Teachings so far

Sorry that it has been a little while since my last post. As you can probably imagine, things are pretty crazy over here, and I keep pretty busy between the DTS and enjoying myself in my free time.

We have been getting some great teaching the last couple weeks, Dr. Bruce Thompson came in for week 2 to speak on the Father's Heart, Sam Hoffman, who is actually on staff with the Family Ministries DTS, spoke last week on prayer and intercession and hearing God, and this week we have Mark Parker teaching us about the Lordship of Christ! The teaching has been absolutely amazing! Bruce's teaching on the Father Heart of God was like nothing I've heard on the subject before. He helped me gain a better understanding of how love works and where love deficits come from and how the enemy uses them against us. I know that there was a lot of healing for a lot of people during that week, especially on Friday. The Friday lecture period was used as a time of ministry and prayer, and you could definitely see God at work in the room spreading His love and peace and healing!!!

Last week's teaching on prayer and intercession was awesome! Sam is quite the prayer warrior, and regularly would tell us that He is crazy, but crazy for the Lord!! He has definitely helped me gain new life in my prayer life and has really helped me better understand the power and necessity of prayer, especially when it comes to intercession. Before coming here I had a general idea of what intercession was, but now I find I have a much better understanding of what it is, and why it is so important for all Christians. I'm kinda shocked that I have been a Christian all my life, but have never really heard much talk being done about intercession. I believe more churches in North America should have regular open prayer meetings for intercession for the church and the leadership in the church. I really think we need to wake up to the spiritual warfare that is going on all around us, and recognize the power of corporate targeted prayer. It is great to promote having a healthy prayer life and spending time with God daily, but why are we not promoting people praying for specific things, for targeting specific needs? Is it because we're afraid that if their prayers aren't answered that they will get discouraged and stop?? Last week I heard many stories of people praying and crying out to God for breakthroughs in certain things for certain people and continuing to pray daily for a year or two or however long it takes for the breakthrough to come. We must persevere in our prayers and cry out to God in our prayers, and not just say a quick prayer here or there and hope that there will be breakthroughs.
I have had such a wake up call and have answered that call by setting aside time every day to pray, whether it be in our morning prayer meetings or going to the prayer room for an hour a night. I recommend to all of you to spend more time in hard, heartfelt, meaningful, crying out prayer. I know my excuse used to always be that I don't have the time to set aside 1 hour to pray, but then I would go and play Settlers of Catan for a few hours with friends, or go watch a movie. I always had the time, I just didn't want to sacrifice the fun I was having doing these things. I hope none of this sounds like an attack on the prayer life of all North American believers, because it's not, I know that some, maybe even many of you reading this have a very strong prayer life, but I just felt that this needed to be said to possibly inspire some of you that have been letting it slip, or that have been saying you didn't have the time. Prayer works, but you must be dedicated to it, and corporate prayer is even more powerful.
I'm in the process of typing up my notes from last week for my parents, so if anybody else would like to see my notes, send me an email at stelps1@gmail.com. I can't guarantee that they are the best notes, sometimes the speakers go off on tangents and I just write down whatever is speaking to me, but I think that there is some very valuable insight in them from an amazing teacher who is a prayer warrior in every sense of the word.

As I said earlier, this week we are learning about the Lordship of Christ. I am very excited about this week because I've heard a lot of great things from the staff about this week and about the speaker, Mark Parker. He is a full time speaker for YWAM, and he travels all over the place speaking to DTSs and other schools. He is full of energy and has an amazing enthusiasm for God. I can't wait to see what he has in store for us, and how God is going to be speaking through him! On Friday we are having an all day teaching/prayer/worship/whateverGodhasinstore time with Mark. I don't know what exactly is happening, but I know that from what I've heard, it is a powerful time and a blessed time. So please keep me in your prayers on Friday, which would actually be Thursday for you (for those wondering, I am now 17 hours ahead of you after our time changed this past weekend, so the easy way to think of it is 7 hours before your time, but plus 1 day).

I hope that everybody is doing fantastic back home in Canada! I know that I am absolutely loving it here!! I still can't believe that I get to spend my days praising, worshiping, learning about and spending time with God! It is an amazing life, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for me. I love and miss you all (but not terribly, because I am loving it so much out here!!! Sorry, just want to be honest)!! Please be praying that God will continue to guide me in what He has for me, and especially in what is my next step after this DTS is finished.

God bless!!!

