King of Queenstown

Queenstown is so gnarly. We drove up last saturday and when we went in to town saturday night there was a big rugby game going on New Zealand against Australia and the streets and the bars were crowded. We had been living in a christian bubble for the past month and a half so it was pretty crazy. It is such a party town I think there is more bars than anything else there. It was so much fun hanging out there.

On sunday we went into this town called Wanaka and it was awesome, crazy beautiful scenery and a great burger place. We went to a church in Wanaka that was founded by some snowboarders and it was awesome, we met Kelly Clark there, she is an olympic gold medalist in the half pipe, best girl snowboarder in the world I think. We got the chance to talk with her and pray for her it was cool. Then on monday we went to the hill called The Remarkables which is on the mountain range that Mordor was filmed on. So it was super windy on the hill so only a couple chairlifts were open and we had to hike to find powder, but we found some awesome powder and it was cool hiking that much. Then in the afternoon we found this jump that Scott had been on earlier he said it was awesome for backflips so we then decided we were gonna do backflips. A bunch of us were there hiking up and down the hill to get this backflip down. A few times I had the spin down but not enough air so my nose hit the ground and then I bailed but that was the closest I came. Then Scott ended up getting the rotation down a bunch of times but not landing and finally he landed one it was super awesome! I'll get er' next time though don't you worry. Another guy Davie Jones also did it so it was pretty awesome. Then on Tuesday we had lectures, with Angelina she tought all week on how to do an inductive bible study it was good to learn that stuff. Tuesday we went to Snowpark, it was legendary!! Right before we went up on the hill they closed it down for an hour for some pro skiers to do some filming for a movie and there was a helicopter flying around filming them and they were riding up the hill on snowmobiles to get to the top of the jumps it was a huge production and cool to see. It was just such a privilege to be at Snowpark that place is amazing. However disaster struck at Snowpark and one of the girls Jessica landed on the knuckle of a big jump and blew out both her knees. It was bad, but her spirits are still high so she's a trooper! Keep her in your prayers for healing. Wednesday and Thursday was all lectures. Except on Wednesday night we went out to Queenstown to try and do some evangelism and we got in some pretty cool conversations. Friday we went up to a hill called Cardrona and the burton open was going on and they had ripped down the park the week before to make all the jumps triple the size for the contest. We saw one guy pull a double back 1080 it was so amazing. All that being said we had tons of fun playing around in the other parks that were there and it was just a great day. Since the contest was going on there was a lot of free giveaways so I didn't even have to take a break for my sandwich. The best kind of day! It was a great end to a great week in Queenstown and we had Fergberger to finish it off, best burgers in New Zealand.

This week is supposedly gonna be a gnarly week spiritually so pray for it to be super awesome and for energy throughout the week!

Thanks guys,

Love You!

Brendan

X comes before Y

Sometimes we find ourselves asking why we would hike half an hour up the hill for a 5 minute ride down it, or perhaps why we would ride in an area where it is mostly rocks, or how come we always put our gnarly boots on instead of turn down an awesome opportunity? Well the answer of course is because X comes before Y!!!!! It's time to get X-treme!!! This week are heading to the world capital of extreme sports Queenstown. We will be hitting up 3 different mountains while we are there including the infamous Snow-park NZ, in which some scenes of the best snowboard movie ever "That's it That's All" were filmed! http://youtu.be/Z3heqxz43_0 this will be one of the places I'm gonna ride next week. The rest of the week we will be doing lectures and going out in Queenstown to find some opportunity to serve the Lord and having another week of getting closer to God. 

How many snowboarders does it take to screw in a light bulb?

3, one to screw it in, one to film it and one to yell "SICK!!!!"

Anyways... Last week we had this speaker named Adriel Booker and she talked about Identity. She taught us that as christians our identity is in christ and God know longer considers us as sinners but as holy people and the royal priesthood of God. We learned some really good stuff about acceptance and rejection in society and all sorts of cool stuff.

This week we had a speaker named Mandy Hudson, she talked about spiritual warfare and it was pretty gnarly. We just learned about the ongoing battle that is everywhere. We learned that we can stand from a place of victory because of the Holy Spirit in us. Pretty cool stuff!

I'm really excited for this week in Queenstown though. We have had some pretty big warnings against disunity so please be praying for unity within the group so that we can be as effective as possible.

Love you all

Brendan

"Let's get it on" -Marvin Gaye

Well we're finally getting to go snowboarding on all the days we are supposed to, the hills are just starting to open because this has been one of New Zealand's worst winters for snow in the mountains! But it's not the only reason I'm here so I haven't minded that at all. Anyways this saturday we got to go to Mt. Hutt again and there still wasn't much snow but it was open and so was the mini park with some boxes and stuff, and on Wednesday we went to Porters and it was the same kind of deal. Porters only has T-bars it's crazy! some fairly long runs are available but you have to ride a T-bar for so long and now my inner thigh is majorly bruised. None the less it was such a great time and I hope to improve a bunch by the time I get back!

