Update #6 - "CHANGED"

With only a week and a half of project left, this is likely the last update before a full summary. Although most of us can't wait to come home, by no means are we forgetting that there's still plenty of time and things left to do to keep us real busy.

Our last event - the coffeehouse "CHANGED" - is taking place this coming Tuesday, that is, tomorrow!

I sincerely ask each and everyone of you to lift this event up to God: to cover all of our preparation and presentations with prayer, and to ask God to open up the hearts and ears of the 90+ friends and acquaintances that we have personally invited. It is in many ways the biggest event we have put up so far, as almost everyone in the team of 30 are involved.

At this event, I will be involved in a short drama, a little piano-playing, and something that I have not had extensive experience with - sharing my personal testimony.

I have spent the last 2 weeks preparing my testimony and it's been a real joy to be reminded of how God has changed me and every last detail of my life. Please pray that my testimony, along with all the other presentations, will effectively present just how the Gospel of Christ is not simply words on paper but the power of God - the power to give us life, and life that is abundant.

I have learned quite a bit in the past 3 months. I hope to share my experiences with each and everyone of you soon. See ya!

Update #5 - Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts

I decided not to update you on all the details of what actually has happened in the past few weeks, but instead present to you lessons I have learned from these events. But in short, in terms of outreach events, we have had one community Barbeque successfully hosted with West End Baptist church on Saturday, June 30^th; a showing of the film “End of the Spear” and a discussion session that followed here on St. Mary’s University campus on the same day; and also a few other events like coffeehouses and soccer games where we got to meet with yet a few more students, mostly international students. Next Saturday will be the annual Tall Ships festival here in Halifax, a weekend we are looking forward to as downtown, especially the waterfront area, will be packed with people.

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With only a couple more weeks of project left, it’s really time for all of us out here to keep focused with the end in mind. As for me, since the beginning of project there were a few things that I specifically prayed for. In fact, right now I’m fasting during lunch hours on weekdays to pray for these very things (given the fact that most food places are actually closed during the summer at Dalhousie University, where I am working, it’s not as hard as it could be).

1. The first thing for me to learn is to die to self and live by the Holy Spirit everyday. I was really reminded this past Monday by our guest speaker Karmal, who is a passionate, passionate Christ-follower from India, about how the most important thing in our faith is that Jesus Christ changes lives – as in 1 Corinthians 1:18, where Paul says “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”.

The Gospel is the power of God! If I am not reborn in the Spirit, constantly drawing on the source of all strength and wisdom, why should I even bother going out evangelizing, telling people about something I have not even experienced myself?

Living by the Spirit means that we will no longer gratify our self-centred desires, but live lives so that our bodies are worthy to be called the temples of God. Hence, one issue we as a whole project addressed in the past few weeks was personal purity – especially purity against sexual immorality for us guys. It is such a common problem amongst both Christian and non-Christian men nowadays that I am very thankful we took the step to address it as a group. On the same line, we have also addressed the issue of wearing modest clothing, especially for the ladies here on project. Us guys have really appreciated how the girls have reacted to this and found it to be very edifying.

2. Back to the whole “things I fast for” topic, the second thing I have been fasting for (and praying for since the beginning of project), is that God will help me see that He is more Holy than I have ever imagined, and that people are more sinful that I would like to think. Again, I quote Paul, as he says in 1 Corinthians 2:12: "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God." What better way to understand truths than to simply ask God to freely give them to us through His Spirit?

God has really answered the second part of my prayer. On both of the last 2 Saturdays, I got the chance to share my faith with 2 homeless men, Wayne and Robbie respectively, who both know God and claim to be Christians, but suffer greatly under the influence of alcoholism and simply the harsh way of life on the streets. At the West End Baptist barbeque, I spent a few hours just listening to Robbie and I have to honestly admit that he was the most broken up man I have ever met. It really brought me down to earth to see how far our sinful nature can take us if we let it.

