Dead Turtle

One day a man came home from work to find his house in turmoil. His daughter's pet turtle had died that day, and her mom had been trying to comfort her to no avail. Now it was dad's turn. After trying the usual bag of tricks to cheer her up he finally came up with an idea. He told her that he would go to the store and buy cake and ice cream and they would have a party for the turtle's funereal . She would be able to invite all of her friends over and turn a time of mourning into a time of fun and happiness. As he was telling her all of this, her face began to change. Her mind was filled with the ideas and excitement of the party to come. The idea of the party had consumed her and left no residue of sadness. So they both walked back to her room to collect the body of the turtle. As they were walking up to the cage the Dad notice something. The turtle began to move. The turtle wasn't dead after all. The little girl stared at the turtle for a moment, and then looked up at her dad and said "let's kill it".

This story describes what we do with our convictions when we let our wants turn into infatuations. We kill the voice of God in the name of pleasure. Take tip from David in the 23rd Psalm and be satisfied.

Story courtesy of: Dr. Lee
More reading: "A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23" by Phillip Keller

Sin, it's ugly

This post is in regards to the recent events that have occurred concerning my church back home.

They start out small, yes those big green lizards we call alligators. In fact they start out small and cute. They are small enough and cute enough that some people, believe it or not, will try to keep them for pets. What harm will that do right? As it turns out, this cute little guy with the help of time and food can grow into a full size alligator. This is bad for two reasons. One, a full size alligator is much much harder to control than a baby alligator. Two, a full size alligator is much harder to hide from the people from whom you must hide it from.

This presents a problem.

But, not to worry, there are a couple of solutions. The first is very simple, but maybe not obvious, that is to not get a baby alligator in the first place. As cute and small as that little guy is you are better off leaving him be. But, if you already have a pet alligator the next best thing to do would be to starve it(metaphorically speaking only, I love animals and I would never actually starve an animal to death) . As hard as it is to watch this thing die, it is something that needs to be done. No food means no growing and eventually death to it. If you don't have it in you to starve it, the next best thing to do would be to tell someone about it. They would be able to help you take care of the situation.

Sin, no matter how pleasurable or inviting it is cannot be allowed to grow. It is like an inviting poison. It tastes good, but as you are drinking it, it numbs you. This numbness is to cover the pain it is causing. This freedom to choose to drink the poison will soon turn into chains. Maybe even physical chains. Most sin is not likely to lead to that point, but it takes away your freedom. When God saves us, we are free to do the only thing we really desire to do, and that is to be with Him. But, when we turn to sin we will be enslaved. God will discipline us if necessary, but most of the time that discipline works out in the consequences.

My prayer is that chains will be broken, blindness will be healed, and that the lame will learn to walk, even run.

John 5:1-15 ya read it

When Jesus asks the lame man if he wants to walk, the man begins go into excuses that are from his perspective. Please don't be like this man. Jesus is asking us if we want to walk. We should have faith that he can do that and say "Yes, Lord, I want to walk more than anything."

I hope that made sense and I hope all of that comes across like I wanted to.



With Love

Road Trip

Hello family and friends,
I know it has been a long time since I last posted a blog. I have been so busy lately, it's crazy.
I want to share with you a link to my friends blog who wrote about our road trip back to school.

http://gmarthe3rd.blogspot.com
or you can click on the "Beef Supreme" link on the left

He does a good job at describing our trip back, so I figure I could just link to his site.

I am doing well, but I am really busy. My classes are a little bit harder this semester. I am really having to study to understand the homework and not just do the homework. I like it though. I like being challenged. I just got over a three week cold last week. I think it lasted so long because of the lack of sleep. But, God has been good to me, and has been giving me restful sleep lately. I am hoping to go back home soon to visit. I wanted to come back before school but, as you will read, my trip back home took a little detour.

Thank you for your support
In Christ's love

"From the Inside Out"

"From the Inside Out"
by Hillsong United

A thousand times I've failed,
Still Your mercy remains.
And should I stumble again,
I'm caught in Your grace.

Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame

Your will above all else
My purpose remains
The art of losing myself
In bringing You praise

Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame

In my heart and my soul
Lord I give You control
Consume me from the inside out
Lord let justice and praise
Become my embrace
To love you from the inside out

!!Everlasting!!
!!Your light will shine when all else fades!!
!!Never ending!!
!!Your glory goes beyond all fame!!
!!And the cry of my heart!!
!!Is to bring You praise!!
!!From the inside out!!
!!Lord my soul cries out !!

