Halfway Through June

I meant to do a halfway through the school post, but time gets away from me. Sorry.

Here's my outreach team!!!

 From left to right: Arne, P.D. (aka Dad), David (his hair is black now), Yours Truly

Amy (aka Mom), Allie, Kissy, and Glori. We are the largest, as well as the most ethnically and culturally diverse team on the school. David is Chinese-American, Kissy is Korean and black, Allie is from England, and Glori is from Tanzania.

We are a little more then halfway through the school. We have finished reading the entire Old Testament, and in between the Old and New Testaments we had a few days of cross-cultural training and outreach preparation, and a very long but informative day on the Jewish Intertestamental history, with a focus on the Maccabean (Hasmonean) period, and the Roman period.

We read 1 Maccabees 1-10, and it was AWESOME. I'm a little sad it's not in the Protestant Bible's. While I understand it doesn't fit some people's requirements for what qualifies as the inspired word of God, you can clearly see God moving to protect Israel again and again, and you can't really understand the average Jew's worldview in the New Testament if you don't know that part of history. Most people, upon realizing Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, would have assumed He'd be the next Judas Maccabeus, except without the whole dying in battle thing. 

There's a lot more in 1 Maccabees, and I would assume 2 Maccabees (which tells the same overall story from a less zealous perspective, or so I'm told) that adds to the New Testament story. I would highly recommend finding an Apocryphal Bible and reading that middle chunk that young Protestant children are told to stay away from because it's from the Catholic version of the Bible and therefore isn't really the Bible. 

It's still history, and while some of the other books are slightly less believable (I'm looking at you, "Bel and the Dragon"), they are all still important Jewish texts, and will add to your understanding of the Jewish mindset at the time of Jesus.

Class time!

Let's see, what else have I done the past few months...oh yeah, prophet study! We were all assigned a minor prophet to study in depth and eventually give a 30 minute teaching on. I was assigned Habakkuk. At first it seemed a daunting task. The longest speech I'd ever given was 10 minutes back in Speech class senior year of high school, plus Habakkuk is only 3 chapters, that's a whole 10 minutes per chapter! However, I quickly discovered it was going to be difficult to summarize what I wanted to say in just 30 minutes (it was ONLY 10 minutes per chapter).

My original outline was 4 pages long, and had literally everything I could possibly find about the book of Habakkuk. There's probably enough information on that thing to give a 2 to 3 HOUR teaching on the book if I had enough time to prepare. Seriously, if you haven't recently (or ever) read that tiny, short, funny sounding book sitting snugly between Nahum and Zephaniah, go do so now. I fell in love with it. 

We also went camping! Our cross cultural training week was supposed to be during our camping trip, but we ended up leaving 2 days early because there was a storm that destroyed half our tents. However, the Friday - Monday that we were there was a ton of fun! I got the worst sunburn of my life (I could not even reach my own shoulders the next day to apply my own Aloe Vera, I had to get friends to put it on me because it was so painful) for spending to much time shirtless on the beach on a sunny Saturday, but it was worth it, because we had a ton of fun.

Credit for Camping Photo's goes to my dear friend Laura, who photographs everything now that she has a smart phone for the first time. We've all been there Laura, it's okay. 

 Lunch around the campfire!

 Worship around the campfire!

 Class under the pavilion at the beach! A few hours later we'd see THE storm role in, wait for it to pass, and then head back to camp to find everything busted. We headed home that same afternoon.

The "WeatherMaster" got mastered by the weather. 

The Tuesday after we came back (we were still supposed to be camping) was declared The First Annual Madison BSN Ugly Day, as a way to continue the fun and games in spite of having to come home early. I will share a class photo here. 

WARNING: MAY CAUSE GAGGING AND/OR WEEPING. VIEW AT YOUR OWN RISK. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. 

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Here you go

Pretty bad, huh?

Our winner was Meagan, the girl on the far right next to me. She clipped off some of her own hair and glued it to her armpit as an added affect. The runner up was Noah, on the far left, who throughout the day continually splashed water on his crotch, rubbed charcoal on his face, and waxed his beard, so he'd look more feral. 

You can't tell in this picture, but I actually shaved off half my mustache and drew in a new curly one with eyeliner. After the competition was over, I shaved off my whole mustache and sideburns, and a few days later my whole beard. I am now (relatively) clean shaven. 

Just this past weekend we did a fundraiser/local outreach at the Madison farmers market by the capitol building. We made a ton of homemade Arnold Palmer Ice Tea (Ice Tea and Lemonade mixed), and handed out free cups to thirsty passers by. We all made Facebook events and asked for people to pledge a certain amount of money per cup (we put a limit on handing out 1000 cups). Some of my friends made over 2000 dollars in one afternoon handing out free lemonade! 

 Some of our lovely servers!

Meagan was on fire. I think she must have handed out half of our cups by herself!

I didn't get any pledges per cup, but I did get a few people asking how they could donate in other ways, and besides, it was a lot of fun and we got to bless a lot of people, so it was super worth it! I got to chat with some homeless people and it made me miss San Francisco :') Plus I think I may have signed up for a local philosophy club while talking to these two older guys about what I was doing. They had some kind of a sheet, and I put my email on it to get back in contact with them. We'll see.