3. The third and last thing is that I really hope that God will use me to bring one guy to Himself. There are a few guys I have met here that I have made especially stronger ties to, and it would be (in my shortsightedness anyways) such a waste if I was not able to fully share with them what Christ means to me and to them.

Lastly, I finally got a full time job! I am now working as the scholarship coordinator (big title but it’s really just a data entry job) at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, and it’s been really enjoyable so far! I thank God for both the timing of the job and the things that I get to learn out of it. I thank God for His timing because if I got the job any sooner, I would have lost lots of opportunities to learn and experience the things I did so far on project. I thank God for things I am learning because, to be frank, project life has gotten a lot more difficult since I got the job but I understand that is the reality of life and that self-control and time management comes right into the equation here.

Anyways, that was a long update, I hope that it is encouraging news to you! Again, it would be really encouraging if you could leave me a comment or e-mail me with your thoughts, take care and see you soon!

I'll leave you with a photograph of my lovely food group (a group of project people I have dinner with every Tuesday and Thursday, where we take turns cooking for each other), the SHALOM FOOD GROUP:

Update #4.5

I just realized that I left out a big portion of Project from Update #4, so I will call this Update #4.5.

Something that I totally did not expect before project, is the fact that there are actually tons of International students here in Halifax, most of them taking ESL classes. Having come into contact with more than ten students from China, Japan, Korea, Nigeria, and other parts of world, we have seen more and more people come to Christ.

The official figure right now is 8 people. That’s 8 lives that will be changed eternally! Please pray that follow-up (helping the new believers to understand the basics of their relationship with God) will happen smoothly with them, that they will be willing to have a hungry heart, a real desire to learn more about God and God’s mission for their lives.

On June 30^th, the same Saturday where our City MDA team will be hosting a community BBQ with West End Baptist Church, the Campus MDA team will be showing the movie “End of the Spear” here at St. Mary’s, and having a time of discussion after. Please pray that students will show up to the movie showing and that fruitful conversations will take place, where the Gospel will be presented.

Thanks once again!

By the way, here's a updated Halifax Project '07 team picture:

Update #4 - OFFICIAL: Staff team leaves

The project has gone to its halfway mark now, which also, more importantly, marks an important transition:

It's official: the staff team has left.

This means that the project roles I talked about in my last update (me being one of the men's discipleship group leaders, with my roommate Paulman being the other) are now in full effect. Joanna Wilkins and Ben Harrison are now the project co-directors, with my housemate Steve Emmons, as well as Katherine Dehm, the Evangelism team coordinators. Please pray for these four project mates of mine as things are beginning to get a bit hectic, seeing that there are only about 6 weeks of project left (time surely flies)! Pray that they will be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit of God, and that they will be building upon the foundation in Christ with works that last into eternity.

As for myself, this will be a good opportunity for me to put into practice principles I have learned from the Bible, as I will be meeting with the 3 men in my group (Steve Emmons, Ben Tsai, Jean Brunet) one on one weekly, and also during our weekly biblestudy meetings. Please pray that I will help these guys to grow as men of faith, and run the good race set out for us.

Thankfully, I will finally be getting an actual project to work on with a Psych Prof. here at St. Mary's University. Dr. Ivanoff is really eager to make sure that I will be learning lots as I help him do some data analyses, which is just great! As well, there's a student named Wafa who is working for him as a research assistant, so I am really looking forward to getting into some conversations with her, hopefully leading into a sharing of my faith.

In the past 2 weeks, in addition to some random evangelistic meetings I have gotten the chance to go into around the university campuses here, I have also gotten the chance to meetup with an international student named Kenny from the Bahamas, who happens to be an Anglican!, and a Chinese Ph.D. student named Peng.

