Dearest Friends and Supporters,
Sorry its been a full five days since the last upsate, but it's very difficult to get a hold of a computer over here! Either way, if you don't want to read the rest of the post, know that I'm doing REALLY WELL and God is doing amazing things already! Thanks for your prayers! On with the post....
This has been the first week of lectures, and already God has just blown me and the rest of the team away with his goodness and grace, poured out on us, his people. I'm really impressed with the depth and quality of the teaching we've had so far, and from the looks of the schedule, we're going to continue having great speakers all the way through! Sifting through my notes, some of the subjects covered this week have included: Monday - Self image, being available, releasing control of your own life for God to take control; Tuesday - The purpose of DTS, One another (how to be a family in the body of Christ), Being a disciple, Itimacy with God, God as Father Friend Lover, Hearing God's voice; Wednesday - Why Pray?, Quiet Times, The Bible (including methods of study); Thursday - Being with Jesus, Not forgetting God and what he teached us, Intimacy with God, Knowing God and Making Him Known; Friday - Possibility vs Impossibility (what part does God play - hint: we do the possible, he does the impossible), Building on a vision.
It seems such a shame to just skim over the basic subjects like that - were any one of you sitting here in Hawaii with me we'd be mulling over all that we'd heard all week, discussing it, being challenged by it. there's been so much to suck up! I feel like a sponge that's so full of water (information) that I'm dripping it all over everywhere! Along with just the basic great teaching, there have been amazingly intimate times of deep fellowship with God, where I've really felt his power. I know it's not just about the feeling, but when it's accompanied by this depth of teaching and challenge, and then the Lord pours out a palpable sense of his prescence, that's truly a blessing. God is good. You can see one such time in the photo below. 
This was on Thursday morning, where the speaker was talking about being set apart to make God Known, and committing to the sacrifice of being part of God's army. We painted our faces at the end of the meeting symbolically and prayed for each other, that we would be truly set apart and that God would honor us with an opportunity for sacrifice for the service of his kingdom. Pretty amazing stuff. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger image. I know that some of this stuff can sound a little weak, but when it's in the context of what we're praying for, that God would set us apart, that God would make us a people that would be willing to lay ALL on the altar of sacrifice to him, it means a lot to symbolize that committment to the Lord.
God has been really challenging me this week. In my quiet times, and all throughout the day, in the lectures, everything, he's been nagging me about sacrificing all of myself to him. Now is the time when I need to be applying to medical school for next year if I'm going to go. And yet all week, as I've been sending emails and doing the research to work on the application, I've felt the quiet nagging of the Lord. Hard as I've been trying to ignore it, I feel that the Lord may well be asking me to lay down my dream of being a doctor. Now before we just to any conclusions, that doesn't mean that I won't be one, that just means that for right now, I feel that he's asking me to just be with 
him, listening to his heart for me, before I make a jump into the application process. I feel that he wants me to lay it down, as if I'll never be able to take it back up, and entrust my future entirely to him. For those of you who know me well, you'll understand how much I love to have things sorted out, and planned, and my ducks in a row, etc etc. For that reason, this week has seen a really difficult challenge to my heart, because in a sense this is me laying down my security for next year, and abandoning all to the Lord and his leading for now. I'd greatly appreciate all of your prayer on this matter. You all know how close the subject of medical school has become to my heart in the past year - I really want to go, and I would like to apply - but I feel that for now this is the sacrifice that God is requiring of me. Lift me up please.
Tomorrow our group leaves for the north of the Big Island, to Makapala. This is a big part of what many of our team feel sets us apart. God 's engineered it such that our DTS, the Compassion DTS, should separate from the other 250-odd DTS students here in Kona, for a special time in a special place with him. We're excited to go, and also slightly apprehensive, as this is a step in a - well - much more rustic setting. We're told we're going to have to do a lot of work to get it ready when we get there. They've been working on it for a few weeks already but it's going to need more work. On that note, in Makapala as of now there is no telephone, no internet, and only sporadic cell phone coverage, although the first two are hopefully being installed this week. So, it'll all go dark from me for a week or so, and then I'll hopefully resurface with lots of stories of rural Hawaii and cockroaches etc.
Anything else of note to note? Umm on Sunday a bunch of us were playing soccer and one guy suffered what I believe is called a compound complex fracture of his fibia and tibia (where both of them shattered and punctured his leg). I was right there when it happened, and helped him hold his foot until the abulance came. That was interesting. Oh yeah this too - fully ecxiting! Last night about 25 from my DTS went down to the beach with a couple of guitars and just worshiped God for an hour or two. A bunch of druggies showed up and a few of them were really hit by our simple praise. They kept asking us to keep playing. One of them was weeping. I heard later that one of the girls led him to Christ. It's amazing what the Holy Spirit can do through the simple offerings of us his children. God truly does inhabit the praises of his people.
Hawaii is good, lives are being changed, hearts are being challenged, we're being ruined for ordinary. Christ is being Glorified. Love you all, Johnny
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