Goodbye for now…

I apologize for a lack of updates since you heard last. Internet has been few and far between during the last weeks of outreach and mixed in with travel has made it hard to get a word out! Two weeks ago my team and I said goodbye to Mozambique and were off to Cape Town South Africa. We spent a week there visiting friends, debriefing our outreach and trying to get some much needed R&R! Its been quite the adventure and I don’t quite know how to sum up this last month. We have had countless testimonies of the power of God touching the people of mozambique not to mention our own lives. Some of my favorite testimonies have to be the ones that changed the lives of my students, they are not the same people who strolled into class in Hawaii 6 months ago!!

One student struggled with believing in the gift of healing before outreach. We watched as the Lord started to break unbelief over his life as he prayed for the sick and saw them set free. One night specifically he prayed for a man with a deaf ear and saw him completely healed! The ironic thing about that was that the reason he struggled believing for the gift of healing was that he is actually mostly deaf in his left ear and as a child he was prayed for but didn’t get healed. The exact thing he prayed for and saw breakthrough in someone else was the very place the enemy had sown unbelief in his past.

Another Student came from a knarley backround full of money, drugs, alcohol, women, you name it he did it. When he first arrived in Hawaii he had no joy and no hope for his future until one day he got filled with the Holy Spirit! haha he was never the same again! He didn’t even come with a desire to meet God, but he totally got hijacked by the Lord!  To see the joy on his face, and hearing his heart for the Lord day after day in the middle of the dirt in Africa was incredible. The very last place a guy like him would ever want to go became the very best place for him to encounter the love of God.

One day we went to a prison to do some ministry. One of my students got to share some of his testimony and pray for the men in the jail and got completely wrecked that day. He is really prophetic, and as a boy the Lord spoke to him that he was going to go to prison one day. As a child he didn’t know what to do with what he herd and didn’t want to believe it. Little did he know God was speaking to him about ministering in a prison and not being in prison himself. Every week after that he went to visit the prison’s and saw incredible fruit. He got so stoked as he saw the word of God over his life being fulfilled. After that experience he has a real desire to impact the prison’s in his home city and really knows that the Lord has called him to be a part of that in some way.

I could share more but I just wanted to give you a glimpse of what it has been like looking through my eyes the last months. In a lot of ways this last season of my life has been really hard and not always the most enjoyable one. I have struggled to fully understand what the Lord is doing in my own personal life and recognize his nearness. And yet I can look at any one of these testimonies and say that despite any of my wrestling with the Lord within the last 6 months it was completely worth it all! Learning to serve and lay down my life that others may climb higher has been my journey and it has been grueling. Yet even if it was for breakthrough in one of these students lives it would be worth pouring myself out again and again and again. The Son of man didn’t come to be served but to serve and I have learned that simply serving with my hands and serving people are two completely different things. To really live as Jesus lived will cost us everything, I never realized how narrow the road is! It is not some cake walk, he completely poured out his life so that others may live. I had a glimpse of that on this trip and I felt like it was going to destroy me, but I believe it was the grace of God that allowed me to see it and to really count the cost. I will never be the same after this experience and I know none of my students will be either.

So all in all I could share so much of what has happened in the people of mozambique and the testimonies of freedom and deliverance but this trip was more than that. There was more fruit in ministry on this trip than I have seen on any of my trips and the people of that land are so beautiful. Looking back I see that more than just touching the land of mozambique, 9 people have been forever ruined by what they saw and how they met the Lord. And the fruit of their lives is going to touch countless others, to mozambique and wherever else they go!

I hope many of you have had or will have the chance to travel to another place and see the love of God in a different culture. I have found that I tend to learn more from them than they learn from me, I have so much to learn and I am grateful for this experience!

 

blessings!

Chris

 

Sorry I’m not much of a writer haha! this blog doesn’t show a lot of what happened. But hopefully these pictures can help, and hopefully we can talk in person if you want to hear more!

 

 

Beans and Rice.