Kenny has grown up as a Christian, but currently he is facing some struggles and doubts in his walk with God, so I will be hoping to get to meetup with him again in the near future to see how he's doing. As for Peng, my project mate Johnson Chuang and I got the chance to meetup with him over coffee, and although he has come into contact with many Christians since coming to Halifax 2 years ago, his heart is still closed to the Gospel. Please pray that the Spirit will just continue to use me and Johnson to speak to Kenny and Peng in the coming weeks.

Two important events coming up in the next few weeks are two community BBQ's (partnered with West End Baptist Church and First Congregational Church respectively). We will get the chance to help train the church members of these churches in initiating spiritual conversations and sharing the Gospel before the actual barbeques. Please pray that God will use these events to build into the Christians around Halifax, and more importantly, to use us to reach out to the lost.

In the past weekend, I got the chance to go away with 7 other project mates for our weekend off (we get 2 weekend offs in total on project) in Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.). Below is a link to some of the pictures I took during the trip, take a look!

http://ubc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099372&l=7a878&id=21008145




Lastly, this week has been a really convicting week for me, as I really want to see the Power of God here on project, but to be honest, so far I am not seeing much fruit out of my ministry. But as Paul says in 1Co3:7, I can only continue to wait on God and plant and water His seeds faithfully, as only He Himself can cause growth. Please pray that I will be faithful and continue to build on the foundation of Christ, with things that will not burn away but things that will last into eternity.


Thank you so much!

Update #3 - Rock the Dock

Hey all! Hope I find you in good spirits whereever you are now. The past few days has been very sunny and beautiful here in Halifax! But, much like Vancouver, rain seems to be a "more-often-than-not" type of thing here as well. So I enjoy the sun as often as I can.

A quick report is that now there are "officially" 5 people who have received Christ as their Lord and Saviour since project started! 3 of them are being followed up, they are: Vivi, Denise, and Jack. As this is only the beginning of their faith journeys, please pray that they will be built up into mature Christ-followers!

Also, there are a good number of international students here at St. Mary's University who are very interested in Christianity, it's pretty amazing!


The Job Situation
Since the last update, the past 2 weeks have been very eventful, not least of which were some moments of discouragements.

Two weeks ago, I received a call from Payless Shoesource down at Bayers Lake (about an hour's bus ride away) for an interview. Even though it was raining very heavily, I was quite excited as it was the first call I got back from anyone after dropping off at least 25 resumes in the past few weeks. After a long busride and a bit of exploring on foot (honestly, shopping complexes here in Halifax are not meant for pedestrians), I finally met up with the manager and got ready for an interview. However, as soon as I informed her of my availabilities, it turned out that there wouldn't be an interview, because I simply cannot work on Saturdays, as we do all of our bigger scale outreaches and evangelism on Saturdays.

In addition to that, volunteering at the Psychology lab at Dalhousie University has been really slow and quite simply, unexciting. Summers at the universities here are very quiet (for instance, their food courts aren't closed during the summer), so as eager as I was to look for random tasks to do and meet students, there simply wasn't anything available.

But of course, God had other plans for me.

The day after the "interview", I got a chance to meet the key student leader for Dalhousie Campus for Christ, Luke, and it turns out his brother runs a brick-laying company and could use some extra hands for their project. So me, along with 2 other project guys, went and worked from 7am to 5pm the next day, meeting some young Haligonians there, as well as finally making some $$. It was physically very tiring, but I was really thankful that things turned around so quickly for me. Praise God!

Although that was only a one day job, things at the lab have also turned around. The lab at Dalhousie is now finally giving me some direction, as I am now getting to participate in one of their studies on visual attention. Additionally, after contacting one of the Psychology Profs here at Saint Mary's University (the university I live at), I am getting a chance to do some volunteering here as well.


PROJECT ROLES
The past two weeks also marked the assignment of roles for all of us on project. I am now appointed as one of the two Men's Discipleship Group leaders, responsible for leading smallgroup biblestudies and checking on how the other 3 guys in my group are doing on a weekly, one on one basis. I am really looking forward to this, as I will get the chance to build into three awesome guys.

