Hawaii to Haiti

Hey Everybody,

God is doing some amazing things here. Tami and I have a cool story to share about how we found out we're going to Haiti for outreach (April-June).

Tami and I had originally felt the lord tell us Guam/New Zealand, He showed us where to go and what He wants to do. So we were on that team and helped confirm what they would be doing. They were actually thinking of not going to Guam and in prayer, Tami heard God say, "the place you're going to has mountains and the name of it is (name of mountain)." When she looked up the mountain on google that mountain was in Guam. What are the chances that was awesome.

But then the earthquake happened and instantly I felt the peace of God even more than for Guam. So we prayed and said Lord you need to confirm this. So that night I prayed and said, 'Lord we really need to hear you on this would you speak to me in my dreams with clear interpretation tonight to confirm what I'm already feeling in my heart.' Then i wrote a note next to my bed that said,"thanks for speaking in my dreams tonight Lord because you are just that good." Then the next morning I woke up and I had this dream. I was in a car with Tami and her mom was with us, driving us to our wedding or honeymoon to drop us off and when we were on our way, Tami turns around and says 'you know what Jon I know of someone way better for you to marry and it will mean a lot more in your life if you do it. It's my younger sister.' Which obviously Tami doesn't have a younger sister. Then I agreed and her younger sister pulls up behind us on the road and I get in a mini van with her. When I woke up I pretty quickly knew what it meant. It was that we were married to the idea of Guam for outreach but the Lord actually had a much better place for us to go, I just didn't know about the other place yet cause the earthquake hadn't happened. Then Tami wakes up and she had a dream where someone was praying for her and said,"You're going to Haiti for outreach and three people are going with you." The Lord showed us that those three are: The love and heart of Father God, intimacy with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

We'll be staying at the YWAM base in St.Marc, 60 miles north of Port-Au-Prince, they're already working closely with the government and are helping transport people right now.  We are really excited for this cause we know for sure that God is going before us and I've already heard some amazing miraculous stories that are taking place there from guys from our base who just got back from a week long trip.  We're so excited about how God is going to restore this nation and its people through faith, hope and love.


Be praying for this, that God's plans come together for it all and for our team, we're taking 9 students. We love you guys and are praying for you.  Thank you very much for all your love, prayers and support.

As always the Lord is amazingly good.

Mahalo (Thank you),
  Jon

Back to ONE

Thanks for coming by, what you read in the rest of this lil' note is all masks off, the raw, gritty truth that might sometimes be piercing, but sometimes it's just what we need...and as we dive more and more into God's desires for us, let's take the fullness of His truth, hope and love to the lost, the least and lowly. We hope you discover more of who God is to you as you take it in too, we're learning together!

So today I sat just listening to what Jesus had to say...cause I had realized how much my time spent with God consisted of a to-do list for Him! And what kinda friendship is that!?! I mean I've enjoyed plenty of moments of just worshipping Him, but recently He encouraged me to just sit, be still and rest. And for all who know me, that's kinda hard to do, I think it's honestly hard for any of us to do because our lives are so busy where distractions are at our doorstep as soon as we wake up and we've gotta train ourselves to really "make every effort to enter His rest" as it says in Hebrews 4:11.

So for a while, I'm sitting there and Jesus was pretty quiet, I think He just wanted me to enjoy some silence for a change. Then He broke out and wanted me to pray this over His children: "return us back to one." John 17 popped into my head, the part where He prays for those who'll come to believe in Him. The Father and the Son are one (John 10:30) and they desire their children to be brought into the same union as them (John 17:20-23). He longs to return His children, me included, back into our rightful place of deeper union with Him, that our walk of faith will be about oneness with Him first - above ministry, serving, finances, worldly thinking, job positions, titles, etc. (Gal. 5:6).