Hey all. I just figured I would drop a quick post about a short testimony that happened today! Every day at Iris there is a ministry that ministers to and feeds the village kids. For many of these kids this food is all they get for the day, and for many of them most of it has to be taken home to their family before they can eat it. Its a measly rice and beans according to what I am used to in North America, but to them its what they need to get through the day. Today was like many other days with lots of hungry children excited to watch a drama, sing some songs, and get some eats in their tummy! The kids line up in sections to pick up their food as others wait their turn. As we were getting to the last few groups we noticed we were running out of food fast and most definitely wouldn’t have enough. I was filling the plates with the rice and beans myself and could tell you that we had more kids than food. Everyone started to panic a bit at the thought of many anticipant hungry children not getting food for the day. we began praying that the Lord would multiply it as we filled the plates but to be honest it just didn’t look like it was working at all haha. So as the last group of children waited we piled every last plate together and began praying and blessing it, we really had nothing else to do. Our African freind went over to the children and began counting how many heads there were, he called back, “we have 79”. We began counting the plates, and beleive me it didn’t look near 79 when we first piled them together, and we counted exactly 79 plates of rice and beans!!!! haha I couldn’t beleive it I just started laughing and laughing, none of us could believe it. All the kids came up to wash their hands and get their food and everyone got fed! Its something I don’t think I will ever forget, not only the miracle of the multiplication of food, but the look on the kids faces as they came to get their rice and beans! Stinkin’ ridiculous, I was so blessed today and so humbled to see how faithful He is to even the littlest, poorest, unnoticed, overlooked one that walks the face of the planet. That is my God!

Earlier in the day today we also had the opportunity to visit a prison and do church with them. Often times we go their to worship pray teach and encourage them. But every time I leave more blessed than when I go, and I get more and more convinced that I am in fact learning more from them than they are from me. The worship was so passionate and raw, it was powerful as the prisoners lifted their worship without any instrument but simply voices in a hallway no wider than 5 feet packed with stinky men. After All the worship and teaching their was an opportunity for prayer and their was a man that had bad back pain. I asked him to stretch and he began slowly trying to touch his toes, obviously in pain, and then twist his upper body side to side and he could hardly do it as he winced in pain. We began praying and declaring health over his body. We asked him to stretch again and this time he could move a little better but still obviously in pain, so we told him we are going to pray again. Something completely broke as we prayed the second time and the man began bending over and twisting side to side and began hopping on his feet. He started jolting up and down with a big smile on his face and, through translators, it was obvious the man got completely set free from back pain!! He was filled with so much joy and was truly blessed. I remember praying and thinking of the Lord’s faithfulness to this man and how much He desired to set him free! So good!

I have pressed in and prayed for the sick many times in my life but I have never seen the power of God move in healing like I have hear. There is a real need for the power of God in this place, they don’t really have many options as the majority of the population cannot afford medical care.

So thats a short story on our day today! It was a super encouraging day, and yet I am challenged on so many levels. This has to change everything, the power of God has to be more than enough for every living soul. I guess that’s my journey in a nutshell, how deep can the power and love of God go and how can He change everything we thought we ever knew? I have no idea where I am going in this life, and yet I have every idea what and who I am going after and that is enough. We have to let the power of God touch our lives, I don’t want to chase the wind my whole life! I want to chase something that is real, that is deep, that challenges me to the core of my being and and that is more alive than anything I have ever known! no matter the cost, it has to be worth it.

What are you chasing after?

Bush to the Bush!

