Vanuatu update

Thank you to all of you who have been praying for me. Our team has spent every morning with the children of the village who can not afford school (it is about 300 bucks us per term), and afternoons we’re going door to door. It is very tiring on me, and our team is already worn thin from the first 2 months of outreach. We are planning on staying here for 2 more weeks, then back to lautoka for 2 1/2 weeks, then 2 1/2 weeks in one of the outer islands, then the last few days in lautoka before we head back to kona. We had been talking about going to samoa, but it does not look like God will open the doors for us to go. So unless we get an invitation and a blessing from our leadership, we will not go.

Keep praying that we will somehow get the rest that our spirits need. I don’t even know what would do it. We need more than sleep, probably more than a day off (it has been about 2 weeks since we had a whole day off), more than something fun to do (I haven’t even played a game in weeks). I am just bored of being serious. I rarely learn or do anything new or fun and all we do is walk around talking about Jesus’ love and I’ve been struggling to feel His love personally, so it has been really hard for me to share it. I’m bored with movies and even getting bored with music. I have 7 more weeks of outreach and it’s not like I don’t want to be here, it’s just that I don’t want to do anything. The only time I have enjoyed honestly has been my times alone with God on the beach. No music, no people, no distractions…just the sound of the water and the feel of the sand between my toes…and sometimes stars or rain. Yet God keeps telling me to spend time with the people here…and I feel like they are bored with me. It’s quite the vicious cycle.

So pray for life for me and my team. We have plenty of things to do, but after so much being serious, I want to enjoy life and God’s creation…because that’s how I enjoy God. I almost went swimming the other night in the ocean during the lightning storm, but then I thought if the lightning didn’t kill me, my mom would. So I opted out.

I am learning how to surrender all, which has been a surprise how easy and hard it is at the same time. It’s as easy as saying the words, yet you need to conform your desires to God’s, and so it’s a daily process. Surrendering the same things daily was something that I thought was proof that you hadn’t really surrendered. Yet God has been showing me that it is impossible to completely surrender some things. So as a result, we need to admit that we’re not capable, and admit that God knows best. After we surrender it, when we leave our prayers, we will gradually forget that we gave it away and it sneaks back in, and as soon as you see it in your possession, admit it to God and give it back. Basically, we’re spiritual kleptos.

I will keep up the fight, because I see that good is coming of it despite my fatigue, so I will trust that God will give me strength until he gives me the rest I need. I hope this is insightful and helpful for you in more ways than just how to pray for me. I love you all.

Haggardness

Please pray for my team. We are all tired and weary...well not all of us, but a lot of us just need rest. We haven't really had a full day off in what seems to be a long time. We need prayer for our team to have life revived in us. We haven't laughed in a long time, nor done anything that brings a smile to our faces...i haven't felt joy in a while. We have had a lot of spiritual attacks and we're reading our bibles and praying and resisting the attacks, yet we have just been SO tired. Pray for wisdom for our leader in how God plans on reviving the life in our group. We're doing good as a team, getting along well, and God has been healing our pains (He healed mine sunday night). But i'm still just so tired. More than sleep, more than getting a meal that isn't rice, more than homesickness...just tired. Thank you all for your prayers. They continue to change my life...this last week was another extremely hard week for me. I would post it, but I believe the details are not suitable to post online...and would take too long. What matters is that God healed my pains...now he just calls me to obey. I am eager to obey, but I'm just so tired. Keep praying.

Pongo Village

This week has been a good one….VERY hard for me, but good. Pam and I have been leading. It has been nice to have some order to the schedule and more than 30 minutes of free time at a time. We have put all of our events back to back so that we get all of our free time at once. It has been terrible to try and go to town to check the internet or take a nap with so many small blocks of free time. This has made everything a lot easier for me.

In our scheduled time we have been doing a lot of things in the local community. We have done some prayer walks, painted a few houses (and each other simultaneously), as well as hosting a bible study a couple times a week. Vanuatu is a great place for our team right now. We were doing a team building exercise Tuesday and all the neighbor kids (and a few adults) came over and watched (and kinda got in the way)…but they are SO eager to learn what we’re doing and what we’re about.

The culture here is different than the other islands. Similarities include: Boys and girls can not be together 1 on 1 otherwise they assume you’re sleeping together, no garbage cans…they just burn it wherever, they are very shy until you know them, girls are required to dress VERY modestly, and how eager they are to listen to what we have to say because we’re white. Differences include: Guys can wear basically whatever they want to…even for ministry and church, the people here STARE at us wherever we go and watch everything we do. If you do one thing somewhere, and walk to the other side of the village, you do not need to tell them, because they already know. The missionaries here call it coconut wireless. News about anything we do (good or bad) travels faster than you can walk. It’s really creepy. So we need to watch our actions extremely closely.