In addition, our team of 30 is now divided into 2 different movement development areas (MDA), where one team is now responsible for Campus outreaches, and the other City outreaches.

Because I have never done any city outreaches, I chose to be on the City MDA team. So far, during the past three Saturdays, we went out in pairs into the city (mainly the downtown and waterfront areas), and performed surveys and shared our faith with Haligonians and tourists. Generally speaking, people here are quite open to share their thoughts, however, as always, there are also a lot of misconceptions about spiritual things, and quite simply, lots of weird theologies. In fact, during most of the conversations I have had so far, the most "popular" beliefs are:

- that there is heaven without hell
- the historical event of Jesus Christ crucified and raised after 3 days was just a nice fairytale
- that every religion leads to the same god
- that churches here (there are plenty, especially Catholic churches that have been around for more than 100 years) are all on the wane


IBS Training
Although these are all tough questions requiring good answers, God had made sure in advance that we would be well trained.

One of the most important activities we have been doing these past couple of weeks is IBS: Inductive Bible Study. We as a group are studying the whole book of 1 Corinthians, and it's simply the most fitting book for everything we are doing here.

For example, in 1Co1:17-18, the Apostle Paul says:
"For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."



Also, in 1Co1:22-24:
"For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."


So, no matter what beliefs Haligonians here carry, we know one thing for sure: that we are to preach Christ crucified: nothing more, nothing less. Not with words of eloquent wisdom, so that we do not take away the power of the cross.


Back to the MDA thing...
Back on the topic of the City MDA, because we are here as multipliers, and not just "evangelists", we will need support from local churches. So far, things have been going very well, as two churches (West End Baptist and First Congregational) are very, very eager to partner with us. Already we have two community barbeques scheduled with each of the two churches for late June and early July, and they are inviting our team to train their congregations on initiative evangelism in mid June! Praise God!

Lastly (I know, it sounds like I just won't stop, doesn't it), two weeks ago we also had the priviledge to be trained by the executive director of D.R.I.M.E. (Disciple Ready in Mobile Evangelism), which is a ministry actually based in Vancouver, where Christians perform Gospel-based mime dramas accompanied by popular music on city streets, an effective tool for getting people's attention and thus initiating spiritual conversations. This will be a very useful tool for the city MDA team, as many festivals will take place in Halifax allowing this type of performance on the city streets. We are really looking forward to putting the skits to use.


Evangelistic Contacts
One thing we are encouraged to do on project is to make friends and evangelise through friendship. So far, I have had the priviledge to make 5 friends who have left me with their contact information. It's a funny thing being in Halifax, it really isn't all that big, so whenever I go out everyday, I am almost guaranteed to bump into one of these friends randomly. Mouhanad, a Muslim guy from Saudi Arabia who is a student at Dalhousie, is the most interesting of all.

Although a Muslim, he claims that he needs to believe in Judaism and Christianity. So, me and some friends on the team have gotten the chance to share the Gospel with him on several different occasions, and in fact, we got a chance to do some studying of the Gospels with him yesterday morning. Although he believes that Jesus is essentially only a Prophet, he is open minded and is very eager to meetup with us to study the Gospels again in the coming weeks. Please pray that God will just open Mouhanad's heart and reveal to him who Jesus is! As Jesus says in Revelation 3:20:

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."

I hope that this will be a reality for Mouhanad! I have yet to get the chance to have spiritual conversatoins with the other 4 contacts, but in the coming weeks I will be hoping to meetup with them over coffee or soccer (we invite students to play soccer with us every Tuesday evening), and hopefully striking into some intense spiritual conversations.




Thanks again for supporting me and praying for me! Please realize that your prayers are one of the most important parts of our project here! Again, please feel free to leave some comments, I'd love to hear from you!


As I end, I would like to leave you with a few photographs from the past 2 weeks:

St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica, Halifax

"Pizza Corner"

King of Donairs

There's actually some Chinese cuisines here!