So this weekend we went to the middle of no where (africans call it “the bush bush”) of Mozam for outreach. We crammed maybe 25 people in the back of a truck for a 2 hour drive into the middle of nowhere. The truck reminded us all of like an army truck with a covering over the roof packed full of people in the back, half white half African. So we arrived at a remote village and set up camp to run a showing of the jesus film, share some testimonies, and have a time to minister and pray for the sick in their village. It was craziness to say the least haha! good craziness but crazy. Lots of people showed up and lots of people received prayer. Its hard with the language barrier but we saw a lot of people healed mostly from back pain, head pain and from stomach pain. Some of our students were praying for a lady with a problem with her jaw and her husband came with the intent that if their was someone their that could heal his wife he would pay them. So they prayed and she got healed and he tried to pay us haha! Its was 20 mets which is about 75 cents Canadian, but most likely a substantial amount to these villagers. You can see alot of poverty in this place but even more noticable is how beautiful these people are. There is something so special about who they are and the way they live I feel like I have so much to learn from them. Their lives are so simple yet I believe so significant in God’s eyes. I can’t really describe it but something happens every time I look into their eyes. I cannot help but lock eyes with every child, man and women I pass by saying “Salama” and giving them a big fat smile! I love these people and I feel like I was sent here more to learn from them than actually them learning from me, I am more assured of that even as I write. There is definitely real physical challenges of our time here and especially the bush bush outreach but looking at it now it feels so not substantial compared to what its like being with these poeple and learning from them. I just can’t talk enough about how special they are. Everywhere I have travelled I feel like I see the heart of God in the people and there is so much beauty in every culture I’ve been to and this one is no different. Its super humbling, we have lots of opportunity to teach and pray and serve with the ministry we are with here in Mozambique and we are pouring out on these people as much as we can. But I can’t help but feel that the Lord wants to teach me so much more from these people than anything I have to offer them.

Ministry was filled with person after person coming up to you trekking through puddles and puddles of mud to get to the front. There was a language barrier but it didn’t matter even just the eye to eye contact and the laying on of hands seemed powerful enough for God to move. At moments it was challenging because there were so many people and so many prayers that I had no idea what was going on but every so often someone would come up and point to their back for prayer. I would motion them to stretch so I could see if they could touch their toes. They would only be able to make it half way. I would pray for them and motion them to try to touch their toes again and the second time they could! they would smile and give me a thumbs up and that was it, on to the next person! It was hard because it seemed really genuine and yet it was hard to tell how it really effected them through the language barrier.

The next day we went to different houses, or huts, to pray for families and give them some pamphlets to help them learn about Jesus. It was super special to have the opportunity to go to their homes and bless their households. One of the families had a very small child, I found out through asking through a translater, that he was only two days old and I asked his name and his mother said they haven’t named him yet. Later on that day the mother of the child came up to me asking me for my name so that they could name their child after me. I was super taken back and didn’t quite know how to respond. The translator told me it was a good thing so we wrote down and pronounced the name to her. What the heck! I still don’t really know what to think of that, but I hope the child is blessed!

 

By the afternoon of the second day we all stunk and were pretty dirty due to some flashfloods and hot hot sun. Some of the african dudes that were leading the outreach with us asked me and a few friends if we wanted to go for a walk during our break. Turns out we ended up at a river with toppless women bathing and cleaning clothes haha! It didn’t occur to them to be weird at all… the guys took us over to the other side where the men were hanging out and because we were ill prepared, stripped down to our boxers and jumped in! it was soooo ridiculous being the only white person laughing and swimming with them and sharing their soap to wash up. I will never forget it! then we found a big rock and started jumping and doing flips into the river, boys will be boys no matter what culture or piece of earth you are on. I love it!

And the kids! there is so many children here and swarms of them just come up to you wanting a hug or a handshake. they all smell kinda bad and by the end of the day you smell just like them haha! But the smell cant hold you back from just loving on them.

The team really enjoyed the trip tho I know they were challenged by many things as well as me. They are settling in well and enjoying the journey in the midst of the challenge, It wouldn’t be the same adventure without it! hope this helps give you guys a little of an idea of what we are up to! We have been doing a bunch of other things here on the base as well to help this place keep running, maybe in the next message I can fill you in on more of that. Until next time…

 (Bill & Chris)

Mozambique!

So we have our VISA’s! Praise God! Everything is a go and in order to head out to Pemba, Mozambique to link up with Iris Ministries. Finances have come in and students are getting excited. The above picture is the base where I believe we will be living. Unfortunately one of our students can no longer come due to health reasons, yet thankfully she will be able to go on another outreach with a team heading out to the west coast of America. She is excited for the opportunity to go, its sad for us to say goodbye but its whats best for her and for the team!

