Total Surrender.

I've been thinking about this a lot and I really just wanna FULLY surrender my life to Christ. I know i've attempted to do this multiple times in my life.. but it never follows through. I know why. I'm not really giving Him my everything. Just a large portion. But the truth is there's more. I need to give Him more. Like.. everything. LOL. Wow i'm just going in a circle. I apologize, my thoughts are all over the place haha. Get over it!! :]

I'm really struggling with sin. Like, there is certain sin in my life that I reallyyyyy wanna get rid of, but its kinda still there, and as much as I want it to go.. it doesn't. I've asked for forgiveness plenty of times. But its to a point where I just feel fake. That just makes me feel even WORSE.

This week at church we're doing a prayer night, every night. 6:30-8:00. I went today. Ironically, our pastor decided to start the week off with just a night of repentance. I thought 'oh yes. PERFECT. i need this... bad.'

so first we start off by praying and just personally asking God to forgive us. I do that. BUT, I just feel fake about my little prayer. Its the worst feeling, ever:/

THEN he says i'm leaving this mic up here. if any of you feel like you need to confess your sins to the church and have us pray for you. then come up. it definitely is gonna take a lot of humility.. let the Spirit lead you..

so a few people go up. most confess their sin. they're bawling though. their heart is broken. they realize how nasty their sin is and they confess it. they give it to God.

my friend looks at me and says.. hm do you wanna go up together and confess our anxiety? and I FREEZE. no way am I gonna go up in front of everyone and confess that. but HA there's another sin.. PRIDE. sadly i didn't overcome it, and my friend ended up going by herself. when she was up there she lost it. she came back and was just broken. she knew the depth of this sin, and how much it was destroying her, but she wanted to fix it. so bad that she knew she had to humble herself and CONFESS. not just to God but to the church. let me just say that she felt a lot better after, and i have a lot of confidence she wont be dealing with too much anxiety anymore. :)

but back to me and my stupidness. i didn't confess. i was prideful. i was fake. i didn't really understand how dirty all my sins are. dont get me wrong, i wanted to so bad! i asked God to break my heart sooo many times for these rotten sins, but He kinda just didn't. I ended up leaving not knowing whether or not God's really forgiven me.

because just maybe, my prayers were fake. they're BEEN fake. and im confessing it now. in this blog. i don't ever know who reads it but there you are. this breaks me and i don't know what else to do about it.

please keep me in your prayers. i KNOW something good will come out of this.

love you guys.

-monique

M.E.X.I.C.O! (Part 3)

okay TUESDAY!

my FAVE day(:

so we had the same amazing team :) after all the morning activities we headed off to our build site. when we were unloading the truck I remember going up to talk to the lady we were building for. She introduced me to her 3 sons and daughter.

ok, something cool, i speak fluent spanish.. so it made the trip really unique for me because i actually got to interact with the families we built for!

anyway, she was telling me her story about how she got divorced 5 yrs ago and how her husband moved to AZ. i remember meeting her 14 yr old daughter and noticing she didn't smile one bit, at anything. you could see this sorrow in her eyes. it was really sad. i later realized it was from everything going on. This lady's older son was not going to be able to go to high school. his education ended after junior high because the mom didn't have money to pay for his stuff. this broke my heart. he had to stay home doing NOTHING all yr. :( there was a lot of stuff going on within their family, and it was cool because i got to talk to this lady about it all and just love on her and give her words of encouragement.

so then she asked me, "WHY are u guys doing this? WHY are u building us a house, for FREE? WHY?" and i got SO excited. it was just an open door for the gospel.. and that's exactly the direction i went. i shared God's love with her and everything, and i'm confident that it wasn't me doing.. cause i just went on and on and on.. i know God was doing all the work.. and i was glad to be a part of it!! She told me she used to go to church but she was scared of some of the stuff they said. she also told me her kids used to love church. she promised me she'd start going she said she believe in God and she needed Him.

