Hey there Readers,

So here it is, the final blog written in our building for the academic year! It is so crazy how quickly this year went by, but it has been an awesome experience. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we really saw God this year and have been changed through the trials, classes, fun, laughs and relationships we have made this year.

I am going to go back a few days to our last Hartland trip. So when we started the year this was one of our first trips and we all really had no idea what we were doing. All we knew is that we were working hard and wanted to impress each other. It was still a very fun trip and essential to our year, but going back this time was so different and both trips were great. This time we only went for two days and we worked to help get the camp ready for their summer season. At night we would debrief a little bit about the past and future. Our first night we got a little nostalgic and reminisced over the previous part of the year and saw how much growth has really occurred this year. It was an awesome night of being together and getting to say some things we might not have had a chance to otherwise and hearing the encouragement and love resonating through our community was awesome. The second night we talked about the future. We broke up in to our job sites that we will be working in for summer and talked about how we are going to be intentional this summer and what we want our workplaces to look like. We prayed over our workers and bosses and had a great time fellowshipping. We also found out that night what our rules would look like over break. We found out that we are able to listen to music without headphones, we can movies with our families or with three other Joshua students present, and if you are in a relationship, you are now allowed to be “even” with your significant other.

When we got back from Hartland we deep cleaned our building and started on cleaning our rooms for move out. There was an awesome BBQ/Grill for dinner on Sunday night where the whole Hume community came out and had a great time eating good food and hanging out before the start of the summer season.

It is now Monday and it is move out day. I am writing this in a pretty much empty building and a lot of people have began to head home. For me personally it is a little rough and emotional, but it has been such a great year. I’m not upset about moving out but more grateful for these people God gave me for these past months and it has been such a blessing to live with them and do life together. Seeing cars packed and leaving is sad, but I know we will be reunited in ten days and I am glad that some tears have been shed because I know we have all loved each other and loved deeply. I am excited for what the summer has for all of us, and even though change is to come, God has us in His hands and this is all a part of His glorious plan. I pray for everyone to have safe travels as they head home and that God would keep them and protect them.

Just to wrap this all up for our time in the building I would love to thank all of you for walking through us and helping us. Parents, friends, family, loved ones; we would not have been able to do it without you supporting in so many different ways. I thank my community for loving me and God has done such a big work in my life this year through them and they have been such a blessing to me and I can say at Joshua Wilderness Institute is where I found my faith and a relationship with God and the staff, students, speakers, and everyone up here and back home have all impacted me so much this year and shown me what it is to have a relationship with God and what it means for my identity to be found in Jesus Christ.

Once again, thank you so much and we look forward to summer and graduation shortly after.

I thank all of our wonderful staff who have been so amazing to us this year and God has been too gracious to us to give us Rich, Jen, Chad, Brett, Jenae, and Jenna who have been here living life with us and just being the amazing people God created them to be. I look forward to the future and relationships we will have and I am excited for the friendships we all have.

May the Lord bless and keep everyone.

Love,

Tyler Henry

Room 209

This week has been a whirlwind, but it’s been an encouragement to all of us thanks to the staff at First Baptist Lakewood. Brent, Trent, Darrin, Dave, and Jeff came up this week to and took the time to share with us, where and how we can enter into the “real world” again now that Joshua is ending. We were given helpful instructions for finding mentors and learning to be a mentor, for getting plugged in to service opportunities and for the importance of finding community once we leave here because we can’t live life on our own ability. Each day, one of the staff member’s would teach on their area of expertise, per say, and afterwards all five of them would sit at the front and let us ask questions, so that we could gain a wide range of perspectives and answers. It was most certainly a huge blessing to have them pouring into us on our last week in the building.

We leave for Heartland again tomorrow, so keep us in your prayers as we try to finish out the year strong. It’s been a challenging week for most of us, we’re tired and we’re becoming emotionally and physically drained, if we aren’t already. It’s been stressful, and we’ve been slipping and we’ve started checking out mentally; we’re being tested right now and it’s most certainly showing. Yesterday, as a few of us got together in a small group for book discussion we found that all we could do was spend a half hour together in prayer because our minds we’re too overwhelmed by the trials this week has brought upon us. So please, pray for us as we go back to Heartland, that we would have joyful spirits and that we’d be ready to work and give 200%! We want to end this year on a high note and remember that the real test is just around the corner as we work here this summer with many of the upcoming Joshua students. We hope to minister to them this summer and set them up with a positive outlook for their upcoming year here, in this building, in these rooms, 5 out of the 7 members of this year’s amazing staff, who have committed to another year of leading this program.

Tonight is our official last Pause family event for the year. Every pause family is meeting in Cedar Chapel tonight to get together for the Night of Remembrance. For the past few weeks each Pause family has been working on a way to help the class remember each part of Joshua, from videos to skits, to songs and other craziness the Pause families are getting ready to perform tonight and hopefully bring up some wonderful memories and challenges from this year. I think I foresee some tears in our future, starting tonight and continuing until after we graduate together this summer. It’s going to be an interesting night, and a fast summer but we’re going to make the most of it!

Signing off one last time from the Thursday blog,

Megan

Hello everyone!

This is our last week that we have as a class in the building. Not to mention that we just finished our last Corinthians test and had our last Old Testament Survey class with Jason Knott.  On Monday Rich taught our last Israel Prep class, in which he answered any questions that we had from Israel. We also just finished our last work weekend for retreats.

We started taking everything down in the building that belongs to Joshua so that Hume can flip this building into a hotel for summer. It was weird watching everything get taken down. The building looks less personalized to our class. To match all of our solemn attitudes it started raining up here yesterday.

Beth the lady who comes up here every year to do the Joshua quilt is putting the final touches onto our quilt.  This week we have all of the pastors from First Baptist Lakewood Church in Long Beach up speaking. They are here to help us finish out our year and tie up all of the loose ends from all of the information that we have gathered. We are especially excited to have Trent Lewis, Darin McWaters, and Brent Eldridge back for a second run.

Tomorrow we get to move some of our things into main camp to our summer housing. It is bittersweet leaving the building and having the ability to walk out of our rooms to everyone laughing and building community. Yet we know that God has plans for all of our lives.

Until next time

PEACE & BLESSINGS

Lindsay Andrews, Jordan Smith, Sharon Kersbergen, Taylor Chesney, Luke Scianna, and Antonio Thompson

Only two weeks left in the building! This year went by so incredibly fast. These last two weeks we will be finishing up our classes, putting together our quilt square, and watching The Bible TV series! Yep, that’s right we will be watching TV for the first time all year. Speaking of TV, we had the privilege of watching Les Miserables last night. If I could sing every word I said for the rest of my life, I would. Les Mis is an incredible story about the beginning of the French Revolution with an underlying theme of grace, which has been a theme throughout this year. We’ve been learning the importance of not only giving grace, but also receiving grace in return.  If you have yet to see this movie, we would highly recommend it because you probably aren’t in Joshua and can watch movies whenever, so take advantage of it! We unfortunately do not have a speaker this week, which is why we will be watching The Bible series. It’s been great to be able to take a break from technology this year, but after watching Les Mis, I’m excited to catch up on what I’ve missed.

Monday morning we had guy/girl time. As guys we hiked up to Inspiration Point, which overlooks Kings Canyon, and went over what spiritual gifts each one of us has. This was very encouraging and uplifting to learn what others see in you. Knowing your spiritual gift is definitely important in your Christian walk to be able to serve others.

The girls hiked out towards the Wagon train camp and got to have devotional time in the middle of God’s beautiful creation, simply reflecting on the year and how God has worked in each of us. Afterwards we each added a statement of what we wanted to take from the year to a giant canvas, and added the completed artwork to the art gallery in the forest. The gallery was really cool to visit, and in the different pieces of artwork hung there you could see the artist’s expression of different things they were passionate about and different things God has taught them.

Oh hi there, dear followers of the blog,

I don’t think I have actually ever written a blog before in this year. I mean I have sat and looked at it being written, but I’m not that great of a writer so I’d rather have other people do it. But I guess I can’t run any longer and it’s my turn now. I am the foreign girl, who is rooming with Taryn, the Viselia girl. Morgan and Jordan are also helping with this blog, Jordan being from Texas, Morgan being from Narnia. Ok, maybe he is not from Narnia but he definitely looks like he should be from Narnia and I’m totally blanking on where his home is.

This week has definitely been different, not just because the pressure is on since Joshua as we know it in the building is coming to an end soon. But also because we finished raking pine needles, YEY! Not only that but the yearbook is almost finished! Several people but especially, Lainie and Taryn have been working very hard getting the book together while the rest was racking. Austin Rurik has been working very hard at trying to finish our end-off the year video and I myself was in the kitchen making food for the workers, together with Alyssa, Kelsey and Bella.
 
As of Tuesday we started working on the quilt. Making a quilt is a Joshua tradition. We fill it with different squares that share a memory from our year. It is then hung in the building for future years to see. Beth the quilting lady, who is amazing at doing quilts, has come up to help us with it and we are all brainstorming about inside jokes, learning experiences and other things that are just significant for us as a class. The ideas are coming but trying to put those in ‘ creative memories’, the theme of the quilt, and actually drawing it out and making it out of fabric is more tricky than most of us expected.

Curt and Rhonda have been our speaker for this week, they have blessed us by coming up and are teaching us about relationships. Not only with the other sex, but also with family members, friends and people you will meet in your life. They are amazing, especially since they are so personal with us which we as Joshua students enjoy very much. There are definitely things that I’m taking away from them, putting them in to practice with relationships that I already have and someday will have.

Tonight will be our LAST theme night. I’d rather not think about it being the last already, but Kelsey the cook has thought of an awesome theme. And being able to prep things with her, I know our ‘pirate-night’ is going to be a blast. I guess the biggest question we will be asking ourselves tonight is; ARRRRRRR you ready for a treasure hunt? I sure am. (I’m sorry I just really wanted to get the ARRRR in)


I hope you have enjoyed this blog, because I definitely had a fun time typing this out and taking it away again because I realized my weird jokes don’t always come across the way I want to when you type them out..

I hope you have an amazing day today, whenever you are reading this and I just want to remember all of you that God loves you and He sustains. (It’s true)

Love, Sharon Kersbergen. (Jordan, Morgan and Taryn aren’t here since there are actually working on quilt squares!)

So to say the least, this weekend was one of emotion, and excitement filled ladies.  So this weekend was the women’s retreat.  There were around 600 women.  For me, I was a dining host, along with about 15 other people.  Work was busy, moving all over the place.

So for most of us here, we have been outside enjoying the nice weather that is rolling in.  Some people playing spike ball, and others skateboarding, and some just basking in the sun.  In the end, we are all so excited for summer, which is just right around the corner. As we prepare to make our quilt, and start to talk about what this summer will look like, we must stand strong, and press on to end the year.

Dylan Goorabian

After two straight days of travel we are finally back at Hume Lake and in the Joshua building.   Everyone is really tired and jetlagged (10 hour time changes are a killer) but we are all still overwhelmed by what we have had the opportunity to experience these past two weeks.   What a blessing to walk the Bible and see it come alive right in front of us.   I think every student would tell you that all the study and long hours of classes were well worth it and that they will never read the Bible the same way again.  As the director of Joshua I was so proud of the students with how they took every opportunity to soak in the teachings and make the most out of their time in Israel.  I hope that you soon get to hear the amazing life changing stories that came from this adventure.   Our desire as a staff was that through the blog you were able to catch a glimpse of what your students were experiencing.   As you can imagine the days were full with 6 am wake up calls, full days of hiking and seeing sites and then not getting back to the hotels until after 7 pm.   I personally wanted to take a second and thank the Joshua staff for their hard work every day to capture photos, audio teachings and make wrap up videos each day.   Chad, Bret, Jenna, Jen and Jenae went above and beyond to not only gather all the media but to then work at night to get it uploaded to the website.

I just wanted to acknowledge them and leave you an opportunity to post a comment about your experience following the blog.   Also if you use Facebook we would encourage you to click here and “like” GTI tours and leave them a little comment of thanks on their page.   Without them this trip would not have happened and we are extremely grateful for their partnership with Joshua.

Thanks again for following the Joshua blog

In Him

Rich Ferreira

Joshua Director

Chad (the video man)

Jenae and Jenna (photos and white-board)

Brett (photos and everything else)

shalom,

brett

Joshua Coordinator

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

Continue reading today’s entry on the GTI Tour Journal →

טוב לילה

Laila Tov, which means good night in Hebrew

The time has finally come at last.  Today we all met at 3 pm at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX to begin the check in process with Turkish Airlines for our trip to Israel.   Everyone is really excited and we can’t wait to begin our study tour through the Holy Land.   Once we board our flight at 6 pm we will travel for 13 hours before we land in Istanbul and then transfer to our connecting flight to Tel Aviv Israel.   It’s going to be a long day as we leave on a Tuesday and arrive Wednesday evening around 8:30 pm Israeli time.   We are ready for the adventure of a lifetime, so keep the 76 of us in your prayers and continue to follow us on the blog.   We will make sure to do a short update when we arrive so you will know that we made it to Israel safe and sound.   To quote Lao Tzu, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” So here is to that first step……

Take care

-JWI Staff and students

Because we love quotes

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”- Mark Twain

It’s hard to believe that over 7 months of Joshua has already passed and we are closing in on the last months of the program.  I think that I can speak for everyone in that we are all really excited about our trip to Israel that is coming up in just a few days.  The students have been studying for months and just finished their Israel final last week (click here to download a Israel practice final and see how you do.  If you want to save the test you will need to right click on the link and choose save as).  I know that all of their hard work and studying will pay off as they will never read the Bible the same way again.   My hope is that you will be blessed when you hear the stories of what they have learned and that through the blog you will be able to journey along with us as we walk the land of the Bible.   Through the blog we will be posting daily photos, recorded audio teachings, daily video wrap-ups and a lot more.

Please keep us in your prayers and feel free to leave comments on the blog as we as a class would love to hear your thoughts about our trip.

Take care

Rich Ferreira

Joshua Director

A few tips for using the blog while we are in Israel

1. We will be posting everyday and should have a new blog up by 8pm Pacific Standard Time.   If for some reason it’s not up by 8 pm don’t worry as we sometimes have problems with the internet.
2. We will be posting to the Joshua site like usual and then you will be redirected to the GTI website to see the full blog.  If you want you can subscribe to our Israel tour as well as “like this tour” on Facebook by going to http://gtitours.org/tour/2013-04-02-jwi/
3. We will be doing live updates through out the day on the Joshua Twitter account.  You can view these updates or choose to follow the JWI twitter account by going to https://twitter.com/joshuahumelake
4. Click here if you would like to partake in a 9 lesson scaled down version of the Israel curriculum that the Joshua go through.
5. If you are interested in experiencing a study tour like the one the Joshua students are doing then check out GTI Tours on the web.