We are still praying about where God has called us for the last month of our trip. We are thinking about Samoa because it was the original plan, but we have not heard from God yet. Our plan is to focus on prayer until we hear what God wants. This last week I have had a heavy heart. Not a depression, not a sadness, not self pity or anything similar. It has had a few different forms this week and some of you know about that…and I thank you so much for your prayers. The specific forms of heaviness have gone away, yet the heaviness has remained. I know that God is doing this intentionally and I’m not sure why yet. So please pray for me that I can learn to hear God’s voice. He wants me to understand this heaviness beyond any circumstances. Your prayers have been changing my life, and I’ve been doing my best to change the lives of all those I encounter. So thank you for all you have done for me.

Our Plan...

These last few days have been focused on settling in, getting to know the people and area, resting, and team bonding. The area we are staying in is right off the beach in an area where witchcraft is not completely hidden or thought of as bad. People who go to church will be the same people who engage in witchcraft. Our Plan is to pray for the people in the area and tend to their needs. We will be needing prayer for spiritual protection as we become vulnerable to those who practice witchcraft that oppose us. Your prayers have sustained me thus far, and for this I am eternally greatful! My prayer is that your blessing may be double the blessing that you have prayed over me. Thank you so much for standing by my side and fighting even if/when you don't know why or about what. I can not describe the times I have felt your prayers at the most unusual and needed times...from the 4:26am earthquake to the mid day crisis to the 17+hours on a boat when there wasn't any more motion sick medicine and I volunteered to be the one not to take any.(and didn't get sick)...your prayers are more powerful than you know.

Trip to Santo

Thursday night my team parted ways and the 14 of us going on extended outreach said goodbye to the half of the team staying in Fiji. We packed up and left for the airport around 7pm for Vanuatu. We arrived Vanuatu around midnight and drove to our sleeping quarters. Once our luggage was offloaded, we had a team meeting where we found out we were leaving at 5am for a 10 hour boat ride…that would have been nice to know in advance…but so would have the next few days. We got up at 4:45 and left around 6 and waited at the dock from 7 until 9:30 and then about 60 people loaded on with all their stuff onboard a 30 foot catamaran. The seas were a little more lively than our last boat ride and on a MUCH smaller ship.

We arrived Santo around 8pm waited for half an hour to load our things on the truck, then jumped on the bags and rode to our sleeping quarters where we dropped our bags, then left for dinner. We didn’t get back from dinner until midnight and we waited for half an hour for the director to look for a second room because it’s not kosher for boys and girls to sleep in one room together…but after that mission failed, the girls slept on one side and the boys on the other. So 50 of us slept in a huge cement room that echoed a lot(with the snoring and the children in pain(one with pink eye, one with boils, and a few with diarrhea.)) with the lights on all night to keep the centipedes out of the room(they are poisonous), using a water bottle as a pillow since mine disappeared and we were awoken at 5:30 to eat our 1/3 beget for breakfast before loading into the back of a truck to ride an hour ½ to go to a presentation all day long. Once we thought it was done, we drove downtown and it just continued downtown until about 9pm and then we ate dinner, got back around 11pm because we had to wake up at 5am because our truck was leaving at 6am. This time the journey was 2 ½ hours, so the 50 of us loaded in one truck bed because we were going to go take vans…but the vans were gone, so we rode like that for the whole time…I stood up the whole time with 5 other guys who didn’t have room to sit…both ways.

We got back the second night about 10:30 because our boat was leaving at 4am the next morning….but we were late and it waited for us…thank God! This time we were on a little bit bigger one hull boat, but the seas were BAD! We were avoiding 2 weather systems and the swells were on average 4-5 feet the whole way. In some of the bays it went down, and on occation we had some swells over 10 feet! After 17 ½ hours of this grueling part of our journey, most of the people on the boat threw up more than once…(luckily I was sitting on top of the boat with the crew so I got a lot of air and water for most of the journey…but it was really slippery. There were a few times I thought I was going to fly off the boat…God kept me safe and my stomach calm. By the end of the trip, I could see the salt crystals on my skin.)

Our whole team was physically and emotionally exhausted from the journey so we all stayed in a motel for the night. It is really expensive here. The ride from the dock (half a mile) for one van to take 2 trips was $30 US and its $90 per room per night here. We arrived the motel at 1:30am and unpacked and showered…OH the GLORY of a hot shower!!! I hadn’t showered since I left Fiji, and it has been almost 2 months since I’ve slept in a bed. So today I’m checking my email for the first time in a week, resting, reading, swimming in the pool, and I’m going to go to town and buy me some good food…It has been a week since I have actually had a meal. I’ve eaten a grapefruit here, some rice there, and an occasional cookie or cracker.

