Tanzania prayer requests

-Team 1 is leaving Thursday, May 17th! I am going with team 2, but my mom along with seven others are going. They will be doing the same thing we are doing, assembling water tanks.
-My team leaves May 31st. Pray for the last bit of preparation and for team unity. Here are the names of the people on my team: Mark Baker, Chris Hundley, Jason Hundley, Jonathan Kholer, Deryk Rankin, Emily McKeean, Melissa Freed and Fred Freed.
-Pray that the assembly of the water tanks would go smoothly, quickly, and without complication
-Pray that we would be a blessing and encouragement to the missionary families we will be staying with and working with, particularly the Settles.
-Pray that our hearts would be softened and that God would do a great work in our hearts as we learn about the Datoog people.
-That God would become greater, and we would become less, and that the Kingdom of God would be manifested in our hearts and lives as we go!

Thank you all, you are such a blessing to me.

Honduras

Hey all! Thank you so much for praying for me for the Honduras trip, both for the preparation and during the week itself. I have so many encouraging stories to tell! This is a group of kids in the village where we played our first soccer game. Especially in the villages we were able to share the gospel with so many little kids as well as the college or high school age kids that we played soccer against. When we would play a game we had several from the team share their testimonies during half time and then after the game we would pray and sometimes give an invitation or ask if anyone had any more questions about what we talked about.
Suffering for Jesus: it rained three days straight mid-week so in order to get to the village of Balfate we had to get out of our vans and cross the river Planche.
The beautiful Honduran mountains at sunrise.
Me sharing my testimony with Dr. Harris translating. The team came back very encouraged and excited not only about what God is doing with the seeds that we planted and watered but also about how God will continue to use the team now that we are back in the States.
Please continue to pray for the seeds we planted in Honduras. One specific request I have is for a man I met in the San Pedro Sula airport. The Lord strongly put it on my heart to give him one of the remaining tracts we had and when I approached him he gladly accepted it. Pray for his salvation, and also please continue to pray for the Tanzania trip coming up in June, for funds, for the team, for the Sells (the missionaries we will be working with) and the people we will impact when we are there. Blessings! 

more prayer requests

Hey Friends,
Here are some more prayer requests:
Honduras--
-Three of the team members may or may not get their passports in time.
-Two of our team members are injured and are in danger of not being able to play (including Tim, the team leader). If the other one (Derrick) is not better in time he may not go. Tim has a hurt back and Derrick has a torn ligament in his ankle.
-Pray for spiritual and physical preparation for the soccer games we will be playing in the intense heat and for sharing the gospel afterwards.
-Pray that many will come to know Christ through our witness and that the missionaries and churches that are there would be able to follow up with them once we leave.

Tanzania--
-Pray for all the finances to come in (I am currently more than half way there! Praise God!)
-Pray for our leader Fred as he is working on planning the logistics of the trip.
-We are in need of an older man with travelling experience and construction experience to lead the second trip (the one I am going on) because Fred will already be in Tanzania with the first trip when we are going over there. Right now I am the oldest on the second trip and while I could lead the group of high schoolers Fred would prefer someone with more experience.
-Pray that God would be glorified in all we do and that our eyes would be opened to how differently God works in a place where material wealth is not as plentiful.

mission trip prayer requests

Hey guys. Sorry if you visited looking for mission trip prayer requests and found that I hadn't posted them yet. Here are some of the requests that are on my heart for both the Honduras trip. I will add prayer requests for Tanzania shortly.
1. Pray for the team. I am going with 12 other guys on the Bryan College soccer team. Some of them are not believers so we will be doing ministry even within our own team.
2. Pray for physical protection. We will be playing a soccer game every day in the extremely hot weather. It will be cold in Tennessee until the time we leave (early March) and it is the off-season so we will not be in peak physical condition. Pray that there will be no physical injuries as we travel and play local teams from Honduras.
3. Pray for an anointing in sharing the gospel. Sports ministry is an extremely effective way to share the gospel and many tribes and tongues have come to know Christ through this kind of ministry. After each game a member of the team (one that speaks Spanish) will share his testimony and the gospel.
4. Pray for funding as not everyone on the team has received enough money yet to be able to go.

