We will share more this weekend!
Thank you for keeping us in your prayers!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Thailand here we come!
This week was all about spiritual warfare. We talked about what the enemy does to try and run us into the ground and then we do to combat it, we are all soldiers after all. What is it that we can do to try and combat any evil or darkness of this world? Live the Christian lifestyle! Prayer, worship, scripture, fasting, the blood of Jesus, the name of Jesus, and our testimony are all powerful weapons against the devil and his plans. It was just a cool week. No matter what the devil throws at us, it doesn't matter at all because we have the weapon of Jesus on our side. "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11)." Every knee....in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Thats every created being, including the enemy. How comforting is that, to know that no matter what, every knee shall bow at the name of our savior?
That was the final topic of the whole DTS. You know what that means? Outreach is here! We cannot believe its here already. Outreach is just around the corner and we cannot wait for the experience. Its hard to believe that 12 weeks have already past. If this is how fast 12 weeks go, how fast will 10 weeks go?
Thailand should be a blast. It will be hot and humid but I think we are ready. We will be spending the first couple of days in Bangkok for orientation. Then we will be heading up into the north part of Thailand, Mae Sot to be exact, for two weeks. There we will work with refugees from Myanmar. After our two weeks we will head further north in Chang Mai. We will be there for four weeks working with a university teaching english, in the red light district, and going into hill tribes. Following that we will spend two weeks near the Thai-Cambodian border in an orphanage. This is the part I'm most excited about. We will be hanging with the kids, cleaning up, and fixing the place. Basically, we are just going to bless everyone there. After those two weeks, our trip is basically done. The final week we are there we are going to be in Bangkok just chilling out and unwinding/debriefing before heading home. It will all be a blast and will probably fly by. We will try to update this blog as much as possible. We will have internet access frequently but its a matter of time to update it.
If you have been following along on my facebook you might have seen that some people needed their funds before they could go. To update you....EVERYONE has gotten all of their funds in! That means no will be left behind! Praise God!
For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I thought I would give you the pleasure of seeing the final product of my mustache competition.
Don't worry. I shaved it off the next day. It was way too disgusting.
Thanks for all of your prayers over this amazing experience in Oregon. Now its on to Thailand and we will need your prayers even more. God bless you all and enjoy! We leave on Thursday morning! Woo hoo!
Josh
That was the final topic of the whole DTS. You know what that means? Outreach is here! We cannot believe its here already. Outreach is just around the corner and we cannot wait for the experience. Its hard to believe that 12 weeks have already past. If this is how fast 12 weeks go, how fast will 10 weeks go?
Thailand should be a blast. It will be hot and humid but I think we are ready. We will be spending the first couple of days in Bangkok for orientation. Then we will be heading up into the north part of Thailand, Mae Sot to be exact, for two weeks. There we will work with refugees from Myanmar. After our two weeks we will head further north in Chang Mai. We will be there for four weeks working with a university teaching english, in the red light district, and going into hill tribes. Following that we will spend two weeks near the Thai-Cambodian border in an orphanage. This is the part I'm most excited about. We will be hanging with the kids, cleaning up, and fixing the place. Basically, we are just going to bless everyone there. After those two weeks, our trip is basically done. The final week we are there we are going to be in Bangkok just chilling out and unwinding/debriefing before heading home. It will all be a blast and will probably fly by. We will try to update this blog as much as possible. We will have internet access frequently but its a matter of time to update it.
If you have been following along on my facebook you might have seen that some people needed their funds before they could go. To update you....EVERYONE has gotten all of their funds in! That means no will be left behind! Praise God!
For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I thought I would give you the pleasure of seeing the final product of my mustache competition.
Thanks for all of your prayers over this amazing experience in Oregon. Now its on to Thailand and we will need your prayers even more. God bless you all and enjoy! We leave on Thursday morning! Woo hoo!
Josh
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Only 12 more days!
