My First Hong Kong Blog Post

Some news from the past 8 weeks in Hong Kong! :)) Sorry I haven’t written here in a while! I have a Facebook group that I update with more short regular updates, let me know if you’d like added! 🙂

I’ve spent the past couple months adjusting to life in Asia! After a month and a half of living in base housing, I moved off base into an apartment close by to the base (in the same village of Shui Tau Tsuen, which is actually the oldest village in Hong Kong!) and I’m roommates with the only other Canadian girl on staff so that’s fun haha! Life has been busy (classic Hong Kong) and full of ups and downs but overall I feel peace with the decision to come here and it’s been incredible being in the same place as Ilalio and learning more about his culture and communication! 🙂 Thankful for your prayers! The two specific words I felt the Lord told me about this season (of unknown length) were: Rest & Lio at first I felt like it’s been so easy to get sucked into the spirit of busyness that runs HK, but I feel like the Lord reminded me of those last week and I’m trying to take steps towards actually being obedient to those words. Thank You, Jesus!

The past couple weeks I was put in co-charge of redesigning the base Library/Lounge area. I don’t have a complete ‘before’ picture but it was not a very inviting place haha but now it is warm and ready for a coffee bar to get constructed in the next few weeks! So excited to have been a part of this project that has really blessed the community here in YWAM Hong Kong.

The students for the next DTS are arriving this weekend and come Monday I will be helping in the Kitchen for the duration of the Lecture Phase (until June)! Cooking and doing food runs (Lio and I will to be going to the Chinese Wet Market a couple times a week to buy all the fresh produce and meat which is quite hilarious… pray for me because no one speaks English and it’s crazy fast paced ahhaha!!) I’ll also continue to serve the base with Worship leading and taking some time to process burnout and continue to spend time with Lio and helping pioneer the Homeless Ministry in the poor district of Sham Shui Po.

Also in 2 weeks I’ll be teaching a week on the DTS on the topic of Worship! This will be the students first official teaching week so pray that they are very impacted and inspired to engage and encounter the Living God this week and have deeper revelation about who He is and why we worship Him. Pray for me to have wisdom and discernment as I teach!

Also I will be going to the Philippines the first week of April! I’ll be going with Lio and his church. We’re going to be working with Kids International Ministries (KidsIM) and I’m so excited for this opportunity, we’ll be leading worship for the team twice a day along with helping the families that are going that have never been in a third world nation to adjust and to help them in ministry!

Annnnnd at the end of April I will be teaching a week on a School of Worship on the topic of Character of a Worshipper (Holiness etc). This is the first time I’ll be teaching a week including full translation into Mandarin! I can’t share which country due to safety reasons but  I’m SO EXCITED! Please pray for grace as I learn to communicate a full theological teaching while also being translated haha! And 3/4 of the students don’t speak English at all! So the dynamics will be quite challenging but Holy Spirit is a great communicator so I have faith He will show up big time!! ❤

LOVE YOU GUYS Thank you for your prayers!! I miss Toowoomba but I’m thankful for opportunities to be challenged and to grow!

Things I’ve experienced about living in Hong Kong:

There are SO MANY cultures! 🙂 I love it! Although many of the people here are Chinese, there are many expats and ethnic minorities living in the city. Not to mention the domestic workers from Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. Many immigrants from Pakistan, Syria, Nepal, parts of Africa & even mainland China as well!

The food!! Hong Kong is very diverse! I can always find different types of food in almost every street of the city

The transport! So easy to get around, the MTR (metro), bus & ferry systems can get you virtually anywhere you want to go. Unfortunately it does take about an hour to get from our village to anywhere (we live up north west, near the border to China haha)

The crowds! It’s pretty crazy how many people can fit into one city! Sometimes to get on the train you have to get super aggressive and push people to fit hahah but that’s a really nice thing about living in a ‘village’ you can get away from the crowds and almost enjoy country life out here! Many people from the city actually come and tour the village and to visit the ‘Kam Tin Country Club’ haha look it up it’s pretty great

The Chinese Culture! It actually makes me cry, I love how rich this culture is with history and heritage. From the music, to street tai chi, to Chinese lanterns, to food, to respecting your elders, to crowded, loud street markets, to beautiful architecture, to martial arts…  it’s all breath-taking ❤

We held a Soccer Tournament in our village and were able to share about Jesus during the half time! It was a hit and they all want to have another one!

We go out and worship on the streets on Friday nights!

