Outreach time. it's been coming and now its finally here!

I still really cant believe that i'm actually flying to Thailand on Monday. So, a quick rundown of the last couple weeks.

Had some really good speakers including one guy (who is our base director) named Tom Osterhus. He spoke on the most basic and foundational parts of Christianity and it was super good. I really think it would be sweet to maybe teach that somewhere at school or church cause it was super duper good.
The next week we had a guy named Dan Bauman come and speak. He has been a missionary for like 20 plus years and he came and shared about all his experiences. He had some crazy amazing ones.
He was imprisoned in Iran for 9 weeks because he was a missionary and becasue the government thought he was a spy. He went through so many rough times there and had some awesome God experiences. I'm also pretty sure that he changed lots of lives while he was there.

I still am really blown away by the fact that i'm really doing this. I'm super excited but this is the sickest (posotive) thing i've ever done.
I also thought it'd be good, since i wont be able to talk to you guys on outreach, to give you a rundown of whats going on,
We fly to Thailand on monday at 4:30 AM and we get there at 3 AM of the same day. weird.
We do ministry there for 10 days then my team flies to Borneo and we are there for 3 months. We'll start in Pontianic, a coast town on the west side of the island, that has a YWAM base in it. We will stay there for a week then we'll go and trailblaze into villages in the jungle. We'll go village to village for a while then come back to the base to re-fuel.
After about a month and a half we will fly to the east side of the island and TEACH in a DTS just like the lecture phase i just finished. Stoked on that for sure!!

I really do send my best reguards to all of you and i'll be home on November 22!

TALK TO YOU GUYS IN 3 MONTHS!!!!!

-Matt

this is my life. the past two weeks. get some.

A wonderful quote from my new and awesome friend Ashleigh:
"HI! i love my new friend ashleigh.
and i love the name hokyo. its like tokyo. with an H!
the end."

So... these past weeks have been awesome and busy as the others have. I've gotten into this really cool flow from week to week. Week starts: Tired. skeptical of speaker, good quiet times with God.
Middle of week: Warming up the the speaker, more awake. Even more awesome quiet times with God.
End of Week: Loving the speaker, Totally awake, So so so in touch with the Spirit and God's word.
Weekend: Chill and do something crazy.
and repeat.
Although it is the same, i love it sooo much beacause i grow more every week. I always build and my relationship with Him is getting soooo awesome.
I've been thinking a lot about the future and what is next, but i really dont know. God is still working in me and i suspect He doesn't want to overload me with His plan, cause its a big one.
I love it here though and i've already been changed sooo much i love it. Definately, i've been wrecked for Jesus and i cant ever go back haha

Love you all and i cant wait to see you when i come home!

busy, more busy, and awesomeness

ok soooo i know i'm a little bit late on this post but things have been CRAZY around here. We had our base director Tom Osterhus give us an Old Testament overview of lots of stuff. It seemed really school like, which didn't make me very happy, but it turned out to be really awesome becasue of how it all got summed up on friday. I really got wrecked for Christ, again, and really felt the Holy Spirit moving in me. It was such a great experience i decided to design a tatoo to remember it as well as the knowledge and perspective i gained from it. I hope to get it done before i leave Maui by this really cool guy named Cat. Cat is sooooo awesome. He is a prayer warrior for Revival Maui and has been blessed so much by God. A group of us did work in an intercession we had during the week, he is so tight. I cant wait to chill with him more. This weekend we went to twin falls and cliff jumped, it was sooooo cool. A few of the pools were a tad shallow, but we did work nonetheless. Careful jumping and good depth checkers avoided any form of incident haha. Well its about 12:37 and i need to be up at 7 for breakfast... i'll try and make my next update sooner

i love you all and my prayers are with you!!



