be here.

Grow where you’re planted. It’s a thought that I’ve been tossing around in my mind a lot recently. I can’t remember when or how or where I heard it; all I know is that it has stuck with me. I knew it somehow applied to my current season and situation, and have been asking God for insight on it…

Right now, I’m in a strange season of life. I returned home from YWAM 6 months ago (exactly, actually). It’s been a difficult time of adjusting to my old habitat as a “new” person. But man, it has been good. I have grown so much, and am learning to rely solely on God, regardless of who and what is surrounding me. Not to mention that I absolutely love Lancaster County and the fact that I get to call it home! However, I feel an undeniable pull towards “the ends of the earth”, if you will. The idea that my life would be full of travel was one that God began to speak to me as a senior in high school, and my time in YWAM really confirmed that for me.

I’ve recently made several attempts to make plans for “the next adventure”. As each one fell through, I got more and more discouraged. I’m dying to GO, but here I am—STAYing. I began doubting and questioning everything that I felt God had spoken to me about my life and my purpose, and at one point, even felt like He simply had no interest in using me. But I knew that that is not at all the character of the God that I know, and began searching for peace in my situation.

Last week, I was at work—milking cows. The barn is where I do my best thinking, or possibly where I hear God the clearest (Seriously! I know many fellow farmhands who would agree with me on this!) This particular evening was no exception. God gave me a picture of what it looks like and what it means to “Grow where you’re planted.”

Consider a flower…ultimately, it is taken home and planted outdoors, where it can grow and thrive. But that’s not where it begins. It begins in the winter, in a small pot, indoors. The seed is planted, and the small plant begins to grow. When warm weather rolls around, the flower is transplanted outdoors, and continues to thrive. If the gardener had transplanted it earlier, it would have died in the winter and early spring frost. In order for the flower to grow and reach it’s ultimate destination, it had to first grow and mature indoors, under the care and watchful eye of the gardener.  And so it is with me…

I am the flower, God the gardener. And currently, home is my small indoor pot. Right now, my job is to allow God to continue growing me, trusting that when the right season comes, I’ll be transplanted “outdoors”. If I don’t grow and thrive here, I can’t be uprooted and moved. And as for when and where I will be moved, that’s not for me to fret over. The Gardener knows what He’s doing. He’s keeping careful watch over me, and waiting for the right season to carefully move me to a new location.

I love this picture. I was especially hit by the realization that I don’t have to try to figure out where and when to make the next move. I’m simply the plant! God just wants us to focus on really growing where we are, whatever the situation is, so that we are prepared for the next season.

If you’re like me, and feel restless in your current situation, rest in the knowledge that you are right where you’re at for a reason. Don’t worry about the future—simply focus on the present and allow God to grow you in it. He’s the most skilled gardener I know, and He’ll surely transplant you when the time is right!

How many times have I begged God to speak to me? How many times have I felt discouraged because He felt so distant? How many times have I longed to simply be reminded of His love? Too many.

But what if all those times I felt frustrated with God for not being close by, He was actually right there, trying desperately to remind me of His ridiculous, mind-blowing love, if I had only opened my eyes…chosen to see it. 

God is so insanely passionate about us — His kids. He would do anything to demonstrate that to us. But here’s the thing — most of the time we’re not looking or listening. We are living with our eyes half open, oblivious to any type of communication that isn’t big, loud, and unmistakeable, and we miss out on the gentle, persistent invitation from our Savior to come; to be with Him; to understand His love. God illustrated His character in everything He created. We are completely surrounded by it — by Him…His love, His character. 

constantly communicating,

beckoning,

gentle,

persistent,

surrounding,

too often over-looked,

rejected

but faithful all the same. 

That’s our Savior.

In your majesty ride forth victoriously in behalf of truth, humility and righteousness; let your right hand display awesome deeds.

-Psalm 45:4 

Week 8 is complete. That means we only have 4 more weeks of lecture phase! I’m really hoping the time goes slow…I know outreach will be amazing, but I’m not ready to leave Colorado and everyone on the Haiti team! Speaking of outreach, last week was Outreach Prep week. So instead of lectures, our days were spent learning dramas, as well as a few other odds and ends like activities to do with children and basic first aid. But our main focus was the dramas. Everyone I’ve talked to who has been on outreach attests to the fact that dramas are actually extremely effective and powerful. We learned 5 this week, and will possibly be learning another one before we leave. I actually really like doing them, and I’ve been so impressed with the abilities of my teammates!

