Salem, Oregon

Hey everyone, just an update. This week our school is in Salem, Oregon for a conference on Injustice. It was a really long trip up here from L.A, but it was still a lot of fun. I've never seen this side of the continent and so the mountains were new for me to see, which was really exciting. I'm sure thats old news for all of you, oh well haha.
Our first night here was so cool, instead of just learning about injustice we actually got to experience it, and my eyes were opened. We experienced what slave workers are put through in sweat shops, what unclean water tastes like and how so many have to travel so far to get it. We experienced what a brothel would look like and how prostitutes are treated in them. We also got taken and put in a situation where we were forced to kill someone (acting obviously) in being used as a war child. This one was really crazy because a truck actually came up behind us and we were blind folded and forced into the truck bed. We also learnt about abortion and the process of abortion, which broke my heart to see how its done and how often. We also saw how people are drugged at bars and clubs to then be used for their organs to be sold on the black market and left for dead. It was such a tough night for me to get just the slightest taste of what it would actually be like to be in these situations in real life. I think the thing that bothered me most is that my life should've been described by these acts of injustice, but thank God that He rescued me through my parents in Brandon by adopting me. So Mom and Dad thanks for adopting me! Anyway, this is just a brief update, we will be driving home on Friday night and back to our regular routine next week.
Hope you all have a great week and God Bless!
Adam

Update!

Well it has been an amazing week and I’ve got lots to share with you all. This past week the weather has been absolutely amazing, which I’m sure warms all your hearts back in Canada. I have never been pushed so much in my walk with Christ in so many different ways it has been so humbling since I’ve been here. I’m discovering a whole new meaning of what it means to be a Christian and what it actually means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I really don’t know how I lived without knowing Jesus this way my whole life; it is by His Grace I’m where I am today.

Last week we had a lady named Kristie Wilkie speaking on Hearing God’s voice, which is something I’ve thought I’ve always struggled with. I realized very quickly it had nothing to do with God’s inability to speak it was my inability to hear. Our God is a communicator I discovered very quickly, and it’s so cool to actually be able to talk with Him throughout my days. I’ll give you example of how God spoke to me this week, which was a memory I will carry with me all my life. Last week we were doing a lot of practice hearing God’s voice and we would ask God to give us words or scripture to share with a certain person in the room. I’ve never done anything like this before in my life, so it was such an eye opener that God can speak to anyone about anything at anytime. Anyways after last week I really wanted to talk on my own with God and not rely on someone else to initiate it. A couple nights ago we were in a worship session and it was spontaneous because the guy who was teaching our lecture just felt lead to put off teaching for the rest of the night to sing. It was an amazing time of worship, but the coolest thing happened for me just as we were about to leave to go back to our dorms. I got a word for one of the girls who stayed sitting while everyone else left for the night. The word was “Jump,” I can’t explain how strong I felt I needed to share this word with her, but my mind kept telling me I was making it up. I prayed about it just to make sure that I was not acting on my own behalf and I really felt I needed to share it with her. I wrote her a note and felt God needed me to tell her to jump because He was waiting to catch her. I left it in front of her and left to go get a cup of coffee from the dining hall. No more than a minute later she came to me and I honestly thought that I offended her by saying it just in the expression on her face. Then the first words that came out of her mouth were, “I don’t know how.” I was so surprised by her reaction, but it was so exciting to know that what I wrote her actually had meaning and I knew it was from God. We sat down and talked about it and it was just so amazing how God used that moment and conversation to humble me before Him and to encourage her to not be afraid to Jump into the life He has waiting for her.

That’s the really short version of the story and I can tell you that this kind of stuff has been happening all week here and I honestly can’t explain how it has changed my view of my Saviour. I used to think that God was only watching over us, but now I can see He’s also walking with us. When we eat, when we sleep, when we work, when we drive, in school, any situation you can think of He is there with us! Now I know people will say yeah I always knew that, but how do you live that out? For me I have been really focusing on thinking about Jesus as a person in my life, I know it sounds crazy, but bear with me. When I walk I talk to with him as if he’s beside me walking, when I eat, I talk to Him as if He’s eating with me, when I pray, I pray as if He is right there with me. Along with that, I have put pennies in my shoes, so every time I take a step I am reminded that He is with me, this was a cool idea that Kristie gave us all last week. I encourage all who read this to try it out; it’ll change your life. Once we finally embrace God’s presence we break the mould of just a thirty minute a day relationship with God. He doesn’t just want to speak to us in a thirty minute devotion He wants to speak to us in every single thing we do in a day.

Anyways I’m going to work on shortening my blogs so that I don’t have to keep trying to remember and piece together everything from the weeks past. I also will be sure to keep these blogs from turning into sermons, I’ve got such an information overload and I’m just waiting to pour it out, but I think that my blog would crash if I tried to get all my thoughts and experiences in one blog. Thanks again for your prayers and support, I love and miss you all!

Adam

Outreach Location!

Hey everyone! Last night we were given our options for our outreach locations, which we will be leaving for the first week of April for two months. Our options were Haiti/Dominican Republic, Morocco and Thailand. After wrestling with God for an hour about this, I finally felt that Thailand is where Jesus needs me most. I have a great team as well and I'm so excited to start preparing for this new adventure! Hope you all have a great day!
Adam

Busy, Busy, Busy, Sorry!

