Hello everyone,
It has been a little while since I last blogged here. I have had a full on schedule. As most of you know I have taken this season of my life and joined a short term school called Discipleship Training School through Youth With A Mission. This school is primarily focussed on a ministry called Impact World Tour. The IWT-DTS is a 3 month lecture phase and 2 month outresch phase based school; classes range to and fro in all different aspects revolving around the foundations of God and the Christ such as the Pursuit of God, Nature and Character of God, Lordship/True Repentance, Freedom in Christ, Father Heart of God, Study of the Word of God, Hearing God's Voice, Relationships, Spiritual warfare/Authority of the Believer, Faith/Finances/Missions, Holy Spirit-Gifts and Evangelism. This particular school is located in Tauranga, New Zealand.
The team and I started this journy on September 1, 2008, 9 1/2 weeks ago. As a team we have grown extemely close to one another through the fellowship and the one heart desire to seek the Lord with all of our hearts, minds and souls. The Lord is doing alot of amazing things here; over the course we have experienced many wonderful healings on the heart level. One guy came out here because he was forced, he did not know the Lord, over these 9 1/2 weeks he has not only given his life to the Lord but has also grown close the Lord in an extravegant way; he and about six others were baptised with water and dedicated themselves to the Lord. The groaning of the Spirit of God has come alive in many of us here. We are all growing deeply affectionate toward our lover and maker as He not only heals us, but also restores us through revealing of His heart toward us.
Many of us have not only grown close to the Lord and as well others, the Lord has opened up the spiritual realm for many through dreams, visions and encounters with angels to be a few. Many came timid and shy, now many are filled with boldness and are gaining boldness through the word of the Lord; we even had a small group recieve the gift of tongues, some for edification and others for prophecy. Many gifts have been revealed to each individual person. I love that even as we are here many relationships with friends and family are being mended and restored. How great is our God!!!
Prayer House and Drug Arm:
The coolest thing in my experience here on the DTS is our involvement with the Tauranga House of Prayer; we spend around 10 hours a week in prayer and worship together. This excites me as I am joyfully apart of the prayer culture that the Lord is raising up here in New Zealand. When the Lord told me that I was to do a DTS I was not to excited; but the Lord is sovereignly raising up IWT and T-HOP together as one ministry, two arms with the same vision: raising up missionaries who have been soaked in seasons of prayer and study of the word. I believe stongly that the promise of setting watchmen on the walls and the command of go into the world and make disciples is a hand in hand operation that must rely on God to go forth, the separation of the two will hinder the work of God.
Drug Arm: A ministry here in Tauranga, New Zealand in operation since the early 90's focussed on street ministry. On Friday and Saturday nights a small group of us go out under their leadership to serve hot meat pies, coffee, hot chocolate and of course the Gospel of Christ. I have myself been out on three separate occasions; it has been a most amazing experience. I have seen 4 salvations take place, 50-60 seeds being planted in which most had tears. The Lord is simply amazing. I think by far though the intense reality of seeing the youth on the street wasting themselves has had the biggest impact thus far in my life. Its funny to me that 1000's of youth can be down town getting drunk, searching to put away the stress of the week or some false release of joy, yet none really look happy at all. The Lord in His great mercy is causing my heart to yearn and cry out for these young people who are searching and longing for some kind of fullfilment in their lives, the empty cisterns in which they continue to draw from are not satisfying, the hope of Christ that dwells deep within is yearning for a people to cry out on their behalf; the answer for your prayers concering the releasing of God's salvation is usually also answered by you going out and sharing the word of God to His lost sheep.
Financial Breakthrough:
I have never seen such a crazy release of financial provision as i have seen last week. October 16th - October 24th; personally I recieved 5,500.00 dollars in less than a week. As a team we have seen 43,000.00 dollars poured out for lecture phase and plane tickets to the Philippines for our 2 month outreach phase. The Lord continues to astound my heart in all areas of life; who knew that even financial provision could produce such humilty and faith with patience in the Lord, on the final day fo h airfare to be in the Lord released 2000.00 into my hands. The coolest part is that most of this money has come from the most random and unlikely places. Praise God. As a group we need 2000.00 to come in by tomorrow, we have strong faith in the Lord, that He will release financial provision to those who are still in need.
Please pray for my team mates and I; I need to raise 1,200.00 dollars in 1 months time, and the team as a whole needs to raise just over 11,000.00 dollars in one months time.
Please pray for us as a team that the word of he Lord would continue to run swiftly and that His Son may continually be glorified through us on a daily basis. We leave for the Philipines on November 27th, 2008 for a 57 day outreach. We will split into two separate groups, some will stay in the capital city Manila and the others will travel to Davao. We primarily will be working alongside other ministries and churches in these cities, as well we will be spending alot of time going into the slums of these cities to provide mercy ministry for those who live there. there are around 22 million people living in these slums; most of the percentage of these whom live there are of the youth, without families, living in the streets and eating from the garbage.
Please be in prayer for us, that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon us to preach His word with clarity and boldness. Pray for an outpouring of His Spirit to be released that healings through signs and wonders may be done. Most of all, please pray that the unrelenting and unquenchable love of Jesus would come upon our hearts and the hearts of those who we come in contact with. We are believing for amazing encounters with God that will change the face of our concept of reality and destiny forever.
Bless all who may read this. May the Lord cause you to be blessed and enriched with the Holy Spirit in whom gives life to the dead and broken hearted. AMEN