The last few weeks of lecture phase have been really good but I think a lot of us are getting a little bit antsy to be honest. The teaching has been so good, but its time to get out there and do the kingdom man!

We had a week on simple church planting that was super practical and super applicable to outreach, I think many of the students were empowered knowing really how simple the gospel is.  Sometimes we totally overcomplicate everything! What if we just made disciples rather than trying to reach the masses?

“If I focus on the masses its an overwhelming task, but if I focus on the one, it will change the world.” (Mother Teresa)

 

Cant wait to share more when we actually arrive in Mozam and are getting in the dirt with the poor and the brokenhearted. Hope to have lots of updates for you guys soon. We will actually have a team photographer and reporter that may help with keeping you guys in the loop. I’m not much of a photographer…

We leave on March 29th and arrive in Pemba on April 2nd, craziness. A 9 hour layover in Frisco, a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt, and an 8 hour layover in south Africa. You can be praying for grace and safe travels!

Here’s a link if you want to check out what Iris Ministries is all about –> https://www.irismin.org/home

And here’s a pic of the crew! We may look pretty in this picture, dunno if I can say we will look that good in Africa tho haha..

 

Peace and Love,

Chris

 

 

This teaching continues to mess me up…

I love this guy, give it a listen.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part.

Hey friends! What to share … Its been a while since my last post. hawaii is still beautiful, the ocean is still salty, the star fruit is still delicious and I am still alive and healthy! The last few weeks have been a bit ridiculous but fun none the less.

This particular Fire and Fragrance DTS has probably had by far the most emphasis on the word of God than any other previous school. It has been so good, I find myself getting hungrier and hungrier to just eat up the word of God and get it in me! The last few weeks of teaching have been super challenging for most of the school as the speakers contradicted one another on a lot of topics. It left many of the students a little bit aggravated and others a bit confused. So one of the afternoon sessions was spent debriefing the last weeks and processing what the Lord was saying. Sometimes verbal processing is so necessary! Many people got a clearer picture of the heart of God from a different perspective while others were really challenged. But what was interesting was that you could almost feel the hunger for the word of God in the room increase the more we discussed. I think so many of us were challenged to really search the scriptures to find out what Jesus really came to accomplish and what we have really been given! Its obvious that so much of christianity today is living under the standard of what jesus really died to give us! Do we really know what He died to give? Do we really know the level of freedom  he has made attainable? Do we really know the power that resides inside of us? Do we really know the power of the gospel? It has to be more than some fairytale to make people feel good about themselves! If the gospel I carry does not display the power of God to transform lives, cities and nations than is what I’m carrying the gospel?

As a school it so good to see students and staff alike dive into the scriptures to discover the truth and not just hear what we want to hear or believe what we want to believe in order to make us feel good. But to actually know the truth. I find myself challenged on so many levels and hungry to really know the truth from the word of God. It can be easy to develop a theology based on our own experience that actually isn’t rooted in scripture.

Outside of class things have been quite hectic as outreach is approaching fast! Please pray for my sanity in the midst of logistics and planning and busyness, its definitely not my strong point… VISA’s and budgeting are in the works and I have a lot to learn! haha. Pray that my team and I can maintain vision for the dreams God has placed on our hearts for our time in Mozambique and not to get caught up in everything else.

I wanna see the sick healed man!

Outside of planning weekends have been niiiiice, I have taken advantage of every minute of free time I get either hiking mountains or shredding some pavement on the longboard or cliff jumpin or going for a nap at the peer! Here’s some pics of some adventures and my newly acquired wheels!

 

New school this July!

Click the link to find out more, maybe this is for you…

I love you Holy Spirit

where to start… I am writing this after just getting back from a camping trip this weekend with my future outreach team. We got some solid bonding time as well as solid adventure time swimming in underwater lava tubes and cookin’ hotdogs over the campfire and sleeping under the stars on the beach! Its such a blessing to not only be a part of a move of God but to also have the opportunity to enjoy His creation on the most secluded islands on the planet! Hawaii actually once had the biggest church in the world on the big island in a town called Hilo, it grew to over 10, 000 members! Crazy. There is so much rich spiritual history here, its time to uncap the wells!