Update #2 - Pounding the Pavement

Hey there! I am still adjusting to blogging here on blogspot.com, so bear with me. The good thing here is that anyone can leave comments, so leave me with your thoughts and feedback, and prayer requests too if you've got some! I would really appreciate it!

Here's the actual update:


Just to start things off, here's a photograph of our team (with 3 girls and a few staff missing):

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BIG PICTURE:
After sending out update #1 two weeks ago (time surely is flying by!), which coincided with the conclusion of our weekend project orientation, our goal for the past two weeks was simple and clear:

GO POUND THE PAVEMENT AND FIND A JOB!

This goal actually fits in perfectly with the purpose of this project, which is for us to become spiritual multipliers by not only walking by faith ourselves, but teaching others to do the very same thing. As it was said in 2 Timothy 2:2:

"And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others."

With a job secured, we can really become a part of the city, so that we can, as light in the world, bring the Good News to the locals who have yet to know Christ.

So far, after two weeks of search, I have yet to secure a job. However, I have gotten in contact with one of the Psychology professors here at Dalhousie University and have gotten the chance to do some volunteer work. Hopefully, be it through a paid job or a volunteer job, I will get the opportunity to connect with more locals here.

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HOW IT ALL HAPPENED:
To sum up what actually took place in the past two weeks, basically, our schedules looked like variations of this on weekdays:

8:00-8:30 Prayer Meeting
9:00-4:00 JOB HUNTING
4:30-5:00 Prayer Meeting
6:00-7:00 Dinner
7:00-9:00 Training/Fellowship/Discipleship/Evangelism
9:00... Social time

In addition, on both Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons, we had times where we went out for some initiative evangelism. So far, through various different avenues, such as soccer, spiritual conversations, or doing simple surveys, we have made friends with at least ten people, some of them students, and have gotten the chance to share the Gospel on several different occasions.
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Praise:
I could make a long list of items to give thanks for, but there are a few things I would just like to praise God specifically:

1. Me and my roommates.

I am really thankful for these guys that I am living with. We get along very well (so far!!) and are always on the lookout for each other.

From Left to Right: Paulman, myself, Steve, Gilberto







Paulman is the guy who actually shares a room with me. We get along really well, and we actually knew each other from before (as he is a SFU student).




2. Last Tuesday, May 8th, we split up into three different teams to initiate spiritual conversations around university campuses and the downtown area, and we got the chance to proclaim the Gospel to a good number of people.

We even saw two girls come to Christ! Their names are Denise and Vivi. It was very encouraging to see God working right off the bat.

For me personally, I got the chance to go sharing partnered with Colleen, one of my teammates from the University of Western Ontario, and shared the Gospel with a soccer player who was just getting warmed up for a game that evening on the St. Mary's University field. It was encouraging because as we chatted, his friend showed up. Me and Colleen were a bit worried, but it turns out the friend is a Christian himself and was really eager to join in our conversation.


3. In addition, on this past Monday, May 14th, we prepared a surprise birthday party for two of our teammates, Tabitha and Kacey. But what happened was really beyond our plan, as we actually saw two Muslim guys (whom some of my teammates got a chance to talk to the previous Tuesday during initiative evangelism) and about four Asian international students join us for the evening.

On yet another night, this past Tuesday, May 15th, we knocked on random doors around the residences and invited three new faces to join us for a game of soccer. It's really great seeing how easy it's been so far for us to meet students and people around the city.

Here's a photograph of the surprise birthday party that saw all the new comers:


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Your part:
Now this is the most important part of this update! You, my friends, family, and supporters, have a big role to play!

As we are in the body of Christ, I hope that you can pray for me and my team! On the left is a list of prayer items, if you could just lift a word up to the Big Man about the items, that would be great!

And like I said, lemme know your thoughts and prayer requests as well!


Thank you so much!

Until next time... keep fit and have fun!