Dear friends and family, greeting, salutations, hello, shalom, and any other words that you would wish.

Thus week has been a most hectic week.  We have called it, FINALS WEEK! We had our Israel final, Corinthians Test, our Philippians Final, and a another test that we didn’t expect, however we all passed it….except for Taryn…maybe…just kidding she did.  Since we had no speaker week, we had a superfluous amount of study time to prepare for each of our tests. This time was spent either worrying about studying, thinking about studying, and finally actually studying. It was a long process but we have made it out still keeping our sanity intact.

We also had the great blessing of going down to Fresno Pacific University to tour the campus, and learn about the potential scholarship we can receive.  We were able to get a lot of information on what FPU is about and along with eating their great food.

One thing that we must address is that we have finished our final Philippians. (sigh of relief). For all of us, this is a great accomplishment after almost 7 months stressing about this small book.

Sincerely,

Jonah, Ryan (formally known as Matt), Micaela, and Sara

Also be sure to check out this week’s podcast on the left of the screen or by clicking here. 

The staff was kind to us and gave us about 6 hours of study time on Monday before our Pauline Epistles class. Hopefully most of us used our time wisely. We’ll see how it reflects on our tests! Today is our Israel final *insert dramatic music here*. 100 questions all about the geography and culture of Israel. Can you believe we are going to be there in less than a month?? It’s crazy, I know. We are going to walk in the footsteps of Jesus! But before we hike to Masada, we had to finish watching the movie Masada, which we did today (finally!) It only took us like five months to finish it… But anyway, that’s pretty much it so far.

Oh! Shout out to Lauryn’s sister who got married this weekend! Congrats! Whoop whoop!

Yours til the crow flies and the flies crow,

Hannah Banana

Good News. Tonight is Purim. We’re pretty excited about it. Now you may ask yourself. What is Purim?

Well.

I am glad you asked. Let me tell you.

Purim is a Jewish feast celebrated each year in remembrance of Esther and her bravery in the face of genocide of the Jewish people. Taryn is especially stoked because she read the story this morning in her Bible during Devo’s. For the feast the girls dress up like princesses in remembrance of Esther. And the males will dress however they please. Or as whatever they please.

We’re excited to go into this evening of fellowship since our community has all expressed the weariness we feel. But we’ve been learning/discussing what godly community looks like in the current book we are reading. Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer has covered what it looks like to live under The Word of God. It has encouraged us to be immersed in the word, uplifting one another, sharing truth and how to do that corporately.  This has been a huge reminder to choose joy and we are excited to dig deeper into what that looks like during

Purim tonight.

Also, we are running through a Passover Seder tonight, which we are equally as overjoyed for.

That’s all: peace, love, and chicken grease.

Austin and Taryn.

GOOD MORNING PARENTS AND LIKEFELLOW! We are here at the Joshua building reporting on the highlight of the weekend:THE BOXSLED BLITZ!!! This weekend the Joshua students were invited to participate in this epic race. This is what the participants have to say in response to so me very difficult questions:

Luke, tell us about the inspiration that came with this boxsled building?

• Well, first we wanted to build one so I got my parents to bring up a bunch of cardboard and duct tape. The original plan was to make a biplane or the Ark of the Covenant,  but that didn’t work so we made a giant sled and saw how many people we could shove into it.

Would you say it was a success?

• Yes. We got going pretty fast.

What was the highlight?

• Probably the crash at the end of the run.

So Shelby, tell us what you thought about the ride in the boxsled?

• It was LOTS of fun!! It took a while to build but it was worth it in the end. We should’ve paid a lot more attention to the structure though, because in the end it crumpled once it went off the jump. It was a lot of fun and I would do it again!

Jonah, were you in the boxsled?

• No.

Sharon, how was your boxsled experience?

• The boxsled was interesting, fun and very fast!

Well, there you have it folks. One of the most epic activities at winter camp came to a conclusion this weekend, and the Joshua students were told not to win, so we didn’t.

Signing off,

Daniel, Lainie, and Mallory.

P.S.

Bye.

Andy Schmidt and Nick Zavala here hijacking the Joshua Blog! Nick and I graduated from JWI last year and have returned for our annual reunion, which took place last evening.  It was a strange thing to walk into our past home to see that it has now become the home of others, however it was a great thing to come back and remember all of the times that we had been through.  We thought of trips and speakers and even rules that we had broken during our time at Joshua.  We could say a lot about the things that we remembered and while it is good to remember we were asked to think about how we are making Joshua a part of our lives everyday. You may have heard the saying “Joshua begins when Joshua ends.” This is what we were truly reminded about.  How are we making everyday life Joshua?

As the evening wound down the current students started to return from their PAUSE families and we were all challenged to an Israel Prep quiz this morning; past classes verses the current class. The current students had the fact that they have been studying this for a year on their side. We had the fact that we have been to Israel on our side.  It was a very close race, but in the end the alumni came through! Let’s hope next year will be a three-peat!

JWI alumni signing off,  PEACE!… Or should we say SHALOM!

-Nick Zavala and Andy Schmidt

Click here for our podcast featuring Joshua Alums at our reunion.

Here is an addition to the weekly Joshua blog.   Salutations to the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, and siblings, and pets who actually read this weekly account.  This week has been a week of awesomeness; our speaker has been Brad Bell from the Well Community Church in Fresno, CA who we get to see every Sunday for church.  He has been sharing his wisdom and thoughts on the book of the Song of Solomon.  It was a great series because it was loaded with biblical truth, yet held a ton of practical advice to take into the world of relationships. As we are sure you can imagine, there were lots of laughs and giggles as Brad dove into the book. He called the men of Joshua to step up and take the lead in their future relationships and for the women to be godly women with high standards based on the Bible’s description of a godly leader.  Joshua as a whole is beginning to prepare us again for the real world, and this series by Brad was one of the next steps. We continue to learn valuable lessons that we will be able to practically apply to our lives. BTW it snowed. Nothing stuck.

From Life effective people (hopefully),

Eric, Alli, and Fletch

Now let us rewind a bit as we continue our journey through time and space. We shall revisit Sunday, March the third (Ji’s birthday and also our last day in Los Angeles). On Sunday, we attended a church called Faith Inspirational located in the city of Compton. Never have we experienced such love and hospitality from a large group of people we have never met before. One thing for certain united us all: Christ Jesus. Highlight: “MEN OF FAITH – AWOO! Let us take back the city of Compton!”

We know that sounds a little obnoxious, but it was a truly powerful service filled with so much devotion and passion for our Lord, Jesus Christ. It was inspiring to find a group of people in an area so plagued by violence finding so much hope and courage in the understanding that there is power in the name of Jesus to break every chain.

We arrived in Compton to find a bright yellow school with blue trim ready for a little bit of a Joshua touch. Everyone dove into start on the 8 portable brown buildings with a prime coat of yellow. The sun definitely felt a little hotter than our usual Hume Lake weather but we distracted each other by making sure to add an even coat of paint on the buildings as well as our neighbors. Our crew worked until around three with a short stop for some Little Caesar’s pizza brought to us by our wonderful staff.

Before continuing work we were able to meet deputy sheriff Owens who is also the head pastor of one of the African American churches who partners with Compton Initiative. Owens encouraged us by sharing some of his personal testimony as well as the powerful revival he believes has taken, and will continue to take place, in Compton. It was such an inspiration to hear from such an influential man who God has been using to better this broken and unsafe place.

After finishing our day of painting we experienced another cross-cultural dinner as we chowed down on some Nicaraguan food. Afterwards heading to the Griffith Observatory, we were able to get a sky-high view of Los Angeles as we talked about the week we had experienced. It was a beautiful way to end our time here.

The week has totally flown by and as we look forward to a Sunday service tomorrow and a night’s rest in our own beds at the building, we are so thankful for the time given to learn more about who God is in our lives and how we can portray that to others anywhere we go. But for now, we have more night on the church floor – a blessing within itself!

Peace, Love and Jesus from Room 225,

Taryn and Sharon

P.S. We love you Mama Harvey and Mama Kersbergen

2013 LA Trip – Compton Initiative – Griffith Observatory from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

After a couple frustrating days of conversations that didn’t go anywhere and what seemed to be an endless supply of people who are devoutly devoted to every and any religion, including Judaism and Self Realization, I finally had a good day wandering the streets of LA and conversing with people.

It couldn’t have been anyone but God that put Cruise in front of Ji, Stephen, and I as we sought refuge from the sweltering SoCal sun by a public bathroom of all places, it was completely by accident that we ended up there and so many factors could’ve changed our path but the Lord had a plan and it was amazing to see it today. We met Cruise right outside the restroom and while sitting there we came to learn a few key things, he was homeless and he was a Christian. Naturally, Ji invited this intriguing homeless, nicely groomed, Christian to lunch with us so that we could find out a little more about his story and maybe be a blessing to him in some way.

When you take a step of faith God provides, the three of us were able to find a backpack for Cruise in which we put some fresh fruit and art supplies and we were able to get him lunch without much problem. Not only that but God was faithful in opening up Cruise’s heart to us and by the end of our afternoon in downtown LA today we were seeing a broken man, filled with endless bountiful love for his daughter who he is fighting for with everything he has, while he also tries to fulfill his artistic dreams by using the talents God has given him. We left him with hopeful yet melancholy hearts and will most certainly be praying for him in the days to come.

2013 LA Trip – DreamCenter – The Grove from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

Our afternoon was spent in Santa Monica. We were sent out in pairs to wander the town and start up conversations and bless the people we encountered (with an envelope of finances to help us do so). The sun was shining. It was mapping out to be a glorious day.

I entered the time with expectations; some well-thought, others subconscious. They were ideas like “I will use all the money in the envelope,” and “We will engage in great, extensive conversations.” As the hours passed, none of my expectations had been fulfilled. I became flustered. And at the end, as we climbed back into the vans, I felt like the day had been wasted. I hadn’t taken initiative. Obviously, I didn’t try hard enough.

But in my processing, I’ve come to see it more like this: The results of today were not from a lack of trying. The results of today were from trying too much. I tried to make the day become something, instead of enjoying it for what it already was. What a learning opportunity. It was a difficult one. A frustrating one. A needed one. (Breathe.) There will be a chance to try again tomorrow…

Thank you for reading,

-Lainie

“Expectations. We all have them. But we must remember to hold them loosely.” –Chad Rosell

2013 LA Trip – LA Food Bank – Santa Monica from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

Yolo driving video from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

After waking up at 4:30am yesterday, Brett, Jen, and Jenae’s vans were all extremely happy to be able to sleep in until 7:45am this morning. The fact that we now consider 7:45am to be sleeping in is a little worrisome, but it was sleeping in nonetheless. We were happy and content and ready to take on the world (or at least The Museum of Tolerance). If you’ve never been to the Museum of Tolerance, you should. And if you don’t know what the Museum of Tolerance is, it is a museum dedicated to tolerance. It was an absolutely eye opening experience. We took a three hour tour through different exhibits that dealt with injustice across the worl in the span of the last century including: the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current state of the refugee population (which is a population of around 33,000,000).
If we had to choose the most powerfully moving part of the tour, it would have to be the Holocaust exhibit. Not only did we get to learn about Hitler’s rise to power and the timeline of World War II, but we were each given the story of a different child, whom we followed throughout the course of the tour. We came to find most died in the Nazi concentration camps. However, one, Peter Daniels, survived, grew up, and became a docent at the Museum of Tolerance, where he still works today. One thing that our tour guide kept repeating throughout the course of our time at the museum is that when people are told a lie for long enough, they will start to believe it. This was true of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. The understanding that one man’s words of hate could cause millions of others to suffer is a horrible thought, but it also brings hope that one man’s words of love could change the world just as powerfully in the best possible way.
Then we had Indian food. It was phenomenal. Even Jordan liked it a little bit (which is saying something if you know Jordan and his eating preferences). That’s all we have to say about that.
We finished off the night by heading to Westwood Village in attempts to have conversations and share our faith with our peers (most of whom attend UCLA). It was a completely different dynamic than what we all experienced last night on Hollywood Boulevard in the fact that we were talking to people our own age, socioeconomic status, etc., instead of the homeless. It’s easy to recognize and address brokenness and the need for a savior in people who appear so obviously broken. However, it’s a little more difficult to recognize and address brokenness in people who resemble us, because if we acknowledge it in them, we have to acknowledge it in ourselves, and sometimes that’s uncomfortable. It’s also uncomfortable to approach groups of 20somethings in Starbucks, but that’s a different story.
And that brings us to 10:33pm, Wednesday evening, in the third to last pew of the sanctuary of Golden West Christian Church in Los Angles, California where we currently sit, typing this blog. Tomorrow we get to, once again, “sleep in” (7:30am) and the adventure will continue on. Seeing as how we’d like to take advantage of all 9 of the glorious hours until then, we must depart to hug our pillows. But we will leave you with this: In the words of Derek Zoolander, there is more to life than being really, really ridiculously good looking, and we are continuing to find out what that is. Good night, beautiful people.
Tall Jordan and Short Jessica

2013 LA Trip – Museum of Tolerance and UCLA from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

First off let me say that this place is beyond me, I did not really know all these places were here. Like the dream center, and how close skid row was to the convention district in downtown LA.

Today was an interesting day, we started it off by going to The Getty museum, which I had no idea existed, and absolutely loved it. The beauty of the art, in that it was elaborate and so detailed blew my mind. I could not get over the amount of patience’s that it must have taken these men to create these canvas beauties.

The Getty was also a big reminder of how people put their time and money where their heart is. Rich said that multiple times as we debriefed our time there. And it was very true, The Getty facility itself took more than 5 years to construct and cost more than 1 billion dollars. From a Christian perspective that made me upset that it could’ve been used for something better. But from the perspective of an artist, and these people who value the arts, this museum was where their heart was, and their money was then spent there.

After we went there, we ended up at a temple of Self-realization. I never knew this religion existed, and was very curious to learn about it. Listening to the Monastic Brother who was the head of that temple talk about what they believe made me think. They believe in God, but they also believe in Guru’s who have achieved sainthood. And you can choose whichever Guru you want to follow. And pray to whichever one you feel like praying to. I walked away from that temple wanting to sit down with the head of the temple and just talk straight up with him. And ask him questions from my heart.
The Getty was amazing, and the Temple was challenging. But it was not the highlight of my day. My highlight was in the evening when we went to Hollywood Boulevard and began to do evangelism. And the highlight of my night was not necessarily in the conversations that were had(regardless I had some awesome conversations with people tonight) but walking with my evangelism partner Bella.

