Finally Made it Home!!

Well, it's been a long time coming and I've been greatly anticipating it for the last 8 months or so, but I've finally returned back home to New Zealand! I arrived in Christchurch on Friday morning and have started getting settled into my new home in Oxford.

My first couple days here have been a little uneventful since my body apparently thought it was a good idea to get sick on my way to the airport to fly here, so I've been battling a cold the last couple days. Thankfully jetlag hasn't seemed to hit me at all. I was able to start changing my clock right away during my flight from LA to Auckland, so I've had a couple nice full nights of sleep, going to bed and getting up at a normal time. Hopefully my cold will go away soon and I'll be right ready to jump right in and start preparing for the school on Monday.

I also was able to go home to Canada for a month before this, which was an amazing time. I was actually able to get some rest and relaxation while I was home, and I got to spend a lot of time with my family and friends. It was a gift from God to be able to go home for a full month and see everybody. I also got a chance to speak at my church while I was home, and from what I hear, it seemed to touch people's hearts, which is a blessing to know.

I'm now gearing up to go full speed into planning the Bible Core Course that I will be leading, which starts on June 24. There is a lot of work to be done in the next month and a half, but God has put me into a great situation since the former school leaders are here to help me plan and help me learn how to lead a school, and I am 100% confident that He will help me do what He has called me to do and that it will be a blessing to me and my students.

I currently have about 7 students set to do the course, which is awesome, but I'm still all alone on this, so I'm hoping and praying that God will send me someone to staff my school with me (so if you've ever done a BCC or SBS and don't have anything to do in June, drop me a line because I WANT YOU!! lol).

I am so excited to finally be here and to start preparing for these next few years of my life at my new home here. I will have to write more of an update later once I'm all settled in and have been able to learn more about the base and about the school and everything. I'll also have to take a picture of the beautiful view we have from our base and of my new family here (although we will be a small family at first since everybody left for outreach today).

Thanks for reading, I hope and pray you are all well.

God bless


Prayer requests:

- That God will guide me and Roger and Julie (the former leaders) as we prepare for the school
- That God will continue to call students to come and study the bible with us at the school
- That God will send me a staff to help me run this course (HUGE need)
- That God will be with Grace and I as we continue to adjust to living apart
- That God will be with Grace as she continues her outreach in India and soon in Warburton, Western Australia

Remembering that He Knows

He knows....

Two simple words that can seem so insignificant when you first hear them, but once you start really thinking about them and meditating on what they really mean, they become much much bigger and more important.

I was given these words by a very good friend here at YWAM Perth during a staff meeting that turned into a worship and prayer meeting. When he first said them to me, my initial reaction was, "Ya, I know He knows, I've got "He knows the plans" written on my chest in Hebrew to remind me of that, and it's because of that that I've been able to move to different areas in the South Pacific over the last year and a half and was able to commit to leading a bible school in New Zealand for 3 years without ever being at the base or knowing anybody there." So initially I just took it as a good reminder from God and didn't think too much into it.

Then I actually went and spent some time talking to the Big Guy, and that's when He reminded me what "He knows" really means.

For those of you who aren't aware of my backstory, or aren't aware of the latest developments, I'll give a quick synopsis of the last year and a half or so. In Sept. 2010 I joined Youth with a Mission and did a Discipleship Training School for 6 months in Matamata, New Zealand. After that I studied the bible for 9 months at the School of Biblical Studies in Taiwan, and quickly followed that up by staffing a 3 month Bible Core Course here in Perth, Australia to train me so that I can go lead the school out in Oxford, New Zealand. I'm currently in my last couple weeks in Perth before I will head back to Canada for a month before heading to Oxford at the beginning of May. The latest development is that while I was in my quick 3 month stopover in Perth, God decided to introduce me to an amazing Chinese-Malaysian girl named Grace, who I have been in a relationship with for just over 6 weeks, and who is committed to staying in Perth for the next 4 years. God is funny like that sometimes; just when you least expect it, He does something crazy.

So now that I've set the stage, you will be able to understand a little better why these two little words ended up having so much meaning for me.

