This is weird. Apart from the fact that mere weeks ago, I was in 100 degree weather in Argentina and am now in 35 on a “nice” day; apart from the fact that I am now back in a culture where showing up at a stranger’s house in the  morning and calmly informing them that you’ll be spending the day with them is not only abnormal but reason to call the police; apart from the fact that I now wake up every morning alone in my own room instead of in a cramped dorm with a bunch of other guys- apart from all those things, one amazing journey has ended and I am now in the beginning stages of another. I am reminded of the lyrics from the Semisonic song Closing Time: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

As much as I hate to tie a secular song into the last week of DTS, the above quotation pretty much perfectly captures the emotion of the last few days I spent in Ensenada, Mexico. While it was very difficult to leave the place I had spent 3 months of my life- a place where I made life-long friendships and grew so much- it really felt more like a transition than a definite end. One of our speakers, Kenny Peavey, said that “the real outreach begins the moment that your DTS ends.” That’s pretty much what I am experiencing right now. I’m still very much getting over the fact that DTS is over and I won’t see a lot of my good friends for a while- which sucks- but at the same time, I am excited to take the next step in my life (once I figure out what that step is) and see what God has in store for me next.

When I look back over the last 5 months, it’s really hard to pick out one specific thing that God taught me, because I feel that I learned so much. Looking through my journal and previous blog post is pretty weird, because all those weeks of lecture phase and outreach seem all blurred together. There are specific stories and funny moments that I remember, but overall it feels like DTS went by in a flash. Whenever I see people here in MN and start talking to them about my experience with YWAM, I honestly don’t even know where to begin. The other day I was asked to share a specific answer to prayer that I experience during DTS, and all I could say was, “Uh…. just one?” Seriously. It’s hard to begin to describe what I have learned over the last five months of my life.  So I guess to try and summarize this experience, I’ll have to start somewhere.