Monastery trip

For one of my classes I had the option of either writing a paper or going to a Monastery. An opportunity came up for me to go to St. Bernard's Abbey near Birmingham, so I went. Please excuse the picture quality--these were taken on Jason Poarch's camera.
A shot of St. Bernard's Abbey. The monks gather here four times a day for prayer and scripture reading.
It was really thought provoking getting to know some of the monks--I guess I knew that they did normal things like eating and sleeping, but it was kind of strange at first seeing them line up in the cafeteria.
This is the choir area where we sat for the prayer gatherings. It was really powerful when we sang the word. There is something about gathering together in community and singing scripture--it really helps to meditate on the words when you are singing in a group like that. 

living in community

Hello friends! This semester I've understood so much more of the benefits of community and how God loves to work through communities that seek to honor him. In this post I will explore more of what that looks like.
Drew poses by a waterfall in Pocket. Living life in community means making much of Christ in every situation. This semester I've been challenged with how to do that--how not to compartmentalize my life where I forget God in the times when I am together with people, and only pursue him when I am alone praying or reading the word.
This is a group of girls that came up to Drew's house to celebrate his birthday one weekend in December. We went ice skating and played games and had a good time of fellowship. We also sang "worship" songs but were reminded that the worship doesn't stop when the music stops. I have known these principles for a long time but until now have not been able to walk them out because I had not been living in such a community. I used to practice 'lone ranger Christianity' where I radically pursued God, but it was by myself. I thought that spending my life in the context of a community would keep me from where I wanted to go in God. Rather it was the key to unlocking so many doors in my own sanctification.
While everything I have said is good, it must not stop there. As John Piper puts it, making sure you do all you're regular life's activities with a worshipful heart is like the batboy in Yankee stadium thinking handing the bat to the batter is the main event. It needs to happen, but there is so much more. I believe God's message for the Dayton community is Amos 7:9, that he is lowering a plumb line to measure us and we must be blameless before a holy God. As a community, we must come together in solemn assemblies, humbling our hearts before the Lord and asking for repentance on behalf of our city and our nation. Certainly, there will be much rejoicing and laughing and having fun in our communities, but out of this season revival must be birthed, and that will only come from our travail in private and public prayer. But take courage--God is on the move! 

Life at Bryan

Hey ya'll. My desire for this update is to show a little more of what my life at Bryan is like. This is my "roomy" Drew. We go way back--I knew him in 7th grade, but this is the first time we have been able to spend a lot of time together. With different schedules we don't see each other much throughout the day but we enjoy some good time together at night in the room.
Chris Kloc. He's my sweety aka suite-mate. He's a freshman from Charlotte and is on the varsity soccer team (as are all of my roommates/suite-mates). Chris and I pray and fellowship together on Wednesday nights.
Curt Hays. He's my other suite-mate. He hails from Texas. We are studying the gospel of John together on Thursday nights.
As for soccer, both JV and Varsity soccer seasons are over now. Though in some respects I had a disappointing season with the JV team I got to play all 90 minutes of the last game and though we lost I was named player of the game. It was a blessing to be able to go out on a good note. The Varsity team had a sad end of their season, losing to Virginia Intermont in the first round of the Conference playoffs. They had a brief glimpse of hope thinking they might be able to advance to the NAIA regional tournament as a wildcard team and even started practicing again. But they found out today they actually will not be able to advance.
And as a final note, I would like to encourage everyone to get out and vote tomorrow. At first I had decided I just wasn't going to vote this election because I would have to drive to Chattanooga to do it and I am just too busy. But as I've been praying about it I have decided this is such a crucial election--perhaps the most crucial mid-term election in the nation's history because of the possibility of a third Supreme Court Justice retiring. If the Democratic party gets control of Congress they will most likely not allow a strong Republican Justice to be replace the liberal Justice that is thinking about retiring. To be sure, God is neither Republican nor Democrat--but God is pro-life and the time is now to act in this crucial time in history. For more information please go to the "face-down 40" link on this site and go to the Christian voter guide section. Blessings!