Places God is taking me

Here is a list of places that I will be going in the coming weekends and if you could pray for me and Mark, the pastor who I am traveling with, that God would bless us, bless the church we are going to, and most of all bless the people on the streets in each town as we go out, I would really appreciate it.

Place/City/Country: Date we will be there:

Salford, England Oct 31 - Nov 3

Jersey, (island in Nov 14 - 16

the english common wealth)

Denmark Nov 21 - 23

Bath, England Dec 5 - 7

Belfast, N. Ireland Dec 12 & 13

If you feel it in your heart to pray for these trips please do. We need all the prayer we can get. Thank you so much for your prayers. God Bless. -Ben

It is crazy to be here in Oxford. I am in Oxford. God brought me to Oxford. I can't get over that I am in Oxford. It isn't like Oxford is some special place compared to the other places that God is taking me. It is just crazy to take a step back and see what God is doing. I see little old me in Oxford doing the things on God's heart. To just think that God has brought me here. That coming to Oxford wasn't my doing, it was all God. He has brought me around the world and has taken me to Oxford to do things that are on His heart. It is crazy for me to think about and it brings me to tears of joy and thankfulness for all the blessings God is giving me. We saw the presence of God come to the streets of Oxford today. It was amazing to see and even more fun to think about what God is going to keep doing. People were saying how hard of a city Oxford is with all its intellectuals and stuff. But when those people they were talking about sat down in the chairs, all those things melted away because in the chairs it is only them and jesus. What a sweet time we had in Oxford today. :-) More lord!! Praise you Lord for what you did today on the streets.

Life in Northern Ireland!!

Here is a little bit about what I have been feeling about being here and my thoughts on the church, my internship, my friends, and my weekend missions trips.  I just emailed a friend all this and thought that everyone might want to know this stuff.  So here it is :

Everything over here is really great!  

The internship is really starting to pick up now when I am here at the church offices during the week.  Sydney and I have a full plate of things to do as mission interns and it will be pretty crazy all the way up until christmas.  :-(    The weekend mission trips (if you want to call them that) are amazing.  God has blessed me so so much by giving me the opportunity to travel with mark.  To maybe put it into perspective for you on how much of a blessing it is to be around, to travel with, to talk to, and just to hang out with Mark, it would be as if I was traveling with Heidi Baker and being her traveling partner and hanging out with her all the time.  I am learning so much from traveling with him and he is an immense encouragement to me in my life and walk with God.  I am learning so much and growing outward in so many directions, i would have a hard time listing them all.  :-)

The Church here is one of the most amazing things to be a part of.  The staff here at the church are the most amazing people I have ever met.  They are all gifted and they are all perfect for their jobs as pastors of missions, children, youth, worship, etc.  They are all passionate about God and have a shared vision of the church which is seen in their separate ways of pushing that vision out in the community.  It is amazing working and living around these people who are on fire for God and are living their dream.  

My friends here are amazing.  I already have some really good friends here and all of the fears that were placed in my mind by the enemy about being lonely here during the internship to make me insecure have been broken.  I am leading a small group with a girl from church named Colleen who is a really great girl and I have connections to her family because her brother stayed at my house in California 2 years ago.  It is crazy how small of a world it is.  :-)   

So pretty much all in all I am loving it here in northern ireland.  God is doing amazing stuff here and I am learning so much.  I don't know where life will lead me next, but I can't wait to go there.

