Anna M. Aquino

I don’t know about all of you, but for me 2009 has been both a great year and yet one of the hardest years I have ever faced. On a professional level, I’ve walked through some doors this year that I have been believing to walk through for a lot of years. On a personal level I have felt as if I was running the last few miles of a marathon with fifty pound weights strapped to my feet. Back at the end of 2008, I was prophesied to that 2009 would by a year for me to shine. I’ve seen that word come to pass, but I didn’t expect that in order to shine there would be a lot of darkness I’d walk through. About two months ago I felt as if the Lord spoke the words to me, “2010, It’ll be better than it’s been.” I know that it rhymes and it sounds good. But I continue to hear these words time and time again. Two weeks ago I felt directed to go to a particular scripture in the Bible. Thinking it was an odd place to be led to read, I found the verses. On the pages the words jumped to my spir...

Recently I have found myself walking through a situation that makes no sense to my natural way of thinking. God has made His will and path before me quite clear, but I’ve been trying to reason it all in my head and honestly, I’m quite baffled by the whole situation. I began to reflect on this. I began to realize many times God puts us in situations that may not make sense to our own way of thinking. Sometimes God will tell you to do things, and it’s easy to think “but God, that doesn’t make sense?” Isaiah 55:8-11 in the Message Bible says, “8-11"I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." God's Decree. "For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don't go back until they've watered the earth, Doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food f...

If you’re one of my faithful readers you’ll remember a story a few weeks back about my friends and me sneaking out of the house in high school. Again, not condoning sneaking out, but this makes for a great illustration. I guess you can call this blog part two. There was one night in particular that we snuck out and met up with another group of friends. I really think that it was more about if we could do it, not what we were going to do once we managed to sneak out of our perspective houses. I grew up in a small town and after a certain time there are very few things open. So the plan was that we were all going to sneak out and go eat at Denny’s. In our high school minds this made sense at the time. But shockingly Denny’s was the place to go at 2 in the morning. We drove by the parking lot and it was packed. So having very few options, we opted to go to a Meijer’s. Those of you who have never heard of Meijer’s it’s like a Wal-Mart and it’s open 24 hours. This was when my fr...

I’m going to shift gears a bit for today’s blog and do some prophetic teaching. This is a message that has been on my heart for sometime, but the pieces had yet to be put together. When God is trying to bring revelation to me about something in the word, usually I’ll continue to get that scripture until I get from it what He is trying to tell me. This revelation is a result of years of being baffled about one particular passage of scripture. Matthew 22:1-14 (NKJ) says, “The Parable of the Wedding Feast 1 And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, 3 and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. 4 Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.”’ 5 But they made light of it and went...

My dad tells stories of his time in Vietnam. As a grunt soldier he has often told me of one story in particular. He’d been out on a mission in the jungle to go from village to village. The soldiers were to figure out what village was hiding the enemy and the enemies stuff, and what villages were innocent. One particular day came where dad was leading his troop and he happened to come across this community out in the middle of the jungle. He could tell that it had been painstakingly removed from the other villages. There was a crude fence all around it. He led his men to the door of the compound to see Vietnamese writing on the door. He didn’t speak Vietnamese. He didn’t read Vietnamese. His interpreter wasn’t with him. So he walked into the village. He tells me stories of going through that village. “It was as if the whole community must have been napalmed or bombed,” he says. As he walked into the compound puzzled faces watched him. Several were missing limbs and dad just figured they...