Cambodia

I am currently in Battambang Cambodia and I am finishing up a visit to one of the 11 outreach teams. I am blown away by how much God is doing in the city of Battambang! In the past two years there have been so many new developments in both building and also at the Youth Center I am staying at. The Youth Center is a very successful training center that mainly teaches english to around 300 students every three months as well as other practical skills like guitar, art, dance, photography, etc. In these classes the teachers are allowed to have one day a week to discuss Jesus with the students who most if not all of them are Buddhist. Many of the students who grow up in Cambodia learn Buddhism as part of their culture and it is hard for them to depart from that lifestyle. Through the classes the teachers are able to share the truth of who Jesus is and many students have come to give their lives to Jesus! There is also a Discipleship Training School that runs every six months as well as other training courses that Youth With a Mission has to offer. 

I have spent almost three weeks with this team and have had the opportunity to see many people that I had met last time I was in Battambang. I even was able to go with the team to an orphanage that I visited two years ago and most of the children remembered me! Last time I visited the orphanage it didn’t have electricity, running water, beds to sleep in, as well as a next door neighbor who had a pig pen in his backyard. I never knew how nasty pigs smelled until I lived next to them for a week. This time when I went back they had electricity, running clean water, beds for all the children, and the pigs had disappeared! They told us that one day they all got together and prayed to God that the pigs would be gone and the next day the pigs were gone! I think I have learned more from these kids the past two times that I’ve been with them than many people. They have such a dependance upon God their Father because they literally have no parents. These are some of the most joyful kids I’d ever met and they really have no material things that I had when I grew up. I know what they do have though because I heard them singing and praying three times a day! It is no surprise that going back to that orphanage would change my life even more. I know where true joy and happiness come from and it is from knowing God our Father!

It has been such an amazing time getting to be with the team here. I getting to be more of an outside perspective as well as get to join in with ministry and have individual time with each person. I am beginning to see that I really do have a pastoral heart. I love seeing people walk in more and more of who they were created to be! I love seeing how a little bit of love and encouragement can change someones life! God is so faithful! I have felt the Grace of God throughout this whole first leg of the trip. I have thankfully been healthy so far and feeling really good every day. I have a two day trip to get to my next stop in India where I will be meeting another team who are in the mountain city of Mclead Ganj. 

Please pray that I would continue to walk in the Grace and Joy of the Lord and that I would stay healthy as I venture into India. Also please pray that I get there safe since I am traveling by myself into an area that I don’t know. I am still in need of $500 for the rest of my trip. If you would like to donate you can find information in my support tab at the top of the page. 

If you are feeling down and need some joy I highly recommend praying to God and singing your heart out to Him! When we turn and focus on Him we tend to get pretty joyful because He is really good! Bless you and thank you!

Transitions

I am in a point in my life where I am transitioning from one extreme season to another. I have just finished up the lecture phase of the 6 month Discipleship Training School that I am running and moving onto the outreach phase. The first three months have been packed with teaching and discipleship of 75 students and 25+ staff and encountering the God of Love move so radically in our lives. It is such an amazing environment to get to focus very directly on Jesus and be transformed with a group that is all wanting the same thing. It never gets old to see peoples lives go from hopeless and broken to alive and moving in power! I have now seen eleven teams launched from our base in Kona, Hawaii to some of the hardest and darkest nations on the planet.

It has been such a privilege to be in the position of a school leader during this time because of the outside perspective that I am granted. This can sometimes be overwhelming when I am hearing every single problem that is going on throughout the school but I am only forced to be at the feet of Jesus constantly. Despite my weakness and my failures, God used this past three months to reveal His Love that demands a life change. From leadership to staff to student, there is such a transformation that happens in each individual as they are put into this greenhouse like environment and allowed to grow. I am excited to see my generation filled with courageous leaders who live to see the Kingdom of God advanced in the earth!

 I am very appreciative of where God has me. I think sometimes about what I am doing and what it is costing me to live like this here away from family and friends and I can only look to Jesus and trust His call in my life. There is something about the peace and joy that comes from having a relationship with Jesus that makes it possible to live such a different life. I do have to face the fear of lack of provision or fear of failure as well as many other insecurities but, whether I am living the life of a missionary or back in Cleveland working a more normal job I am set on being a man of faith and courage!

After recently hearing a message from Andy Byrd who is a base leader here in Kona, I was very convicted about ways that I was not taking initiative as a man and not being courageous in the face of fear. I believe that there are promises that God has given us that He simply has "given" us. He has already blessed us and handed them to us but we have to take initiative and take what is ours. It is not our responsibility to sit back and observe whether or not we are capable but to go and take what is rightfully ours! I had to repent of passivity which was causing me to sit back as a leader and watch and observe situations until I felt comfortable and secure enough to act. I realized that I was not putting any faith in the Creator of the universe but in my own capabilities. Thankfully I had some good friends to walk me through repentance which is calling out my passivity as sin and choosing to walk in faith.