We had a good laugh this outreach. Met someone new under the bridge with a nickname “water ghost”. He loves to drink, as his nickname denotes. He has a beautiful voice, no kidding, one that’s often sought after as a radio dj. The intense atmosphere from a few suspicious activities around us was eased by his singing- a classic song by Beyond. The wonder of songs, how it brings even a momentary hope and encouragement to those we sing or hear. He made a point that marijuana helps him in music, more than ice. One of us advocated other ways of music appreciation that is more freeing than with the use of drugs. As he danced around and sang in super high spirits 🎶, he said, “其實都唔一定high野先開心既⋯唱下歌都可以一樣咁開心~” [translation: actually (we) don’t always need drugs to be happy, singing songs can make me happy too ~], he said will a skip in his stride. He asked to join us for the rest of our outreach, with a lollipop in his mouth. He just kept talking and at one point, his lollipop fell out of his mouth. “Don’t worry, I have a lot more! 😄” he said with a good, hearty laugh, offering if we wanted one.

We also get to talk to and pray for homeless people. I really love this opportunity, they are mostly much older and very lonely! In this picture, Novelle and I were praying for a lady’s arm, she said she felt heat and felt much looser afterwards! 🙂 Thank You Jesus!

All the staff at our base, these guys are great! So many countries are in this picture: Brazil, America, Canada, South Africa, Fiji, Samoa, India, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, & the Netherlands!

Chinese New Year lion dance

My Samoan family

My love

A couple of very special people in my life dropped by Hong Kong and got to meet Lio! Such a blessing!

Singing at a local church!

The before and after shot of the base Library!

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Stories & Snapshots

Hey Guys!

So excited to share with you some photos of the past few months with YWAM Toowoomba! I’ve just finished leading my 4th DTS! So rewarding and I absolutely loved watching our 21 students from different nations grow in their walk with God, people, and themselves! There were salvations, baptisms, miracles (quite a few healings among the students! and salvations & healings in town and on overseas outreach), spiritual gifts received, heart changes, mind changes etc. etc. It was so sad to see the students leave last month, but also an amazing testimony to how God works! He is a sending God 🙂

Here are some pictures!

Pastor Dan (he is the director of the Atlanta Dream Center School Of Ministry I went to for three years) came to Toowoomba from Atlanta for the second time to teach the DTS on Lordship & Fear of the Lord. A powerful week, and such an honour to host him again!

I help lead worship at a city/church-wide worship evening that has a heart to worship & intercede over and for the city of Toowoomba. I love it and I’m so blessed to part of such a fun and beautiful night a couple times a month! 

I had the incredible privilege of helping baptize heaps of students! I love baptisms, it’s probably one of my favourite parts of a DTS 🙂 And seeing how powerful it is every time! Students are never the same again! 

I had the privilege to lead worship for a massive conference this school! The conference was a week long and there 6 YWAM bases that were there. Over 300 people on some nights! It was a powerful week focused on Prayer & Missions and marrying the two. Intimacy breeds proclamation! The students (and us staff too!) fell in love with prayer and the presence of God. We had overnight prayer happening and myself and several of our students joined in and sacrificed sleep but had a wonderful time interceding for Australia and the world!

We had a festival in the city on Easter Weekend and it was so fun to minister to the city through music & the love of Jesus. Myself and my friend Tori got to perform 3 sets in a cafe, and on stage at a couple markets!

I visited Hong Kong, and Lio for a few weeks! 😀 this is our first real pic as a couple haha ❤ 

This is a shot I took of an evangelism time we did while in Hong Kong. Tons of people were watching the performances and hearing the gospel!

YWAM Toowoomba held a fundraise to raise $1500 to get a child of the streets and out of the sex trade. We had a successful night & we’ve been able to get 7 (I think even in the past couple weeks we got another 2 as well!) kids off the streets in Thailand & Cambodia. Praise God!

This is the day we finished our Debrief & Reentry week with the school and as staff we surrounded the students and prayed & commissioned back to their homes, mission fields & beyond! 🙂

Isaac Peltz! I’ve known Isaac since he was born, he’s my little brother’s best friend! It’s incredible to have seen and been a part of the way God moved in his life and the transformation he experienced! SO thankful to have family here with me! He graduated DTS at the beginning of June and he is now on staff here!

This is the 4th DTS that I’ve lead, on the night they all graduated. 🙂 And the 7th one I’ve been a part of total! In a row! Haha time flies when you’re having fun!! Another group of arrows being sent out to continue growing in Jesus and impacting & influencing the Nations for the Gospel of Christ. After 3 and 1/2 years I’ve been able to be apart of over 160 young adults discipleship journey, and see so many of their salvations, transformations, baptisms in water & in the Spirit, first times preaching, first times evangelizing etc etc etc AHHH SO INCREDIBLE!!! I love what the Lord continues to do over and over, it blows my mind!

Myself and my friend Nathan we sharing during our Staff Training on the history of YWAM Toowoomba! Crazy to think that I’ve here for almost 4 years now!