Less than 2 weeks and we will be in 100 plus degree weather with 90 percent humidity! Yesterday we visited a monastery, for those of you who do not know, it is a buddhist temple. There is one on the corner of Quincy and 112th in Holland I think. We asked questions about the religion and practices as we prepare to enter their culture in a few weeks. The monk was very nice, but did not speak English fluently. Josh responded to one of the monks answers with "oh, thats cool" and the Monk just laughs and replys "no, its going to be really hot!" The monk just kept laughing at us and saying how we as foriengers are going to visist during the hottest time of year. Oh man, the Veltema sweat is really going to come out :)
We are getting excited, nervous, excited, and more nervous as we prepare for outreach. Monday night Josh and I spent time in a local Goodwill buying some outreach clothes, ones that we will be able to leave there due to sweat stains, and ware and tare from handwashing and no dyers. Of course on our way back to the base we had to stop at Safeway (a local grocery store) and pick up some ice cream. The food at the base is getting old (not saying its bad) but sometimes I just miss eating whatever I want, and of course my sweets. So, Josh and I enjoyed some Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream. Many of the students on base think its so funny when Josh and I to get excited about "new" places like Safeway since many of the stores in Oregon are not in Michigan. We usually have five min conversations everytime we go somewhere asking "do you have this, we have this..." Also, we still have our Michigan acents. Soon its crazy to think that we all will have crazy accents trying to speak in Thai.
This week we had Dan Baumann's sister speak, Lis Cochrane. Lis has been in YWAM
for over 25 years. She has spent most of her time in India starting YWAM bases and many organziations. She is very dedicated to using Business as Missions, and is dedicated to providing jobs to people in order to raise money. Check out http://www.affirmglobal.com/, for more information. Also check out Pure Hope Pakistan for another project she is apart of. Lis talked about Missions and our calling this week and where it is found in the Bible and when it started. Josh was super pumped about this week since it was a lot of history. We learned more facts about the unreached people group (a people group among where there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize itself) during a service on Thursday night. Josh and I could go on for hours about this!
Oh, update on the mustace: its gone! Josh won the "what stache" award.
Even in Oregon we get super excited about ice cream...
We are getting excited, nervous, excited, and more nervous as we prepare for outreach. Monday night Josh and I spent time in a local Goodwill buying some outreach clothes, ones that we will be able to leave there due to sweat stains, and ware and tare from handwashing and no dyers. Of course on our way back to the base we had to stop at Safeway (a local grocery store) and pick up some ice cream. The food at the base is getting old (not saying its bad) but sometimes I just miss eating whatever I want, and of course my sweets. So, Josh and I enjoyed some Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream. Many of the students on base think its so funny when Josh and I to get excited about "new" places like Safeway since many of the stores in Oregon are not in Michigan. We usually have five min conversations everytime we go somewhere asking "do you have this, we have this..." Also, we still have our Michigan acents. Soon its crazy to think that we all will have crazy accents trying to speak in Thai.
This week we had Dan Baumann's sister speak, Lis Cochrane. Lis has been in YWAM
for over 25 years. She has spent most of her time in India starting YWAM bases and many organziations. She is very dedicated to using Business as Missions, and is dedicated to providing jobs to people in order to raise money. Check out http://www.affirmglobal.com/, for more information. Also check out Pure Hope Pakistan for another project she is apart of. Lis talked about Missions and our calling this week and where it is found in the Bible and when it started. Josh was super pumped about this week since it was a lot of history. We learned more facts about the unreached people group (a people group among where there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize itself) during a service on Thursday night. Josh and I could go on for hours about this!
Oh, update on the mustace: its gone! Josh won the "what stache" award.
Even in Oregon we get super excited about ice cream...
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Wow. Thats all I can say for this week. We had an amazing speaker and an exhilarating weekend.
Dan Baumann was our speaker this week. You might recognize his name and rightfully so. He actually has two books out..."A Beautiful Way" and "Imprisoned in Iran." He is an inspiring speaker and amazing person. He shared so many awesome stories with us during the week while speaking in his topic so fittingly named "A Beautiful Way." Dan's basic premise....JESUS LOVES ME! It really is that simple. He loves us when we fail, He loves us when we do great things, He just loves us period. Our part is to simply recognize such love. When we recognize how much we are loved it is only natural that we love back and seek more of that love. It's so simple! A great example that Dan explained was through his story of failures. We often fail as human beings. Also being human we like to relish on the fact that we failed and wallow in our sorrow. Often the situation goes like this...
"God forgive me! I failed you horribly." Then we just wallow in our sorrow. God: "I forgive you." "Thank you...gah, I'm so horrible I can't believed I failed." God: "Hey look at this...check out what I've done for you." "But God, I failed. I'm horrible." God: "You failed? What? when? but hey look at what I have for you."