In Christ,

Matt

Exodus, Spiritual INSANITY, and Oil Changes

Hey everyone. So so so much has happened so i'll try not to make this an absolutely huge message. Once the program started, on opening night we were greeted an a church called Hope Chapel North Shore. After doing worhsip and meeting the Staff for our school which includes Sam, Joey, Angela, and Chelsea we got a piece of paper. On this piece of paper we had a list of things which included one shirt, one pair of shorts that doubled as our swimsuit, one pair of underwear, one pair of socks, one pair of hiking shoes, one pair of sandals, one sleeping bag, and a pen and paper. We didn't know how long we were going to be gone for but we had to be packed and ready to leave at 6 in the morning. The next morning we piled into vans and headed to a park about 20 minutes from the base. We were put in teams and made a team name and team song. haha i still laugh when i think about what we did. Our name was Operation: Can-philipi-states Your Mom. This is because we have a girl from Canada and a girl from the Philippines on our team and the rest of us are from the U.S. our song was me stepping out and saying "We are team Operation: Can-philipi-states your mom....Na Na" hahaha it was ridiclous. After we did that we got a scavenger hunt list. We got driven to the boys and girls club off of Hana Highway (the main road around Maui) and had to hitch hike to get to the places where these things were. My team lost at the song challenge, obviously, so we had to line up away from everyone else so if cars came they would pick up the other teams first. We got a ride from a nice lady in a silver truck. I've learned that lots of people in Hawaii ride in trucks and i've gotten used to just hopping in the truck bed. Anyway, we rode to the small town of Kuau and had to get out. We walked about 5 miles toward a medium town of Paia (pronounced Pie-eeya) then got a ride for the remaining 2 miles from a really high guy. He was pretty funny and really nice. We got into Paia and got all the items we needed, as well as some the other teams didn't get for extra points. We walked to the other side of the town, right by the bay and waited for a hitch to the large town of Kahalui. We got a ride from a dude and his wife that knew about YWAM and had recieved food aid from them before. They said they would take us to all of our places and to our final stop called Iao Valley (pronounced ee-ow). If we were the first to arrive we got 500 points and 300 for the second team to arrive. 50 for the 3rd, but that definately wasn't going to be us! So we get all the stuff in Kahalui and head up to Iao. We beat the leaders there!! We all chilled with the leaders until the other teams arrived. We all talked about the hunt and what it made us feel like, then we dispersed through the valley, which is strangely like any mountain park in colorado but way greener, then we had some quiet time with the Lord. It was really nice to just spend some time with Him. Then we left for an unknown destination in the van. All of them have names, which i'll talk about later. We pull off of a mountain road near Iao and are told to get out. We take our packs, packed with ONLY the things on the list and hike down to a camp site. It was absolutely gorgeous. We camped on a cliff overlooking the ocean and a smooth breeze rolled in constantly. We didn't know how long we were going to stay but it ended up being 3 days. I'll summarize them. Ramen Noodles, Flavorless Oatmeal. Thats all we had to eat but i brought protien bars cause of my hypoglycemia. On the 2nd night we got rained on and i slept in compression shorts with my brothers body heat for warmth, awesome. haha it really was a great experience becasue we all shared our testimonies and grew really close to each other as a group. I really feel like these people are a sweet new part of my life, the Lord has really blessed me with these people. On the 3rd day we were told that we were going to a church to wash off because we all had a big dirt fight before hand. We walked into Wailuku (Why-Luke-oo) Hope Community Church and were greated by all of the YWAM base staff all nice and dressed up. We ate a "Love Feast" and were congratulated on completing our "Exodus". We came home, cleaned up and fell asleep to be greated by a 7:30 AM lecture. This lady that spoke is SO AWESOME, but really intense. I called her Maria the Alarm Clock, because she is known for waking people up. The first talk that we had was all about intimacy with God. It broke me. I cried and cried becasue i felt like i had never given God any intimacy that i was pushing His love away from me. We were all emotionally wrecked, so tired and worn out from the experience of it. Maria ended her talk by praying for my fellow student Benaiah. She has been gifted from God with prophetic words for others as well as prophetic visions. She saw Benaiah being anointed so she anointed him with oil and prayed for him. It was really powerful, we could all feel the Holy Spirit working in all of us. The next day was even more intense. I shared and broke down, again. Maria prayed for me and saw the Holy Spirit burning away the parts of me i dont need to be stronger in Christ. It was a shaking experience, she prayed over me and i trembled uncontrolably. I felt weak and collapsed onto the ground and felt like i was being cleansed. When i stood up i felt light and alive, like i was newly freed. It was the greatest thing i've ever felt. I cant wait to see what else the Lord has in store but His power is so much realer than I ever could have imagined. After that happened in the morning i got assigned to maintinance crew on base. We changed the oil in 6 12 passenger vans and it was really fun. One of the vans, named Gumby, was so old and broken it blew up a new oil filter we put on it. Yea, we still have to fix that bad boy. So of all our vans i'll list all the names i know... Gumby, a giant green hoss of a car. Hulk, another green one. Da Haus, new nice white van. Shamu, another nice one. She-hulk, a Chrystler Plymouth that SUCKS. and Loretta, a 2000 Volvo that barely runs. Today we had beach day after lecture and this girl Chrystaline spoke in tounges for the first time and it was HOLY!! Wow, if God is doing this much during lecture phase i cant even image what He is gonna do on outreach!!!

Write you guys when i can!!!

GOD BLESS!

Kickin' it at YWAM-Maui

Hey everyone!!! I decided that as far as mass informing goes, writing e-mails to every one of my friends would take up more time than i could allow @ YWAM. So i'll update this once per week or more if i can. On the plane ride over i met a really cool guy named Brad Straight. He is or was the Senior Pastor at South Fellowship on broadway. For those of you that go to or know of cherry hills, he is very good friends with Pastor Dixon. He was on his way over teaching at some school over here. We talked about all sorts of great things on the plane. He really gave me som spiritual depth and made me think about lots of legit questions i had to answer for myself. My flight arrived at about 2pm and i cruised down to baggaige claim talking to Brad. He gave me his card and told me to call him up so we could get lunch sometime. As i was walking toward the baggaige carosel i heard my named called, looked over and saw a group of college looking kids chillin on some benches. Sam stood up and made sure i was who he called me as and i met the rest of the crew. We grabbed my bags and hopped into the YWAM van and headed up to the base. On the way we picked up a hitchhicker. As we got closer to the base we found out he was a couch surfer, aka a vagabond, and wanted some food. He got really pissed becasue we wouldn't take him up to our base to eat. He yelled a little bit then said "i'm only gonna get out of this car if i can say one thing...I'M A YWAM STAFF MEMBER!!" dirty tricksters...haha. Once up at the base we chilled and got a tour. This place is sooooooo tight and everyone here is really really cool. i'm definately gonna get some pictures on facebook soon so no worries about that. Today i'm just hanging out and the program officially starts tomorrow night... i'll update this sometime soon!!!


i love you all and my prayers are with you!!!!


With lots of ginger love,

Matt