The yurt is off-grid and teaches us to be energy-efficient. We run stuff when the sun shines, and boy, does it shine. So far, everything is working well. 

Living in a yurt sits well with another side project we have going: working with several groups of people, in the US and even in England, who want to do life differently, both financially and socially.

One area being talked about is creating celebration centers—places for people to get together and inspire training. For people to offer training in their field and receive training from others, be it budgeting, building websites (my thing), bible studies, or even for a church to have space.

This could work well in Hawaii as you don’t need walls to protect you from the elements. One church building we have been to has a wall behind the stage, but the other three sides have absolutely nothing—great airflow, beautiful views of the ocean, fresh and refreshing.

Then we could have other rooms, spaces for shops, small spaces for daily office rental, and even accommodation.
We’ll keep you posted if anything comes of this for us.

Talking with staff, they feel very acutely their financial need.

If an army marches on its stomach, then we march not on money but on prayer.

It is a journey to move myself and others from merely nice words to the biblically correct idea of these words and to live from meaningful prayer.

So, if you are interested, I am interested in praying for you.
Not a “Jesus, please bless John, in Jesus name, amen.”
But a meaningful prayer.

Follow the click below: I would appreciate prayer on some things, not just you praying, but when you pray, if God says anything to you, such as a verse, an idea, or a comment, let me know what that was.
[Prayer Wall]

And I would like to do the same for you.

We all need the tools God gives us to navigate our ship through the storms and doldrums of life. God is a community God, so it’s obvious that He may not be speaking to you because He wants to speak through me. It can be equally obvious that He is not speaking to me about something because He wants to speak through you.

I suggest that this is why we don’t know where and what we will be doing in April 2025.

I don’t think it is a lack of planning on our part.

When we planned to come and live in Kona from 2014 to 2016, we did a lot of successful planning and landed in an apartment with the ability to establish ourselves.

Right now, however, we keep trying to plan, asking God what we are meant to do, but we are only getting a skeleton outline of the future.

We did not know what this year would hold when we returned home to Kona from New Zealand in January. Then, this conference in Manila in September came up, and both of us immediately saw that we were to go, not so much for the conference but for purposes beyond the conference.

I have been running the YWAM Digital Library for a few years, and it is gaining traction. Talking to people and schools face-to-face about how we can better serve them will be very useful.

We are also slowly building out the websites we host. Again, I feel strongly about helping people and bases become aware of how to use technology well and create internet content that helps grow disciples.
So we don’t know what the future could hold, for it could hold anything.
After the conference, we made ourselves available to hold seminars in the Philippines, but that could also be any country between the Philippines and New Zealand, where we would like to be by Christmas.

Feel free to connect with us at any time. We would love to hear from you and share a call.

Upon returning home to Kona in January, we were presented with opportunities in the Philippines and Malaysia.

It seems to me that we spent just a short time in the Philippines in the 80s, yet we continue to meet (online) people in the Philippines that we worked with back then, or in some cases, they are children we played with who are now staff and leaders in YWAM.

I have been doing training most weeks to help staff learn the skills of becoming a webmaster.
I can fortunately take all the hard coding work out of a Website project, and they then have to do the mental work of what they want to display, how they will display it, and why.

They get to start this in English and translate it to be more relevant in their language. There are dozens of languages in the Philippines.

Technology is so useful. I get to train people via Google Meet and Google Calendar.

https://tca.ywam.life/one-on-one/

I am even using this back in New Zealand, so if you have any desire to take on some new Technical Skills, hit me up.

As most of you know, I have always been a technology geek.

My main project, which I am roping Christine to help me with, is providing websites to Staff and Bases of YWAM and other groups.

Security is a big concern, and I have purchased software that I can put on all the sites so they remain safe as they develop their sites for their school requirements, staff retention, and ministry development.

I am working between two ideas.

Being cost-effective, they pay what they can afford, and two, the website reduces their work.

Bases and Staff need to communicate with potential Staff, Outreach Teams, Students, Partners, and more. They can end up doing this across many platforms and become quite disconnected. A website lets them have a starting place that they control, which can then be used to reach out to people via email, connect with other social media platforms, provide forms and applications, as well as up-to-date detailed information about what they’re doing, and what schools they are running.

Not least, this is to help Bases and Staff have a coordinated and clean way to raise prayer partners, learn how to pray for the people who are interested in their work, and provide a way forward for funding and partnership.

In 2023, I (Christine) started reading the Bible chronologically with the help of the Bible Recap. 

Up till now, I have read through 12 books of the Bible. During this time, I have learned more about God’s character. I have watched how he drew near to his people in the Old Testament. 

Many times I have come to tears seeing the love and kindness of our God, as well as, his power, justice and mercy. 

Each morning I wake up and  I have the desire to get my cup of tea and sit down with the Lord and dive into his word. I am never disappointed and always learning new details of the past that speak to me for today. 

I encourage you to join in the fun of going deeper with Jesus!