Bella and I were walking near the Kodak theatre and saw a guy sitting by himself looking very alone. And she said, “should we talk to him,” and then immediately said, “no, let’s go,” I did not argue with her, because I was curious to see what would happen. We walked down a flight of stairs and as soon as we got to the bottom she stopped. She said, “wait, no.” and turned back and immediately sprinted back up the stairs.

We sat down and talked with this guy for nearly an hour about life and people and just tried to engage in conversation. Bella was able to share with him what she believes is of utmost importance to her. And that was to live out Sh’ma. And he was blown away by the idea of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. But loved the idea of loving your neighbor as ourselves.

We didn’t share the gospel with him, but did engage in conversation with a lonely guy. And walking away from it I felt pride in Bella. She told me that was one of the first times she responded to the spirit telling her to do something and actually doing it. And that made me proud.

I am so excited to see where this week will take us. I am stoked to be working with Bella and cannot wait to tell more people about the love of Christ and what He has to offer to our lives.

2013 LA Trip – Midnight Mission-The Getty-Hollywood Blvd from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

-Joshua Staff

2013 LA Trip – Buddhist Temple from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

This morning we received our personality test results. We took the Taylor-Johnson personality test back in December. Today  Dr. Fereirra explained to us how to evaluate and understand the results. A lot of us, at first glance, thought we were crazy. But as Dr. Fereirra  explained to us how to properly read the results, we all calmed down. We now have a better understanding of our strengths and weaknesses.

Sorry to keep this blog short, but we have Pause night tonight, as well as our third Philippians test tomorrow morning.  So, back to studying!

-Lexi, Sal, Stephen, and Paige

I’m dedicating this blog post to all of the moms who have cleaned up after their children day in and day out for our entire lives. This weekend, Megan, Micaela and I (Lauryn) were dinning hosts for the winter camp full of 1,000 hungry high schoolers. Each of us had our different stations or “corners” where the campers could get soda, coffee, hot chocolate, juices or cereal at each of the meals. Our job as hostesses was to keep our corner fully stocked and clean throughout the meal and to make casual conversation with the campers or consolers waiting patiently in line. Seems easy enough right? Well who would have thought that teenagers go crazy when you give them that many options! After about fifteen minutes of a constant flow of people, the place was cleaned out and we had to frantically try and put it back to normal. When a break of people seemed to give us just enough time to get things looking good, another hundred campers would come and the cycle would repeat over again. The entire weekend I kept thinking to myself: ‘man, I have no idea how in the world my mom kept the house looking clean all the time with me living there! Or how she could watch me mess up something she JUST cleaned.’ What a patience woman. Now don’t get me wrong, my job was awesome and tons of fun. I met a lot of people while they were in line for drinks and every time I’m in the kitchen I have a blast, but wow that was tiring! I don’t know how moms do it every day!

After the weekend I had a chance to talk with Mic about what we had just experienced and she said: “This weekend was amazing, not only did I have the opportunity to work with Lauryn and Megan, and they are fantastic, but I had the chance to serve the messy high schoolers of California. The hours were long, we had triple splits but the weekend, overall, was eye opening and enriching.”

To sum up this weekend in three words, I would chose: eventful, messy and rewarding. I now have a new found respect for all the moms (and dads) who have spent countless hours cleaning without notice for years. You guys are great.

LOVE YOU MOM!

Written by Lauryn Wilson

Also, here are some photos from the Valentine’s dinner we put on for fulltime staff as a fundraiser for Israel.

It’s crazy that in just two short weeks we’ll be heading to L.A. Preparations have begun as we have started to refresh or unveil our evangelism skills. We have started off by reading: The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever. Last Wednesday we broke off into groups and reviewed different chapters of the book. Each group presented some of the most notable points in their specific chapter that they were assigned. Here’s a look at some of our favorite concepts:

Shannon- “Love. We are called to love others. We share the gospel because we love people. And we don’t share the Gospel because we don’t love people. Instead, we wrongly fear them. We don’t want to cause awkwardness. We protect our pride at the cost of their souls.”

Alyssa- My group zoned in on Chapter 4, which is titled: How Should We Evangelize. When we presented to the class we informed them of the practical ways to share the Gospel. We also gave them something, which Mark calls, “The Balance” which includes a sense of honesty, urgency, and joy when telling people about Jesus. Some specific suggestions he gave were to pray, use the Bible, be clear, provoke self-reflection, and use the church.

One of the most important things we, as a group, realized is this: “The Christian call to evangelism is a call not simply to persuade people to make decisions but rather to proclaim to them the good news of salvation in Christ, to call them to repentance, and to give God the glory for regeneration and conversion. We don’t fail in our evangelism if we faithfully tell the Gospel to someone who is not converted; we fail only if we don’t faithfully tell the Gospel at all.”

This week we are privileged to have Darin McWaters as our speaker. You may recognize his name from his former band, Everybody Duck. He’s imparting his evangelistic knowledge onto us in preparation for our time in Los Angeles. One story he shared with us was from his own time as director of Joshua, as a previous class experienced what we are about to embark on. As Darin was walking the streets of L.A. a group of boys asked him to buy them a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Darin agreed to buy the cereal, but only if he could join them for a bowl. As they sat enjoying the cinnamon goodness they began to ask him about what he was doing in L.A. He was able to share with them what Joshua was doing – sharing the good news. Darin unexpectedly got the opportunity to present them the gospel and that day Christ drew them in. This story has gotten us very excited about what is to come.

And now, we ask all of you, our Joshua fan club, to pray for our upcoming trip. Pray for the people we are going to encounter. We don’t know who they are but God does. Pray for us that we would have the words to speak and the ears to listen and the hearts to serve.

Hello All!

We hope you are all doing well back at home. We appreciate you taking the time read about what has been going on in our lives up here at Joshua Wilderness Institute.

            This is the first week back in the building for us sine the DR, but it has flown by because of all the different activities we have going on. From classes, to chores, to SWEEPS, to speaker, to homework, continuing to invest into our communities and, ultimately, live lives that are Christ led, our plates are pretty full right now. Not ours only, but also our staffs so if we pop into your heads please feel free to shoot a prayer up to our Father and ask for Him to guide us and that we would find comfort in His everlasting and on-going promise of salvation through His son Jesus Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners, and can now have a relationship with our Father. That is something that I think we can all get distracted from, but as we continue on this week I hope we will be as David in Psalm 27:4 “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all of my days, and gaze upon the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple.” I hope as we continue on we will remember to find rest in His house. Amen.

            Besides our Isaiah test we had and the Isaiah paper and Israel test we are going to have, some really cool blessings have been given to us this week. Two of them are named PJ and Sherry Lewis, who were our speakers and catalyst couple this week. They are a dynamic duo and really invested their lives into ours and shared key, fundamental truths to help us in our walk with Christ. The main focus of this week was “The Bottom Line.” The Bottom Line is that there are 3 key things we need to know and fully believe so that we can trust in God: 1. God is in control, 2. God knows what is best, and 3. God loves me. If we fully believe those three things, then we can trust in God and commit our lives to Him. It is cool to hear people quoting this throughout their days, and is an awesome reminder that “Yes, God is controlling my situation, He does know what is best for His glory, and yes He does love me because He sent His Son to die for me on a cross so I could know Him.”

            Another cool experience we had was during book discussion talking over the book The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever. We are going to be heading to LA soon, which is crazy to think because we just got back from the DR (known as the “dirty DR” to some of our speakers) and it is also a key element to living out our Christian faith. If the gospel impacts our lives and we live a faith that is true to God, then the gospel and “good news” will be something we want to share and are not embarrassed about. I think the biggest revelation for me [Tyler Henry] about evangelism was realizing, the definition of evangelism is to share the good news. I so commonly looked at it as converting people or whatever, but God made me a sower, so I can sow the seed, but He is the one who causes growth as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7.

            The last thing I am going to talk about is a really cool tradition we have up at Joshua called the “Christmas Tree Lighting.” You may be thinking “Christmas tree lighting in February?” The answer is yes. Eight trees in fact. We lit the trees right outside of our building with matches and watched the set ablaze. I did not know that trees got so dry, but I now see why it is a fire hazard to leave them in our building unattended after Christmas. It was a cool experience, almost like a bonfire, that our community got to partake in with the staff and I am so appreciative to be a part of it.

            That sums up some of the key events of this week and I [Tyler] thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this. I hope that this blog has given you some insight into what we have been up to this week and also take notice of the good news woven into it because God is good, and wherever you are in your life, the gospel is always relevant. I hope you find joy in the rest of your day, whether it is from a small smile from a stranger, getting a friendly hello from someone you care about, or maybe winning the lottery. Whatever happens today, rest in the house of the LORD and don’t forget: God is in control, He knows what is best, and the creator of everything in and out of our universe, who has all power, wisdom, glory, honor, and utterly transcends everything I could describe Him as, LOVES YOU!

God Bless,

Tyler Henry, Taylor Chesney, Lindsay Andrews, and Jordan Smith

God used the Dominican Republic to impact a lot of our lives. So we asked some of our Joshua siblings to sum up their experiences in couple of sentences:

“The Dominican was really awesome because God definitely used the trip to work, not only through us in the communities we were serving in, but in our individual lives as well. And what I think is the coolest part about the whole trip is that God is still continuing to work in our lives in the absence of the Dominican, and that He still continues to work in the Dominican in the absence of our lives. I think that’s glorious news.” – Jessica Root

“The culture of the Dominican Republic showed me the importance of investing in others and valuing the relationships I have. The trip also made me realize that I need to find joy in what God has put around me rather than in materials.” – Austin Reifel

“All year God has been teaching me about the power a word holds – both a power for good and also for evil. This became really evident in a specific moment for me. There was one kid in particular that I took a special liking to. His name was Samuel and he was new at the preschool. His family had just moved to El Callejon from Haiti & he didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. Never would I ever have thought that my C in high school french 8 years ago would make such a big impact in the Dominican. When I greeted Samuel in french his eyes lit up. We bonded at that moment. He finally had someone to communicate with. We definitely built a special friendship he & I – all based on a few simple words.” – Shannon Cirricione (Worked at El Callejon preschool)

Yours Truly,

Shiloh Litonjua and Trevor Soderholm

We as a staff hope you have enjoyed following our journey to the Dominican Republic.  On a completely different note it is crazy to start even thinking about Joshua Graduation but we wanted to make sure everyone had information about that big day.  Click here for details.

-Joshua Staff 

For the longest time I was looking forward to coming to the Dominican Republic to just spend time in another country. There really is no experience quite like a short term missions outreach. Individually I have been on enough to know that I leave the country feeling more affected by the people of the Dominican more than I feel like I have affected them. You think I would stop getting in the habit of making expectations and just enjoy my time and let God use me and teach me.

I don’t really know how to explain this trip any better than life changing. I was blessed to have been placed in the sports site and under the leadership of “Profe” Raul Canela. This is an example of what a man of God is. Raul, a career military man one day felt the Holy Spirit tugging on his heart to step away from the military and all he has ever known. He felt called to a role very foreign to him, He felt called to coach baseball. Ironically enough Raul has grown up in a country that places baseball as the primary sport but he never played growing up. Yet this man has been coaching baseball and investing into the lives of the youth here in Jarabacoa. Like I mentioned up top, the kids call him ‘profe’ which literally means teacher. ‘Profe’ never wastes a chance to tell someone about the gospel of Christ. After every session of baseball he has a presentation of the Love of God and how He sent His Son for us.

Nothing stops ‘Profe’. The man literally created his own sign language while we were here to tell a man who was both deaf and mute bout the love of God. I was amazed. He had each visiting American tell their testimony, and used that to represent Christ and His love for all men. But above all else, whenever ‘Profe’ hears someone complement him, he never wastes a chance to give Glory to God.

“Raul, thank you for your wisdom,” “GLORY TO GOD,”

“Raul, good job with the message today,” “GLORY TO GOD,”

“Raul, thank you for your help,” “GLORY TO GOD,”

We even had the amazing opportunity as a men’s sports group to pray with a young Dominican boy named Oliver to accept Christ as his Lord and Savior. The whole time Raul was praising God for simply the opportunity, and was thankful that God considered him worthy enough to pray with this boy to accept Christ.

These past two weeks Raul has shown me the example of what a man of God is, always giving Glory to the One greater than Him. Never wasting an opportunity to tell men about God. I have been blessed by him. One thing he always said was, “nothing happens by coincidence,” and it’s true, what happened these last two weeks was not by coincidence. I was placed under his leadership for an intentional reason. I don’t know why, but I know that I have grown in his teaching.

The challenge now, not just from my testimony of the trip but for all 55 of us is coming back to the states and never forgetting what we individually learned here. God has done some amazing things in the lives of each one of us, and everyone had a different experience from this trip. But we can all rest in the fact that even though we worked at different sites, had different leaders and different experiences, God moved in each and every one of us. And we were blessed by the opportunity to be here.

For those reading, be it family or friends, be prepared for a myriad of stories and experiences. They are all just as valuable as the first.

And finally, Glory to God.

Austin Rurik

Dominican Republic Wrap Up – 2013 from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

We as a staff hope you have enjoyed following our journey to the Dominican Republic.  On a completely different note it is crazy to start even thinking about Joshua Graduation but we wanted to make sure everyone had information about that big day.  Click here for details.

