Outreach

We are currently in our outreach portion of our training. To follow our team go to our blog - outreachfiji.blogspot.com

Thanks

Week 4

Somewhere along the way I accidentally deleted my week 4 summary that I was working on. So I will try it again.

Week 4 we had Joe Ferrante teaching on The Father Heart of God. Many people have no idea that the God loves us. We have an intellectual knowledge of it, but that's as far as it goes. We tend to believe two lies: 1. God is not good, and 2. I am not good enough for God to love me. Satan uses a pattern to condemn us, but God counter-acts Satan's deception.

Satan uses doubt, confusion, fear, despair, and isolation. God counters with truth, clarity, confidence, hope, and intimacy.

If we are going to have intimacy with God, we have to let go of one question: Why? It's OK to ask the question, but we need to be content about not receiving an answer.

Satan knows how powerful forgiveness is, that's why he works so hard against it. Forgiveness needs to be a lifestyle. We are unable to do it in our own strength.Forgiveness shakes the very foundations of hell.

This is just a brief summary of week 4. Joe was a great speaker and such a gentle and loving person.

Week 5

Week 5 we had Jim May teaching us. The topic of his teaching was "With Him". God wants us to do everything with Him. It's as if God says "Hey, I'm going for a walk, you want to come? It's amazing to me just how many Christian books are man centered. Why isn't God the center? We need to realign our center to match His.

Below are 11 passages on why we are to meditate on The Word. I would like you to comment on the reasons given in the passages.

1. Joshua 1:8
2. Psalm 1:1-3
3. 2 Timothy 3:16-17
4. John 8:31-32
5. John 15:17
6. Psalm 119:11
7. Romans 10:17
8. Matthew 24:35
9. Hebrews 4:12
10. Psalm 119:98-99
11. Psalm 81:13-14

I hope as you read through these passages that you will see the value in diving in and devouring The Word.

What's happening in Chico

Here's a real life update finally. We only have 3 weeks left of our lecture phase of CDTS. I can't believe how incredibly fast it has gone and don't want it to be over yet! The teachers have been fantastic, most have been teaching around the world for decades. We still love being here. It's even more beautiful now, we've had some rain to bring out new grass on the mountains and the trees are gorgeous. The temps are still in the high 60's and 70's during the day so it feels like summer to us but with the shorter days and red trees it looks like fall...how confusing! The kids are still loving school and life here. I think they would be happy to stay here forever.

There's been a change with our outreach due to flight availability. We leave on Sunday, Nov 22 for Fiji and couldn't get a flight back until Tues, Jan 12. Because of this we won't be able to minister to homeless people in San Fransisco. That's disappointing but it gives us more time to work with people in Fiji. We still need $3,800 for our outreach expenses, this includes airfare plus transportation, lodging and most meals in Fiji. We'll be staying at the Sandalwood Inn in a town called Nadi which is near the airport and the coast. We've heard the beach there is muddy but hopefully it's not too gross. Since we'll be there in their summer it'll be 80-90 degrees in Fiji with high humidity. Sound good? Another thing, women AND MEN should wear skirts in some areas (like villages). They are called sulus and we'll have to buy some when we get there.

We still plan to drive to the YWAM base in Creel, Mexico to visit when we are done here. As much as we love this place and the people here, our hearts are still for the people of Mexico. Please keep us in your prayers during these last weeks of teaching and preparation. Please pray that our finances come in (as well as our team's finances) and pray for wisdom and we prepare puppet shows, dramas and songs for outreach. We so appreciate all the prayers, words of encouragement and financial support that you've sent our way. Praise God!

Week 3

Our scheduled week 3 speaker, Donna Jordan, had to cancel due to Dengue fever. So a little rearrangement of our schedule had to be done.

The first part of the week was covered by Dale Harrison, the base director that spoke during week 1. He continued with Intimacy with God and a couple of other things.

