Greetings my dear friends and family,

Bonjour from Dunham, Quebec! I'm am so amazed how God has blessed me here and am excited to tell you about it. I can't believe I've been here 8 weeks already! I'm starting to get used to hearing as much French as English in a day, but I still can only speak a few simple phrases. It’s difficult to try to learn a second language on top of everything else we're doing here.

As far as my schedule goes; Monday through Friday, we have 3 hours of lecture, with a different speaker every week. It's really nice to have a fresh face teaching us different things every week. On the other hand, by the end of the week, we are all sad to see our teacher and new friend leave us. It’s all bittersweet. Each week we have different times scheduled for creative release, intercession (praying and listening) time together, HOME CLEANING, home projects (pretty much just another name for more cleaning), and community service. And with all this I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN. We have weekends off, but they are mostly spent working on different projects such as creating a psalm in our own art form or creating a video on an injustice issue going on in the world. Also, weekly we have to complete our journal. These are meant to be personal accounts of what we've learned during the week presented in a creative way.

I’m not the same person as I was 8 weeks ago. God has put so many amazing people in my life that have helped me truly discover some of God's love. So many lies that I had been believing are being replaced with the truth of God's love for me. Being in a place where God is the focus of everyone is incredible. I can’t think of any other place I’d want to be at in this time of my life.

Did I mention that I’m going to BRAZIL for outreach!? For the first 3 weeks I will be in the city, Porto Velho, involved with YWAM and working with the Tribes in the Amazon jungle. After that our team will be heading to the city, Brazilia, and working in a hospital that treats kids with cancer. Also, we will be going an hour outside the city and working with a project that gives shelter to kids that have been rescued from being buried alive because they have deformities. There is a team of six of us going to use the amazing things God has taught these months here in Dunham. I know God has picked us to go to Brazil for a reason and I'm extremely excited for the work we will be doing there.

God has been so good by providing me with jobs so I could support myself for the first part of this adventure! Thank you for all of your prayers and support in coming here. I still need to raise some support for myself, the outreach phase costs about $3,500. I have $1,000 set aside for that and I'm trusting God to bring in the remaining $2,500.

If you feel like would like to support me in this amazing time in my life, please a send a check made out to YWAM Dunham with Nicole Lechner in the memo, or just write it out to my name. Feel free to send me letters and emails too! The address is as follows:

Nicole Lechner
Jeunesse en mission
165, rue du collège - Dunham, QC,
JOE 1MO Canada.  


Also you can support me by donating through paypal,

Donate through paypal

I also need lots of prayer for this journey I'm about to go on. Here are some things to keep in your prayers:

• One of the members of the outreach team is from the Dominican Republic and will have a hard time attaining a transit visa so we can fly through the US.
•  Each of us has to get a visa for our time in Brazil and it's hard for people who are doing the work we are going to do to get one. 
• That our team will learn Portuguese quickly because for the first 3 weeks, while in Porto Velho, we will not have a translator and only one team member speaks a bit of Portuguese. 
• Pray that the outreach team will become a strong, united group because the work we will be doing is not easy work and will probably bring many different struggles for each of us. 
• Please pray that daily I will feel passionate and excited about the ministries I will be working with. There will be days that I will be exhausted and need to remember God’s heart for the people in Brazil.
• While being here I have discovered a passion and a new talent for dancing. Which is awesome because in Brazilian culture dancing is huge. So pray that God will continue to bless my dancing and give me the patience to keep learning.

That's all for now! Please keep me in your prayers, especially as my team and the other teams prepare for outreach. Thank you for everything, dear friends. I miss you all!

Love,
Nicole

Lights

Well friends,
My time here in Dunham, Quebec has become a very busy life. Between daily lectures and house chores,  worship, intercession, lunch dishes, community service projects we also have different projects we have to tackle. Recently we had an art project where we had to create a psalm in our own art form. People wrote songs, poems, created drawings, paintings, sculptures, dances, someone even did a fire dance! I made a quilt in honor of my grandma. It was a very simple small wall hanging one. Most of it was different colored plain blue squares and on top of them I had puzzle pieces. Each piece represented something God had done in my life or a decision I made, all the different puzzles pieces met together near the center and created a explosion where I had fabric sewn on to look like it was exploding off the quilt. The explosion on my quilt created different puzzle pieces, some of which were; fabric with red and white maple leaves to represent coming to Canada; a circus material, since the theme of our DTS is Holy Circus; and a fabric with Brazilian colors on it. And because of coming to Canada and going my DTS I discovered how much God loves me and he ripped away what would of been a very plain future of blue squares and instead gave me this future of knowing his love, where I had all different floral prints to show how I can be like a little girl running through a field admiring all the beautiful flowers and just soak in God's beauty and grace.
Now all of that took about 3 days and 2 very late nights to make. During which I was sick but ignored it till I presented my quilt to the YWAM base. The day after that got up for worship but then found I was so sickly I had to go back to bed. And I slept till about 4. I felt much better but it still took a couple more days to get over that sickness.
This past week we have be studying the topic of Justice. Our teacher was Dave Skeen, and he gave each of the 5 outreach teams a different injustice that was happening in the world and we had to research it and create a video so raise awareness about it. My outreach team was given the topic of  "aboriginal health issues due to tar-sands". When I first heard our topic I was like "WHAA!" I've never heard of tar-sands before. And it's amazing that I haven't because it causing so much devastation here in Canada. Here is the video...

It was a challenging time for our team. We had done most of the research and created the drawings for the first bit of the video but we had put nothing together until the night before. Plus the day the day before it was due the computer we were going to use because of the program it had got a virus and the person on our team with the most video creating skills also got a virus. So yeah, it took us till 4 in the morning to make it. BUT we weren't the last team to go to bed that night. One guy was up till 5:30 making their video. CRAZY.

Coming up I have to do a newspaper article/ book report type thing on Rob Bell's book "Sex God". I would tell you a little bit about it but I haven't started reading it yet. Heh. We'll see how this goes. 

Anyway, in all of this craziness I have had some great times with the people here with me. The compassion DTS here graduated last week and we were all up till 1:30 in the morning dancing. A group of us went on a walk in 0 degree weather to a frozen lake and had a picnic on it. Also I have found time to take some photos of the amazing people here. I have had many great times with this crazy bunch of people.

SO! I'm going to Brazil for outreach!!! YAAAYY! I'm so excited! My team leader is a girl named Eva, she is from the Dominican Republic. The rest of the team is as follows; Caroline from Virgina; Dean from the Cayman Islands; Fiona from Scotland; Raphael from Germany; and Moi! For the first 3 weeks we will be with YWAM in Porto Velho working with the tribes in the Amazon. From there we travel to the city Brazila to work in a kids cancer hospital and also to work with a project that rescues kids from the indigenous tribes that buries kids alive if they have deformities or if they are twins. Mostly they offer shelter to mothers and the kids. We found out to the other day that for the first 3 weeks in Brazil we won't have a translator. So it will be a very challenging time but our team is going to be meeting together weekly for Portuguese lessons. 

Bon Nuit (good night)