Celebration Excitement

Dear Friends,

I thank God for all of His faithfulness in my life, and I am grateful for all of you, my wonderful supporters. I pray that God blesses you abundantly in everything you do and that He protects you everyday of your life.

As you know, I am a staff member at the Youth with a Mission, Perth, Australia base. Recently, our YWAM family celebrated the 50th anniversary of YWAM International along with our own base’s 25-year Anniversary. In honor of these events, this past month, our base has focused on giving God praise and thanksgiving for the YWAM ministry both globally and regionally, and on a personal level. We were blessed to have Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM, visit our base during the anniversary celebrations and speak to us about the journey of this organization. Loren’s message really encouraged me about God’s faithfulness along with our responsibility to persevere toward our Callings (especially in hard times). A few other speakers also came for the celebrations, and I learned a lot from them. Another message that really stood out to me was that we need to always be on-guard and sensitive to the Holy Spirit and obey everything He says.

Everyone in the city was invited to the anniversary celebration. It was so encouraging to see people in our community join with us as we thanked our Mighty God for His goodness! At the celebration, about 700 people (YWAM-ers and other Christians not directly involved in YWAM) made a covenant (called the “Jubilee covenant”) which stated that we will remain committed to follow and serve Jesus Christ for the next 50 years. It was encouraging to see fellow believers, our brothers and sisters in Christ, signing a covenant of commitment together.

My Island Breeze ministry got to perform during the celebration as an act of worship and thanksgiving to our Faithful God; it was cool to be a part of this incredibly joyous time. Currently, my ministry team and I are in the midst of preparing things for our upcoming outreach. I have been teaching the dances to our new dancer and am learning new moves myself. Although I am busy, God reminds me daily to rely on His strength.

During my personal devotions, God has been challenging me to stay in His presence always, just as He says in Psalm 27:4--"One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.”

I am still trusting that God will provide the funds I need to go on outreach again with my team to South Africa, South Korea, and possibly other countries (still to be determined). These trips will cost $5,400(US) and the payment is due to March 12th. I am also still trusting God for more monthly supporters to contribute to my monthly expenses ($355US).

It is with great humility that I ask you, dear friends, to pray for me and pray about helping my financially. I really appreciate your support and your partnership in my calling.

Thank you for taking your time to read this update. God bless you!

With love,

Jon

The New Year and all that Awaits!

Happy New Year to you all! I pray that in 2010 God will pour out His blessing more abundantly upon your lives. I also pray that God will overflow you with his JOY and blessing in your businesses, jobs, and/or studies, and all other spheres of your lives!

It has been about six weeks since I returned from outreach and it is good to be back on the base in Perth and to be part of the base activities again. The first two weeks following my return, I took holiday (or, vacation). On my holiday, I stayed in Perth and was able to really relax and enjoy God—seeking Him and meditating on His words. It was so wonderful to just spend time with Him and in His presence.

After my two weeks off, I got back to work immediately. I became very busy teaching our Island Breeze dances to our new team members and preparing for more performances. My team and I performed twice on Carol by candle light (Australian Christmas Celebration) in 2 different places. We did a couple more dances on our base property during a base fundraising night. In addition to performing, I was also involved in helping to prepare things for our YWAM family Christmas celebration.

One of the base ministries (in addition to the numerous world-outreach programs that the base hosts) includes evangelizing weekly in the city of Perth. So, each Thursday night, all members of the base (staff and students from every ministry) are assigned to one of many different locations within and around the city of Perth. In each location, we form a large group and worship together (usually led by someone playing an acoustic guitar) and then pray before we begin evangelizing. When we evangelize, we either break into smaller groups to disperse throughout the area and meet people individually and/or our group remains in one area and we take turns publically proclaiming the Lord’s Truths to the crowd in love. In addition to the Thursday night base evangelism, my Island Breeze ministry regularly does this evangelism activity in the city on Tuesday afternoons as well.

Through this weekly evangelism ministry we have seen God move in incredible ways in the city of Perth. My Thursday night Evangelism team alone has had the privilege of leading about 4 people to the Lord recently. And, combined reports from all base groups show that last month at least 10 people in/around this city accepted Jesus! This is extra encouraging because we have experienced Perth to be a closed city (“closed” meaning unwilling to hear the Gospel) for many years, and this is evidence of the Lord answering our prayers and spiritually breaking through!

Right now, my Island Breeze ministry team and I are preparing for our next outreach which we expect will be from April through August. We hope to travel to South Africa, South Korea, Mexico, and the Philippines. Considering our far outreach destinations, our team leader has informed us that our outreach fees are going to be at least $5,400 (US). Meanwhile, I need about $360 (US) per month to continue as a YWAM staff member to cover my living expenses (e.g. housing, food, and basic needs). Please pray with me as I trust God for this money.

