Content and Contemplative

PRAISE REPORT : Dave's knee still isn't really bothering him, and he's really beginning to think there might be something to this prayer stuff. Please keep him in your prayers and really pray for friends and family to surround him and bless him this holiday season-he's definitely a lonely guy.

So I still fail at regularly updating my blog. Whatevs...MAJOR PRAISE REPORT: so 2 weeks ago there was still heaps (at least to the human mind-to God it's pennies) of moolah needed totally over $21,000 NZD ($15,900 CAD). With God as the Almighty Provider, as of today the needed money is in and everyone is able to go on outreach!

Alot of prayer went into this as well as some fasting. I was really stretched during my fast and am figuring out how to go about a lifestyle of fasting. I learnt that God meets you even if you decide to fast without His leading. I learnt that my body is stronger than I thought. Sleep is always important, but I really realized how important it is while fasting. I learnt getting a good friend whom you respect alot to keep tabs on you is key. I experienced God's grace and love alot. It was cool to just be real with God and just go to Him unsure and taking my weak faith and holding onto it with my everything, and saying, "Lord, help me."

I'm leaving for India in 6 days to spend 8 weeks there travelling and living life for God, reaching out to anyone and everyone we meet. My team's vision? "To submit ourselves fully to God with reckless abandonment, and to show His love in everything we do." I'm excited to really push myself as a leader and have a blast with my team. I'm also really excited as this week God confirmed that I will be making a second trip to India sometime in my life. I'm not sure when or how, but I'm so excited! I'm sure I'll love India. I hope and pray that I head-on embrace everything this experience entails. I have been practicing eating with my hand and after 2 days of it I'm ready to throw out my fork forever! I'm so excited for my first train ride, authentic Indian food, among other things. And how could I forget squattie potties! Yup, this trip is going to be an experience to say the least...

Last but not least a meaty bone to chew on..."The way to be hypocritical is to only do what you feel like doing! The believer does things because they’re right. In the world you do things because you feel like it. In the kingdom you do things because they’re right and then the feeling follows.” - Bill Johnston

by all means paint

"if you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." -Vincent Van Gogh
Wow, what an amazing quote. So glad I stumbled across it. I've been learning this week that as you "painting" gets easier and easier each time you do it.

Anyway...

PRAISE REPORT...remember Dave (the fish and chips dude whose knee I got to ask God to heal?). God is in process of healing it! I couldn't go in to the city yesteray so I asked my friend to check up on him on my behalf, and Dave said his knee wasn't bothering him too much, just a couple times that week. And he was beginning to think that maybe this prayer thing is working. God's totally got a hand on him, so keep praying! I'm so excited for the day his 5 years of arthritis is completely healed.

Learning, learning, learning...that's pretty much my life and I love it. I feel like I've learnt so much and there's still so much to learn! These last few weeks we've studied the father heart of God, spiritual warfare, and other things. One question our speaker asked this week was, "What things are you doing that aren't drawing you any closer to God?" What a question that totally needs to be asked on a regular basis, eh?

This weekend has been really relaxing and awesome. I've been a weekend warrior with 4 students which meant we got to clean, cook, and look after the base. It's been sweet to hang with these students and learn our way around the kitchen together. Yesterday we learnt that grilling tortillas directly on the elements here does not work. There may or may not have been a bit of smoke involved. I'm off to go prep lunch-wonder what I'll learn today...

outreach!!!!!

Alas the news is out! Come mid-December I will be heading to INDIA for 2 months along with my co-leader Kent and 4 students (Mary Lloyd, Wyatt, Phil, and Erik). I'm so excited and God's really given me a heart for this country. Don't you just love when what you want happens to be in tune with what God wants?!! I can hardly wait and will let you know more as I know more. In the meantime, prayer point for all you prayer warriors out there (you guys are wonderful, by the way!):

-please pray for unity and bonding among the the team as a whole
-pray that we are open to hearing where God wants us to go in India
-pray for good co-leadership between Kent and I

God Bless You!

Alas my friends! Another long overdue update! So...since my last post we have had a lovely woman down from the North Island to teach us about the Holy Spirit. There was lots to learn and lots of ministry time which was sweet. If I wrote you everything I'm learning/doing/God's doing here/crazy stories it would make a book, not a blog. Thus, I shall attempt to keep it short and sweet. A morsel of Holy Spirit week...
-I loved when our speaker talked about worship and the Spirit. Mostly because I love worship. She challenged us to have be sure to have personal worship time with the Lord each day. I think this is a great idea.
-She also showed a clip of trapeze artists doing there thing. Think of trapeze artists, the flyer and the catcher. The flyer must do nothing, the catcher does everything. The flyer must just let go and wait to be caught. We are like flyer’s, we need to let go and wait to be caught by God. This is scary to us. Nobody can let go for us, we must do it on our own.

This past week we had the dynamic Dalton Lifsey down from Tauranga House of Prayer up on the North Island. It was awesome to have him teach on Pursuit of the Knowledge of God. I love his teaching style and how he brings the Bible to life, got really inspired hearing him speak, and my life just continues to get even more wrecked for God which is awesome. A few highlights:
-talking to him one-on-one was awesome, God definitely has a hand on him and spoke thru him. One thing I said was how impossible it seemed to get to know God as there's so much to God. Dalton pointed out Matthew 5: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." When you feel like it’s impossible to completely know God and feel that ache, you are blessed! This is good news to me!
-The true knowledge of God is knowing that He is so great and you have no idea who He is. I think that's a solid-as summary.

I could easily keep going but like I said, this is a blog, not a book.

