More Outreach

So Alyssa's wedding was absolutely gorgeous,  our team cleaned up and set up and served food at the wedding and just had some amazing team bonding time all weekend.  On Tuesday morning we left early in the morning back to Mexico.  We took a boat to Chetumal and met back up with the Denver team.  We stayed in Chetumal with them until Friday, doing more park ministry at night, playing with kids, making them balloon animals, soccer, skits, music.  We even got to play volleyball with some kids, which made my day.  Many families blessed us with making food for our group of about twenty people which was so yummy.  On Friday we packed up, prayed for the church family that was letting us stay at their church, then we headed out to Mahahual, a small village of about 800 people.  We arrived at a small church that was on the middle of a highway, and the church was the only thing in sight.  I literally felt like we were in the middle of no where, and well we kind of were.  But how we all loved this town and church, they were so amazing, just serving us how ever they could.  We were so blessed.  Every night we did church services, with skits, testimonies, some worship music.  We prayed for many people, for a baby with a deformed hand, and by the time, we finished praying the babies mom was bawling.  We also went around and handed out beans and rice to families, and got to pray for them.  We also went to a man's restaurant from church for lunch, and he blessed us with some amazing food.  He then told us his testimony, and it was amazing, he had only been a Christian for seven months, and his story was amazing.  We prayed for him and he started crying, and he was such an awesome guy.  We have been doing some unbelievable ministry, we have felt God everywhere in this little cruise town, and Thursday we head to another little town outside of Playa Del Carmen.  We appreciate all the prayers so much!
Love Ray

Outreach, and more.

So, it’s been a really long time since I have written a blog, so I am really sorry all the masses of people who have been reading my blog, aka, probably only my mom, so sorry mom. But it’s been crazy busy here these days.

Last two weeks of lecture phase were amazing, a riot that is for sure. Chris Toney, our director spoke for our last week of lectures. We asked a ton of questions at the beginning of the week and as he went through his lectures on world view and other religions he went over the questions so, an interesting week it was.

That Saturday just happened to be my birthday, which was also our grad night where we had a three course desert night and we watched a slideshow of our DTS. The staff also made us waffles for breakfast which was grand!

The last week was outreach preparation week, where we pretty much just did outreach preparation, practicing skits, learning spanish for me, because I knew hardly any, praying for outreach and people we were going to meet. Then Sunday morning we got up bright and early 4:30 to get everything on the dock, get our casitas checked one last time, and off we went. The Indonesia team and our Mexico team travelled together across the Mexico border, drove in big vans to Playa Del Carmen, where we were dropped off and they headed to the airport in Cancun for 5 days of traveling. We were picked up by a contact named Darius, and he drove us to our translator’s house where we stayed for about seven or eight days in a very tight space. One small room, about half the size of my bedroom, and all five of us slept on the floor. It was probably about 100 degrees in there, so needless to say it wasn’t all that comfortable, but we made it through.

That week, we worked with churches, one we did yard work and painted for about three or four days. Another church we shared testimonies did worship, while others we just attended or shared a sermon. It was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting, met some amazing people who I will miss dearly. Our translators mom greatly blessed us with some amazing authentic Mexican food!

We then took a bus to Bacalar, a little town 4 hours south of Playa Del Carmen. In Bacalar we stayed on the shore of a lagoon, sleeping under a palapa on the ground, I got a lot of bug bites all over my face, legs and arms, but it was nice to be out of a hot room. We met up with the Denver team there, they were some awesome people. We did ministry in the park in Bacalar many times during the time we were there, and Denver did a program of skits, dramas, puppets, and testimonies, it was pretty sick. They also did some sweet skate ministry. Our leader Chris, who played basketball on a pro level, played all through college, came upon a basketball team practicing, and he pretty much took over the practice, showed them new plays and played with all the kids which was pretty sick. We prayed for a lot of people, talked with a lot of people, and just had an awesome time.

Our team then left on Friday to Belize to go back for a wedding. My small group leader gets married today actually so we are here setting up for a wedding! Then back to Mexico on Monday to meet back up with the Denver team. That is all for now folks!

Thanks for reading.
Rayyy

Coming in on the End

Hello all!  Well last week, we had a speaker named Brenda Lewis.  She is technically living in Boulder, Colorado, but she mostly is always living out of a suitcase traveling from place to place.  She has a huge heart for India, and is opening an orphanage there, and also adopting a child from there, she’s a phenomenal woman, as spunky as they come. 