-Joshua Staff 

We at the Microfinance site here at Students International in the Dominican Republic have combined the work of the head with work of the heart. We have been able to partake in a wide variety of activities while being here, the most common being participating in different community bank meetings, but we’ve had opportunities to witness to the different members of each community and become a part of their daily lives by experiencing their work places and home life. Our jobs have ranged from pulling dead leaves off of bell pepper plants in a greenhouse to getting chickens ready for sale, and we have met a wide variety of interesting people. Our encounters have included Carmelo, a man who owns two greenhouses where he grows bell peppers for export, Juliana who owns a business of de-feathering chickens and raising pigs, Wendy, who’s house we painted with the Los Higos social work team and many other women we visited with our site leader Miriam, also known as the heart of the microfinance site. Miriam is a woman who knows everyone, and is loved and trusted by everyone, she loves everyone and never stops sharing the gospel and her main role in the microfinance site is to focus on relationships and live out the gospel to everyone we come into contact with. Eric, our other site leader, is known as the head of the microfinance site and is our fearless leader, marching us through the twisting streets of the towns and bringing us to our bank meetings, translating for us so that we can have some idea of what’s going on, and setting up loans and systems to help the bank members save money and learn how to spend wisely. Last but not least we also have Martha, the spring intern, who has been our comedic relief and has supplied us with many an inside joke for the future when we return to Joshua. Martha, Eric, and Miriam have each impacted our lives in many different ways this week, reminding us of the importance of the gospel, prayer, community, relationships, and wisely using what God has entreated us with whether it is material possessions or talents. We have seen inspiring moments from different women in the community and how savings has helped them. For example this elderly petite lady named Dulce saves no more than 100 pesos each week but because she is so faithful she has had money in the midst of emergencies that has allowed her to visit her sick sister in the hospital or buy medicine for her own health issues. We’ve seen some sad moments to, a woman who lost hope and gave up after her church fell apart due to a pastor’s poor decisions and a family that is struggling to find a way to provide for their future child now that they are both unemployed.

While we have seen a rollercoaster of emotions these past two weeks, I can say with confidence that microfinance has been the best place for me to be while here. We have been able to be a part of meeting people’s spiritual and physical needs in so many different and unique ways, in fact I believe we’re more of the relationship team than anything else.

Megan

Dominican 2013 Day Ten – Microfinance and Los Higos Education from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

 
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We are in our last few days in the DR and we are still having a blast.  Today writing the blog is me Eric (typing)  and the rest of the construction crew.  Today we were asked to tear down a wall at SI’s new school that they are about to open.  The Job was supposed to take more than one day but we were able to show them that the men of Joshua can power through and get the job done in half a day.  The construction crew has had a crazy few days of hauling dirt from the mountains down to one of the locals houses, it has started to rain so we have been soaked through every day and covered in mud but it is completely worth it to show these people the love of Christ.  Our site leader Hans has been teaching us that it is not always about getting a job done but building relationships with the people around you–which has been a struggle for us Americans who are wired to just keep working until we can get the job done.  Eric would like to give a shoutout to Hannah and his mom!

Ricky’s favorite part of the trip is all of the crazy drivers on the roads that don’t obey any of the laws that we are accustomed to; we have seen people carrying everything from giant propane tanks to live animals on their motorcycles.  The record number of people that we have seen on a motorcycle at one time is 5!!  The drive up the mountain is a long one but towards the top we get the most amazing views around the entire island where we can witness the amazing power of our God and his creation.  Ricky would like to give a shout out to his mom and Cheynne.

Stephan, a man of many words, has given us the wisdom that when it is pouring rain don’t leave your clothes outside to dry.  Stephan has enjoyed his time in the construction crew especially the sledgehammering the wall today he would like to give a shoutout to his family.

The rest of the crew is currently sleeping or engaged in ping pong currently so they are unable to comment on the blog but I am sure that they love their families and cant wait to talk to them in a few days!

-The construction crew

Dominican 2013 Day Nine – Community Health from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

 
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Today was another great day with the Boy’s Club; God is doing work and we are blessed to be a part of it.  The Boys Club is run by Leo, he grew up in this community so he knows exactly how to relate to the kids. It is evident that the boys look up to Leo and look to him for guidance. The majority of the boys have horrible home lives so the Boys Club gives them an escape to come and learn about Jesus. Leo does a great job at sharing the good news by simply showing them what a man of God looks like. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend our day in Sabeneta and on Wednesdays and Fridays we go to the community of El Callejon. We start the day with interacting with the boys until everyone shows up. When we have enough people we start a game of baseball and usually play until the day is finished. It’s amazing to see the passion these kids have for the game of baseball and also their talent. They play every day so they run circles around us Americanos.

 Today we were in the community of Sabeneta. At the beginning of the day we were blessed with some rain so we spent most of the morning just hanging out with the boys. Before lunch we set up a store for boys to buy things from tooth brushes to school supplies. These supplies are all donated, so Leo tries to set up a store every six months, just depending on how many donations come in. The way the boys earn ‘money’ for the store is helping out in the community in many different ways and also memorizing Bible verses. Leo gives the boys many opportunities throughout the year to earn Leo bucks so they will be able to buy necessities when he sets up the store. They have very little so the store is a major blessing and is just one of the ways God has moved within the Boys Club. It was a great experience for us to see the excitement in the kid’s faces and to see how they lit up as soon as we let them in. They were more focused on things they needed rather than what they wanted. They weren’t looking for clothes that “looked good” but they were simply looking for clothes that fit. We had some baseball jerseys for sell and as soon as we brought those out the boys went crazy and flocked to them. It was great to sit and watch their enthusiasm simply over some jerseys.

 After we shut down the store we headed back out to the field for some more baseball. All the boys brought out the gear they had just purchased and were stoked to put it to use. They busted out the catchers gear and we played fast pitch for the first time since we have been here, those boys throw heat (en fuego). I (Austin) got beaned twice and that’s when I charged the mound (totally kidding about charging the mound). Chad, a Joshua director, played with us and hit a bomb, it was impressive. Taylor and Logan also tore it up on the field today; they made the Americanos look good. Gooo Gringos!!

Please continue to pray for our time here in the Dominican Republic. That we would have open hearts and minds to what God is trying to show each one of us. God is doing amazing things within our group and your prayers are greatly appreciated.

-Taylor Chesney, Logan Hensley, Austin Reifel

Dominican 2013 Day Nine – Boy’s Social Work from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

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As a guest staff with Joshua, I have been blessed to work with Jenae and three of our students in Social Work in El Callejon. After being greeted by some of the local children, we gathered with our site leaders to hear Sharon’s testimony and Lauren’s prayer for our group. Every morning together, we grow closer and our hearts love each other deeper.  After hearing of the specific prayers needed for the community, we began to walk down the main dirt road. We prayed for the individual needs of the community and talked about the hardships we have seen, but had not yet said aloud. We spent the remainder of the morning in preparation for the crafts and activities for the week. I was supposed to have shared my testimony the middle of last week, but our morning time was shortened, so instead, I was to share with the older women of the community this afternoon.

Though I had written most of my testimony the day before, I still had not completed it until less than an hour before the women began to arrive. I was stuck. It is one thing to share your life story of following the Lord in the United States and they can think you are crazy or not. It is another when you are sharing with a group of women who live with a completely different culture. I did not want my story to be jaded with the sound of pride or superiority. After much prayer, I was able to finish writing out my testimony prior to lunch. My prayer was asking the Lord to speak through me, to touch the hearts and lives of each of these women. No matter what the culture, no matter where you are, human nature is the same and we are all made by the same God.

The women began to arrive and gathered on the benches around the large table. After passing out handwritten nametags to them, we began with prayer and songs of worship. The sound of the women singing was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. With only the bongo drums, the women sang in strong harmony from their hearts. I love the sound of Dominicans speaking Spanish, but to hear their voices sing was a memory I pray I never forget. Though I did not understand the words, my heart was moved by their spirit.

As our site leader (Kim) interpreted this afternoon, I was then able to share my own story with the 25 women in the room. It was a story of following the leading of the Lord through the 32 years of my life. It was a story of his love and provision through all of the trials and of waiting on his promises that are yet to come. It is not the culture here to wait on the Lord’s leading for a husband and it is not common to be legally married. This leads to a lot of infidelity as a life lead without Christ is lost and searching. I knew the women were paying attention, but I did not know until afterward of a woman sitting in front of me silently wiping away tears. I was told later only that she has a really rough life. I did not know what that meant, but I know these women see their identity in their relationship status, whatever that may cost them. Daisy is our other site leader. She is an amazing woman who took my story of following the Lord and related it even deeper to their lives.

When I had finished, Jenae spoke to the women about their importance to God. She spoke of how he calls the stars out by name, of how he has known us since before time. She spoke of how he thinks of each of them more than there are grains of sand. The words of love from the Lord to these women flowed to their hearts as Jenae “practiced” her Spanish fluently. She tied in that we came here to get to know these women and that begins with knowing their name.

This was a beautiful day, full of truth, testimony of God’s love, and shed tears. The women in the community of El Callejon are each so beautiful and precious to their Father and Creator. It is our prayer that they draw ever closer to him.

~In Christ’s Love,

Sarah Klose

Dominican 2013 Day Eight – Women’s Social Work from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

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Esta fin de semana estaba muy bueno! Nosotros fuimos raftingo en un agua y mucho mas!

You will never guess what we did this weekend (unless you can decipher our poor Spanish above).  We’ll give you a hint:  it involves being wet, having fun, excitement  a chance of sore shoulders, and was a thrill of a lifetime.

That’s right!  We went sky diving!

Just kidding. We went river rafting! It was loco, that’s Spanish for crazy if you didn’t know.  See we are learning so many Spanish words!  We went river rafting and it was awesome.  We went through some pretty exciting rapids, they even had names, there was the mother-in-law, the terminator, the cemetery, and mike Tyson jr. It was awesome and only one person bailed out of the boat, and as it so happens it was Chad our leader, but he’s fine so there’s no need to worry.

We all made it back safely and ate lunch back at the base then headed into Jarabacoa.  We were able to walk around town and buy ice cream.  At dinner time we all crowded into a nice little Dominican restaurant and had an awesome dinner.  

Today we had the opportunity to go to local churches and experience how the church services are run here. It was pretty similar to what we have at home except it’s in Spanish, lucky we had a translator to help us out. All-in-all the weekend has been a blast, but I feel it’s safe to say, we are all eager to get back to our ministry sites again on Monday.

With love,

Tim, Jordan, Bella, and Alli

Now we just need to figure out how to get our clothes dry here.

Check out this video of Chad falling in.

DR-Rafting from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

First we’ll start off with the typist, Alyssa Green. Hi Green Family! Honestly, I went in to this week with little to no expectations. I’ve been out of the country before but nothing could have prepared me for this experience. Not only is it a breathtaking country, there is also some incredible staff. Students International in Jarabacoa has it good. Our site leaders Mike and Karen have overwhelmed us with their generosity and made us feel so blessed. And then there are the kids… I have never met a group of people that are choosing joy so vehemently. They are full of love that’s pouring out onto us. The amount of relationship I have benefited from is vast. It’s our fifth day here and I just want to stay. The food is amazing and God is SO much better. I’m looking forward to the rest of our time here and cannot wait to tell my loved ones all that I’ve learned….if I come back. (: ~Alyssa Green

Well,  this week has been quite amazing and soul satisfying. God has been making himself evident in so many ways: from the beauty of the country, to the joy the children radiate, and finally to the example of love and contentment the people display. God always has made himself evident in so many ways in his creation, and being a nature lover I just feel the closeness of God here all around. From the sound of the jungle at night to the culture and just everything about this wonderful place.  Oh how I love the children, they are so happy and I feel as if they have a certain understanding of God that I can never comprehend. Just their plain joy at life and just loving you from the moment you meet them without even expecting anything, just having plain pure simple love.  We were able to visit a student’s house, and they had close to nothing, it was humbling, in America we have so much yet we tend to never be content, and it just made me question if we are really being good stewards of what God has given to us. For example it takes only $55 a year for college, some of us make that in two hours. What have we been doing to help our fellow humans out and what more is there that we could do?  ~Julian

So, I apologize to my family now, as I might never come back home. I already found a place to live and (hopefully) a job. But in all seriousness, there would have been no way to prepare myself for what I’ve gotten myself into. Working at Genisis with the special needs children of Jarabocoa completely destroyed my definition of joy. I’ve never seen kids so excited to go to school. Working with those kids and helping them with everything from reading and writing to making a leaf pile to jump in; every minute is filled with smiles and fun. God is really humbling my heart and showing me that I don’t need stuff to be happy. He’s also showing me that not even disabilities can stop someone from loving God. I can see God working in all the kids from 4 year old Josalin to 18 year old Jonathan. It’s insane that we only have a week left with these kids. It’s going to be so hard to leave them. But I can’t wait to see what God has in store for the rest of our time here. ~Hannah

I agree with Hannah, as I might never come back, and live in the jungle of the Dominican Republic. Being here has been the most amazing experience. I have never been to such a beautiful place with such beautiful people. Working at Genesis is the most humbling and eye opening experience, here I have learned the meaning of joy and what it means to really serve him. Last night, we had dinner in the community and had the opportunity to hear one of the teachers at the school’s, Angie, story and hearing that she could have any other opportunity but she chooses to serve God through teaching those precious kids. Going to the school and seeing the kids’ faces positively light up when they see us and being continually joyful throughout the day is amazing. They have taught me joy these past few days. I’m excited to see what God is going to do this next week. ~Micaela

Dominican 2013 Day Four – Education Sites from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

The coffee here puts Starbucks to shame, it is one of the staple foods here.  The food here on the base is most excellent too; the cooks are amazing.  We spend our free time playing catch out in the field or writing letters to love ones.   Although we wake up in the mornings super early it is completely worth it to be have our devo time and watch the sun rise in the act.  We also have morning worship and today we were led by one of the locals who only sung in Spanish.  It is a testament to how the God we serve doesn’t only speak English.  Tonight was our dinner out in the community, which is where a local family hosts us and makes us dinner.  The construction crew went to Gladys’s house where she made chicken, salad, and plantains.  If you have never eaten a meal in the middle of the jungle at night time let me tell you it is quite an experience.  We all miss our families dearly and cant wait to tell you about all of the amazing adventures we’ve gone on.

EricJ

Dominican 2013 Day Three – Construction and Mata Gorda from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my father. Dad you are such a huge role model in my life and I’m so thankful that God gave me such a loving father. I’m very bummed that I can’t see you on your birthday but I am sending you my wishes. I hope you have a great Birthday,  I Love you so much!

Love,

Michelle

“Happy Birthday Mom!”

Hey all its Micaela and Lindsey here and we just wanted to give a shout out to Micaela’s mom: Feliz Cumpleanos de Dominican Republic!

Micaela: Today I worked at the Special Education site called Genesis. It was absolutely fantastic. Alyssa, Jonathan, Jullian, Hannah and I did everything from making posters, helping with math, hanging out with our awesome site leaders: Mike and Karen and playing duck, duck, goose. Seeing the joy on all the kids’ faces was the best thing. We can’t wait to hang out with all the kids, teachers, and Mike and Karen these next few days.

Lindsey: I am on the Medical team here at the DR Trevor, Antonio and I got the chance today to set up a community health clinic in a small rural town near our base. We were able to do everything from filling out Medical history to being able to sit in on the doctor to patient checkup. It was very eye opening to be able to see how different the medical field is here in a third world country. We are very blessed to be able to come and serve in this beautiful country.