After getting some quality with my girlfriend Sarah-Jo as well as closing up finances for our school I will be heading out October 8th to Battambang, Cambodia for my first of four pastoral visits. These visits are crucial for a successful short term outreach. They are almost like a diagnostics check on how the team is functioning. It allows me to bring outside perspective to the team as well as remind the team of the bigger picture of what we are doing for the Kingdom of God.

Please pray for this trip. I will be traveling by myself in Asia and I definitely need your prayers as a covering over me. Also, pray for these teams to see salvation in these nations!

Psalm 67:2-4 "May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere. May the nations praise you, O God. Yes may all the nations praise you. Let the whole world sing for joy, because you govern the nations with justice and guide the people of the whole world."

Fiji Final Update!

God has been so faithful in everything that I have been able to be a part of this year from doing a two month road trip across the USA to being an assistant leader in the Awaken DTS and leading an outreach team to the islands of Fiji! What an adventure. God truly is worthy of our praise!

I apologize for the lack of updates on this past trip. We were a very mobile outreach team traveling all over the island of Viti Levu and usually in a location without internet or even electricity. What an adventure though! Seeing SALVATION, HEALING and DELIVERANCE as well as so much more. We worked mostly doing door to door in settlements and villages as well as nightly church services mainly in the AOG church. I know the first thing that comes to mind is an uncomfortable visit from the Mormons, but in Fiji where the culture is very much wanting you to come and "have some tea". They almost expect you to come if your a visitor. This was a very challenging ministry at first for us but after seeing so many people encounter the love of God it became more about being faithful with what God gave us.

We were very blessed to have one of our students be a very skilled photographer and make an amazing outreach video for us which goes over each location we went to with testimonies, pictures and videos. There is a short version which is about 10 minutes and a long version which is in two parts and is about 19 minutes. Below the link to both. Please know that your prayer and support was a huge part of this outreach happening! Thank you so much! God bless!

Here is the link to the long version. Make sure you watch both parts!

Fiji outreach (Long Version)

Here is the link to the short version.

Fiji outreach video (Short Version)

Bring Hope to Fiji

At this point I am still in need of $1500 to go to Fiji. Please pray about how you can help be a part of taking the love of Christ to the people of Fiji.

If you would like to donate you can visit the support information tab

God wants a family

After six weeks of this DTS I have seen so many breakthroughs in the lives of the students. They are so hungry for God and are stepping out of their comfort zones like I have never seen before. This group is simply blowing my mind with how they are laying down their lives to pursue what God has for them. I can honestly say that I am having to keep up with this group in running after Jesus.

This past week we had a speaker cancel on us last minute so we really had no idea what we were going to do. We got together and God started to bring some very interesting ideas to mind. The first day we had Andrew York speak who is our school leader. He shared an amazing message about the presence of God and how it must come before we seek out His plans. Most of the big church mentality is that if we get a really good plan and we can gather a lot of people than God's presence will come. What usually ends up happening is that we get amazing facilities with a good amount of people and there is such a lack of love and genuine fellowship. If we go after the presence of God, He will begin to create families and from that place he will release dreams and visions for what He wants us to do! This isn't just an idea; this is exactly what we have experienced in these past two years in this discipleship training school.

After that day we sent the students out on what we call a "Faith Journey". We basically sent them out in their outreach teams and had them pray about what to do for the day. With little to no structure they left the base and went all around the island. One of the many testimonies from the day was from a girl on my Fiji outreach team who was granted a free ride on a helicopter around the island that normally costs $500. She was even able to pray for someone’s healing through the intercom that everyone can hear through! The main thing I saw God do that day was solidify in the student’s hearts that it's not about what they can do for God but about them enjoying Him and moving from that place of knowing how much they are loved.

On Wednesday morning we split up the guys and the girls and had what we call "Men of Glory" and "Women of Glory". This was a preaching class us staff had been involved in before the school had started and changed my life forever. What we do is pick a simple topic for the group to come up with about a 3 minute message on and each person gets up and shares. More than having a good clean biblical sound message it is about people letting out their passion for Jesus and being set free from fear of man and passivity! I have never seen such a passionate and free bunch of men before in my life! The best part of this is seeing so many men be so brave and vulnerable in front of each other and letting loose the crazy passion for Jesus that is bottled up inside waiting to burst forth!

For the rest of the week we decided to do a 50 hour "Burn" which is basically nonstop around the clock prayer and worship. We had all the staff and students sign up for different hours day and night to be in the prayer room. This was such a good time for us all to seek God and ask for everything that He has for us. We ended this burn with a corporate set that ended with crazy dancing and chanting!

The next night we invited all of the students up to the house that six other guys and I are living at and we had a big family cookout. About 100 of us filled the house and the backyard. This was exactly how we felt like God wanted us to finish this week as a family celebrating the life that Jesus gave us!

