Gambell

Gambell was a totally different place. St. Lawrence Island is supposed to be a dry island, and there are steep fines and jail sentances attached to smuggling liqour in. There is, however, a lot of homebrew. This was way more apparent in Gambell than in Savoonga. Every other night a few drunk men would come to the church and just sit down. Sometimes they'd sob, other times they'd worship, and occasionally they'd just sit quiet and listen to the service. The cool thing about them being drunk was that they always accepted an offer of prayer. So we got to pray with and talk to them and just minister to them and love on them.

Again, we spent a lot of time with the kids. In Gambell, I was able to volunteer at the school with a couple other members of our team. We went MWTh after lunch to help out in the elementary school homerooms, which was awesome :) I love the kids there! Then after school we ran VBS MWF. In Gambell we got to interact with the elders of the church a lot more, It's at their request that we spent so much time with the kids. The elders' main concerns are always for "the young people." We saw a lot of fruit in the young kids, and a real hunger for the word of God. Several of the 6th graders that I became friends with while working in the school accepted Christ while we were there! So that was incredible :)

On the signs and wonders side, this partzular trip was crazy. God spoke to us through the skies in insane ways, including angels and halos in the clouds, as well as a rainbow appearing on a totally overcast day! We also saw radical healings, but that's going to have to wait for my next post :)

God bless!
Josiah

Vacation in Seward

Hey Everyone :)

My apologies for not posting in a while! We had extremely limited internet access while one the island, and so I'm going to be writing a few catch-up posts over the next few days :)

Today was AMAZING! I'm on vacation now (we graduated on thursday) with Martina's parents and the Uhligs. We went on a day cruise out of Seward
to see wildlife and glaciers and it was incredible! We saw like 6
humpback whales, and at least ten orcas. The orcas were so friendly,
they came right up to the boat and poked their noses out of the water
at us! We also passed by a ton of porpoises, sea otters, sea lions,
harbor seals, and saw literally millions of different types of birds
nesting on their cliffs. The most amazing thing was the glacier
though!! There aren't words to describe it! It was so majestic and
just... huge! The glacier we stopped at is over half a mile across
where it meets the ocean, and four miles long and over 600 feet high.
Pieces of it were constantly breaking off and falling into the water,
thousands of tons of ice splashing down with a sound like cannons
firing! It was so beautiful too, this light aquamarine blue all over
with streaks of cobalt. I felt like such a tourist, but it was
incredible. God's creation is SO amazing! And the landscape itself was
gorgeous. The sheer cliffs rise straight up out of the water, towering
several hundred feet over the waves and they're capped with these
dense pine forests and grasses and bushes. Higher up the snow-covered
peaks of the mountains poke up into the clouds and mist and form a
perfect backdrop to the puffins flying by and the mountain goats
perched on the crags. It was such an amazing day.

So yeah, I'll try and write up a few things on our outreach soon!

Josiah

Savoonga

Hey All!

Globalization is such a weird thing... We're in a village of less than 1,000 people, surrounded by natives whose primary sustenance still comes from hunting whale by hand-thrown harpoon, and yet the store carries pop-tarts, the kids dress in Volcom, and everyone listens to hip-hop and rock.

Anyway, I'm two weeks into my outreach and doing wonderfully! We've been warmly welcomed by the church and the citizens and joyfully received by the kids. We've been running a VBS style program MWF after school until dinnertime, and hanging out with the youth (14 and up) after dinner.

Savoonga is amazing. I think I could live here pretty happily. There's no roads and no cars, so everyone owns an ATV for summer and a snowmobile for winter. Most everyone hunts for a living and all of them carve ivory. We've had at least twenty people knock on our door with carvings to sell. (if you want anything made in ivory, now would be the time to tell me :P statutes and jewelry here are 4-10 times cheaper than anywhere else in the world) In contrast, gas and any food that has to be flown in is ridiculously expensive. ($7.10 for a gallon of gas, and $6.30 for a box of cheez-its)

Most of our days have been committed to ministry, but on our day off (Tuesday) we've had some fun. Last tuesday Garrik and Michael took Josh and me snowboarding behind their snowmobiles, which was amazing! We found a sweet little cliff too and had some fun going off it and doing tricks. Then today, Josh and I got up early and went ice fishing. The fishing here is incredible. The guy sitting next to us pulled up over 100 fish in less than 4 hours. Josh and I weren't quite so talented, but we still pulled in about 20, which we then cleaned and fried up for lunch :)

Anyway, I've gotta go, I'm going to attend a martial arts class here in a few (Yay!)