I remember filling out the application to be sponsored by my church and having to answer the question “What do you want to get out of this experience?” I also remember what I wrote as an answer. I talked about how I wanted to come out of DTS with a lot more faith in God’s provision, and a sense of dependence on Him for everything. One of the first things I heard from a speaker that really stuck out to me- I think it was our first day of lectures- was something along the lines of how when we pray to God for patience or something like that, God will usually not just magically give us patience; He will instead put us through situations in which we have to exercise patience, and through those situations, we learn to be patient. The second I heard that, I thought “Uh-oh. I’ve been praying for faith in provision- especially financially. Now I know how my prayers are going to be answered.” At that point, I had a LONG way to go in terms of the $3100 I needed for lecture phase and the $2900 I needed for outreach. I was hoping for some magical multi-thousand dollar donation that would solve all my financial worries in an instant, but there was none forthcoming. About a month before leaving for outreach, I still needed $1300 for outreach and $1220 for lecture phase. As the deadlines to have our money in became closer and closer, I became more and more stressed about how I was going to pay all those expenses. I had about $1000 left in my personal bank account (which I will admit I was hoping not to have to use), but other than that I couldn’t think of ways to get the rest of the money. I was praying and praying to God for the money, but wasn’t getting any. That week, our speaker was talking about prayer and how sometimes God answers our prayers in unexpected ways. He talked about how sometimes when we aren’t seeing answers to prayer, we might not be ready to have God answer that prayer- and immediately I knew that there was something in my heart that needed to change before God could answer my prayers. That night, as I was praying to God and asking Him what needed to change in  my heart- and I realized it was not really an issue of me not having enough money, it was an issue of me not fully trusting in God. As I was praying, I suddenly had the crazy idea to give away all the money I had in my bank account. Naturally, this was not really something I was eager to do, but I really felt that it was from God and that through giving up my money, I would really be taking a leap of faith and trusting in Him- not myself- to provide the money. The fact was, I was unable to provide for myself- and because I was trying to get the money I needed by my own strengths, I was becoming extremely stressed. Though it was a struggle, I decided that I was willing to give away my money wherever God wanted me to. So I began praying to God as to what ways I could do that. Immediately the idea came to my mind to buy a video projector for the women’s rehabilitation center that we worked with each week for local outreach. After a bit of sleuthing around on the internet, I found one for about $520 and bought it. About a week later, I found out that I guy on staff needed some money to help pay for a car accident that he had been in. As soon as I heard that, I knew that God wanted me to help him out- so I went up to him and told him that if he could get me to an ATM, I would like to contribute. So we drove to the only ATM in Ensenada where you can get American dollars, and I asked him how much he needed. He said he only needed $50 more to cover everything. But when I went to take the money out, I felt that God wanted me to give him $200 instead. It was kind of difficult to make the decision so quickly, but I did, and when he saw how much it was, his jaw dropped- it was exactly enough to pay for the rest of the damages, and to cover his staff fees for the month (he had used the money he would have used for staff fees to pay for the accident). I had no idea about all that, but I was really blessed by being able to help someone out. I now fast forward about two weeks to December. It was a Wednesday, I don’t exactly remember the date- but the projector had finally arrived and I got to go give it to the people in charge of the rehab center. It was really amazing, because apparently they had been in need of one for a while but weren’t able to buy one. When I got home, I received an email from my pastor informing me that the missions board at my church had approved to send me 1000 dollars in support (I had sent them an email a while back to see if I could apply for more money, but was not expecting anything that huge). And that night at the community meeting, a guy on staff came up to me and handed me a hundred dollars. With the $1100 I received that day, I now owed only $200 for outreach. And I had exactly $200 left in my bank account! I figured it was providence, but when I was about to go write a cheque to YWAM to pay off the rest of my outreach, I felt that God wanted me to use the money for something else. Immediately, the thought of my sister Laura (who is currently in Uganda with IJM, see her excellent blog here) came to mind. Honestly, it was really hard to be so close to having outreach all paid and be told to give that money away, but by that point I knew that struggling was pointless so I went ahead and gave the money away. The next day, I was chatting with Laura via Gmail Chat- keep in mind she had no idea I had given her money yet, and she was telling me how she wanted to pay for a guy and his brother’s school fees but didn’t have the money. When I asked how much she needed, she said, “Oh, like $200.” That turned out kind of perfect, eh? I was very pleased to inform her that the money was already on the way. The next morning, I received an email from my mom informing me that my dear great aunt Olive had sent me $200. Coincidence? Absolutely not. So, within the space of about 4 days, I received the $1300 I needed to make it on outreach. Between outreach and now, I received several very generous donations towards my lecture phase debts, and now owe $520. It was a little hard to leave owing money, but I am now well-aware that God will provide that money- even if it means me working to pay it off, that job and the abilities I have to qualify for that job are all fruits of God’s provision. I think that before DTS I would have tended to think that if I paid for something with my own money, that it would be me providing the money and not God; but now God has shown me His providing hand in pretty much everything I have.

Whoa, my fingers hurt. I can’t believe I just typed all that. And it still feels like I have barely scratched the tip of the ice burg. I have so many more stories of God’s provision and awesome answers to prayer over the course of the last 5 months, but for the sake of not keeping you readers glued to the computer indefinitely, I will save them for later. If you live by me and would like to hang out and find out more about my experience with YWAM, facebook me or email me at jdgstewart@gmail.com. I am wary of sharing my cell phone number with the whole world, so I won’t put it on my blog. Since my camera was stolen, I got everyone else’s pictures from outreach and am currently going through the tedious task of deleting the vast majority of the self-portraits the girls took of themselves. But once I get through that I’ll have them up in no time.

Again, thank you all for reading and your contributions to my journey with YWAM.

God bless!

~Greg

Our time in Mendoza has been quite amazing, to say the least. Since the last time I updated, we’ve been pretty busy with ministry and all sorts of outreach stuff. Just last week, our team split up into two halves. One half went into the Andes mountains to work with an extreme sports camp the Mendoza YWAM base runs- they did some rafting, rapelling, hiking, and camping type stuff. The half of the team that I was with went back to the desert from Tuesday to Wednesday- where we helped run a few quasi-church meetings (sharing testimonies, childcare, etc). On Thursday, we went and spent the day at an orphanage, where we played with kids, did some slightly embarrassing dances to kiddie songs, did crafts, played soccer, and shared some testimonies and messages with the kids. It was a very touching experience- a lot of the children had pretty tragic stories of how they had ended up at the orphanage. One thing that really stuck out to me there was that all the staff on the orphanage were there as volunteers- and you could really tell that they cared about the kids and that the kids felt loved. It was one of those instances where you leave wishing you could adopt all the kids. All in all, it was a really touching experience- there’s actually a chance we might go back as a whole team tomorrow or the day after. On Friday, we served lunch at a soup kitchen for homeless people and had a time of worship and testimonies. Then in the evening we ran a youth group meeting with a local church- more worship, games, snacks, and all that kind of thing. We didn’t end up getting back to the base until about 1 in the morning, because of the very infrequent buses and the distance from the bus stop to the base. Saturday we spent in San Martin at the church we were at last weekend, where we hung out with the pastor and some of the youth and did some prayer walks. And yesterday (Sunday) we went to two church services- and I translated both the sermons! That was pretty difficult at times, but I managed to make it through. We also shared some testimonies of the work God has been doing among our team and through our team- and, once again, got back to the base very late thanks to public transportation. Today is a day of rest, and then we have ministry days tomorrow and Wednesday, and then we have Thursday and Friday to do some last-minute souvenir shopping and packing.

