even though we are apart for a few days and pray that the fiery love of Jesus would burn in our hearts for His people.
 
Love,
Paulina

More art outreach/worship

 

My student Marissa did this painting which we ended up giving to a couple we met

 

Propetic Painting with an audience

 

Talking about Isaiah 53

 

Meditating on the scripture with two Israeli guys

 

 

 

Israel Team Update 1

Hi beloved ones,

about every week I will write an update that goes out to all my students families and friends so since I am already writing that for them I thought
I’d post the same updates here for all of you to read as well.
So here is our first update:

Hi friends and family,

We have been in Jerusalem for a week now.
So far it has been amazing. The team is getting along very well and everyone is really enjoying our time here.

Since we are in such a historical place it has been unavoidable for us to not see some of the sights in the Old City and doing that has been a lot of fun and a good team building experience. And this is really such a beautiful city!

Before we left we felt that our time in Jerusalem specifically would be marked with a lot of intercession and worship. This has come true since we live just a few blocks from a 24-7 prayer house (and on the other side of our home is the valley which Jesus referred to as Gehenna : )) so we have been going to the prayer house a lot. This place is very much in need of this due to all the tension politically and religiously.

We have also found out that people here, especially young people, are very open to talking to us about the Messiah which is very exciting. There is a part of the city which is more modern and where everyone goes to hang out in the evenings and we have been going here almost every night to talk to people and sing worship.

It has been really good and a lot of us have had many good conversations with people and we have been allowed to pray from some of them. I always expected that everyone here would be very educated in the scriptures but as we have been around here we have found it is not true. What they are being taught is more so teachings from different rabbis and not so much the scripture it self and there is even part of scripture that they are not allowed to read, like Isaiah 53 for example. So it gets very interesting when you bring things like that up when talking to people.

One of our first days here we got to love the poor by putting together food packages for about 600+ families. We spent about 6 or 7 hours straight, together with lots of other volunteers, packing vegetables into huge bags each one weighing about 30 pounds each. I have never seen so much food in one place at the same time. It was like packing up a whole grocery store into bags. Then the families came in the late afternoon and they all got to take two bags of food each.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that we got invited to go to a three day long New Age Festival at the end of this week. It is very expensive but we prayed for a few days about it as a team and we felt from God that two people should go and that those two would be me (Paulina) and Marissa. So we will be leaving on Thursday and stay at the festival until Saturday and the rest of the team will still be in Jerusalem continuing our work here. The festival is a very intense place with over 30 000 young people coming to seek spiritual experiences outside of Judaism. I have heard that people even come all the way from India to come to this three day event. We will not go alone but together with a group of believers that go to these things regularly. They say that this is the best event during the year to share with people about the Messiah. So we are very excited about this.

Please keep praying for all of us, we need it.

Shalom,

Paulina, Philip, Justine, Marissa, Karman, Sarah, Audrey, Lea and Alissa

On the road again / På väg igen

Hi everyone!

Tomorrow, Sunday the 10th of April we will be on our way to Israel and Ethiopia. We have some exciting two months ahead of us, but as always there are many thoughts and emotions moving around inside of me the night before such a trip. First of all I am filled with joy. Joy about the amazing things that I will be privileged to see Jesus doing both in me, in my students and of course in the people we will meet on our journey. I feel honored that God has entrusted me and my co-leader Philip with the responsibility of these seven beautiful daughters of Him. It is my first priority to love these students, to see them find God more and more, to discover who they are and how God is wanting to shine through them. I want to empower them to walk in more faith, love and power than they have done before and to see their lives be transformed as the lives of the people they meet also are being changed forever by the love of God. And I feel an overwhelming peace about this outreach. God has been meeting me more and more lately as a father and mother convincing me that I am safe with Him and that with Him I can do anything. I know I am nobody special but He is. Even though I am not sure of all, or actually almost none, of the details of what we will actually going to face and be set to do on outreach I feel calm and peaceful and confident that we are walking in the will of God. Faith is another thing that I have been given more of than usual for this trip. As God has changed my view of Him slowly into seeing His goodness more than seeing Him as a demanding and very serious person, faith has awakened in me cause I know He is in love with His people and He wants to show it to them desperately. And He will use anyone willing to do so. So here I am God, send me! More of You and less of me so that your love could change the world forever as my life is being poured out as an offering to you. Thank You Jesus for Your love and provision for me.

