Prayer Request for 8/17/14 and 8/18/14

Hello everyone!
   It's been far too long since I've been on here to request prayer.  Please pray for tomorrow for me--I'll be preaching in Spanish in a local Hispanic church, and I don't feel very confident in my ability to easily share without the Holy Spirit guiding me well.  I realize that I've interpreted before in Juarez and taught lengthy lessons in Mexico, but there is a difference in the level of language used with an adult verses youth audience.  Some of the higher-level ideas are harder to express in a secondary language.
   Also, Monday is a BIG day for us--it is Picnic in the Quad, and I'll be up there with Unite (we are giving out Ramen with flyers advertising our free store and free food shelf, game night, and small groups), Aikido of Northwest Kansas (we'll be demonstrating with the FHSU Aikido Club and sharing our regular lesson and prayer meditation program), and The Gamers Guild--we'll be advertising our games and alternative fun to the local bars.
   To successfully take all 3 entities up there takes a crazy amount of preparation work, time, and just logistics (I have 600 Ramen packs to put flyers on, games and mats to pack and take, martial arts equipment, and a tent!)
   Please keep my wife and I and the other volunteers who will help out in your prayers, and thank you for reading and praying!
   Brandon

May Newsletter 2014

The last couple of months have been so jam-packed with ministry and with life that I’m not quite sure where to start updating you all for prayer requests and just so that you know what all is going on!  I have noticed a definite rhythm in my life that is tied to the university semester cycle due to everything that I do with college students.  Towards the end of the semester and the beginning of the semester, my schedule becomes beyond overly full.  Mid-semester and mid-summer (not counting right before, during and after the mission trip), things are much calmer.

Right now we are approaching the end of the semester, so we are in transition with our small group Bible studies—picking different times and locations for the summer, figuring out who is going and who is staying, and at times figuring out how to help some of the students with moving, finding jobs, and other dilemmas that come up at this time of year.  It’s also the heavy time to be serving students at Unite Game Night.  This upcoming Friday, we will be offering a Risk tournament for those who wish to de-stress as well as a study hall area in which we will be serving free coffee and free orange soda for those who need caffeine to help keep them going.  We are also expanding Common Grounds coffee house in its location inside of The Gamers Guild.  Besides adding signage, we’ve added a couple of large storage racks for our ‘free store’, a ‘faith opportunities’ space on the wall (where we can post opportunities like our small group Bible studies, other ministries and their meeting times, national day of prayer, festival of faith, etc.), and we are re-organizing the coffee house for easier brewing methods since we have at least one community member who wants trained as a barista to serve those who come to Unite Game Night.

I do want to take a quick moment to update you about our ‘free store’ (part of Common Grounds Coffee House).  This is a new, small ministry initiative that I hope will become something great to serve the community as they become aware of it.  It is modeled after the ‘free store’ next to Joe’s Addiction Coffee House in Valley Brook, Oklahoma.  We have a sign up that says ‘you can’t steal anything in a free store’, and we have shelves loaded with quality items that individuals have given away for free to be used by anyone who has need of them.  It’s kind of like a Goodwill or thrift store EXCEPT that nothing costs any money and we don’t issue receipts to those who donate items.  We also occasionally receive non-perishable food donations, so it operates a bit as a food pantry.  Though this may sound surprising, there are families and individuals in Hays who don’t have enough expendable income to buy some basic things.  We could get into a long discussion about why that is—some of them spend their income on items like cigarettes and don’t end up with enough to eat, some spend money on TV but don’t have dishes, some are illegally in the US and can’t find jobs that pay enough for them to live on (this even includes some university students), and some have just fallen on hard times due to medical bankruptcy, job issues, or other reasons.  Whatever the cause, however, people do exist who have surprisingly basic needs in Hays, and it is my sincere hope that we as a Christian community can help provide for some of them through the free store here.  I know full well that many individuals in our community will not know that our small and almost hidden free store exists, but I am hoping that over time its reputation will grow among those in the community that need it.  I also know that other churches, ministries, and individuals also have programs to help those in need in our community, so my goal is not to be the ‘destination’ for all in need in Hays, anyway.  I only hope that our free store in Common Grounds can be an additional and unique opportunity for some of the needs in Hays that often fall through the cracks, and that we will be a visible part of the body of believers to be used as Christ wishes to reach the hearts of those He loves.