I’m very much looking forward to being home and seeing all of my friends again- but I know that saying goodbye to everybody from DTS is going to be very hard.

Please pray for our team as we finish up this last week of outreach- for strength and focus and a strong finish.

Be home soon!

I deeply apologize for going so long without updating the blog. Crazy things have been happening and internet use has been either sparse or not free. I cannot begin to tell everything that has happened so far in the space of the 14 minutes that are left on my computer time at this internet café in downtown Mendoza, but I shall do what I can.

Outreach has definitely been a struggle personally, but more than worth it. My glasses broke while I was cleaning them right before I hopped on the plane to leave for Chile, my watch fell out of my pocket sometime during the journey, and my camera was either lost or stolen during the border crossing from Argentina to Chile (via bus). But after a pretty hard start to outreach, things got a lot better. We spent a little under a month at the Santiago YWAM base, during which we did a lot of construction, ran a youth camp (I got to lead a small group, which was quite an interesting experience), and helped with the Cono Sur conference (an annual gathering of all the YWAM South America bases). I would love to go into greater deal about all those things, but in the interests of finishing this post within my alloted time I will have to do that later. For the most part, we spent that month serving on base and didn’t spend a lot of time outside in the city or anything like that.

The morning we were going to leave to come to Mendoza (last Monday), one of my fellow students lost his visa that he needed to leave Chile. I stayed back with him while everyone else went on, and we had to find him a new visa. We eneded up having to go all the way to the airport- some staff from the Santiago base were kind enough to drive us there, to go the international police office and try and get a new visa. We spent the whole trip there praying that it would be an easy process, and a free one because visas for most Americans or Canadians cost about 132 bucks. We got to the airport and went up to the counter, and I started to explain “Disculpe señor, a mi amigo se le perdió su visa y necesitamos conseguirle una nueva” (Excuse me sir, my friend lost his visa and we need to get him a new one) but before I even finished the sentence the man said “Oh, no problemo” and about 30 seconds later we walked out of the office. That was pretty amazing. We left the next morning and rode the bus through the Andes, which was a beautiful ride, and got to Mendoza at about 11 pm. There was a lot of traffic going through the Andes, and we were actually stuck for about 3 hours because there was a construction truck coming up the road that took up both lanes. Once we got to the bus terminal in Mendoza, there was nobody waiting for us. There is no internet on the Mendoza base, so the emails we sent to our leaders concerning our departure times were not recieved, and the phones weren’t working so they basically had no idea when we were getting there. After about half an hour of trying to call people and get a ride, we gave up and went to find a taxi. Unfortunately, not a single taxi driver had heard of JUCUM (“YWAM” in Spanish”), and after asking about 12 taxi drivers we started to lose hope. So we prayed for one that would know where the Mendoza base was, and then a taxi pulled up and asked us where we needed to go, and when I said “la base de Jucum” he replied (I’ll type this in English) “Oh sure, I know where that is! Hop in!”Another answer to prayer.

After a restful sleep in a real bed (we had been stayin in tents at Santiago for a week) and a refreshing swim in Mendoza’s pool, we headed out to the desert (this would be last Wednesday) and were there until just yesterday. I have never appreciated cold water more in my life! We spent a lot of time visiting local families and walking between the houses (called “outposts”). The nice thing was that during the hottest part of the day, everyone takes a 3 hour nap- so in the interests of being culturally sensitive and not getting fried by the sun, we also got to sleep all afternoon. I’m going to try to bring this siesta time back to the states- even stores close and the work day stops for people to go home and have a siesta!