My friend Daniel Gilman from Ottawa came to Toowoomba for the day to connect with the local pastors group and to see me! So great to see familiar faces 🙂

I love this kid! His name is David and he’s from Nepal. He is learning all about Jesus with an amazing ministry in Hong Kong, a Christian after school tutoring program. I met him the first time I went to Hong Kong and got to hang out with him again this time! We’ve had some really good conversations about who Jesus is and why he’s different than Buddha and Hindu gods. I also got to share with him the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. He loved it!

Nora!! ❤ She was a student on the first school I lead in 2015. She is doing full time missions in Thailand, and she was in Australia for a 3 month school so she came and visited our base and it was so fun catching up with her and seeing how God is using her! I love getting to see the impact of what I'm apart of, 2 years later!

 

Thank you so much for continuing to be a part of what God is doing over here in Toowoomba! God is doing amazing things in this city, and in the countries we continuously go to (Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, East Timor, greater Australia, Fiji etc). Toowoomba’s art & music community is on fire, and our base has had a huge rule in that! So great to see our staff & students connecting with local artists, and we run events (one of them is called Campfire Sessions) in the city that celebrate artists and minister to them the love of Christ and give them opportunity to play music & do art. We’ve seen so much fruit (artists encouraged, artists seeing Christ, artists experiencing hope and empowerment, instead of depression, comparison, negativity, etc) in the past year as we’ve stepped out as a base in what God has called us to! GOD is a creator, it’s in His nature to create, so it’s in ours as well. We want to change the culture of Toowoomba into the Kingdom Culture through our art :).

These next few months I am going to be:

• running our Immigration department
• helping with accounts & facilities
• on the Leadership Team
• helping lead worship in town at different events and at church
• teaching on the DTS (on worship leading for an evening, and the Lordship of Christ & Surrender for several days)
• & our staff internship (things like integrity in leadership)
• helping pioneering our base’s Worship & Prayer ministry project (aiming to encourage and engage people in a culture of worship & prayer, training on how to do that, equipping local churches and abroad in the areas of prayer & worship in their context etc)
• and hopefully formulating a Worship Leaders conference/seminar that we can do cross-culturally, either overseas or here in Australia!

So I’m taking a bit of a break from leading DTS’s and I’m excited to see what God has in store 🙂

Thank you so much for staying with me and reading this! ❤

Prayer Requests:

1. For full restoration of health (I’ve been quite sick for the past few weeks, but now I’m on the mend and almost better!
2. For creativity and heavenly wisdom as I pioneer this new ministry.
3. For rest, refocus, & new passion as I enter this new season, I think I got quite sick because I’ve been carrying a lot for a long time, and I need to really focus on building intimacy with Jesus, and reassessing my heart and motivation in ministry etc. 
4. For my car! It’s really struggling and in order to do a lot of the ministry I do, I really need it. There’s a repair that costs about $400 in order to get it running again 😦
5. For the times I’ll be teaching, that I would have His words!
6. For the Lord to continue using me in whatever ways He can!

 

Thank you so so so much for reading this email and continuing in your prayer support of my adventures with YWAM! I pray you are abundantly blessed and enjoy your day!

Feel free to connect with me via email, facebook or follow me on instagram (hmacuzz). I LOVE hearing from you!!! I promise I read everything I receive 🙂

Also, if you feel lead to support me financially either monthly or one time donation please check out paypal.me/hannahmacuzzi , or https://www.gofundme.com/hannah-macuzzi or for tax refundable receipts go to:  https://chimp.net/groups/hannah-macuzzi-mh06

These funds raised will help me continue discipling the next generation of fearless world-wide missionaries and sending them out the nations. It will also help me keep my car on the road and pay for food & rent at the YWAM base 🙂

Blessings! ♥

Han

 

For the Nations

 

 