On a somewhat related note, I mentioned Common Grounds when I presented about our Mission Trip and The Welcoming Event to the Ellis County Ministerial Alliance a couple of months ago.  Afterwards, one of the ECMA officers mentioned that I don’t have to be a pastor to be part of the ECMA.  As such, I decided that I’d come to the next meeting and see if it felt right to come more often.  I was very surprised at how good it was to be there.  Several ministry topics were discussed that I found highly useful to know about, and I was also able to pass on some of the details we discussed to some pertinent ministries in Hays.  For instance, I learned that Festival of Faith is pulling in a speaker from Wichita who speaks on living a life with no regrets.  Off and on over the years, I’ve sat with a group of youth pastors who have brought speakers in to the school district and to the university in Hays and who have been looking to bring in another speaker.  Since this fellow is already coming in, I passed the info about it to the head of the youth pastor’s group, and I hope that it may work out that they can convince him to stick around and present in the school district, as well, and that we can promote his presence at the Festival of Faith on campus.

As for prayer requests—I’ve recently had two Aikido students of mine join one of our small group Bible studies.  They are excellent individuals and friends, and I pray that the community there is a good experience for them and for everyone involved.  I also hope that I can work up the energy (and the time) to figure out how to help incorporate Aikido principles that are also Christian principles more clearly into our youth program and, particularly, into our scholarship program at Aikido of Northwest Kansas.  It is an unfortunate truth, but it is a truth—at super-busy times like this month and last month, I barely have time to keep up with what is already running; it is much harder to spend additional planning time into coming up with high quality lessons that incorporate good moral teachings for the youth classes that I teach and to clearly present opportunities to our scholarship students that allow for growth.  I don’t know where the time will/can come from, yet it really should happen.  Please pray that I can better see how to more readily balance work time and rest in my life during these busy cycles, and just in general.  Though the work isn’t always ‘work’ in the strictest sense (I enjoy meeting one-on-one with college students and leading small group Bible studies), there are honestly weeks in my life right now that I will have between 55 and 90 hours per weeks of scheduled time—not including things that pop up in life.  Today I had to request not to meet with one of the individuals in my small group Bible study just to be able to get this newsletter printed, sealed in envelopes and mailed, and emailed out almost a week later than I intended to, and it is at the top of my backlogged priority list because I believe in the power of your prayers and believe that prayer is important to helping us out!  Though these times thankfully don’t last too long, it is very difficult to keep any type of balance at the beginning and end of each semester, and if I will continue to do ministry long-term in this community (which I intend to), then I need prayer for God to help me learn a better balance of it.  Your sincere prayers in this matter are greatly appreciated!

Finally, I would request prayers for those who are graduating and those who have graduated and are still working in an area outside of their degrees.  This has been a frequently recurring topic in our small groups and in my one-on-one meetings.  Many students are at a phase in life where they better want to find where they can fit in/belong.  Others are looking for a career or job that they can find fulfillment in.  Many are looking for both.  At times like these it is very important to pray and ask God to help us discern where to go, but at times like this we are often busy, hard-up for cash, and have trouble making time to ask.  Please pray that they hear His voice and take the time to listen to it.  Thank you!

Hello everyone! This month’s newsletter is a newsletter of opportunities—for prayer and for your direct involvement with some of what we have going on! Please read about the various sections to pray for us as we grow, and feel free to contact us if you have time or energy to devote to something (or feel led to be part of one of our projects or just WANT to help with some of what we have going on!)

First, we are looking for a vehicle for a member of one of our small groups. He needs to have a car or truck to use to go out and find work. He is a fairly large man (over 6 feet and over 400 pounds), so it actually needs to be an older, larger car OR a truck/SUV to accommodate him. If you have such a vehicle or know anyone who does, please let us know!

