The End...!!! (+Video)

We spent the final week of outreach with two other teams on board the M/V Pacific Hope, a ship belonging to our branch of YWAM, Marine Reach Ministries. It was a ship bought early this year in Japan, and since then it has sailed from there all the way to Tauranga, NZ, and had extensive work done. Up to this point, much of the work has involved deconstruction (which is mostly what we did), stripping down the 30 year old ship to the bare bones so it can be refit from the ground up. After our week of chipping rust, jackhammering concrete, sanding walls, removing evil steel bathtubs, cleaning, painting, and the like, the ship is nearly to the point where they can begin to refit and make it look nice again. Hopefully, in several months it will be ready for a tour of New Zealand, and soon after for medical missions outreach in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands!

With that, we finished up outreach. Then we had a chance to get away as a team for a couple nights at a beach house nearby. We had a great time as a team, encouraging and praying for one another and preparing to rejoin the whole DTS for one final week on the ship.

Finally, we came back to the base for graduation! We had an amazing meal for American Thanksgiving, then reported back from our outreach teams and got certificates for finishing DTS! It was a very bittersweet time: joyous celebration for all that God has done, but also sadness for having to leave some of the closest friends we've ever had. 

The Go leaders GOING!

The whole July 2013 DTS!

Anyway, obviously we had an amazing outreach, and if you've been reading this blog you would know something of what we did. Still, the video below is a good summary. With the captions it's pretty self explanatory. And as it says at the end, thank you so much for your support - in prayers, in finances, and in encouragement. God deserves so much praise for what He has done in our lives and the lives of many others through us!

Gratefully,
The Go Team

Finishing Strong in Vanuatu

This week was a blessing!  To start off the week, we visited the hospital to pray for any person that we saw.  We split up into three groups and took different sections of the hospital, morgue, pharmacy, and the waiting rooms.  We didn't see any dead people raised, but we did see amazing things through God working in healing pain in knees, backs, heads, stomachs, etc.  We were very blessed to pray for all sorts of things. Charlene and Hannah got to pray for a baby born prematurely.  Dan and Abbey visited the slums and got to see several healings and a new flame inside of people about God's love!  Before we all left to walk home, Abbey got to talk to two girls and they both accepted Jesus!  God did amazing things! 

Tuesday was a slower day because Dan, Abbey, and Brad got sick and tried recovering so that we could all do ministry.  Everyone (minus Brad) went to the university that day to pray for the students who had exams.  We did not talk to too many people; we were just doing a prayer walk for an hour and a half around the whole campus and residential area. 

Later in the evening after dinner, we all of us (including the two other teams living with us in Grace House) went down into town and had praise and worship for over an hour and a half.  It was great praying with people, feeling an earthquake and seeing another person brought to Jesus!  Overall, that day was amazing (besides all the sickness...)!

The highlight for Wednesday was going into town and doing a street performance followed by a message from Charlene about God's love and the simple Gospel. Brad was still out sick, and Dan had just recovered, but we powered onward with the help of the medical team that was also in Port Vila. At the last minute, Dan had to jump in and take Brad's place as Jesus in the skit, but it still went well and the Spirit was really working in people's hearts.

We did the first skit near the waterfront and the second one over where the little shops are that the mommas work at.  

They were both really good! The first performance led to one man praying to commit to Jesus, and after the second performance we saw lots of great responses. We even got invited to the home of a man named Jackson to pray for the family and neighbors.  

Once we got back from Jackson's house that evening, we just had a short amount of time before we were back out to lead the Bible study for the troubled teens again.  Unfortunately, Abbey and Brad were down for the count with different sicknesses and the rest of us were super tired, but God's grace carried us, so it went well and Ainsley taught about hearing God's voice like a boss! Once it was over and we got back, we all collapsed on our beds and fell asleep.

Thursday was a day filled with many emotions of goodbyes, excitement, and heaps of fun. 

 After we had worship at V2 Life base in Teouma Valley, we went back to Robinson's household for a goodbye celebration.  While we were waiting for the food to be cooked, we got to play with many children which included a hand woven "volleyball " and the girl's hair. 

  We then had a little goodbye celebration which included small speeches, gifts (including super amazing woven hats), food, and heartfelt goodbyes. 

On Friday we got to go to a nice resort island called Iririki for a last relaxing day in Vanuatu. We spent a while reflecting on how we changed over the course of the outreach, and it was really encouraging for everyone. We also got to go snorkeling and kayaking, and do some last minute shopping before it was time to return to Grace House for a final cleaning time and dinner.

