Holy Spirit Week

A few quick hits before I get started:

- I am now a regular at the McDonalds. I walked in this week and the cashier immediately said “Ice cream!” I was pretty pumped because I have never been at a regular at a restaurant before!

- A few of us guys watched Lion King this week. We figured it was appropriate since we’re in Africa. I forgot how good of a movie that is since it’s been over 10 years.

- I finally found a place to do pull ups this week, which is a relief! There are some monkey bars on a jungle gym behind the house that we are staying in. I was worried that my arms would turn to mush if I didn’t do any p-ups for 5 months. But now I don’t have to worry about that. Thanks Lord.

Well this past week was pretty crazy to say the least. The theme for the week was Holy Spirit week. We had a guy named Joe Ewen, from Scotland, come speak to us. After this week, I have a whole new view of the Holy Spirit and the power we have through the Holy Spirit. I have always had some doubt when in it comes to the spiritual gifts of prophesying and miraculous healing. I can be quick to think that that kind of stuff only happened in the Bible, but not anymore. So this week completely blew my mind when I not only witnessed those things, but also experienced them myself! I could write a ton on all the crazy stuff I saw this week, but I will just touch on a few of them.

- I was prophesied over more times this week, than I ever have been in my life! And what I loved about it was that it was so encouraging each time. And all of them seemed to have common themes, which shows me that they were truly from God. Some of the common themes I got were that God has finally got my full attention and will really start to blossom my faith now that He has it. I have been very laid-back about my faith, but this is a season to intensify my faith so I can take on a leadership role later on down the road. I also got three or four different prophecies talking about how I will be a spiritual father to many children from lots of different nations. (I have no clue what that’s all about.)

- We were also encouraged to try prophesying for others to encourage them and also to strengthen our own faith muscle. So I was prophesying for an awesome missionary guy from another country (I don’t think I can say where because of safety reasons), and as I was praying over him I got a vision of a river flowing between two islands. Gradually the river rose until it covered both islands. I honestly thought it was the dumbest thing, so I didn’t tell him but just kept praying. About a minute later, I got the same vision again so I sheepishly told him my vision. Later that evening he approached me and thanked me for the vision (“haha seriously?” was my first thought) and said that is spoke clearly to him. He said he had been debating about crossing a certain river to start planting house churches in a certain neighboring country, and that this vision made it clear that he should go! I was pretty pumped. It was super cool to think that God could use someone like ME to speak to a missionary.

- I was super impressed by Joe Ewen’s child-like faith in the Lord. One of the quotes he used all week was, “Whatever God reveals; He heals.” So whenever he would be in the middle of teaching and get a sudden ache in his right shoulder, he wouldn’t reach for the medicine cabinet, but he would stop teaching and ask who in the room has been dealing with right shoulder pain. I thought it was pretty weird at first, but there was always someone that stood up. So we would lay hands on that person and pray for them, and then they would be healed! It was insane. During one teaching session this week, Joe stopped what he was teaching and decided that there were lots of physical ailments in the room so we just needed a time for healing. So he told us to all start praying. Immediately my stomach got gripped with pain, and so I stood up and asked who was dealing with stomach pain. Sure enough, there was one girl, so we prayed for her and I’m pretty sure she is healed now (I haven’t talked with her yet). As the session rolled on, my stomach started feeling worse and worse, to the point of having to puke. So after trying to be a tough guy for 10 minutes, I finally set aside my pride and asked some people to pray for me. As they were praying for me, my stomach ache completely vanished! One of the first things I felt I had to do was ask the Lord to forgive me for doubting his power for so many years.

So like I said, this week was pretty mind-boggling for me (although it shouldn’t be, because all this stuff is in the Bible). I have never really had first hand witness of God’s power like I have this week, so it was very edifying for me. I’m very thankful the Lord allowed me to experience so much this week, and I’m hoping this will be a spring board for my faith in the years to come. I need to continue working on praying in the Spirit and learning to declare the authority and power we have in Jesus’ name. I’m super excited to see how far God’s power can reach when we have a child-like faith and trust in Him!