I've obviously been thinking quite a bit about the fact that God has led me into a long-distance relationship over the last 6 weeks, and I've always known 100% that God will help us through the 3 years or so that we would be apart, and that I don't have to worry too much about it because if we are meant to be together, which we believe we are, that He will make it work. So you can understand why I didn't think too much about those words at first, because I thought that I already had that all figured out, that's when He reminded me that we never quite have those things figured out, and when we do think we have them figured out, we tend to forget the complexity and extent of them.

As I was praying and spending time with God, He reminded me that I keep saying that I trust Him and that I know that He will help us and will make it work, but I still would spend time thinking about the logistics of it: when will we see each other, how will it work for when I'm done my commitment in Oxford for me to come to Perth, how can I somehow do a school or something here for a season while BCC isn't running, and on and on. He reminded me that He is the one that brought us together, and that He had already thought of all those logistical things that I was worrying about because He knows.

When He spoke that to me, it was like a weight was lifted, and life was breathed into me. He brought us together, so that means that He probably wants us to be together, and since He knows that we will need to see each other (and would very much like to see each other), that means that He already knows how we'll be able to see each other, and since He wants us to be together again in the future long term, then He must have already figured out how that will work as well, and...well I think you get the point.

It was an amazing reminder that when we say we trust Him and when we say that we know that He knows the plans He has for us, we need to really trust Him and really believe that and not just keep spending time worrying about the logistics and how it's all gonna fit together and just continue to do what He is telling us to do and trust Him that He'll worry about it for us.

I don't know about you, but for me, this is AMAZING news!! After God gave me this revelation I was able to have an amazing time of prayer with Him where He spoke ideas and visions for the future into me, and I didn't even have to worry about them because I knew that if they are to come to pass, He will make it happen and He will figure out how they will happen and He will even show us how Grace fits into those plans as well. It is amazing when we remember that we serve an awesome and powerful God who put this world together for us, and it is even more amazing when we remember that He loves us so much and that He wants to see us happy and joyful and living life to the fullest extent with Him.

As I've been studying the bible so much in the last year, I've found it very easy to focus so much on the greatness and awesomeness of God that I sometimes forget that He is our loving Father who loves and cares for us more than we will ever understand and who wants to see us doing well and enjoying the life that He has given us. It is when we remember that and remember God's heart for us that we are able to live in a greater sense of freedom because of the trust that we can have that our Father is leading us and watching out for us.

So my encouragement to you and what I hope you take away from this is remember that God really does know and that He really does want us to prosper as we follow Him. I recommend spending time with Him asking Him to show you how you haven't been trusting that He knows, and ask Him to help you be able to trust Him in those areas. Something that also helped me was reading Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, which gives you a glimpse into God's heart for His people. Another great reminder is to read Jeremiah 29 (the whole thing, not just vs11) with the mindset that this is God speaking to the people that have forsaken him throughout their entire history and have done so much evil that He had to finally send judgement on them and send them into exile, yet He still loves them and still cares for them and still has plans to prosper them. I love reading that chapter, and really, I love reading all of the prophets because of the amazing promises of restoration that God gives throughout them to His unfaithful people.

No matter what, I hope you will remember..... He Knows.

Great (but crazy) times in Perth

Worshipping on the beach in Busselton, WA during Bible Reading Away Weekend.

Well it's been quite some time since I posted anything on here, so I figured I would post a quick update to let you all know how I've been doing.

For those who don't know, after having a couple weeks home during the holidays I left and moved to Perth, Australia to staff the Bible Core Course to train to lead the course in Oxford, New Zealand for the next 3 years.

So far, things have been awesome, but incredibly busy here in Perth. We have a class of 7 students with 3 staff. We are currently in week 9 of 12 and have read through the entire bible except for the prophets and have studied Acts, Philemon, John, Hebrews, 1 Peter, Romans and we're just starting Revelation. It's been interesting because the BCC is very different from the School of Biblical Studies that I did in Taiwan, so it's been a learning experience in many ways, but God has been faithful to help me through it and to teach me how to staff a school and how to teach our students and share what He's taught me.

