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)

God is Good :)

That's the cry that God has put in my heart and the hearts of those around me. In the last two weeks, our Father has totally cared for us, nurtured us, and protected us :)

The week before last, Scott Smith, the base leader spoke on world religions, covering witchcraft, buddhism, hinduism, and mormonism. It was a fascinating week, and it was a lot of fun to learn about the other religions and see where they come from when they make statements of belief.

Then this past week, Bob Reasener spoke about the character and nature of God. We had a few laughs because one of the students is named Chad Reimer, so we had a week of "Reim and Reasen" :D Anyway, Bob was an excellent speaker. He's pastored a church nearby for over 10 years, and been all over the world, both speaking and holding leadership training sessions. He really ministered to us and had a lot of solid teaching that we needed to hear. He spoke about God as a Master, as King, as the Bridegroom and as Friend.

Then on Thursday, he spoke to us out of one of his favorite subjects, "Big God, little devil." In this teaching talked about how we as christians often think of satan as the opposite of God and therefore equal in power. But God is so much bigger and more powerful than satan that when satan "fell from heaven like lightning" (Luke 10:18) God wasn't even the one who kicked him out. God sent the archangel Michael to do it. But so many times we forget who we belong to and start living in fear of what the devil can do to us. It was an amazing message that we really needed to hear :)

Then yesterday we had fun time in the morning and we got to go sledding! :) We drove up to Olson mountain and the Cooleies brought their snowmobile "or snow machine as they call it here" and towed us up the hill and we rode sleds down. Greg also brought his snowboard and was kind enough to let us students who were dying to snowboard use it :)

So all in all it's been an amazing two weeks :)
I hope everyone's doing well!
God bless,
Josiah

Praises:
God has totally answered your prayers for unity on the team and continues to grow us closer together!!
Excellent ministry and teaching these past two weeks

Prayers:
Provision for the students who still need money for outreach (a large portion of the cost is due in three days)

Happy Valentines Day

Hey Everyone!

Happy Valentines Day!

Last week I was in Santa Barbara, at Westmont College competing for their Monroe scholarship, so I wasn't able to write anything up. It's been a pretty good last two weeks. Last week the staff taught on various subjects; modesty, public speaking, emotions, and forgiveness.

This past week, a pastor from Kodiak island came and taught on intercession and spiritual warfare. He's the pastor of a very charismatic church, so we didn't agree with some of the stuff he talked about, but what he had to say was very good :)

I've been really tired this past week. I only got fourteen hours of sleep all of last weekend, so I was pretty wiped throughout the week. Oh! Speaking of the week, it was Angel-Mortal week. Each person is assigned a "mortal" to be an "Angel" to for the week and you have to do something nice for them every day, which was a lot of fun. Then yesterday, we tried to guess who our angel was and we all revealed ourselves.

I hope you're all doing well!
God bless,
Josiah

Praises:
The scholarship competition went well, and my trip went smoothly
The volcano hasn't gone off (yet)

Prayers:
That I would get more sleep
One of our team members is really struggling with submission to authority, so if you could pray for her, that would be great.

The Shack

Hey Everyone :)

I just finished the second book we were assigned. It's called The Shack and it's an amazing work. The book feels God-inspired and it's beautifully written and tells an incredible story about who God is. While some of it is a little different theologically, I still enjoyed it to no end. I definitely reccomend it to all believers out there!

In other news, we finally got some snow :) So everything is covered in beautiful white :) For small group today we dug out the firepit (down a foot and a half) and roasted hot dogs in 0 degrees :)

Life's been super fun!

Hope you all are doing well!
God bless,
Josiah

Praises:
Snow!
Amazing teaching :)

Prayers:
That I would have a safe flight down to Santa Barbara on Thursday
That Redoubt (a local volcano) wouldn't cause too much damage when it blows

It's been a good week :)

Hey everyone!

I've had a really amazing week :)

Our speaker for the week was Luba Iliyn, the wife of the YWAM North American director. She spent the week talking about relationships between people and what they should look like.

We covered:
Relationships between a husband and wife
Between a girlfriend and boyfriend
and
Between parents and children (from both sides)

The lectures were fascinating :)

Then today, for community outreach we practiced random acts of kindness and shoveled people's driveways for free since the town recieved about six inches of snow yesterday and today.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to :)

Hope you all are well.

Josiah

Praises:
My chapel talk this morning went well :)
We have snow again!

Prayers:
For our internet which is still horrid
We're sending a team out soon to go hunting, because the base is almost out of frozen meat, so you can pray for their success

Cross Walk

On Thursday, for community outreach time we went for a prayer walk carrying an eight foot cross made out of four-by-fours.

Sounds extreme doesn't it? We thought so! Our team was pretty freaked out when they told us what we'd be doing. I was pretty sure it was going to be the scariest thing I'd ever done, so I volunteered to carry it first.

However, as we were praying in a group before setting out, God reminded me of a word that He had given me through another student a few days before. He had said "You have boldness inside you, but you need to BE bold!" I felt like I could do it.

It turned out to be amazing! We all took turns carrying the cross and the bearer would walk about 25 feet ahead of the rest of the group and listen for directions from the Holy Spirit. The rest of the group followed and prayed for the one bearing the cross and for the buildings we passed by. We covered most of the downtown area in the two hours we had.

It was an amazing mix of feelings to literally "take up my cross and follow Jesus." I was scared, excited, happy, and very very humbled. But that challenge of stepping out in faith really boosted my confidence in God's faithfullness. We obeyed and stepped way out of our comfort zone and He totally came and met us.

I'm proud of the bruise on my shoulder now, and I'd gladly do the crosswalk again!

