Dear Alana,

I wanted to give you some words of encouragement and tell you to keep up the good work. I had my own time of reconnection of recent that has left me in awe of our beautiful God forever. I thought I would share it with you in the short form if you don't mind, as it may help. I was at a really low point in my life. I thought I had let God down by not helping someone, like I should have. The spiritual warfare got real bad, I started to feel unforgiveable and lost from God. I prayed and prayed for forgiveness and help. I got real strict about keeping the Sabbath or Shabbat in my case(as a Messianic Jew). I spent the whole Shabbat each week with God singing, praying, praising and trying to be close to God. I got really low, so low within myself that I ended up crying on my knees, begging God to forgive me and telling Him that I wanted so much to do his will. I told God in prayer that I was going to walk to a quiet place of nature to try to be close to Him somewhere that was beautiful and more like God. I arrived, I prayed and I spent time thinking about the Lord, loving the beautiful nature that God had provided. I walked on to a more elevated part of the land. I put my hand into the earth to pick some earth up in my hand to feel the soil, sounds strange, but I did it anyhow, I started to feel the earth move, the earth beneath me was trembling. At first, I wasn't sure what was going on I thought it was the start of an earth quake, but it wasn't. The trembling continued for about 5 minutes, I was really calm and at peace even when I thought it was a quake. The earth trembled but I was perfectly still. I began to realise that I was in the presence of the Lord and came away from that place feeling in awe, amazed and so in Love with the Lord, I can not even describe it. I could weep tears of joy just thinking about it, all bad feelings were gone and I felt so renewed and strong. When I came home I prayed to God to help me understand what had happened and I was led to my bible and found Acts 4;31 which says 'and when they prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness'. I will pray that God comes close to you both during your fasting and that he brings you to a place of forgivness. I say that because I felt that is what the Lord did for me, he brought me to true repentance and with that came the most loving forgiveness. God Bless you both in your endevour to come close to the Lord, I will get praying for you. Please don't get despondent if it doesn't happen like that for you though as God always works in whatever way is best for you, know he loves you and will forgive a repentant heart. Much love and God bless.