Ice Cream and Discipleship

Well my sunburns turned into a tan this week, so I’m pretty pumped (I can be so superficial sometimes)! I’m also relieved that things are slowing down a little bit this second week. The first week was pretty tiring mainly because there are so many things that I had to adjust too. These included: having to share a room with 5 other guys, three of which come from different countries. Not getting as much free time/alone time as I’m used to getting and not being able to run as much as I have in the past have been trying my patience as well. And just getting used to the new schedule with classes and outreach has been really tiring both physically and spiritually. But with all of this, it has definitely forced me to rely on God for everyday strength. Here are some quick hits from the past week:

- The currency here in South Africa is the Rand. One US Dollar equals 7.7 Rand. Anyway, up until yesterday, I looked at the rand like it was monopoly money for some reason. In this States I’m usually very frugal, but I found myself spending money all the time because it didn’t feel like real money. Maybe it’s because the money looks a lot different than ours. But it hit me yesterday that, “Hey! This is actually real money. So I really shouldn’t be buying candy bars and sports drinks multiple times per day.” It’s really lame that it took me 10 days to realize this but I guess it’s better late than never.

- There is a KFC and McDonalds only two blocks away from here that have 2.90 rand cones, which is only 38 cents in US dollars! I am addicted to them. I usually have one per day, but I have had up to three in one day. So if I’m fat when I get back, then you’ll know why.

- On our day off on Monday, some guys and I went to see the movie Safe House. Not only was it a good movie, but it was also filmed in Cape Town which was really cool!

- I’ve been growing my hair out since January 11^th and plan on letting it grow until July 11^th. This will be the longest my hair has been since elementary school. I’m not really sure why I’m doing this because I love short hair. I grew my hair out for 3 months once in college in hopes that it would bring more female attention, but that is definitely not my motive this time. I guess I would just like to feel what long hair is like, so let’s hope I can actually make it all 6 months!

The lectures and the teaching here has been amazing. Even after a week, it has completely rocked my view of church, salvation, and discipleship. There are so many things I could talk about, but I will just mention three things that have really been on my heart this past week.

- I was really convicted when one of the leaders talked about how we should never argue people into the kingdom of God. Oops. I can think of numerous times when I tried that, and to no surprise, they failed every time.

- Another thing we learned that changed the way I’ve always thought of salvation is that you don’t bring people to faith to disciple them, you disciple them to faith. Basically this is saying that as Christians, we should focus less on converting people to Christ and leaving them out to dry, and more on building relationships and discipling people as they journey towards Christ.

- Lastly, during class today the Lord really convicted me that I don’t hate my sin like I should, and that I don’t realize how much God hates my sin. I can tend to take my sin kind of lightly, and lots of the time I even wish I could still live in my sinful habits. This is something that I want to focus on praying for over the next couple weeks.

I hope all of you are doing well! Feel free to email me whenever you want with questions or anything else. Lastly, for those of you who have asked, my mailing address is: P.O. Box 1606 Sun Valley, Cape Town South Africa 7985

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South Africa Quick Hits

Well I've been down in Cape Town for about 5 days now and it's been pretty awesome. There are a lot of things I could write about but I don't wanna bore you to death, so I will just give you some quick hits!

- The flight over here was pretty long. 27 hours total, with the longest flight being 17 hours. I felt so claustrophobic. But at least I could watch movies!

- I found out really quick that the South African sun is really intense. I usually take pride in never having to wear sunscreen. But I found myself caking my whole body with it on the second day after getting burned pretty bad on the first day. Definitely a rookie mistake on my part.

- I love the smell out here. It smells like a combo of coconut and pineapple mixed with lotion. I don't know. I just love it!

-A few of us stayed up late and went to a local restaurant in town to watch the Superbowl early Monday morning (it started at 1:30am out here). Sadly, we only stayed til the half and so we missed all the exciting stuff.