I was able to teach 1 Peter in week 6, which was absolutely amazing. Teaching a book was a bit of a scary experience for me, but God really taught me a lot through it and did an amazing job teaching the book through me. He definitely was with me as I prepared and showed me the message that He wanted to share with me and the students and even gave me some awesome insights and reminded me of my own experiences while I taught so that I could share them with the students. Overall, it was an amazing experience, and I am excited to do more teaching over the next 3 years. I will also be teaching Esther in a couple weeks, which I'm a little nervous about, but I know that God will be faithful again to help me through that as well. It's a very different book from 1 Peter, but it is a great book with an awesome story of God's providence and His sovereignty that I am excited to really dig into deeper than I ever have before.

Another interesting part of the staffing experience is grading. After staffing for 8 weeks I definitely have a lot more respect for my SBS staff because grading is a lot of work. It's also been a learning experience for me, but I've enjoyed it and it's awesome to see God moving in the lives of my students and really brings a greater understanding of what we're studying. It also has shown me how much I care for my students and how much I want to see them succeed, which was something I never really thought about before becoming staff.

Overall, my experience in Perth has been amazing. It will definitely be a lot harder than I ever expected to leave here because I have really become a part of the family that they have here, more so than I thought I would. It has become another home for me, and it also helps that it is absolutely beautiful here! I went out to Freemantle this weekend for the first time, and it is amazing. The beaches that we have around here combined with the weather really make this an amazing place to live. God has definitely been amazing spoiling me by sending me here for a short season. He definitely is an amazing God who really does give us the desires of our hearts as we follow Him and trust Him. He continues to blow me away around ever turn, and I am so thankful that I am following Him with my life. It really is a privilege to be living my life this way and being able to study His Word for the last year and for the next 3 years, and I am so thankful for all your prayers and support that helps make it possible for me to do this.

I will be here for another month and a bit, returning home for about a month on April 9. I hope that I will be able to connect with many of you while I'm home, so please, if you're in London area and are free to grab a coffee while I'm home, send me a message on facebook or an email at stelps1@gmail.com and we'll set something up.

I will also be sending out a newsletter soon with some updated support information (I can finally give out tax receipts!!!), so if you would like to receive that please send me a message on FB or an email or comment on this post with your email address and I'll add you to my mailing list.

Hope you are all doing great!! God bless you all. Love ya.

Wow...It's 2012 and I'm in yet another new country!

Reading Acts in King's Park

Wow....I must apologize that it's been almost a month since I posted a blog post, but this last month has been a bit of a whirlwind that ended up dropping me in beautiful Perth, Australia!

Last time I checked in, I was on my way home from Taiwan after successfully finishing the 9 month School of Biblical Studies with YWAM Taipei. My time at home was awesome, but also insane. Being home for only 2 weeks at Christmas time is pretty crazy. It was amazing to see a bunch of family and friends and was definitely amazing to see the support that I have from a lot of them! It definitely means so much to know that people support me in what I am doing and believe in what I am doing. It has definitely been difficult being away from all my friends and family, especially since I'm pretty sure I won't be back in Canada long term for quite some time, but it is absolutely amazing knowing that I am living my life for God, the way that He wants me to, and to know that friends and family believe in that too means a lot to me.

So here's a little summary of my time at home: I got home on the night of the 17th to surprise my sister Jenn at her 30th birthday party, which was a definite success! Both her and my brother were completely shocked and floored that I was there because I was supposed to come in the next day. The next afternoon my mom's side of the family came over for our family Christmas, so I had a very loud welcome back to Canada from the family and had an awesome time visiting with everybody, and of course watching football too! Most of my time home was spent hanging out with my family, especially my nieces and nephews, and seeing as many friends as I could. At the same time I was still waiting for my application to go through at YWAM Perth (who were in the process of moving their base from one location to another, so they were pretty bogged down with that), but more on that in a second.

First, I'll tell ya about a bit of a highlight of my trip home, which was going to the Lions-Chargers game in Detroit with my parents on Christmas Eve. Before the game we met up with my Aunt Betty and Uncle Ed and my 2 cousins Krista and Melissa in Chatham because they were going to the game as well, and we were surprised by my Uncle Ed renting a limo as an early Christmas present to his girls, which we got to enjoy as well! So we got to ride to the game in style (first time ever in a limo), and had an awesome time watching the game. It was great to get to spend time with my parents and catch what may be the last football game that I watch live in a long time, and being able to ride up in the limo gave me a great chance to talk to my cousins as well and hear how they've been and share about what God's been doing in my life as well.

