Second Monthly update...where is the time going??

Hi everyone,

Where to start. The past month has been absolutely amazing! So much has happened! The speakers have been exactly what we as staff and the students have needed to hear. It’s been so cool to see how God speaks to everyone in different ways.

After Cindy Mandrell of Project C.O.O.L in Canton Ohio spoke, we had Dan Sneed come and speak on Identity, knowing who we are in God. Identity is always a good week. I think it was definitely a God thing that it happened so early in the school, week 3. I didn’t have the Identity lecture until the 3^rd to last week of my DTS. But having the students knowing who they are in God is such an important thing going forward in DTS. It helps them accept the fact that no matter what they’ve done in the past, they are loved, and accepted by God. Dan Sneed had a very interesting teaching style. He was more of a talk-about-it-with-slides-to-help-solidify-what-he’s-talking-about kind of speaker. Which I think is very cool to see that someone feels that comfortable just talking about something like that. He also told a lot of stories. Some from his childhood which affected who he was, and how he acted, and some stories which he’d heard from other people. The combination of them really helped get his point across.

After Dan Sneed, we had Marty Myer come and speak on Spiritual Warfare, which is always a heavy topic. Like I stated in my previous update, it was exactly what the students needed to hear at that moment. Marty Myer was about a month into a 9 month road trip sabbatical with his family. Making stops every once in a while to speak at a school here and there. So the week that he was with us, he had his entire family with him. It was definitely interesting having an entire family on the base, it was new for everyone. Marty was more of a in your face kind of a speaker. He didn’t go easy one bit. He told it how it was.

Then came my favorite speaker from my DTS, and from the word on the base, the favorite speaker of all the students, Jeff Pratt of YWAM Axiom in New Haven CT. He spoke on The Father Heart of God. Jeff has a very unique style of teaching. Before becoming a speaker on the DTS circuit, he used to be a film critic, so he combines his love for the two, and has a lot visuals in with his teaching. He shows a lot of movie clips from movies that one wouldn’t really think to use. Along with the movie clips, he tells a lot of stories of redeeming love. On Wednesday he had a ministry day…and it would be the understatement of the century if I said that it was an intense day. Words cannot begin to describe what exactly happened. All the students were set free from something. A lot of them were able to forgive those who had hurt them in the past. Overall it was a very good day, just so so so so intense. It was one of those days where all you want to do is drink coffee (or hot beverage of choice) and just stay in bed all day. But it was so good!!!! Needless to say, he was everything I remember he was, if not better.

Last week we were in Cincinnati Ohio for a Frontier Missions conference. For those of you who don’t know what Frontier Missions is, because it is a relatively new concept, it’s the going into closed countries and preaching the gospel, very carefully of course. But Frontier Missions can take place right in your backyard by talking with the Muslims, or Buddhists, or Hindus, etc. The conference was all day Monday, all day Tuesday, and all day Wednesday. The morning sessions for the three days were with a guy by the name of Steve Gregg who spoke on the Cost of Discipleship, and what it looks like. It was some really good teaching. In the afternoons on Monday and Wednesday we had what were called Breakout Sessions, which we could choose one of two topics to go listen to. On Monday, I went to a question and answer session with people that lived on the “front lines” people that served in closed countries for 20+ years. It was really cool to hear their experiences and stories, and just what God showed them through that time that they were there. On Wednesday, I sat in on a testimony of a lady who had served in Mauritania whose husband was killed by al Qaeda in 2009. It was awesome to hear her story and how God has been bringing her and her two children through it the last two years.

We left the F.M conference early Sunday morning to head to Harrisburg PA for the Northeast Regional YWAM Staff Conference. There are nine YWAM bases represented here right now. Some of the DTS with them, and some don’t. it’s been really fun getting to know other YWAMers from the Northeast and just hearing their experiences thus far. Please pray for us for the rest of the week, as the conference ends on Thursday night. Thanks!

Thank you again to everyone who has committed to support me financially as well as prayerfully, it is very much appreciated!!!

With the wind,

Mark

Wait wait wait....it's been a month already??

Hi all, so I can’t believe that I’m saying this already, but I’ve been on staff here for a little bit more than a month already.