He wants to take us back to the first commandment of loving Him will all our hearts, souls and minds, of putting Him before our hunger for greatness, giftings, anointings, selfish ambitions, etc.  Back to the simplicity of just being with Him, walking with Him as Enoch, Moses, Paul, and all those patriarchs did and making room for Him to be with us every second of the day.  And out of this deep union, His love and ministry (prophet, priest, teacher, etc.) will naturally flow out of us and into this hurting world.  And it's true, as I've welcomed Him into more and more of my life every single day, it's been nothing but joy, peace and freedom.

"Nothing Even Matters" by Lauryn Hill was playing in my head the other day. The Holy Spirit often uses songs to get a message across, He's like a jukebox! So He was trying to tell me that in this life, nothing really matters but Him. I was deeply convicted these past two weeks of school because as our leaders spoke on the love of God and our identity in Him, I was broken to know how I found security, acceptance, worth and value in people/things other than Him. How the foundation of my walk with Him was more me trying to serve and please Him and earn His love...or even other people's approval or recognition for that matter. Salvation is a gift, but I know I sometimes live like I need to pay Him back! How I've felt like I needed to make my destiny happen or even how I put ministry before Him, sought after anointings and giftings instead of just seeking Him alone. "Pursue love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts..." 1 Cor 14:1

And trust me, I'm speaking to myself, not to be patted on the back or anything, I'm trying to catch God's heart for all of us. But He wants to return all of us, His children, back into oneness with Him. Where we live out of a place of "He loves me!!!" Where it's not about how well we can love Him, serve Him, please Him with doing good things. Where it's about His overwhelming love for us that meets our deepest needs. "We love because He first loved us," 1 John 4:19.  No matter our past, present, mistakes and sins, He just loves us, we are the joy and inheritance of His suffering (Heb 12:2). I pray we can all learn to live out of His approval, pleasure and acceptance for us and be fulfilled in that.  I ask you the same question that was asked of me, that made me look deep within my heart:

If you were stuck on a deserted island and all you had was Jesus, would He be enough?
                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                  Love,

- tami

Flickerin' Flames

Right now, Jon's out on his 2nd spear fishing expedition, he's loving all his 'manly' adventures! The weeks are so intense that by the time weekends come, we're all excited to get off the base and "choose our own adventure." So this weekend we spent time learning about spear fishing...and how to not get hurt or killed! The ocean's ferocious, if the crazy waves don't get you, the sharks or eels...or urchins will! haha, but we had a blast safely! Our friend caught a needle-nosed fish, but our dinner washed away in the chaos of losing the spear...long story!

So in case your wondering what the heck we do, I'll give you an idea of what a normal..wait, no such thing as normal here...of what a day looks like for us. Mornings are filled with teaching (this week we're learning about our identity in Christ), then we grab lunch and head to the prayer room (Matt 21:13). There we worship and pray for whatever God leads us to pray for (nations, cities, different spheres of society like arts, politics, etc.). We've definitely been praying for Haiti, several guys from this base left a few days ago to go and help. The YWAM base in St.Marc, which is 60 miles from the capital, reported that their town is already out of food, so keep praying for the people of this nation (protection from disease, crime, etc.)

That's our favourite time of day because we just give the agenda to God and pray His heart for this world, knowing it's making a huge difference. Then I head off to my 'work duty,' where students are assigned a chore on campus and Jon goes into staff meetings. I help clean their coffee cafe. It's great cause it saves money and it does so much in our lives as students. It forces me to deal with issues of my character that have been lying "dormant"!

After our work duty, we head off to dinner and in the evenings, we do various things. On Tuesday nights, we do street evangelism where we all split up and take the streets of Kona to pray, share the gospel, heal, whatever God wants us to do! We got to pray for Guylee, a homeless guy, and encourage Him with who God sees him as and he was so taken back that he wanted to come to our Thursday night service!! God's love is so powerful!