Our ride to the Lions game! Thanks Uncle Ed!!

Anyways, back to the whole getting to Perth story, my acceptance finally came through on the 22nd and I was able to apply for my visa online, but had to drive to Toronto to get a chest x-ray done the next day, and because of the holidays it didn't get looked at until the Wednesday after Christmas. This all added an extra level of stress to my trip home, but I was able to give it to God after struggling with it a few days and He definitely came through. Because of the holidays I was worried that I wouldn't get my visa until after New Years, but it finally came through in the nick of time on the afternoon of the 30th and I was able to book a ticket leaving early in the morning on the 2nd. So I was able to spend New Years Eve with some friends and spend the afternoon watching football at my parents' place with family before leaving for the airport on Sunday night. The most amazing part of it all is that the price of the plane ticket didn't really go up hardly at all from the first time I checked when I first found out I would be going to Perth to when I finally booked it basically 2 days before I would leave, God is so good!

So I got here to Perth a few days late, but that didn't matter too much because I only missed a little bit of training. Since I've gotten here it's been pretty full on. Thankfully I didn't have any real problems with jet lag at all (I think my body's used to being on this side of the world by now), so my transition here has been pretty good. The base is absolutely HUGE with over 300 staff and students currently at the base and a ton of others out on outreaches. It has been pretty tough learning everybody's name, but everybody has a lot of grace when it comes to names because we all know how crazy it is meeting so many people in such little time. I am still amazed that God sent me to Australia for a season since it's somewhere that I always wanted to go to, but didn't think I would ever end up going, and it definitely hasn't disappointed! I am loving it here in Perth. The city is beautiful, and our base is very close to the downtown, which is amazing considering the cost of land and housing and such in Perth. It is definitely an interesting time to be on base because of the transition to the new buildings and still waiting on the main building to get completely finished and approved by the city. It is a time where flexibility is key, but it has given me many chances to serve people and do whatever I can to bless the base and the people here.

The Bible Core Course that I'm staffing is now into its 2nd week. Our first week consisted of orientation and registration stuff, as well as reading Genesis-Ruth, Isaiah and Acts. We are now starting to study Acts and we just finished the first day of teaching the introduction to the inductive method. I was a little surprised last week when I learned how different the course is from the SBS that I just finished in Taiwan and kinda wondered a little of what I had gotten myself into, but God has given me a lot of peace about it and I'm just trusting that He will help me to learn a lot during my time here so that I can go to Oxford, NZ and lead the course there successfully after I leave here. I have an amazing leader here (Melinda) who has staffed about 16 BCCs and is leading her 7th school, so she has a ton of experience and is more than willing to teach me as much as possible as I prepare to lead after this school. We have 7 students and 3 staff (including me and Melinda), and we seem to have a pretty great group that are all eager to learn and excited to start digging into the bible over these next 3 months.

If you could all be praying for me and for our school, it would be greatly appreciated. More specifically, for me that I would be able to learn a ton while I'm here, both about the BCC and how to lead it as well as about the Bible and that God would bring me deeper understanding and closer in relationship with Him. Also, for the school that the students would be blessed by their studies and by us as staff and that God would be moving during our class times as well as their study time. We also need your prayers for finances, both for our school, especially for outreach fees for both staff and students, but also for the base in general because they are still in the process of raising money to fully pay off the new building.

Well, I think this is probably long enough (and longer than I planned, as usual), so I will sign off now. I hope everything is going great for all of you and that God is blessing you and moving in your lives. I'll try to send another update in a couple weeks or so and let ya know how the school is going.

God bless.

After 9 months, it's time to leave Taiwan

Me and my housemates at our graduation. I'm gonna miss these boys.

It's hard to believe, but the time has finally come for me to leave Taiwan. It has been an incredible blessing and privilege to be able to live in a different country with a completely different culture. There have been some ups and downs when it comes to living here, but overall it has been an awesome experience and I thank God that He brought me here for this season of my life.