That's all for now. As always, thanks so much for reading and please consider donating towards my outreach with either the GoFundMe button on the side of the blog, or by contacting me on Facebook or email (christopherpaulhickey@yahoo.com). Our outreach budget is being finalized, and with tickets it's looking to be between 4000-4500 dollars, and we leave in a month and a half. I have at least a thousand dollars in donations already, and little bit helps! Thanks again!

God's Blessings,

Chris

Where Am I Going For Outreach?

First things first: I am going to Nigeria and Tanzania!

Now that that's out of the way, here's everything else that's been going on.

The past month has been jam packed with Biblical knowledge and spiritual goodness. After our week on hermeneutics, we dove in to Genesis for a week, which was the longest we've spent on a book since then. Job, Exodus, and Leviticus were the next week (Job is thought to have lived at the time of Abraham, which is why we did that one so out of order), and after was a week on Numbers and Deuteronomy.  We then did Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First and Second Samuel. That's right, we did a book a day (kind of: Ruth we did in one class period because of time constraints). And this past week was spent all on 1 and 2 Kings.

On our own we've also read through Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, and most of Psalms. We read through each book ahead of the time we study it in class so we have time to figure out what we don't understand about the book and are ready to ask questions and be engaged in class.

A big part of how we do our studying is with our reading groups. We all have groups of four students that read through our daily Bible assignments together. There's usually an hour and a half to two hours worth of reading. We have these cool Bibles that have God's text in red, the narrator in black, the main character of each story in green, and all the supporting characters in blue. So we each pick a part and read it as a narrative, instead of a wall of text. It's been fascinating, especially for the more story oriented books like Joshua, Judges, or 1 and 2 Samuel. We try to have fun and do interesting voices (we tried to rap a couple of the Psalms as well), and we often get sidetracked talking about the motivations of the characters. It makes it feel so much more real and understandable when you do it like this, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

My daily schedule goes like this. Shower, breakfast, class, break, class, lunch, class, reading group, homework, dinner, dinner cleanup, finish homework, and if I have time I socialize a bit before going to bed. So the only reason I am having time to post this update is because I have a long weekend and I am sitting in a coffee shop. I actually started writing this update almost 3 weeks ago, but I kept getting sidetracked.

So...Africa! Long story short is they revealed a few weeks ago that for outreach we'd be splitting in to 4 teams. They would all be going to different places in Tanzania for the second half of outreach, but there were 3 different countries and 4 different locations for the first half. Two teams would be going to two different villages in The Democratic Republic of Congo - DRC - and doing teaching seminars. 1 team would be going to Swaziland to do a different seminar. And then the last team would be going to Nigeria.

Nigeria instantly stood out to me. For one, they speak English there. Another thing is that our ministry will mostly be in big cities (I have had a heart for city ministry since my DTS in San Francisco). There was lots of other things that seemed cool, but the last one I'll mention here is that we'll be heading a revival (at the time I just knew we were participating, but I recently found out we'll be the main speakers). After much prayer, and some trusted individuals confirming to me that Nigeria would be an excellent fit, I declared to my leaders that I would be going to Nigeria.

So that's exciting.

The estimated cost for the outreach is looking like four to five thousand dollars. It isn't finalized yet because the teams were just decided a few weeks ago, but I will try to keep everyone updated on here or at least on Facebook.

I want to express my immense gratitude to everyone who has supported me thus far with money or with prayer. I've been having an amazing time, and I wouldn't be able to be here without you.

Thank you, and God's Blessings

Chris

I AM SO BUSY

I AM SO BUSY

Seriously though, this BSN thing is nuts. They have to keep reminding us that, yes, it is a college course, because we constantly have homework.

Let me back up.

This place is really nice. We're in the middle of a bunch of farmland about 20 minutes outside of Madison at the TC (Training Center...YWAM loves their acronyms), and while it is beautiful and relaxing, it also makes me feel very isolated, especially in comparison to my DTS. In San Francisco, I was in the heart of the city. It was impossible to get away from people. Here? The only people are the people I live with, and if I need to get away, I have headphones and a big backyard with a nice swing.

The city of Madison is gorgeous. I've gone in a few times now. The first full day here, the Saturday before Easter, we all bused in to town to do a bit of a photo scavenger hunt and to see the YWAM Madison downtown base (they have an acronym for that too, but I can't remember what it is). I also went downtown to State Street, which is between the UW campus and the capitol, to watch the NCAA championship match. It was raining and the streets were packed with drunk college students. It was a wild night right up until the saddening end (GO BADGERS!).

But about the school: We will be going through the whole Bible once in 4 months. However, the first week of teaching was all about worldviews. We learned about the lenses with which people (including ourselves) see everything in life, and how those can affect, specifically, their understanding or approach to the Bible. This week is all about exegesis and hermeneutics, e.i. how to study the Bible in it's original context and then how to apply what we learn from that to our lives in modern times.