Today is a free day, and for the next few days we’ll be working with a church- something with youth, I believe.

I’ll try to update again soon!

Thanks so much for all your support!

God bless,

Greg

I found out that after stopping in Buenos Aires, I’ll have another flight to Cordoba before flying into Mendoza. This makes for a total of four flights on the way down to meet up with our team, which is going to be the most consecutive flying I have ever done in my life.

I’m pretty much all packed up, minus a few things here and there. All I really need now is a pair of good sunglasses, which I’m aiming to pick up later this afternoon downtown. Tonight will be my last sleep in Ensenada for a while- since we are leaving so early in the morning on Monday, all the DTS students are going to stay up hanging out and having a last supper together.

All in all, I’m extremely excited. I have never been off the continent before, and it will be cool to have that first experience be with this kind of trip. I’m really going to miss the people who will be on the Mexico outreach, but I know God has some amazing things in store for them and I’m pumped to hear what kind of awesome stories they have when I get back.

I am also happy to announce that all the money I need for outreach has come in within the space of the last 3 days through various generous donations. God has given me back everything I have given away and then some. On Wednesday, I went from owing 1300 to owing 200, and just had the rest of that come in yesterday. While I still owe 1300 for lecture phase, I know God will provide that.

I would ask that you pray for me for a humble attitude and willingness to sacrifice things for the sake of the team’s unity; and for all of us- safety in travel and again a spirit of unity. Also, I’ll have to be doing a lot of translating, so just for confidence with that as well would be another prayer request.

I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have while on outreach, but our team is supposed to have a blog so there should be some at some point. I shall post again before I go, though.

God bless!

Greg

Our speaker this week was Dean Sherman, on the topic of spiritual warfare. It is rumored that Dean is the inspiration for the character Ned Flanders (The Simpsons)- according to the legend, he used to live next door to the writer for the Simpsons and the writer exaggerated Dean into Ned Flanders. Dean was not able to confirm the validity of this rumor, and I am not sure what to think- Dean didn’t really seem much like Ned. Dean is the author of two books- one about relationships and another about spiritual warfare- appropriately titled Relationships and Spiritual Warfare, respectively. He’s probably written more books. Anyways, I would have to say that Dean was undoubtedly my favorite speaker of all of lecture phase- both in terms of content and entertainment. Admittedly, when I saw a rather old man walking through the door last Monday morning, I was a little apprehensive- but his sarcastic humor and way of presenting his lectures quickly destroyed my first impressions.

To me, spiritual warfare had always been something that I thought of as something that consisted purely of major battles like demon possessions and that kind of stuff. But Dean said that spiritual warfare is an everyday battle including more than we would imagine- even our own everyday decisions play an important part in spiritual warfare. Dean also talked a lot about what spiritual warfare is not- which was equally important. Drawing from Ephesians 6:12- “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms-” Dean emphasized that humans are never the enemy- because our struggle is not against flesh and blood. However, we very easily get caught up in struggles against people or things like abortion and gay marriage- which are, of course, important issues- but they are  people issues. Dean used an analogy involving soccer fields. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but if we are fighting flesh and blood, we are playing the soccer game on the wrong field- the other team isn’t there. We can score as many goals as we want, but they aren’t goals against the team we want to beat and therefore mean nothing. Meanwhile, the real enemy or “opposing team” is playing a soccer game with no opposing team, because we are playing on the wrong field; and our true enemy can score as many goals as they please. If we want to win the battle, we have to fight the real enemy, right? If the United States got in a war with North Korea (purely hypothetically speaking, of course) and decided to fight against Mexico instead, they would do absolutely nothing to help defeat the real enemy and therefore they would be exposed and undefended to attacks. Applying this to us in the here and now, while some issues like gay marriage and abortion are definitely important; it’s important that we not only focus on those issues, which are the overflow of an even larger issue. If we found a way to ban gay marriage, who would that be a victory against?

Dean really had a lot of quality material, but in the interests of time I’ll save it for later.

