Author Archives: andysread

Week 8 – YWAM Kona, At the Crossroads – Missions

This weeks teaching by Ralph and Donna Bromley from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was on Missions. They did their Crossroads DTS back in 1980, then worked with YWAM for 7 years. Since then they have been involved in missions, as a mission pastor in Kelowna, in intercessory prayer, they are now with Hope for the Nations. Another week of excellent teaching, this time based on my second favourite scripture passage,

Ralph Bromley

“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8

We looked at this scripture from the perspective that we have an ‘an absolute sovereign God’ who says that “Righteousness and Justice are the foundations of [His] throne” Psalm 89:14. We also recognized that God’s way is often opposite to the ways of the world, as we can see when we compare Satan’s upward plan ‘to be like God’ in Isaiah 14:13 with Jesus’s downward life, as described in Philippians 2:5. So with the right foundation, and God’s way in mind, when we looked at Micah 6:8 it was easy to see that to fulfill God’s requirement we need to walk humbly with our God Praise before we can love mercy and do justice. When we humble ourselves through prayer and worship, we develop a character more like God, then we can see beyond our own little world into God’s heart for mercy and justice. Once we get the humble character then the attitude of our heart begins to align itself to God’s heart, and we start to recognize other’s pain and suffering and we offer mercy by providing Philanthropic Justice. As we begin to invest our time and money in an injustice we see God’s posture as a defender of the widows and the orphans, and we move into action; doing justly. The fruit is “Love & Faithfulness go(ing) before you,” Psalm 89:14

Other takeaways from the teaching:

* To be missional is to be who we are and bring that to others.
* The conversation is more important than the answer.
* Missions is a changing landscape, years ago it was a vocation, gone for the rest of their lives in another nation, then short-term with youth, like YWAM, now globalization is…
* Fighting injustice is a team sport, identify an issue, pull in behind someone/something.

There have been many fundraisers going on as we reach the deadlinefor outreach money to be paid. Some are hosting Brazilian BBQs, others cooking up Shish Kebabs, cookies, ice cream, putting on magic shows, etc, but the International Korean DTS has set up an outdoor salon offering massages, pedicures, manicures and haircuts. Glenda had the manicure and pedicure, black and silver! I helped out by getting a haircut.

My Work Duty was spent mostly in the swimming pool, which has been under ~~constr~~ um, destruction since before we arrived. There were two seemingly very long days of pulling weeds for Jesus.HereLars is teaching Deborah, our Malay classmate how to use the jack-hammer. Note: Sorry I am not in any of the photos it must be because I am never working but taking pictures 🙂 Oh, and I missed work duty on Thursday as my small group went sea kayaking and we didn’t make it back in time for work, fortunately our performance appraisals had already been completed and handed in!

It has taken just 8 weeks but I finally got to snap some photos of Glenda dusting books in the library. (Is that Katai I see on the shelf?)

Thursday night at Ohana Court included an excellent teaching message on God’s understanding of adoption (click here for the video) by Johnny Gillespie, who is an adoptive father and a YWAM Kona DTS leader. The video is a couple of hours long, it begins with people arriving, we sat on the left of the middle aisle if you happen to see us. The worship starts about 15 minutes in, then around 40 minutes some families share their adoption stories, the main talk starts at about 1 hr 12 minutes in.

Wildlife this week, starting with the insects and birds…

…and plant-life…

…and don’t forget to check out “George the Gecko” video on the Instagram link on the sidebar.

Next week is a short one, American Thanksgiving on Thursday gives us a 4-day weekend, we will be travelling over to Hilo on Friday with our Seattle friends and suite-mates, Jon and Joyce Brooks.

Until next week, be blessed and be a blessing, and believe,
love, A&G

P.S. Go Stamps, Go!

Week 7 – YWAM Kona, At the Crossroads – Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare

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“Angels & Demons” by ~~Dan Brown~~ Jesus of Nazareth

The Rite

It has been quite a struggle, this week, to decide how to share the teaching we have heard. In some ways we feel like we sat through a few horror movies, and yet, we both feel a great peace, a new freedom and sure knowledge that we are entering into a much more exciting future, as better ambassadors and more proficient soldiers for Christ.

This week, Dave Bryan, of Church of Glad Tidings, Yuba City, CA, presented a convincing picture of the battle between good and evil that is going on around us. It is a battle that most of us in the western world are desensitized to, unaware of, entertained by or in denial of its reality. For many in the rest of the world, dealing with shamans, witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves, etc. the spirit world is not a thing of the movies but a very real part of daily life. Even within our enlightened western world evil is real and people do inexplicable things, school shootings, for example. Recently, CNN reported a story of satanic activity in Oklahoma, which suggested that the Roman Catholic church is hurriedly training exorcists to deal with a rapidly increasing need. One of Dave’s first introductions to spiritual warfare was ministering to a young lady who had been groomed to carry the anti-christ, by Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan and author of the Satanic Bible.)