Dear Family, Some news from the past few months as I’ve been serving with Youth With A Mission Toowoomba (Australia) 🙂 First off, I had my 26th birthday last July! July- December I lead my first school on my own (previously I’ve co-lead a couple schools in 2015). This was an incredible experience! They graduated (pictured above) mid-December 2016. I had a team of 4 staff , and we had 13 students from America, Canada & New Zealand. I am so honoured and privileged to have been apart of their training and I’m pleased to say that there was much transformation and many lives transformed through them all on outreach. Here’s an incredible story of one my students: She came into the school unsure of who God was, incredibly insecure and unable to trust people or Jesus, and held back by shame & fear. By the end of DTS, she had laid down the need for comfort from things like food, blankets, make-up, also fear of man, comparison, and complacency in her faith. She picked up things like comfort from the Lord, security in her identity as a daughter of Father, genuine love for others, passion,  standing agains the enemy on the Word of Truth, and also a love for intercession! On Outreach I saw her push through so many things and she became a major force of reckoning to the people of Hong Kong and our team as she learned not to be controlled by her feelings or circumstances, but by the Word of the Lord and Holy Spirit. I am so proud of her! She is now continuing walking in the things she’s learned, even at home when things aren’t easy and she is seeking support, the Lord and the Kingdom. So good! Ah! One of my favourite parts of the School was getting to teach an entire week on the Lordship of Christ. I covered things like who is the Messiah/Christ? What was His purpose? What’s the Gospel? What is true surrender, and what does it look like to live a life surrendered to Jesus reign? What’s holiness? What is our purpose? Why do we need to obey the Lord? It was a powerful week where I stepped out in teaching and in faith as well. The end of the week we had a challenging time of practical surrender and prayer for each other 🙂 Everyone had the chance to pray and ask the Lord about things that we hold onto and give them up at the cross. Then the next day we had a debrief time where we discussed how we walked out in those things practically, and everyone had a story where they were tempted to worry or think about things the same way as before but then dealt with it differently this time! Whether it was to go to someone and ask for prayer to overcome, or to say the truth out loud, or to practically share with someone about Jesus (if they were afraid to do that before) etc. So amazing! The timing of that week was quite crucial to some, one of the girls found out her mother had cancer & parents were getting divorced, and another girl found out her friend had passed away. There were many tears, but it really moved me to see them go to the Lord straight away and to give them their burdens, and as well for the whole school to grow in relationship & vulnerability with each other. We prayed and ministered with these girls, and the Father really came with peace & hope in the midst of their pain as they gave it all up to Him. This was a pile of things that we as a class surrendered to the Lord. Wallets to represent finances, passports to represent citizenship, mirrors to represent self image, watches to represent time, pillows to represent comfort, pictures of family etc. HONG KONG Myself and another girl on staff lead half the students to Hong Kong, and the other half went with another couple leaders to East Timor. We had an amaaazing time on outreach in Hong Kong working with YWAM Harbour City up in the Northern Territory. So many stories I could tell again! 🙂 I think one of my favourites was working with a ministry called Shanti Ministries. It’s a Christian Tutoring ministry that works with about 20 Muslim, Buddhist & Hindu school children and tutors them in maths, Chinese, & English. They have volunteer Chinese teachers come in, and once the kids have done their homework, they go into another room and learn about Jesus! We got to work with these kids twice a week for over a month, and really fell in love with all of them. Jesus is moving in their lives and touching their families as well. I was talking with one of the kids, he’s about 12 years old and is from Pakistan. Every day after school he comes to Shanti for a couple hours, is surrounded by love, encouragement and the Lord, and then he goes to a mosque for a couple hours and is surrounded by fear, anger & hopelessness. I was challenged by the amount of wisdom he carried and the pure heart he had, and how even though he was very young could really see the spiritual battle that he and his family is in. I was able to pray for him and prophesy over him, and I continue to pray for him and his family. Another really cool aspect of our outreach was the amount of intercession & worship we did over the city of Hong Kong & the village the YWAM base is in. We engaged in spiritual warfare by declaring the praises of our King in some of the darkest spiritual places around. We carried around our guitar everywhere and I loved getting to feel atmospheres shift as the place was taken for Holy Ground by a bunch of young Jesus lovers! 😀 We got to also work in a public primary school several times a week teaching English! It’s also completely legal to talk about Jesus there, so we shared taught the kids worship songs and encouraged them to get along and work hard gave them notes about Jesus. These kids were mainly Muslim & Buddhist! Such an incredible opportunity. I am so overwhelmed by how God strategically had us ministering to mostly young people from the ages of 2- 20. I got so convicted that these kids are SO KEY to revival in Asia! The enemy is trying his utmost best to destroy their lives, suicide rates in kids from 10-18 in Hong Kong, Japan, & China are unreal! We felt a real burden to reach out to these kids and impart JOY and HOPE through Jesus. That was our main focus while we were there. When we would evangelise & worship on the streets we always felt to go counter-culture and sing joyful songs and dance. Haha so fun, and people were really drawn to that, because joy and peace are so evidently missing in that city. Pray for Hong Kong! My team and some of the amazing youth we got to hang out with! 🙂 Worshiping on the streets! Shanti Ministries!  Gospel Drama on streets I was hugely blessed by an opportunity to go to China for the day! 🙂 I left my team in the capable hands of the other leader and traveled to Shenzhen with a couple girls from the base in Hong Kong. Stepping over the border I immediately felt so much joy and peace and confirmation about the potential future opportunities there! These are a few girls from the High School that we went to a few times! It was amazing, we shared our testimonies, talked about Jesus and sang quite a few worship & pop songs. Such an amazing opportunity and because of this several of the girls from the school went to church with us and heard the gospel even more clearly. THE NOW: I’m currently co-leading this DTS which started about 4 weeks ago. There are 21 students from America, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, England and the Netherlands. One of the students I’ve actually known since he was born! It’s been amazing to help disciple him and hear all the revelations that are challenging and growing him. I’m serving on the Leadership Team that meets weekly to discuss staff/student issues, base decisions etc. I also get to teach! I’ve been teaching the DTS on subjects like Worship Leading, Worship & Praise, Bible studying, Missions & Cultural Awareness. I also am overseeing staff development and Pastoral Care. I meet with about 3 staff girls weekly. Weekly, I run a staff development session that focuses on Leadership Development. I also serve at a local church here in Toowoomba as well. I am running a Young Adults group with about 7 local young adults from Toowoomba! I love them all, so fun! Here’s a picture of a few of them 🙂 So excited to keep seeing them grow and challenged in the Lord. This school I won’t be leading an outreach team, but I’m hoping to go to Hong Kong again at the end of April with another staff member to scout out a potential future music & worship partnership between our two bases.