It's been interesting digesting and processing a bit what we've gone through these last 9 months. I realized today when we wrote a test that 2nd year theology students write as a final exam just how extensive all of our biblical knowledge has become. The opportunity to spend all day, 6 days a week for 9 months straight  in God's word is an amazing privilege and is such a unique thing that I still don't quite grasp the significance and depth of doing it. Not many people get a chance to do this and it's important that I remember everyday how blessed and privileged I am to have gotten to do this. So to all of you who have played a part in making this happen, whether through financial support, prayer support, or just encouraging me as I did this, THANK YOU. You have given me an amazing blessing that I am forever grateful for.

The fact that I don't have to wake up tomorrow and start an outloud or colour code or PTs or chart or anything is a strange feeling that I'm not quite used to. We've lived an extraordinary life these last 9 months and now regular life just seems foreign and strange, but I'm definitely looking forward to it, even though I will only be able to really experience it for less than 2 weeks before I leave home again and head to Australia to help students through a similar, but shorter 3 month journey through the bible. It will be awesome getting to finally go to Australia and to be able to help teach the bible and to train for leading the school in New Zealand, but I am definitely looking forward to having a bit of a break after it in April.

As I thought about the fact that I now get to not only continue to study the bible, but also teach it as well as lead a school teaching it I am still blown away by how amazing God is and how He has really blessed me with an amazing life and an amazing opportunity to spend the next few years studying His word. I am part of a small percentage of Christians that will ever get to study the bible this extensively and I know that this is something that many people would do anything for, but don't have the opportunity, and that many people would love to do, but cannot (my Dad is pretty jealous. lol). Being constantly exposed to God's truth and seeking Him through His word is one of the most life-changing and life-giving things that I have ever done in my life, and it has really shown me who God is and how awesome and great and powerful He is, and how small and insignificant we are, yet He still loves us more than we could ever comprehend. It has amazed me how humbling studying God's word is and it was awesome, although a little difficult at times, how God revealed my pride to me and worked with me so that I could give it to Him. If I had to say what the best thing that happened to me during SBS was, it would definitely be how God humbled me and showed me areas of pride that I never knew I had or never knew were pride. His truth is so amazing!!

Well it's getting late, so I should head to bed for the last time here in Taiwan. I hope and pray that you all are well, and I look forward to possibly seeing those of you who are back home in London. Thanks for following me on this journey through SBS, I hope and pray that it was a blessing for you, and please continue to follow the journey that God is taking me on. It means a lot to me to know that people care enough to take the time to read my posts, especially since they tend to be long and can sometimes ramble on. So thank you so much. God bless.

Finally some clarity on the future

The Sunset View from the Library at the University

So a funny thing happened today, I realized that in 3 weeks, I'll be back home in Canada sitting in front of the fireplace at my parents place watching football in HD on their beautiful TV. Oh, and I'll be hanging out with my awesome family and catching up with them a little. The nice thing is that I finally know how long I will be home for because I FINALLY know what I'm doing after SBS.

It's been a bit of a lesson in patience and in giving my future over to God over the last month as I awaited word on my application with YWAM Oxford (NZ). I'd be lying if I said I didn't question once or twice if I had heard God's voice right with applying there, but now that I finally have confirmation I see that He definitely has put this together better than I ever thought it was possible.

When I had first contacted the base about staffing their Biblical Core Course (BCC), I asked if they needed staff and they said that they were looking for a new leader, which I basically just shrugged off as just them giving me as much information as they could and figured I'd pray for them that they would find a leader. Well, apparently God didn't just shrug it off because when I was praying about whether or not to apply for Titus, God basically said to me that I never looked into the opportunity of leading the school. This was something that seemed absolutely insane to me since I had never staffed a school and didn't feel anywhere near ready to lead a school, and didn't even think it would be possible for me to lead without staffing first. A big reason that I was applying to Titus was that I felt that God wanted me to trust Him and do things that intimidate me, which teaching the bible does, and while I was praying about it He showed me that I had got the message correctly, but the application wasn't for Titus, it was for leading the BCC. After wrestling with Him for a little I finally agreed to send an email to the Oxford base telling them what I thought God was telling me to do, while telling them I may be crazy at the same time because I thought I was crazy and that they'd just kinda laugh at me, a guy with no staffing experience, inquiring about leading a school. Well, it turned out that I wasn't as crazy as I thought because after sending a number of emails back and forth and after some waiting I got an email from them offering me the BCC school position.

