Two Thirds Through!

Alright! One more month of lectures finished. Two thirds of the way to completion. And for those of you wondering, IF I have done all my math right, only 250 bucks away from having the entirety of my second tuition installment so I can go on outreach tomorrow and complete the school, as well as, for those who didn't hear, not needing to make another border run before major outreach. So thanks to God for all of that!

This time I actually have other things to post about besides just lectures as on two different weekends I had friends from Chiang Mai come visit, and got to take a couple of trips, one with my friends from CM, and one with my friends from the base to go to Burma. Yet again what follows is mostly chronologically ordered, and even more from memory than usual as I forgot to bring my journal with me. :-)

Lecture Week 1: The Ministry of the Holy Spirit - Tim Ginn
So this week we talked about Who the Holy Spirit is. It was a good week because it brought me back to the fundamental Truth that the Holy Spirit is also a distinctive personality. Sometimes I think about the Holy Spirit as like this power and connection to God the Father, but not as having a personality, thoughts and so forth as we would give to God and Jesus. But if this is not true, then how can we grieve the Spirit, for one example. And we talked just about communing and being in submission to the Spirit with our own spirit which God has placed in us. Great stuff.

Annie and I

The following weekend was when Annie came to visit. We went to eat Moo Kra Tha with a couple of people from the base who have recently also become a couple (staff, not students), whoo! Then that evening and all day Saturday we just hung out at the base and had a great time. Sunday we did a Bible study together (because the church I go to meets in the evening), and then went to eat together and sent her off at the bus station. It was great to see her.

Lecture Week 2: Spiritual Warfare - Rob Wiebe (who is also the base leader with his wife Cy)
This was a truly interesting week. Usually when we think of spiritual warfare, we think of the Exorcist... or maybe The Amityville Horror (the old version, never saw the new). Casting out demons and doing battle with Satan and the like. But Rob took us back to the root Greek words, and a foundational view of spiritual warfare. To sum it up, the way we do spiritual warfare is bringing the Truth of God into our own lives, and wrestling with the lies that Satan has planted in our thinking, and learning to live in the Truth instead of our personal strongholds. We did this by going through the entire book of Ephesians. It was really good stuff, but if I get started this blog will be 5-6 pages long.

Cal hanging off a wall over about a 20 ft drop

That weekend my buddy Cal came up with a friend of his, and we hung out, and on Saturday went running around near the base. It was a great time. Got so see some great scenery and had a good time. If you want to see the full album of pics that I take, you have to get an iPhone and install Instagram, then search for my profile: zDubya81. If you don't have a profile, just go to my profile on FB and scroll through my old posts.

Lecture Week 3: Relationships - Josh Parsons (DTS staff)
Again, good stuff. We went through biblical examples of what relationships are, and all relationships, not just boy/girl ones. We started by looking in the gospels for how Jesus describes his relationship with his Father. Then built on that in application to other relationships. It was really tough week in some ways, but brought a lot of growth.

Mae Sai: From the trip with Cal and Pra Tawachai

Lecture Week 4: The Cost of Discipleship - Jeff & Becky Hooker
This past week has been a very fun week. Tough, but these two did a great job about keeping things light and not getting overbearingly heavy. But we looked at the idea of what discipleship is and that you can be a disciple of many things or people (duh), but then how to identify where we are giving authority and priority to other things than God. In our relationships, addictions, families, friends, supporters, latest fashions, etc., etc. And then how to get into the bible and really study it to see what the bible say about these things, keeping it in context as far as the fact the the bible was written for, but not exactly to us, and discerning between cultural commands and commands from God and the like. Again, great stuff.

God has continually been showing me places in my own mind and heart where I am not following Him or have believed wrong things about Him. So it has been a really growing and challenging experience. I love it here. Tomorrow we leave for our second outreach, the Faith Outreach (the link will take you to extensive information about it, starting paragraph 3). I am super excited for this. Praying hard that the rest of the money comes in so that I can go and so that I can finish out the course.

A couple students and one base staff dressed
in traditional Akha dress for international night

Next update will be at the end of the outreach, only 2 weeks, because I won't have time middle of next month because of weekend plans (guys retreat to CM & Annie coming to visit to celebrate our 1 year anniversary). Also be on the lookout for pics on my profile from this outreach! I get to take my phone but not my SIM card. I'm totally OK with that.

Prayer requests:
~ Faith Outreach: That we will be sensitive and open to the Spirit's direction~
~Final Tuition Payment: October 31st, right before we leave for Major Outreach~




Will have more after we get back!! Thank you all. Love you.