2010: New year, new quarter, new students, new move of God

New year, new quarter, new students, new expectation ... every 3 months we welcome in a new crop of students on the campus and into the family. The beginning of the quarter is always exciting ... the anticipation of who will join us and what God has for them in being here. It would be so easy to see the new 260+ students as just another bunch. But they are unique, each on of them. They each have a reason in God's heart as to why they are here 'for such as time as this'. I love seeing students transform as they realise more of who God is and what he has placed in them. We get to watch as they surrender more to Jesus and encounter him in ways they never have before. 

Schools this quarter are Discipleship Training Schools focusing on prayer  & worship, arts and entertainment, all nations/all generations, Call2All. Our second level schools are Biblical Studies, Biblical teaching and Preaching, Illustration, Photography, Counseling and TESOL, with lots of interns in education, film making and other areas. The quarter again represents the true diversity of who we are a mission - in our nations and our skills.

Arrival day was as always a very long day ... we said our first hello's just after 8am and the last one's that day just after midnight, with more into the weekend. Orientation time on the first full day was a time of welcoming the new students into our community, but the highlight was a time to pray and prophesy over them. As I moved around and got to pray for people it increased my faith to hear words and see pictures from God for these precious ones. As God gave me revelation of some of what he wants to do in each one, I got excited about what this will mean for the whole Kona family - as each one of us meets with Jesus and is transformed, so 'we' are transformed.

Our welcome day started with Hawaiian protocol and ended with Hawaiian celebrations of dancing and fire, as we honoured Loren & Darlene Cunningham (YWAM founders) as we enter the jubilee year of YWAM. It really is an exciting time to be in missions and in place where we get to hear regularly what God is doing around the world.  I believe the testimony at the end of 2010 will be that God has done more amazing things around the world than we can even imagine right now.

A key move this quarter in Kona has been the transition of our main lecture room into a house of prayer. A place to corporately seek God, to minister to the heart of the Lord, to sing his praises and intercede. I was thinking about it the other day as I was driving to campus - prayer has become 'cool' again... we are increasingly becoming a campus that is full of radicals who want nothing more than to come to a place of radical intimacy with Jesus and pray. Only one week into the quarter and the new prayer room and we are already overflowing the space and squashing to get in. God only knows what will occur ... but we are excited!

I have stories to share from the Christmas holiday period, but they will follow next week!!