When I said I was SO BUSY, it was because I had just gotten assigned a word study on Timothy and Ephesus. So all last evening I was using a concordance to find and list every time Timothy is mentioned in the Bible (far more than I thought) and any time the city of Ephesus or the Ephesians are mentioned. The goal was to get a better understanding of Paul and Timothy's relationship, and since 1 and 2 Timothy are addressed to Timothy while he's in Ephesus, we also wanted to learn about the state of the church there.

It took awhile.

We've been told to expect at least 3 hours of homework due the next day each night, with week long assignments that will take a bit longer. After this week, we'll be going chronologically through the whole Bible. I'm a little apprehensive, but extremely excited.

Prayers for focus and self control would be greatly appreciated. This is my very first college level course (not counting Psych 101 and American History 101 my senior year of high school, which were pretty easy), and if I'm honest with myself I never developed a great work ethic high school. I have a hard time sitting for hours at a time pouring over one topic. As much as this will be a time of gaining knowledge, it will also, hopefully, be a time of character building.

Well, I should go now. We have a relatively light workload tonight - we are trying to find a one sentence summary of the purpose Paul had for writing 1 Timothy, and then finding half a dozen major points and summarizing how they relate to said purpose - and I want to take advantage of that by getting it out of the way now so I can relax and socialize a bit after dinner. My guess is it'll only take me a little over and hour.

As always, please share this link and the link to my GoFundMe (on the left side of the page!). Outreach locations won't be decided for awhile, so I'm not sure exactly how much I'll need, but I'd guess at least a thousand more dollars, especially when I have to find plane tickets.

The focus is still on The DR Congo and Tanzania (we have two students and one staff from Tanzania who want to start up a BSN in their country when they finish this school!), but because we have so many people, Uganda is another place I heard we might be going. I will update on here the moment I find out where I'm going!

Okay, that seems like a pretty good first update! Thank you all so much for your interest and support!

God's Blessings,
Chris

Just To Clarify...

So I'm not going to beat around the bush, as some of you have already heard about this and the rest should just hear it from him: Mark has left the BSN. He went home late on Easter night, and so I asked him to write something about it so I didn't have to run the risk of misrepresenting the situation.

Without further ado...

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In the past few months I had been gearing up to do the YWAM Madison BSN I do feel that I was led there and I know God had things to reveal to me in that time I was there. When I arrived I felt that something was wrong, I didn't just feel it I experienced it.

I felt as if I wasn't wholly there. I was afraid to admit to myself that I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be there anymore. So I began to seek God and find what else he had for me, he pointed back home and at this point I came to a cross roads.

On looking back home I saw my relationship with my girlfriend, a relationship I believe has been set by the Lord. I saw my current situation in the BSN not as a danger to my relationship but more as a hindrance. God gave us each other to peruse Him more powerfully and to minister to those around us in a more complete picture of who Christ is.

I believe I didn't feel complete because although I can grow in Christ alone I also had the opportunity to grow together. Put extremely simply it was up to me what I would do with God. Grow with Him in the BSN and get everything he had for me there or return and nurture my relationship with my future wife. He wanted me to prioritize and fully follow whichever path I chose, both with trials and rewards. So I chose togetherness over self-development.

I think all too often we as Christians seek for some sort of voice from heaven to tell us exactly what to do next and although there’s nothing exactly wrong with that it can breed uncertainty and it’s easier to worship the plan rather than the planner. I think Christ gives us free range to pursue things we love and he blesses our actions and our boldness.

Even if we make the wrong choice Christ doesn't abandon us. Even when Adam and Eve sinned Christ did not immediately destroy them, he picked them up, clothed them, blessed them with children, and long life. As I had said before Christ had things to show me at the BSN, and to be completely honest I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. However, I am confident in the goodness of Christ, and I just have to trust that in my efforts to follow His will He will continue to reveal Himself to me and bless me with a deeper understanding of His word.

I am also genuinely sorry for any confusion about what I’m doing. I’m acutely aware that I do not live in a vacuum and whatever I do will affect others. I pray that any trust that has been broken down in me or Christ can be rebuilt over time. Thank you all so much for the support and prayers in this confusing time.

- Mark

And We're Off!

In less then an hour Mark and I will be one our way to Madison, er, Columbus (the location was changed because the Madison facilities didn't have enough room for all the students!) Wisconsin.

Instead of written updates, Mark and I are planning on doing video updates. I wish I could say they'll be weekly, but I don't trust either of us to be that on point with our scheduling, especially at the beginning. I'll be posting the videos on my YouTube channel and linking them here, and then putting this blog link on Facebook.

PLEASE be praying for us on this trip, but especially this weekend as we are adjusting to a whole new group of people and as we are away from our family's for Holy Week (again). I don't know where Mark was last Easter, but he was either in England or Amsterdam, and I was in Rome.

Anyway, I have to go over my packing list one last time and then my dad and I are off to pick up Mark and his father for a double father/son road trip!

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported us thus far with finances and prayer. Please remember to share the link to our GoFundMe, which is on the left side of this page.

Thanks again.

And again.

I'm gonna go now...

God's Blessings,
Chris