Thank you so so so much for reading this email and continuing in your prayer support of my adventures with YWAM! I pray you are abundantly blessed and enjoy your day! Feel free to connect with me via email, facebook or follow me on instagram (hmacuzz). I am not the greatest at responding, but I LOVE hearing from you!!! I promise I read every email I receive 🙂 Now I am working at scheduling in times into my schedule to reply to all of them, so if you’ve sent me an email in the past bit and I haven’t responded yet, don’t worry! An answer is coming! Also, if you feel lead to support me financially either monthly or one time donation please check out paypal.me/hannahmacuzzi, or https://www.gofundme.com/hannah-macuzzi or for tax refundable receipts go to:  https://chimp.net/groups/hannah-macuzzi-mh06 These funds raised will help me continue discipling the next generation of fearless world-wide missionaries and sending them out the nations. It will also help me keep my car on the road, and to travel to Hong Kong in April. I’m in need of about $1500 for Hong Kong 🙂 God bless you! Lots of love, Hannah

Live & Laugh

 

Hello from the other side…. 😀

Hey there folks! This is an update from May-June (the last one was actually one I wrote back in May, but just posted it yesterday)! 🙂 I’ve been up to a bunch of stuff!

What I’ve been up to these past few months:

Well, I went to New Zealand for 10 days in June, after the January Discipleship Training School graduated! Myself and one of my best friends who’s been staffing with me for a couple years, Rebekka from Germany, went together and rented a car and stayed at several YWAM bases, and did some couch surfing as well! The whole trip was amazing, we got to experience New Zealand, get some rest, get renewed and ready for the next school and have so much fun! I was so blessed to have been able to go. We met a lot of cool people who love Jesus and got to encourage some who don’t know the Lord! We visited Hobbiton, (one of my childhood dreams come true), climbed some mountains, visited the Hot Springs, explored some deep caves and went on a boat that floated underneath a million glow worms lighting our way, hung out in the city of Auckland and drove throughout the North Island. Thank you Jesus for opportunities like this! 🙂

Top of Mount Maunguanui in Tauranga, NZ

Roturua Hot Springs

This is Cathedral Cove where they filmed Prince Caspian a few years ago.

Hobbiton! Samwise Gamgee’s very own door! 🙂

 

Also, I turned 26! 🙂

My birthday was on July 1st, right after getting back from New Zealand, and I had a blast! I was able to skype with a lot of my family, opened my birthday package from my parents that had a bunch of Canadian chocolate, ate dinner out with all the YWAM staff still on base, ate some of my Canadian Maple Leaf birthday cake, and watched Tarzan with everyone. Wonderful 🙂

Birthday cake & a flag

Skyping my parents & eating dinner out with my YWAM family!

 

After that, on July 4th we started Staff Training! From then til the end of July, I was pretty much leading the whole base (the base leaders were all away on holiday), organizing and running staff training, planning and preparing the school and training my new DTS staff how to staff a DTS! It was a CRAZY month but so amazing to see myself stretched and the Lord’s faithfulness to preserve my sanity and strength. When the school started and all the other base leaders arrived back, I felt a big weight lift but I also was so amazed at how far the Lord has taken me in the past few years, there is NO WAY I would have been able to do this even a year ago, I would have freaked out and probably stressed so much and made myself sick. Wow, HE IS FAITHFUL and HE GIVES SO MUCH GRACE! Seriously, amazing.