Dale described the original intent of the altar as portable, so that people wouldn't have to travel in order to worship God. God designed it, but it had to be constructed by man. After the coming of the Holy Spirit, man became the altar to continue in the portable nature of it. We do not need to go places to worship God, we are able to worship Him where we are. There were different types of altars described in the Bible. They were made out of four different types of materials: gold, bronze, stone, and earth. The gold altar in the Tabernacle was only for the priests to use and only incense was to be burned on it. The bronze altar was for the sacrifices, very bloody. Stone altars can be built anywhere, and symbolize what we have become. In Exodus 20:25 the instruction for constructing a stone altar were given. They were to use only uncut stones, meaning only natural stones that haven't had tools used on them. God doesn't want us to dress up ourselves. He wants us to use the messes of our lives to build an altar to worship Him with.

The rest of the week was taught by our class leader Carlos Penning. He spoke on the character of God. God inspired the Bible to show us His character. He wanted to be transparent with us. He wants us to ask Him questions regarding His character, He is big enough to handle them. His character shows us that He desires a relationship with us. Our relationships with everything else, people and things, are only to be a compliment to our relationship to Him, not a replacement. We have chosen to replace that relationship with God, and seek after relationships in other places. We have made an abomination of what God desired. Indescribable horror has occurred due to our selfishness. Murder, rape, child molestation, and the list could go on and on. God could step in and stop these horrible things, but then His perfect justice would require Him to stop all sin, even mine and yours. That's not to say that He doesn't sometimes do that, but only when His people intercede for change. God has chosen to limit Himself to using His people for now.

Week 2

Week 2 – Bill Payne

The Truth Box

We all have a truth box. It's the little box that we file things that we know, or think, are true. If you hear something you immediately run through the files in your truth box to verify it's true. Say if I were to tell you that the world is not really round like we all thought it was, but instead that the world is actually square. You'd take that bit of information that I just gave you and check it against all the things that you know about the earth, pictures that have been taken, eye witness accounts that have seen that the earth is actually round, etc... and you reject the idea that the earth is square. We also put things in the truth box about God. Depending on your life experiences and other influences your truth box may have untruths put in there by other people or even the father of lies himself. Untruths like: God can't possibly love me as filthy a sinner as I am or God is just waiting for me to mess up so He can zap me with lightening, or some other such nonsense. The picture of God in our truth box influences how we approach Him. The truth is God loves you more than you can imagine.

Don't believe me? Read it for yourself. Ephesians 3:17b-19 says:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Hmmm.... Sounds pretty clear to me. Yet for some reason we read this passage and the knowledge of it stays in our head and doesn't make it down to our hearts.

Do you ever wonder why you were created? Why would God create such frail and fragile beings as us? Did anyone ever ask you why you had kids? For most of us, we had kids as an expression of our love between our spouses and us. We wanted to share the relationship we had between us with our children. That is why God created us. God had a perfect relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Out of that perfect relationship God created mankind to be a gift between the Persons of the trinity. Mankind was meant to be an expression of the love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God acknowledged that His relationship was good and He wanted more of it. It's like us having a bowl of ice cream and wanting more because it was good. Jesus didn't come so we could get into Heaven, but to restore the intimacy mankind had with the Father.

Did you know that God can't make you love Him? Love is not love unless it's freely given. If God could make you love Him you would because His will is that no one should perish, see 2 Peter 3:9.

If you're not trusting God or believing His love for you, you are attacking His character and are in league with Satan. We believe that our families love us, but we doubt God's love even though He tells us over and over again that His love for us is unmeasurable.

People sometimes reject God because they can't believe in a God that would send people to Hell. God doesn't send people to Hell. People are free to choose which path they follow. God doesn't stop them from following the path they've chosen. It's like telling someone that I want to go to Chicago, but I'm determined to take the road to Detroit. There is no way that I'm going to make it to Chicago, but I keep insisting that I'm going to make it. Then suddenly I end up right where the road has taken me. Then God gets blamed for me choosing the wrong road.

God is more interested in my pleasure than I am. He created us for ecstasy. I am valuable because I am a creation of the living God, created to have relationship with Him! I'm not valuable because Jesus died for me, but Jesus died for me because I'm valuable. If you pick up any person in the world and look at their price tag, you would see the ultimate price for each and everyone of us, every drop of Jesus blood. We are the most expensive things ever purchased in the universe!