This past week for outreach prep we were challenged to really step up and out more, especially during Friday nite evangelism, but also in everyday lives...so I went up to this guy Dave who sells fish and chips in the square everyday and got to pray for healing for his knee. He has had arthritis for 5 years, but I have faith God can heal it. Please take a minute to pray for him. I can't wait to check back with him on Friday. My friend and I were also doing some open worship in the square and got the attention of many Asian tourists, who seemed to like the music and getting their picture taken with us. Please pray the songs we sung touched them.

Okay, this post is probably on the borderline of getting long. Henceforth, I leave you with a quote from one of my heroes, Mother Teresa: "I just want our work to be a work of love."

How's the King today?

Coca cola. It means delicious happiness in mandarin (at least so says the internet! :p). Current mood? Indeed, it is happiness, of the delicious variety of course. This last week has been A-MAZING! Some highlights...

We had the lovely Jamie and Kim down from Australia to bless us with their passionate, engaging teaching on backpacker ministry. This included an overnite trip to a hostel to give the students a taste of what backpacker ministry is like. My team didn't meet alot of people, but it was still a nice time off base, bonding over food and crazy adventures. One adventure involved us seeing penguins, including one close up sitting on eggs! Our other adventure involved finding an abundance of sheep roaming about, some beautiful horses, and of course a  magnificent view of the ocean. Nothing like getting lost in a good book in that setting, and enjoying lunch amongst sheep manure!

Friday the students got the opportunity to walk and have some processing/debriefing time with God as they walked to the top of a look out, and as they walked up staff had the opportunity to pray over them and give them a backpacker Bible to bless someone with. I loved our students from the moment I met them, but never had I been so proud as I was in that moment. I can learn so much from them and I know they are going to accomplish great things in their lives. (all these thoughts after only 2 weeks with them!!)

In the evening we split up to do ministry in the city. I was on the square ministry. At the beginning of the day, though quite unsure of what the "official ministry time" was to look like, I was excited, this continued through my walk to the square. Once we hit the square however, a bit of nervousness hit. Well, with prayers lifted up to God we were off. I tell you, God was really moving and it was amazing!!! A brief glimpse...

My friend pointed out this street preacher that is often in the square and I knew I wanted to talk to him-I was already curious about him when I heard of him last year. However, not quite feeling bold enough to walk up and talk to him, I was kinda relieved when I glanced over and noticed him packing up for the day. So, I played it safe and started writing in chalk.
   Before I could finish the first letter, this guy wanders up to me (out of everyone in the square he chose to strike up a conversation with me. Coincidence? I think not!) and stops, and asks, "Hows the King today?"
   I heard, "How's it going?" So smiled and answered a soft, friendly, "Good."
   He leaned in closer. "Who's the King?"
   I was a bit taken aback. I mean, that's quite the ice breaker. "Sorry, what?"
   "Whose the King?"
   "Well, that's God."
 I then asked him what he had been up to in the square and asked him what he was carrying when he told me he was preaching. He set it up to show me and I ended up talking to this guy for at least an hour, until it started drizzling and his friend came. The contents of our conversation could probably make up a short book, and he was really hard to follow. Anyway, I hope to see him again and talk to him more-there is alot to discuss, and I will definitely be doing some research and prayer to figure out where this guy is coming from. I've definitely already found evidence against some of what he told me.

Another highlight was that the German girl on my team got to talk to a German girl for a while (which was cool, because that day I had prayed that God would send German people across her path...can you say ANSWER TO PRAYER?!!!!)

Today involved climbing, sunshine, and ice cream. A solid end to a solid week.

Gerber Daisies

Stepping into the checkout line, my roomie Katie and I leisurely waited, in no rush. A lovely woman stepped ahead of us, failing to see us in her rush. Of course, when she realized what she had done she was a bit flustered and profusely apologized. Typical kiwi-they're so friendly down here! Katie reassured her it was fine. The great thing is Katie's got an American accent-a dead giveaway we weren't from around here. So this began a real short conversation about how long we were here for and what we were doing here. Turns out this woman was on her way to a Christian camp and that's why she was in such a rush. Thus, with a "Bless you guys!" she hurried of to camp without further delay...or so we thought. Later Katie went to pick up the pictures she had ordered, and the woman behind the counter passed her 2 individually, beautifully wrapped gerber daisies. Turned out in between the time we left and Katie came back, this stranger we had briefly talked to had still felt kind of bad and henceforth purchased the flower and left them for us. And that is the icing on the cake of yesterday.

Jesus-friend of sinners

"If Jesus came to Amsterdam, He would go to the discos. He would know the names of all the bartenders and He would be friends with all the prostitutes. The Bible tells us that Jesus was a friend of sinners; but we may say, What about my reputation, my witness?


I told the story of how my wife had struck up a friendship with a particular girl with whom she talked about Jesus. “The only way she could see her was to go behind the window and talk with her, while I waited on the street. Men would walk by and think that Jodi was also a prostitute. This made me very angry. But if my wife was going to show God’s love to that girl, she had to be willing to be mistaken for a prostitute. If you are going to reach lost sheep, you are going to have to be willing to be mistaken for one yourself. Just like Jesus was. He was called a glutton, a drunkard, and a sinner. Why? Because he loved them so much he was willing to be mistaken for one himself." -Rock Priest

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." -Matthew 9:10-13

I've just really thinking about how cool it is that Christ was a friend of sinners. He'd hang out with prostitutes, criminals, drug addicts, and everything in between. How many of us would be willing to do that without fear of being scorned?