First stop - San Francisco, California

We arrived in beautiful San Francisco ready to share Jesus’ love with everyone! This was our first stop on outreach. The first night was really exciting, we had an impromptu worship time where we spent time praying over each other and hearing God’s voice as He was preparing us to go all over the world and preach the gospel. After that first night, our team really opened up to one another so that the rest of our time in California could be spent getting to know each other better as a team and working through struggles that some of us were going through. We had our first ministry time at a sweet church on a Sunday evening. We opened in worship (our team was so blessed to have quite a few musicians), did dramas, shared a couple of testimonies, and ended by opening up the front if anyone would like prayer or would like to accept Jesus into their heart and life. God was speaking to peoples’ hearts as many came up for prayer, and God used us to intercede for all kinds of situations in their lives. Later that week we attended a youth group on a Wednesday night. We showed a video that was made by YWAM titled “Jesus Freaks.” After the video we encouraged students to come up and pray with us and talk to us about what might being going on in their lives. It was a really awesome night for me because I was able to pray with two girls that were crying. After talking and praying with them, I also prayed for their father and younger sister who had come to pick them up at youth group. We spent one whole day being homeless in downtown San Francisco where we had no money, only one slice of bread and one bottle of water for each person. We split into small groups and began to make our way throughout the city. We would walk and pray, asking God what His heart was for the area we were in and for people that we saw. There were times we felt led to go up to someone and talk to them and ask if they would like prayer for anything going on in their lives, we encouraged them, and shared verses with them. This was an important day as we practiced hearing God’s voice while we prayed specific things for people. It was a really cool just to see how God works when we are willing to be used by Him even in the simplest ways. We were nearing the end of our stay in California before heading over to South Korea and there was an evening when we were gathered up as a team and were debriefing about ministry times, praising God and thanking Him for the ways He was beginning to use us. It was during this time that Jacob, our team leader, shared something really special with us. He said that he had been praying for our team before he even met us and that the word God gave him for our team was “power.” He shared that God was going to use us in very powerful ways over the next few months. So at that point, we began to watch as God began to sew power into each ministry time, each day that we sought Him with all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul. Our time in California was very much about God meeting us and preparing us for His Kingdom.