Stay turned for more updates, videos, and photos from our trip!

Dominican 2013 Day Two – Sports and Dentistry from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

The morning only got better when we were blessed by having a meal of mouth-watering brown sugar and oatmeal pancakes and assorted fruit. The pancakes were better than good by themselves, but with jam and peanut butter it was a whole new level of deliciousness. From our meal we went to a group orientation where we got to learn about our leaders (Kenny and Karen) on a more personal level and see a bit into their pasts and then got a good amount of information on Dominican culture. We compared the differences of our own culture and the one we will be staying in for the next two weeks and they encouraged us to step out of our American mind set and really be inclusive in all we do. It is so easy to jump up and think we are the best problem solvers ever, but sometimes we don’t know the whole story, so it will be an awesome experience to let others take the reins and really go along for the ride in a new environment that is foreign to most of us. These next few weeks are going to be more focused on the relationships God has blessed us with in our new work sites, and also the many we have built over the past 4 months with one another.

After being provided with an awesome lunch of good ‘ol hot dogs, we got to meet our Student International leaders and get plugged in to our work sites. We left the base we are staying at in trucks and went out into the Dominican. The country is absolutely beautiful and it was crazy to see all the foliage and life the island has to offer. It was interesting to see some of the big houses on the way to our sites and how the line of poverty and the upper class are so close to one another. Unlike America where the rich, middle, and lower classes all seem to be isolated, the various living standards are all right next to one another and you are really able to see what a difference there is.

Once we arrived at our sites (Austin Reifel at Boys Club and Tyler Henry at Pre-School Education) we got a more hands on tour. At the boys club we got the chance to hang out with the site director, Leo, and hear what God has done in his life and also his vision for the boys club. It was awesome to hang out in the town of Sanbeneta and see how all the kids would interact with Leo, it was obvious that they look up to him and how big of an influence he has been on their lives. Sanbeneta is a town with a lot of bad influences so the only way out for these kids is baseball; we got a chance to play with the kids. It was great to see their passion for the game and also their amazing skills. They don’t have good equipment but that doesn’t get in the way at all, they all have extreme passion and it was incredible to be a part of that. At the Pre School in Mata Gorda, our leaders Katie and Alberto talked to us about the 3 and 4 year olds we would be working with the next day. The school is awesome and there are about 24 kids total from around the area. Mata Gorda is an agricultural area so it is very poor, but it looks absolutely stunning with all of the different plants growing. Our leaders gave the 4 of us working there flowers for our hair and are teaching us some Spanish. It’s an awesome experience.

After we all arrived back from our sites, the SI staff made us a snack that was very scrumptious and we all got to chill out until dinner (as seen in the picture). The surrounding area of the base is stunning and the cabins are awesome. The hospitality that we have been provided has really made our stay so far an enjoyable one. For dinner we had an awesome stew and then we did a Culture Night. Culture night was a great time of fellowship where they served us Dominican coffee, which is super sweet and very awesome. Then we learned how to merengue and got to dance as a class for the second time this year. After busting out some dance moves, we all played a game where you pass cups in a rhythm doing a chant to a song and whoever messes up loses. It was super intense and Trevor did a great job representing the man community and taking home gold. I can’t say it was easy though because Lexi was a tough competitor and put up an awesome fight. To finish off the night we got to try some coconut milk straight from a coconut itself and then have some coconut candy that was super sweet and some say tastes like German Chocolate frosting.

We look forward to an awesome day tomorrow and what the Lord has in store for our trip. So far we are all pretty healthy. Prayer for God to move in our group and in the Dominican would be welcomed from all of you back home reading this and we look forward to sharing about our trip when we are back in the states. We love you all very much!

God Bless,

Austin Reifel & Tyler Henry

Dominican 2013: Day One – Orientation from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

We’ve made it!!! We’ve changed out the icy mountains for the balmy Caribbean–and it wasn’t without effort. It was a long day of travel, almost 24 hours to the minute, from doorstep to doorstep.

We started at 8:00 AM heading out for LA.  Our friends at First Baptist Lakewood were kind enough to shuttle us to the airport, so we stashed our vans in their parking lot and jumped on their bus.  By 9:30 PM we were in the air, a redeye to NYC.  We finally met up with Rich for the first time in two weeks, and we were all just so excited to see him.  We had about an hour in the airport, where some got breakfast, and others were sprawled out sleeping on the floor.  Then it was back on the pane for our final leg to the Dominican Republic.

By the time we landed and took the bus ride to Students International’s base, we were beat. Fortunately we had the rest of the day to relax and get settled. Some laid on hammocks for a nap while others took it more seriously and slept in their cabins.  Others even read love wins, and great divorce.  Our first meal here was rice, and sausage, and watermelon on the side. It was just what we all needed after a long day of travel.  We all loved what they had to serve, and can’t wait for the next meal. In the end we all made it safely and for some of us flying on a plane was a first. But in the end, we are all so excited to start working at our job sites tomorrow.

in the end,

-Dylan Goorabian

The time has finally come, we’re headed to the Dominican Republic! The trip is going to be a great one. We’ll be down for two weeks, working with Students International. Students International is a missions organization that connects short-term teams with long-term missionary professionals serving communities in need through specific occupational ministries. The ministries our students are paired with are: construction, health care, education, sports, and micro finance. To be linked to Students International’s website for more information click here.

We are all eager to get there. We’ve made it down to LAX and are now outside our gate waiting for our first flight–we have a connecting flight to New York then it’s on to the DR. We should arrive in Santiago at noon (that’s 8 AM Hume Lake time). Check back here for updates and pictures of our trip.

We will see you in the Caribbean.

You see it was pretty cold this weekend and a lot of us must have thought being out side in the freezing cold would not affect us, but we were wrong.  We’re pretty sure that this much tissue paper hasn’t been used in such a short amount of time in a millennium. But we are slowly getting over our stuffy noses and coughs to come and see this week’s amazing speaker Dave Hansen.

He is the president of students international and he really has a heart for missions.  We can tell that he is really passionate about what he does.  He even invited the remaining healthy people down to his cabin and he and his friend Tom made us cookies.  He talked a lot about service, and finding your “sweet spot” which is something you are passionate about and how that coordinates with the needs of the world and then serve in that area.

We are all really excited to go to the Dominican Republic next week!  It will be cool to see who will discover their “sweet spot” and who knows maybe someone will discover something that they will want to do for the rest of their lives.  The important thing is that we will have the opportunity to serve those who need it.

Well that about wraps it up… Peace.

-Jordan M, Jonathan, Shelby, and Hannah

We had over 600 campers this weekend. How blessed we are to experience winter camp every weekend and to be apart of these kids lives. To see God move in these kid’s lives and to see the change in their attitudes by the end of the camp is something we will definitely miss as we go on with our lives after this year. I got to personally talk with a few campers and they have been to Hume Lake since they were little. Pondy Chapel is definitely one of the highlights for the campers and for us. It honestly feels like yesterday I was one of the campers. For all Seasons (Reveal) is the band that will be playing for all of winter camp as well as summer camp and they are the beez kneez! I love their worship and I’m so stoked that they are here because I know, as a camper, the worship bands often are what makes the camp. I would say it’s a huge part in effecting these kids lives. There has been this bug that has been going around Hume and around the Joshua building so we are all trying to get healthy before our trip to the Dominican Republic. Everyone is very excited–we leave this weekend!

“I loved our time at Preview. It was near to the ‘experience’ of Joshua. But now that we’re the Joshua students and had a Preview come through, I have a different perspective. Being in the program is a lot different than seeing it from the outside.” –Sara

“Preview was the first time I had ever been to Hume. I was suddenly in a whole new culture, with new people, seeing what it was to be a ‘Joshua student’. I was overwhelmed… There are some very specific memories I have from that time. One of which is when Shiloh and I walked the hill, just to see what it was like. Another is a ‘loft party’ the girls had together. And I remember my interview with Jen… At that time I didn’t see myself at Joshua. I wouldn’t have anticipated any of this happening, much less the five of us writing a blog about it. Funny!” –Lainie

“It gave me a different perspective to what I though Joshua was. I expected it to involve more independence, but at our Preview I realized how much community is involved.” –Tim

“It was interesting being on the other side of things. I am surprised how quickly our time as Joshua students is going. When I was attending Preview it seemed like the class had already been there for a while, but really it’s only a few months.” –Stephen

“I really enjoyed our Preview. It was very different than actually being in Joshua. The reasons I had wanted to be here are different from the reasons God actually has me here. There are other things He is working on. And that’s good.” –Shiloh

Good luck to all those preview students out there. Before you know it you’ll be on the other side of things writing a blog about it all.

On Sunday as everyone was leaving, in the midst of falling snow and hectic chain control, Mallory and I got to talk to an entire van of girls from Bakersfield about Joshua and the impact that God is making in our lives here. In those twenty minutes that we spent answering their questions about the program, I got to a point where I almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth.  I am already such a different person then I was at the beginning of the program. I am learning the value in imperfection, that it leaves room for God’s grace. I’ve come to understand that my future is not uncertain, looming, and scary but rather wide open and full of freedom to serve others by doing the things that God has allowed me to be passionate about. I know with certainty that I deeply care about every single one of my siblings that are struggling through this year with me; if we stick together and encourage each other in Christ we can make it through the year.

It’s preview week and all I can do is try to put into words the wonderful things that God does here at Joshua in the lives of the students. Even though we have about two days with them I don’t believe I could get near to telling them everything I’ve learned about myself, my friends, and God.

Please keep us in your prayers, as different sick bugs are making their way around the building and keeping some of us: out of class, away from work, and getting in the way of our community time.

See you in a couple months!

Megan

At last, we were able to catch up on sleep when the work weekend finally came to a close. And thus we woke up the next morning to realize, alas, PHILIPPIANS TEST TWO IS HERE! We meet again, this time with punctuation errors. Let’s just say, punctuation is a life skill we have yet to master. But we boldly say: WE SHALL NOT BE MASTERED BY ANYTHING! NO NOT EVEN GRAMMAR! So, we practice spiritual discipline, and we did everything, well, some things, sometimes, without complaining or arguing, so that we may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation. In other words, we are still learning. We truly hope that we may continue to grow and mature alongside one another as God continues to sanctify us as we strive to live a life surrendered to Him.

In all, this week has been full of ups and downs, some great moments and some difficult moments, but despite all this, we cling to the truth and to one another, knowing that God never fails and He is faithful even when we are not faithful. He is moving in our lives even when we cannot see it.

Well that’s all folks, until next time, with love…

Jonah, Jessica, Ji. AKA TRIPLE J DAWG.

Hello World and Merry Christmas!!
Shiloh, Kelsey, Trevor and Ricky here, updating you all on our recent Joshua shenanigans.

Yesterday was an eventful day! It started out with our class “The Grill” where we got to ask our speaker for the week, who happens to be the Joshua director, Rich Ferreira, all about his life. It was great getting to know more about him and his ministry. After that we took a personality test that consisted of 180 questions. It was challenging but beneficial to see where many of our strengths and weaknesses lie as we answered the questions. Once lunch was over, we had our weekly book discussion. The book this week is The Practice of the Presence of God. We discussed tangible ways in which we can actually “practice the presence of God”. It was cool to be able to really think about the application of what we’re reading and see its relevance in our lives.

Last night was the annual Joshua Christmas party! As if the heavens had been notified of the time of our Christmas party, it began to snow—and it didn’t even arrive fashionably late but right on time! We started with a formal dinner– everyone dressed in their best. The staff had set up the dining room to look beautiful and very festive and we were surprised with pizza, Caesar’s salad, coke and root beer for dinner! Everyone was very excited about our “fancy” food. At one point Chad mysteriously disappeared and the Christmas Ape paid us a visit; whoever he is, randomly running through the dining room.

After dinner, we cleaned up, changed into our ugly Christmas sweaters and set up the dining room for the gingerbread house competition with our Pause families. Each pause family had an hour to make our creations with the only rule being that we had to use the boxed gingerbread house set that they gave us. There were some intense and incredible things made out of gingerbread. Some of the creations included the house from the Pixar movie, “UP”, a tree house, the shire from “The Hobbit” and the winning design from the Saunders/Harris Pause family: an AT-AT from Star Wars!
After that, we sang Christmas carols and had an Ugly sweater competition, with Lainie and Fletcher as the winners! Becky Ferreira then read a Christmas story about the creation of the candy cane and after that, the night was over. Well, besides the impromptu snowball fight that capped the night off

This week, our work weekend begins today. Many people are leaving for home on different days between today and Wednesday. Please keep our class in your prayers as we each go home for the holidays. We are traveling and facing new challenges outside of the building.
Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Isaiah 9:6-7
-Shiloh, Kelsey, Ricky, and Trevor

Greetings to all our wonderful blog readers,

            “More than that we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame.” Romans 5:3-5 (ESV)

This week we are getting covered in the dust of our rabbi, Rich Ferreira. He not only teaching our Israel prep class and theology class; he is also our evening speaker for the week. Yes, we are rich indeed.

As we all know, “all roads lead to Rome.” That is exactly where we are going during our evening sessions. We are going through the book of Romans to see what it means to follow after Christ.

In other news here at JWI, this previous weekend Hume Lake hosted a victory outreach. Most of the Joshua students worked it. Lexi and Matt worked activities, which meant broom hockey for days and all kinds of crazy events for our guests. Julian worked as a cook in Ponderosa kitchen, where he was able to have subtle interaction with some of the guests, and Paige worked High Adventure, running the giant swing for those brave enough to give it a go.

Winter is upon us and that can only mean one thing “Broom hockey, broom hockey baby.” Yes, our competitive nature has come out and we have taken it to the ice. In the words of Julian, “it is exhilarating.” We look forward to the days we are able to play as a class and bond through the healthy competition.

We are looking forward to all that we will learn this week from Rich and as next week draws near we are excited to spend time with our families down the hill.

Grace and Peace,

Lexi, Paige, Julian & Matt

Olivia: This past week we have had Randy Carpenter speaking about Biblical Finances.  It has really opened my eyes to see how selfish I can be.  The dangers of debt and how we should be viewing the money God has blessed us with.  Everything that Randy said was biblically based about tithing and offering, and about sacrificing so that it stretches you and not just so that it is comfortable.  The whole week I have been convicted to be more diligent with how I spend my money and how frivolous I have been with my money.