    The whole week she talked about our destinies, and our dreams.  How are lives shouldn’t be destined by our careers, but instead by our callings, because callings are motivated by God, while careers are a lot of the time just motivated by money.  We did a session where we all wrote down our dreams and passions on pages, and then we went through everybody’s papers, discussed them, encouraged people, gave them ideas.  It was really eye opening and gave everybody an idea of what they actually love, instead of what they had planned for every other reason.

    Brenda also played a sermon for us by a man named Paris Reidhead.  Conviction stings, really bad sometimes, because this man had been serving in Africa, and he came back to the United States and was disgusted with what the church had turned into, because everybody was serving God to serve themselves.  Everybody was serving God, so that they could get what they wanted from Him.  Let me just say, conviction once again.  Just one other way God is transforming me these days.

    This last week, we had a speaker named John Gotz.  Well, haha, just typing his name makes me laugh because what a goof this guy was, and is.  He actually runs a kind of discipleship school down in Puenta Gourda, its a 2 year program and they take in addicts and people wanting to clean their lives up. He and his wife and three kids live there at their base.  It’s based on mind body and spirit, so their whole team that’s here does 7 am workouts Mon-Friday, which is actually really neat.  They own a cafe in the town they are at, so their staff, and when their students are ready, they will start training them in the cafe to in a sense introduce them back into the real world. 

    John talked all about spiritual warfare, being a warrior,  Satan’s tactics, how he will attack you and how to defend yourself.  Everything was very tangible, and extremely eye opening.  John also talked about Lot and Abraham, I never really truly realized how terribly corrupt Lot was, it was actually disgusting and how Soddom and Gomorah just changed him and his family as they conformed to the world.

    On an exciting note....Taleah is coming!!!!! On Wednesdayy! Lala la la la la!!!  So I am pretty much extremely excited for that, I think I am still in shock that she is coming.  But either way I am extremely extremely excited!

    And that’s about all for these past two weeks.  Thanks for reading.

Love you guys.
Ray
PS sorry bout all the spelling mistakes

Oh YWAM

Well folks, these last two weeks have been crazy, just like every other week here!! But you all know how it is... Last week our speaker, John, came from the Denver YWAM base, and he’s in the middle of leading a BDTS (Boarders Discipleship Training School). He came for the week to talk about relationships, a very powerful message, and I learnt a lot, just like every other week.

John’s school back in Denver is quite a big school, so they have about five or six outreach teams, and one of them is going to, Cancun, Mexico!!! Crazy right! Soooo we are hooking up with their team for a little bit to do some ministry with them! Our team is only three students, so it’s super flexible anyways, plus our two leaders, and their team is three girls three boys, and their two leaders, so I am really looking forward to that adventure!

This past week has been ministry week, so we have had no speaker, and instead have been going into town and serving the community. Monday we went into San Mateo, which is the poorest part of San Pedro, and it was an interesting picture, it was pretty poor. We split into teams, walked in different directions, and just prayed for direction. We walked through and stumbled upon this house that was playing music, we yelled inside saying hello, a lady and a man came out and greeted us. We started talking and they invited us in. We walk in to hear a really old worship song, that I can not remember the name of, and I just remember thinking “what on earth is going on here.” We all sit down and start talking, and find out we have stumbled on a pastor and his wife, and they are in the middle of building a church in their backyard. We sat and prayed for them and their ministry, their family and they were such people of God in the middle of chaos and evil. I was thinking that we were going to be going into town to bless people by maybe cleaning or talking with them, but I was completely blessed by them. It was so encouraging to see them, and this weekend we are hopefully going to go out to a service!

Tuesday we went into town, and there is a couple from Missouri there, who took over a bakery, and everything bad that could happen, has literally happened, God had sent them here, and they were inches away from just packing up and leaving, when our leaders stumbled upon them a week or two ago and found out everything that was going on. They are having to move locations because their landlord has been ridiculous, and so all Tuesday we stripped the new location of all the disgustingness, and Wednesday we finished up painting it so they can move in on Saturday! They are such a nice couple and they make good food! They have two kids, so if you think of praying for them, do!! They can use all the prayers they can get!

Wednesday, we went into town and were sent to a house, told they weren’t home and to just go clean. I started with the stove, which I thought was black, I soon found out, to my despair, it was actually white. Needless to say after an hour and a half of scrubbing they had one clean white stove. We also swept, did dishes, brave Katlyn tackled the bathroom, and Dallas did a little landscaping outside. Overall it looked a lot better after we left.
Thursday, we went back into town, and my team was cleaning a small apartment, it only had a bed in it, and a small sink. We killed a lot of cochroaches needless to say. We then met the woman who was renting the apartment, her names Shemicha, she was 21 and has a 3 year old son Aiden. Shemicha is awesome, she and her son came out to community night and had a blast here at the base.