Some fun stuff from this week- on Wednesday night we had a Christmas costume party (sort of a combination of Christmas and Halloween). I went as Paulie Bleeker (from the movie Juno) and my friend Kayla went as Juno- see the photo section. There were a lot of pretty cool costumes out there (see my Picasa Web album “christmas party”) and the food we had was incredible. We also had a gingerbread house building contest and a talent show after the dinner was done- Kayla and I performed that one song from the end of Juno, and Jacob Kemp (the son of the training director here in Ensenada, dressed as Mrs. White from Clue) did a couple original songs. Definitely an amazing night, and I think there is a video of one of our songs in the above linked album.

This past weekend was the annual YWAM San Diego/Baja staff convention, where all the staff from our 3 bases come together and have meetings and the like. They had a Christmas party on Saturday night too, which we were invited to- making for two insanely delicious dinners in the same week. I got to play a lot of guitar and mandolin for worship sets- which is not only one of my favorite ways of praising God, but got me out of having to work in the kitchen. Because us students were worked so hard all weekend with the convention, we got to sleep in until 10 this morning- a fact I found out at 6:30 this morning when I woke up for devotionals. I still got to sleep the extra 3.5 hours though, so it all worked out.

Anyways, that was last week. We have lectures this week through Wednesday, and then the rest of the time until we leave is to be spent cleaning up and getting ready for outreach. Sean Lambert shall be speaking- I forget his exact title, but he’s a fairly big deal around YWAM San Diego/Baja.

Speaking of insanely delicious dinners, it’s hamburger night. I need to go get in line so I can eat. God bless, and thanks so much for reading!

Greg

Jeff actually didn’t get in until Monday night, because he missed his flight, but he more than made up for it. His topic was “a place called home,” where “home” meant God’s loving embrace. He talked about things that prevent us from coming home, and how we can identify those things in our lives and get them out of the way. A highlight from the week would definitely have to be from Thursday, when we drove out into the relative wilderness to spend 5 hours in silence and solitude with God. I must admit, at first I was a little bit resentful of having to give up my whole afternoon, but as we drove out there, I realized that if I was at home with my own father, I would be really really excited to be spending an afternoon with him, and that five hours would seem like not enough time. I then thought of how Jeff had been stressing how much God just wants to spend time with us like a father wants to spend time with his kids- and that kind of made me feel bad about resenting the mandatory retreat into silence and solitude. By the time we got to the mountains, I was really excited and couldn’t wait to spend some time with God. Jeff had given us some Scriptures to read and some guidelines/suggestions for how to spend the time, but unfortunately I have been able to locate my English Bible, and after reading all of Psalm 119 in my Spanish Bible, I decided to take a break from the guidelines and just hang out with God. I climbed about halfway up a “mountain” (it’s more like a hill, but for around here it was a fairly big hill) and just sat there looking at the ocean and surrounding large hills talking to God. It was probably the best and closest time I’ve spent with God in a really long time, or perhaps ever. After a few hours I climbed down to the beach to a little bay and found a little cave in a cliff that overlooked the coastline and ocean- so I climbed up there and spent some more time in prayer. Thursday afternoon was probably the only time in my life where a given period of time has gone by slowly in a good way. I thought the 5 hours were done, and I checked my watch and only and hour had gone by!

And, as many or most of you know, yesterday was my birthday.  My first birthday away from home, in fact. It started with a fairly normal breakfast- a few people wished me happy birthday, and then I went out with a building team to help build a house for a needy family here in Ensenada for most of the day. Someone brought cake to have with lunch, which was rather delicious. When I got back to the base for dinner, the dining room was decorated in my honor and everybody sang Happy Birthday when I went in. After dinner, I was taken out for a movie and when we got back, we had more cake and watched the Office, and then a friend and I watched a war movie to shake off the romantic vibes from 500 Days of Summer, the movie we went to see after dinner. It was definitely a great birthday, and I want to thank everybody again for all you did to make it such a special day.

This upcoming week will be our last full week of lectures. Our speaker, Dean Sherman, will be talking about spiritual warfare. During our weekly prep meeting tonight, several staff members warned us that this week tends to be pretty spiritually intense. I would greatly appreciate your prayers for protection over me and the rest of my team this week, and for us to finish the last few weeks of lecture phase with strength- as many of us are burned out and ready to move on.

As always, thank you so much for reading!

This last week was quite a busy week. We had a perfectly normal schedule Monday through Wednesday, and then we had Thursday afternoon/evening/night off, then Friday and Saturday shall be explained later on.