And thank you all who are standing by me in this and please be praying for me and my team. It is hard for me to leave Robert for this long and especially right before our wedding. Please pray for us.

Love and Peace in Christ,
Paulina Gudmundsson

 

Hej allihopa!

I morgon, söndag den 10 april kommer vi att vara på vår väg till Israel och Etiopien. Vi har ett par spännande två månader framför oss, men som alltid det finns många tankar och känslor som rör sig inom mig kvällen innan en sådan resa. Först och främst är jag fylld av glädje. Glädje över de fantastiska saker som jag kommer att ha förmånen att se Jesus göra både i mig, i mina elever och naturligtvis i de människor vi möter på vår resa. Jag känner mig hedrad att Gud har anförtrott mig och min hjälpledare Philip med ansvaret för att dessa sju vackra döttrar. Det är min första prioritet att älska dem, att se dem finna Gud mer och mer, att upptäcka vem de är och hur Gud vill lysa igenom dem. Jag vill ge dem möjlighet att leva i mer tro, kärlek och kraft än de gjort tidigare och att se deras liv förvandlas liksom livet för de människor de möter också förändras för alltid genom Guds kärlek. Och jag känner en överväldigande frid inför denna resan. Gud har mött mig mer och mer nyligen som en pappa och en mamma och övertygat mig att jag är trygg med Honom och att med Honom kan jag kan göra allt. Jag vet att jag inte är någon speciell men Han är. Även om jag är inte säker på alla, eller faktiskt nästan inga, detaljer om vad vi faktiskt kommer att möta och göra på denna resan känner jag mig lugn och fridfull och säker på att vi vandrar i Guds vilja. Tro är en annan sak som jag har fått mer av än vanligt för denna resa. I takt med att Gud sakta har förändrat min syn på Honom till att se Hans godhet mer än att se Honom som ett krävande och mycket seriös person, har tro vaknat upp i mig för jag vet att Han är förälskad i sitt folk och Han är desperat efter att visa det för dem. Och Han kommer att använda någon som är villig att göra det. Så här är jag Gud, sänd mig! Mer av Dig och mindre av mig så att Din kärlek kan förändra världen för alltid när mitt liv hälls ut som ett offer inför Dig. Tack Jesus för Din kärlek och att Du förser mig med allt jag behöver.

Och tack alla ni som står bakom mig i detta och be gärna för mig och mitt team. Det är svårt för mig att lämna Robert så länge och särskilt precis innan vårt bröllop. Be för oss, vi behöver det.

Kärlek och frid i Kristus,
Paulina Gudmundsson

Philip, Alissa, Justine, Audrey, Lea, Sarah, Paulina, Karman, Marissa

 

Ett liv förvandlat / A life changed

Hej allihopa!

Detta är en video som en av mina elever gjort. Den handlar om hur Gud har förvandlat hennes liv under denna tiden hon har gått vår DTS. Videon är verkligen fantastisk. Och om du har stött mig ekonomiskt eller genom bön eller på något annat sätt så vill jag bara säga tack för att du har gjort det möjligt för mig att vara del av hennes liv. Du är en del av vad Gud har gjort i hennes liv. Så tack!

This is a video one of my students made. It is about how God has transformed her life during this time she has been at our DTS. The video is truly amazing. And if you have supported me financially or through prayer or in some other way I just want to say thank you because you have made ​​it possible for me to be a part of her life. You are part of what God has done in her life. So thank you!
P.S. You might have to go to YouTube and watch it cause I’m not sure it will play from this blog.