So, Samoa—we are flying out on March 27th.  We will be staying at the YWAM base near Apia, the capital of Samoa. We don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing there—it will probably be a variety of things. We really just want to be open to whatever God would have us do there. We’ll likely spend our mornings in prayer, getting direction for the day. Samoa was hit by a tsunami in the fall, and many villages were completely swept away, so clean-up, etc, is a definite possibility. Samoans are all about having close relationships, so spending time with people and really getting to know them will also be important. We are fortunate to have a couple on staff here who worked with YWAM Samoa for a year, so they have been sharing lots of information with us about the culture, etc. Like, for instance, the fact that it is considered rude to eat or drink while standing!

Snowboarding has been going really well! I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of it, and man, I love it! Every Sunday, we ride at Breckenridge, and we are involved with their Service on the Hill. Basically, it’s a little church service held outdoors mid-mountain. We sing a few worship songs and someone gives a short message. It’s pretty sweet. We also help hand out cookies to all of the employees—lift attendants, etc, who all refer to the cookies as “Jesus cookies”!


I guess that’s all for now…I posted a bunch of new pics. If you’re interested, here they are: Any Given Monday…Also, if you would like to support me financially for the outreach (Samoa) portion of the school, it would be much appreciated! The cost is $2,800. I have paid for half of it, but will soon have to pay for the last $1,400.

My address is:

Laken Hoffer
YWAM BDTS
12750 W. 63rd Ave.
Arvada, CO 80004

(Checks can be made out to YWAM.)

Thanks so much!

P.S. Ok, one more link, just cause I feel like it…here’s a video I made for a Creative Presentation: Gentleness vs. Harshness

I’m finally updating! Sorry it’s been awhile…so much has been happening lately, so free time has been few and far between. I’m warning you now, this might be a pretty lengthy post!

Several people have wondered what our schedule is like here, so I’ll give you a quick synopsis. Mondays are spent at the base in Arvada, as I explained earlier. Tuesdays and Thursday go like this: breakfast, quiet time, class, break, class, lunch, “Director’s Docket” or creative presentations (I‘ll discuss them in a minute), work duties, dinner, free time. Wednesdays and Fridays are similar: breakfast, quiet time, worship & intercession, break, class, lunch, class, work duties, dinner, free time. And Saturdays and Sundays are spent riding.

We’ve had quite a few speakers since my last update…we are half-way through our lecture phase! It’s ridiculous how fast the time is going. There have been some really incredible speakers (like this week!), and some that I didn’t personally care for. But I’m pretty sure I learned something from each of them. Our director always talks to us about how we are feeling about the speakers, and encourages us to take what we can from each of them, even if we don’t personally like them that much. The main topics we’ve covered so far are The Father Heart of God, The Character of God, Relationships, Evangelism, and The Fear of the Lord.

The other week, our whole crew headed to Aspen, Colorado for the Winter X Games. Our main purpose was to serve and evangelize, but there was also time to just enjoy being at the X GAMES! We were all pretty stoked. I could write a ton about the sweet stuff that happened there, but I think I’ll just mention some highlights. One of our first nights there, several of us decided to pick up trash after the events were over. And it was actually really fun to be able to just bless the workers there! And it was pretty funny to see their reactions! They were surprised, to say the least. Another ministry we did was handing out free hot chocolate downtown. We did it after the events on Friday and Saturday night. It was a great opportunity to just talk with people and love on them. What amazed me the most was how many people just stayed…for a long time! There were lots of kids our age, and they would talk about needing to go get drunk or whatever, but then they would just continue to hang out with as. It was crazy to see how people were just drawn to us, not because we are anything special, but just because were loving each other and loving them. We did various other ministries throughout the week, but those were our main ones. Like I said, we also had time to just watch events and enjoy our time there. The first night, a few of us ended up getting in to the VIP section for the Men’s Superpipe Eliminations. Apparently I got on ESPN…did anyone see it?? It was pretty awesome. But it got even better…through helping out around the venue, we got to know Jose, one of the big-wigs there, and because he had seen us picking up trash, he let us in the Athlete Support section (which is even better than VIP) for the Women‘s Superpipe Finals. I’ll be honest, I think we all geeked out a bit. We were pretty excited. So yeah, it was a crazy week. This is just a snippet of all the happened during our time in Aspen. We definitely got a taste for evangelism…and had tons of fun doing it! Wanna see pics? X-Games Pics

