A short one

David's tent is over and we are now about to leave for Israel.  David's tent was successfully completed with over 1000 hours of worship logged through various bands from different states and some from other countries.  

As I write this, I am hours away from leaving for the airport. This past weekend we had provision come in as we were prayed for and commissioned out from Embassy Church. 

A quick story.  One of my students did not have his passport to go.  He had submitted an application for renewal but his passport had not come in for over a month even with expedited services.  This weekend we searched frantically for options and realized that this Monday was a federal holiday so the post office would not be open.  After praying and trying to find other options, his passport arrived this morning.  Some how he received his passport in the mail today!  God is so good!

Please keep us in your prayers as we go to Israel. 

David's Tent Outreach

Lecture phase has officially ended and outreach has begun.  I can't believe that 3 months have passed so quickly.  The last week we did outreach prep and we will go in to preparing for David's Tent at the White House Ellipse.  This is an amazing opportunity for us as well as anyone who wants to join us on the ellipse.  For this outreach we have actually moved back to southeast D.C.  We actually live in an old ministry center that YWAM DC used to run out of.

David's tent kicked off last night, Sept. 24 and will continue until Nov. 5.  Worship will be live and going for 24 hours a day.  For more information you can check out www.davidstentdc.org.  My outreach team will be helping facilitate this worship event.  We currently are on different shifts to keep watch during the tent.  My team has 1PM to 7PM and 7PM to 1AM while the other 12 hours are covered by the other teams on the base.

Although I am on outreach, I have not met my financial goals for support.  I am still in need of support for the rest of this outreach.  Part of it being in Washington, D.C. and the other portion in Israel.  Please pray for me in this area that I would be able to complete this outreach.

How I see the world...

How I see the world matters when it comes to living out biblical Christianity.  This past week our speaker presented Biblical Christian worldview and Secular worldview and the importance of knowing scripture to live out how God told us.  Worldview is how the lenses through which we see the world. Many things affect how we see the world around us but not all of those things are from God.  We need to allow the bible to be the lens that we look through to see and understand the world around us.

 Tom

Some of the statistics Tom gave were staggering.  It's not that I hadn't heard them before but the urgency of preaching the gospel and discipling minds hit me again this week.  Here are some of those statistics:

In a survey taken 13 years ago in churched youth:

-63% didn't believe that Jesus is the son of the one true God

-58% believed all faiths taught equally valid truths

-51% didn't believe Jesus rose from the dead

-65% didn't believe satan is a real entity

-68% didn't believe that the Holy Spirit is a real entity

-It was also estimated that about 69% to 94% of churched youth are leaving the traditional church after high school, and very few are returning.

It also seems that it has not gotten any better.  In fact, out of the all the generations in the last 100 years it seems that this generation is the most biblically illiterate, which means that the current generation does not know their bible.  I have also heard that we currently have the most Christian literature published in any given time period, even things about the bible but young people do not know their bible.  Although this may seem like a grim reality hope is not lost.  There is also a hunger in young people to find out who the one true God is.  

ASL and David's Tent DTS w/ Tom

I pray that this hunger will drive the youth in America (and even over seas) to seek after Jesus and to find out who he is.  If Christians would live according to what their bible said there would be radical transformation in society.  But more than that, God is greater than the problem at hand.  All our human efforts may produce little to no fruit but with God all things are possible. Continue to pray for the revelation of Jesus to come again to America.

Save the Lost, Revive the Saved, Train them All

David's Tent DTS Students and Staff

The past 2 weeks, weeks 6 and 7, have been a jam-packed.  We started in Lancaster, PA for the School of the Circuit Riders.  Driving up from Washington, D.C., we spent a week participating in a school that started 2 years ago.  2 years ago I was a part of this school and came for outreach in D.C.  This was a more condensed version of the same school and for way more students.  We started with about 300-350 people and the last night session came to about 1,600+ people.

The idea of Circuit Riders is based on the old methodist pastors who would ride circuits around the United States preaching the gospel from horseback to all of America.  This training school was set up to teach people wherever they were to preach the simple gospel.  The motto of this school was:

Save the lost, Revive the saved, Train them all.

Night session in Lancaster

With 3 sessions of lecture and 2 portions of outreach, we saw a total of 320 people who came to know the Lord and over 60 healings.  There were portions where night sessions exploded in spontaneous worship because of the freedom and gratitude in the hearts of the people attending.  I wish I could recount all of the things the Lord did this week but this is just a very short summary.  One personal highlight for me was that I was able to reconnect with my YWAM family and friends who I haven't seen in over a year.  

