We have been here in Kona more than 6 weeks already. Now I find two weeks of teaching slipped by without an update.

The first of these weeks saw Jean Norment “Unveiling the Cross“… We sat under Jean’s teaching last year and it was excellent.(Clicking that link will take you to my post from last year on this teaching.) Her message definitely unveiled all that the Cross, and the blood of Christ, did once and for all. There is so much depth and meaning in this mystery that Glenda and I continue to see the veil being removed. One of our big takeaways last year was reinforced this time, we are even more certain that our unbelief is our greatest sin. I will come back to this later in this blog with an example.

Our Outreach locations were announced this week and preparations have begun. This year our school will be visiting: Battanbang, Cambodia; Penang, Malaysia; and Hanoi, Vietnam. Need I say that Glenda and I are both very excited to be heading back to Hanoi? We haven an awesome team of fully-equipped people who are ready to share their gifts with the people of northern Vietnam as Cultural Exchange and Volunteer English Teachers. There will be more on this in weeks to come.

The second week the teaching was on our Identity in Christ with Ivan Roman… a revivalist and church planter (Empowered Life Church) from Medford, Oregon. His wife Erica was with him and they spent time together ministering to the students. Ivan taught us from a wealth of memorized scripture and his experience about who we are in Christ. Ivan has a prophetic ministry and spoke into everyone’s lives. This was an exciting week as many people discovered we were Unveiling our Identity, becoming who we already are. Again our unbelief is what holds us back from becoming all God has made us, and it prevents us ministering with the power that is available to believers walking in the Holy Spirit. The power to overcome evil, power to overcome sickness, power to overcome addictions, power to lives wholly Holy lives.

There were a couple of external affirmations that built on this weeks teaching. The first appeared on Facebook, I was struck by this quote from William Booth while speaking about the 20th Century. I am afraid that in much of the world it continues into the 21st…

Then as I went through Morning Prayer from the “Daily Prayer: The Official Common Worship App from the Church of England” on Saturday morning I found that the Collect for the Day just summed up this weeks teaching so accurately.

God, the giver of life,
whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church:
by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ and make us eager to do your will,
that we may share with the whole creation the joys of eternal life;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen

Remarkable! How did God know what we were learning all week?  Oh, and I spent some time wondering what the Anglican Church worldwide would look like if they prayed this prayer with real belief.

Small groups, one-to-ones, praying, technical support, giving thanks, preparing & serving snack, praising, planning outreach, interceding, attending staff meetings, worshiping, etc, etc and just “being there” is keeping us busy and out of trouble. We give thanks for the technology that allows us to FaceTime and Skype, blog email and text message with family and friends. The world truly has become smaller for missionaries taking the gospel to the nations.

Thursday night in Ohana Court saw Suze Chmell speak, a young German girl who went home after her DTS and started a new YWAM base in her home town, you can watch some highlights here  http://livestream.com/ywamkona/thursdaynight2015

Wildlife this week…

This out-of-focus centipede was over 125mm (5 inches) long-  still only half grown

Underwater Wildlife. On Saturday, many of the men met a 7a.m. and headed to Kapaluli Beach for a snorkel trip. We had a great time and several went for breakfast afterwards.  I had to borrow the photo here from Dan, one of our students, who took many underwater photos as we swam with turtles and many, many fish.including the Hawaiian state fish, humuhumunukunukuapuaa 

Our awesome CDTS Students are here and we are now settling into the teaching phase of the Discipleship Training School. This week saw our first few days of lectures presented by Warren Groves, he taught on the Nature & Character of God of God. Warren was a classmate of ours last year and he was part of our Vietnam outreach team.  He has almost 40 years of church and missionary experience, he is now staff of the Apostello School of Frontier Missions that sends people out for outreaches of 2 or more years. We learned how to know who God really is and what knowing Him requires of us, we learned that as human’s we need an operating system upgrade. When we become Christian we get a new OS altogether and it should be getting regularly updated as we align our worldview, that is what we see as reality, changes to come into alignment with God’s view of the world. Warren recognized that the Third Law of Theology is “for every theologian there is an equal and opposite theologian” so he stayed away from theological treatises instead he addressed questions like “Where does our view of God come from?”; “Who do I think God is versus who He is really?”; “Why should I study the nature of God?”; “How do we know who God really is?”; and “What will be required of me?”

Loren Cunningham was the ‘guest’ speaker at the Thursday Night Gathering at Ohana Court this week. It was a great reminder of how much YWAM does, over and above training youth and sending them out. He shared how his vision for having a Bible in every home, and scripture in every language by 2020 is moving ahead. He talked about the progress that has been made in Bible translation as YWAM has been working with Wycliffe, using story-telling volunteers to get translation faster; and about text and audio bibles on micro SD cards. He talked about Uniskript a new alphabet that can be used for every language and can be taught in just 5 hours. He shared about other YWAM ministries; CROWN Ministries (Christ Revealed on World Networks), YWAM Ships and an invitation by the government of Papua New Guinea.

IRONMAN World Championship  We were blessed to be able to volunteer as Security Race Officials in the Bike Compound at the Ironman again this year. You can watch highlights on West Hawaii news. The race starts at 6:25 am and the finish closes a midnight, it begins with a 2.4 (3.86km) mile swim, 112 (180.2km) mile bicycle ride and 26.2 (42.2km) mile run. This year 2,308 athletes started out, the oldest was 86 by the way, altogether 2,144 finished the 140.6 (226.26km) torturous miles in temperatures up to 40C, with the humidity, before the finish closed and they were declared Ironmen (and women, but somehow this brand survives without being gender-sensitive). The fastest person finished in 8:14:40, the last finisher took 16:49:24. As Glenda and I stayed cheering to encourage athletes until 10pm and heard “You a an IRONMAN!” many more times up until midnight, we were left pondering what Paul really means when he compares our spiritual journey to being in a race and finishing well. These athletes give everything they have. They invest thousands of hours training regularly for at least 2 years, they have to complete 2 Ironman races elsewhere to qualify to enter their name in a draw. They invest thousands of dollars, on entry fees, on equipment especially triathlon bicycles, airfares and hotels. Then, as we witnessed on Saturday, they push their bodies beyond all reason to gain the prize of being called an IRONMAN. Most compete to finish, not to win. It is hard to comprehend what drives a person to strive for the prize BUT this is how we are supposed to live out our Christian life in this world, glorifying God in all we do. Peter says it like this in his first letter, 4:10&11, remember life is a gift. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

Glenda and I are being kept busy, there is lots to do and we are really enjoying being here supporting Bob and Carolyn as they lead the school. We are truly blessed by their leadership and encouragement, and we have a supernatural peace as we serve God and his people in this place, especially when we are being stretched beyond ourselves.

‘Wildlife this week’

A Praying Mantis joins in the worship

Until next time, be blessed and be a blessing, A&G