Have a great weekend everyone, and God bless!
Josiah

Day to Day Life

I realized that I haven't given an overview of what we do every day, so here's my schedule from today as a quick example :)

7:00am - Breakfast - Pancakes and bacon
7:30am - Quiet time for the students,
My team was on meal cleanup
today though so I was doing dishes
8:00am - Worship
9:00am - Intercession - This is really cool,
Us students get an hour to pray
over each other and listen for what
God puts on our hearts.
10:00am - Lecture
Our lecture today was on the renewing
of our minds by spending time in the
Word and by worshipping
12:30pm - Lunch - Chicken casserole
1:00pm - Lunch cleanup
1:30pm - Lecture
3:00pm - Work Duties
I'm on the maintainence crew, so we cleaned.
I was assigned the bathrooms.
5:00pm - Short break
5:30pm - Dinner - Pasta Salad and berries and ice cream
6:00pm - Dinner cleanup
6:45pm - Free Time
10:00pm - Curfew

We have work duties three days a week and classes or community outreach the other two days (T/Th).

My team does meal cleanup every Monday and then we're off for the rest of the week :)

The weekends are totally free except for mandatory service at a local church.

anyway, hopefully that gives you all a better idea of what I'm up to :)

Josiah

Praises:
Great time of worship and intercession today
Our team is apparently coming together better than any so far!

Prayers:
One of our team members, Crystal has been pretty ill today, so pray that she recovers quickly

Short tidbits

Hey, I'm about to go to bed, but I've got time to share a few quick tidbits.

Classes are still going great! We're wrestling with some pretty trippy stuff, like Authority and Dominion, and also some really deep stuff, like the fruits, pains, and causes of pain of the heart.

Life is good, we're all getting alone and really growing together as a close-knit team. The food is excellent and I have clean clothes! We went to the laundromat as a group and hung out there for a couple hours while we did our laundry. We had time to play a quick round of Settlers of Catan, in which I pulled off an unexpected win :)

God's really been pulling us and growing us and drawing us to step out in faith.

I've got everyone's thank you letter stamped and addressed, but I haven't had the chance to run down to the post office yet. So you'll hopefully be getting those shortly. I'll probably have time to take a trip down there this weekend :) For now though, our schedules are packed from breakfast through bedtime :) Which is amazing though. We're enjoying worship. spending significant time in intercession and prayer, communing and fellowshipping together and growing in God!

alright everyone, I've got to get some sleep!
God bless!
Josiah

Praises:
I really enjoyed the teaching on forgiveness today, I really feel like I'm learning a lot here!
Clean Clothes!
The weather's warmed up!
This was in response to prayers from our base leaders for the interior of Alaska which was stuck at -60ish

Prayers:
Safety for us, since the rain makes the roads treacherous
Continued good fellowship in our group

... With a bang!

Today started the school in earnest. I drew work duties for Mondays, so I helped out with the meal cleanups all day which wasn't too bad. It was only a few more dishes than I'd have to wash at home :)

After breakfast and quiet time we had an hour of worship, then an hour of free time before classes commenced. We began with a study of the Tower of Babel (did you know that God was NOT angry at Babel? read the passage!) and saw how that applied to God's vision for humanity (that they would fill the earth) and how that applied to missions.

After lunch and cleanup, we had an interactive teaching on adoration and revelation, then we did an in-depth bible study on the book of Philemon, and how it represents the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I finished the day off with a delicious dinner and a thoroughly satisfying victory at Settlers of Catan.

I'm really excited about the days to come and what God's going to bring us next!

I'm off to bed!
Josiah

Praises:
Excellent first day of classes.
We really connected with God and each other during worship

Prayers:
That our fellowship would continue to be good
That the internet would improve :)

Gettin Started

Hey everyone!

The past couple days our team spent fasting from electronic devices in order to build relationships amongst ourselves. We spent the time at a local church, helping to paint part of the inside of the church as well as enjoying get-to-know-each-other games and some awesome snow football. We also enjoyed some amazing worship and a time of sharing of testimonies. We've really begun to draw together as a team and as a group, overcoming our inhibitions and boundaries and we've started to trust each other. We've got Sunday off and we start in on classes Monday morning!

I'm excited for what's gonna come next and I'm feeling a lot of peace that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be for this season.

Josiah

Praises:
Amazing week so far
Got to have a long chat with Jerry

Prayers:
That our internet would start working better so I can communicate with you all

I'm here!

I'm finally here! Three flights, four airports (the last one smaller than my house) and one van ride across a frozen lake and I'm finally here.

I'm all unpacked and about to fall asleep for the first time in what will be my house for the next three months. I'm really looking forward to what God has for me during this time!

There's four other students going through the school with me: Chad, a wiry Canadian of nineteen, Lissy, a 21 year-old german girl who's training to become a nurse, Maxia, a lady from Bolivia, and Crystal, a college student from the U.S.

Our orientation over, we're starting bright and early tomorrow with a "surprise" trip, probably aimed at team building :)

Anyway, God bless and I'll write again soon!

Praises:
Safe travel
Dedicated staff
Devoted fellow students

Prayers:
For the lecture phase to go smoothly
For the temperature to increase a little
(it's a balmy -1F out right now)

About to leave

Hey Everyone!

I'm about to leave and things are getting pretty hectic as we desperately try to cram everything into my suitcase (Thank goodness for my mom's packing skills) and print out my itinerary and just generally get stuff moving! I leave in less than an hour for the airport and my flight leaves in just four hours.

I'm praying for safe travel! I'll post again after I land.

God bless and thank you everyone!
Josiah