Holy Spirit

So after the long, crazy week last week with all the extra people up here, we were pretty tired. It was a much needed lazy weekend, with a ton of beautiful snow :)
My roommates and I have been wanting some pictures together, so we finally took some really cute ones!
Here's a few:

Sandy from Chile, Hanna from Texas, Holly from Florida, me, Kara from Australia, and Alex from Oregon. Aren't they gorgeous?

Being silly!

They volunteered me for this one. ha :)

This week's teaching was on the Holy Spirit. Pastor JR Polhemus from The Rock church came to speak and did an excellent job at explaining who the Holy Spirit is, how He works in our lives, and what the spiritual gifts really are. Pastor JR talked about how the Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood part of the Godhead, yet the one with which we have the most direct contact, changing us from the inside out. Tuesday, he had a team from his church come in who ministered and prophesied over each of us. We all had a really positive time, and the people spoke a lot of truth and confirmation into our lives. Then, JR actually had us "practice" prophecy. So if we got a word for anyone on his team, we shared it with them. We also set aside some time to get with another person in the school that we aren't super close to, pray, and prophesy over them as well. Thursday, we learned about the difference between speaking in tongues and the gift of tongues. I actually didn't know the difference even though I was familiar and comfortable with people speaking in tongues. So after a lot of clarification on two, JR invited us to practice speaking in tongues if we were comfortable with it. I really appreciated that JR did such a great job at being Holy Spirit-led the whole week, and he approached the spiritual gifts with so much wisdom and had great information to teach us, all based on Scripture.
This next week will only be a couple days of teaching since it's Thanksgiving, but I'm super excited because Donna MacGowan (she and her husband Mark lead our school) will be speaking on Recognizing on the Voice of God. My small group leader said Donna is one of her favorite speakers, so I'm really looking forward to it!

I leave for Costa Rica in less than a month, which is insane to think about, but I'm SO excited!

Until next time,
LC