Brazil up date #1

We are in Brazil! Brazil is very beautiful and full of life, and people! We had a slight miscommunication regarding our flight info; I told everyone that we were getting in on the 5th of May when really we got in on the 6th. Oops. God worked it out though, as we managed to find an internet café where we were able to facebook one of the team members, who relayed the message to one of the Brazilian leaders. Praise the Lord. It would have been a long night otherwise. So for anyone who is still opposed to face book, this is further evidence to convince you that it is good, if you use it wisely.
Arriving in Brazil, we were driven to our host home by a young man named Nato. (Yes some of the names are hard to pronounce but we are doing alright.) Out host family is awesome! They are a family of four, Sandro (the father), and Tasi (the mother), and their two children, Alice (10) and Daniel (6), plus the puppy, Niki. After spending a short night at our host home we were off to meet the rest of the team. There are about thirty of us in the group from all over the world, Canada, U.S.A, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Mexico, England, Scotland and Brazil. A very great and diverse group of people Barbie and I are really excited to get to know everyone.
Then main struggle we face is the language barrier. I was under the impression that most people would have a bit of English because it was required in school, but so far this seems untrue. There are enough people on out team that can speak English and Portuguese that we can for the most part have a translator.
Barbie and I are really excited to have this time with Shane, Aaron, Kendra and Bill who is the leader of GX international, to see exactly what our roles will be in launching a GX Canada. At this point things are looking different then I initially thought they would. For me I thought that I would probably do some skateboarding if there was a need for it and as it turns out I am the only one who is a skateboarder on the team. So now I will be doing all of it ha-ha. This however opens up some doors to do some recruiting with in the city and tapping into some of the other skate ministries that are around.
Barbie and I are really excited to journey with everyone during this time and we will try and keep everyone up to speed with what is happening and when we have prayer needs. We will also be including pictures and lots of them as we were blessed with an amazing camera by an amazing friend and man of God.
Thank you so much for your continued support.

Blessings.

Its been a while since our last blog, blog

It has been awhile since our last blog. Not that we haven’t been busy, maybe we have been to busy. Re-adjusting to life back in Red Deer has been great! It has been amazing to see all of our family and friends again and all the new babies are so dang cute! Yeah. It has been great being back though for a short time. We have been busy getting organized to go to Brazil on the fourth of May for two months and its coming fast.
While we have been home we have been able to help out with some things and it has been great. We helped my mom, Deanna, paint the up stairs of there house, I (Luke) got a chance to work with my step Dad Brent, who is a heavy duty mechanic, at his shop on equipment, I also got to roof a house, which is always fun and we also got to help a friend move, busy times.
At this point in time we are waiting for our visas to come in. The whole visa thing has caused us a fair bit of stress in the past few weeks, but God is in control. The whole visa thing has been quite a mess. Initially we thought we would be in the clear because we sent all of out stuff to the consulate with more than enough time to get our visas back for the trip. It would have been fine if we had sent them to the right consulate. We mistakenly sent them to the consulate in Toronto when we were supposed to send them to Vancouver. Apparently there are jurisdictions, which I had no idea, and Toronto only serves Ontario, Manitoba, and Nunavut. So yeah this made things pretty tight. We are pretty much praying hard about things now. Some time I think that God does things like this because he wants us to know that He is in charge not us. It is a good lesson to learn and one that Barbie and I are constantly learning as we continue on this journey. We received a real boost from Shane Fox, who is also headed to Brazil, the other day when he received his visa in only nine days. Yeah Jesus is still in control and he care about the little and the big things in life.
We are really excited to see what God has for us in this up coming time away again. It is defiantly hard to leave friends and family again for two more months after already being gone for five and also we are going to miss the playoffs! This is what obedience looks like for us at this time in our lives and we are excited to continue on this journey.
This Saturday the 25th we are having a fund raiser in Sylvan Lake at the Alliance church so we hope to see you there.

ONE DAY TO GO!

WOW! Only one day left! I don't say that over enthusiastically, or scarcastically. I am excited but, as with any good time of ministry, sad to see the time end. Still, we are so excited to see what God has for us next. We have been blessed so much by this experience, and our leaders have been amazing and, thankfully, teachable. We are looking forward to heading back home and hanging with friends and family and seeing everyone again. Yeah!
We are so thankful to everyone who has prayed and supported us during this time. I will stress at this point that we are not done. Life with Jesus is never done (unless you're dead, then it's safe to say that you're done).
I (Luke) have learned so much during this time and have had the chance to read some awesome books, sit under some really good teachers, and do some hands on stuff that has stretched me quite a lot, but it has been really amazing and I would do it again, definately.

Video Blog #2

Hello friends. This is our second video Blog and this one is very much fun times yes? This is a little taste of some of the ministry that we are doing during this time of outreach.

Blessings.

Montana

We are in Montana, (Woot!) now close to the end of outreach and even closer to staring our new life in ministry; we're excited and scared at the same time, it is good. One thing we've learned, and has been ever clear during this time, is that Jesus Lord.

We have done a lot of cool outreaches during this time in and it's been amazing, all the things that God in His providence has lead us into.

Last week, we had the opportunity to join a prayer team at a "Get motivated!" seminar, which is the largest of it's type in the world. We were invited by a man named Joe Walsh to pray for the people that were in attendance. It was quite amazing and we definitely felt like we had no business being there, but God called us to be there and it was awesome. The speakers there ranged from Gen. Colin Powell to Mike Phelps, and was totally amazing to be a part of. The leaders of the event also spoke and gave a gospel message which was really good and the 17,000 people who were there were impacted by a straight forward call to repentance.