Dave’s teaching was full of examples illustrating scripture, I think I will leave further details and just offer a few takeaways… (Comments section is open :-))

*The Bible is our training manual and Jesus is our example, if we aren’t doing what Jesus did, maybe, we aren’t doing it right.
*If you were living to the full potential of your life everyone would know about it and they would think they had met Jesus Christ.
*Even kids cartoons are more open about supernatural phenomena and spiritual realities than most churches.
*Anything that is boring is not God: the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the last book in the Bible, talks about lightning coming out of His Chair!!
*Ready – fire – aim!
*”The great enlightenment might be better called the great endarkenment”

One of the biggest thoughts from the last couple of weeks is that we are not living at our full potential. In some ways we knew that years ago and it is, in part, why we are here at YWAM taking the Crossroads DTS, but the reality of what it really means to live with the power of Christ in us is changing.

As for the rest of the week, the University held a Campus Fair which high-lighted some of the second-level courses and ministry opportunities available after DTS. After we visited the School of Photography, School of Illustration, Voice for the Voiceless, Word By Heart, Steps of Justice and the Discipleship Bible School together, Glenda had to go to library duty, so I went off to Appropriate Technology Village, part of the Science & Technology Department where there are several interesting projects in place to aid developing countries.

Work duty for me involved filling holes with rocks, but we had a lot of extra hands this week, a family from the Marshall Islands who live in one of the units came out in force and helped a lot. Glenda continued to work in the library cleaning and organizing the books and helping students find what they need.

Around and about

A Panoramic View from the Royal Kona Resort

a couple of Hot Rods

Andy, Glenda and Stefany

At Royal Kona for lunch

Looking out on the bay

Wildlife this week

Scorpion in the Grass

Our Outreach preparation continues, the time in Vietnam may not include much outside communication.

Until next week – Be blessed and be a blessing, A&G

Week 6 – YWAM Kona, At the Crossroads – Holy Spirit

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For me, this was a full week without leaving the University of the Nations campus, and Glenda just walked down to the ABC Store and Farmers Market, with a couple of girlfriends, for Papaya and Lilikoi.

One thing is for certain, if we came here with any religious spirits they would have been complaining quite strongly this week. Any concerns we had that this was going to be a flaky, orchestrated, manipulative, pushing-people-over kind of week were quickly dispelled. We sat under 15 hours of captivating teaching, (including lots of prayer and some expelling) on the Holy Spirit by Gord Whyte of Healing Gate Ministries. And then we voluntarily signed up for a weekend “Beyond Freedom” seminar with another 14 hours going deeper into the healing ministry of Holy Spirit. This was a very positive week for everyone that I talked with. Most people received healing spiritually, emotionally, physically and felt freer than ever. In the physical realm we saw one leg grow about 20mm in length, I personally, have much less pain in my heels than I did at the beginning of the week.
Some takeaways: As a believer, the Holy Spirit is a dove, it sits on your shoulder wherever you go; as a believer don’t pray for stuff you already have; as a believer you cannot operate in someone else’s anointing; the dark-side is real but Jesus has won; escape the “church” and become a prisoner of Christ; as a believer you have the power in you to do more than Jesus did (John 14:12); healing is the #1 evangelism tool used by Jesus.

On Tuesday I celebrated the twentieth anniversary of my rebirth in Christ. Our suite-mates Kyu Hup Hwang and Gui Ja Lee sang me a birthday hymn. Fortunately, I recognized the tune 🙂 although going by my humming I didn’t really, there is a video posted on Facebook please enjoy, it really blessed me.

Are You Washed in the Blood of Jesus?

On Thursday night at Ohana Court the speaker was David L Cunningham, who is “an international filmmaker. Besides his documentary credits in more than 40 countries, Cunningham has also directed several feature films including To End All Wars (2001) and the TV miniseries The Path to 9/11 (2006). Cunningham is represented by the United Talent Agency.” Wikipedia Bio.
David is also the son of Loren and Darlene Cunningham, the founders of YWAM and the University of the Nations. He spoke about how his Christian worldview has influenced his career in the sphere of Entertainment. One great story took place while he was filming in Romania, when he arrived he was asked what the crew would need and he asked for a school so that the film crew could take their kids, which never happens in Hollywood, the Romanians built one almost overnight.

All the effort made to get excused from Work Duty this week was really unnecessary as there was a shortage of rocks to fill the holes we have already dug and we ended up with very little to do for three days. On the plus side, we did have time to stop and smell the plumeria flowers. This is an awesome work crew, it never ceases to amaze me how few complaints there are when we don’t have a paycheque tied to our labours.

This weeks wildlife shots include a roach that decide to share our bathroom and a herd of feral pigs that tried to surprise me by running out of the brush at full speed while I was walking around the campus wild area.