A Birthday and a Telegraph Machine

It is hard to believe already that our little Annie turned two on Friday.  She is full of sass and spunk!  She is sure trying to keep up with her brother and sisters!  The below picture is of Anders in his treehouse after he built his own homemade telegraph machine!  I am not kidding, he sure did and it works great.  He and his brother now send morse code messages to each other from the tree house (more like a tree platform!!) to our shed.  One of the things I love about this picture, is it defines who God designed Anders to be.  He is a task oriented kid. Focused, resilient, and not willing to give up on something once he has started. Anders is not a big fan of big groups of people, but boy does he love doing projects by himself.  This challenges me as his dad, whose personality is just the opposite! I personally would of given up 10 minutes into the telegraph project, but not Anders.  God has uniquely designed the kids so different.  The highlight of the day was seeing Anders face when the first..tap tap tap was heard on the telegraph and seeing his big smile and hearing him yell, "I did it dad, it works!!"  "Yes you did son, yes you did."

Heart of a Youth Pastor

I love the above picture.  It is of a great friend of mine who is also a youth pastor who has returned to our Mission Adventures summer program 3 years in a row.  This picture was taken about 4 days into last week. Mike looks exhausted....and he was!  Yes, that is a bowl...I mean cup...of dark Northwestern coffee he has.  But one thing i really do love about this picture, is it truly does show the heart of youth pastors.  They are all in for their students.  Willing to go with little sleep, lots of annoyances, disappointments, challenging discussions, and continual attack from the enemy.  Guys like Mike are warriors of today, and they are fighting the most strategic an important battle their is....the battle for the souls of teens..  They don't give up as they battle for the souls of their students.  It is guys like Mike in the picture above that give me hope for today's generation.  Despite the exhaustion, Mike saw two of his students submit their lives to Jesus this week.  I think Mike would say it is all worth it. Being able to come along side youth pastors is another reason I love Mission Adventures, and having friends like Mike continues to challenge me to radically follow Jesus.

Confidence through Surveys

The above picture is of some of our Mission Adventures students surveying people on the streets.  On Thursdays, we have the students break up into groups and create different surveys to use for their outreach that day.  These are great tool to get students talking to people, and provide great platforms to share the Gospel in various settings.  For many of the students, it is their first time ever doing something like this, and it really challenges them to listen to people, which is one of the things that makes them better at evangelism.  This week, our students were able to speak to so many different types of people, and actually left the outreach feeling encouraged, but also challenged with the hard matter of fact questions people gave them.  This is awesome, because it forces them to truly dig into God's word and find out what they believe.

Youth Pastor Shares About Why He Has Done Multiple Trips With MA.

The above video interview is from a youth pastor in our city who has done multiple trips with Mission Adventures over his many years in ministry.  Find out why by watching the clip!

Faith Day

Wednesday afternoons we take our outreach teams downtown to do an outreach we call "Faith Day".  They break up into groups and have an envelope that has 10 tasks in them.  Some of these tasks require the students to really bust out of their comfort zones.  Today, we had a few students who shared the Gospel with people for the first time in their lives.  Although it was awkward for them to start the conversation, once they did, they were amazed at the peace that came over them.  Today's outreach the youth left feeling passionate to share the Gospel with their friends.  Simple outreaches like today change lives, plain and simple.  The above picture is of our Mission Adventures group after a debrief of today's outreach.

Five Stages of Evangelism

One way we train our Mission Adventures students is an activity we call the "Five Stages of Evangelism".  We take a look at some scriptures, and have the kids go through 5 different stations in which they learn that evangelism happens by RELATING to people, LISTENING to people, OBSERVING the culture your in, SHARING with your words, and UTILIZING the things you have to point people to Jesus.  Its a great dynamic time, and I love doing it.  The above picture is of one activity which challenges students to relate things to each other.

Crosswalk

Monday evening at Mission Adventures we do our Crosswalk outreach.  We take the students down to the center off our city, and they drag a wooden cross.  Each student drags it for about 5 minutes. It is amazingly stretching, challenging and powerful. Every single time we do this outreach, kids lives get changed.  Tonight, many high schoolers were brought to tears as they reflected on what Jesus did for us, and how the cross was a place of sacrifice, shame, and abandonment.  We stress that this outreach is for an audience of one....Jesus.  In the past, we have had people on the street join us, mock us, encourage us, question us, and simple observe us.  through it all, the students are brought to a new depth in their understanding of the cross, and Jesus love for them.  By the way, if your looking for a great book to read, check out the book "The Cross" written by Arthur Blessit. He has drug a wooden cross in every country in the world, and seen tons of people come to know Christ!