So I will be co-leading a team with my friend Brittany Chaney. We are leading a team of 8 students, 4 guys and 4 girls, to Africa in less than 2 months! Time has  literally been flying by its ridiculous. It has been so good yet also very challenging the last month as leadership tends to draw out the best and also the worst in me haha.  Insecurities that you don’t even know you have get exposed and all the junk tends to come to the surface, which under different circumstances you would normally have no idea about. Its a love hate relationship for me as I long to be completely exposed in a way that I don’t have to hide anything from anybody and just be raw, real, Chris! Its time for a generation to rise up that is free from the fear of man and free from the fear of failure! imagine how different our lives would be if we simply rid ourselves of that junk! Every time I feel like I conquer these areas the Lord takes it a little bit deeper and exposes a little bit more. Ahhh Its tiresome sometimes haha and yet its so good, I am a completely different person than I was a few years ago due to this area of freedom and I will never give up the fight. But my freedom isn’t just for me, its for a generation to know the truth and live a life free from the bondage of self hatred, free from the bondage of addiction, free from the bondage of depression, free from the bondage of rejection, free from bondage of lies lies and more lies, the list could go on forever. All of hell trembles that you would discover who you are and become it! The reason you ever get attacked by the spirit of fear is because the spirit of fear fears you! If we really knew who we are… The only answer to any issue we have in our lives is the knowledge of God! I promise you this one thing will change your life, I can’t stop being changed from it no matter how distant or how close to Him I feel. It is worth giving up everything to discover Him!

The main emphasis of the last few weeks of the school has been on Holy Spirit and on Freedom. Holy Spirit week went so deep in so many hearts of the students, He came in such a subtle way but in a way that was so needed. Many of the students got filled with the Spirit for the first time and many of them were speaking in tongues for the first time. I was reminded all week of the first time I met Holy Spirit and how my life was never the same after that moment, its so good to see this happening in the lives of the students and I pray that it would mark them forever. Freedom week was intense but so needed as lies of the ememy were completely exposed and many of the students were able to break ties of self hatred and unworthiness. At the end of the week the speaker had a team with him that anointed the students with oil and prophesied the truth of God into their hearts replacing the hole that the lies used to fill. It was so good, some people got completely drenched with oil haha, myself included. It makes me think of David and how much oil they used when he was anointed, I bet he got covered head to toe!

So I guess thats a brief update. I hope this leaves you encouraged and excited about what the Lord is doing in your life because I guarantee that it is significant even if you don’t realize it! I miss it half the time in my own life but every once in a while I get completely wrecked when the Lord shows up in the room and points out every area of my life that He cares about.

My outreach team is coming together, finances are a bit tight for some of our students if  you have the opportunity please pray for breakthrough! As well as wisdom for Brittany and myself as we have been reminded that this thing is so much bigger than ourselves and what we feel like we are capable of! We have spent some time vision casting and praying about what we desire for this outreach and we both are continually reminded of simplicity. This quote pretty much sums it up: “If I focus on the masses its an overwhelming task, but if I focus on the one, it will change the world.” (Mother Teresa)

Thank you so much for your prayers and support it means a lot, I really miss you guys.

Sorry for the lack of photos, I kind of suck at that. But here’s a pic of me and my co-leader!

Chris.

Freedom! Week 1.

Hey all! So today marks the end of week one, it was crazy! I haven’t seen a group of students in YWAM this hungry for the Lord right off the bat. Its been super encouraging to see students encounter the Lord starting from day one. The first day of class we didn’t even get into any of the teaching that was planned because Holy Spirit decided to show up and began ministering to people all around the room! The ministry time went long into the morning and didn’t end until an hour and a half later where we had a break and then regrouped to process what the Lord was doing. There was testimony after testimony of people being set free and delivered while others were engaging in the presence of God and letting him minister to their hearts! So good.