Dear Family and Friends,

Yes, I am still alive. I have been pretty busy lately with working at McDonalds. But I really needed to give y'all an update, so I took the time to sit down and write this. My job at McDonalds is going well. I like the people I work with a lot.

If any of you haven't seen the movie The Kite Runner, you should. It is the greatest picture of servanthood I have ever seen. While it's based in an Islamic conitation it definately has a certain similarity of Christ's sevanthood. Watch it.

Dear Family and Friends (and maybe people I don't know),
Yes, it is true. I am a McEmployee. Working at McDonald's is not so bad. I thought it would be a good experience. I am a person that has to be completely sure of how to do something before I will do it. I guess I scared of failure. I think God is using this job to push me out of my comfort zone. The first day was a bit different. The person I was assigned to learn from didn't really teach me that much. So it was mostly me guessing and then someone telling me I was wrong. This is not really how I am used to learning. I usually learn by reading about something and then doing it. I'm not really a trial and error type of person, but I guess sometimes you have to learn to adapt.
Also I think God is trying to humble me. Everybody I work with has more knowledge about the workings of a McDonald's than I do. I doesn't matter much how clever you are, if you don't know it, then you don't know it. So, I am learning that I need to be humble. Just because I have taken Calculus 3 and can do 3D Calculus and parametric equations, it doesn't mean I know something as simple as how to fry up some more frech fries. It is dumb for me to think that I am "smarter" than anybody. It's almost ridiculous to think I had that thought.

I just want to throw some prayer requests out there.

The ministry here-
There have been some really cool opportunities to talk with people lately
Direction in my life-
I'm still not sure what direction I am heading career wise and life wise
The church here-
The Manti Pageant time drains the Ex-Mormons in the church.

Dear Family and Friends,

Well I said I would try to update this thing more often, and I have failed. I was informed that people back home really do read this, so now I have motivation to keep updating. It's such a blessing to know that people care enough about me and about what God is doing to read my updates (I'm smiling as I type this).

Things have died down a bit since the Pageant. It was such an intense two weeks of training, studying, praying, and talking to people that everybody who is a part of the ministry here had to take a rest last week. Things are back to the norm now. During that week I recognized one of the Devil's traps. It seems that after an intense time of spiritual warefare many of us don't know how to rest in the Lord. Actually, I think the problem is that we think we need to take a rest from the Lord. This is one of the Devil's lies. It's so easy to say "Well I studied so much last week, or I prayed this many hours yesterday, I should be good for a while." This is far from the truth. God sees our hearts' and knows our motives. God is the one who renews our strength. We should be resting in him and not from him. We can trust that we will strengthen and renew our motivation and our drive.

Manti Pageant

Dear Family and Friends,

Honestly I am somewhat embarrased that I haven't posted about the Manti Pageant yet. It is one of the biggest wittnessing opportunities off the summer, and it is going on right now.
The Manti Pageant is a play put on by the LDS church depicting the history of the church, as well as exerpts from The Book of Mormon. The Pageant is held on the side of a large hill with outside seating, and the Manti Temple as a back drop. Thousands of LDS people show up each night to watch the Pageant, which is why it is such a great place to challege people to dive in and study what they believe.
We begin by eating dinner togather at the Thompson's house, and then spend sometime in prayer. After this we head for Manti and gather on the street beside the temple grounds(it's blocked so only pedestrians can get through) circle and worship for a while. Next comes more prayer in small groups, and then we head out ready to share God's love and truth with people. I am hoping to get some pictures to help explain this better. Anyways we just strike up conversations with people and let God work. It is so amazing to see God to set up divine apointments over and over again. God is so good! Amen. For LDS people prayer and worship are almost foreign. They do it, but when they pray it is almost like they are leaving a message on a recording machine to God. They don't know Jesus. From what I can tell talking to some of the former Mormons, it blows LDS peoples minds that we would be praying for them and that we worship God like we do and that when we pray it is like we really know who Jesus is. Many LDS people have a love for God, but they don't know him, because they are lied to. Please we need your prayer's for these people. They are opressed by the laws and ordanices forced on them. Their prophets have taken grace and twisted it to mean something totaly diffrent than the true meaning, which is a free gift from God. Grace you have to earn is no grace at all. Anyways I will try to keep you all updated more often.