Friday we did a scavenger hunt all through town which was fun, going different places taking pictures, praying for people, handing out bibles and such, and then ministry in the park on Friday night where we made balloon animals, face painted, played soccer, and just talked with the locals.

What a journey it has been these past few weeks! It’s been crazy, but here’s also a crazy story I had fishing!

Well, what an adventure I had on Sunday February 12. I was asked if I wanted to do some deep sea fishing with a few of other people. Why not right! It’s not very often I get asked to do deep sea fishing. So we head out Sunday morning, got some bait snorkeling, used it to catch some little guys that we mostly caught and released, Ally threw one playfully at the birds, and one actually swooped down and caught it and ate it! So that was pretty neat, but then we went outside the reef to do some deep sea fishing. Got some bigger rods, some gas and headed out. I tell you, there are some big waves out there, it’s like being on a roller coaster, especially on a day like today, it was windy! So we could only have two rods in the water at a time so I was first with Ally, while Chris, Dallas, Jared, and Maurice hung out in the bow. So we are trolling along through these giant waves, and I got a fish! Reeled it in, it was a decent sized snapper so we kept it, in the midst of the excitement of my fish, our captain and his buddy got us stuck in some coral, the sound of the hull scraping on it, is the most unpleasant. So Ellis, our Captain, jumped in the water and got us free and off we went again. I rotated off with Chris, and he caught a needle fish, not good to eat so we threw that guy back, then Jared was up, and Ally rotated off with Dallas, and we keep trolling, getting drizzled with some rain, and splashed by some big waves. All of a sudden the boat stops...not good in a midst of all these humongous waves, our captain and his buddy start yelling in creaol(the local language), as we are toppling over huge waves, and the one guy jumps up and grabs the other tank of gas and brings it to the back, when I look over my shoulder as a huge swell comes terrorizing its way towards us, and we are now parallel to it. I felt like I was flying, I look down and I’m looking down at the water and my friends on the other side of the boat, I legitimately thought we were about to capsize, I saw a blue shirted person fly overboard, my first thought was how i was going to catapult myself through the bars of the buimony and up to the surface to pull my sweatshirt off and start swimming over the reef and a mile to shore, when I feel Chris, one of our leaders, grab me and a tight hold to the boat, as water rushes over the sides, and by God’s never ending, everlasting grace, the boat did not capsize, it somehow landed right side up, we made it over the huge swell with out capsizing. We lost our captain in the water and got him back in the boat as more and more waves pounded us, soaking wet we are trying to hook up the gas to our outboard, and the wind and waves push us closer and closer to the reef that separates us from the shore. There are large cuts in the reef at certain parts where you can get your boat through, but at this point we are getting reeled into the middle of the sharp reef, that can rip anyone or any boat to shreds. More and more waves nail us as the boat just does not start, there was something wrong with it. As our captain and his buddy try to fix it, we all just stand around as the boat starts smashing into coral heads, the absolute worst sound to hear. The scraping was unbelievably excruciating to hear, especially when we can do nothing to stop it. We get blown all the way over the reef, but we are still in coral head territory, it is just a maze of coral heads, when we finally get the engine started all the boys are jumping out onto the coral heads and pushing us off and maneuvering us to a place we can put the prop down and actually start moving. Which we do, and then we zip home, back to base, where once our adrenaline has worn off we realize how bad that could have been and if we had capsized, what could have happened, and how we couldn’t believe we didn’t. Our security guard at base said we are so lucky that we made it out of that with our lives, if our boat would have capsized our faces would have been the ones being nailed into the coral. At the moment when I saw the huge wave just blowing over the side of the boat and just looking down at the water from the peak of the swell, I thought we were capsizing for sure, but for some reason through all of it i was worried or freaking out, I knew God was right there the entire time and He had my life in His hand, and I trusted Him fully to know that whatever would happen it would be His will.

So a lot of learning has been going on as you can probably see! Thank you all for the support and prayers, I am forever in your debt! PS sorry this entry was a little long, drawn out, and late...whoops.
Love you all,
Ray

Part 2!

