I have always dreamt and prayed for an opportunity to see a person get physically healed. Being in ministry and working with people that often go to developing nations I hear stories a lot. When going to Papua New Guinea in January I knew there was a chance for God to do some pretty cool stuff!

Our first village was called Hisui, we’ve sent YWAM teams there before so it was a little intimidating hearing people’s

stories of how they came to know the Lord through the previous teams and

you wonder if your team is going to make as much of an impact as the others did. Every afternoon we would walk through the village and visit people at their homes.

My first home that I visited was a lady that had her leg amputated only 6 months before because of diabetes . Myself and three oth-ers from my team, and our translator walked

up to the home feeling pretty nervous. Could this be the day that I’d see God use me to see a person healed? The home was on stilts and had a grass roof, it was how i’d imagine a home in PNG looking. They invited us in but to my surprise we didn’t go upstairs but instead sat underneath the house on a dirty mat. And that’s when I met Sandra, the women with no right leg. She had a big warm smile and kindly welcomed us to sit down next to her. We asked her ques-tions about how we could pray for her.

We started out praying for physical healing but as we were praying God started to lead our prayers in a dif-ferent way. We stopped our prayers and asked her questions about her family and how her relationship with them was. We found out that she is a widow, has no sons but only two daughters. In this culture that puts a lot of pressure on the women because without a man in the house that means they have no income and no food to eat. Before Sandra had her leg taken she was able to go out fishing and try her best to provide for her family but now that she had no

leg she was unable to do that. Sandra became depressed and hopeless and stopped every-thing. She spent her days sitting on the dirty mat just thinking about how she was unable to do anything. Her lack of trying disappointed her two older daughters and they began to get angry with her.

So there we were praying with her. As we prayed, God’s spirit started to encourage her and

give her strength. We called in her daughters and walked them through forgiving one another. By the end of the afternoon we had them praying blessing with one another and the daughters agreed to help their mom learn how to walk with the crutch that she had been refusing to use because she had lost all hope. Before we left the village we went to visit Sandra and her family and they were helping lead the rest of the extended family in what they had just learned. The whole extended family reconciled with one another and agreed to walk together in love and unity. It was encouraging to pray with them too!! I may not have seen God do a miracu-lous physical healing but I did see God heal people’s hearts and bring them closer

together! Praise God.

January & February 2011 edition

my friend sandra

“... it means no income and no food to eat...”

Photoshoot

Family greeting us into their home

She loved jumping on my back playing in the water

Showing pictures of my family and supporters from home in America to friends in the village

Leading an outreach teamI guess leading a team of 12 people can tire you out... this is me in between running morn-ing workshops, afternoon house visitations, and evening evangelistic meetings.

Visiting a piece of historyI got to visit the Kokoda Track which is a huge part of Australian, Papua New Guinea, and American history. Our soldiers were rescued by the natives in battle with the Japanese during World War 2.

Papua New Guinea’s Sea HousesIt felt like a dream to be sitting inside one of these sea homes in Papua New Guinea. First, you have to take a small boat or canoe to get to your home and then when you get there you have to climb up into the home from the water.

Australia’s Biggest StormA picture of my van (with me standing in front of it) a few days after Cyclone Yasi hit our coast. This tree was being parshly held up by the pow-erlines! Yikes!

Krystal Cochran

in missions

On Wednesday, February 2nd the largest storm to ever hit Australia shores hit 2 hours north of where I live. This cyclone (hurri-cane) had effects on my city of Townsville and caused major damage to homes and business-es north. Sitting through the night and watch-ing the palm trees blow from side to side was a sight I never thought I’d see. The next morning we woke up to find that Townsville had no elec-tricty, our beachfront moved up onto the street, and trees were uprooted and fallen. Once safe

enough, my outreach team and 3 other teams went out into the community to help with people’s clean up.

We started in our neighborhood but once word got to the city council about what we were doing they approached YWAM and asked us to get a city-wide volunteer clean-up going. All the following week we manned a call center where anyone that needed help with clean-up from the cyclone could call and then our team would go and respond to that call. During those 4 days we visited 12 homes. Each home we visited had big trees that had fallen down and just barely missed their homes. We dragged branches and trees out to the road for the city council to collect. Some piles were 4 ft tall by 15ft wide that’s how much brush had fallen down! The people we visited were so incredibly grateful that they didn’t quite know how to thank us apart from buying us softdrink or expressing thanks through kind words.

Then about 6 days after the storm had hit we helped spear-head with the city council a “Restore Townsville” day where we had over 100 volunteers involved and in total visited over 600 homes around Townsville! It’s amazing how God used something that could’ve been bad to bring a city closer together and give us a chance to get into the community and show them God’s heart through our actions!

This story is written by one of the students that I lead on a 5 week outreach to Papua New Guinea. It was amazing seeing these guys step out even when it was a challenge for them.

While we were in our second village, Gaba Gaba, we split up into 10 groups to go visit different people in the village. I was dissappointed to find out that my group was visting 2 people who were sick because it wasn’t too long ago that my mom died of cancer so I have had little faith when it comes to miraculous heal-ings. When we got to the second house we met a man named Guns, who went by the name “Shotgun Boogey”, he was laying down on a platform when we got to the house, apparently that’s really all he was able to do for the past 6 years, because he damaged his back when he worked as a bulldozer driver most of his life. When we got there he had a very sad tone of voice and struggled to get to where we prayed for him. He had great faith in the Lord and new that whatever God did would be good and he was ok with that. After praying for “Shotgun Boogey” he was instantly happier, and he said that he had felt something move in his lower back 3 times. Then he got up and was dancing around. We went back to visit him 2 days later and he was still as great as he was after we prayed for him. This was the most amazing thing I’ve seen God do in my life for a long time, and its given me so much faith that God does heal.

shot gun boogey

cyclone yasi

PNG man we visited sitting on the platform underneath his home

All smiles riding in the back of a truck in PNG

A YWAM house after the storm

Myself and another leader discussing with one of the home owners how my team

could help him cleaning up from the storm

1. donate

2. Prayer

3. write an encouragement

By mail or in person toSally Cochran1876 Shalom Dr.West Bend, WI 53090 USA

By Tax-Deduction (check/cash)1. Make check out to YWAM (Do not write my name anywhere on the check)

2. Send check in post to Accounting Department PO Box 3000 Garden Valley, TX 75771-3000 (Must include a note saying “For Krystal Cochran”)

3. You’ll receive a tax-deductible receipt

Emailkrystal_32_bb@hotmail.com

Websitewww.krystalcochran.com

Facebook Krystal CochranNetwork: Australia

By mailReef to OutbackPO Box 6221Townsville, QLD 4810Australia

• For the 10 DTS students that I’ve been leading through outreach. They graduate on March 4 and many of them are nervous about going home and still applying the things that they’ve learned on DTS.

• I would have new revelations about about God as I look back and reflect on the last 5 months after the DTS finishes.

• God would give me clear vision for what I should do on base after staffing the DTS.

• An increase in people wanting to sup-port me financially so I can continue doing what I feel God has called me to do.

how you can helP!