So, we're staying in Polson, Montana for this week. The surrounding area for about 100 mile radius is Reserve land belonging to the Flathead Indian nation. We have teamed up with the Island Breeze DTS once again, actually for the first time since Vancouver. Tomorrow we get to be a part of something that is a first for the people of this reserve here in Montana. We are meeting with the tribal council of the reserve and the Samoans are going to present a message, cultural dances, songs and gifts to them on behalf of the countries and cultures. (There are ten countries represented in our team.) It's really cool and Really different. Also we'll be preparing and serving a luao lunch. Our DTS is taking on a servant role for the Samoans and help them make this time a success.
There is a lot of protocol involved in something like this, which we have spent some time learning about. We are so excited to see how God is going to use this opportuinty! For His Glory!

Video Blog #1

Hello all faithful Blog followers. We have a little treat for you today, it's our first video Blog. We just figured that we it would be fun if you could see exactly where we are at and some of what we are doing. Enjoy.

Outeach week 3

We are now into out third week of outreach. It's funny how God changes things and directs us to people & places we would never think of.

Everyone on the team was really excited to go to Seattle and Mars Hill church for a sunday service but unfortunatly the van broke down and we had to stay in Vancouver for another few days. It was all good though, we got to hang out with Danny and Arielle (Barbie's brother & his GF) for another evening (and shower at their place, yeah!) God always works things out for good for those who love Him.

We also got to spend some time with YWAM Vancouver and encourage their team. They were/are also in the middle of a litigation process for their base. Apparently the city has re-zoned their base as residential and they are not allowed to be there now. So they have been in a large process of getting their base back, good times.

$1900.00 later, our van is fixed and we're on the road again. Stopping breafly in Seattle to pray for the city we headed to Salem OR. We stayed the night in Salem at the YWAM base which was quite nice; All their guest rooms are theamed after countries and Barbie and I stayed in the Azerbaijan room which was really nice. We met a young man named Adrian who we got to spend a lot of time sharing with and praying for, it was really awesome. He's a cool dude. Actually, he is a stunt man and he has done stunts in some pretty big movies like "The Fantastic Four". We only stayed in Salem for one night and then headed for Redding CA. Arriving in Redding at one of our host family's place, Shane and Ginny Grimes, to have dinner and then headed to Bethel Church. I'm not sure if you have heard of Bethel Church, but it is a great place and people are on fire there. The team there ministered to us and we got to sit in on some classes in their Supernatural School of Ministry which has about one thousand students. Our time in Redding was so great and we met and minnistered to a lot of people.

Treasure Hunts- If you have never heard of a treasure hunt, it is about the most crazy thing I have done. Basically you wait on God, asking Him to show places, peoples names, appearance, prayed needs and unusual things to look for. Then you go out and look for them, and when you find those things you pray for people. One of the teams that went out came back with a crazy testimony of finding a woman who exactly fit the list someone made and who told them that the day before she had said to God "if you love me send someone to tell me." No Joke. It was totally amazing and our team has now adoped the idea and are trying it out in other citys we visit. Redding was amazing, going to church there was a blast and I would say probably the most intimate and intense worship I have ever experienced.

Leaving Redding we made the short drive to Chico CA We stayed at the YWAM base there and it is an incredible place. The base there is actually an old hotel built in the twenty's for movie stars and is still in quite good shape. After we unpacked our stuff ,we found out that there was a pastors conference there with over seventy pastors attending from the county. We were given the opportunity to attend a prayer meeting with them and given some time to speak. It was crazy. I really felt that God had given me a word to speak to the pastors about holding thelogical issues in the open and closed hand and what needs to be in the closed hand thelogically and what we should hold in the open hand thelogically. It went well and I got some good feed back from a few of the pastors. Another thing that happend near the end they asked if there were pastors that wanted to come up for prayer about any personal issues that they had. One pastor named Abe came up and said that he was afraid to blow it and just wanted God to be proud of him. I felt like God told me to tell him that He (God) had a wallet with his picture in it. Yeah sounds pretty funny but, obedience. So after the meeting was done I found him and told him that. He began to tell me that he tells people that all the time and it means a lot to him. He thanked me then began to tell me how he was just so scared of messing up I told him not to worry about that and that it would be important for him to study pastors who have messed up and see where they stumbled and also have a network of Godly men around him to be accountable to he thanked me again and left.

The next day we headed out on our first team treasure hunt. The treasure hunt this time was definatly different than in Redding for what ever reason. We ended up praying for a young ladies Dad who was struggeling with pancreatic cancer. How we arrived at this point is the interesting part. Like before, in Redding, we waited on God for people, places, things ect. One person got "Jon and Bon's" which is an ice cream shop, another person got "fountain", and "pancreatic ailment", another got "purple shirt and red nail polish". And another got "octopus". When we met this girl named Jacqueline, she was wearing a purple shirt she had red toe nail polish and she standing was in between a fountain and Jon and Bon's ice cream shop, and in the fountain was a statue of an Octapuss. Barbie went up to her and told her all this. When she asked if we could pray for anything, Jacqueline told us that she had a grandpa who was dying from pancreatic cancer. Coinsidence?

After a few more days in Chico and serving the base there we headed out for Sacramento.

This trip has been amazing so far. We, our team, all believe that God is leading us on a journey that is much different from a conventional outreach, whatever that is, and far from what we might expect it to be. It was the sense from the beginning that He would be putting us in places where we had no business being with people who we would not otherwise ever contact. This is exactly what He's been doing, so far, along with teaching us much of whi He is. Jesus Is Lord!