I currently need one-time support for my upcoming outreach as well as monthly support for my ongoing staff fees. I humbly ask that you pray for me and pray about supporting me financially. I can't do this by myself; the reason that I am able to reach out to the nations for His Kingdom is because you have sent me to go. Please send me to Go again, I am willing and eager.

Thank you for your time, thank you for praying for me, and thank you for your generosity. May God bless you so much more from what you have invested to His Kingdom. God bless you.

Our final tours in Spain

I thank God for everything He did during outreach. I thank all of you as well for your dedicated support. I am honored that you are partnering with me in my missionary journey and I am privileged to share with you what I witnessed our Loving Father do in Spain.

After my teams and my ministry in Germany and Holland, we flew from the green-ness of those countries down to the dry-ness of Spain. In Spain, we joined a large mission’s tour called Impact World Tour which involved 3 ministries: Team Extreme (TX), Island Breeze (our ministry), and GX International. Team Extreme is a team of big strong guys who can bend iron bars, rip thick phonebooks with their hands, break bricks, and do much more extreme stuff- and they use their incredible strength abilities to share about God. GX International is a team of break-dancers, BMX-ers, and skaters who also use their awesome talents to share the Gospel.

Our first tour started in Motril (south Spain) where we stayed for 9 days. There, we performed at the local schools (3 - 4 different schools everyday) to promote our big event which we always hosted at the end of the tour in each city. We were not allowed to share the Gospel with the students in the public schools, so we handed them the flyers for our event (where we could and DID share about Jesus) and prayed that the Lord would bring them there. And He did. Thousands of people came to watch the big, three-night event where we performed 3 shows (1 show every night) and we shared about God’s endless love for each of them. At this event, hundreds of people gave their lives to
Jesus!

For the next tour, we went to Ceuta (still in Spain but it is in the Africa continent next to Morocco) and we stayed there for a week. About 60% of the population there is Muslim. As usual, each day we went to 3 - 4 schools to perform and hand out flyers to the students to tell them about our big show at the end of the week. Again, we were
not allowed to share the Gospel directly at the school, so we taught about good values and things. Just like before, our big show was 3 nights in a row and thousands of people came to every show. But, the disappointing thing was that every time the speaker started to share the Gospel, tons of people quickly left the stadium. Within minutes,
the place was practically empty. Sometimes, a few people stayed until the end of the show and there were a few salvations among the ones who stayed :-). But, the fact that most people rapidly fled from the Truth made it painfully obvious that the spirit of religiosity was a stronghold in that place. The city of Ceuta needs much prayer; I ask
that we all remember them in and fight for them.

The last tour we hosted was in Gibraltar, a city outside of Spain which belongs to the UK. We were there also for a week and we did the same routine I previously mentioned. The difference in this city was the people’s response to the Message. Thousands of people (even more people than the stadium could hold!) came to watch our big shows and
we witnessed hundreds of young people give their lives to Jesus!! Praise His Holy Name! All in all, during our month-long ministry with Impact World Tour, about 12 thousand people heard the Gospel and about a thousand people gave their live to Jesus! Isn’t that amazing?!

I learned during this tour that we can not change peoples’ lives, but it is the Holy Spirit who changes them. My team and I did all we could to share the Gospel with everyone, and even though not everyone accepted Jesus, I believe that God will speak and change their lives because God loves and accepts them. The most important thing is for us
Christians to obey God and plant seeds in people; and let Him water them.

Thank you for your prayer during my outreach and thank you for taking the time to read my newsletter. I am back at the YWAM base in Australia and I will keep you updated on my ministry here.

God bless you so much!

Germany and Holland Report

First of all, I am grateful to God for all that He has done in our ministry. Secondly, I am grateful to all of you for your faithful prayer support. It is because of you that I can do what God has asked me to do. We have had an amazing time ministering in Germany and Holland.

For the majority of our time spent in Germany, we worked with a church in a town called Neugraben in the city of Hamburg. It was cool to work with this church because the congregation was really passionate about reaching out to their community, especially by ministering to the prostitutes and helping the homeless. So, during our time there, we were extremely active. We performed for the church a couple of times and did many school performances as well. We always share the Gospel and give our testimonies whenever we perform, and it’s really awesome to watch God use our talents and our stories for His Glory. We also ministered to the homeless people in the area by giving them food and spending time loving on them.