Chris: Even beyond Randy, it was a great week. A lot of the students participated in the broom hockey video on Tuesday. Ahh the joy of broom hockey, it is that time of year when the ice is fresh, the hockey pads are taken out of storage, and  people are slipping around everywhere. It is a beautiful time here at Hume, still no snow but we are getting a lot of rain, which for some reason a lot of people really like.

Nathan: DO THE BROOM HOCKEY. I was able to be in the broom hockey video as well this week. We donned ridiculous costumes and did an incredible dance for the video. But no spoilers here, you have to see for yourself.  God is really working on me this week. I am starting to realize how selfish I am, which is natural in all of us. Our speaker has really convicted me of this through his teaching on Biblical finance. It is awesome to realize these faults and slowly start to improve them.

Alex: It may seem like I play this game too much but I really don’t. I finally won a game of Settlers!!!! It was a total high for the week. The speaker this week was awesome. At first you think, Biblical finances… what? But it was great, he opened up my eyes and made me realize that even if you don’t have a lot of money, it is still important to give. I was also convicted because I would always tithe at my home church, but not here. I realized that this is my home church now, and I should give to it. It was just really awesome, I didn’t know there were so many biblical things about finances. I didn’t get to do the broom hockey thing, but it looked like a lot of fun!!

Greetings from Olivia, Alex, Nathan, and Chris!

It was an eventful board game weekend, lots of settling went down, by that we mean: Settlers of Catan; as well as, Bang!, Magic the Gathering, and Dominion.  Everyone had the weekend off and most of our class stayed in the building. It was party time!!! We braved the slippery hills of Hume to trek down to the dining hall for food.

Alex: For the first time ever I ALMOST won a game of Settlers of Catan this weekend–Cities and Knights version. It was the most intense game I’ve ever played. I was moments away from winning; victory was in my reach. All I needed was my turn and victory was mine. But no, Austin, a worthy opponent, took the victory and won the game. It was a devastating loss, but I’m ready for another game. And this time, victory will be MINE.

Olivia: For the first time this weekend I learned how to play Settlers by the gracious patience of Alex and Logan. They taught Lindsay and I how to play the game that everyone in the building has been raving about. It turned out to be lots of fun.  The rest of the weekend was soaking wet, whenever we ventured outside it was inevitable that we would be soaked.

Nathan: This weekend was a blast, with everyone not working and hanging out in the building. I also tried Settlers of Catan for the first time, and had no beginners luck. However, it was cool to understand the game that is quickly becoming a pastime of our class. The weather made for interesting hill walks to the Pondy dining hall, but thankfully I got a few rides. Our speaker this week is Randy Carpenter, who is teaching us about biblical finance. This topic is very important, and is challenging to everyone. I am excited to continue to learn from Randy and take away valuable knowledge to apply to my life.

Chris: So this weekend was fun, we had a lot of time to spare because we didn’t have any work this weekend. The rain was abundant this weekend, especially on Saturday but it was still a nice weekend even though it was pouring. The house felt alive and it seemed like a lot of us were very happy to be back this week. We played games, built community, and ate out at Pondy dining! So have a great week everyone!

For our theme dinner last Thursday the class celebrated their future, 50th reunion. Here are some pictures from the event along with some shots of their future selves.

We finished Ragamuffin Gospel this week and instead of doing our usual format, Brett gave us the opportunity to get creative. We split into groups to discern the main theme of the book and to create a skit based on it. My group figured it was God’s unfailing and unending love and acted out a scene from another book called Gift Wrapped by God. We depicted God’s love through the story of a daughter of a highly respected judge. The daughter had committed a crime and her father was the judge for her case. He gave his daughter the maximum fine allowable for the crime he then took of his robe and paid the fine he had given her. There is no price our father in Heaven isn’t willing to pay for His sons and daughters

This week we had the opportunity to ‘grill,’ or question, our speaker like usual, but also had the chance to do the same with the president of Hume, Michael Anthony and his wife Michelle. We heard everything from proposal stories, advice on life, even to favorite superheroes. Chris’s favorite superhero is Spiderman, just in case you were wondering.

Tonight is another theme dinner, sure to be full of fun, ridiculous costumes, and food. We are having a Joshua 50 year reunion tonight, so all of us are planning on over exaggerating our old person stereotypes and dress in the most crazy way possible. It is going to be a fantastic night.

See you all at Christmas break but until then try not to miss us too much!

Eric, Fletcher, Megan, and Bella

Also: Happy Birthday Fletcher!!

Hello World! Happy Post Thanksgiving!

Today we, Jordan Smith, Tyler Henry, Taylor Chesney, and Lindsay Andrews ,interviewed a lucky few on what they are thankful for. But secretly I (Jordan) only interviewed a few because the rest of the Joshua class is at SWEEPS or is hiding in their rooms.

This is what the people of Joshua had to say:

Mallory: “Cloudy Day.” Mallory took Lainey home with her for Thanksgiving break, since Lainey lives in Oregon. They went to San Francisco

Micaela: “My Joshua Family.”

Heidi: “I am thankful for my hearing.”

Shiloh: “You! haha just kidding… For this whole experience.”

Matt: “Even though I am so far away from home I still have so many places to go.” Incase you did not know, he lives in Costa Rica and stayed with Austin Rurik over Thanksgiving break.

Sharon: “I am thankful for my parents. Hi, Mom!” Lindsay Andrews took Sharon home for Thanksgiving break because she lives in Holland.

Daniel: “My whole Joshua Family. I love you Mom!. Also for wheat thins, and coffee.”

Morgan: “Grace.”

Hannah: “For the big and small things. I am thankful for being raised in a Christian home, and being able to come here, and all the people here. Oh, and Nutella!”

Fletcher: “Jesus”

Kelsey: “Dollar churros, hair dye, late night 1:00am conversations with my twin sister, cheap sweaters from Goodwill, and accidentally hearing my favorite song at the mall during break.”

Kelly: “Laughing till your abs hurt, pizookies, seeing a different perspective of life in Mexico.”

Jenae: “I am thankful for the song that says, ‘I lean not on my own understanding, my life is in the hands of the maker of heaven. I give it all to you God trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.’  I am thankful that God has a beautiful plan for me from the beginning to end.”

Austin Rurik: “My toothbrush, my right canine tooth, a jackbasalopes, and pink elephants with one arm.” What a jackbasalope is? I do not know. Google it.

Ali: “All of you, and fall weather.” Ali went home with her roommate Marina for Thanksgiving break since she lives in Oregon.

Paige: “You, just kidding… being at Joshua.”

Olivia: “Shoes, and Rich Baker teaching our class today… Oh! and a new toilet seat.”

Sara: “Harry Potter, and for my Joshua sisters.”

Andrew: “I am thankful for getting to do SWEEPS with Jordan Smith. HOLLURRR” Aww what a sweet heart.

It is safe to say that we are all very excited to be back with our Joshua Family after being blessed with an amazing break where we were able to learn a lot of things we couldn’t in the building. I, Tyler, am glad to be in an environment where we can continue learning and challenging ourselves. It is crazy how much there is to learn. It was such a cool experience coming back up from our adventures outside of our cozy little cabin back to a group of people who were so excited to see each other once again. The energy was so high and I feel so blessed to be around so many amazing people. We love you all and send regards from all of our brothers and sisters to everyone that is not here with us.

God Bless.

Bella here! Today was our final full day here in Mexico! After getting up bright and early we headed to work for the last time! I was in a group with Matt, Taylor, Olivia, Andrew, Luke, and Brandon this week. We were in charge of hoeing and clearing out a specific area to make a fire break (click here to check out photos from our trip). I was put in charge of our group. Leadership has been something that I have been working on. As we were reading Spiritual Leadership, our second book into Joshua, I soon discovered that bossiness did NOT fit into the requirements. The one characteristic I am great at!  Throughout this week I got to practice leadership as being encouraging and as being a servant! Let me tell you. Leadership is not an easy role or task but something that requires lots of hard work. We finished early this morning and moved on to help in different areas.

After lunch today, everyone got ready for the soccer game. The game is a tradition between the Ranch kids and the Joshua kids. Apparently every year the Ranch kids win. Today was the first tie! I believe the final score was 5-5. Then Alyssa, Alli, Kelsey, and I climbed the hill in the back of the ranch. When we were at the top we looked out upon Mexico and it was a beautiful view. After taking several pictures, I came to this realization that I never would have thought I would be here at this moment and I felt blessed. God is truly great.

I found beauty in the fact that the students here worship with their hands, signing the words to the songs. I cannot fathom not being able to hear. Music is a huge part of my life and I have definitely taken advantage of my ears. We often connect worship with music; we connect it with hearing. That isn’t all of what worship is. As we offer up our voices, they offer up their hands and God is pleased with both.

Lexi here.  During dinner tonight, I was given a sign name! Here at the Ranch, as the kids get to know you, they give you a sign name to identify you by. I was so thrilled to be given one! Meal times are definitely some of my favorite parts of the day, because for most of us, that’s the only time we get to spend with the kids. I wish I knew more Spanish Sign Language, so I could talk with the kids more, but they have been very patient and some have even taught me more signs. I love watching the kids sign to each other, and I especially love prayer before meals.

After we said goodbye to the friends we had made. I walked over to one of the girls. Throughout the entire time of the 5K I ran with this girl. When she stopped I stopped. When she ran I ran. I never gave up on her and she finished the race. I was proud of her and glad not only that I stuck with her but that she stuck with me! After I said goodbye to her, a few of the students came over to me and we exchanged facebook names and emails and then said goodbye. For me, the theme of this week can be summed up by the words blessed and thankful. As I watched the students at the ranch this week, I noticed their laughter and happiness. Their happiness and laughter has rubbed off on me. It has been evident that God is working and moving in this place: through Luke’s story, through the student’s contentment, and through the progress of this place. As we return to the states I hope I can remember all I’ve learned here.

Bella and Lexi

Also: Remember to listen to our weekly podcast.  Episode 4 about our Mexico trip is just to the left of the page under the heading Recent Podcasts.  

Today we had an adventure in Baja. 30 Minutes of driving brought us to the beautiful port city of Enseñada where we were able to watch the take off of the Baja 1000 and explore a bit of Mexico. After arriving we split up into groups and headed straight to the beginning of the Baja 1000 to watch the trophy trucks and buggies take off. We had great spots since we were a half hour early. Twenty minutes later the first truck pealed out and took off down the dirt. 

Afterwards we had freedom to roam around a portion of Enseñada and take part in the food and haggling of tourism in Mexico. Deals were made, delicious food was eaten, and good conversations were struck. Needless to say we were blessed to have such an incredible day off to simply hang out and enjoy the culture we’re immersed in.

Tonight Rich’s friends Pam and Domingo welcomed us into their home and provided us with a mouth-watering dinner of homemade fish tacos, a food that is beginning to become a staple in our lives. Many of us enjoyed the dinner in our new ponchos, while others cuddled with their new blankets by the fire. Afterwards we all enjoyed a night of Karaoke and silly dance parties. The view from the house was breathtaking. Most of us, after Pam and Domingo’s open invitation, are making plans to visit this wonderful couple again some day. We couldn’t have asked for a lovelier evening and a better group of people to spend it with.

Taylor, Megan, and Sharon

Note to parents: The San Diego drop off this Saturday will possibly be earlier then expected. Due to a bike race we will be leaving earlier then we planned to avoid the traffic, we are hoping to cross the border around 9:00 am. Students will contact parents as soon as they have cell service. There will be a staff member able to wait in San Diego with the students being dropped off in case parents are not able to get there at the earlier time.

Boo happy 14th!! Hope we didn’t scare you!  We are having fun here in Mexico as well as learning some great life lessons.  We are learning that although you may not be able to communicate with someone verbally, you can still show them that you love and care about them.  It’s as easy as spending time playing soccer with them or giving a quick smile as you walk by.

 Today we helped put on Rancho Sordo Mudo’s annual 5k run for their female students. Many Joshua girls ran along with them to encourage them while us guys set up the whole event and cheered the girls on throughout the entire race. We added some obstacles to spice up the event. The favorite parts of the race turned out to be the mud pit and the Joshua guys dressed up as firefighters spraying everyone with hoses!  We also learned that as a group Joshua can knock out any task we’re given if we all work together.  Being so large we can conquer a large task in only a matter of a few minutes.

There is a little rumor going around the group that tomorrow is our off day, and that we get to go down to Ensenada for the day, everyone in the group is super excited to go and be able to experience some authentic Mexican culture.   We learn more and more everyday about the lifestyle and culture of the people.

Overall we are almost done with the week, it’ll be hard to say goodbye to all of the new friends that we have made here when we go home for thanksgiving.  We love you all and miss you!

Eric and Chris

(what the students don’t know at the time of writing this blog, is that they are about to watch the documentary “From Dust to Glory” about the Baja 1000 race that they will get to see the start of tomorrow during their free day. It might be the only movie we show them all year that isn’t about Israel- they’re gonna love it!)

Back this last summer when Rich and Jen were convincing me to come work with them up at Joshua, Rich led with the line, “think of all the tacos you’ll get to eat.” At the time I thought that was an odd incentive to give someone from San Diego. There are five or more places to get tacos within blocks of my place and I didn’t expect the Sequoia National Forest to be able to compete with that. But Rich wasn’t talking about just any tacos. Now that I’m down as one of the leaders on Joshua’s trip to Mexico I finally understand. These are the Tacos of Guadalupe and these tacos are special. As a staff we visited the taco shop the first day we arrived–in fact we visited it twice. Last night we decided to bring the students along. Here’s the night in pictures.

Carne asada grilling

Adobada on the spit

Handmade tortillas warming up

Tim trying out his spanish to order his tacos.

Julian seems quite content.

Mexican Coke just tastes better, perhaps its the cane sugar they use instead of fructose corn syrup we have in the states, perhaps its just the reusable thick glass bottle

Nathan finishes his fifth taco.

Cats run around searching for scraps.

Jen tallies the tacos as we order.

They look spritely.

Toronja, grapefruit soda

Marina ate the most with a surprising total of ten tacos.

-brett

Joshua Wilderness Coordinator

This statement has been exemplified in our first full day at Rancho Sordo Mudo. There is silence on the playground in the back of the ranch where the children are playing. They are on the monkey bars, playing basketball, and riding bikes with huge grins on their faces. The students, ages four to eighteen, express themselves through facial expressions and their language—LSM (Mexican Sign Language). As Joshua students, we are having a blast trying to communicate with them using the minimal sign language we have learned. Our favorite phrases include “How are you?” “I’m excited!” and “Horchata.” Some of us have even received our own “sign names”, as dubbed by the deaf students. We are so honored to be initiated into their culture.