We've had this speaker this week named Frank and he is this massive Samoan guy and I call him Frank the Tank, not really sure how feels about that though. He is this huge guy with the softest voice but sometimes he yells and it scares the crap out of you but it's really awesome. He's has got us to do a couple really cool activities to prove his point like he had one guy lay on the floor and have 4 other guys each grab a limb and the one guy has to escape from it. The idea was for the one guy to get help from all the people in the classroom that weren't involved in the activity or to use full force to get out, but the one guy was Scott, so he didn't want to actually hit anyone. I definitely would have... Anyways he didn't get out of the hold, especially since I was holding his leg. All the guys holding him had a certain issue that guys have to wrestle with like pride or lust or doubt written on his arm so the idea was that it is hard to do that alone.

And we had to do charades and I had to act out Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it on" so people guessed that in about 10 seconds, of course I did a great job with that. Some of you are probably picturing me acting that out... you get the idea.

Ya Frank the Tank has been going over the character and Nature of God so it's pretty great. We had some outreach prep today and it was all about culture shock. Our outreach teams had to make up a culture to interact with other cultures and violence ensued, and now I have burns in 4 beautifully symmetrical lines on the side of my torso... use your imaginations and try and figure out how that happened that should be fun for you. It involved using Styler as a sacrifice and that's the only hint you get.

So still learning lots and having tons of fun, Can't wait to go to my countries and still loving everyone here, still loving everyone back home. I miss you all!

Brendan

Asia and The Middle East? Beauty!

I have had so much the fun the past week it's been amazing! Joel Parker continued to challenge us to move and to actually pursue some of the call on our life instead of just dream about them. I'm still trying to find out what mine are, but I'm getting there. Friday we went surfing and it was so much fun! It's a lot cheaper than snowboarding as well because you don't gotta pay for a lift ticket. We've only been able to go snowboarding one time so far because the hills still haven't opened, but apparently it will be open saturday so hopefully we will get to go. Today we went to Castle Hill and checked out some awesome scenery and climbed around on huge rocks and did all the fun stuff. Castle Hill is also a place in The Chronicles of Narnia so it was super cool! I'm really realizing why they filmed so many awesome movies here! The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of The Rings if you didn't know. 

Our Speaker this Week is named Nick Badger we call him Nickjagger. He's a really cool dude. He's teaching us about The Cross and what it means and why it was necessary. God's love and grace is just amazing. So were still gonna be diving into that for the rest of the week.

Most important thing that has happened so far though.... Outreach is confirmed!

I'm going to Malaysia for a month and then Turkey for a month! They are both primarily muslim nations with something like 90% of people being muslim in Malaysia and like 96% or something in Turkey. I've been given a probable rate of arrest for Malaysia and almost definitely will get arrested in Turkey. I'm super stoked to share some love and hope in those countries!!

That's it for now.

I'll blog again when something cool happens!

thanks for reading :)

How real it becomes.

This week we have had this gnarly speaker named Joel Parker. This guy is next level bro, dude, so rad. That's how he talks he is a christian snowboard film maker, and a surfer and a pastor at a mega church in Seattle. God is moving through him in some awesome ways at our school. He has been teaching us some pretty hard stuff about dying to ourselves so that we may be raised again not as ourselves but as Jesus living through us. It's not just something we can do once and all of a sudden were all Jesus like, but it's a daily struggle that we need to pray about every day and really concentrate on listening to God every day. Some pretty crazy stuff, however super awesome. He also tells some real funny stories which is always helpful. We learned a whole new perspective of looking at Simon Peter yesterday as well. I'm sure it is new for all of you as well, he calls Peter so punk rock. He often challenges Jesus just like a punk kid would challenge someone in authority. But God used him in awesome ways in acts as he started the church and brought 3000 people to God in one day in Acts 1. pretty cool. Today we went over ways to answer common questions asked by non-believers. I still don't have all the answers but it's cool to explore!

Yesterday we went to christchurch again to clean up some more earthquake damage. Then of course last night an earthquake hit off the coast of New Zealand and flooded some of Christchurch... It's never ending work for God's people.

But the big thing that happened last night... OUTREACH LOCATIONS. Finding out our outreach locations made this trip seem so much more real! It finally set in the purpose for why I'm here. To spread hope to all the nations and just like Jesus, Seek and Save that which is lost.

The options are:

1. Malaysia and Turkey

2. Jordan

3. Queenstown and India

I've Picked Malaysia and Turkey as my first option, not quite sure yet which one I'll be going or what I'll be doing so I'll keep you guys posted!