As previously mentioned, this week was spent learning dramas and dances- which we will be using on outreach. I have never considered myself to be much of a dancer or drama-er, so this week was definitely full of new things. If I recall correctly, we learned 3 dances to kiddie songs and 2 dramas that are accompanied by music as well. I gotta say, it was really awesome to have a break from the usual sitting-on-one’s-but-for-3.5-hours-every-morning type of week and get to move around a lot.

That said, class time wasn’t completely spent in song and dance. Edgar, our instructor, shared a little bit about the arts and how he used his talents to worship his Creator. He talked about how some of his best times alone with God are when he just puts on some music and dances. He said that arts are all about finding new ways to talk to God, and that talking to God/communicating with Him does not have to be through prayer or reading the Bible. Sometimes you don’t even have to speak. Or move.

I spent all day Friday and Saturday building with Homes of Hope (a YWAM founded organization that builds homes for families), as we had 4 teams down here building and they needed help. This is the second time I have built a house (and I get to build another one this Saturday [my birthday!]) and it was a great experience. I lent my camera to one of the people in our group, but they took a lot of pictures, several of which I am in, which I shall post.  We did not have our local outreach on Thursday, as it was Thanksgiving- and because this base is predominantly American, we were given the evening off. I did, however, end up going to the women’s rehab center that we usually go to for local outreach anyways; one of the staff here leads a service there on Thursday evenings and asked me to lead worship. That was the first time I have ever lead worship by myself, but it went very well considering I was singing in Spanish and lost my guitar pick halfway through.

This morning, I finally got an accurate financial update. I owe approximately $1300 for lecture phase and $1400 for outreach (the cost of which has actually come down to $2900). So all in all that’s about $2700 that I’ll need to complete the DTS. I did have about $1000 left in my bank account that I had planned on using to pay off most of the rest of my tuition fees, but God has been speaking to me pretty clearly about that money recently, and He’s given me some specific ways I can bless people with that money. I have since used $700 of the $1000 in a couple of ways that I prayed about a lot, and am now praying about what to do with the rest. I would greatly appreciate your prayers about what to do with the remainder of my money, and for peace/trust in God to provide the rest of the money I need. It seems rather nonsensical that I need to give my money away before I can receive the money I need, but then again we do serve the kind of nonsensical God that gave up what He loved most as a sacrifice for His enemies. There is a certain strange peace about being penniless and relying on God and not yourself- when you really give up trusting in yourself to provide and give that role back to God. That’s kind of where I’m headed right now, but please pray for strength to submit myself to God’s will and for Him to show me if there is anything I need to do in terms of people to contact for support. It’s always awkward asking people for money, and I know that a lot of you have contributed to my DTS very generously already- but if you are interested in further supporting me financially, let me know or visit the “Support” page of this site.

Thanks so much for reading, and God bless!

~Greg

We spent most of the week in the Tijuana base. It was sort of cool to spend some time in a different location (and the rooms in TJ are really nice), but the base is very spread out and very exposed to the elements- which means a lot of walking and a lot of cold. Not a good combination. On Thursday morning, the internet went out around lunchtime and we ended up coming back to Ensenada a day early so we could have a Genesis connect (webcam thing) with Loren Cunningham. However, the internet was out here too. Eventually we had to settle on Skype, but even that was spotty. Nevertheless, despite bad weather, excessive exercise, and technical difficulties, the week was a good one.

Tom Bloomer, our speaker this past week, happens to look exactly like the guy on the cover of the Monopoly box. White hair, white beard, and a handlebar mustache. Give him a top hat and he’d be set.

Besides reminding me of a board game I haven’t played in way too long, Tom also had a lot of really good things to say. He started every lecture off with a prince/princess story, and we had to guess which story it was. Most were from the Bible, but he did use Cinderella as one of the stories.

The thing that stood out to me most from the week was a one-liner (technically a two-liner, but I don’t think that term exists) that goes like this: “When we pray to God, we are trusting in Him. When He doesn’t answer, He is trusting in us.”