Also, as you know, I’ve been preparing the past 6 months for the July Music & Worship DTS, and it has now officially started! It’s the first time I’m leading a school fully on my own, so scary but exciting! 🙂 We just finished Week #2, having covered the topics of Character & Nature of God, Hearing the Voice of God and Repentance & Forgiveness. There are 13 students from North America and New Zealand, 4 boys and 9 girls. They’re amazing!!! Compared to other schools, it is a young group, but some things we felt strongly as a DTS staff team (there are 4 staffing the DTS and myself) before we started were that the Lord has gifted this group with an anointing in wisdom, discernment and understanding, that He was going to grow them & mature them fast, and that they were going to bring a level of consistency, steadfastness and peace such that this current generation has seen little of. I’m so excited to see that already happening! These guys are incredibly hungry for the things of God. And something we keep feeling the Lord telling us as a school is that faith is not built on emotion it’s built on the Fear of the Lord which leads to the knowledge of God and a deep deep wisdom & understand. Some amazing passages that God has spoken over us are

Hosea 6:3

Let us press on to know the Lord

Psalm 119:97-104

Oh, how I love your law!
    I meditate on it all day long.
Your commands are always with me
    and make me wiser than my enemies.
I have more insight than all my teachers,
    for I meditate on your statutes.
I have more understanding than the elders,
    for I obey your precepts.
I have kept my feet from every evil path
    so that I might obey your word.
I have not departed from your laws,
    for you yourself have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
    sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I gain understanding from your precepts;
    therefore I hate every wrong path.

& Proverbs 2:1-11

My son, if you accept my words
    and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom
    and applying your heart to understanding—
indeed, if you call out for insight
    and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
    and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
    and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
    from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
He holds success in store for the upright,
    he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,
for he guards the course of the just
    and protects the way of his faithful ones.

Then you will understand what is right and just
    and fair—every good path.
For wisdom will enter your heart,
    and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Discretion will protect you,
    and understanding will guard you.

 

I am so excited to see the Lord already transforming these amazing young people into targeted arrows for the Kingdom of God that are going to be sent out soon into the nations! We just had a week of Repentance & Forgiveness and every student has chosen to open their hearts to the Lord and let His light come in and speak Truth. I’ve watched minds and hearts healed, tears come and forgiveness and confession of their identity in Christ and not in sin bring freedom. Thank you Jesus for Your work on the cross!

Thank you for your prayers, they mean the world to me! You mean the world to me as well, and I pray for you to be filled with all knowledge of the glory of God and with His power.

 

Much love,

Hannah ❤ xoxo

 

May 2016

Hey family!

Been awhile since I’ve updated but since March, it’s been amazing to see the students’ growth and love for outreach! I was able to have the privilege of teaching a whole week on the topic of Missions. It was incredible and I never would have imagined myself speaking to a classroom of over 40 people for an entire week!! It ended up being so inspiring and I covered things like, God being a missional God, an overview of missions in the Word, what is missions?, who does missions?, why do we do missions?, mission is actually our main reason for being on the planet, the 10/40 window, 1st world missions, martydom, the worth of the Gospel etc, cross-cultural awareness, and at the end we had a time of 3 hours of worship and intense commissioning and saying yes to God’s call on everyone, to be a part of His mission. It was amazing! I was so amazed at what the Lord did in everyone’s hearts and how He used me to express Himself to His kids.

Right after that week, all the outreach teams left for Fiji, Thailand and Cambodia!

While the outreach teams have been away, I’ve been working hard planning for the Discipleship Training School in July that I’ll be leading! 🙂 Booking speakers in and their airfare, planning the weekly, master, & event schedule, praying, processing student applications, choosing outreach locations (another possibility of me going to Hong Kong in October!) and much much more keeps me busy! 🙂 I’m getting so excited, albeit a bit nervous, to try this out on my own with the Lord! I have a staff team of 4 and already 12 students fully accepted. It’s looking like there could be upwards of 14-20 students by the time the school starts at the end of July.

I’ve also been ministering on a team in our city’s Healing Rooms, teaching Sunday School, leading worship at different events and churches, attending our Christian Leadership Network meetings, starting a Young Adults group, mentoring a few different young ladies in the city and leading our staff team of about 10 that has stayed back in Toowoomba to do ministry here.

It’s been full on! I would love prayer for sanity and rest in the midst of the business of life, that I would have the wisdom to really continue to encounter God and treasure quiet moments with Him, and that I would be growing in my confidence to lead this school without a co-leader (I’ve been a bit nervous about that!), that things would come together planning-wise, and that I would be very in tune with the Lord with what He is planning these next 6 months!

Thanks so much! Love you all! ❤

P.s. The pictures are of the Young Adults Group that I’m leading here in town (there are about 8 all together, 4 pictured), a little glimpse into some of my schedules/calendars for planning this DTS, and a bunch of pictures from the last time I went to East Timor! 🙂

A much needed update from Oz!