Newcastle

Today was a fantastic day here in Newcastle.  We hit the streets with a group of 150 people in the city center right next to this massive and beautiful monument pillar/statue.  It was normal weather for Mark and I because it was cold, really windy, and pouring rain.  Mark said that he felt like he was back home in Coleraine.  Haha!!  I was blown away with how many people were passing by second by second in the city center.  We were set up in the center of 4 or 5 converging pedestrian walkways so second by second multitudes of at least 100 people walked by.  It was the perfect spot.  God your so good!  So all the people got flyers and started handing them out.  It was amazing to watch and crazy just to see how many people we had on the streets; it was perfect.  From the get go all the 9 chairs we had set out were swamped with people.  It slowed down close to the end, but people kept on coming for prayer.  It was a beautiful act of the holy spirit to see him drawing his children from the streets of Newcastle to step out in faith and sit down in the chairs.  It is crazy being Marks traveling partner because I am asked all these questions like I am an expert in HOTS when I am almost as fresh as most of the people who are doing it for the first time.  So I walked around for a while talking to people, answering questions, and taking afew fun pictures.  Then I got to pray for Richard who was this broken, grungy, old man who weeped in the chair because of the love of christ that was touching his heart.  I was amazed at the people I was praying with because they had really caught it and were going for it with all their heart.  They prayed their best prayer and I was blessed by the love and compassion that overflowed from them to Richard and the others they prayed for.  It was true gentleness.  We ended up praying for Richard and then leading him to christ.  It was a beautiful and heart moving moment for me being part of leading someone to christ for the first time.  That afternoon on the streets was such a glorious time.  There were so many stories, testimonies, and salvations from just this one day on the streets it was so obvious seeing God's love for his children doing the stuff on the streets.  It was so encouraging to the church here hearing all of the stories shared after HOTS of what God had done.  It is an exciting time here in Newcastle.  I feel it is an exciting time for the whole world.  I feel that all we have to do is go to where god's heart is.  On the streets......    Thank you God.  You are so good.  Bless you father.  I love you Father.

During Mark's teaching here in Newcastle he introduced me and told the audience who I was and after the teaching was over I got stopped by these two young adult guys.  After they stopped me I heard the greatest sentence I could have ever heard spoken to me in England.  I had only ever heard this sentence said in movies like green street hooligans.  So, these two guys got my attention as I was walking past them and I turned to the one closest to me and he utters these words.....  "So your the Yank!!??"   It was hilarious!!  I just burst out laughing.  :-)

Last weekend I was off to beautiful Norway where I met my beloved friend steven and this weekend I am off again to Newcastle.  What a crazy life I now have with all the things God has blessed me with.  I am traveling all over Europe with Mark and we are booked almost every weekend from now until christmas.  What a calling I must live up to.  To live a life worthy of my calling.  I have just begun striving to be more like a child.  I need to be like a child in my relationship with God and with how I follow His leading.  To let my heart fun free and unhindered by the boundaries of this grown up world that is covered in fear.  I am longing for more and more intimacy with God.  I also now see that I must seek after the intimacy within the bible, God's diary.  The bible is a diary of God's where I can learn his deepest thoughts, desires, and get to know Him on a personal level.

I have been living with Sydney and Katja for a week now and am getting use to having female house mates.  They are both really fun and I know that we will get along great this year.  I had a hard week this last week because I feel a little down and out with not doing things in Coleraine on the weekends.  With me being Marks traveling partner I wont be in Coleraine for the weekends which makes me unable to do street evang, Face to Face outreach, HOTS, and go to church on sundays.  Don't get me wrong, I am so blessed that it over takes my emotions sometimes by how much God has blessed me with being Mark's traveling partner.  It was just hard this week when Ricky was going over everything Sydney and I were going to be doing this year as mission interns and it discouraged me that I wasn't able to do many of them because of being gone on weekends.  I was also feeling a little bit of competition with Sydney which I should have expected, but I don't want any of that.  Having another person from home here is great, but at the same time I feel that bit of insecurity within me being rattled with the idea that Sydney may be more liked, successful, and better than me amongst friends and in the internship.  I need to drop all my fears cares and turn to what God thinks about me.  His opinion is the only one that matters and is the one I should draw my strength upon.  Otherwise I falter and crumble in fear of man.  Thank you for freedom from fear God.  Victory!!

Prayer Requests:

-If you could pray for me for peace in my situation of being a little discouraged about not being able to do things in Coleraine pertaining to my missions internship

-If you could pray for me for intimacy and my journey into relationship with God

-Also if you could pray for increased sensitivity to His leading and voice