Justice Water with Jamie

Aloha from Kona!

Last night was the love feast for our 2013 Engage Discipleship Training School- essentially our last big meal together before sending everyone off on outreach for three months.  It has been an amazing school in which I have seen lives transformed by the love of God, people coming in who were in the depths of inner darkness have seen the light of Christ peel off layer after layer of pain and turmoil and seen it replaced by "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord."  This has likely been the busiest season of my life because of getting to be full time (literally) staff with this DTS while still working with Justice Water and getting to do some teaching of our Ripple Effect class.  I have come to see how much I love having such a full schedule- it seems like whenever I look back on the previous week I can see how much my work was enjoyable, fruitful, and deeply meaningful.  

Yesterday was an amazing day- we got to baptize 31 students in the ocean at a public beach where I got to talk to a local dude about what was happening the whole time!  We started the day with thanksgiving, got to see the girls in our class encounter God as a loving Father in a touching way, had a massive time of giving where everyone's outreach fees got covered, and ended it with that Love Feast, a time of tremendous testimony of what the Lord has done, awesome food, ridiculous, off the wall, unhinged, bonkers dancing (seems to be a theme throughout the school), and genuine fellowship.  The Holy Spirit encountered many students and showed who He truly is and when we get that He actually is a friend and has the best for us, life changes!  After all, Jesus said it was better that He left so that we could have the Spirit.  

In 5 days, I get to lead a team of 7 to Asia!  It is getting very exciting to think that so soon, outreach begins!  I have loved being here in Kona but am certainly itching to get to practically start doing what we have been learning about here for the past two and a half months.  It will be nice for me to get to move on from this planning stage and get into the actually moving stage.  This quarter, we have started doing Tuesday and Thursday morning 'training mornings' and I think that they will make a tangible impact on the success of our outreach.  We have had teachings on sanctification, quiet times, church planting, repentance, and many other topics that have been tremendously practical and have given us real tools to use to see lives changed.  These training mornings have made me think of some teachings that I would love to do or help with in churches or youth groups back home!  Of course, our team has been trained in how to do some simple water technology projects and we hope to have the opportunity to build a latrine or some biosand filters.  

The topics of this school week by week were as follows: Hearing God's voice, The Nature and Character of God, The Cost of Radical Discipleship, To Know God, To make Him Known, Sin, Repentance, and Freedom, Bible Overview and Worldview, The Kingdom of God- Honour and Reconciliation, Jesus the Word, Sure Foundations (Spiritual Disciplines), Spiritual Warfare, and Holy Spirit.  We were all deeply impacted by certain teachings and had specific points really stand out to us but I really enjoyed talking about the cost of actually following Jesus, the importance of having a biblical worldview, spiritual disciplines (why we actually take time to pray, read the Word, memorize, meditate, and fast).  Also, this quarter I have really emphasised reading other books in my spare time and have found some AMAZING books to read.  I would highly recommend Intimate Friendship with God by Joy Dawson, Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, How Now Shall we Live by Chuck Colson, Hooked on the Word by Ron Smith, and Beautiful Feet by Danny Lehman.  I heard a really good quote by Will Smith recently, he basically said that the secret to success is 'Read and Run'.  Interesting to note that most problems that we think we have usually have been solved before- hence, read- and that with discipline built in you will actually do things important- hence, run.  

Thank you all so much for your support, both financially and in prayer.  I now have paid for my outreach fully, so I'm going!  As we go, please keep us in prayer, for hearts to be soft to the gospel, for opportunities to share and serve, for meaningful relationships to invest into, for favor with visas and travelling, and for our team to be marked by our love and unity for each other.  Here is our team's mission statement; "To know and love God intimately and to glorify Him through our actions, words, and unity in relationships with a spirit of thanksgiving."  

God bless you guys and thank you for reading!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G8ZMYEk5M4&sns=em (our recent Justice Water promo video- I also had a more personal one made and it will be posted soon)

Lamentations 3:27 (there's a different type of verse than usual!)