Next, we are updating the Common Grounds Coffee House that we run during Unite Game nights a few ways. First, we are doing some physical work on the coffee house area to make it more visible and more obvious what it does. The coffee counter is an old metal desk that we use; we plan to build a new counter out of a donated office desktop about waist height with bar stools in front of it so that it looks more like a coffee house. We also plan to add signs and some sign-ups for small group Bible studies and other involvement opportunities. We feel that this will make it more open for individuals to get involved in something more if they wish without scaring those who aren’t away. We could use the help of anyone who has the time and skills in constructing two wooden cabinets to put the office desktop on; we could also use help re-upholstering some chairs that we plan to use for Unite Game Night and/or just putting some fabric over the existing fabric that is fraying.

The other big update for Unite Game Night is that I am working on putting opening and closing instructions into an old computer that I got for Unite Game Night. These instructions will allow anyone who wants to volunteer as a barista to more easily do it since it will have the instructions about how to open up, the spreadsheet for recording any donations for food and/or drinks that we receive, and closing instructions. We will also load in some simple instructions about how to brew the various coffee drinks that we brew. We still plan to pray with anyone considering volunteering to make sure that it’s a good fit and helping them out in person at first, but the presence of simple, backup instructions should help others feel confident in manning the counter even if one of our other more long-term volunteers isn’t present. We have MANY opportunities to open up Common Grounds now for more than just Unite Game Night hours. Since Common Grounds is in The Gamers Guild (the card and board game shop that I opened up), it could run during any Gamers Guild hours, and baristas would have great interaction opportunities with those present in the store (often quite a few people from junior high age to middle-aged). We even have CATT-G (the FHSU Collegiate Association of Tabletop Gamers) meeting in our store Thursday nights—I just don’t have the time to open up and run Common Grounds since I am at the university at that time! All we need to serve and interact with that group and the many individuals who come in are the volunteers and a way to make it easier to volunteer, so I am working on just that.

Finally (as far as Unite Game Night goes), I wanted to let you know that you don’t have to want to serve coffee to come and interact with a ton of junior high, high school, and college-aged individuals! Every Friday night we are there playing a variety of board and card games; if you like board and card games and want to stop in and have some fun while developing relationships, you should feel free to come by! You never know when one of those people whom you get to know may want to have serious conversations or when you could help them out (or when they could help you out!). I hope that you prayerfully consider coming in sometime to play some games and get to know the many people who are part of the Unite Game Night community!!

Finally, it’s that time of year again! We are preparing for our Spring trip to the NOMADS missionary conference and (hopefully this time) our summer mission trip to the Emmanuel Ministries Children’s Home in Juarez, Mexico. Both trips are open to anyone, and we would LOVE to have you pray about joining us (or even just praying for us when we go). Please keep these upcoming adventures/opportunities in mind!

As we close, I do want to address the elephant in the room—the recent lack of monthly updates! I sincerely apologize for not getting the newsletter out the last couple of months! Your prayers and financial support are critical to what we do, and I need to do my part to keep you informed of it so that you CAN pray Please accept my apologies and know that I plan to do better from here on out! Thanks again for being a part of what we are doing!

Newsletter

Though it may sound strange, I would describe the last couple of months since my marriage as cyclones of blessings.  Nothing has been bad—in fact, quite the opposite, everything has been VERY good.  However, we have had so many VERY good things back to back to back, all of which have taken up large quantities of time, that about one week ago when things finally slowed back down, I was left just sitting, catching my breath, wondering what had happened the last couple of months.  To share them with you briefly…

