On the Road

We have a phone!

So yeah,

We just got a student line at Makapala! The number is (001) 808-889-5805. Bear in mind that we're 10 hours behind you Brits right now, but I'd be stoked to hear from you guys! You'll almost definately not get me, but you'll probably get some other nice student so just ask for me!

I'd love to hear from England. Call me.

Love you all

John

All the lastest from DTS

Well, life here in Makapala is rolling on, and we're entering week 8 now I think? Unbelievable. The last few weeks have been both incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding. I'll try to share a little with you all.

First off, the week starting October 30th (I think) was Holy Spirit week. We were SO blessed to have a lady called Maureen maynard come and speak to us. She knew Beth and Jeff from South Africa earlier this year, and she is Vice President of YWAM! Talk about bringing out the big guns. I was kindof thinking "wow this could be a volatile week", and it sure could of been but she made this incredible statement at the start of the week. She said something along the lines of: "Most of the Christian church agrees on 95% of the subject of the Holy Spirit, and disagrees, splits, etc., on the other 5%. I'm going to concentrate on the 95%". What a blessing! And what followed was a CRAZY week. Take for example a foundational part of teaching -  the Trinity. She went through just basic foundational stuff, looking at how each member of the Godhead has a mind and a will and is relational, and what their relationship looks like etc. Pretty mindblowing in and of itself. But then, when you look at things like SALVATION in the light of the character of the Trinity, it blows your mind to realized that you're welcomed into the very middle of that relationship. It changes the way you look at each other to realize that the Holy Spirit resides in each of you. It changes the way you look at your flesh and issues in your life, and it changes the way you look at your submission to God. It was an earth-shattering week. She spent about an hour talking about spiritual gifts, and that was so encouraging, but I loved the way Maureen kept us on the main issues - who the Holy Spirit is and what that means for us. Amazing.

Then week before last we had a team from a church in Tacoma, Washington come and teach to us about strongholds in our lives (basically how we give Satan authority to operate in areas of our lives, although we as a whole person are submitted to God). We looked at how this happens, what happens when this happens, and what should happen when we deal with them correctly, taking authority over these areas of our lives in the name of Jesus, repenting of our sin, and living differently, filling that place with the truth of God. It was also mindblowing. We also did some work on forgiveness, and realizing how unforgiveness in our lives can be a very powerful place for the enemy to gain a foothold in an area of our lives. I'd love to explain it to you better, but I don't want to type that much!

One other awesome thing they did was pray with each and every one of us, asking God to reveal to them what our personal original design was, i.e. what God created us to be (whether or not we were that already). I was skeptical at first, I have to admit, because I was kindof expecting them to be like "I see a picture of a rainbow, and God says he loves you" (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that picture, but it's not exactly prophetic). Anyway, all my skepticism was BLOWN AWAY when we prayed and everything that I got was either something that I have been directly praying for in my life for a long time, or soemthing which I already felt I had received from the Lord about myself. I mean honestly, it was unbelievable. So that was both totally encouraging and challenging, because now I need to be living in that!

Ok, so last week we had Kevin Norris, who is the Kona base worship leader guy, come and speak to us about worship. Again, this could have been a kindof non-week, but not on this DTS! Kevin is 53, a family man, and totally on fire for God! He's also entirely down to earth, and not your average happy-clappy worship leader. He has a real depth of knowledge of God and an amazing logical brain. He took us DEEP into what is worship? is is the songs we sing? Are all the songs we sing worship? Can you worship with your whole life or is that statement technically wrong? One thing which I thought was an amazing challenge....

Dinnertime. Back later.

Internet in the Wilderness!

Dear wonderful friends and family!

I'm pleased to announce that on Saturday we had our bling satellite internet system installed - i can't even imagine how much that cost the University of the Nations but I guess it's all part of them bringing the Makapala site up to date, and boy are we thankful! We're getting pretty good use of it too...

So, ideally you can expect more mail and blogging happening from this end! We had our masquerade on Saturday night for a little bit of fun... I was Clyde (Bonnie and...). I'll try and get you all some photos soon!

Please be praying for me this week. We have a big decision in terms of whether or not we should go an an extended outreach to Uganda after our Mozambique outreach. I want to be wise and hear God's voice clearly on this. Please hold me up before God!

Love you all, talk to you soon. Going now to itch some of my bugbites.

Mozambique!

This week we heard our outrreach locations - we had prayed about them individually before, but this week the staff confirmed our choices and I'm so happy to say I'm on TEAM MOZAMBIQUE!!!! Check out their pretty little faces to the right....

We have Amanda (our Leader), Rob, Basil, Tim, Jessie, Sofia, Joanna, Naphtali, Song, Grace, and me!

As a little sidenote, however, and I'd love to get the story in full on here sometime, last week God was AMAZING in his love and provision for me. The basic gist of it is that I was expecting to receive 1500 GBP from a funding source to go towards outreach fees, and though they had been very upbeat about this prospect all along, two weeks ago received an email saying they had no money, and I couldn't have any! This was a serious shock, but everything which we've been learning is about trusting God beyond what we can see, Hearing his voice, believing that if he's told you to do something, he'll provide.

