Teenagers hungry for the Word of God

Yesterday afternoon a group of us joined the teenagers' Bible study at the house of the local YWAM leader. We started off with some enthusiastic worship and then presented a drama about how the things that we or others may view as rubbish - our height, hair colour etc- God fearfully and wonderfully made. We need to ask God for His revelation of how well He made us.

Next we looked up a number of scriptures which told of our value to God. One of the team demonstrated that despite scrunching, chewing and trampling a 20 peso note, it retained the same value. The same with us - no matter what we do and what happens to us in life, we remain valuable to God.


We then split into groups to pray. I got a group of older teenage boys to pray Psalm 23 over each other. It was so encouraging to see as many as forty young people with their Bibles, worshipping with great fervour and responding so keenly to questions.



I must admit that I was not really looking forward to going to the Bible study. I have found it difficult to relate to teenagers in the past but I now see I was meant to go. I was able to contribute to the drama and make contact with a young man who was a very keen Christian and to encourage him in His faith.

This morning I preached for the second time. It was being Sons and Daughters of the Father, focussing on Jesus' constant reference to the Father in the gospel of John. It was a very small church, meeting only for the second time and they just had a small garage to worship in. Afterward there was a powerful time of ministry when the pastor was slain in the spirit.

A quick update !

Well, apologies if you have visited here expecting to see an update - we are staying some way away from an internet cafe and so can only get to it from time to time. This past weekend many of us travelled to city called Iligan, about two hours away by coach. There we were greeted by the Mayor, the councillors, city hall employees and a jazz band. Maged, the leader of the outreach, had negotiated with the leaders of the churches and the municipal authorities for us to come for three days to support the churches in reaching out to their communities.

We went out sharing the Good News in the poor areas, preaching on the Sunday and doing a prayer walk downtown. I got to do my first preach in a church which was up in the hills, just outside the city! It went well - it was on Psalm 139 - how we are fearfully and wonderfully made, how God is pleased with us and we obey because we love Him, not out of duty. Yesterday they took us to a hydrolectric power plant and to waterfall where most of us went for a swim.

Today we were back here in Cagayan de Oro - some of us went to Smokey Mountain which is a rubbish tip where people actually live. I stayed back to do some intercessory prayer - our leader felt God was asking us to pray for unity in the team. This meant some time repenting of attitudes and selfishness, praying against the spiritual strongholds, such as division and miscommunication, on the island of Mindanao, and then praying positively for the team to be blessed. In all, two and a half hours !

This evening there were more reports of healings and people giving their lives to the Lord.

We are finally off !

Today was our last full day here at the Kings Lodge for the lecture phase of the school. On Wednesday we clean and pack up and leave mid-afternoon for Heathrow and onto the Philippines. For those who would like to know the schedule for the next few days take a look at our class blog http://tklcdts2007.blogspot.com/. We plan to update this regularly so do check it out.

It is a very exciting time with much praying as we enter a different phase, that of active ministry where unity will be crucial. Several people here had words about unity this morning at our weekly intercession where we often pray for different countries and Youth With A Mission missionaries.

One thing that really touched my heart was when I and a friend, Lucena, who is from the Philippines and is teaching on the Health Care course, went to the Filipino International Christian Fellowship in Birmingham. I went in order to tell them about the work we are going to do in their home country and to establish a link between them and Youth With A Mission. They surprised me so much when they took a second offering for us and raised £73 which a considerable amount when you see how few adults there were (see photo above).

Lord bless them abundantly !

God really DOES provide

We have 18 days before we leave for the Philippines - most of us will fly out on 27th June, the rest on the 28th June. We have been prayer and fasting as a group for three weeks now and the last two days we have been praying continuously through the day and night. And God has answered our prayers:

• we received a single gift of £2,000 yesterday for airfares, medicines etc
• the hotel which was overbooked now can accommodate us for the first three weeks and it works out cheaper and more producitve than other accommodation options
• we all got our visas in one day
• the school of the leader's son will allow him to be taken out of school for the trip to the Philippines

Everyone is starting to get excited about the trip. Please do add your comments by clicking on the comments link below. Tell me what you would like to know about things for me and the trip.

No trailer - this IS the main feature

As many people are apt to say, there is no dress rehearsal for life - this is it. So using a film anology instead, there is no trailer for life, this is the main feature. Hence me and my crossed arms ! I am getting excited as we start to look towards going to the Philippines and get to do the real stuff that Jesus did and is commanding us to do : to heal the sick, to comfort those who mourn, to baptise and make disciples and make God known.

The latest update

Well, sorry it has been so long since the last update. After our long weekend, we started the week on Tuesday with Connie Taylor, a very enthusiastic speaker on Evangelism. Some good stuff even it was delivered at high speed ! I am reading Making Jesus Lord: Laying down your rights by Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission. We are used to having own things and the individual rights to many things but while they are all from God, we need to learn to lay them down to focus on Him and trust Him and then He rewards us. Tonight we are having ministry time - this may be time for God to deal with my British reserve. This weekend I am on work duty which means washing up and doing the toilets - all part of servanthood. It also marks the half way point of our lecture phase - six weeks to go before we are off to the Philippine for two months. Goodbye for now.