Right before our wedding, things had been exceptionally busy.  The week of our honeymoon was the week before college classes, which is usually one of my busiest planning weekends since the first week of college holds the Picnic in the Quad promotional event at Fort Hays State University (I have a booth there for our ministry, one for the Aikido school, one for The Gamers Guild, and I help there with the college Aikido club), our ministry puts on ‘The Welcoming Event’ (formerly ‘Get Plugged In’) at the university, we have the first Unite Game Night of the year, and the first large promotional card tournament of the year.  As such, I had a lot of make-up work the week or two before the wedding for the planning week that I would soon miss.  On top of that, we closed on our house at 10 am on Tuesday, July 30^th.  Since I had to move out of my existing apartment that very day, it led to a hectic move; I also had been contacted by some international students since the dorms hadn’t opened but their rental agreements ended the next evening.  As such, the day after chucking my belongings into a house very haphazardly, I got some great friends to help me move some international college students’ items up to the Aikido school along a wall.  One of them needed a place to stay, and my house was not yet livable, so we stayed up at the dojo on the couches that night.  The next day, we moved all of their stuff into the dorms.  All during this time and the rest of the time until the wedding, I was finishing the work of closing on a house and fixing it up, moving into the house, helping with final wedding plans, and trying to get makeup work done for the ministry time we’d miss ON TOP OF maintaining our existing ministry projects (we still had game nights, small groups, etc.); you get the picture—though all of the things happening were beyond amazingly good, it was nuts!  Once we got to the big day, I felt that the wedding went very well, as did Tella, and we had a great time afterwards with family and friends and then with our honeymoon.  It was strange slowing down to such a dead stop after so ridiculously much had been happening, but Tella and I enjoyed the time VERY greatly!  The honeymoon, like so many other things right before our wedding, almost fell together perfectly in front of us (thank God for His providence!)  One of my Aikido students in Plainville has a dad who has a cabin near Leadville, Colorado, and they make a habit of letting friends of the family use it for just $15 per night; this is a NICE two-story cabin with an in-door Jacuzzi bath, two fireplaces, and a deck with a pretty view of the mountain evenings.  I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed adventuring with my new wife in the small mountain towns and retiring there to rest.  It was a wonderful week!

We returned to Hays late Saturday night, and then we went from zero to one hundred miles per hour almost instantly!  We finished settling a few things in and then moved all of Tella’s items into our house and got ready for the first day of college.  The Picnic in the Quad event was good for getting the word out (we did get one new small group bible study member and several new interested Aikido students plus a LOT of new attendees at our Unite Game Night).  The Welcoming Event was smaller than usual, but it was still a good chance to interact with college students and welcome them to the community in the name of Christ.  We had a few staple churches come and all of the college ministries turned out, but a few churches that usually come had leadership changes and/or couldn’t make it this year.  Nonetheless, a couple hundred college students received free meals, free coffee, warm smiles, good conversations, and other welcoming gifts from many of the churches in Hays and all of the Christian college ministries, which, to me, is a powerful and important witness to our campus.

By then it was September, and we had several more big events including the FHSU Aikido Club seminar (which is a great time to interact with many college students), and a few very large card tournaments at The Gamers Guild.  The Gamers Guild (the small card and board game shop that I started next to the dojo that has been helping us connect with many more students and community members) hosted a few major card tournaments (a prerelease tournament for a game company and several other competitive tournaments), and Unite Game Night, in turn, has had very large attendance almost every Friday night.  For that first month, I had to focus more on developing The Gamers Guild and preparing for those tournaments, but now it has hit a stride, so I plan to focus more on Unite Game Night and what we can do with all of the huge influx of new gamers into our game night.  (Side note: we are looking for volunteer baristas who are willing to love and serve students and possibly do relational ministry, if you know of any).  We also had our usual [alt] game night (as an alternative to Oktoberfest after-parties in Hays).  It was well attended, and the students there seemed to have quite a bit of fun—all the way until 7am the next day!  During this time, our small group Bible studies have also grown slightly—one college student in the Aikido classes knew about our small groups and asked to join, and one knew about us through the Unite Game Nights.  Each small group is still a strong community, but both could use prayer as the times we meet can be a bit challenging with everyone’s schedules being so full.

We also received a very surprising and direct answer to prayer over this time.  My parents and several others have been praying that God provide financially for me more heavily than He has been.  His existing providence has been more than sufficient for all basic needs.  However, it is true that it has been perpetually tight since I started missionary work, and they wanted to see more money coming in to help out.  Thanks to God for a direct answer to prayers!   A couple received an inheritance and they wanted to send some of it to an in-state missionary instead of just supporting overseas efforts.  They decided to send it to support me and the work here in Hays.  In effect, as long as existing donations continue through December, it has raised my salary in the 2013 year from 1/3 of a starting youth pastor’s salary to a full starting youth pastor’s salary for the year; this is a HUGE difference!  It has completely changed the landscape here for both Tella and me.  It took me from a long slow process of paying off my remaining $4,000 in student loans to having no debt whatsoever except for the house.  It also helped with some surprise medical expenses that came up and allowed Tella and I to set aside some of the money as a ‘blessings fund’, which we have already started using to bless some local individuals when needs arise that can’t be met by some of the existing systems in place in Hays.  It is very exciting to have some money set aside to bless others with and the ability to start saving up ourselves for our own needs as they arise.  Thank God for answered prayers and thanks again to that couple for such a tremendous blessing!  Please keep in prayer that God provide more long-term supporters for us; if my salary were regularly closer to my goal (a starting youth pastor’s salary), it would open up several new ministry windows that we’ve wanted to take advantage of but don’t have the finances for!  Thanks again for your prayers and your patience during this overly-busy time in life; I plan to get back to keeping you all more regularly in the loop (your prayers are VERY important for us!), and I look forward to sharing more soon in next month’s newsletter!