Anyway, the deadline for our outreach deposits was last friday, and I needed to find about $1700 that week, because this money hadn't come in. I chose to trust God, believing that he was actually doing this for his greater glory, and Lo and Behold, by Thursday lunchtime, out of the blue, I had received about $2100, and to top it all, a girl gave me her 30GB video iPod, because she felt like God wanted me to have it! Isn't that amazing! For me, it was a personal lesson, not only in trusting God, but in the fact that he really does love me completely! I know he loves me, but I've always subconciously struggles with realizing that he loves me enough to supernaturally provide, or speak really clearly to me, and stuff like that. This was a lesson I don't plan on forgetting.

Thanks for all your prayers. I appreciate your support and without praying friends I don't know what would have happened! Keep praying that God will keep on teaching me these big lessons! That's all for now, hopefully we'll get internet in Makapala soon and I can continue updating! Blessings.

Earthquake!

Just about 7am on Sunday the 15th of October, I rolled out of my bed and walked sleepily to the toilet. I sat down, ready to do my business, and was thinking some half-hearted groggy thought when suddenly I heard this low rumble. I was like 'watet hammer'. Then the wall started shaking. In the groggy state I was in, I was like, "aw the side of Hawaii is probably falling off into the sea but I'm in the middle of something here and I can make it!". Then, things went crazy, the whole house was jumping, and you could hear a freight train roar coming from the ground. I was like "I'm getting out of here!" so I - shall we say - cut things off a little early, and ran outside with the rest of my housemates.

I don't know how long it lasted but it felt something like 20 seconds of big quake. 6.8 on the Richter scale I hear. It was awesome! Destruction aside, I loved it!

Speaking of destruction, we were cut off for a couple of days because the road got covered in boulders and dirt most of the way to Kona. A couple of our buildings got entirely destroyed (one was a shower block and though it was after 7, thankfully no-one was in it at the time). A few more moved off their foundatios and are condemned. Thankfully though, of the 90-odd people on site, no-one was hurt more than bruises from falling objects.

It was kindof fun!

On a serious note though, the quake has given us an opportunity as a school to really reach out to the local community. Whether it be helping a guy rebuild his broken wall, helping an old lady tidy her house, helping a local shop check it inventory, or demolishing condemned buildings, we've been able to really help the community, and build bridges to them in a way which would have been very difficult, if not impossible were it not for the quake.

Welcome to Makapala!

Well on the second saturday after starting our DTS here in Kona, the Compassion DTS (my one) moved up to our more permanent home, the Island Breeze Makapala Retreat Center. Makapala is a tiny collection of houses on the north shore of the Big Island, in the area called Kohala. It's a stunningly beautiful area, where they are rumored to have filmed Jurassic Park, etc, as you can see from these photos...

Island Breeze are a YWAM ministry that are dedicated to redeeming the cultures of the world, and bringing them to Jesus, without losing the things that identify that culture. This is their base, from where they go all over the world sharing the gospel through their own island culture. They do the hula, fire eating, and stuff. Very impressive! The site in Makapala is old and decrepit, but stunningly beautiful! It's a mile from the ocean, and is lush with palm trees, bushes, elephant grass, etc etc. You can get an idea of what some of the site looks like from the picture on the right.

I get to stay with Steve Shin, a Korean/Canadian, an over the past few weeks we've had a lot of fun getting to know each other. Our house is full of termites, and we're always trying to keep the dust off things - all part of the Hawaiian experience I suppose!

About 2 miles from our base is the first big valley of the Kohala coastline, called Pololu. You get to it by a road which stops at the top of a cliff, maybe 400 feet up, and then you weave your way down the cliff on a steep path through the jungle, to the black sand beach at the bottom. The sea is totally treacherous, but the first time we went down we had to go in. The water's so warm and the waves are powerful! (Since then we found out another YWAMer drowned there last year, and so we aren't going to swim there anymore out of respect for our school leaders).

Makapala is a wonderful place to have the DTS. There is always a quiet place to be found to spend time with the Lord, and because we're about 3 miles from the n earest town, and we have no transport, there's basically nothing to do except for our scheduled stuff and spending time getting to know each other and God. It really has turned out to be such an amazing blessing that we ended up there! We as a school are so thankful to God for the way he engineered that!

Hope you all like the pitures, click on them if you want them larger.

An Explanation

Dear readers,

I feel some kind of explanation is due as to why I've now been here about 5 weeks and haven't updated this blog too much. I have one word for you:

Makapala

We are so far out in the middle of no-where, that even though we've ordered satellite internet, it just can't get out to us for some reason. There is a rumor that it'll turn up this weekend, but I'm not couting any chickens until the fat lady sings or something like that.

Either way,  I've got about half an hour of computer time today, so I'll endeavor to tell you some of what's been going on!