This was my absolute favorite part of the whole week. just sharing Christ to someone always brings u this amazing joy.

later that day we heard testimonies from some of the staff at mexico caravan ministries. it was cool to hear what God was doing in some of their lives. then we had a group devo and quiet time then bed!

i'll add more to this blog later when i actually have my journal. its upstairs. im too lazy to go get it haha.

k byeee! :]

M.E.X.I.C.O. (Part 2)

heeey guys:D here goes day 2:) maybe even day 3.

wait before i start i'm gonna give u a typical day schedule in mexico;

6:30-wake up and get ready

7:00-individual quiet time with God

7:30-breakfast

8:00-morning service

9:30-leave for build

4:00-back to the dorm.. free time until like 10

10:00-lights out upstairs.. devo time with your group

10:30-individual quiet time with God

11:00-lights out

Monday, Aug 3

so i woke up and had my quiet time. i think i was reading a chapter in the purpose driven life about serving God.. and i was just trying to prepare my heart for that day and for the build. i had heard it was gonna be so hard.. and hot.. and frustrating.

that morning we heard from this one guy that was a bible school college professor. he talked to us about making everything we pray about be about God's will for our lives, not our will. I don't remember much from that service I was kinda falling asleep. which was BAD, haha.

in my last blog i forgot to mention that that night me, breanne, and karina couldn't sleep so we had a bible study in el baño(the bathroom>:D) hahaha. we read 2 timothy and jkafjafhs i love that book. something i learned that night is how much biblical knowledge i DON'T have. it was really nice going through that book and stopping after each little part to talk about it.

so we got put into our teams for monday and tuesday. i remember on our way to our build that day..i was thanking God for the team He put me in. I just had a good feeling. so we got to our build site and met the family and started working on the house.

okay so A) it wasn't very hard to build, B) it wasn't frustrating at ALL and,and C) the heat just made it worth it :) here's the reason why everything worked out so well.. everyone on the team was just SO willing to work with each other, and SO humble, and SO unified with each other. it was an amazing representation of the body of Christ. the day ran smoothly, and it was so cool to see the look on the families' face when they saw their new house! we prayed for them and left. on our way to dinner we learned how to play the FRUIT game. if u dont know how to play that i need to teach u because its the funniest game of your life. haha that day we went to go eat at rene's.. the best place to eat EVER. i had this amazing burrito hahaha. so that night we had a group devo then quiet time. that night i journaled about how amazing that day went. i realized that the night before i really had only made it all about ME.. and that's why it was so disastrous. there's such a joy in serving God.. and that's something i never wanna forget. i also learned that i need to be more humble. putting others before myself is super important. that's one of the biggest things i got out of that day.

okaaaay i don't wanna write about tuesday so you guys gotta wait till tomorrow night :)

God BLessssss<3

M.E.X.I.C.O! (Part 1)

okaaaay. here it is, i promised! :)

as many of u know i went to mexico on a missions trip a couple weeks ago. looking back on it now, it was definitely a life-changing trip. God is so good. ahhh i don't know where to start :O i'll make it like a journal sorta..just going through each day :)

Sunday. August 2nd.

this day started early. i went out to coffee at 7 am with one of my bestest friends marianne!(: we were kinda catching up on life and stuff, and she was telling me about how she was gonna pray for me this whole week. she gave me a tiny little journal and wrote me the sweetest, most encouraging note ever in it! the rest she said, was for me to journal some things about my trip.. 'so i can remember' :)

then i went to church. we loaded the van and stuff and went to the 9 o'clock service. after the worship we went up to the front of the church so they could pray for us. it was so cool haha. it gave everyone a sense of peace to know there was a lot of prayer going into our trip.

after this service we went to go play handball outside. it was quite fun i must say. then we stayed for the 11 o'clock service and they prayed for us again.

and then we left. :)

we went to in-n-out for lunch. our last american food for a week. me and candida just go water with lemon in it. haha. omg i'm being too specific about things that really don't matter.. bare with me here. lol.

we were on our way to mexico finally! i was sitting next to this amazing girl named bethany grace reinbolt. no seriously, she's awesome :) and behind us were candida, sam, and emily. let's just say it was the sweetest combination of people because we played road trip games the whole way there! it was so fun!

