07' was the wildest year of my life...
It started in a van ride to Georgia with my friends from Heartland:PM to attend the Passion Conference. I literally spent new years eve in a 15 passenger van. The conference was awesome... I was a little wounded because I had just had surgery on my knee a month before and I was recovering from a few personal issues that I was suffering at the time too. I was discouraged and ready to bow out of ministry. God had a different plan. When I attended the conference I really connected with one of the speakers, Francis Chan. He shared how he had left his church for a few months because he wanted to make sure he was legit. It was music to my ears. And, his remedy from discouragement was to focus on God through the Word. I began to see God give me a bigger glimpse of his glory and it left me trembling and worshiping.
The next portion of my year was a trip to Africa for a month. I felt that I needed to use my down time to minister to the least of these so I planned to be in Africa from January 20- Feb 18th. During that time God stoked a passion in me for His name and His glory. I was so far removed from the mundane casual mediocre christian life that I led in America. God was transforming me to be completely discontent with living a casual life. The return home was equally exciting because I felt that I was leaving one mission field to go to another. I realized that God was calling me to be an American Missionary with an seemingly impossible task of helping nominal christians actually fall in love with God. I was nervous but prepared.
When I got back stateside I had a trip to California planned for Operation 12 for some snowboard event planning. Before I departed I sent an email to Francis Chan to let him know I was coming out there... I got a hold of some people from his church and made arrangements to spend some time at their church. It was awesome. I was actually at Cornerstone(The church that Francis pastors) when they rolled out the plans to give 50 percent of their income away and make budget cuts to allow them to do so. They also revealed that they were abolishing their building plans in favor of doing something more cost effective. I was crying as I realized that God is raising up a bunch of Christians that are so sold out to God that they would break the mold of church growth and the mega church mentality. I ended up spending several days with Tony Cruz the technical director of Cornerstone. We went surfing a couple times and talked about life and ministry. It was so uplifting and so encouraging. From there I travelled up to the mountains to spend some time with several op12 snow candidates. That was awesome too as we worked out the details of the snow team and what we wanted to accomplish. Even though my knee was still busted up I was able to do a little riding on Mammoth Mountain and it was incredible. But, the trip came to an end and I had to be home so off I went in a little diesel Jetta.
The next trip was a week away. It was a trip to Haiti with my family and pastor David and Deby and a few other friends. Wow, Haiti is an oppressed place. God was revealing the depths of the darkness of sin and showing what it looks like when it runs rampant. In America sin is easily disguised and seldom is exposed for what it truly is. In Haiti there are no pretensions. Satan is the prince of the earth and he parades his darkness across a poverty stricken land with no need to try to market his ways. Being in Haiti made me realize how absolutely terrible sin is and we need to call our friends to a more radical holiness. The trip was awesome but now it was time to start focusing on OP12's busy line up...
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