From this training week we went straight to Virginia Beach to do some more practical application.  In Virginia Beach we helped run a youth camp called Culture Shift which was geared to help youth stand strong in their faith as well as preach the gospel in their high schools.  The age range for the students ran from 10 to 18 and it really impacted the youth.  During the week they went and did outreach in the local community preaching the gospel at parks, beaches and malls and they saw at least 12 people come to the Lord.  I can't seem to remember the exact number.  The youth also shared many testimonies of personal breakthrough.

Jason Hershey and Andy Byrd 

It was so encouraging to see what God was doing within the United States.  There seems to be more and more evidence that God is moving in the US. On one of the last nights during Circuit Riders Andy Byrd shared Reinhard Bonnke's word for America.  Reinhard Bonnke is an evangelist who has seen millions come to the Lord in Africa.  He said that for so long America was the offering plate to see revival in America but not anymore, God would move in America and all of America would be saved.  Such a statement of faith from a man who has been so faithful to see the Kingdom of God come to Africa.  Even in our current situation, I believe America can be saved and that the greatest move of God has yet to come for America.

You can be a part of this movement too by directly going out evangelizing and praying for America but also by supporting missionaries like me.  I am currently still in need of financial support for the David's Tent DTS and outreach. You can go to the financial support page at the top and using one of the donation methods.

David's Tent DTS week 1

Hello everyone!

Stairwell worship

To do a quick summary of what's been going on in my life I just wanted to mention that I had started staffing in Youth With A Mission in Washington, D.C. since the end of May.  I've been busy helping move this group from a different ministry center.

Last year when I staffed we were working out of a place called the Gatepost.  This year, God has moved us out of that location and brought us to Embassy Church in Northwest D.C.  The pastor of this church has allowed us to move into the church and use the different facilities to run the DTS. For several days over the last 4 weeks, we have been moving furniture into storage, out of storage and into the church.

DTS students at a monument tour

The DTS officially started on June 27th with the arrival of our students.  Most of the students are from the DMV area but one came from Hawaii.  We also have an American Sign Language DTS that is running along side of us and it has been such a privilege to have the ASL DTS running in D.C.  From our research, it seems that this is the first all ASL DTS to ever run in the history of YWAM.

We currently have a prayer room that just started running 24-hours a day 7 days a week and any one is welcome to join us.  Just feel free to contact me to arrange a time.  We are also looking for slots to fill the hours through the day.

Jeremy Bardwell

The first week of lecture was on the culture of the Kingdom.  Jeremy Bardwell was our speaker from Harrisburg, PA.  He did well to connect with both the ASL and David's Tent DTS students.  The topics covered were things like stewardship and excellence, happy holiness, and different principles of Christian life.

I hope to write more soon but its been pretty busy adjusting to a new schedule and new responsibilities.  Please keep me in your prayers!

3 Weeks and Beyond

I am currently writing this from my work-study job at Frederick Community College (FCC).  In 3 weeks, I will have finished my course work for my AA degree in government/politics and graduate from FCC with honors.  I can't wait to be finished and the 3 weeks could not come sooner.

As this time at community college comes to an end new opportunities have presented themselves.  Because of a scholarship procedure, I will be postponing my undergraduate studies at a 4-year university for a whole school year.  In the meantime I will be transitioning back to YWAM temporarily.  During the summer I will be staffing a Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Washington, D.C.  This will run similarly to the schools that I had staffed previously as well as the school I participated in as a student.

This DTS will also emphasize David's Tent during the outreach.  (I'll re-explain this in another post). The emphasis will be in doing worship and prayer 24-hours a day for about 40 days during the outreach phase.  There will also be an outreach overseas as well.  By the time this finishes, it will be around mid-December.  Following the DTS, I plan on going to Kona, HI for natural farming and school of photography provided by YWAM.

Hopefully, these plans will come to fruition but ultimately it is all in God's hand.

All the way from VA beach

(This post is a continuation of the last post and should have been published months ago but school took precedence.)



Continuing with tours, on another day, we had an opportunity to do the tour in the Capitol building.  This tour was not any different from the tours that are given on a daily basis in the building.  In a previous post, I wrote about a different tour we had done as a group with the wife of a former Congressman.  That specific tour was done in a very different way than the tour done with the youth group.
The tour guide gave us many different historical details from the construction of the building, the art on the walls, monuments of historical figures, intricate details of the architecture, and the significance of different rooms in the building.

After the tour, Jason, the leader of YWAM DC, discussed the implications of the things we heard during the tour.  It was also a debriefing time for the youth group students to share what they felt the Lord was saying to them.

As well as praying in some of the senate buildings, the team spent some time at the steps of the Supreme Court building life-sieging for the ending of abortion. God is stirring passion among the younger generation.