Prayer = Change

lHey Everyone,

This week Tami is taking a vacation from journaling everyone and I thought I would give blogging a try. God is amazing. Everyday we are more excited by what God is doing in our generation. Even this past 24 hours we had non-stop prayer and worship from Friday night Saturday night. It was amazing to see people passionately running after God through different styles of worship, praying for our nations, praying for our outreach locations, praying for one another and just plain enjoying

Now there were certain times we needed to be in the prayer room because each outreach team covered an hour, but many spent hours crying out to God. One guy stayed in the room for the whole 24 hours. But it isn’t just about the prayer, it is about having relationship with Jesus. It amazes me so much that the one far above all rule, power, authority and dominion (Eph. 1:20-21) wants to have deep friendship with us. It amazes me that this God who laid the foundations of the earth intimately knows us. He has numbered the hair on our heads. He is not one who is far off but one who is longing to show is goodness. Many of the students, after having a day of prayer, noticed the difference in each other’s faces and stature. Just as a quick story cause I love amazing stories. There was a man in the early 19th century in New York city who sought God on how to reach people. The Lord told him to send out invitations to people and tell them he is having a praying meeting once a week over lunch for an hour. In this time in the United States the church was on a downward turn and many were turning away from God. I believe if I remember correctly that someone even declared in the next generation there would be no one following Christ. So he sent out thousands of invites and only 20 people showed. Then the next week 40 and it is said it almost doubled on a weekly basis. Then even started making the lunch bell 5 minutes early and 5 minutes late so that people would have time to get to the nearest church and pray for the lunch hour. That year in the United States of America 1,000,000 people were added to the church, in today's terms, that would be like 6 million people (The Layman's Prayer Revival)! It is absolutely amazing that when we pray, God moves in a way that draws people to himself. Everyday we get to pray together as a school for nations, people, spheres of society and get to hear testimonies of how our prayers are making a difference. Tami’s friend Emma goes to the famous St.Andrews University in Scotland and she led a 24/7 prayer week with her friends in the same week. They put together a really good video that shows what we’re all going after through prayer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRekujFQm1U). See you next time! Peace,

Jon

Tsunami Day

This is what we sent in an email so sorry if you get this in your email, I guess just delete it or stop reading this! But thanks to all those who sent us texts, emails and called us to make sure we were ok!! We were woken up around 5am by some texts coming in on our Canadian phone. We didn’t even bother checking them and just rolled over back to bed. Then the tsunami alarm went off, and being incoherent, I thought it was weird that they were doing a drill at such a random time of day. That didn’t hinder my sleep though! It wasn’t until it kept going off that we decided to wake up and find out what was going on. That’s when we checked our phone and found out a tsunami was headed our way in just a few hours!

Commotion picked up outside as everyone came out to find out what happened. We were shocked to find out that another earthquake had hit another small country and that it was even more powerful than the one that hit Haiti. But before we could process that, we had to grab breakfast and head to the Ohana Court where everyone on the base met for instructions. Thankfully the base is just above the evacuation area and the dorms are even higher than that, so we were pretty safe (and you’ll see in our photos the long, steep set of stairs we have to walk up to get to the main area of the base). Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM and who also lives on the island, took the mic and shared some encouraging stories of how God had protected other missionaries from impending natural disasters through dreams and stuff. He also told us to not get prideful and do anything crazy! Haha and some boys actually tried to head into town…and were stopped by security.


We were told to stay within a certain area of the base to be safe, so everyone camped at the top to watch and wait for the tsunami. A lot of us were praying though and felt at peace, that nothing was gonna happen. And as we waited for the tsunami that never came, we watched a news report that showed how the tsunami was heading in our direction but then all of a sudden split and went in different directions. We’re so thankful God spared Hawaii from the impending wave…even though the kid in me wanted the once-in-a lifetime opportunity of seeing a tsunami…we’re really grateful for Him intervening.


So a few hours later, the Kona county lifted the ban and everyone was free to hit the beaches again. But by this time, people were either napping from the exhaustion of it all, families were playing or people were just hanging out. And turns out I had the longest nap of my life, guess I was more exhausted than I knew! We were all joking that it turned into a holiday, Tsunami Day, where we could do nothing but enjoy the company of each other so it was beautiful. Point is, God is mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:17) and is always wanting to take us into a deeper place of trusting Him. Faith, Hope, Love…

tami

GIVING TO HAITI OUTREACH

Mahalo (thank you) for your desires to give towards our outreach to Haiti - which is coming very soon!  People from our base are constantly going back and forth so meetings are underway about what we're heading into and there's lots of expectation for what God wants to do through our team.  Your gift will help us get there, get around to places, and do the things we want to do like bulid houses, possibly run daycamps for kids, offer support in the refugee camps and be of help to the YWAM bases in Haiti. We receive miraculous stories of how God is saving people, one story was about a man who was pulled out of the rubble after 4 weeks and when the news asked him about how he survived, he said, "a man in a white coat kept bringing me water." Of course the news would never attribute this miracle to God, but for this story, see: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/08/haiti.rescue/index.html  God hasn't given up on Haiti and we're going to let them know that! So whether through prayer or finances or both, thank you for partnering with us in this...we'll have pictures of our team up shortly. We miss you and value your friendship so much!

- WAYS TO GIVE -

ONLINE

Go to http://www.canadahelps.org/, type "YWAM BC" in the 'I want to give' box. It should say Youth With A Mission BC Society, click this option. Hit "Donate Now" and fill out the rest. For the Fund/Designation, your giving to the 'General Funds to Individual - Missionary Ministry' which should already be the option. In the box below this, the message/instruction box, write that the donation is for Jonathan Masson (MJ22). It is important to give them this instruction so that the donation actually goes to us!

SEND A CHEQUE

You can write cheques to YWAM and put 'Jonathan Masson' somewhere on it (in note area). Send the cheque to:

YWAM Project Funding

Box 57100

2480 E. Hastings

Vancouver, BC

V5K 5G6