Thanks

The Salt Lake Temple Grounds vs. The Former Mormons

Dear family and freinds, this weekend was busy(actually by now it was the weekend before last)

After the compassionate boldness conference some of the former Mormons wanted to go up to temple square in Salt Lake City. This really took some courage on their part, coming out of the LDS church is very hard emotionally. There was one particular reason why they wanted to go, in the museum in the childrens room there is a life size pentagram for the kids to play with, also there are little pentagrams for the children to color. The former Mormons wanted to see it for themselves. I have a suspesion that that was not the only reason they wanted to go but that was our mission, to see the pentagram.

We did see the pentagram, but somehow we got in to conversations with some of the missionaries(LDS missionaries) there. Some of my friends talked to a guy missionary(missiariy A) for a long while. I was with two former Mormons who had to walk out because they were so frustrated at missionaires B and C. I walked out with them, but I went back in to get the others. As soon as I get in the doors missionaries B and C who we had been talking to started talking to me again. An hour and a half later I get a phone call from my friend Gareth telling me we needed to go. I had been talking with B and Cfor over an hour, I didn't even realize it. It was pretty amazing out God set that up.

So I headed back for the front of the building. All my friends were outside, evidently missionary A had followed them out. The conversation seemed a bit heated and emotional so I stayed back. After a couple of minutes missionary B who I had been talking to came out, like they were leaving from work, but stopped. My assumption is that God had been working on missionary B's heart before we even got there. Missionary B seemed to want to listen, intruiged. One of my friends who is a former Mormon began talking with missionary B. Missionary B seemed unseltted about the pentagrams as well, also the way Missionary A acted embarresed missinary B. At the very end missionary B just kinda broke down. We really hadn't talked about much but God was bringing her to a place of brokeness, so that she could understand His gift to her.

GOD IS SO AWESOME

Compassionate Boldness Conference

Hello again, to all my friends and family.
The Compassionate Boldness Conference was this weekend. What is the Compassionate Boldness Conference you may be asking yourself ( or maybe not, but I will tell you anyways). The Compassionate Boldness Conference was a conference whose goal was to show how someone could share the gospel to their Mormon friends with compassionate boldness, hence the name. "With compassion" means sharing from the heart. If we are not sharing Christ because we love someone then we are motivated by the wrong reasons. This is especially hard when sharing your faith with a LDS person. If you are not careful it can very easily turn into an intellectual exercise. But, compassion was only one part of what this conference was about. Boldness is another key part. This boldness should stem fourth from your compassion. This is very applicable to sharing your faith with anyone.
It seems in toady's world, sharing your faith or conflict at all is viewed as insensitive and insulting. During the conference this view of just focusing on things you agree on was compared with a friendship. If you tell someone that they can only talk about things that you agree with and that won't offend you, you will have a very very shallow relationship. But, if someone was really your friend and you cared about them then you would be able to talk about anything with them. In other words to apply this concept we need to view the big picture. If I were lost, and you had something that could save me, why would it matter if I might be offended if you told me about it. I am not saying we should just tell people whatever we feel like, what I am saying is that it is very important that we talk to people. Again both compassion and boldness are needed. With out boldness we will never open our mouths, and with out compassion we will most likely open our mouths too much. Our goal is to be able to approach and challenge people on their beliefs and still be able to shake hands and even be friends after the conversation.
The concept of compassion is illustrated by Paul who reveals his heart about his people, who are the Jews, in Romans 9 and 10, for example Romans 10:1-3. Unfortunately this verse is very accurate in describing the Mormon beliefs, which is ultimately based on works. They have a zeal for God, but have been lied to.
All in all this conference was very successful. It has been a long time coming. There seems to be a split in opinions on how to witness to Mormon and even if we should witness, I believe this conference will bring more unity to the Christian church in Utah.

Thanks

We made it!

