given to Nate by the grils on our trip....

Tips for Nate!

(Remember: these guidelines are written by females to help you gain a better understanding of the opposite gender. Feel free to not change your habits around your buddies…its all about context!)

1. Farting around your homeboys may be permitted, but not all homegirls will appreciate your ability to fart the loudest, longest, or even smelliest.
2. Gleaking, spiting, and drooling is not attractive unless you are under the age of two.
3. Leave squealing to girls…they need you to protect them!
4. It is always better to keep your hands to yourself. Leave punching matches for guys’ nights!
5. Don’t bring attention to embarrassing moments…leave pointing and laughing for when you are not in public.
6. Girls respond better to whispered complements in their ears over loud barking…always remember, “I am a human, NOT a canine.”
7. Do you not leave your dirty underwear on the floor, especially inside-out!
8. Never show the coin slot…wear a belt boy…no girl wants to see your vertical smile.
9. Learn to be tactful in pointing out the amount of an over priced item in a high quality store.
10. Do not repeatedly smack the air while saying “oh, yeah, oh, yeah!”
11. Regarding the table:
1. Despite common practice it is not always polite to overly exert bodily functions.
2. Chewing with your mouth shut is not just a polite gesture, it is mandatory
3. The path of food is from the plate to the mouth.
4. Utensils are not weapons but tools for transporting the food along that path, there is no need for aggression.
5. Napkins are for prevention of stains not for attempting to remove the aftermath
6. Wipe off your mouth before sipping out of a glass.
7. Leaving your wallet at home is not a good start if you are paying for the meal. Also make it clear at the beginning of the date who is paying, but it is better to be the gentleman and pay anyway.
12. Shoes and their scents go on the feet not up your nose.
13. Showers are great! They keep you clean, healthy, and people around.
14. “Stupendous” is a cute phrase is for children and does not work well as a word of endearment for a sweetie.
15. When asking a girl if she is ready to go to the car, refrain from demanding her to “Get to the Chopper!”
16. If the girl has to excuse herself to go to the restroom keep composure without saying “again, how long will you be?”
17. Not all women are impressed with how much of the burger you can stuff in your mouth at one time. However, if you find a girl who challenges your burger eating ability you may have found a winner!
18. NEVER, NEVER agree with a girl when she says she is fat.
19. Girls enjoy meaningful conversations that may pertain to real life! In these moments avoid cartoon impressions.
20. God blessed you with a sense of humor, use it to your advantage.
21. Keep God number one and He will work out all the details.
22. …

an adventure

This trip has been pretty sweet. This evening I met a guy who knows a guy that I met at Chi Alpha in Moscow, ID three years ago. I told him that my sister is up there now and knows his friend, confused yet? They gentleman here said that this the second random connection in the past week. Crazy!

Well, aside from random connections, this trip has been great because we have bonded pretty well as a team. A few nights ago we had a girls night, and the guys copied us and then joined us at our movie after theres was over. As a team we have been met with some huge obstacles among each other as well as spiritual challenges.

God is good. For me, there is the occasions for me to step outside my comfort zone and just rest in the place that God has laid before me. For all of us, we have expressed our difficulties and have tried to encourage one another in the things of God.

The things that we are doing here we can apply when we return to Poky. There are three new -be's to Pocatello this semester that are on the trip and it is crazy how it happened, but we are all making connections with people that plug us into the campus and give us a good fellowship base.

We are getting really comfortable with each other. . . like real brothers and sisters. We have shared meals and a bazillion stories with one another and laughed too much. Like grown-up kids we have cleaned, learned and read. We write, we sing, and I do not feel so uneasy about singing in public.

Tomorrow we are going to Portland, I have never been there, and so I am so excited. I love big cities and Oregon is so beautiful. I am so short on words, and am very distracted as I write during this bonding moment around me.

"don't ever say stupendous" with a -Barney voice

Well. I should go because I cannot think but I will write more later.

our story

I thought today that I would share one of the experiences Megan and I had on our trip. On Tuesday, we parked the van at the Fred Meyers parking lot.

What we have been practicing on our missions trip is how to hear God's voice. So we ask God where to go, any directions, practically anything that will lead us to who God wants us to talk to. We also ask God what to do along the way. It is amazing how God shows us and truly does speak.

Back to Megan and I, I felt that we needed to go out together, so we paired off and everyone went their seperate ways. We both felt we needed to take a right and Megan said we had to walk across the parking lot and sit on the curb at the hair salon. We walked over there and then we felt we needed to sit on the chairs right next to the salon in front of Sandwich Express.

Right then, Megan saw one of the workers in the sandwich shoppe that we needed to talk to. I couldn't see her, but we started to ask God what we need to say to her. I felt that people have been canceling on her and not following through, but God is not going to cancel on her. He is always there. Megan felt that she needed to know that she was ok.

So, we went into Sandwich Express and Megan asked her if she would come to the table we were sitting at to talk. She did. We then said, "we are Christians and this might sound really odd, but God told us to come here and tell you that God is not going to cancel on you like everyone else has been doing."

Hannah (the girl at the shoppe) was really suprised and she said that everyone hasn't been following through. She has only had the job for a couple days. She was really thankful that we told her what we did and I gave her a chocolate bar I bought the day before. I bought it because God told me to and I knew she was the one I was supposed to give it to.

The suprising thing is that Megan and I left the shoppe and went to Fred Meyers. We saw Kyle and Jamie there and told them the story about Hannah. We walked around the store and I bought Megan the first pie she has ever had...believe it or not. We were putting it in the car, and guess who was right outside our van....Hannah was there.