It has been such an amazing experience so far! We currently have a Discipleship Training School going with 31 students representing 14 different countries!! We are in our second week of Lectures; our current speaker is Cindy Mandrell from Project C.O.O.L in Canton Ohio. Cindy is actually an extended staff member here at YWAM Metro New York. She’s just based in Canton Ohio. About three years ago God gave her an idea for this Project C.O.O.L, which stands for Community Outreach Of Love. It has been described as, “Extreme Makeover Home Edition on steroids.” Instead of tackling a single house for a week, they tackle an entire community for one day. The last C.O.O.L day in June of this year, had over 2,000 volunteers!! How cool is that?? (Pun intended)

It has been such an intense week so far, and it’s only our third day! She has been speaking on the Character and Nature of God, and has been exactly what the students have needed to hear at this moment. And after last weeks’ lecture with Christi Wilke who spoke on Hearing God’s Voice and Intercession, this week has been an amazing follow up week.

From my experiences in YWAM, no matter the speaker order, it seems to me that the weeks just flow like they’re supposed to. The same happened on my DTS more than two years ago now, and the same is happening now, even with only two speakers having been here. God just knows what the students need to hear, and when they need to hear it, and it works exactly how He intends it to.

Alright, so I’m posting this a little later then I was hoping to, and we’re now in our last lecture day of our third speaker, Dan Sneed, who has been speaking on Identity. This topic was a huge part of my DTS, and I can tell that it has had a massive impact on a lot of the students here.

Nonetheless, it has been an amazing experience thus far, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the future! Thank you to all of you who have committed to supporting monthly, supporting with a onetime donation, and/or committing to pray for me while I am here. I appreciate it more than you can imagine!

With the wind,

Mark

And so it begins...

hey everyone!

So it's been about a month since my last blog entry, which doesn't seem all that long ago, but at the same time it does. Let me catch you up as to what has happened in the last month before i move on to what i really want to talk about. Alright, well, i arrived home from the Philippines on August 3rd. And was home for about a week and a half when i started working at my summer job from last summer temporarily because they needed help desperately, and i needed the money, so it was a win-win for everyone. Also in the past month, i was able to hangout and catch up with friends that i had missed dearly for the previous four months while i was in the Philippines.

Alright now...unto the main event. This past week i officially moved to the YWAM Metro NY base here in Smithtown. It is as much fun as i thought it was going to be. The people here are beyond amazing. And i can't think of anyone else that i'd rather be on staff with. Yesterday and today were staff training/orientation days. Both days were amazing. Both days were stressful in their own unique ways. Yesterday was stressful in the fact that it was much more theological and way above my thinking level. Today was stressful in the fact that it was just a massive amount of information in not a lot of time. It was brain overload to the max. But I have some amazing friends here, and they helped me sort through some of what i was feeling, and gave me suggestions on what i could do to further process what i was thinking/feeling. I think it's just going to take me a little while to get used to how things work here as a staff member given the fact that this is my first experience as a staff member for something like this. But i can honestly say, I am definitely looking forward to living life with all the staff member's for the next two years of our lives, and the students that arrive in about 2 weeks for the next six months!

With the wind,
Mark

Final Update that's not really an update

Hello everyone!! This isn't an official update, but given the fact that i'm leaving to come home today, I figured it would be a good opportunity to tell you what i've thought of the last four months. I write this while i'm in the Cebu Airport, waiting for the airlines to open so I can get my ticket. They want international travelers at the airport four hours before their flight is supposed to leave, but that doesn't help when the airlines themselves aren't open.

Anywho, the last four months have absolutely flown by! It feels like just yesterday that I was stepping out of the airport and meeting up with Angela. They say, “Time flies when you're having fun”, and they are absolutely correct. Sure there were a few rough periods while i've been here, but that's to be expected on any mission trip.

Before coming here, I was told multiple times that I was a natural leader. I even did a leadership based DTS (Discipleship Training School) without realizing it till I got there. I did not want to accept the fact that I was a leader. No matter what people told me, or how many times they told me that I was a leader, I denied it. I didn't see myself as a leader what so ever. Well, while i've been here interning at the children's home, I finally accepted the fact that whether I like it or not, I AM in fact a leader, and I need to embrace that. To say that this was an awesome experience would be an understatement. I knew coming into this, God was going to reveal something about me to me, I just had no idea what that was. But now that I do, I'm surprisingly okay with that. In about three weeks, I'll be moving out to Smithtown, New York to go on staff at YWAM Metro New York. While i'm super excited to go out there and be apart of what they are doing, it also terrifies me at the same time, mainly because I have no idea what to expect, and it's a first for me. Having a legit job. It's all uncharted territory for me. But I think it's safe to assume that being terrified comes with going into the uncharted right?

