This is the first of hopefully many updates from my time at Stanford. Tomorrow (Thurs) at eight I will at last move into the dorm and start life at Stanford. Today I had an encouraging breakfast with David Jones, who is starting up and RUF on campus, and I was able to buy a few last things before the move-in. Please keep me in your prayers as things get started out here. This first update is a little long, as it covers the whole summer and is actually the final letter mailed out to my support team. I hope it gives you a picture of how I have seen God move this past summer. I look forward to updating you all on what God does out west.
What an amazing summer it has been! As I pack up all my things to journey out to California, I am so thankful for all I have been able to see God do in the past three months. Looking back, I can only say it has been a God-breathed summer, where I have been simply flooded by His blessings. As I share these testimonies, my prayer is that they will encourage you and remind you that God is still moving and answering prayers today, and also that you will be inspired to pray for me as I begin a new part of my life at Stanford University.
In late June, through a crazy sequence of events and God's opening of several doors, I joined a team from Abounding Grace Church going to San Pedro, Mexico, just hours before the buses left the parking lot. When the trip began, I knew about fifteen of the forty-five people who went on the trip, but the thirty hour bus ride provided amazing opportunities to forge the beginnings of deep friendships. The buses left Abounding Grace on Friday evening, journeying through the night and day to the Mexican border, where God got us through without any hassles or inspections. Driving through the night, we finally reached San Pedro around five o'clock on Sunday morning, just in time to view a beautiful sunrise before crashing in our beds. We spent the week working with Stephen and Marcela Tolman. (Stephen is the brother of Philip Tolman, one of the pastors we have worked with in Tepic for the past six years.) Over the course of the week we did ministry in a drug rehabilitation center (San Pedro was once one of the heroin capitals of the world), twice in a high security prison, on the streets, and in the Tolmans' church. Each ministry opportunity was unique, yet every time we saw God work. The prison was an experience like no other. After being carefully searched by a guard, we were led through a corridor of chain link and barbed wire to a walled-in open space where the prisoners were waiting under a shelter. We went to the prison twice: the first time some of the team gave testimonies and we prayed with the prisoners. The second time we were able to hang out with them playing hackey-sack and basketball and then take another opportunity to talk to them and pray for them. It was a strange feeling to realize I was playing hackey-sack with murderers and drug addicts and yet I felt totally at ease, and I marveled at how receptive they were to the Gospel being shared with them.
At the rehab center we saw God's power poured out. Several amazing things happened. We arrived to find some fifty men just a week off the streets, but when we began to worship, they worshiped with more freedom than I had ever seen, and when the Gospel was presented to them they eagerly received it. A great answer to prayer came when the team was giving testimonies. A friend of mine named Edmund, who was not a Christian going into the trip, got up and told how he had just accepted Christ. Then during the prayer time, God healed one man of a serious neck injury and restored the sight to a man who was blind in one eye. Truly God is amazing.
For me, the San Pedro trip was an unexpected gift. I formed deep friendships with members of the team whom I had not known prior to the trip. I have long felt a calling as a worship leader, and I was able to develop this gift playing guitar and keyboard with Evan Bass and the worship team. One night during a worship practice, the Spirit of God fell on the room, and our "practice" turned into an all night worship service of singing and dancing before God. God also answered a prayer I had long had: that I would be able to experience Him not just through other people, but that I would encounter God himself. One night while I was receiving prayer, I felt God saying to me, "You're my son; I'm proud of you; I know where I'm taking you."
Coming back from Mexico, I was excited to see what God would do in Northern Ireland, especially because two of my teammates from San Pedro, Lindsey and Patrick, were also going to Ireland. Well, God blew away our wildest expectations. When I think of Ireland, I think of God laying out a buffet table of all His blessings for us. And then He calls to us, "Come and eat, all you can take." It was a strange trip in that rather than being taught by hardship, we were overwhelmed again and again by His blessing and love.