Laughing it up with Dr. Who!!

Mission Adventures has been likened to the perfect balance between a camp, and a missions trip.  Certain elements of the program have certain flavors.  One flavor that is definitely old school"lets get crazy silly camp like" is our opening day skits.  This year, our staff decided to go with the trending Dr. Who show.  The above picture is some of the staff all decked out getting ready to go challenge kids to be passionate for Jesus.....even if that means getting a big smile and laughing for His glory!

Serving with Dad!

I love being able to bring Anders and Aidan with me when we have our Mission Adventure teams.  They are old enough now not only to just come along, but also to help serve in different ways!  Today the boys helped with our breakfast prep and clean up, along with helping me man my station in our downtown prayer scavenger hunt.  They also heard today from missionaries who went to the amazon jungles, and ones who hiked the Appalachian trail with the Gospel!  What a blessing it is to be able to involve my children in the ministry I love so much, and to have such rich experiences for them.  Blessed!

Prayer Scavenger Hunt

Monday afternoons we take our Mission Adventures groups to downtown Salem to do our prayer scavenger hunt.  They break up into teams, and are given clues that lead them to 7 specific areas in our city.  All of which represents one of the seven "spheres of society" that we have. These are the things that make up society, such as religion, family, government, economy, etc... As the students ask people on the streets for help, they are forced to engage strangers, and in doing so, rely on them for help.  They then are able to read scripture and pray over each specific location.  The purpose of this activity is to get the groups more familiar with our city, get them speaking to people, working together, and learning how to creatively pray for the city.   The below picture is of a happy group that just completed all 7 stations.

All the Fixins!

Most people love getting extra fixins on pizza, because it just makes it that much more enjoyable to eat.  Likewise with Mission Adventures, we add on a few fixins of our own to make our students mission trips that much more enjoyable and memorable..  The above picture shows just a few of the things that our students get in this years participant packets.  A devotional journal to help them journal their missions trip, some cool name tags, stickers, buttons, pencils that are all related to the summer theme.  A wristband with the seven I AM statements of Jesus, to help them remember who Jesus is to them.  We also give them some sweet messenger bags, but I forgot to put it in the picture!  Every student that comes to us is special in the eyes of God, and we want them to feel special, even down to stickers and buttons.

Local Youth Become Summer Staff

The above picture is of 15 year old Nate, and 18 year old Phillip.  Both these kids have come through our Mission Adventures program for the past two summers as participants with their youth group, which happens  to be a local church here in Salem.  God did amazing things in their lives during Mission Adventures, and we have the awesome opportunity to have these two guys intern with us this summer as inter staff members.  This is so exciting to me, because we are seeing past participants become passionate to reach students their own age via Mission Adventures.  Once again, this is a great example of how Mission Adventures is continuing to work alongside local churches here in Salem, and provide amazing opportunities for local youth.

Court Street Connection

The above picture was taken while I was downtown Salem doing our Friday morning evangelism.  Today, on Court street I had an interesting discussion with a young 24 year old guy named Alex.  I have seen this guy a few times downtown, as he is kind of hard to miss in his spiked jacket, spiked hair, tattoos, and signature flat brimmed cap that says the word "Asshole".  No kidding, that's what it says. Today I spent time asking God to show me whom He desired me to speak with.   He led me to Alex.  I spent about 20 minutes talking with him.  I found out his life story, which is hard and full of hurt and anger at a father who never loved him.  He told me his spiritual take on life is an animistic one, but he would love to talk about Jesus with me.  I plan to.  I was shocked as people would literally change their direction as they walked towards him, because of the way he looked.  All it takes is to sit down and talk with people, no matter if they look scary or not.  God opened a door today, and I believe seeds were planted.  I hope to continue my conversations with this young confused man.  Court Street, just an ordinary street in our city, held an extraordinary encounter with God today.  Get out there and talk to people.....divine encounters await us.

Night of Nostalgia

I am excited for a new thing we will be doing with Mission Adventures this summer.  the above picture was taken yesterday while we were setting up our new outdoor movie system.  It can accommodate up to around 350 people! It will serve two purposes.  First, is we will be using this for our YWAM Salem staff to enjoy over the summer months.  Sitting outside watching a flick while eating popcorn and snow cones.  How awesome is that?  The second purpose will be more for outreach purposes.  We plan to use the set up for local youth groups to come to, and invite their non believer friends.  After watching a movie, we will then have a Gospel message given.  I am real excited for this. We are also tossing around some ideas to use it for a missions awareness type of event in the fall as well.  I'll keep you posted.