Ok, now about Outreach. So much has happened as far as locations are concerned! Originally, there were 3 teams: Mexico, Panama, and Western Samoa. We had to make final decisions about which team to join last week. I decided to go to Samoa. Because only a few people had chosen Mexico, they made the decision to drop that outreach. So we were down to Panama and Samoa…until yesterday! During intercession, we prayed for the country of Haiti. Then John, our director, told us that at the YWAM Denver elders meeting on Monday, they felt very strongly that God was asking our base if we were willing to go to Haiti and work with the YWAM base there. Soooo, they gave us time to individually pray and discern if we were supposed to stick with our original outreach or go to Haiti. It ended up that almost the entire Panama team wrote down Haiti, so the Panama outreach was dropped. So we now have a Haiti team and a Samoa team. Long story short, I am still on the Samoa team! Our team is pretty small — there are only 8 of us. But I’m actually really excited about it! Everyone on the team is pretty solid, and I think we’re really going to have an awesome time together. More on that later!

Thanks to everyone who sent me cards and stuff for my birthday! I really appreciated it! Everyone was having a fit about how much mail I got! Haha. Anyway, man, I really need to write updates more often…there is way too much to say! I promise to get better at doing this more often!

As I sit here amongst the sounds of chattering (mixed with some yelling due to the football game on tv!), I can’t believe that 2 weeks ago, I didn’t know any of these people. I was at home, cramming as much stuff as I possibly could into 2 suitcases, wondering what the next 5 months would bring. Well, I still don’t know what they will bring, but I do know that the past 2 weeks have been gosh darn incredible.

Lots of people have asked me how snowboarding is going, so I’ll start with that. It’s been going really well. I mean, I’m boarding in freakin Colorado! It’s gorgeous. One of the staff members really worked with me one day, so now I’m actually able to ride without falling down every 3 seconds! But right now, I can only do toe-side (I’ll explain that in a sec for those of you who don’t know), and not heel-side. So that’s what I really need to work on. Basically, when you snowboard, you alternate between putting your weight on your toes, and putting your weight on you heels. But right now I can only ride with my weight on my toes. Apparently that’s really odd—most people learn doing heel-side and have trouble with toe-side. Anyway, I’m really enjoying it. And I bought my first board the other night! I absolutely LOVE it! I haven’t gotten to use it yet because I just ordered bindings for it, but hopefully I’ll be able to next weekend.

Last week, we had a Commitment Service. Basically, it was a time for each of us to really commit to giving our all in the next 5 months, not only to God, but also to each other. It ended up being a really remarkable night. We spent a lot of time in prayer. Staff prayed with students, students prayed with other students, and we prayed individually. Several staff who prayed with me had words and visions for me, and it was pretty incredible stuff that really meant a lot to me. Also, each student and staff got a cord on their wrist as a reminder that we are all committed to this together. One girl lost hers after only a few days, and a staff member told her that it was either prophetic or pathetic! Haha.

This week we started our actual routine for the lecture phase, meaning we now have regular classes and work duties. Each week, we will have a new speaker come and teach on a specific topic. This week Jeff Pratt spoke on The Father Heart of God. What I particularly liked about him was that he was so real…he didn’t use notes or anything. He just came in and told us about his life, what God has taught him, and what he still needs to learn. And he was just really passionate. We learned a lot, and took tons of notes! Each afternoon after classes, we have work duties for a few hours. I am in housekeeping, so, yup, I get to clean! I don’t care for some of the jobs, like cleaning bathrooms, but overall, it’s not too bad. They know that I love vacuuming, so I get to do that whenever it needs done. It’s actually a nice time to just be alone and process everything from the day.

YWAM Denver is actually 2 bases that function as one. We are at the mountain campus, but there is also a campus in Arvada, which is a suburb of Denver. So every Monday, we spend the day there. We have worship and intercession with them, as well as meals. In the afternoon, we get to go shopping, and go to the laundromat to do our laundry. After spending the week in the middle of nowhere, it’s pretty fun to be back in civilization for a day! In the evening, we split into groups and do different community outreaches. This week, I went to a place called Beacon Place, which is basically government-funded housing for people who don’t have the finances for average housing. We spent the evening playing bingo with the residents! I got to know a man named Lou, and eventually learned that he is also from Pennsylvania, but moved to Colorado for the jobs and the women! He was a really nice guy, and I really enjoyed chatting with him. Anyway, each week we will get to do a different outreach.

So that’s some of what’s been going on in my life…there is never a dull moment here! If you would like to see some of my pictures, but don’t have Facebook, here is a link to my photo album: (Boarders)DTS

And here is the latest YWAM Denver videocast - see if you can find me in it! VideoCast #113