Traveling back to New Zealand was fun because we had a three hour flight followed by a three hour car ride to Tauranga. Finally, we arrived back on the Pacific Hope, Marine Reach Ministry's "new" ship!

~The GO Group 

Praying with the President

This week has been an exciting week of ministry, healing, divine appointments, and fun!

Monday began with going to visit the local hospital, where we prayed for the patients, encouraged the people that had been in the hospital, and prayed with their families.  It  was a wonderful ministry time and it was a blessing to encourage and pray for so many people. As we prayed, God healed some people of different things - like knee pain - in the pharmacy area!

After we spent a few hours in the hospital, we walked down the street to go to visit the slums.While we were there, we got to play with heaps of children, build relationships with the parents (and grandparents), and pray for many of the people in the slums. It was amazing to see how blessed many of the people were through prayer - some who received us a little hesitantly said goodbye with huge smiles on their faces! Overall, it was a great day!

   

We kicked off our Tuesday with some worship and prayer as a team before walking over to the office of the President of Vanuatu. We showed up there just hoping we would be able to see him and pray with him, but God had even bigger plans. It turns out that all of Vanuatu's provincial leaders were there for a council which happens only twice a year, and they welcomed us into their meeting!  They let us sit in on the meeting for a few minutes, share the words we had received from God in prayer that morning, and pray for them!  It was so exciting!

After we prayed, they asked us to pray for their guest house (where all the non-local leaders stay when their in town), so we went and prayed for it. It was such a cool opportunity because it essentially meant we could affect the spiritual atmosphere of the place by welcoming the Holy Spirit, praying against any evil that was there, worshiping (putting God in His rightful place), and praying for every leader that will be staying there. It was a great way to directly sow into the leadership of Vanuatu spiritually. Then we wrote a letter to the President and delivered it to him in person before we leaved. It was really cool! 

After the exciting morning, we came home and ate lunch, and then both the Medical and GO Team went to a local Christian school to sing songs, do skits, teach, and play games with the kids. Our team did a skit on the Good Samaritan and Charlene taught on loving God and hearing His voice. Next, the medical team took over to do some health education, especially teaching on washing hands and brushing teeth.

We split the kids up into two age groups, and the older children went outside to play a crazy type of tag involving long lines of people holding hands!

Wednesday was the day that we had been invited to go back to one of the homes that we distributed Bibles to the previous week. Unfortunately we hadn't really taken into account island time, in which Wednesday "afternoon" could apparently mean anytime between 3 and 7 pm... So as we showed up around 1:30pm, we were told that they hadn't expected us until the evening. Oops. In the end, we waited around for a while, singing and playing with the kids, as they gathered the people of the community for the church service. After some worship, Hannah and Abbey spoke on unity between each other in families and as a community.  We had a time for prayer ministry with them, and even had a little children's activity time!  

Some of the girls from the medical team came with us and they helped do some wound care for the children.  One thing that was forgotten to be mentioned was the heavenly downpour of rain the entire morning and afternoon. The sermons had to be projected with our voices because the rain was really loudly hitting on the metal roofing. At the end of our time with the family and community, we were served island food and were invited to come back the following week for a farewell celebration. We are all excited for that!  

Once we returned home, we rushed to eat dinner and then get back on the road to do devotions with a group of troubled youth in the area. It had almost been canceled because of the rain, but in the end we were really glad we still came! Bradley shared a message about John 3:17, then we opened up the floor for questions and they asked us several really good questions about church, hearing God's voice,  and about life in general. We finished the day really tired but very happy with the results of all our ministry.

On Thursday, we headed out to the V2Life YWAM base to do praise and worship in the morning, along with some prayer and intercession. After that we waited for a break in the rain to do some work around the base.  Although it is easy to write about, it took us a long amount of time to plant vegetables in the garden, help build their new prayer chapel, "weed" with machetes, and babysit. 

On Friday morning, our Go team went back to the Christian school to lead chapel.  Brad spoke and we sung "Every Move I Make," "Deep Cries Out," and "Lord I Lift Your Name On High" and some of the children were singing at the top of their lungs. It was absolutely adorable seeing the children getting so into worshiping Jesus!  Brad's message was on the triumphal entry, repentance, and the parable of the lost sheep. He had definitely heard from God as he wrote it, and it was super awesome!

  

Later that evening, we went back to the Christian Fellowship group held at the university.  We had a wonderful time building more relationships and hearing people's testimonies on how good God has been to them in their lives.