Hello to my family and friends,
Yes, my friend Gareth and I made it to Utah. Our trip was fairly smooth, with no major problems. Of course it wasn't without it's hic-ups. Gareth drove to my house on Sunday evening. We planned our route soon after he arived, we hadn't yet decided what we wanted to see or do on the way. We went and picked up a bike from my friend Marshall's house. I'm so glad and greatful I have bike to ride around. Anyways, after talking for a while we decided to visit the Grand Cayon. After more college age rational thinking we decided to leave at three in the moring. This would have alowed us to arrive near the Grand Cayon the next evening. Sounded like a great plan. Little did we know. So we headed out, we had to pick up a chair for someone in Rockwall, after that it was up to Amarillo and then a straight shot to Flagstaff, AZ on 40. It turns out Gareth's little truck isn't running quite right. We found out very quickly that we could only cruise around 60-65 mph, that was going on flat land. Going up hill things quickly digressed. We weren't in a hurry though so it was ok with us. Anyways, just outside of the DFW area Gareth wanted to sleep, which I had been doing. So about 30 min later Gareth is asleep and I am driving, slowly. All of the sudden Gareth jumps and kinda yells out reaching for the dash. This of course sparks curousity, I ask him what happened and he told me he thought he was still driving. This of course made me feel very safe throughout the rest of the trip, NOT! We had a very smooth drive most of the rest of the way. We stopped just before Amarillo and tried to clean out the in-line fuel strainer. It was really dirty but it didn't help much. After a quick snack we were back on the road. Our next stop was on the way to Albaquerqy. About an hour away from Albaquerqy we ran into some hills, and one of them felt like we weren't going to make it up. So we stopped to see if we could figuere out someway to make the truck run better. One reason could be that all the vaccum hoses are mostly just plugged in somewhere with an educated guess. Anyways Gareth decided to pull the carb apart a bit to see if we could clean it out. After we got the truck back together it wouldn't start. After about a half hour of tinkering the truck finally started and we were on away again, and surprisingly the truck ran a little bit better. In Albaquerqy we decided to stop at Autozone to buy an ingintion coil, as well as stop at Walmart. We wanted to get some snacks, I had to get eyedrops. While we were in Walmart Gareth thought it would be a good idea to try and cook some pizzas in the engine comparment, the air filter housing was the perfect size to set pizza on. I told him it sound like we should at least try it. In the busy parking lot we made some PB&J sandwhichs and Gareth preped the pizza. After all this we pack up and get ready to leave. Of course the starter on the truck starts acting up again so we have to push start it. We seemed to be well practiced at push starting so we went for style this time. Each of us pushed on his side of the truck and then at the last second we both jumped in, poped the clutch and took off. All the while this little girl was "yelling mommy mommy look look" almost as if she was accusing us of stealing the truck. So we were on the road again. I drove for a while, and then let Gareth take over. It was now around 1 or 2 in the morning the next day. Gareth made it through flagstaff, and we stopped at a rest stop and caught a few hours of shut eye. We both suddenly woke up in the morning at the same time, it was a bit weird. Anyways we headed to the Grand Cayon to hike for the day. Gareth and I hiked a trail down into the Cayon. We didn't want to go all the way down. I would say we hiked about 3 and 1/2 miles down. The way back up was much more difficult. We found a guy on the side of the trail, he wasn't looking too good. We gave him some water and waited on him. We hiked back up barely making it out, yes we are out of shape. I went back to the truck and Gareth went back down with some water to check on the guy. He gave us 20 bucks for helping him. After leaving the Grand Cayon we just wanted to get to Utah, with as little stopping as possible. It was already about 4 in the afternoon. We did stop and eat dinner with the money we were given. We finaly arrived at our destination at 2:30 in the morning.

Preparing for Utah

School is out, and I'm back at home. Hopefully I can get my dirt bike sold. Summer is finally here.

If all goes well I will be going up to Utah. Prayers are needed. Me and a friend of mine should be driving up in a couple of weeks. I'm not even sure we know what we will drive. But, it will all work out. I have had so much free time while at home, I just hope that I will be able to take advantage and use this time of non-busyness to really focus on God. We really need prayers for our trip and the summer. Utah is a spiritual war zone. I have really been feeling it lately. My main concern is my relationship with God right now. My secondary concern is with preparing myself to go to Utah, that includes mentally, physically and spiritually. I am really excited to watch God work. My hope is that I will be able to write down what I see God doing throughout my Summer, so keep checking for updates.

Yours Truly

Dear Family and Friends,

God is awesome! Some of you may have known that over spring break I went on another mission trip. This time I was off to Utah. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Praise God! As some of you may know Utah is over 90% Mormon. Our group went there to spread God’s truth to these people.