In this journey, I encountered a few men of God that were such a delight to meet. Two of them are locals to Santo and knew everything about the area. One of these two (Pastor Ben) had been there for his whole life and knew everything about everywhere and everyone. The other (Lester) was a graduated college student and one of the highly esteemed intercessors for the island. I learned a lot from these two and if I ever go back, they will be the first two I look for. Another powerful man I met was actually on the stage as an official guest to the ceremony. He sat a few rows behind the president and prime minister of Vanuatu. He challenged my faith very strongly and I will be keeping in touch with him.

Through these travels, there were certain specific times of the day that I felt some of you praying for me. It has been happening more and more. So either your prayers are becoming more and more powerful, or I’m just sensing the prayers that you’ve been praying for me this whole time. I can not tell you how thankful I am for your prayers. They have sustained me through this time…I don’t know how I would have survived without you fighting by my side this last week. Thank you all so much for being a part of my life and my adventures.

Arrival in Vanuatu completed!

I will be updating my blog soon...I just wanted to tell you all that I am okay. Everything is either VERY cheap or VERY expensive here. I got 3 of the HUGEST grapefruits I have ever seen in my life (about the size of my head) for a dollar, and a can of Coke is $3.00. Internet is $8 an hour, so I'll type up my last week's adventure and post it soon. It was one of the most memorable trips of my life. The story is soon to come.

Vava'u Pics

Here are the promised pictures from Vava'u.

http://wwu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022416&l=30c5c&id=25902808

NEWSFLASH!!! 8.0 EARTHQUAKE!!!

This morning at about 4:30 I woke up. I turned in my bed and started praying and then the room started shaking. I jumped up by the doorway and waited for a little bit hoping it would end...we had a earthquake a couple days ago that was a 6.5 and we thought nothing of it because it was so deep, and it just felt like someone jumped and the house briefly shook. I was thinking this one would be the same. I was wrong. The house kept shaking....then I started shaking really bad...everything was flying off the shelves...we were on the 2nd story of a 2 story building...that doesn't seem to strongly built. After about 25 - 30 seconds, a few of us made a mad dash to the front door(the steps are outdoors, and not covered). The quake just kept shaking. It had to have gone on for over a minute. Nothing seemed to have broken though. Not sure how. We were running around getting flashlights and candles so we could see since the power was out. It wasn't until about 15 minutes later that I realized I was still in my underwear...everyone was so shaken up that nobody even noticed....Ooops.

The power was only out for a little bit, and then we gathered supplies, but none of us have cash and almost none of the stores that accept credit cards are open. THe 2 ATM's are shut down too for some reason. So our goal is to find cash because we were planning on getting it this morning. Everything is closed today in honor of the Prince's birthday. There is a party tonight on the pier for him and our plan is to have a prayer booth there.

Diane, the lady we're staying with is amazing! It seems like she is on every major committee. She was talking to prime ministers and the red cross, hospital, police, and even NBC. She is going to meet with a bunch of people tomorrow to help set up an aid relief for the Nation. Everyone is so chill here. They don't fret too much about it. They are all over it...or so it seems...the nature of a kingdom leaves those under the king to supress their feelings. Many people were afraid, but appear to be over it. I hope our prayer booth will be good. We leave for hte main island of Tonga tomorrow morning 10am. Thank you al lfor your prayers. Please email me with any questions or comments. I should have internet a couple times the next week. So please let me know what's going on. If there are tremmors, I'll let you know what's up.

Pictures from Tonga

The computer lab has a very fast connection and very slow computers. The server just went down, but luckily it came back up again. I am uploading some pics, so click the link below if you want to see some pictures from Tonga. None from Vava’u yet…no captions either. I wish I had time to write the stories I have left out. I figured I was lacking in the photo department more than the story department.

http://wwu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022060&l=023df&id=25902808

if the link doesn't work let me know...sorry that it wasn't there. I will try next week to get you pictures from Vava'u.

Talk about Power....

I just found out the reason why my internet hasn’t been working. Strange story: It began on Sunday night, the Prince’s right hand man urinated in public and offended many (since it is illegal to wear a sleeveless shirt in public…palangi’s are exempt for some reason). One of the people offended was the chief editor of the Tongan paper. He told the owner of the restaurant that he was going to publish what happened. The Prince’s right hand man called the right guy and shut off all internet and telephone on the whole island. It could be days before the internet works. Very different from America. (what’s even funnier is that I was at that restaurant and left 10 minutes before that happened.)