  It was a wonderful week, and to top it off, Hannah, Abbey, and Mallory (a girl from the Medical Group) helped make cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Saturday morning! Yum!

~The GO Team!

Operation Holy Spirit Descending

After transitioning over the weekend and praying about what we should do, we decided start off our time in Port Vila by doing street evangelism for the day. We all split up into groups of two and went all over town: to the market, through the parks, into the shops, by the waterfront, at the bus stop. While walking, we went around evangelizing and praying for people EVERYWHERE! We all came back from our evangelism time feeling blessed and so thankful that we had been sharing God's love all day with others. If nothing else, we had been challenged to step out in boldness and talk to everyone God told us to.

The next day, Abbey was sick from giardia and Hannah stayed behind with her.  The other four healthy members of our team went out to the Teouma Valley (where a YWAM Base called V2Life is located) and to distribute bibles in Bislama (Vanuatu's official language)!  The Bibles were carried in a wheelbarrow and we had a wonderful translator named Ethel with us.  The day was filled with prayer, healing, Jesus, and heaps of Bibles distributed to the locals! The first place we came to was called the Anglican Brotherhood. Several young men live there and have a kind of monastic lifestyle devoted to God and prayer for a few years. We gave them Bibles and prayed for them, then they offered to come with us and help. We weren't sure at first, but they turned out to be really nice, and they helped us cover a lot more ground that day!

The next day, the GO Team was down one more person.  Abbey was still out, Bradley was sick too, and Dan stayed back to watch the two of them.  Although we only had half the team that day, we also had two other local helpers. The people that went out got to give out quite a few bibles and had a good day talking with the locals about Jesus and sharing the Gospel with them.

So many new Bibles!

The following day, we all started off by doing worship at the V2Life YWAM base with our team, a group of people from the YWAM Perth, and a group from YWAM Tonga.  It was so beautiful hearing people singing to God in English, Tongan, French, Swiss, and Bislama all in one place.

 Praise the Lord, everyone was healthy today and we all went out to distribute more Bibles! 

We had all six of us in the group, plus three translators and Cheyne, the DTS leader, with us.  We split up in different groups because we had so many people and we got to pray for heaps of people, hand out more Bibles, and build such good relationships with one family.  Ainsley preached the gospel like a boss with so much boldness, and God was giving everyone supernatural knowledge and prophetic words about the people we were talking to! They invited us to come back next week to lead a church service at their home!  Later, after we had finished, we went home to prepare for our skit that we were doing later in the evening. That night, we went to the University of the South Pacific (five minutes walk from Grace House) to the Christian Fellowship group.  We performed our skit and had an explanation afterwards and then they continued with the rest of their program...and continued...and continued.  It went pretty late because it was almost their last meeting of the year. But it didn't matter too much because we got to experience the amazing love those students have for God and each other, their wonderful culture, and some great praise and worship.  We also got to get to know some of them and build relationships. After all of that...we went to bed at midnight.  There's island time for you =)

Friday we did a prayer walk around the university and prayed for gym and sports fields, housing areas, cafeteria, offices, classrooms, and for a party that was going on that evening.  It was so much fun! In the end, it was a pretty intense week, but God is always faithful and keeps encouraging us and giving us strength. We're so blessed...

~The GO Team

From Espiritu Santo to Port Vila

After a long and hardworking time of building the water tank, we were blessed with a day off! 

You can click on any picture to see the original size

We were really blessed because the whole group got the opportunity to go to Champagne Beach, one of the nicest beaches in Vanuatu.  

We had a blast spending time relaxing, being in the sun, swimming in the clear tropical ocean water, exploring, eating fresh pineapple, and spam sandwiches for lunch! When we left, most of us were a few shades redder.  

The second we had arrived at home, Clemont (our host) told us that we had five minutes to change and take showers before we left because we were going to the hospital to pray for people.  We were a little confused because we students were told to dress up nicely. When we got to the road, we sat and waited for a ride.  By the time that a truck arrived that was willing to take us, it was dark outside.  We ended up getting surprised by the leaders and Clemont, who took us out for a nice dinner together. We had a lot of fun – the two highlights were the great food and the flushing toilet complete with toilet paper!  It was a truly wonderful day and we were blessed.

The next day, we had to get the guttering up and attached to the house and water tank.  After the guttering was finished, we all had to dress up nice for the going away party. 

The girls wore their totally amazing and stylish island dresses. 