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of events!  I found out where I am going on outreach, Mexico!!! At first I was freaking out, my team is five people, and all my other friends are going to outreach in Indonesia, but I have been convicted largely.  If I go into this with the attitude I went in with when I went to the Ukraine with, no one is going to benefit.  If I sat and let my pride get in the way of God working, well, let’s just say what a shame and how selfish I would be and was when I went to the Ukraine.  I must embrace my captivity not endure it, (not that I am captive, but you understand what I am saying).  So needless to say, Mexico here we come!  I’m so excited for some fresh fruit and Mexican food!

            Not to say Belizian food is not good, we do eat well here, that’s for sure and food for the most part is quite cheap, 10 bananas for 1 US dollar is a pretty sick deal, or a papaya for 1.25US.  But anything like nuts, cookies, peanut butter, all very expensive, we are living on an island so it makes sense it all has to be imported, but let’s just say I do miss the comforts of home, like a nice blizzard on a blistering hot day, which just goes to show how spoiled I am at home.

            This last week we had a speaker named Jeff Pratt from New Haven, Con, and wow, let’s just say one of the most powerful speakers I have ever heard in my entire life.  He spoke on the Father Heart of God, and wow did I learn a lot, and did I cry a lot, and I am not a crier.  I have realized that a lot of the things I am being taught, I have already been taught, I already new them because they were in my head, my mind, but had I ever embraced them and had the ever captured my heart and soul?  I realized and still am realizing that God loves me the same today and tomorrow and yesterday, nothing I can do can earn more love or make Him love me less, and he loves me so much.  As far as the east is from the west is how much he loves me, and it has been the weirdest and most awesome revelation.  I have been living in such blindness and ignorance for so long, and I had to sort through so many issues.  We labeled all of our issues as bricks and prayed them out and claimed Truth in our lives, and let me tell you, that wall was sky high, and I took the biggest wrecking ball to it, because now I have my identity in God.  This doesn’t mean I won’t still struggle with these things, but it’s the first step into dealing with them.  And living and claiming Truth and taking the Word to it, is my weapon and I now know why they made us memorize all those memory verses in Sunday school!

            This week our speaker has been Lynn Toney, she is the directors wife here at YWAM DP, and she’s been teaching about forgiveness.  Lynn is hilarious, she just does and says the funniest things, she’s like a kid in a 45 year old body it’s great.  So far I have about 15 pages of notes from her sessions this week, and I have realized how important taking notes has been.  I go back to them all the time searching for truth and proclaiming it in my life.  This weeks theme is forgiveness, and I have learnt a ton.  The first step to forgiveness is just choosing to forgive, I don’t have to feel like forgiving the person, I first choose to forgive and the feeling will come later, but freedom will come right away.  This journey has been the biggest struggle, but the also the best and most fulfilling experience as well! There will be more to come with my journey in two weeks time!  Thanks for reading!

First Blog of YWAM DP

YWAM DP
    So far it has been a crazy ride.  Missing my connecting flight in Salt Lake, to having my luggage left there at the airport and not having clothes for a couple days.  All in all though I am here and it is good.  Completely surreal though.  I still can’t believe I am here, it literally feels like I am living in a dream land. 

    We have been reading all about John, read the book 5 times so far...needless to say I never want to read John again, but I also know the book pretty well now.  Jon Peterson from Washington has been speaking all week and he left early this morning. 

    I really miss my family and everyone at home, but because I feel like I am in a dream, it feels like very soon I will just wake up and they will be right there, so for now I am not missing home too too much.

    I have my written dive test tomorrow, we have dove four times now in the ocean, I have seen tons of fish and saw one sting ray!  Most of our dives have just been testing our skills so we haven’t really been able to explore much yet, but we did go through a really tight tunnel sort of thing and i got cut on the corral, haha well everyone did.  And one of our leaders has one of those sick 1080 HP Pro cameras so he put that on his head and now we have videos of us diving.

    Also have been learning how to sail the hobby cats, which is also so fun, being out on the water reminds me of being on the boat in summer and I love it.  We also can spearfish and kayak, it’s a ton of fun.  The hard part is finding the time to do it. We have so many assignments, memory verses, leadership classes, lectures, etc.  finding the time is almost impossible, but we get our fair share of fun that’s for sure.  No complaining here.

    My whole team is also amazing, there’s a guy from Chilliwack, he’s awesome, a girl from Calgary, Montana, Northern California, Oregon, two German girls, a newly married couple from Switzerland, two guys from Pennsylvania, and one guy from Virginia.  Everyone is honestly awesome, and as we live in community we are getting closer and closer.

    For now that is about it! I’ll update you in a few weeks to let you know what is going on!

Love Ray