Last night Angela and Janet stopped by the house to say goodbye to the kids and the staff. After the kids were done saying goodbye to them, they started to say goodbye to me. I told them I wasn't leaving yet, and they went back to what they were doing. This morning, when they were all getting ready for school, I was hanging around so that I could say goodbye to them as they walked out the front gate. The first two kids walked out with saying goodbye to me lol. We had the youngest kid run and call them back so I could say goodbye to them. Since then, one of the staff reminded all the kids to say goodbye to me as they walked out the gate. I just found it funny that last night they couldn't wait to say goodbye to me, but this morning they totally forgot. Saying goodbye to the kids was a lot easier then I thought it was going to be. I think that's mainly because the kids didn't really make a big deal out of it. If they had made a bigger deal, I think it would have been hard, not to mention that I didn't say goodbye to them as a group, but individually as they left for school.

Last Update!!!

(Insert clever greeting). As strange as this sounds, this is my last update from the New Beginnings Children's Ministry. This is our 17^th meeting, but i'm just finishing up week 16, my last full week here.

This week was...interesting. Normally I allowed to go up to the headquarters during the day to use the internet and what not. But this week they were having meetings there with all the pastors that are involved with Missionaries To Asia, the organization that NBCM is associated with. So the plan was for me to go to a local resort for a couple days, Monday- Wednesday. But with the craziness of the schedule for those days, not to mention the fact that the price I was originally quoted from the website, was a lot cheaper then what the person said at the resort itself (about $100 cheaper a night, plus, the fact that i'm an American is going to cause the price to shoot up. They hike all prices up when they see American's because they figure, American's= $$, sadly, that's not always the case.) So I was under house arrest for this week. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I wasn't allowed to go to the headquarters for internet. Fortunately there's an internet cafe on the same road that we're on. But I only spent like an hour at the most there each day cause I didn't feel like spending my money on internet, even though it only cost P5 which is the same as $.12 for 30 minutes of internet time. On Tuesday, I was able to go to the mall. Unfortunately, due to a very last minute change of plans, I was not able to eat American food this week. The plan was that on our way back to the children's home/ headquarters, we were going to stop at a restaurant for authentic Filipino food. But the remote for the car decided to die, so we had to get that fixed, which cost a little less then an arm and a leg, maybe just an arm, and then we were sitting in a coffee shop, eating breakfast, when we found out that a couple of the board members for the States were coming, and Angela had to be tour guide, and then bring them back to the hotel they were staying at. So I didn't get to eat lunch at all on Tuesday, because I had already told the person who does the cooking that I wasn't going to be there for lunch. But I was still full from the sandwich that I had, plus we shared two salads. A Spicy Tuna Macaroni salad, which is absolutely amazing, and a Caesar salad, which was also really good.

Nothing new really happened with the kids this week. The expression “same stuff, different day” applies here, just substitute the word “day” for the word “week” and we're golden. I know they know that i'm leaving soon, but I don't know if they realize that they may never see me again. They keep asking me when i'll be coming back, and I say the only thing I can, “i don't know”, but the very sad truth is, I may NOT be coming back.

That's it for this week. I will most likely post something on Wednesday.

With the wind,

Mark

No Exit Visa Needed!

Hello of people of planet earth! We meet once again. This is now our 16^th meeting, but the end of week 14. It feels so incredibly strange that after being here for the past four months, I'm going home in 11 days.

Last night one of the boys asked me when I was leaving while I was saying goodnight. They now know that my time with them is drawing to an end. Before last night I don't think they realized just how close I was to leaving. But now that they do, who knows how they will react when i'm no longer around. I know it will be one of the hardest things I've had to do to date. I'm not saying that saying goodbye to family and friends to come here wasn't hard, it was, but when you live with people for this length of time, not really getting away from each other, there’s a bond there that almost seems stronger then a family's bond. The only thing I can think that was tougher was saying goodbye to my YWAMily in February after graduation. Being with these kids for four months 24/7, through the bad and the good times, has definitely grown us together.

With that said, it will definitely feel good to be home with all my family and friends once again! I've said this before, I'll say it again, this trip has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I've been a few international mission trips before, but I was always with people of the same culture, who spoke the same language. That was not/is not the case here. These kids, and staff, speak English as a second language. With that said however, they speak English very very well! One of the staff members just about speaks it fluently. These past four months have absolutely flown by! It feels like I just got here a couple of weeks ago.