Before the dinner began, it started off with some people (including the village chief) and some of us giving small speeches.  Then, we were all given gifts and we exchanged gifts with the family as well.  Dinner was really special and involved a lot of food. Let me stress the A LOT in that sentence.  We had at least five different kinds of food: lap lap, rice, bananas, and so many other dishes.  Every time we turned our heads to talk to someone, someone was putting more food on our plates!  After we ate lots of food, we all were called up to dance.  So then, we listened to Reggae music and danced until we were exhausted and really, really sweaty.  When we were all done dancing, we shook a million hands and said our goodbyes to the locals of the community.  The thing that lightened the mood was that "I Want it That Way" by Backstreet Boys and a Reggae version of "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada were being blared in our ears while shaking hands.

Dan and his buddies.

Brad and his homies.

The last day in Santo involved a lot of patience waiting for almost an hour and a half for our "bus" (van) to arrive to pick us up. We were told it would come at 10, it didn't come until 11:30.  We had to catch a flight at 12:35, but fortunately it was on island time (late), so we got to the airport and checked in and still waited a while before the plane left.  Leaving Santo was pretty sad... One thing that made our waiting interesting was our plane tickets that were hand written...

We got picked up in Port Vila and now we are staying at YWAM Marine Reach's outreach base, called "Grace House."  Once we arrived at the house, we were welcomed by the medical DTS group.  It was really exciting to see familiar faces again!

Over the next few days we mainly prepared for the next stage of our outreach in and around Port Vila on the island of Efate. This included an receiving an orientation to Port Vila, hearing about the different opportunities of things that we could do here, praying about it A LOT, and also spending some time interceding (praying) for the other DTS groups. 

It was a good week, and we were blessed in so many ways. God blessed us both with a wonderful end to our time on Santo and a great place to live as we do ministry in Port Vila. It has involved a big transition from things like limited electricity, bucket showers, and island time to electricity, running water, and being on a schedule. Still, we finished the week with lots of excitement about the opportunities for ministry that God has thrown our way, and the amazing possibilities for Him to work through us!

~The Go Team

WATER TANK WEEK!

From the 14-19th of October, our group got to be a part of making the first water tank building on the island of Espiritu Santo! It was a real privilege to be building a water tank for the locals in the community that we were staying in.  

The first day of building the water tank, we all helped make the wooden form, which consisted of six large elements. It took a lot of elbow grease because we didn't have any electricity (and thus no power tools). We built a screen for sifting the sand, and we started the loooonnnggg sifting process.   

Even the locals helped us because they were so excited to have a water tank near their homes.

On the second day, our team made the skeleton of the lid.  Although it is easy to write about, it took a lot of work and it was time consuming.  Making the skeleton for the lid involved cutting rebar with a dull hack saw, bending it into the shape of circles and twisting TONS of wires around to keep it in place. We made something similar for the foundation and poured it with concrete the same day!

The foundation

On day three we poured the lid so it would have plenty of time to dry before we lifted it onto the tank. 

Day one, two, AND three, we did a lot sifting sand for the concrete. For maybe 30 minutes, the sand was easy to sift. Sadly, the majority of the time the sand was slowly sifted through two screens. It involved us sifting the rocks out first and then sifting out the shells and coral...by hand.

The first batch of cement was mixed in a wheelbarrow, but we all quickly realized that it was easier when mixing it in a tarp. Someone would hold each corner, and each person would lift in turn to mix the concrete evenly. It worked really well!

After pouring the foundation and the lid, we set up the form, wrapped it in fabric, chicken wire, and a thicker steel wire, and put up two coats of concrete. After we plastered the outside of the tank, we took the wooden forms out and then plastered the inside.  In the process of using the cement, we got very messy and even had an accident with the cement spilling ALL OVER Hannah and Abbey.  Whoops!

The last day of building the tank, we all had to lift an EXTREMELY heavy cement lid up above out heads. Fortunately, lots of villagers turned out to give us a hand!

Finally, we put up the gutter to collect water from the roof and direct it into the tank.

We came, we saw, we conquered. 

Over all, we all had an awesome week that was filled with hard work, cement, sand, wire, a few cuts here and there, and lots of bugspray and sunscreen. We were certainly tired by the end, but we had something pretty amazing to show for it! We still got to interact with the villagers while we worked, which was really good, and on Sunday we had the opportunity to lead church again. Brad led worship while  Charlene spoke on wisdom and humility and Dan spoke on finding truth and freedom in Christ. It was yet another really good week on Santo!

~The GO Group