We're also so excited to be leading a team on outreach, the team will consist of roughly 8 students. Teams are going to various locations (Europe, Afghanistan, New Zealand, Guam, Ivy League universities, etc.) We're still finalizing details on our location, so we'll update you as soon as possible, but Jon and I are learning a great deal as we've been praying about outreach because God changed the plans on us so we're learning how to follow His voice and leading, we're really just sheep following our Shepherd (John 10)!! Following Jesus is such an adventure, He'll lead you to places you've only dreamed about or where you've never even thought of!! But there's so much more peace, joy and rest in trusting Him...no matter how out of the box it looks to us!

We love you and thanks so much for caring about what God's doing in our lil' lives and walking with us through this journey, we're nothing but flickerin' flames for Him and we hope the love of God beaming out of us will draw people to Him! Let us know how your doing, it means so much when pple write, it's a touch of home! But we hope and pray you and your loved ones are doing well,

tami & jon

God in the Raw ~ Unprocessed. Unfiltered. Undiluted.

Authentic community, centered around the presence of God,

leading to revivals and reformation in the nations of this world.

    This is the vision of Fire & Fragrance, the school we’re attending here at YWAM Kona, Hawaii.

We’re so thankful to be here, beyond the amazing weather (I’ll hit that later), we’ve been here just over a week and have been immersed in a community of love, humility, honour and heartfelt unity that's just so rare. Where openness, vulnerability, true honesty and the freedom to succeed and even fail are embraced and encouraged. Where this vision is really a reality. We all come from different nations, cultures, family backgrounds and denominations that if we don’t make God and His values the priority and centre of everything, then their vision would just be empty words. So it’s really been refreshing and motivating.

   The week’s been packed with events, one was the Ohana Gathering, where Ohana means family in Hawaii. It was a few days where the YWAM Kona staff did worship/teaching, fun activities and meals together – and I don’t mean just a few. We’re talking over a hundred comprised of different generations of different nations. It was powerful to witness. It’s probably what Heaven’s like…maybe just without the eating. We even got a chance to meet Loren Cunningham personally, who is so down to earth and humble!Then once all the students had arrived, there was a protocol ceremony where we honoured the elders and natives of Hawaii with gifts for allowing us to make Hawaii our home for the time being…and thus, honouring God for making it all possible. It’s protocol that before you enter a town or village (at least in most countries), you visit the elders/chiefs and get their blessing to enter it. Then at night, they had the opening ceremonies where the native Hawaiians did dances inspired by Polynesian islands and like the Olympic ceremonies, people came in representing their country with a flag (videos to be posted soontime).

    Whew, then on top of all this, to be surrounded by such beauty (check out what we have in our photo album so far)! Everyday it’s like, “Jesus, you made all this?!?!” From the moment we stepped off the plane, it was like watching Planet Earth in the flesh! The sound of waves crashing onto the shore, picturesque sunsets, birds chirping, wild hogs, turkeys…gecko’s catching their morning meal! And it's whale season, these whales just came from Alaska and are here to date and mate, and of all the whales, they're humpback whales!!! Obviously!!! haha! So there’s no shortage of entertainment here. Sorry, I’ll stop talking about the weather, but as you can see, we're really grateful we’re not in Toronto right now.

   School starts tomorrow, I can’t believe it. It feels like we’ve already been here for months, so much has happened. And that’s why we’re so excited, because it hasn’t even really started yet!! Everyday will be filled with teaching, worship, serving, fellowship and more. The school leaders have really set the standard, that it’s really about passionately going after God’s presence through worship and prayer, to experience God in the raw; unprocessed, unfiltered, unconcentrated!! And in His presence, getting healed, restored and transformed. And from being filled by His presence, going out and loving on others through community outreaches so we're looking forward to the powerful ways God's gonna reach the people on this island.

  Wow, this note's gotten way too long!! AAHHH!!! If your still here, congratulations!! You made it through, haha! But seriously, we'll make them a lot shorter, it's just this is our first time so now that you know what everything's about, it's all good! I'll get Jon to write the next one and it'll be like a paragraph long! And "on the legit" as the islanders say, thank you for being a part of our lives and for sharing with us in all God's doing! Love ya and miss ya,