Hello again! Just a bit of my newsletter to post on here!
October was a very busy month for
me, along with challenging. This was in
a good way though. I think that I have
finally found my niche and role within the church. I find it quiet funny that I seem to have
always run away from working with youth and young-adults even though I had my
mom always telling me I was good at it, well now I am starting to believe
her. I am not sure if it was the fear of
responsibility and leadership or just that I didn't trust God enough in what to
do with my life. Either way I am
continually blown away by what God has been doing with these youth over here.
A staple to the Vineyard Church is to be naturally supernatural. One
of the problems I have always had with so called healing ministry is the
production and pizzazz of so many of its proponents. The whole philosophy here is that we expect
God to heal the sick and hurting because he said he would. Nothing more and nothing less. The focus should always be kept on God and
not on what we can do. One of the things
that has challenged me lately is this thought: We are always asking “What can I
possibly do God?” While God is asking
“Who am I”? I find it really easy to keep my focus on my strengths and failures
instead of finding out who God is. I
truly believe that if we focus on our relationship with God those other things
will fall into place.
Just a few prayer requests for you
all back home:
Continual prayer for the
opportunities to work in the schools.
This has been an amazing opportunity to bring light into the
schools. I find myself being in a
position of running groups 10 -20 kids and it has being amazing to see these
kids asking questions about my faith. I
also look at it as an opportunity to use my social work training as a
councilor.
Prayer for open hearts and safety
with the street work. We are hearing
some great stories of renewal and healing in the community. So continued opportunities and safety for our
teams.
Finances, that God will continue to
provide for me while I am out here. God
has blessed me with amazing friends and family.
I love you all!!!
I guess my last request is for me to
be diligent with school work, so that it does not affect my work as an
intern. I have been finding it difficult
to balance the two of these lately and it has been causing a bit of
stress.
Lastly I just want to mention that I
will be attempting to start up a video blog along side my current blog. I think it would be a great way to just have
some fun with this whole thing. Feel
free to check out my blog as I will be updating that more frequently. Any thoughts on this?!
Skype:
Bigguyjake
jake@vineyarddungannon.co.uk