Rancho Sordo Mudo’s purpose is to reach the deaf. There are many deaf in Mexico who do not know sign language and therefore have no language. Here at the Ranch the students are not only learning a language so they have a “voice” but are also learning about Jesus and his radical love for them. Deaf ministries are lacking throughout the world and in many cultures the deaf are forgotten or cast out.  Even in American churches, there is a need to expand upon current deaf ministries! The Ranch is excited to be partnering with Rick Warren to create outreach programs for the deaf in the 12 largest cites around the world.

A seemingly ordinary family from North Carolina, who heard God’s calling in their lives, founded Racho Sordo Mudo years ago. They packed their belongings into a renovated jimmy-rigged school bus, and ventured to Mexico trusting that God had a plan to fulfill their dream to bring a language to deaf children. Today, their ministry is still alive and flourishing, touching the lives of many young Mexican citizens, many of which would not otherwise have the ability to receive the gospel of Christ.

The new building which houses both the auditorium and classrooms is a perfect example of God’s faithfulness to the ongoing ministry at Rancho Sordo Mudo. The project has been funded by the generous contributions provided by God bringing together the right people for His will. The initial seed money funded the basic foundation of the auditorium. After finances dwindled down to $60, they were unsure of how to continue with the project. By the grace of God, a happenchance conversation led to a contribution to complete the structure. All that remained was a need for carpet! God once again provided when a group of visitors came to help the Ranch. One of the visitors, who wasn’t originally a planning to attend the trip, was so touched by the hearts of the students, he wanted to help out in any way he could. His parents just so happened to own a carpet company in Sacramento and were generously willing to donate the carpet needed to finish the new auditorium. The word “coincidence” is not in the dictionary of Christ, only “God-incidences.”

We are excited to come home and tell you more about our adventures and experiences here on the Ranch!

The journey continues…

Kelsey, Shelby, Lainie and Matt

It started off simply enough. We woke up on a snowy Sunday morning at Hume Lake elated because we knew that in just a few short hours we would be in Meh-he-co(Mexico). After being in the building for five weeks, the excitement of being elsewhere was overpowering, especially for those who had never left the country–or even California.

The first day was spent mainly in vans. We left Hume at 8:30am on Sunday morning and besides a few stops (In-n-Out included) drove straight to San Diego. Where we spent the night at San Diego Christian College.

After breakfast we a toured the campus and were given an opportunity to ask questions to admission counselors and faculty–SDCC gives a special scholarship to any Joshua graduate who enrolls. One of the highlights of our time at SDCC was sitting in on one of their chapel services. In it Dr. Fred Blackburn presented a parable of three trees. He warned us to be wary of being a religious zealot, lacking a foundation, or having an obsession with theology, yet lacking fruit—a simple topic but filled with great information.

LUNCHTIME! We had a great lunch at SDCC, and we had dessert! It was ice cream! And cake, and stuff! Hello freshman 15.

After this we piled back into the vans and scurried along to the border. We were blessed to not have any trouble crossing the border. Two hours later we arrived at Rancho Sordo Mudo! After settling in, the girls in a nice bunkroom and the guys in a recreation room on the floor with camping mats, we had the opportunity to play with the kids before dinner. We could just see the excitement on their faces that we were here. Many kids enjoyed a nice game of fùtbol with us and we got to learn more about them as we tried our hand, (literally) at signing with them.

Dinner was fun, Sharon can sit here and laugh at me(Austin) about what happened. We were served dinner, a bowl of soup, three crackers, and beans, or so I thought. After sprinkling my Parmesan cheese all over my beans, I began scooping my beans into my soup, mixing it for a better flavor. At this point Sal was kind enough to point out that my “beans” were actually my dessert, chocolate pudding. So I had put cheese on my pudding and put it all in my soup. It was appetizing.

After dinner we went to hear more about the history of the ranch. Luke Everett the director of the ministry was kind enough to take the evening and tell us the origins of this amazing non-profit. He continuously brought up the idea that God has a plan, it was encouraging to know that even through the hardest of times, all we need is to believe God will take care of us. It is amazing how Luke’s father had a holy discontent and packed up his wife and seven kids. And with what little they had left moved to Mexico to begin an orphanage for the deaf and mute.

People who are deaf and mute are one of the most unreached people group in the world. Through this ministry at Rancho Sordo Mudo they teach the deaf a language, giving them a chance at life. It looks to be a beautiful organization and we are blessed to have the opportunity to come here and learn more about it. Stay tuned for more.

Always with sincerity

Sharon and Austin

Because we’re going to Mexico next week and have Thanksgiving break right after that, we decided to decorate early so that we can enjoy the Christmas decor even longer. The building looks beautiful and it was awesome coming together as a family to be a part of traditions that some Joshua students won’t be able to participate in in their own homes for this year.

Our speaker this week is Lem Usita and he spoke on culture programing and identity. Lem brought a lot of character to the evening sessions as he broke out the ukelele and guitar and taught us new songs. We played games at the end of the sessions he taught  that furthered his point of being aware of cultural programming. Last night, the Joshua community was shook by his lesson on grace. We did an activity where we wrote down five words that describe our life, and then five lies we have been told or think about ourselves. Then, we went around to different people in the group and had them write five things they thought would describe us, which when comparing the two we could see they were totally different. Realizing this we saw how much we needed to give grace on ourselves as God does. Lem also taught us how to talk to other people from different countries, what is acceptable and not for other people and how to conduct yourself in a manner that wont offend other cultures. This will be of great help to all of us when we go to Mexico next week!

In preparation for our trip, we had two classes on spanish sign language to be able to communicate with the deaf students at Rancho Sordo Mudo. We are all counting down the days until we leave on our journey down there! For some of us, this will be the first time that we venture out of the country. After our trip to Mexico, we have a week break for Thanksgiving to celebrate with our families. We can’t wait to see you guys!! A special shout out to Colleen Wilson and Marianne Bankston from your children Lauryn and Ricky.

We have been warned that a storm is coming to Hume Lake and will dump on us quite a bit of snow. Because of this, we had to park our vans down at main camp to insure that we won’t get stuck, but this means we will have to carry our bags down the giant Joshua hill, while its snowing early in the morning, going up hill both ways. Pray for our safe journey and that we will be able to display Christ to the children at Rancho Sordo Mudo.

Hasta Mexico.

Hello again from all of us here at JWI!

We have just started our last week in the building before we head off to Mexico for our first international trip. We will be serving at Rancho Sordo Mudo, a school for deaf children, in preparation for this trip we are learning basic Mexican Sign Language—everything from learning to spell our names to a reciting a prayer before our meals, we practiced this for hours. Needless to say we should be quite proficient in our communication by the time we get there.

The dreaded day has finally passed, our first Philippians test is over! We worked late into the night making sure we were up to the task of reciting all of verse one. Finally being able to recite the whole chapter is satisfying in the sense that we have a better understanding of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We have all learned a valuable lesson, each specific to his or her individual walk with our Father.

The girls headed out yesterday afternoon for a small adventure in the woods, Lexi and I [Paige] had a wonderful roommate bonding time as we hiked to the top of the Hume Lake water source and enjoyed the wonderful view of God’s creation and realized the many reasons we are able to thank God for letting us live in such a beautiful place.

We are also excited about this week’s speaker, Lem Usita, who has come far far away from the land of San Diego. He is talking about cultural interactions, which will be extremely helpful for our next trip. We have been doing a series of activities to help us understand the barrier between different cultures. One of the activities was for us to invent our own games. After the game was conceived we were required to select delegates to move within the other groups. As we migrated to the other groups we had to figure out how to participate without being told how to play or what the rules were. The feeling of foolishness abounded, yet it was enjoyable because of how silly it was. At the conclusion of this, it became apparent that this was a representation of how it is going to another country and trying to understand the societal norms. We eagerly look forward to tonight ‘s lesson and activity so we can further our understanding of how we can immerse ourselves into a foreign culture.

With all that said, we would like to thank all of readers for their continuous support and prayer! But where are the comments?? Are people following our blog? If so, let us know what you think or ask a question and we might answer it in our next post.

You can also follow us by subscribing to our mailing list or to an RSS feed. The links for these are on the top of this page.  Thanks everyone for following.

Sincerely,

Paige Ekwall & Julian Rios

It’s finally November! These past two days have been quite exciting. Yesterday morning we said our sad farewells to our dear friend, and speaker, Robb Williams, we had a great week with him. (Honestly, a few tears were shed) Robb spoke a lot about meditating on God’s word, and learning to “match His heartbeat” through all the struggles that life throws at us. (I encourage you all to check out his messages or the podcast on the Joshua site). We also finished Mere Christianity and had our last book discussion on it…we all really seemed to enjoy the book and had some great talks about it. We can’t wait to start Ragamuffin Gospel next!

Yesterday afternoon we had the joy of going to see the last soccer game of the season for some of our pause siblings; we decorated signs and had a BLAST cheering them on. They were all really excited to have us there. It was really nice to do something outside the building as a family. Some of us were able to hang out with our pause families after the game; some of us went to snack shop for dinner while others went to their pause families’ houses.

Tonight (Thursday) we had a really creative theme dinner and went and played a grand game of Qudditch (an intense version of dodge-ball for all who don’t know). Overall the past few days have been exquisite, and we only have ONE MORE WEEK UNTIL MEXICO!

Until then, toodles!

-Heidi, Brandon, Michelle, and Dylan

This past weekend, majority of the class had a few days off. I, Chris, was in Bakersfield with a few Joshua siblings hanging out and even though we did not watch the game, we heard the great news that the Giants won the World Series! Woo! While Chris was in Bakersfield, hanging out with friends, I, Nathan, had a lovely weekend working activities here at Hume. My day was even more blessed when Alex and Olivia showed up to the boathouse and studied with me. Enjoying good company always helps to pass the time.

So, in short, some of us spent the weekend working and most of us spent a few days relaxing and taking advantage of the weekend off.

And parents, please ask each of us about resting in the hull with Jesus. You will soon have a week with each of us and we want you to ask us questions!

Shalom!

-Nathan, Chris, Olivia and Alex.

It’s spirit week here at Joshua and we’ve had some crazy theme days filled with costumes ranging from cute homemade woodland creatures, to almost identical roommates. Our current winners for the best costumes are Sharon, for Mustache Monday, Julian and Matthew, for Twinsie Tuesday, and Eric for Wild Life Wednesday. Today’s and tomorrow winners have yet to be decided but the current favorites for Thrift Store Thursday are Tyler and Heidi, our two thrift store magicians.

While half of the building is at main camp working on their sweep project, which includes jobs ranging from working with Support Services to teaching P.E. with Cheryl Kerry for the Hume students, the other half of us are pushing to finish our papers before we leave for our pause families tonight. It is impossible to accurately describe how much our pause families mean to us but everyone can be sure to know that when Thursday night rolls around every other week, there is not one person who isn’t excited to spend time with his pause family. Whether we are off adventuring in the woods around Kings Canyon, or lounging around a table eating a warm, homemade meal and playing card games, we all cherish our pause families and can’t seem to get enough of their smiling faces.

As October begins to end, we’re all making sure we’re getting chapter 1 of Philippians memorized for our test on November 5^th, pray that our minds would continue to remember Paul’s instructions and that we would not only be able to pass our test but that the words we are memorizing become our lifestyle. Not only that but also that the wise words we continue to hear from our speakers, would penetrate our hearts and help us to become great stewards and disciples of God. For as we have learned this week from our speaker Mark Strauss, it is not good enough to just become followers of Christ but we must also take the knowledge he has given us to make and grow other disciples.

The cold is beginning to nip our noses up here at Hume, but blazing fires are helping to keep us warm and cozy, as we expectantly look to the skies for signs of snow. Winter weather is right around the corner and we’re all ready for it, even our sister from Hawaii has stocked up on heavy-duty winter gear and is ready, relatively, for the freezing days to come.

Can’t wait to see you all for Thanksgiving Break we’re studying hard, but enjoying the beautiful mountain air too.

With love and joy,

Megan, Bella, Fletcher and Eric

Happy Tuesday everybody! This blog goes out specifically to Lainie’s mother, Julie. Your daughter is sitting here with me (plus some others, no worries it is completely odd) and she doesn’t know I’m going to dedicate a whole portion of the blog to you, so it should be pretty fun.

Yesterday we had our first snow and it was so cool…literally. A lot of the students went outside and took pictures and I know Lainie was excited because she misses the weather from home. She told me about your area and it sounds like a splendid city, I wish I could go and see all the trees changing. There are too many evergreen trees to really notice that fall is here, but the rain has been nice, even though I [Tyler Henry] am from Southern California and love the sun; I still appreciate other types of weather.

To go along with the amazing weather yesterday Mrs. Ford, your daughter and I, plus nine others (Ji, Matt L, Lexi, Ricky, Julian, Alli, Kelle, Dylan, and Jonah) went on a Monday Adventure Hike through the wilderness. We found a three-story tall tree cabin in Wagon Train and it was so cool! Plus it was still raining and drizzling throughout the entire hike so it was like we were a caravan of mountain people on an expedition (“nature hike”) through the woodland labyrinth we call our backyard. It was definitely one of the coolest things I have done so far here, plus I fell a couple times and it was pretty hilarious. Ji, a fellow student, says I fall very gracefully.

Lainie tells me she neglects to let you in on what we do in class, and luckily, I always pay attention to what is happening. The classes are very interesting and they give you a whole new perspective on the Bible. Before it seemed like a textbook, but now it is like a historical narrative with messed up characters and crazy plot twists. The funny part is, the more messed up all the stories seem, the more I relate to them and the more I understand. We learn how to understand the Bible in context and draw our own interpretations, while also validating that the conclusions we are coming to are correct. We also learn a lot of interesting facts about background, culture, and even Hebrew that contribute to a better foundation to growing in our doctrinal knowledge. On the flip side we have some fun classes where we learn life skills and little “nuggets” (that’s what some staff call them here) of knowledge that we can use on a day-to-day basis.

I really hope you enjoyed this blog Julie, and everyone else who decided to join us on reading about our adventures here at Joshua this week. I hope that God is apparent in your lives (and our own) and that we all, as a church and followers of Christ, can be lights to the Earth and the beautiful surroundings and situations our Lord has put us in. God bless you.

With All My Love,
Tyler Henry (writing on behalf of rooms 209 & 203)

P.S. This week is Spirit Week, hence the mustache on Lainie’s face.