Pictures from New Zealand.....Finally

Hello everybody, I decided I should probably finally upload some pictures for you all to see. Unfortunately, the internet is usage based here, so I only have a certain amount of megabytes to use before I have to buy more. So that is why I haven't uploaded pictures yet, but I figured I'd upload a few so that you can see where I am, and be jealous. lol. I would love to say that I miss you all, but that would be lying. I absolutely love it here! The school has been amazing so far, and the environment is absolutely amazing, the pictures do not do it justice!!!! It is also so awesome knowing that I am finally following God's plan for my life, so I think that makes it feel like home even more. I could definitely get used to living in New Zealand!

Anyways, it's getting late here, so I have to get to bed. I hope to create a new post soon giving you all an update on how things are going and how the teaching is and everything, but that will have to wait until later. So here are the pictures, I hope you enjoy them!

God bless,

Matt

Arriving at Crystal Springs, my new home!!!

Wairere Falls, which is about 5-10 minutes from our base - This is where we had our first church service which included hiking up a path to a lookout, then climbing up the river to the base of the waterfall and jumping into FREEZING cold water. It was absolutely amazing!!! Definitely a great welcome to New Zealand!!!

This is pretty much what we see out of our lecture room. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day, so you can't see the mountains too well. It rains pretty much everyday here because it's the spring, but sometimes it'll just be a random 5 minute downpour, then go back to being sunny.

This is the "A Frame" where we have our meals and lectures, and there's a ping pong table and a pool table. We spend a lot of our time here.

This is the yard beside the A Frame, everything is so green here because of all the rain. It's like life in HD.

Gotta have a picture of the Hobbiton Sign in Matamata, still haven't actually taken a tour yet though.

Chillin with my buddy Smeagol

Typical New Zealand scenery, bunch of sheep, with mountains in the background and clouds overhead.

This is Kyle and Levi walking up to the boulder that I jumped off of into the ocean when we went to Mount Maunganui. 

Here's me preparing to jump. Once again, it was freezing, Kyle and Tim were supposed to jump with me, but chickened out because it was too cold. It's still only about 17 degrees here, and generally is cloudy, as you can see from the picture.

Just a beauty picture of a farm with the mountains and clouds in the background. I absolutely love it here!!!!

Greetings from Matamata!!

Hello from New Zealand!! Sorry it has taken me a few days to update you all, but things have been awesome here and I am keeping pretty busy.

The flight over was amazing, I never had anybody in the seat beside me the entire trip. The jet lag hasn't been too bad at all, I was able to sleep on the plane pretty well because I had an emergency exit row to myself from LA to Sydney, and I made sure I stayed up until the proper time for this time zone every night. The first night we stayed in Auckland at the old base that they used before they moved to Matamata. This base is WAAAAYYYYY better!!! The other base didn't have much to do, but here there's a ping pong and pool table, plus it's on around 12 acres or so, so there's lots of room and there's a soccer field and volleyball courts too.

Like I said, things are keeping pretty busy, we spent the first couple days this week sharing our life stories with eachother, which is where you basically tell everybody about yourself in about 10 minutes. It was pretty awesome, and people were very honest with their past and current situations and struggles. Today we had our first lecture from an older man from New Zealand named Meynard. He is speaking on the character of God, he's very soft spoken, but is pretty interesting and I've enjoyed it so far, even if it's nothing I haven't really heard before.

There's about 25 of us, and we all get along really well. For the most part we're pretty outgoing, and we're all pretty active, so it's been a lot of fun! We play a lot of ping pong and we broke out the cards tonight, (13 player round of spoons!!) and we've even had a few impromptu worship sessions too. We have a room called the GAP that we can hang out in and there's some drums, guitars and a piano that we can use.

I'm staying in a cabin with 2 other guys, Matt, who is from Auckland, and Joēp, who is from the Netherlands. Matt is 25 and Joēp is 22, so they're a little closer to my age than most of the other students. I am the oldest of all the students, and there is only 1 staff member that is older than me, but I'm having no problem getting along with everybody, so the age difference doesn't seem to be a problem at all.

Anyways, I'm hoping to upload some pictures soon to show you all what the base looks like and also a beautiful waterfall that we hiked to the other day. It is so beautiful here, and I can't wait until the weather gets nicer (it's only been about 15-18 degrees everyday and has rained most days as well). I'm absolutely loving it here, and I can't wait to see what God is going to do during this time. I hope all is well over in North America, and I will try to keep you all updated as much as possible.

God bless,

Matt