So the details are that I will be going to Perth, Australia at the beginning of January to train during their BCC so that I can see how the BCC is run and also to be trained how to lead the school. After that finishes at the end of March I will probably come home for about a month so that I can see my family a little and relax a little since I'll only have about a 2 week break at Christmas between SBS and going to Perth. Then I will head to Oxford, NZ to meet my new YWAM family and get settled in at the base that I plan to be at for most likely at least the next 3 years. Then I'll have about a month and a half or so to prepare for the school and our BCC will start at the end of June and run until the beginning of September.

It's been amazing how God has pieced this whole process together in a way that only He could, and He has really set me up for success better than I ever thought He could. The former leaders of the BCC will be staying on staff at the base and have said that they would be willing to help me out where needed, and there are a couple current BCC leaders at other bases that said that they are willing to help me out over skype or phone when needed. So although I am still a little intimidated by the idea of leading, God has done a great job of putting people around me to support me in leading, and I know that He will definitely help me in leading the school.

I hope to also staff the Backpackers Discipleship Training School, which starts at the end of September and was what originally led me to their base, but I will have to see if that is still possible or not. God's made it pretty clear that He wants me at their base and wants me to lead the BCC, so I'm gonna start there and see what else He has for me there as I go. Either way, I am super stoked to head out there. I don't know what it is about New Zealand, but since I first got there last year for my DTS, it just felt like home and I had a feeling that God would bring me back there, just never thought it would be this soon. I'm also really excited to get a real start on my "YWAM career" and get settled into one place for a little while.

As with all YWAM positions, I need to raise all of my own support to pay base fees, as well as for any outreaches that I go on, so please be praying and asking God if you are supposed to support me in this, any support is helpful, even if it's just a little. The nice thing is that because I will be full time staff, I should be able to start getting people tax receipts through a YWAM base in Canada soon, but I still have to look in to how it works.

As for SBS, things have been going steadily and we only have 3 weeks now. We just finished the book of Daniel, which was an amazing book, and prior to that we had what may be the most exciting books of the Old Testament in Ezra and Nehemiah. At first glance, Ezra and Nehemiah may not seem like the most exciting books, but when you think about the fact that the Jews had gone through their exile and were finally seeing the restoration that God had been promising them through the prophets and really try to get into the head of the original hearers who took part in the returns to Jerusalem, it's really exciting. They are also books that give amazing examples of leadership as you look at Ezra's and Nehemiah's examples, and God's sovereignty has been very evident in all three of those books, as well as Esther.

We've now just started Ezekiel and only have Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi and Matthew left. It's been an amazing last 8 months and I can't wait to see what God has in store for us over the next 3 weeks, but I'm definitely looking forward to being done. It's hands down been one of the best if not the best thing I've ever done, but it's also been one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm really looking forward to having some time to relax and enjoy the holidays with my family and not have another book looming over my head.

Hope you are all doing well, and I'll definitely send out another update before I leave Taiwan.

God bless

Can't believe it's almost November - Only a month and a half left!!

Well it's been a little while since I've posted anything, so I figured I'd give you all a quick update.

Things have been going great here, and God has been continuing to teach me and move in my life. We're kinda on a wave of hard weeks followed by easier weeks, with major prophets one week, followed by a couple minor prophets the next. Right now we've just started Jeremiah and will have our first teaching on Monday morning, which I'm really looking forward to. After just reading the book a couple times, my first impression has been how amazing Jeremiah's faith and endurance were to keep preaching even though nobody was listening to him and were persecuting him for preaching against them and preaching a message of judgment for their continuous turning away from God. I can't wait to dig in a little deeper and really see the full message that God wants to bring me through this book.

Last week we did Micah and Joel, which were both great small prophets, but I think I enjoyed Micah the most. Micah was considered kinda like a little Isaiah. He had a similar message to him, but most likely operated outside of Jerusalem and didn't have the same type of access to the king as Isaiah was. He did bring a similar message though, in that he spoke against the injustice that was happening among the people and among the leadership, and of course, about their coming judgment and the restoration that would come. The main thing that I got out of Micah was regarding leadership and the injustice that was happening within the religious leaders as well as the rulers of the people. It really showed me the importance of being a godly leader and of always looking to God to show you how to be a godly leader and also the importance of having people around you that will help keep you accountable and will help ensure that you are leading in a godly way.