Aikido Meditation Thought

Tonight, as I sat meditating on the mats during the end of Advanced Aikido class, I was strongly stricken by the fact that yes, I DO need to keep doing Aikido and yes, God DOES use it to teach me VERY greatly.  Listening to the rain and focusing on His bigger presence in life, I realized that I was spending the first time sitting—just sitting and listening—that I had spent in a LONG time.  Not only is it through Aikido that we have our early church prayer meditation program that allows me the committed time to sit and meditate in Christ like that, but my body also felt SO happy to be back to Aikido today (even though it will be very sore tomorrow due to jumping back in from 0 hours to 5 in one day due to our heavy Thursday class schedule).  We have been on a 2 week break, and I have honestly even been enjoying having my evenings more free to get more work done on the wedding and house details—until I got back on the Aikido mats tonight.  It was SO nice—beyond simple words nice—to be back on the mats and moving, learning to blend with others and move and work with others in community.  God teaches me so much through Aikido, and it is good for me in so many ways.  Thank God for interesting and unexpected providence!  I never would have expected Him to teach me so much through a self-defensive Japanese martial art—nor did I know that there was a martial art founded on protecting our attackers as much as possible and blending with harmful energy to turn it positive.  It is firmly founded in principles that, though the founder may or may not have known, were the same principles that Christ so heavily espoused in His earthly ministry.  How cool is it that I now get to study Aikido and Christ together?  :)

Summer Newsletter 2013

This has been a very challenging couple of months to try and really trust God and His providence in the midst of extreme busy-ness and life fluctuations.  It has also been a time of great successes in the ministry and great excitement and joy in life.  Some of it is just that I am overly busy right now, and some of it is that I need to trust God to take care of the things that He promises to take care of in the Bible when we surrender them to Him; some of it, though, is that I am currently seeing in real life that the harvest is plentiful, and the workers are few, and that can be difficult to see when it affects real people whom I care about.

As to the busy-ness, life is currently full of some VERY excellent things for me—they are work intensive, but very exciting.  For instance, I am right now in the middle of wedding planning along with my fiancé, Tella.  We are getting married August 10^th at 2:00 p.m. at North Oak Community Church, and if you would like to come (and you are reading this), you are invited!  I apologize if you do not get an invitation in the mail and just get the invitation in this newsletter, but in this day of cell phones (and thus few addresses in the landline phone book), we just couldn’t find addresses for everyone whom we wanted to invite!  As such, please do consider yourself invited if you are reading this newsletter and wish to come join us!  We will have a reception following at the church with cake and punch until about 5:00 p.m.  Though very time-intensive as far as planning goes, this busy-ness is extremely exciting.

In regards to very exciting but very busy things, I am also closing on a house July 30^th.  Since I must be fully out of the house I rent by the 31^st, that leaves very little moving time, but we should be able to get it done!  I’m knee-deep in everything that goes into buying a house for the first time in life (private party sell); I’m also trying to figure out how to work boxing and moving in with everything else.  Again—it’s an EXCELLENT problem to have, but it is still time spent and financial craziness as money shifts accounts every which way and budgets are entirely re-designed.  This is all hitting in the middle of the time that I usually go out and promote The Welcoming Event (formerly ‘Get Plugged In’) to the various churches and college ministries, and all of the usual ministry stuff is still going on or starting back up near the end of summer break.  As such, it has honestly been almost overwhelming at times—especially if I focus on the immense lists of what I have to do.  However, when I am able to ask God in prayer to help me step back and surrender my worries to Him in prayer (and then when I actually follow up and do so), I can look around and truly enjoy what is going on around me.  This is a time of intense adventure and super-exciting new life experiences.  I cannot wait to be married to Tella—she is such a blessing in my life, and we are both very excited to start off our new life together!  I am also excited to have a new place to live, just her and me (and a renter downstairs, but that will be separated by doors).  I intellectually understand that in less than 3 weeks I will go from living with just guys in a dirty, run-down house to living with my new wife in our own safe house, but it is such a huge change that I really can’t fully get it through my head until I am there! 