In the mean time just keep up your prayers and especially pray for discernment from the leadership team as they finalize what places we will all be going to and continue to pray for unity with everyone here.

Thanks everyone, Love you all!

Brendan

It's time to get extreme!!!!

We finally got past all the detail type stuff and were into what we are really here for. On wednesday we all shared our testimonies and for 20 of us it took about 5 hours so it was pretty awesome. There was such a wide variety of stories being told it was amazing. Stories ranging from people who have been christian there whole lives and were destined to come to YWAM and some who were struggling until the day their plane took off with drugs and alcohol. The most powerful way we saw God move that day is when we renounced any demons that Scotty had left in him and saw him shake as they left, and the instant smile he had on his face when the Holy Spirit filled those places that were now open (getting a little hot and heavy here). Ya it's just awesome to here the variety of stories and I'm so thankful that we are all here together, and that we all answered the call and made it out here.

On Thursday we then had our first lectures and they were awesome. First we talked about Hearing God's voice and then Worship was our second lecture. It was just some basic stuff and it was just really cool to see some ways God speaks. Then we had some sweet hearing God practice it was super cool. Then on friday we talked about intercession and prayer and learned some awesome things about why we pray.

On friday afternoon we went to Christchurch to do some earthquake relief. There is this things called liquefaction that happens with earthquakes and it brings all sorts of silt and crap up to the surface so everyone's lawns and gardens and sheds are just full of this crap so we went into Christchurch and helped with some of the clean up. It was a humbling experience and I'm so glad I don't live anywhere near a fault line. But seeing all the damage in Christchurch really brought it home that there is a lot of people that need our help in this world. and what 21 of us could do in a few hours just the homeowners would have taken months, probably years. Many hands make light work.

Then today we finally went snowboarding and it was awesome! except for there was only a couple runs open and there is barely any snow yet... and except for that I really owned myself. I've been struggling with this nasty hip injury and the bruise now takes up my entire leg between my knee and the top of my hip, and it looks like I have a volleyball or a woman's basketball (but not big enough to be a regular basketball) starting to protrude from my hip and it makes it really hard to walk let alone snowboard. So I had to sit in for the rest of the day :( I am not a fan of taking time off to heal injuries so this is definitely gonna be a challenge. Testing my patience. So that is where we stand before I go to bed tonight. Keep me in your prayers for that.

Thanks

Brendan

Skates, Luggage, Irish.....and so forth.

I finally have collected all my luggage! My board bag and my clothes are all here! I'm so very excited to have everything that I wanted to have... Including jackets because it isn't especially warm here during the winter season. Anyways that's very exciting but not exactly what I'm blogging about.

The school just started on monday and we haven't had any real lectures yet just administrative stuff and rules and regulations and all the stuff you have to go through. We had our first School thing on Sunday night and it was a welcome dinner and everyone involved with our YWAM base was there so we got to meet everyone working behind the scenes it was pretty cool. We had a New Zealand special meal... mutton. Which is sheep and it was delicious, and then there was this awesome dessert, it pretty much sums up all the meals we have had so far. The food has been delicious, and if I keep eating like this I'm gonna be huge in a few months... hopefully I'll just lose all that weight again on outreach. Also sunday night was our first worship session and it was amazing. We may not have had the most practiced worship band and their was a few hitches in the music and Scotty is playing drums right now, and he hasn't in so long but actually sounds pretty dece, but it was still fantastic. Everyone was just concentrating on Worshipping the Lord and not about who was around them and the Holy Spirit filled that place.

Now that our real schedule is starting tomorrow I think we will have a lot less free time, but since we have had so much free time since we got here we have been taking those opportunities to hit the skatepark. Now that I have my skate it's gonna be even sweeter! We are getting to know a lot of the local kids pretty well. Some of them are so sick at skateboarding it's awesome. These two kids that are always there one is named Andre, and one is named Irish (Yes that is his real name) are really good at skateboarding and they are pretty young probably like 15 and 12 or something like that. They played a game of SKATE with a guy from our DTS named Skyler and it was really cool to watch them doing some really cool tricks. Getting to know the locals is cool because we could get a chance to do some evangelism with them and spread the good news. Pretty cool.

Finally everyone arrived today as well and it was really cool meeting with everyone else and everyone just fitting in right away and I'm looking forward to get to know everyone here in a fantastic strong relationship. It's only been 4 nights and these people are super cool. I'm also getting pretty good at ping pong, I'll be a legend by the time I get back. Tomorrow we get to hear everyones testimonies and share our own. I'm really excited to learn so much more about everyone through that. Getting so stoked for that and real lectures starting up on thursday as well! Can't wait to get to know God so I can make him known.

Love from NZ

Btack