Into the fourth week

This week sees Jose and Rosanna Liste originally from Argentina speaking on blessings, curses and deliverance. Tonight we played some games with the children which included a celidh and pass-the-parcel to help everyone to focus on praying for other nations.

A little more...

Today we had some great teaching on covenents - the threshold covenent in Jewish culture, the Jewish wedding and marriage covenent and the new covenent in Jesus. The covenent of hospitality was very important in the Old Testament. There are so many parallels between the Jewish betrothal and marriage ceromonies and culture and the new covenent that God instigated with Jesus. I will add more when I have 'processed' it all ie thought through it. Just had a curry with the other men in the class - good time of bonding. And we are off to the pub to some community outreach (honest !).

Latest bits

Hi ! Friday saw our last day with Paul Hawkins. We prayed for him and he sensed that I had an annointing on me. He said it may possibly involve education. I had a good chat with him afterwards. On Saturday I visited my mum's in Cambridge where Thomas, my brother, and his family were. I played Thomas at tennis and won ! I cooked a meal in the evening and spent some time with my mother and Thomas. On Sunday morning I drove back to the King's Lodge and took some folk to the Living Rock, where I have been the last three Sundays now. On Sunday afternoon I did some catching up with reading and emails and writing my journal. Today we had a new speaker on Sin, Salvation and the Cross. Tonight there was the base celebration night with about one hundred people worshipping including a number of visitors. Barry and Kay Austin, originally from New Zealand, shared something from their trip to Asia, running leadership courses.

Quick update

A ver quick update. We have been having an excellent teacher from the States, Paul Hawkins, who has been in YWAM for 37 years. He has been teaching us on the Nature and Character of God and has instilled in us, in a very direct and challenging way, that we must never doubt God's character. What we believe about God shapes what we believe about ourselves and the world. There is a lot in his teaching to digest. He has told us of many instances where when he has been obedient to God, God has always provided and has always been faithful. When we go through tests (for example he was about to run a course like the one I am on now and a day before, he only had two students; he trusted God and ended up with 25), our work bears lasting fruit (ever since then he was able to fill courses several times over).

Above is a fellow student. Loren from the US, and I, ready to go for a 6am run.

And to the left is my brother, my niece Kirsten and a rather large cat fed by one of my mother's neighbours.

The games room
The front of the King's Lodge
Good night !!

The snack bar for break times
Cosy, eh ?

What I have done and learnt this week ?

At the end of my first week here at the YWAM King's Lodge, I am looking back to see what I have learnt this week. Our first talk was on 'Finishing the race well' partly based on Hebrews 12. I learnt that the race is like the Tour de France: some days it will be on the flat, others it will be on steep slopes and others still will be downhill. God will help me all along the way to finish well. It is a privilege to serve Him; Isaiah 61 is key for me when we go the Philippines.

Our second talk was by the school leader, Maged Kalta, from Egypt, who is also the leader of the King's Lodge. He stressed on us the importance of learning to hear God and that His ability to speak to us is far greater than our ability to hear Him. And hearing Him is more than listening for instructions; we need to converse and listen for the details.

The third speaker was a Brit, Paul Hopkins, a YWAM England leader, who spoke about being blessed to bless the nations. God spoke to Abraham and promised him the land of Canan. Abraham obeyed God and he and his people were indeed blessed. We too are part of the Abrahamic covenant. God speaks about His promises, we need to have faith in Him and obey and there will be a blessing, though it may not be in our lifetime.

And with work duties in the kitchen, doing a food hygiene certificate, prayer triplet, small group and an outing today with our class to a nearby Abbey, things have been busy but very good. It seems a lot longer than a week. And it is great have all these different nationalities. Do write in with some comments and say how you are getting on as well.

The other evening we got to see some video clips from last year's trip to the Philippines and to pray for the leaders and various places in the city (Cagayan de Oro). Amongst other things, we will be visiting a refuge for young women and a correction centre for boys. Our role will be to form relationships and share the gospel. The photo above was taken last year at a settlement on a rubbish dump.

Well, here I am in blogosphere. Just to say that all is going well here at the King's Lodge. I am busy most of the day - in the morning there are lectures (for example today we had ' Hearing from God') and then in the afternoon we have work duties ( I am in the kitchen). There is also time to write our journals on what we think God is saying to us and what we are learning. And tonight we saw 'Faith like potatoes', a film about a South African farmer who became a Christian and gathered many farmers together to pray against the violence between the whites and the Zulus and for rain during a drought. He also told them to grow potatoes as God had told him to do so, despite it being as dry as a bone.