In the midst of all of this, my bachelor party really helped highlight God’s providence in my life; while I was out with a bunch of good male friends and my dad shooting some targets in the country, I took a moment to look around and let the moment sink in.  I was surrounded by real friends who were a blessing in my life, I was enjoying time with my dad, and I was enjoying a variety of excellent blessings all day.  It struck me that God has answered (or is answering) all of my major prayers from my time in High School.  Back then, I was always the ‘nice guy’ who everyone liked, but I had very

few if any close friends.  It was easy to feel lonely, and some of my largest prayers were 1) that God would help me love Him more, 2) that He would provide a spouse for me, and 3) that I would one day have close friends.  As I looked around at this group of guys, I realized that He had long been teaching me to love Him more—ever since the difficult step out to become an in-state missionary/ministry leader.  He had also provided me with true friends along the way, and He even blessed me with a spouse who is beyond my words to describe (as far as how much of a blessing she is and how amazing of a woman she is).  What a humbling and astounding thing!  Though I often didn’t see Him answering my prayers when I was younger, and even at times wondered if He was answering my prayers, He was faithfully answering them even when I wasn’t listening or following well.  What a sincerely amazing, loving God we serve.  In truth, I feel blessed beyond my words’ ability to express it, and I really can’t pen down my emotions, gratefulness, or feelings of being inadequate to the blessing received (which, in the sense that none of us have ‘earned’ them, we all are, though His choice to love us makes us valuable enough and ‘adequate’ to receive them).  This feeling is accompanied by an almost bashful joy that He would love me, and all of us so much.  It is a truly blessed period of my life.

This is, however, certainly a rollercoaster time of highs and lows, for in the midst of such joy, I have also had to struggle with trusting Him in various fields.  There was a time of uncertainty that the house would go through, which was very stressful; I had to spend substantial time praying it into His hands and trusting Him to take care of it either way.  We also had to officially cancel the Mexico Mission Trip due to lack of attendance/sign-up.  Though several have already committed to go next year and though this time ended up being truly needed for wedding planning and house-buying, it was still difficult to have to miss seeing the children and staff there for another year.  Also, I started up The Gamers Guild next to the dojo (it is a card and board game shop).  As I explained in the last newsletter, it costs a few extra hours each week but opens up MANY new fields to develop relationship and love people.  This has been a pretty huge success—I see more new faces each day than I can truly get to know.  This has been VERY encouraging; we have also had a few visits by local ministry leaders who came to hang out with us during Game Night and develop relationships.  Unfortunately, due to how busy they are, they cannot regularly come at this time, and I see the truth to the fact that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  We are getting many more new faces in the door than we are getting believers who wish to come and get to know the life stories of those faces, develop relationships with them, love them, and live life with them.  I truly pray to the Lord of the Harvest (as I request you do as well) to send more workers and to share His true nature with them (and with us, too)!

Anyway, this has been a crazy, rollercoaster couple of months, but I thank you for reading this newsletter and for praying for me and for us.  PLEASE do keep us in your prayers; it is through His providence that so many amazing things—more than I could oversee myself—are all happening at once.  Thank God for who He is, and thank you for your prayers and financial support in our ministry endeavors.  Please pray for more baristas and/or people willing to step in and help lead and serve at Unite Game Night.  Please pray for The Welcoming Event as I am promoting it among the churches and college ministries a bit later than usual.  Please also pray for [alt] as we seek to put together a leadership team for it and to see how it may ultimately look this year.  I am excited for what lies ahead, but I ask God to help me enjoy and ride in the now.  May He bless us and help us all continue to see His hand, providence, and trustworthy nature in everything around us, and may He help us seek first His Kingdom (living in the Spirit, surrendering, and loving daily) in all that we do!  Amen!