Isn’t that cool? Tom encouraged us to really rethink our prayer lives. He encouraged us to search for unanswered prayers in our lives and look at those as areas of our lives that God is trusting us in. Sometimes, God gives us opportunities to answer our own prayers, even if it’s not in the way we would have originally expected. For instance, if we are praying to God for wisdom, chances are that we will not all of the sudden wake up incredibly wise- although God is absolutely capable of doing that. Rather, we will encounter situations in which we have to practice wisdom- and through those situations, we will grow in wisdom. Although it may at first seem that God is ignoring our prayer request, He is really trusting in us.

Tom also got me interested in an SBS (School of Biblical Sutdies). It’s a 9 month course offered by the University of the Nations in several bases around the world  and it covers the entire Bible, cover-t0-cover. Apparently it’s extremely difficult and rigorous, but I think it would be completely worth it. You can take it in 3 segments of 3 months or take it all at once. I plan on getting some more info about it, but I shall keep you all posted on where that goes.

And, a shout out to Cortlyn who destroyed me in Call of Duty yesterday- specifically, that headshot with the Glock from all kinds of far away on Rust that I said was blog-worthy- as promised, respect.

This upcoming week is pretty much all outreach prep. Our speaker is going to be teaching us dramas and dances- yes, dances- that we can use for outreach.

That is what is up in my life right now. I haven’t been taking as many pictures as I should, so I promise to fix that asap.

God bless!

~Greg

That’s right, another week has flown by. About a month and a half from now, I’ll be in Santiago celebrating Christmas (Lord willing). This will be both my first birthday and Christmas away from home, which is a very strange thought. But I digest.

Our speaker this week was Brenda Lewis, our first and only female speaker. She had a lot of energy, which was a nice change from last week. She integrated personal stories with Biblical teachings, which was both entertaining and effective.

The thing that stood out to me most from what she taught was that God is after obedience, not significance. Obedience makes us smaller in order that Christ may be given the glory. Trying to do things on our own puts us in the way of God being glorified; trying to do things on our own strength blocks Christ from working through us and being glorified. All obedience consists of is saying “yes” to what God calls us to do. If God calls you to Africa and you say “yes,” then God will provide everything you need to follow His call. Brenda used the example of Paul. Early in his writings, he refers to himself as “called to be an apostle” (Rom 1:1). Later, he is “least of the apostles” (1 Cor5:9) and ever later, he calls himself the “worst of all sinners” (1 Tim 1:15).  This information was put in a diagram that I cannot, unfortunately, reproduce here- but I shall try to give you an image of what it looked like: Imagine a solar system with three orbiting planets decreasing in size as you move towards the sun. That’s what the diagram looked like- with Jesus as the sun (the largest, by far, of the four circles). The point is, the less and less we make ourselves, the closer we move to Jesus and the bigger he gets. I thought it was a good illustration for an even better point.

Next week, our speaker will be Tom Bloomer- the Provost of the University of the Nations. We will be spending the week in the Tijuana base, which should be pretty fun. Speaking of which, I need to pack.

God bless!

~Greg

Now, if I were that translator, I would be pretty nervous.

Darlene was talking about David and how he would herd sheep. The Spanish word for sheep or lamb is “oveja.” However, the translator kept using the word “abeja,” which means “bee.” So every time Darlene would talk about caring for sheep or protecting them or whatever, it got translated as bees.

This got me thinking. What if the Bible translators had it all wrong, and every time the word “lamb” appears in the Bible, it’s really supposed to say “bee?” This would have a profound impact on our Christian faith.

Examples:

Jesus is the shepherd, and we are the bees of his pasture. The kingdom of heaven must have a lot of honey.

Jesus is the bee of God. Sounds more like an odd kind of pet than anything else.

They overcame him by the blood of the bee and the word of their testimony. Do bees even have blood? Hard to tell when you squash them. Next time I have an extra bee lying around, I still probably won’t bother trying to figure this out.

Imagine trying to sacrifice a bee as an atonement for your sins. Catching one is enough trouble, trying to use one in a ceremony is plenty more trouble.

The shepherds watching over their flocks by night when Jesus was born were actually bee farmers. They could have really endangered the baby Jesus if they had bees following them around when they visited Him in the stable.

If you were supposed to sacrifice the best of your bees- a spotless one, 1) how would you judge that? and 2) can you even tell if bees have spots? All the directions for properly sacrificing lambs in Leviticus now apply to bees. Weird.

Anyways, I had some fun thinking about changing every use of the word “lamb” in the Bible to “bee.” But other than this mistake, the translator did a great job. Kudos.