And so on. We have to realize that we are loved as a person much more than our plan in life. As our speaker put it last week in a beautiful story. John 21:15-19. Peter is reinstated. What we don't realize is that what did Jesus do when he first called Peter? He told him to follow me. What is he doing in this passage? Telling Peter to follow Him. Peter's denial of Jesus, his failure, did not change the plan God had for Peter. God loves Peter much more than his plan.
I feel like I am not doing this topic and speaker any justice at all. I would highly suggest that you pick up, "A Beautiful Way" to dig deeper into the subject.
Besides our lecture we got to do the Ropes Course located here on Saturday. It was a blast. We got to do a number of obstacles including: a low ropes course, a giant swing, a blindfolded rope game, and a high ropes course. Let me explain. Giant swing.....the greatest thing I have ever done in my life. Climb up a 30 ft pole to a platform, attack a cable to your harness, and swing down. Because of the decline in the hill it was perched on we had to travel at least 80 ft and must have been 40-50ft off the ground in the trees at our highest point. It was unbelievably awesome! I want to drag every single student in the youth group out here to just do it. Despite the awesome experiences we had separately it was really cool to see how well we worked together as a team and how well we encouraged each other. It was a day full of encouragement and teamwork and just pure enjoyment.
A little over two weeks until we leave for Thailand! Found out some exciting news this week about our outreach. The last two weeks of outreach, believe it or not, we will be living in an orphanage in eastern Thailand. I, for one, was really excited to hear this and cannot wait for the experience.
Thanks for the continual prayers and support. We love you all and miss you all!
Josh
Dan Baumann was our speaker this week. You might recognize his name and rightfully so. He actually has two books out..."A Beautiful Way" and "Imprisoned in Iran." He is an inspiring speaker and amazing person. He shared so many awesome stories with us during the week while speaking in his topic so fittingly named "A Beautiful Way." Dan's basic premise....JESUS LOVES ME! It really is that simple. He loves us when we fail, He loves us when we do great things, He just loves us period. Our part is to simply recognize such love. When we recognize how much we are loved it is only natural that we love back and seek more of that love. It's so simple! A great example that Dan explained was through his story of failures. We often fail as human beings. Also being human we like to relish on the fact that we failed and wallow in our sorrow. Often the situation goes like this...
"God forgive me! I failed you horribly." Then we just wallow in our sorrow. God: "I forgive you." "Thank you...gah, I'm so horrible I can't believed I failed." God: "Hey look at this...check out what I've done for you." "But God, I failed. I'm horrible." God: "You failed? What? when? but hey look at what I have for you."
And so on. We have to realize that we are loved as a person much more than our plan in life. As our speaker put it last week in a beautiful story. John 21:15-19. Peter is reinstated. What we don't realize is that what did Jesus do when he first called Peter? He told him to follow me. What is he doing in this passage? Telling Peter to follow Him. Peter's denial of Jesus, his failure, did not change the plan God had for Peter. God loves Peter much more than his plan.
I feel like I am not doing this topic and speaker any justice at all. I would highly suggest that you pick up, "A Beautiful Way" to dig deeper into the subject.
Besides our lecture we got to do the Ropes Course located here on Saturday. It was a blast. We got to do a number of obstacles including: a low ropes course, a giant swing, a blindfolded rope game, and a high ropes course. Let me explain. Giant swing.....the greatest thing I have ever done in my life. Climb up a 30 ft pole to a platform, attack a cable to your harness, and swing down. Because of the decline in the hill it was perched on we had to travel at least 80 ft and must have been 40-50ft off the ground in the trees at our highest point. It was unbelievably awesome! I want to drag every single student in the youth group out here to just do it. Despite the awesome experiences we had separately it was really cool to see how well we worked together as a team and how well we encouraged each other. It was a day full of encouragement and teamwork and just pure enjoyment.
A little over two weeks until we leave for Thailand! Found out some exciting news this week about our outreach. The last two weeks of outreach, believe it or not, we will be living in an orphanage in eastern Thailand. I, for one, was really excited to hear this and cannot wait for the experience.
Thanks for the continual prayers and support. We love you all and miss you all!
Josh
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