Dear family,

News from the past six months (since my last email update! ah!)! 🙂

First off, I had my 25th birthday in July! That was pretty cool. The Lord has shown me how blessed and favoured my life has been as I’ve traveled the world and seen hundreds impacted by the love of the Lord and His Kingdom. My family has also more than doubled in size in the past few years. All my siblings are now married and I have 4 nieces and nephews! Amazing! 🙂

Since I last emailed, we graduated the second DTS that I co-lead! Super excited to hear stories already of how they are impacting the world with the Kingdom of God. 2 of them are actually coming back on staff this July to be on my DTS staff team for the July 2016 DTS.

I also lead a third team to East Timor! It was quite a trip, many testimonies of the Lord’s love and I am really getting good at the Timorese language, Tetun! In the village I was able to communicate quite well and even do some translating! I think my favourite part of going back a third time was seeing relationships grow and the changes God is doing in their lives since my first time being there almost 2 years ago.

Check out these awesome testimonies:

 

This is Cecilia… She is a wonderful woman who has been on quite the journey since I first met her in April 2014!! She received salvation and physical healing our second time being East Timor April 2015. When I went in October 2015 her face shone the light of the Lord and she has received much healing, emotionally spiritually and physically, and even her husband is on his way to receive Jesus soon, because of her testimony and the joy she has found. What an honour and privilege it’s been to go back to see her and see the seeds we planted grow into fruition! Praise the Lord!!

This is Janelle… She is a beautiful lady who is trying to get on track again in life and while our outreach team was in Darwin in November (Northern Australia) the Lord sent us to her to encourage her and pray for her. The week before she was beaten by her partner and she had two ribs broken, he ended up going to jail. When she met us and told us her story, we shared the gospel and prayed for her and her ribs were healed! Keep praying that she will fully surrender to Him her heart as He continues to chase her.

Also I got to lead these wonderful young people to the Lord at the University in Dili! So honoured and blessed! They were so blessed and were so amazed at the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ! So hungry!

The Lord provided a way for me to go home to Canada for 5 weeks in in December! It was a most amazing time of being with family and hanging out with my nieces and nephews! I am so thankful for that precious time and love love love that the two older ones can say my name now when I skype them! 😀

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE NOW:

Landon and I are no longer co-leading, he is fully leading this school that just started and I will be leading the July school by myself. This means for the first time in YWAM Toowoomba history I will have a whole 6 months to prepare for the school!

I am currently doing a few different things around the base. I’m in the beginning stages of planning, organising and running the July DTS as I said earlier.

I’m serving on the Leadership Team that meets weekly to discuss staff/student issues, base decisions etc.

I also get to teach! I’ve been teaching the DTS on subjects like Hearing the Voice of God, Worship, Holiness and Fear of the Lord so far.

I also am overseeing staff development and Pastoral Care. I meet with about 5 staff girls bi-weekly and run a small group for the new DTS staff as well. Weekly, I run a staff development session that focuses on Leadership.

I have just recently (in the past couple weeks) begun to serve at at a local church here in Toowoomba as well. I am going to be training and developing the youth in the church in ministry! This involves creating a Youth and Children’s team to volunteer in the Healing Rooms that the church runs, mentoring them weekly, teaching on worship and stuff as well.

This school I won’t be leading an outreach team, but it will allow me to continue to plan the July DTS, serve my church here, and have a bit of a rest after the past 2 full-on years.

I’m very excited about this season! It is a bit weird not being fully involved with the school but I’m loving the change in schedule and being a bit more flexible.

 

This is Tammy, my car! My church family in Toowoomba blessed me tremendously by giving this beautiful little red car to me! She’s a ’95 and runs like a new one. Only 140,000 clicks on it!! I still cant believe it! In all my almost 26 years I never thought I would ever be able to own a car! The Lord has completely outdone Himself in His faithfulness to me and has challenged me again and again in my misconceptions of receiving and blessings! Thanks Lord!

 

Thank you so so so much for reading this email and continuing in your prayer support of my adventures with YWAM! I pray you are abundantly blessed and enjoy your day!

Feel free to connect with me via email, facebook or follow me on instagram (hmacuzz). I am not the greatest at responding, but I LOVE hearing from you!!! I promise I read every email I receive 🙂 Now I am working at scheduling in times into my schedule to reply to all of them, so if you’ve sent me an email in the past bit and I haven’t responded yet, don’t worry! An answer is coming! 😀

God bless you!