For a short time during our stay in Germany, we moved to another suburb still in Hamburg. We joined with a YWAM base there and ministered again in the local schools and churches. We did more street evangelism there, again specifically targeting reaching the prostitutes in Red Light District areas. One time during evangelism, our team had the chance to lead a lady to the Lord! Please pray for your new sister! (Just to clarify, she was not a prostitute.)

Although we only saw one salvation during our ministry in Germany, we planted many seeds and we trust that the Lord will water them. We really felt the spiritual darkness was strong in that nation. People didn’t really care about the Gospel or God. But we could sense breakthrough happening while we were there. Please also pray for that nation. God loves them sooo much!

From Germany, we traveled to Holland briefly to visit our friend’s church. The spiritual atmosphere in Holland was totally different than it was in Germany. During our short stay in Holland, we did couple of performances and encouraged the church a lot. After one of our performances, about 20 people rededicated themselves to Jesus! And that same night, I got to lead a 14 years old girl to Jesus! Her name was Karmen and she came to church that night because her friend invited her to watch our performance.

Thank you for taking time to read my blog. I hope you are encouraged by this report- God is moving around the world. I ask that you pray for me, personally, to be wise, sharp in spirit, and sensitive to what the Lord says. Please also pray that God will continue to anoint our team in ministry. It is the Lord’s blessing that fuels our ministry.

May God bless you so much more!

More Happenings in South Africa

As you know, the outreach journey that my team and I have undertaken involves traveling to several different countries. We first flew to South Africa, now we are in Germany, and soon we plan to travel to Spain.

During the last two weeks that my team and I were in South Africa, we did a tremendous amount of ministry. For the first week, we attended a week-long conference hosted by YWAM at the Worcester-South Africa base. Many people came to this conference from many different YWAM bases. The daily teachings at this conference were amazing. From the teachings, I learned a lot about God’s mercy and His justice. Additional seminars also really opened my eyes about prophecy, and I have a deeper understanding of the Holy Spirit and how He moves. My team and I got to perform at the conference a couple of times and evangelize in the area too. One day during evangelism, I had the chance to lead someone to the Lord!

After the Conference, we stayed in Worcester and joined a ministry called Impact World Tour for another week. During that tour, more than 6000 people heard the Gospel and more than 400 people gave their live to Jesus! It was amazing to see God moving! We were very busy that week but God gave us His strength. We started ministry at 8am and continued straight into the evening, performing 3 to 4 times per day everyday. It was a challenging week, but a wonderful week because we got to see God changing people’s hearts and gain more brothers and sisters in Christ!

We have currently begun ministry in Germany. There is a different spiritual atmosphere here. Please continue to pray for my team and me to shine God’s love everywhere we go. On a personal note, God has been challenging me to persevere and to press on toward the goal, forgetting my past and looking forward toward what lies ahead (as the Bible says in Philippians 3:13b-14). Please pray that I can apply this message to my life daily.

Thank you so much for taking time to read my blog. I pray God blesses you so much for your support.

News from South Africa

THANK YOU for supporting me on my outreach! God miraculously provided for me through each of you, and I am truly blessed to be on outreach with my ministry team right now. You are a part of the Work of God that I am writing to you about, so I pray this update encourages you in your faith.

My team and I arrived in Cape Town, South Africa about three weeks ago. I love the people here because they are so welcoming, hospitable, and friendly. We have partnered with a local church and they have set up programs for us and arranged for us to perform in many places. So far, we have performed in churches, schools, parks, on the street, and even in a conference called “Nations to Nations.”

The first time we performed at a school, we saw about 130 students give their lives to the Lord! And, after our second school performance, about 160 more students accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior! It is so amazing to see these people’s hunger and thirst for God.

My team and I also evangelize in the streets. We pray for the Spirit to lead us to someone to share Jesus’ love with. One day during evangelism, my teammate and I started talking with a man. This man had never heard about God or Jesus before. I shared the Gospel with him and after he heard, he gave his life to Jesus.

Salvations are happening all the time. Last Sunday, we evangelized in a farming area about 1.5 hours drive from Cape Town. That time, again, God allowed me to lead 3 more people to Him. And last night, we visited a hospital nearby to pray for patients, and 3 more people gave their lives to Jesus!

Please keep praying for me as I serve our Father in the battlefield. Please pray for safety and good health for my teammates and me. And, please pray for God to give me His strength daily. The Lord has been reminding me of John 15:5 and He has been challenging me to remain in Him at all times and to fix my eyes on Him alone.

Thank you for partnering with me. I thank God for each of you!

God Bless you so much,

Jon V.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:5

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