Hopefully I've given you an idea of what this place is like, I'll try to post later about specifics of what we've been up to!

God bless!

Josiah

Leaving for outreach :)

Hey Everyone!

So, the volcano blew again and covered Homer in ash, but we're all safe and sound :) The ash settled down last night and we were able to get up this morning at quarter to five and we were on the road by 6:00. Our road trip up was relatively uneventful (saw a bunch of moose grazing by the side of the road!) and we got to Anchorage at 10:15. Happily, we had a few hours to shop and now we're at the airport with 10 bags, 10 coolers, and 2 peices of oversized luggage checked. (The lady at the check-in counter said she remembered YWAM from last year!)
We fly out at 5:00 tonight and we're spending the night in Nome before leaving for the island!

These past few weeks have been really good :) Our speakers have been amazing and have really built up our faith!

We're about to board so... God bless!

Josiah

Praises:
WE'RE OFF!

Prayers:
Safe travel on the rest of our journey

Volcano

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know the volcano I wrote about a month back had quieted down and they said it was no longer an issue. However, over the weekend it became active again and it's erupted like 6 times since, spewing ash over 10 miles up. The wind is blowing away from us, so we won't get hit by the ash, but several other towns will be, so if you could pray for them that'd be great!

Hope you're all well!

God bless,
Josiah

Praises:
Volcano has missed us!
A huge chunk of need for one of the students who needs money has been met!!! Praise the Lord!

Prayers:
Pray for the people who will get hit by the ash
Pray for the remaining financial need our team has - about $2000 total

Winding up

Lecture phase is winding up! Only two weeks until we leave for the island! Our team is doing excellently, keeping busy and really building unity and trust amongst ourselves.

Two weeks ago, our speaker was Bevin Ginder, a worship pastor from the Denver YWAM base. His teaching on missions was very inspiring because he approached it in a way that was exciting and attainable. Most people (including myself up to this point) view missions as a task. The "Great Comission" or "Our marching orders." But Bevin's focus was on the story of the gospel. The bible and our lives are part of an amazing epic that is being written. An epic, full of battle and heroics as well as the most incredible romantic plotline is unfolding around us and our call is to step into our role in the story. The Gospel is a two-part message.
Part one says "God is going to bless your socks off!" In other words, He's going to save you, give you eternal life, and give you abundant life on the earth. Part two says "Go and use that blessing to be a blessing to others." This was first declared to Abraham when God makes the covenant with him. God says in Genesis 12: "I will bless you... and all nations shall be blessed through you." Bevin's takeaway was that you can't preach one without the other. So our mission is to take that two-fold gospel, apply it to our lives and in doing so take the gospel to others.

This past week we've learned about Islam and the Jehovah's Witnesses and why their teachings don't make sense, and about God's plans and purposes in our lives, and about our identity as cleansed sons of God. The identity in Christ teaching was something that I really needed, because I, like a lot of other people think that God must be angry at me when I sin and that He wants to punish me. That's wrong thinking however, because to think that is to deny the finished work of the cross. Saying that God is still going to be angry and condemning when I sin is the same thing as saying "The cross wasn't good enough." So that was incredibly freeing to me, since it means that I don't have to fall on my face and feel miserable in order for God to forgive me :)

So yeah :) Life's been really good!! We've had some awesome times of prayer and intercession, and a good amount of time just marveling at the beauty of God's creation around us! The mountains and the oceans are spectacular and everything here is just so beautiful. Oh and we had a moose in our front yard today :) It was a really little one, probably only one or two so it was only as tall as a minivan. But it hung around for a while, ate some grass the ambled off :)

Friday night we had a masquerade party as an opportunity to just have some fun and get to know people better and fellowship with the community of friends YWAM has built in and around town :) so that was a lot of fun! Chad, the other guy student and I dressed up in matching robes and facemasks and had a lot of fun entering the costume contest. We would have definitely won had not Scott, our base leader shown up as an outhouse :P Good times :)

Anyway, I hope you're all doing well! I really appreciate your prayers and support! God bless! I miss you guys!

