Brasil (Brazil)

February 1st is a very important day for me. You make ask why? Well since you ask, I'll tell you.
February 1st is the day that I abandon my comfortable home in the United States of America. It's a day I leave my family, my new found friends and friends I've had since I was a child. It's a day I literally take the next step into my next season, calling, and destiny. It's a day I grow like I've never been able to grow before. It's a day of new beginnings and all new things.
February 1st is the day I hand my one-way ticket to the security attendant at the airport and fly off to Brazil.
And why Brazil? What is it for?
Because God has called my heart there and I must follow. It's for the poor, the broken, the lost. The prostitutes, the orphans, the fatherless. God has broken my heart for the broken.

The generosity of the people/the culture have nearly brought me to tears at many points in my two trips to Brazil. They are so giving of not only their earthly possessions (purses, shirts off their own backs, personal Bibles, etc.) but also of their lives. So many are sold out to the Lord and what He is doing in this hour. They've tried it all: prostitution, drugs, alcohol, money, clothing, worthless items and they've come to the realization, He is everything. He is it. There is nothing else. I have and continue to learn so from them.
Even though there are so many, who are giving their everything to follow the One who gave it all, there are so many who aren't.
I remember going to Brazil for the first time in July 2009. I was walking the city streets of Curitiba, Brazil and on the side of the street, a man with no legs had a small tin in front of him for loose change to be donated. I saw pamphlets with numbers on them to call for prostitution, lining the streets. I saw women in church services, crying out, broken, looking for true love, the Father's love. I saw God's love being manifested through healings, deliverances, and forgiveness. People were stepping into the true revelation of God's love and falling in love with the Man, the one I've never seen but know. I saw so many broken, lost and hurting people. God began to break my heart for them.
On my second trip to Brazil, God loaded on more compassion and even more desire to be there, with the Brazilian people.
The prostitutes have stolen my heart. I want them to know Him. To know His love. To know His grace. To know who they are in Him. To know that no matter what they do, where they've been, they are loved by Him. So about 75% of the reason I'm going to Brazil is for these broken women. I want to love on them, I want them to know that they have a Father, they have Someone who not only loves them, but likes them.
Another big reason I'm going, is to go to the poor on the streets. To love them to life. Matthew 25:40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' I will be doing what Matthew 25 talks about, giving water to the thirsty, giving food to the hungry. I will be sitting with, living with, loving on the "least of these."
It's my calling, it's my destiny, and it's becoming my life.
So February 1st, I'm going to a place where my heart longs to be. I'm nervous, a little scared and curious as to how it will all go down. But I'm also at peace, excited and trusting that He is and will continue to care for me and all my needs. He is so good and so faithful.
Eu te amo, Brasil.

Know Him
<3emma

Full heart

I find myself sometimes trying to write down what's in my heart. I never really feel like I am adequate enough to really relay my heart, my thoughts, my emotions, but I make attempts and thats all that matters.
"What's the next season?" "What is in your heart?" "What is the Lord saying to you right now?" Are all questions I think I've been asking myself since I ended my last season. Truth be told, I think I've been asking myself those questions since high school, but none the less. Rough only begins to describe what I feel like I've been going through since leaving my "home" in Pennsylvania. Never did I think it was possible to get so close to people I hadn't know 9 months before leaving them in May. Family is a perfect word for those people. They honestly felt and continue to feel like family. They say that family knows you threw and threw, well those people know me threw and threw. They saw me at my worst, they saw me at my best, they took me for who I was. Not knowing my background, my past, my faults, my family, my gifts or what I could bring to the table for them, not know me. They loved me, for me and nothing else. No longer was I Pastor David Addesa's daughter, Miracle Boy's sister, one of Lisa's daughters or Hannah's crazy sister. I was know as Emma Addesa. Thats it. I was some random, goofy girl from Virginia that no one knew, who made up her own sayings and called her car (and many other things) "Bubby." At first I thought that would be a horrible thing but it wound up being the best thing that could have ever happened. Words can not describe how much I love my new, random, wonderful and goofy "family." Bethany, Canaan, Brandon, Cody, Jacob, Nikki, Jackie, Jordan, Mark, Jenny, Brian, Rachael, Nic, Casey, Lisa, Holly, Dan, Chris, Tim, Tyler and so many more people, make up my new family. I couldn't be more blessed..
While those people got to know all about me and what made me, ME, I also got to know me. I found out who I was.... Better yet, I found out who the Lord says I am. All my life I feel like I've been in my dad's shadow, my mom's, my sister's, my friends, I was who people thought/wanted me to be. Not anymore. I was becoming who I wanted to be, I was becoming who HE wanted me to be. These past nine months not only was I blessed with a bigger family, but I grew(and am still growing) to knew who I was in that family and what part I play.
Throughout the year, I would notice things about myself that I never had noticed before. At 18, I was becoming Emma Addesa:). I was gaining a voice. No longer was I an Esther but I was becoming a Deborah.
So many things happened this past season, but for me, that was one of the bigger things.
Another big thing, which in a big way ties into this previous thing of rambling, was who I am in Christ. Dan Mohler was the one who triggered it. *Thank the Lord for Dan.* He came to Global and said something like, "What you say and what you do to me, won't affect me. You can't offend me, no matter what you do. You know why? Cause my identity is not found in you. My acceptance is not found in you. My identity is found in the Lord, my acceptance is found in the Lord. I look to Him for my emotional fill." Let me tell you, that offended me beyond belief, in a very good way. I wasn't happy, but I knew my religiosity was being killed and it hurt so good:). All my life, I've been known as the emotional, sensitive one and let me tell you, I still am. But I'm not letting it control me and tell me how to live and who to be. So when people don't treat me how I'd like them to, when people don't say what I want them to, when they act like humans and hurt me or whatever the case may be, I'm beginning to realize how much emphasis I've put on PEOPLE. I then realized how little emphasis I put on the LORD. Scary, I know. Now mind you, I'm not perfect, so I do struggle with these things at times, but I'm growing and thats the most exciting part.
So yes, big things my friends, big things. Moving to Brazil is in the horizon and I'm freaking excited. Eu te amo Brasil:). I'm in a season of trying to learn how to love where I'm at. I'm trying to not feel trapped and hopeless because in the Lord, there is freedom and hope. I am who He says I am. I may not be where I want to be, in Brazil, ministering to broken woman. But I am in Virginia, being loved on by my Papa and my family. I'm resting in Him and just being. I'm preparing for a new, foreign (literally) season and its exciting and scary all at the same time. I have His peace and I have His acceptance. I am who He says I am.

Know Him
<3emma