We are going to see the hungry fed, young missionaries raised up and sent out into the world, children grow in their understanding of the world they live in and the God who made them, and music written and poured out before the Lord!  The first fruits are already being seen this past January.

DTS Staff and Students

On January 5th we welcomed about 12 new staff to our DTS family.  We have a brand new crew of young staff members who are spending the first 3 months of 2012 preparing their hearts for the DTS this April.  We will introduce them more properly in a few weeks, but we are so confident in this group and all they are going to accomplish by God’s grace this year.  We are busy building community, growing in our leadership and serving the campus before being joined by our students this April.  And believe me, they are coming!  We have about 70 applications for the Fire & Fragrance DTS we are leading this Spring.  We are praying for all of these students to complete their applications and trusting that we will have about 60-70 students.  That is about twice the amount of students from last year!  God is moving through DTS and multiplying missionaries into the nations!  We are excited about the things God has in store for this group of staff and students.

Fighting Hunger with the Foodmachine

God has stirred our hearts to use the Foodmachine to more effectively send our outreach teams out with powerful mercy ministry in their tool belts.  We have been working with the developers of this technology for the past few months planning for them to visit our campus and train our staff on this technology so we could take it out with us this Summer!  We are planning to do this in Cambodia during July and August.  Take a look at this video of myself and a few of our staff being trained and building our very first mini Foodmachine!  It’s really happening!

On March 2nd I am flying with my friend Evan Thomas (from the company that developed the Foodmachine) to Cambodia to teach on a DTS and scout out the land for the Foodmachine outreach this Summer.  We will be in Battambang with our long-time friend Garth Gustafson for about one week preparing the way for what God is going to do there this July and August.  Tickets are purchased and the plans are all coming together!  We are excited about how God is going to use our DTS family to fight hunger with the Foodmachine!

Raising Up World Changers at The Learning Center

Ronda is thriving as a first grade teacher and constantly amazing me and her staff with her endless creativity and commitment to her students.  I don’t know how she manages to juggle all the balls she has in the air and be such a woman of grace at the same time.    She prays for all the families of her students and is such an encouragement to each of them as they partner together to educate their children.  We are taking advantage of our location in Hawaii to give our children amazing opportunities to see different parts of creation.  Just last week we spent the day on a field trip going whale watching.  We saw humpback whales just a few feet from the boat we were on with the entire Learning Center school.  What a memorable experience!  I never knew raising up world changers could be so fun!

Writing New Music to Sing over the Nations

At the end of 2011 I felt the Lord challenge me to write music this next year for a brand new album in the near future.  I have asked my friends around me to hold me accountable to pursuing this part of my calling.  I have set aside a morning each week to seek the Lord and develop new songs to use in the prayer room and corporate worship here in Kona.  I have written a couple songs this year already and more are on the way!  I am looking ahead to this September through December to produce another album of original songs that will ignite hearts to follow Jesus wholeheartedly!  Please pray for me as I spend this time before the Lord writing new music to sing over the nations!

Colossians 4:2-6 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. ³ And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. ⁴ Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. ⁵Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. ⁶ Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

For me, in my outreach history, this is a time to work as hard as possible, preach as much as possible, teach, evangelize, and do as many crazy things as possible to see God’s kingdom extended across the globe.  Now, I am still just as passionate for those things, but the Lord has re-centered my focus onto His face.  The Lord called our team to take each morning this past week and devote ourselves to prayer for three hours.  This was motivated in part by this passage.

Take a moment to consider this.  Paul, one of the greatest evangelists to walk the earth challenged the readers of this letter to devote themselves to prayer.  He challenges us elsewhere about evangelism, but here he takes the time to challenge us to be devoted to prayer.  Devotion to prayer requires the willingness to be inconvenienced.  We must be willing to lay down our plans, agendas, and striving to take up what is on His heart.  In Philippians Paul calls us to press in for the prize of knowing Jesus our Lord.  Here, he challenges us to press into prayer to see the doors open up for the Gospel.  We are to pray that the Gospel message is declared clearly and with wisdom.  From this place of being devoted to prayer he challenges us further to have our conversations seasoned with salt.

The devotion to prayer is what allows our seasoning to be appropriately directed.  If we don’t have the foundation of prayer then our saltiness can be wasted at the wrong time and in the wrong amounts.  My hope and prayer is that every time I take the saltshaker out and spread the salt in my conversations it would be tossed on top of a foundation of prayer.

I will no longer scoff at outreaches filled with prayer walks and prayer watches.  I want to live my life like this passage challenges me to live.  Devoted to prayer and seasoned with salt!  This is a powerful combination.  Our team begins a 24 hour prayer watch tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m.  Maybe you want to join us.  Pray for doors to open for the Gospel message to go forth.  Pray that the Word would be preached with clarity and wisdom and that we would always be seasoned with salt to share the love of Christ with all He calls us to minister to here in Brazil and across the nations!

Through all of this and more we have fallen in love with this nation. Two weeks has hardly been enough to satisfy my longing to spend more time in this beautiful country. Today as I looked ahead to the Call2All DTS in April of 2011 I started thinking of spending a few months here for outreach. I believe God is preparing this land for a great harvest and I for one would love to be a part of it. I certainly think that having a ministry on the largest university in the world is fairly strategic!

My prayer is that we have been a blessing to the ministry here with YWAM Thailand. I know they have been an incredible blessing to us. I believe the fruit we have seen over our short time is being passed on to very capable hands and I believe the seeds we’ve sown will be watered and harvested. I believe the water we’ve poured on the soil is soon to produce a great harvest that the team here is so ready for! I would encourage as many as possible to come join this family here in Thailand to work the field in this nation. I believe you will love every minute! I definitely have!