God really has a sense of humor, the only snow we got while driving up there was in Texas. I dare someone to tell me that that is not ironic. The drive was beautiful once we got near the four corners area. To a Texas grown young man mountains and snow are the most beautiful things in the world. God really knew how to speak to my heart, even through the terrain. I, of course, tried to take pictures, but pictures can never do justice to what God has created. It was such a blessing to see God’s handy work. The lord knows me well.

When we finally arrived in Ephraim, Utah, after a total of 24 hours on the road and an over night stay in Albuquerque, we were exhausted. We unloaded our stuff and got settled into our rooms. We stayed in the college house above the Solid Rock Café run by the missionaries there. The guys’ dorm was above the café and the girls’ were above the garage. When I say dorm I mean more like house with rooms and a bathroom. The house they converted to a café is perfect for that use. The guys’ dorm had a kitchen and bathroom with a washer and dryer. The first night we didn’t do much. We mostly met the people who worked with Chip and Jamie (the missionaries who run the café) and the college students who currently lived in the dorm. That night we had to practice some songs for church in the morning. Yes, that’s right, we lead worship. God provided enough people on the team who could play instruments and sing that we were able to lead worship in church (the only Christian church in the county) on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning we went to church. It was refreshing to see the sincerity of these people. That Sunday they were celebrating the fact that they had just become debt free. Praise God! We celebrated with them by eating cake. The rest of the day we tried to get settled in and talk to the Christians there.

On the second day we began painting the upstairs of the café, that is the guys’ dorm. After painting for a good while we went sledding with some of the Christians that were there. It was such a blessing, going up to the mountains and seeing more of what God had made. I had never been sledding before and it was a blast. After sledding we had to hurry up and take showers and eat, God had been at work. Somehow we were able to get a meeting setup with one of the leaders in a polygamy group in the area. This may not mean a lot to some people, but to Chip and Jamie it meant a great deal. In one of the previous years he met with a mission team and they had left a good impression on him. Having a good relationship with him is a very good thing.

Our third full day there we finished painting the upstairs and began to hand out flyers for a Mexican food fiesta that we were sponsoring in the Solid Rock Café. The Mormon Church seems to be scared of the café and tells people not to go near it. If they catch people going in or out they will usually have a talk with the person and scare them back in line. Positive publicity for this place is crucial. While handing out flyers it was our goal to begin talking with people from the college there. We had been studying Mormonism for a couple of months so that we could talk and witness to the college students. I didn’t really have any good conversations that night. My group got back early, so I prayed for the other groups’ conversations and that God would provide good relationships.

The next day things really started to get interesting. My friend Josh and I went out together to pass out flyers and witness to college students on campus. God was good. He led us to a conversation with young man. Our goal in talking to these people is not convert them right on the spot. It takes on average seven years for someone to come out of Mormonism. Our job was to ask questions and show them what their church believes. We want them to ask questions. There are so many lies in their church, it is scary. The leaders know that there are holes in their doctrine so they discourage questions. The LDS people are taught to take peoples word for it and not ask questions. How sad is that. They are trapped in a well crafted snare of the devil. It scares them to ask questions, their whole life and culture is based on the Mormon Church. There are many conversations and things that happened that I don’t have enough room here to tell you about, you will have to ask me about them personally. All I can say is that there really is a God and he orchestrates things perfectly. If you have questions about your faith, ask them. If you don’t get your answer, then keep searching.

I think many times the Christian church is the same as the LDS. We just take what people say and believe it. It’s not that the people we listen to are bad, but they may be misinformed. After seeing how the LDS church treats scripture I value God’s word even more. God gave us the bible so that we wouldn’t be lied to we need to use it and study it. God can speak to us other ways, but to test what we hear we need the bible to back it up.

There are so many more things I could talk about here, but I will sum up everything God has shared with me over this trip. God wants a relationship with you! When I used to hear the word relationship I thought that meant reading my bible and praying. I missed it. You see reading your bible and praying are part of the relationship, but they are NOT the relationship. God wants a literal relationship with you; a real, loving, and passionate relationship. He is waiting for you to give up your dreams and desires and let him come in and fill you up.

In the Lord’s amazing Love

Blogging, for all the people who want to know who I am, what I am doing, and get a glimpse into my mind.