Today we interviewed some of our Joshua classmates, here’s what we found out.

1.Why did you come to Joshua?
‘I wanted to come to grow in my faith.’
-Logan Lerman

2.What are your expectations for Joshua?
‘To grow and see what it means to be a man of God.’
-Taylor Chesney

3.What has been your favorite memory at Joshua so far?
‘Hartland was the BOMB!’
-Jessica Root

4.Have you had any dreams about your Joshua siblings?
‘When we were at Wildwood I had dream that Matt came into our cabin
and was shaking girls to wake them up and I was yelling at him, “You are
so even right now! Matt stop!” and then all the guys came into the cabin
and started to shake the girls to wake them up. It was real weird.’
-Marina Taylor

5.Do you like turtles?
‘Sure.’
-Jordan Smith

6.What is your favorite memory with a staff member so far?
‘In man hall Chad said when you agree with somebody all you have to
say is, “Holla at your boy.”’
-Matt Lindly

7.Do you have any embarrassing Joshua stories?
‘When we were talking about how people were trying to discover the ark I
said it was made out of beaver bark and Jen said, “No, it’s made out of
gopher wood.”’
-Nathan Bryant

8.What has been your favorite meal?
‘My favorite meal has either been the BBQ night or Monday Meatloaf
Dinner.’
-Hannah Pettey

9.What has been the biggest struggle living in the Joshua building?
‘Everybody.’ See says with a smirk.
-Alli Fergerson

10. What do you do in your free time?
‘I dominate all the guys at ping-pong!’
-Michelle Loren

11. What is your favorite class?
‘I would say probably Israel Prep. I like it because we learn about
Hebrew and helps me with the context and not looking at it from an
American point of view.’
-Tyler Henry

12. What trip are you looking forward to the most?
‘I’m looking forward to Israel because I can put the places in the bible in
perspective.’
-Shelby Boyde

13. What jobs have you done and which is your favorite so far?
I have worked Support Services and High Adventure and High Adventure
has been my favorite.
-Dylan Goorabian

14. What have you done with your pause family?
‘We have carved pumpkins and made s’more by the fire and got to know
the family better.’
-Alex Parfiett

15. What is your opinion on Julian’s curly mustache?
‘I think it’s manly.’
-Eric Callaway

16. How much do you love your roommate?
‘This much.’ (stretches arms wide)
-Chad Rosell

Reporting by:

Sal Virgen, Sara Monin, Micaela De La Rosa and Stephen Burns

This past Thursday was our second pause night. While some pause families were out and about on quads, others stayed indoors and played charades for hours. Everyone had a good time, and we all are so glad to be in a family atmosphere again. A lot of people had this weekend off, so there were a lot of students hanging around the Joshua building and around camp. Some people went down the hill to visit family, tour college campuses, and attend the Fresno County Fair.

Mike Bogart is our speaker for this week. He is a professor of world religions. Last night he talked about the 3 major religion types; Cosmic, Acosmic, and Historical (or Abrahamic). It was a very interesting lesson that will really benefit us. We celebrated Matt and Taryn’s birthday’s this week! This Thursday is our very first themed dinner. We’re all dressing up for 80’s Skate Night! Everyone is really excited. We will be having a theme dinner every other Thursday from now on!

It’s nice to have a few normal weeks in the building, and we all are definitely looking forward to what God has in store for us in the coming days!

Later!

Hannah, Jordan M, Jonathan, and Shelby

Today has been a wonderful day in the Joshua building. We woke up to very dark rain clouds, which boosted our hopes for snow! The 40% chance of snow has been the talk of the building. And although we didn’t get snow, there were many who danced outside in the hail this afternoon.

Our morning discussion, the last time hearing our speaker Trent Lewis, took place this morning in the Great Room. We have all loved the messages centered on humility. Trent challenged our class to be a group known for its humility. This morning’s talk was  emphasizing the importance of serving. He talked about how as Joshua students we have a season to be poured into, but this season isn’t anywhere close to reality. The knowledge, understanding, and resources we gain this year are to be taken and used to glorify God and serve others. When Joshua ends, it begins.

Tonight we have our second evening with our pause families. The excitement has been such a buzz about the building this past week! We are so blessed to be welcomed and loved by these Hume families, and we are so grateful for the evening of conversation, games, food, and fun each Thursday night.

Peace,

Sharon, Taryn, Austin, and Daniel

We also have a new opportunity to serve our Hume community with our S.W.E.E.P program.  (Student Worker Excellence in Education Program) It’s similar to an apprenticeship where we work with different Hume staff, observing and learning from them.  We work in all the departments, from working maintenance to teaching elementary students.

Today we are celebrating our one-month anniversary and after a month, we are still going strong.  We’re learning more than ever up here in Joshua, and we are stoked to put it all into practice.

Andrew, Morgan, Lainie and Mallory

Humbling.

“Why humbling?” you ask. Well! Let me tell you. I chose the word humbling because the trip was hard and it showed us many of our faults. I firmly believe that this trip was eye opening for us. It was awesome being able to serve. We basically cleared an entire side of the camp’s brush and trees–think campus beautification (public school’s nice version of detention). The cool part is, aside from the Hartland staff, no one will know that we were the ones who helped make the place more beautiful.

That is literally the way service goes. And for a lot of people, including myself at times, I struggled with the thought of serving and not getting the credit. But I realized that I was doing what I was doing so Hartland can further grow their Christ centered ministry. We assisted with a major maintenance job that allowed Hartland to focus on their campership ministry.

Being back at the building is nice. But I would love to have spent another week serving God, serving others, and serving Hartland at the same time.

Forever seeking and serving Him,

Austin Rurik

Hartland blog – HD 720p Video Sharing from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.

In tonight’s book discussion we talked about many different topics including the cost of leadership and how sometimes we are faced with decisions that are not fun. We are placed in those positions to help us continue to grow in our spiritual walk with Christ.

We’re still badgin’ in Badger California!

Eric, and Austin

We ended the day with a class taught by Rich. This week, we have been learning about Israel, Theology and Apologetics. I love that we are all being challenged with the WORD and being encouraged to figure out why we believe what we believe.

We be Badgin’ in Badger California.

-Eric and Austin Ru.

We were blessed with a safe, easy journey through the woods and the windy roads. It was intense, but we’re actually staying in cabins, not tents.  Everyone is super stoked! Our afternoon was filled with work assignments that included a lot of weed whacking, trench digging, dirt shoveling, trail raking, and much more! We definitely worked for our Thanksgiving style dinner! (Thank you Hartland staff for the delicious pie!)

We ended our evening with a study in our Israel Prep class taught by the one and only Rich. All in all it was a very successful day and we are excited to see what Hartland has in store for us the rest of the week.

Sincerely yours,

Kelsey Rasch, Trevor Soderholm, and Taryn Harvey

Greetings fellow earthlings! It has now been three weeks since we have been cut off from the outside world. We are struggling to survive…in the wilderness…with so much food…and no staff…and so many sweets. This week has been the week that we have discovered where the Joshua 20 truly comes from: the Catalyst couples. They gorge us with fried foods and brownies…and milk. And we are now speculating that they will have us for supper by the end of this winter. We are frightened. Get us out. What have we signed up for? We are actually paying for this…

But really, this week has been great. Unfortunately, our phenomenal speaker, Sam Meier, and his wonderful wife, Eileen, are leaving us, after so profoundly impacting our lives these past couple of weeks. They have poured out so much wisdom and knowledge that will not soon be forgotten, plus love and memories that will last a lifetime. As they return back home to Ohio, we pray that God will continue to bless them as much as they have blessed us these past few weeks.

The Catalyst couples are making such a huge impact on us. Aside from the delicious sweets they have been spoiling us with, the love that they have imparted to us has been so overwhelming. Although it has only been three days since they first arrived, they have already been grafted into our Joshua family.

In all, we have bonded incredibly, and although we have only known each other for three weeks…we be friends, good friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ, Amen.

Side-note: PING PONG TABLE! We have finally discovered its whereabouts.

May the force be with you.
With much love,
Jonah, Jessica, Ji and Matt.

A few of the guys also learned to throw tomahawks with Chad. (Personally, I feel like that might have been a bad idea–boys with sharp objects? Scary!)
We also have our first catalyst couple. They baked us brownies and cookies. I think we all love them already. Well, I think that is all for now. Look out for the next blog on Thursday!
Bye folks!
-Sara, Micaela, Johnny Tsunami (Stephen), Sal

This consisted of: taking down all the tents, tearing down the bedframes, and stacking all the bedframes in a storage facility. It was challenging yet fun at the same time. This was the first chance for us to put into practice the team building strategies we had learned throughout the week.

After we finished tearing down everything, Rich told us we were allowed to come back to the building! Finally after nearly a week of living in the wilderness we came back home and were able to SHOWER!!! The excitement level was through the roof! It was nice to be able to sit down and relax. Everyone was overjoyed to be back at the building until the staff told us that we are leaving again after dinner.

Where we are going? Nobody knows….

To be continued…..

-Austin Rurik, Kelly Schmitz, Logan Hensley and Lauryn Wilson

The morning started off as a typical day at Wildwood. We had breakfast and devos and then broke off into out groups for GI’s. At the end of the GI we had a group discussion about leadership and what it means to be a leader, which was cool because it correleates with the book we are reading as a class called Spiritual Leadership. After the Gi’s were over we had free time until dinner.

Dinner was different. It was another GI that we had to complete. After we all sat down they had us hold hands and  tied our wrists together with a piece of cloth. The objective was to get our food from the kitchen and eat our meal all the while being connected. It was an interesting but fun challenge as we tried not to spill food all over ourselves or each other. Our evening ended with a book discussion on Spiritual Leadership. Today concludes our last full day at Wildwood as we pack up and prepare to leave tomorrow.

-Micaela and Shiloh

P.S. Happy birthday to Shiloh’s brother Vincent!

As we end the second day at Wildwood we think about the small things that brought us a lot of happiness. It was little things, such as sleeping in, completing a GI or finally having dinner after a late night in the woods. Today we were all given the time to struggle and get real with God. We had an extended solo time in the woods which lasted for several hours. After, as we debriefed our time, it was great to hear the different ways God spoke to everyone. We are being pushed to our limits.

-Andrew, Megan, and Luke

Our day started much too early… at 4:30am. We were woken up by our RD’s giving us a bag and a packing list and telling us to be downstairs in 30 minutes. We started out on a crisp morning hike as we watched the sunrise. We reached our destination, Wildwood, having given up all rights of knowing what’s going on, what time it is, and what’s coming next. In the words of Jen Manlief, ‘our first encounter with submission as a Joshua Family.’

The day unfolded with a wonderfully hot breakfast followed by our first High Adventure course at Wildwood and our first Group Initiative. We were split up into three groups, each doing a different element. Each activity was meant to push us as a group and individually. Eric discovered his hatred for balance beams 50 feet up in the air; Taryn realized how hard it was to be deemed mute and attached to another teammate while trying to lead a group through an obstacle. Lunch came after with a leisurely afternoon, followed by dinner and a great Q&A with the Joshua Staff. And then there was pazooki! It was a mad rush to eat as much as you could and it was incredible. 

Even though it’s only our second week, our Joshua community has already begun to blossom and we are looking forward to whatever the week brings.

We be badgin’

-Eric and Taryn

IMG 1256-SD Video Sharing from Brett Garner on Vimeo.

-Chad

Enjoy the pictures and videos

-Joshua Staff

Click here to see the student portraits from the evening

Click here to see photos from the etiquette dinner

It has begun and we are all ready to go. Saturday was move-in day. It started out pretty hectic but mellowed down towards the end of the day.  On Sunday, our first full day of Joshua, we spent a lot of time getting oriented and learning about the commitment. It gave us a feel for what the rest of the year will look like. There was a tour of the Hume Lake Camp and then we had some free time to explore and go on adventures. We also made our first trek up the Joshua hill, which will definitely prepare us for the hiking on our trip to Israel. We had many other firsts, including our first night of student-led worship and learning how to pray in Hebrew (the Sh’ma). Also, our theme for the year was introduced. It is centered around the idea of being anchored, based on the passage in Hebrews 6:16-20.

There has been plenty of time for us to get to begin to get to know each other and to  learn about the Joshua culture. This year is going to be great!

-Mallory, Lainie, Andrew and Morgan

The student photo list is here for Joshua Class of 2013. Click here to download a PDF version.

The time has finally come, move in day is here. With the help of family and friends the new students are busy filling out paperwork and moving into their new rooms. They are meeting their roommates and fellow classmates for the first time. Everyone is excited and a little nervous for what is to come.  As the students get settled and the parents head down the hill, the new adventure begins. Joshua 2013 has begun.

Move in day timelapse from Brett Garner on Vimeo.

The Joshua class of 2012-2013 starts in only four days! The staff is already in the building working hard prepping and planning for the year ahead. We are all excited, and if the student’s facebook group is any indication, they can’t wait to begin either. We’ll see you all on Saturday.

]]> http://joshuawilderness.org/2012/09/joshua-2012-2013-is-about-to-begin/feed/ 0 http://joshuawilderness.org/2012/08/joshua-clothing-now-available-at-humeapparel-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=joshua-clothing-now-available-at-humeapparel-com http://joshuawilderness.org/2012/08/joshua-clothing-now-available-at-humeapparel-com/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:58:07 +0000 Allan Schuler http://joshuawilderness.org/?p=5398 We’ve recently made Joshua clothing designs available online! Head over to our new section at HumeApparel.com to view the latest Joshua apparel! We’ve designed collegiate style T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, and a crew neck design to meet whatever style you prefer. There are also HPI and Shema designs available. Check them out by clicking on the link: HumeApparel.com

Week 6 has arrived and has left us just as quickly as it came. We have continued to have one-on-one’s throughout the week. We also have worked various jobs with the students at their respective department. Although we are more than halfway through the summer, the students are continuing to be resilient as they are learning the characteristics of service.

This week began with J.P. Moreland – author, speaker, and professor – speaking at church. He began to speak about “happiness,” confronted our contemporary definition of it, and challenged our cultural mindset of how seeking our own pleasure and satisfaction is a worthy. He showed that is an utterly useless pursuit and is contrary to the teachings of Jesus (Matt. 16:25).  It was the fuel for a great conversation at our weekly Fire Pit time at Rich’s Tuesday night. To conclude the week, students participated in various departmental events this Saturday such events included: a progressive dinner, 4-wheeling, BBQ, go-cart racing in Visalia, seeing the new Batman movie, and a ka-ja-bi-can-can tournament. Fun was to be had this week.