Update we sent out by email

Hello family and friends,

Sorry it's been so long since you've heard from us. Life here is much busier than we anticipated. We arrived on Sunday, Aug 30 and were shown to our house/room. We spent the rest of the day meeting people and getting unpacked. They also treated us with a steak dinner that first night as a welcome! Not bad, eh? We hit the sack early because breakfast was at 6:45 (yeah, right) Monday morning with class beginning at 8:00 for all of us. The first few days were a blur of new faces, new schedule, getting to know our housemates, etc, etc, etc. We went to bed early because all the changes wore us out! Now we feel much more settled so I have a few minutes to tell you about our life.

The YWAM base is a few miles NE of Chico, CA down a very, very, very bumpy tar road. There are many springs in the area that have ruined the road. The road follows a mostly dry creek bed through the canyon between some mountains (don't think huge, Rocky Mountains!). The surroundings are mostly brown, dead grass and many trees with greenish/brown leaves. They can go for 6 months in the summer without a drop of rain...VERY different from MI! The center of the base is the hotel from the 1920's (see www.ywamchico.com). We have all our meals in the dining hall/banquet room of the hotel. We also have meetings, worship time, prayer time, some classes and coffee time in the hotel. There are many regular hotel rooms upstairs that are used for conferences and summer youth camps. There are a few larger buildings around the hotel where the younger DTS students live, the house we (Crossroads DTS) live in and a few cabins for speakers and such. Also scattered around are numerous tiny houses where the rest of the staff lives plus a bunch of tiny cabins for visitors (hint, hint). There are lots of trees on base and we are surrounded by mountains on three sides. It's really beautiful! There are a few flowers and bushes sprinkled around to add green to the place. There is an Olympic size pool which is very much in need of a new paint job if anyone is interested. Oh, yeah, the school is by the hotel along with tennis courts and a small playground. Definitely a place we could be very happy at for a long time!

Our schedule starts with breakfast every morning at 6:45, usually only Dan goes, the rest of us have cereal at our house. At 8:00 school starts for the kids and we begin with either worship time, prayer time or lecture. At 10ish (depending on the day) there is a coffee break at the hotel complete with coffee cake or some delicious, fattening treat. Then we have lecture again until 12:00. We meet the kids at the dining room for lunch all together and at 1:00 school resumes and we have lecture or other activities until 3:00. School is done at 3:00 so the first week we went swimming everyday after school. This week will be different...work duty begins. All students are required to work 2 hours a day during the week for the 3 months we are here. Dan is doing breakfast cooking/prep so he has to be in the kitchen at 5:45 am M-F. Ugh, not for me but it's what he wanted. I was assigned to grounds so I'll be helping to weed flower beds, mow some lawn, rake leaves and other outside duties. I'm glad I get to be outside but also nervous since it'll be hard work and the temps are predicted to be close to 100 again by Friday. I prayed that I would lose weight here, God is having me sweat it off! Dinner is at 5:30 and most evenings are free but they go very quickly since we go to bed earlier.

There are 5 other students in Crossroads with us and they are all around 50 yrs old. Karen is a widow from Colorado, Chick and Lynda are from Colorado and Frank and Denise are from Arizona. Frank and Denise have 5 grown children from previous marriages and now have 5 children together ages 5-12 and all 5 are autistic. They are gluten and dairy free along with a number of other food and environmental restrictions. We can barely tell that they are autistic, they have come along way in "healing". The oldest is Caleb, he's 12 and since they are all a bit delayed he is a perfect fit with our Caleb. Nathaniel and Josh play great with the younger boys. Unfortunately, they have one lone girl that is 10, she is really outnumbered. We live in a house with Karen and Chick and Lynda. It has a kitchen, dining room, family room, living room, laundry, 2 bathrooms and a bunch of big bedrooms with lots of bunk beds. We have a room with 2 sets of bunk beds pushed together, a big desk and a big closet. The boys room is attached to ours, they have 2 sets of bunk beds and a dresser to share. There is also a big front porch which I LOVE! We have plenty of space and so far sharing has been easy. Lynda actually said that our boys were 'so quiet and well behaved'. WOW! We said that school was tiring them out.

Stay tuned for more updates!!!