Nothing really interesting happened this past week. Although, on Monday I had to go to the immigration office to get my exit visa, which costs about P700, which is like $15 or so. Anyway, I get to the immigration office, pick up the form I need and go sit down and fill it out. When I go back up to the desk, to give my form in, and be told where to go next, the lady tells me that I don't need an exit visa because I'm only here for four months. The only time you need an exit visa here is if you've stayed for more then 6 months. SO naturally I was very happy. That was $15 I didn't have to spend! And to celebrate, we went to a different mall then we usually do, which is actually bigger in my opinion, which is very hard to believe. We didn't really go there to celebrate, Angela needed to pick up a dress for the mother of the bride. We had a little breakfast when we first got there because we got there before the mall o

pened. Then it was time to get the dress and a few other little things. Then it was time for lunch. We went to this place called Case Verde. If you look at Facebook profile picture, that's the Big Bang Burger from the same place. I was smart enough not to get that burger again, instead I got the Excalibur burger. When I ordered it, it looked a lot smaller, and much more manageable then it really was. It was huge. But, I was able to finish this one this time.

There's not a whole new with the kids this week. All the kids are officially in school now. For the past month- month and a half or so one of the girls wasn't in school because her aunt hadn't sent her papers to the headquarters for her previous school. But she officially started school on Monday. But other then that, nothing new has happened this week.

Well that's about it for this week, see all of you again next week!!

With the wind,

Mark

"It's not goodbye, it's see ya later"

So once again we meet. Week 13 is coming to an end. Which means I have less then 20 days left. And i've been thinking about going home this past week. It's going to be exciting seeing my family and all my friends again. But it's definitely going to be hard leaving. There's a saying in YWAM, “It's not goodbye, it's 'see ya later'.” I hope, hope, hope that I get to return in the future.

Nothing really new has happened this week. Actually...no, I lied, something DID happen!! On Thursday we were headed to the mall, I needed to get a few things and my fix of American food, and Janet and Angela needed to get dental work done, and Art and Annabelle needed to get some stuff done for the wedding. Anywho, we were driving down the street, and we were driving through the an intersection. Now most of the intersections here don't have working street lights, they have police officers directing traffic. Well, this intersection happened to have a working street light, and had just changed red as we were driving through it. There was another police officer at the intersection with a motorcycle, well he chased us down, and pulled us over. I've been told a few times since i've been here that the police officers are very corrupt, and they take bribes to get people out of tickets or having to go to some sort of seminar thing. Anyway, I had no idea what, or how it all went down. When the police officer pulled us over, he asked for the license, and said that it was only valid for 90 days, but they, Angela and Janet, were told that it was valid for 6 months. The police officer then started to say that they would need to attend a seminar, but that won't work, because they leave the same day I do to return to the States. Even before the police officer can finish what he has to Angela asks, “how much?” on purpose to make him as uncomfortable as possible, because, obviously, it's highly illegal to take bribes. Flustered, the officer responds, “whatever you want.” Angela takes the money and sticks it out the window, again, on purpose, the officer bumps her hand back inside the car, takes out his police wallet thingy magigy, opened it and stuck it in the car for Angela to put the money in her self. After which, he let us go on our way once again. It was very very interesting needless to say. Once at the mall I had to go get my picture taken for an exit visa, which we are getting on Tuesday I believe. The purpose of the exit visa is for the government to make sure I'm not wanted for some sort of crime. Anyway, I did that, had my American food, got what I needed to, and then left to come home. I had to take a taxi home again, and if you remember back a few weeks, the last time I had to take a taxi home, I got the driver lost horribly. Luckly, I knew where I was going this time and got home no problem. I went to pay the driver, but he didn't have any change for me. So I started thinking, and realized that I had a bunch of change in my back pack. I didn't realize how much I had until I started counting it. It was enough to pay for the taxi, about P173. I felt bad for the driver, but it was all I had haha.

As for the kids...not a whole lot is new. Beginning last week, each of the high school students have some sort of party they have to go to. Last week was first year high school, this week is second week, and so and so on. The school is only about 15 minutes away or so, so I can hear the music, and from what it sounds like, it sounds like they are having a lot of fun there. But other then that, nothing is new. Life has gotten dull since the children have started school.

That's it for now. We shall meet again next week! Hope everyone is doing well!

With the wind,

Mark