Lots of love,

Hannah

 

Australian Update :)

Hey there!! 🙂

I am back from 4 1/2 weeks in East Timor and a 1/2 week in Darwin, Australia! So many stories to be had, but I think my favourite part is always watching the students grab hold of the fact they can hear the Lord’s voice, know what He’s saying, and then obey!

Team East Timor

I also loved going back to a country I’ve grown to love!! I seriously felt like I was coming home. We got to build a house, hold many church services and kids ministry times, build relationships and disciple, evangelize on the streets, in universities and in aboriginal communities, teach English to children and adults, worship and intercede over nations, and boldly proclaim the Kingdom of God to the Timorese people.

After we arrived back in Toowoomba, there was a couple more weeks of lecture and local outreach (which included busking/evangelizing!!! That was so fun, I’ve never busked before but it was such a neat way to share the love and light of Christ to people!). The last week Landon (my Co- School Leader) and I shared on debrief and re-entry, as well as both of us taking the time to impart again to the students what a normal Christian life can look like. It was incredible to share with them the power of Grace, which can train us for godliness in this present age! Titus 2:11-15.
I was able to teach a day on Holiness/Sanctification, and he taught on No Compromising. I love love love teaching! I was literally so paralyzed in fear when it came to speaking in public a few years ago, it’s incredible how far the Lord has taken me! I still get nervous, but now it’s so fun and rewarding to see the fruit of what you teach for 5 months displayed in a group of 33 young people who are on FIRE for the Lord and His Kingdom! These guys’s journey has been inspiring and encouraging to me to say the least.

Last Worship Session!

Bible Reading: I lead this 30 minute segment 2 mornings a week. We read a portion of scripture for 15 minutes, ponder it for 5, then discuss for 10 🙂 So much fun!

On Honouring Night (the night after Graduation), I had the chance to honour the whole school and I cried the whole way through. I had no idea that I would grow so close to these wonderful people or be so proud of them! They have truly laid down their lives for the King and I fully trust the Lord to carry them on until completion. These guys are a different breed of young people than I’ve ever seen. They are on a mission. HIS mission! I’m so excited after having sent them off last week, they get it! They get the fact that we, as followers and disciples of Christ, never turn off. We are always missionaries wherever we go. We are always transforming to look like Christ, never taking a ‘break’ from the tilling, ploughing, weeding, etc of our spiritual gardens. The call to rise up and take up our swords has been shouted from the rooftops and they are off on a mission to live as foreigners to this world, and bring Heaven to earth wherever they go.

Grad night!

I am so fulfilled. I can’t believe how fulfilling it is to watch seeds planted and take root, grow and bear fruit! Discipling is addicting!!! It’s so cool, I’ve been told all my life by that I have a mother’s heart (nurturing, developing and teaching people) and that I would mother nations but I never ever believed/understood it until last Friday. I realized through this school that that is one of my giftings, and I feel so blessed to be able to walk out in that calling! I felt the morning after graduation like a mother about to have an empty nest, I was overwhelmed with fear for their lives and then the Lord reassured me the whole day that He is keeping watch over them and that this is so good for them to go, to take to the world a message it needs to hear!! Woo! I love my job!!!

NEWS about the FUTURE!
I am School Leading this next school that starts in July with Landon. There are 12 students and I will most likely be leading a team of 6 students to East Timor again (3rd time) for 6 weeks with Stu, a student from my last team who is coming back on staff in July.

To give you an idea of what I do around here:

• Planning, Booking & Facilitating Speaker Sessions
• Small Groups, One on Ones & Basic Mentoring
• Facilitating Classroom & Ministry Times
• Leading Staff & Student Worship
• Student Song-Writing & Collaboration
• Teaching, Preaching & Sharing Testimony
• Planning, Coordinating & Running School Events & Local Outreach Teams
• Local Evangelism, Youth & Mercy Ministry
• Planning, Coordinating & Leading Overseas Outreach Teams
• Student Assessment Development & Implementation
• Staff Development & Mentorship

Also, if you are interested in supporting me financially, (I will be doing more intentional fundraising in the next few months, especially if I commit to YWAM for a longer term) I am looking to raise funds for a new computer. I have already raised $1,200 of my $1,500 goal through GoFundMe! 🙂 I only need $300 more!

You can go to the GoFundMe page itself to donate:
gofund.me/wnk9t7y

Or you can donate via PayPal by sending money to hannah.macuzzi@ywamtoowoomba.com

Feel free to connect with me via email, facebook or follow me on instagram (hmacuzz). I am not the greatest at responding, but I LOVE hearing from you!!! I promise I read every email I receive 🙂 Now I am working at scheduling in times into my schedule to reply to all of them, so if you’ve sent me an email in the past bit and I haven’t responded yet, don’t worry! An answer is coming! 😀

God bless you!

Lots of love,

Hannah