- I still can't sleep very well. There is an 8 hour difference in time, and so they say it should take 8 days to get adapted to it.

- As lot of you probably know, I don't like animals. Thankfully I haven't gotten attacked by anything yet, but I've been keeping a constant eye out. There are some scary looking birds and some poisonous snakes over here. But the thing I am most worried about are the baboons. Apparently, they attack people and are pretty vicious. But that is usually only if the person is carrying around food. The other day on my run I saw two baboons about 50 meters away and I got pretty scared, even though I knew they wouldn't attack me since I didn't have food. I just gotta make sure I'm not carrying any food when I head out the door. Hopefully, that shouldn't be too hard!

-I'm super thankful I've been able to squeeze in some runs. Although all of them haven't been too great. It's been 90-100 degrees everyday, there are tons of bikes on the roads, no shoulders or sidewalks to run on, and the cars drive on the opposite side of the road which definitely makes things really confusing. I'm more worried about just surviving than about getting a good workout in. The good thing is, my runs here have been the most scenic runs of my life! And I have been fortunate enough to do some of my easy runs with my good friends Matt and Jay. They know the area a little better and aren't a newbie like I am.

- The program I'm in, which is called CPx (Church Planting Experience), started up on Sunday evening. In a typical week we will spend three of the days (Tues-Thurs) in lectures learning and hearing stories from some very wise, awesome, Christ-following people. Another three days (Fri-Sun) will be spent doing outreach in certain townships in Cape Town. For these outreaches we will be in our church of people (6 or 7) and will just try to love on, serve, and just spread the Gospel. The townships have extreme poverty and generally have pretty high rates of crime. Then on Mondays, we will have the day off!

I've found out quickly that I'm gonna have to get used to being uncomfortable out here. There are so many differences and a lot of daily comforts that aren't around out here like I'm used to at home. But after hearing everyone's awesome stories, I've been so excited to see how God will work in my heart over these next 5 months, and where He will lead me to afterwards. I've already felt Him working in my heart these first few days!

I miss all you guys back in the States! If you guys wanna get a hold of me then just shoot me an email or send me an F-book message. And lastly, Go Timberwolves- they just went over .500 a couple hours ago!

See ya winter!

Well I decided the best way to keep all my family, friends, and supporters in the loop about my South African mission would be to start a blog. So here we go! Oh, and PS- DG in CT = Dan Greeno in Cape Town. My roommate, Joel, came up with the name and I liked it so it stuck!

Tomorrow is gonna be a long day as I'm flying out for Cape Town in the afternoon. There will be 21+ hours in the plane and 6 hours of layovers. All in all, it should take about 28 hours to get there. Believe it or not, I'm kinda looking forward to being able to just chill out, catch up on some reading and have some solid prayer time!

This past week was pretty crazy as I was trying to get all the last-minute details for the trip figured out, along with a pretty crazy but fun social schedule that included lots of family, friends, and co-workers. One of the most stressful things has been trying to get my travel visa for South Africa. To get my visa I had to send in my passport along with a few other important documents to Travisa in Chicago. On Monday, after making numerous calls to Travisa and USPS I had no other choice but to conclude that my stuff vanished out of thin air as neither of them had any records of where it was. I was in a pretty sour mood, so when my mom told me to pray about it, all I could do was roll my eyes (I'm terrible). After awhile I was able to calm down and spend some time in prayer, and although it didn't seem to do much, I did have a lot more peace about the whole situation. About an hour later, the guy from Travisa called back and said he just found it laying around the mail room! I am just so thankful for the Lord's provision over everything these past few months, it's amazing how quick I can be to forget all that God has done for me in the past.

I'm super pumped that I will be skipping the rest of the winter (even if it is pretty tame) to head to one of the most beautiful places in the world to serve the Lord! I will try to send out weekly, or at least bi-weekly updates to let you all know what's going on over here and how the Lord is working! Lastly I wanna leave you with this verse which I have been loving lately since I have been kinda sad having to leave everyone over here in the States. The verse is Matthew 19:29- "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."