Josiah

Praises:
God is totally answering our prayers right and left, little things are getting straightened out and He's been so faithful to us and kept our path smooth!
Our team is really bonding even closer together and learning to work together.
We're all excited and looking forward to our outreach!

Prayers:
Some of our team members are still in need of finances for the trip, so your prayers for them are really appreciated!

We're in a battle of ideas

Hey everyone :)

We had a really fascinating speaker this week; Tom Osterhus. His subject was the differing worldviews that are competing to take over the minds of the world's population.
He talked about the seven "mind-molders" which are the ways in which worldviews are spread:

Family - Clan/tribe/people group
Religion
Education
Government
Celebration - arts/entertaiment/sports
Media
Economics

One of his main points was the Christians have really dropped the ball in almost all of these areas. But the other worldviews (secular humanist and eastern) have flooded into that gap and taken over these areas with their ideas. We as Christians have a responsibility to teach the truth in all of these areas, but we have failed to and become "tolerant" and wishy washy.

The following table gives the basic summary of the info he gave us about the different worldviews. The table shows the basic questions of life and the answers each worldview gives:

Basic Questions	Biblical Christian WV	Secular WV	Eastern WV
Truth Epistomology How do we know that we know?	Rational Revelation Divine Revelation that comes through the biblical scriptures. The Bible is Truth	Rationalism "Man by taking thought" Means thought and logic is "god" So truth comes from logical reasoning	Intuition Faith in faith, faith in mystical experiences. Truth comes through "feeling"
Orgin Where did the universe and man come from? "Ontology" -Study of where everything came from	The infinite and personal God of the Bible created the universe and man	The result of an as yet undiscovered naturalistic causation. In other words we don't have a clue, but we DEFINITELY know it's not Intelligent Design Universe comes from the big bang, man comes from evolution. These are the predominant theories	We can't really know for sure where everything came from. Brahman is infinite, but impersonal. Like the force in star wars. No mind, no conciousness. Man is god in a temporary state of self-forgetfullness. Somehow, Brahman forgot he doesn't have a personality, and is dreaming that he's 6 billion people with personality
Condition Metaphysics - "What is the nature of what exists?"	Finite and Fallen BUT! Man is made in the Image of God. Every person has dignity, value, and worth. Both the natural and the supernatural exist	Everything is a product of "Chance+Time+Matter" No supernatural, only the material world exists. All a human is is recycled matter. Man is a sack of guts with hair. Man is ultimately an accident. But somehow, man is inherently good	No natural, only the supernatural exists. Everything is an illusion, a dream. Called "Maya" Brahman is the only thing that exists.
Morality Axiology "How should we life?" "What is right and wrong?" Ethics Also: "what has ultimate value?"	Based on the Bible. Moral absolutes as revealed by God	Truth is relative. So moral values are completely subjective. Morality is based on society, or on the individual. Because man is an accident, he has no value. Man is nothing but an animal so why not treat him like one? In fact, we should kill off all the weak ones, like we do with animals. All morality is based on what is "workable" If it works for society, it must be right	Do anything that allows you to gain good Karma. Things aren't good or bad, you just do what works to get you off the karmic wheel. It's amoral
Destiny Teleology "Where are we going?" Destiny of universe and of man	Towards the Kingdom Of God	Utopia in the kingdom of man The final destiny of the universe is heat death, when the universe becomes devoid of energy	Destiny is to escape the Maya. The goal is to drop the water of "you" out of the syringe of "maya" and drop back into the ocean of brahman. In other words, there is NO destiny. The ultimate goal is to disappear and vanish.

It's been a pretty academic week of teaching, but really enjoyable :)

On other matters, we've had a quiet, enjoyable week of living in community together :) We would appreciate your prayers for support as four of the outreach team members still have hefty financial needs that need to be met before we leave at the end of the month. So your prayers would be greatly appreciated :) Also, if you'd like to contribute, write me an email and I'll get back to you about how you can do so :)

Thank you and God bless!!

Josiah

Praises:
It's been an awesome week, praise God!
Our team is continually bonding even tighter together and we're making excellent progress in preparing to go to the island
I'm in excellent health and thriving despite the cold :)

Prayers:
Financial support for our team members
Good health (almost everyone on base has colds)