Hey everyone, I’ve really pushed updating this blog up for way to long, God has given me a lot to think about and work through. First of all the weather here has really started to warm up which is so nice after so many cold and rainy days. I honestly think I would rather have snow over rain. Anyways, I guess I’ll get right into getting you up to speed with what has been happening lately.
First of all, my roommate Patrick is no longer in the school, which has been something I have struggled dealing with. I’ve finally just surrendered it up to God in trust that He will take care of him where ever he goes. He didn’t do anything bad, but there were some personal health issues that lead to him leaving two Saturdays ago. He truly was the most genuine guy I’ve ever met, he would ask for prayer at anytime and anywhere. I really looked up to him for that, he had such a simple faith which was so cool to be a part of and learn from. This was really awesome for me to see what a completely genuine heart for God looked like. I also saw how the evil one can disrupt that, which broke my heart to see how much stress it put on him. For his privacy sake I won’t go into anymore details.
Two weeks ago we had a guy named Chris Lautsbaugh speaking who completely tore me apart in how small my view of Christ was. The main theme was Grace and Karma and then we took Grace deeper into Salvation. The easiest way to sum up everything I learnt is that the struggles of sin were bigger in my eyes than the power of Salvation. I wish I could sit here and type out everything he said because it would literally blow your minds, but I’d rather share it in person. Last week we had Dean Sherman here and he gave us a spiritual butt kicking which has been so awesome too! He was teaching on spiritual warfare and it is some serious stuff, it was really stretching for me. As a Christian it can be so easy to get stuck on Salvation, and Salvation is only the doorway into the Kingdom life. Jesus didn’t come just to redeem our souls but he came to redeem our lives here on earth. Salvation is only the doorway into the Kingdom, don’t let Salvation be the only evidence that you are saved, let your life declare it as well! His desire is that our lives would speak louder than our words to the non believers around us and sadly today the millions of lukewarm or pretend believers as well.
YWAM has already completely changed my life, if I were to pack up and come home today I would still be able to say this was the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I have never experienced God in such a way as I have here; I am so thankful that God allowed me to come here. We will be finding out where we are going to go on outreach tomorrow, I’m beginning to feel a calling to another country other than Thailand, but we will see how that all works out in time. We also picked our focus tracks two weeks ago and I chose the Justice track, which will be dealing with the human trafficking as well the whole sex trade industry. I would really appreciate your prayers for God to open doors for us to shed His light in these very dark areas.
I’ve finally started to learn that I will never understand how big God is and all that makes Him who he is. I’m reading this book written by the pastor of the church that I’m attending every Sunday and he describes it like this. If my mind is the size of a soda can and God is the size of all the oceans, it would be stupid for me to say He is only the small amount of water I can scoop into my little can. It’s so simple and somehow I have found a way to ignore this my whole life, which has lead to me to finally see God for what He truly is. I feel like a little kid here because everything is so new for me; I’ve never dug so deep into the word as I have here.
This past Friday we went out with our focus tracks and our Justice track went out raising awareness of human trafficking in Burbank. This was a lot of fun and we had so many people respond to it with a great interest in being a part of standing against it. The stats here in the USA are tough to swallow knowing that there are 100,000 – 300,000 under age children being sold into prostitution and the average age of those kids is 13 years old. People were blown away after hearing that and the coolest people to share this with was the young girls in the mall. They really expressed a deep concern knowing that it’s girls their age that are the targets for this industry. I’m not sure what we will be doing this Friday, but I know after speaking to about 150 people last time around I’m sure God has big things planned for this Friday as well!
This past Saturday was an amazing eye opener for me as I took part in a Boot Camp for kids at serious risk of getting into lifestyles that would most likely wreck their lives if not end them. We met all the LAPD officers that were running the boot camp and they warned us to be ready for what we were about to see and to know that they were only doing this out of love for the kids. There were about 14 people from our YWAM base that went and we lined up along the back fence just to observe. There were 70 kids lined up on a basketball court and these police officers came flying through the gates and just ripped into these kids it was really shocking for me. I had seen stuff like this on shows like Maury, but in real life it’s a whole new feeling. As much as you want to step out and stop it you know that these kids don’t listen to anyone and if no one disciplines them their lives will completely spin out of control. The first two weeks we will just be getting used to the environment just so the kids can get comfortable with our faces and two weeks from now we will begin mentoring these kids. I’m really excited to just love on these kids who have been looking for attention in all the wrong places; our team has such a big heart for these kids ranging in age from 8 – 17 years old.
This week Randy Thomas is our speaker and he spoke for the first time last night and he was so good. He is so funny I’ve never laughed so hard in a setting like that. Randy has spoken at hundreds of DTS schools and ran many of them; he is so good at what he does. He has a sense of humour kind of like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy, I couldn’t stop laughing. We will be learning about the Nature and Characteristics of God this week from him, which I’m really excited to learn about. It’s been so humbling coming from home thinking I knew so much and now feeling like I haven’t even touched the surface. This is a feeling I’m sure God will always want me to have the rest of my life, because our minds can’t even begin to work like His. I got to get to class, have a great day everyone!
P.S I’m sorry about taking so long, I’ll get it back together!
Adam