The week before, we did Isaiah, which was a tough book for me, and was actually the first book that I didn't completely finish. My goal in SBS had been not to let this happen, so I was pretty disappointed, but it was something that God helped me accept and really taught me through.

The good part of it was that I was still able to interpret the entire book and was able to do my final application, but I wasn't able to all the insides on my charts and I missed about half of the New Testament references in the book, and there's a lot of them because Isaiah is the most quoted OT book in the NT. The neat thing was that God really taught me a lot about humility through not finishing the book and through being able to accept that I wasn't going to finish and changing my goal to reflect that so that I would still be able to get something out of it and not just go into auto-pilot trying to finish it. For me, this is a pretty big thing because I've had issues with being performance focused and a bit of a perfectionist in the past, so the fact that I was able to give that up and say that I was alright with not finishing so that I could really try to seek God in the text instead of just trying to power through it and not getting anything out of it was a pretty big deal to me and really showed me how much God had taught me through it.

The other lesson that God taught me, through my small group leader and one-on-one Brent, was that although I am a great finisher and always work hard to the very end and won't quit - which was something I was happy with myself about because I didn't just give up and accept not finishing the book, but finished it as well as I could - I don't always work hard throughout the whole process, especially in the early stages of big books. I tend to be one of those, work well under pressure guys, which is good, but God really showed me that I need to also learn to have the discipline to go hard all the way through and to have the sense of urgency that I have at the end all the way through as well. I also learned that I need to set myself up to be able to work hard, which I didn't do in this book because I stayed up to watch the Falcons game on Sunday night, and I ended up getting a little sick because of it and wasn't able to work as hard as I would have been able to if I got enough sleep.

So although I didn't finish and failed the book, I still was able to get a lot out of it and God really taught me a lot about myself, which really is a huge part of SBS, but I'm definitely not going to let it happen again and will learn from my mistakes (that's the good part of SBS, there's always another book to put what you learned into practice).

Starting tomorrow, we will officially be into week 6 of SBS, and I will only have a month and a half left in Taiwan. I still can't believe how fast it has been and it's hard to believe that I will be leaving my family that I've had here the last 7 months, but all good things must come to an end I guess. I've been trying to spend as much time with my classmates and to go for lunch with a lot of people in this term so that I can really connect with people and we can bless each other and speak into each other's lives, which has been awesome and I hope to do it as much as possible over the last month and a half. I'm also starting to have church with some guys on Sunday mornings in the coffee shop near our place where we just read through part of the bible a discuss what jumps out at us. Today was my first time joining them, and it was awesome. We went through Romans 1-7 and had some awesome discussions about it. The discussions that I have with people here is something that I'm going to miss so much because I've been able to learn so much from my fellow classmates just through discussing what we've been learning.

I was hoping to finally know what is happening after SBS for this update so I could let you all know, but unfortunately things are still up in the air. The only update that I can give you guys is that I am no longer doing the Titus Project (where we go teach the bible in 3rd world countries) after SBS as I had planned. I had applied to Titus, but I heard that they probably weren't going to be able to accept everybody, and since I wasn't sure I would be able to do it or not depending on when the Biblical Core Course that I'm planning on staffing in Oxford, NZ starts, I figured I would withdraw my application so that someone who will be doing it for sure could have my place. Also, as I been praying about it, and even when I originally applied, I just really felt that God was taking me in a different direction and that I wasn't supposed to do Titus at this time.

So right now I am still waiting on my acceptance with Oxford, as well as waiting to find out how it's all going to work out with me going there, but I'm just trusting that God has it in His hands and that He will work it out the way that He has planned. Please be praying that I will have peace while I wait to hear from them and that it won't distract me from my work at all.

Anyways, this ended up being a longer post than I planned, as usual, so I should wrap it up, but I hope that you are all doing great and that you're keeping warm as winter comes. Things have gotten a little cooler here, which is awesome because I no longer sweat just sitting around my house, but it's still fairly warm when the sun is out and I was still able to get out surfing with surf ministry this weekend. I will definitely update you all when I know more about the future and how it's going to look.

God bless