we finally got to our dorm and we went upstairs. when i first walked into the girls' room i gasped. literally. the room was like 110 degrees and there was no air conditioning only fans, and there was like 500 bunk beds.. or like 20.. and they were 3 bed bunkbeds, not 2. HELP!!?? i flipped out. i did not even think i'd make it all week. i panicked, and i wanted to go home. we went downstairs to load the truck for out 1st build day. while we were loading i remember thinking, i'm hot, and im hungry, and im tired, and i DONT wanna be doing this right now. it was just complaint after complaint(in my head).

we went to this really good taco place to eat. it was pretty awesome. i still had a pretty negative attitude.

another thing was that when i went to mexico in april, by the first few hours i met the canadian team.. we all CLICKED. everyone fit in perfectly. there was unity. this team however, was not unified at ALL. i had done it. i set expectations..and it failed. that's another thing that was weighing me down.

so that night we had free time, then devo time at 10. i just didn't wanna talk to anyone i wanted to sleep so i just went to my bed and laid there. i remember thinking "i hope im not making this obvious".. and knowing myself, i really wasnt. i hadn't physically VOICED any complaints all day. it was all in my head. so im journaling and writing about how NOT excited for this week i was and stuff and how i hated it so far, and how i didn't even feel close to ANYONE on the trip. now, one of my closest friends karina was there, but we weren't on great terms that day.. and my leader bethany was there, we're suuuper close. so im sitting there journaling about how i didn't wanna bug her or ruin this night for her.. and right when i was writing that.. she comes up to me and gives me a folded note. i open it and it says: "I love you, and so does Jesus, the Creator of the Universe!:) -Love Bethy-Love" ... UMM! what?! HI GOD! Hahaha! It was crazy timing. Then i read back on what i had written about my day so far.. and i realized it was very "me" centered. i just wanted to be comfortable. i didn't wanna step out of my zone. i didn't like that the team wasn't unified. i didn't like a lot of things. but that was the wrong kinda mindset. right then the first thing i learned was that this trip was NOT about me..but about God.

okaaaay. so i changed my mind i cant write it all tonight. it took about half an hour to write about day 1 out of like 6 days. so this is officially part 1 :) stay tuned for more!!

God Bless,

-moni-q

one of those days

ahhh today was just... weird.

i don't know what made it that way :/

and i did something that made me feel so distant from God.

why is it that certain things we do make us feel distant from Hin?

OH YEAH, sin separates us from Him. I guess i'm learning that the hard way. I don't like when He feels distant :(

anyway. i would write the mexico blog but i''m in a weird mood so it just wouldn't be the same. hahaha.

byee C:

Been a While!

Hey guys!

Ok so I know I fail at life, I haven't written my mexico blog yet! I just don't understand HOW i'm going to write it. I learned SO much. Hahaha.

..be patient?

anyway. I'm out of town right now at my cousin's house. Life is good. I have been teaching at a VBS my aunt is holding at her childcare this week. We are learning about Fully Relying On God. I have told them about Daniel in the Lions Den, David and Goliath, and Shadrach Meshac and Abdenego. (sp?) All these stories I have heard before. But I just barely kinda realized how cooool they actually are! They are real life stories about how these people actually HAD to rely on God, and then how God actually came through for them! God is so awesome :]]

Being here this week has been a challenge though. I just came home from a pretty much life-changing trip, and then I have to live with like 5 kids under the age of 11!

..HELP!?

It's definitely been hard. I need to learn to be more patient. I guess that's another thing I can add on to my list of "I have learned so much lately!"

Hahaha. Seriously. God's doing crazy stuff in my life. I know my heart's changing. I feel like I understand Him more now. I understand what He wants from me, and its hard to give that to Him, but i'm definitely trying!

Okaaaay I feel like i'm rambling. lol. I alwaaaays do!! i'm done though I think. okay yeah. mexico blog will be up in the near future.. maybe.. quite possibly.. don't get your hopes up. kaay bye :]

God Bless <3