The presence of God continued to move throughout the week in class and in the prayer room as the teaching and ministry began settling on the students. Andy Byrd was speaking on the love of God and how we have all to commonly mixed it up, living for love rather than living from love. When we know the true love of God we respond naturally to the things on His heart, but when we don’t really know the love of God we tend to find ourselves working for his love and responding out of performance to gain His love. His love can never be attained by human effort or good works! The Love of God can only be received by grace, not by my own ability. This is the foundation of our faith, and when the foundation is wrong our whole house can all too easily crumple to the ground. As Andy spoke this simple revelation it began to shift many of the students’ ways of thinking and provided opportunity for the Lord to move and release his true nature and character. If we really knew what God thinks of us! It would completely change our life! Its time we give ourselves to the knowledge of God rather than relying on good structures and formulas that make us look good on the outside! He doesn’t look for pretty people, he looks for the broken, the raw, the hungry hearts that don’t care how foolish or messy they look on the outside. Lets get messy in our pursuit of Him! He likes to get in the middle of our mess, forget what you’ve been told that you have to be perfect!

…So all thats to say its been a good first week. Even before the week began we had a student walk into our dorm room seeking freedom. Me and some of our staff guys in the dorm at the time were able to lead him through some deliverance and he got totally set free! He recognized some areas he had been walking in sin and as he confessed them to the Lord we helped him pray through the junk and saw the lies of the enemy flee as the presence of God began shining on the darkness! We began prophesying truth to replace the lie and after asked him how he felt and he said, “I feel high as a kite.” All we could do was laugh with him as he was being filled with the Holy Spirit. This is just one of many testimony’s that have been coming out of this first week, we really feel like the Lord has been emphasizing deliverance and seeing people set free of the lies of the enemy right off the bat so they can be free to run into everything God has for them over the coming months.

Personally I am doing well, the most impacting thing since being here for my own personal walk has simply been the amazing leadership I am surrounded with and fellow staff/friends that I can be completely open and vulnerable with. Freedom is so attainable the more we walk in authentic community and really learn to be real and raw with one another.

Jonathan David Helser came in on the weekend  to lead worship this coming week. He’s one of my favourites, you can check out some of his tunes at www.jonathanhelser.com.

Oh and its official, I will be leading a team to Mozambique Africa! Should be fun, I will be leading it with another staff member.

Thank you for your prayers and support, it means a lot!

Chris.

Our prayer room.

Our classroom.

 

 

What does faith look like?

So as many of you know I have had issues entering the United States the last few years and when I entered in early December the case was no different. In these times with the authorities I have found myself a little anxious and in prayer but not really faith filled prayers if you know what I mean… kind of like pity prayers for help. The visa I got earlier this month was for 3 months but was actually a few weeks shorter than I needed. However, as I left the country for christmas that visa was no longer useful. Soooo after christmas I realized I had to do this again which I was not stoked about. As I got off my flight and was on my way to customs things felt different this time, almost like a holy frustration came over me and I decided that this was going to stop today! I began declaring in my spirit that I was child of the most high God and that the things of this world cannot hold me back from the call of God on my life and really just declared breakthrough. I remained super calm and confident as I responded well to the customs officials telling them everything I was doing in Hawaii and he stamped it just like that. Usually I get a B1 but he wrote B2 in my passport and I didnt know quite what that was so I asked, “how much time do I have in your country?” and he said 6 months!! haha just like that, I was amped. And it was a christmas miracle!

I just wanted to share that with you to encourage you as well as keep you posted on my happenings. We are a people that cannot be contained by the systems of this world! We are seated in heavenly places and it’s time we started living with that revelation, it’s more than just a good idea or a nice saying. It contains real power for today! The power is in if we believe it, do you actually believe it? I dunno if I can say I did when I was lifting up my pity prayers for help. “But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” (Luke 18:8). Lord let us be ones who have faith!

I hope you leave this encouraged and challenged as I was…

Oh and my Christmas was good! Awesome to spend some quality time with my parents and see how they live their lives in Trinidad & Tobago, its a different world over there. I honour what they are doing and am blessed to see how they have been pouring themselves out for those people. Go mom and dad!

Students arrive here in a week so there will be lots of preparations over the next few days, hopefully I can post some photos of things so you can get a feel for whats happening.

I hope your Christmas was fun, blessings until next time!