"Revelation brings a Crisis"

I have now been in Kona, Hawaii for three weeks and have gone through so much transformation! Yes I have completed a discipleship training school and staffed one last year but I am beginning to understand when our staff trainer Jeremy West says “be a disciple first always”. A discipleship training school (DTS) is something you can graduate from, but you never graduate from being a disciple. The past few weeks have been some of the hardest times in my short Christian walk, but it has been my choice to continue to engage myself with the heart of God that has changed me. In plain words I can't rely on my own experiential knowledge but to always be teachable and pliable by God.

During staff training the past two weeks the one quote that has been stuck in my head has been “revelation brings a crisis”. The idea is that when there is true revelation from God there should be some kind of crisis that provokes me to seek or desire a change. This should then hopefully bring me to seek Jesus Christ for the grace that I need to walk in it. It’s really the same as “revelation requires a response” but I never thought about the fact that when I start feeling like I’m having some kind of life crisis that it could actually be God’s love. In no way am I saying that God kills people to teach us or that he makes us suffer so that we realize we need Him. I’m saying that there might be heart issues or mindsets that we have and when we are pursuing God His light actually shines on us revealing the hidden things.

I had one especially hard week where I felt like all of my junk was rising to the surface. This was where I had to consider the fact that maybe God wants to do a work in my life. One day I felt so rebellious and didn’t want to do anything during worship or focus on God. I didn’t want to open my mouth or do anything. Later that day one of the other staff asked me how I was doing and I simply responded “bad”. She didn’t try to do anything other than simply pray for me and it was so encouraging! I know that God doesn’t want us to walk these things out by ourselves and that he desires for us to have loving friendships that can simply pray for each other and see breakthrough.

I have simply experienced a passion for Jesus and a constant choice to engage Gods heart, no matter how I feel. I have had to press through some of the driest days where I don’t “feel His presence” and had to just trust that He was with me. This is so necessary in a place where ministry is 24/7 and I usually don’t “feel” like I can minister to others. I have to hold on to the truth that it’s worth it! When God is glorified through other people finding out who they are in Him than we continue to see more and more of who He is!

18 more days until over 100 students come to have their lives radically changed!!!

New Update!

Update of the last few months

I recently spent two months traveling across the United States with a group of 5 friends that I work with in the Discipleship Training School. We visited different ministries and leaders of the ministries to gain perspective of what they see God doing in our nation and in our generation. It was an amazing eye opening time of seeing so many different parts of the church operating in exactly what God created them to be. There is so much diversity in the church and it is so beautiful to see a certain part working exactly as it should. Sometimes we would go from one place to another and it seemed like they saying complete opposite things, but it really took us to a deeper level of seeking the Lord and in the end we really saw that most of what they were saying was the same but communicated differently. I could see the love of God in so many different ministries and began to understand how I had to break some of the boxes I was putting Him in.

We also saw how God was revealing Himself to us in our small community of 6 throughout the trip. We had amazing times together as we spent endless hours driving over 13,000 miles in our 1998 Dodge conversion van. We really learned how to love each other and this only increased the presence of God in our group. God has been putting 1John 4:11-12 on my heart and revealing to me how much it connects to what He is doing in my life and in our group.

^"11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. ¹² No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us."

I have never seen God and known His love as much as I had on that trip and it wasn’t in the church building or listening to the preacher, it was with my friends as we would seek the Lord and love one another. This is simply the first two commandments of loving God and loving your neighbor. It was a deep revelation of how God really brought His love to a full “expression”, or “perfection” as we began to love each other. We had even seen a few peoples lives completely transformed and redirected back to God because of how they saw God in our lives! That was the most effortless evangelism I've ever been involved in.

My next steps

I will be heading back to Kona, Hawaii at the end of the month to work in another Discipleship Training School. I am completing my second year of my two year commitment and should be expecting anywhere from 70 to 100 students. The first phase of the school is three months of lecture where we have a different speaker each week talk about different topics about God like “the Father heart of God” or “The Holy Spirit”. During time we have close one on one discipleship and small group times with the students. The second phase is a three month outreach where I will most likely be taking a team to Southeast Asia to serve in different churches and ministries.

This is a service based ministry and I am committing my next seven months to this school. This school had a major impact in my life as most of you know and I have such a desire to see others have the same freedom and revelation that comes with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This school also has a major impact on the nations that we go to. Whether it’s serving long term missions or working with local native churches, we are able to see amazing fruit and this brings so much perspective to our students as well.

Your Part

Please consider how you might be able to partner with me in this next seven months either in financial or prayer support. Both areas are major areas that I depend on others for.

Prayer support

Please consider taking time each day or even once a week to pray for me as well as other staff and students. There is a constant battle going on and as we begin to tear down the works of the enemy in our lives and go after all that God has for us there will be heavy opposition from the enemy.

Financial support

I am dependent on financial support to be able to serve in this school since it is a volunteer program. Please pray about making a donation or even becoming a monthly supporter. Check out my support page for more info.