She was waiting for her mom to come and pick her up which gave us the opportunity to talk with her for about twenty minutes. She is home-schooled because she was kicked out of public and the alternative school. She is also on probation right now. She said that she is starting to get back on the right path. Hannah is starting to go to a youth group out of town, which was encouraging.

Overall, I think the experience was really eye opening because, for one, it was so sudden and well-receipted. We also were able to see her again and get to know her. Since, a lot of times when you get words for people you tell them the word and never see them again. But the great thing about the experience with Hannah was that we saw her again. God placed her twice in our path. How amazing. So that was one of the stories of how God spoke to us and gave us opportunities to share words of encouragement with others.
-Amberlee

Jurassic Park, Sardines, and Hostage

We have been having a great time here in Newberg. I thought I would share a bit of our experiences of our evenings. I will venture to say that our spring break team knows this church inside and out better than most of those who go to church here. We've been playing games such as Jurassic Park, Sardines, and Hostage. I thought I would attach some of the picture of our winnings.

Obedience

Hi it’s Nate, it’s my first time actually writing a blog for the missions trip. The drive up here was long, but I got over it after we arrived here in Newberg, Oregon. The reason we’re up here is to hear the voice of God. It has been a very exciting time, and God has spoken to me. Today, we had pizza with Dave Benson the pastor at the church we are staying at. After lunch with him, we set off doing our acts of obedience, we prayed to hear God’s voice to know what we had to do for him. He told me George Fox University. So we continued on down the road to a place in the middle of no where. We stopped for some reason, maybe it was because some heard from God to stop, I don’t know? We all got out of the van and prayed for God’s direction. God told me to walk to GFU (George Fox University) and I was like “I aint walking that far, and God was like do you trust me and i was like mmm, I aint walking that far, so no.” I told james that I needed to go to GFU so, we got back in the van again after a few minutes of just standing there. We started down that road, we drove for a couple of miles and God told me again to start walking to GFU. I was like “heck no I aint walking that far and i don’t know the way.” We continued going back into Newberg, everyone wanted to go to the bathroom, so we arrived at Thriftway. I was in the store waiting for the group to get done going to the bathroom and God told me to go to George Fox. I was like “mmm no, and it’s far away and I don’t really know the way.” Everyone got done, we got back in the van, and we drove off. James asked me if I still needed to go to GFU, by then I knew God was pretty upset with me. so I said “yes, drop me off there.” We got there and me, James and Hannah got out of the van so we could go pray for the university. By then i felt very disobedient with God by not listening to what He told me to do. Me, James, and Hannah walked around the University just praying for it. We went down to the creek/ river bed thing. There was a pipe crossing the river. So James being James crossed the thing. The pipe was pretty narrow, i was like “WTC!” So Hannah crossed it with no problem. I was like, “nrr i just wanna go back”, James told me to across it. God told me “do you trust me?” by then i felt like crap so, I went across the pipe with fear. I went slowly across the pipe fearing that I would fall in. I finally crossed the stupid thing saying, “I would never do that again.” God saying, “Do you trust me?” and I told Him “Yes” and I trust Him. In my life, I really haven’t been trusting God with my decisions. Today God really opened my eyes to faith in Him and being obedient to what He has to say. God made me to follow Him and to be a man of God - that’s what my purpose in life is at this point.

We can reach our culture...

I haven't written on this at all this entire trip, so it is time. This missions trip has been quite rewarding for me. I don't even know where to start. We had several different speakers come and share new perspectives, insights, and spiritual truths to us.

We had Paul Gibbs come and speak yesterday. What he said really stood out to me. His main point was that the church's biggest crisis today is that we fail to go deep enough in the Scripture and faith, and because of that, we are not capable to reach our culture.

In our Christian society, I think we try to come up with different strategies in our humanness of how we can reach our culture. We try to come up with different activities that would draw a certain crowd in, which is not inherently wrong in and of itself... but the focus is almost a bate and switch technique. But what Paul says that we can't reach others and relate to culture until we know God on a deeper level. He encouraged us to use the resources we have. Dive into His word. Use commentaries. Study the original languages.

In the book of Acts the Eunuch was reading the book of Isaiah which was unheard of having your own copy of the text. That would be like reading a $50,000 book. That made me think...the book of Isaiah is worth that much at that time, it is valuable. Today, it is so easy to just keep our Bibles on our book shelves. They didn't cost much. You can buy them everywhere.

We need to see the Bible for it's actual value, it is priceless, our firm foundations, the words of life, truth and peace. Why would we not be devouring God's word? Personally, I have been wrapped up in busyness and I have been neglecting to spend time in God's word. I should take time out of my day and spend it with God. There is so much I do not know. That is the amazing thing about the Bible and God, the more you learn, know, and experience, the more you realize how much you still need to know. Our walk with God is a journey, I am glad we can dedicate a week to seeking God, and reenergizing our walk with Him.
In Him,
Amberlee

An uneasy day.

Well, we were off on another grand adventure and nothing exciting happened and was just a frustrating day. I mean God worked and talked to me but I didn't see any tangible result. The only person I really talked to shot Amberlee and myself down very quickly. Well a guy started tagging along with us. Once we got back to the church I begin to feel this darkness in the pit of my gut. It seriously felt demonic. I have never felt like that before. So I laid down and started to pray and read the word. One of the thing I had gotten was the number 876. I had been looking for that number all stinkin week, and no such luck. So I get back and God prompts me to look up Acts chapter 8 and verses 6 and seven say:

6 And the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. 7 For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed; and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed.

wow that makes all the sense in the world to me.So I spend the next hour in prayer and God tells me to fast during dinner which I do. I start to feel a little better but it's still there. But then we worship and boom. It's g one. So I have no idea what this means but it was something that had never happened before today. But praise be to God!

Benjamin "Buster" Smith