One of the first great blessings of the trip was instant unity. I had never met any of the people from Newcastle, the Irish town where we were working, and our team from Nashville had done fairly little together. Yet when we arrived God immediately bound our hearts together with His bond of divine unity. From the first moment, we moved as a team and a body with Christ as its head. Each of us had our own purposes, tasks, and opportunities for the week, yet no one was jealous of any other, but rather excited for what God was doing. It was so exciting to see each person have their own divine appointments, and then to come together late in the night to recount all the stories of God's amazing power. God also gave us thick ties of true friendship with the Newcastle youth, and in a matter of days we were at a point where we could share our hearts with each other, pray for each other, and encourage each other in the Lord.
We spent our time in Ireland primarily working with a youth group from Newcastle Presbyterian Church putting on Camp Colditz. This four day camp brought in kids from all over Newcastle with a wide age spread (12-20). In the afternoon we would do some sort of game or activity, such as capture the flag or a hike through the mountains. Then at night we would come together at the church for a speakeasy, where there would be skits, worship, testimonies, and then the Irish pastor would share the Gospel. After each speakeasy we would divide into small groups, and I had a guy in my group who was from the Newcastle youth group. The first night he was very quiet, but the second night (Friday), he became very interested in the discussion and began to ask questions, wanting to know how we had seen God in our lives. He told us that he was a Christian, but he struggled to live it out and did not feel God at all. After the discussion was over, I asked if Lindsey, Sara, and I could pray for him. He was blown away by the offer, and after we prayed, he was so thankful that we had prayed God's Spirit over him, and he was confident that God would walk with him. It was exciting over the rest of the trip to see his faith and confidence in Christ continue to grow.
That night we gathered to tell what God had done and to encourage each other. We entered into a time of prayer where we called out to God for help and praised Him for all He had done, and we continued to pray until 2:45 in the morning, blown away by how God was moving. The next morning, we traveled to the North Coast. All day, at both Carrick-a-Rede and Giant's Causeway, I was overwhelmed by the natural beauty; my senses were flooded with colors and lights and sounds and smells. There was so much beauty that my eyes literally could not take it in, and it is amazing to know that the God who created all of it desires me to be His son.
On Monday I saw God work in another amazing way. At the beginning of the trip I met Johnny. We had many common interests, and I was amazed by his servant's attitude. I wrote down his name in my journal and throughout the week would pray for him, although not for anything in particular. Skip ahead to Monday. We went for a hike through the mountains, and I spent most of the walk talking to Johnny. I was enjoying the conversation, and it never crossed my mind to go deep with it. Midway through the walk, he sat down and asked me to sit with him. He told me that it was hard that we had to leave so soon, but so good all that God had done while we were in Ireland. I asked him how the time had affected his personal walk with Christ, and he smiled at me. He told me how he and Todd had a long conversation throughout Saturday, and how he had been prayed over Saturday night at a youth group prayer meeting. That night at home, he prayed and became a Christian. He told me how he woke up Sunday morning and saw the world completely differently. He was excited about what God was going to do through him in Newcastle. It was so good to see God answer my prayer, and to sit by the mountain lake calling out praise and thanks to God with Johnny. God is beginning to do an awesome work in Newcastle.
And God is continuing to work in my heart, even in the last few weeks. He has shown me the encouraging power of prayer as I watched it transform my loneliness into joy, and He has been instilling in my heart an excitement for going to Stanford. I desperately need your prayers as I move to the West Coast, for I am leaving the comfortable Shire of home and going to a place full of unknowns and foreign worldviews. Please pray that I will be able to find a strong community of Christians at Stanford that can encourage me and help me grow in the Lord. Pray also that God will give me His heart for each individual at Stanford, and that I will be looking for ways to share His love with everyone I meet. And pray that God will give me direction, for at this point I do not know what I want to do or what God is calling me to.
This will be the last mailing for some time, but throughout the year I will be sending out updates by e-mail. If you would like to be on the mailing list, please e-mail me. I have also developed my homepage, and I will be using it this year to post news and pictures. I hope that this will be a tool to share with others what God is doing in my life.
I know that my God is in full control of my life, and He knows what plans He has for me. I am thankful for all that He has done this summer, and I am eagerly awaiting Him to reveal the next piece of His plan to me. I pray that the Lord blesses you also this year.
