What I'm doing and how God's moving

Hi guys. I've realized that there are probably a lot of people out there wondering what on earth I'm doing and where on earth I'm doing it. So here's a quick post of what's been happening, how I've been seeing God move, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

I'm still in the beautiful land of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Chronicles of Narnia (that is New Zealand.) During my Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) I started asking God "what's next?". After a long time of getting prayer from important people back home and asking for confirmation, it seemed like God was clearly saying that I was to stay and work at the base I did my school at. As of right now I'm pretty much the "fill in the gaps guy". I've worked in the registrar office, compiling flight, immunization, insurance, emergency contact information and a ton of other stuff so that students can go on outreach and be safe. I have been a lunch cook. I am currently working as a groundskeeper/maintenance man working on the upkeep of the YWAM base here in Tauranga. The base is currently switching gears from pioneering mode to settlement mode, and I feel that God has brought me here to help ease the transition by helping to do whatever is needed to keep the background work of the ministry going so that the more evident work of training and discipling students can continue uninterrupted.

Basically right now I'm running around getting information to help leaders with outreach and making sure we have all the necessary information if there were to be some sort of accident, and also: mowing, washing cars, cleaning, weeding, trimming, lifting, moving, building and the list goes on. But that's just what's in the job details. Part of what I do is also leading a small team to help me with the work that needs to be done around the base. We work together for about 2 hours every day, and we talk while we work, which often leads to some of the fun parts of my job.

Recently while talking with one of the students that works with me, I found out that he had a shoulder injury that has been causing him lots of pain and he didn't have full mobility in it. He had injured it playing football, and had surgery, but the surgery didn't really help the pain. He's had the injury for about two years and hasn't been able to play the sports that he loves. I got to share a bit of my testimony of how God has brought me from being in a place where I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs to being what I am now. (As a maintenance guy, I've had to chop up some trees, and move the discs to a shed to dry for fire wood. Some of the wood I'm moving is easily 100 pounds. YAY JESUS. :D ) He let me pray with him and after a few minutes of prayer, he was able to move his shoulder in ways that he was previously incapable of moving it. About 80% of his pain is gone, and nearly all of his mobility is back. I don't really get why it's not 100% healed, but I'm going to celebrate the 80% that was made better! After seeing this, another student asked us to pray for his back because he could barely bend over without being in terrible pain. The student who's shoulder was just healed and I prayed for his back and  when we asked him to test it out he got a smirk on his face. He had full flexibility and no pain. This is my Jesus. This is why I LOVE MY JOB.

On the school that came in July, a friend of mine sprained her back to the point where she had trouble walking, and could barely bend over. She was in and out of the hospital for medication for a week, but she was able to make it to friday morning intercession. The leader of the July school was there and asked to pray for healing for her, and she said that would be fine, but wasn't expecting much because we had already prayed for her for nearly 3 hours during the course of the week. I reached into my bible to get out some anointing oil a friend had given me so we could put James 5:14-15 into practice. She got up to stand in the middle of the room, quite slowly. Then we anointed her and prayed to our loving father, commanding the pain to go and flexibility to return. After what probably around 5 minutes of prayer, we asked her to try it out, to do something that she couldn't do before. She reached down and touched her toes without even thinking about it!

As base staff here at Marine Reach Training, I have the unique opportunity to speak into students lives as a friend. All students have one DTS staff member who will spend an hour or so with them a week to talk to them and is specifically there to disciple them. I'm at the base almost all the time, and when I talk to students it's because I want to be there, to talk to them, to laugh with them, to chill or do something crazy. Base staff often become good friends with the students and have an opportunity to speak into their lives as a friend, not as someone above them, but someone who has been through a lot of the same teachings, new experiences etc,  and wrestled with the same challenges. So while I'm installing hydraulic door closers, or building steps in the valley, or cutting down ugly hedges, I'm getting to sow into the lives of the students that work with me and see them change, and celebrate their victories with them.

Some quick stats of what happened with the July school's outreach. A team that went to Indonesia saw at least 35 people be discharged from the cancer ward/ICU because God used them to heal the christians, muslims, and hindu's that they prayed for, including a woman they were told that there was no point in prayer for, because she's a hopeless case. The Solomon team saw the eye's of the blind opened (not figuratively, I'm talking completely blind people being able to see because of the name of JESUS.) The Vanuatu team walked into a High Security prison without papers, into the place that not even family members are able to go, where they shared the love of God, and the worst of the worst gave their lives to Jesus. The Fiji team saw the demonically oppressed healed and set free, and people filled with the Holy Spirit as a result of partnering with Him to bring him to tired and weary villagers. The team that went to southeast Asia got to teach the growing church, and see orphans experience the love of God in such a tangible way that it changed the way the children saw themselves, others, and the way they lived. God is on the move, and this stuff isn't available to only the "spiritual elite". It's for those that believe to heal the sick, raise the dead, save the lost, and bring the light of the world into the darkest places. Go after God, and His Kingdom, AND NEVER LOOK BACK.