This is a way old school picture... but hey, a kind of fun one. I don't know if anybody ever even looks at this blog because I haven't been on it in forever, but yeah, essentially I have taken a break from blogging... for now.

I will be getting back into it soon though, so yeah, that should be fun. A few reasons why I haven't been blogging:

1. I believe God has called me into a different season these past 6 months and has been changing me ALOT... essentially, I am finally now living as the real Jeremy as He is showing me what true sanctification means.

2. My camera has been broken and blogging isn't very much fun without pictures... not to mention that this season has been very uneventful, so yeah, not much to share.

3. My computer is a wreck and I don't have the internet in my new apartment.

So yeah, some pretty good reasons, not that I have any "fans" but it's kind of funny that my last blog was like 6 months ago as I was about to begin staffing at the Emmaus School of Biblical Studies.

I am now NOT doing that, which is ok, God had something else... like 'being still and knowing that He is'... so that's what I've been doing. I will soon share more of what's going on in my life.

Love ya'll.

Psalms - Teaching my first SBS book

So I just finished teaching the book of Psalms at ESBS... my first book taught here. It was a lot of fun and I felt really comfortable teaching it. I wanted to write something about each book I teach to share with ya'll my overall and closing thoughts.

Psalms is a beautiful book of people's journal entries, shared with the world that we might see how to live in right relationship with God... living in humility, honesty, repentance, and trust as we try to relate to the creator of our souls. For myself this is difficult, especially as I grow older and more experienced... having to face my lacking more and more every day. Life isn't easy, there are very real things that I face every day that would bring me great joy as well as great frustration and sorrow. In the face of circumstances and doubts and fears and hopes and everything imbetween... who is God and who am I? Psalms brings perspective back to the reality of God as our loving Creator and dares us to live in that reality. "The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever".... what if that really is true? Well, it is... despite what I want to believe or have a hard time seeing or whatever...

God really is good, He really is King over all creation, He really does love us (look at the cross), He will bring us into His deliverance ultimately if we are trusting in Him. There is more to life than circumstances... there is more to life than brokenness... there is God reaching out to a fallen humanity trying to restore our souls. Yeah, it was amazing having the chance to teach the Psalms to the students here at ESBS... I believe you are challenged more as a teacher than as a student... I had to really wrestle through whether I believe God is good and that he does love me... and you know what... yeah, I buy it... especially when I look at the cross.

Song you might want to check out, I have been listening to it a lot as I was studying the Psalms:
Jon Foreman's "Your Love is Strong"

Saying Goodbye to Montana

So this is way overdo... but I finally am getting around to updating this blog thing. These are pictures of some of my dear friends from Montana who I had to say goodbye to after returning to the YWAM base in Lakeside, MT to debrief from my trip overseas. It snowed like a few feet the second night I was there and was 20 degrees below zero for most of the time I was there... really sweet considering all I had were shorts and t-shirts for Mexico and Costa Rica. I dearly miss these people, they are absolutely amazing... people who were with me for a solid year of my life wrestling together with God for His glory.

Last week in Costa Rica

So these are the last set of pictures I have from our last week of ministry in Costa Rica. These are my friends whom I already sorely miss.

Debriefing... relaxing at Jaco Beach, Costa Rica

After our teaching commitments came to an end we had the opportunity to just relax a little bit as a team after all our hard work. We went to a beach on the Pacific Coast called Jaco... pronounced "haco". It was a beautiful refreshing time... I went on a long walk down the beach all afternoon and got some great pictures I thought I would share so here they are.

A quick adventure in Heredia, Costa Rica

So Friday and Saturday I went with two of my new friends I made here in Costa Rica to the other YWAM base in Costa Rica... in the town of Heredia. They were having a fundraiser picnic for the DTS class there this fall who are about to go on outreach. My friend Paola lives in Heredia so her brother Alvaro picked us up and took myself and my friend Ruth up for Friday evening and Saturday to spend the day there. It was an awesome time.

Friday night Paola and Ruth and I walked down to town and took a ton of pictures of the amazing flowers and sun as it was setting at the end of a gorgeous day. We had a fun dinner and evening of just walking around town and enjoying each other. Saturday morning I had the chance to play with Paola´s niece some and then we went to the Heredia base and had a blast. I got to spend some time with the Base Director there Terry... he has some awesome vision for the base and wants to start an SBS there. I also got to spend some time talking with some of the DTS students about their futures and I think some of them are excited about perhaps doing SBS next so that was awesome. I also had the chance to see my friend Carla again and her new boyfriend Ian so that was really great too. It was one of my favorite experiences from here on outreach, and between Paola and I we have some great pictures to remember it by.

Talamanca - Costa Rica = THE FLOOD

This last week we went to the southeast region of Costa Rica near the Panama border, a region called Talamanca... to a tiny indigenous village called Bambu. We went there to teach oral communicators God´s word for a week or so, doing some seminars to help them know how to study God´s word on their own. This was super exciting, the place was beautiful, and yeah... this is what we as Titus have been trained and equipped to do - so bring it on rainforest!

The first day there our host Alex took us on an amazing trip through the rainforest... crossed a river into Panama and got to just walk through jungle and wade through rivers. It was an awesome day, a beautiful day.

Then... it started raining... and for the next 9 days there was no end to the rain. Seriously it felt like we need to build another ark because the river was rising so quickly. The river actually flooded its banks for the worst flood Costa Rica has seen in more than 35 years. Tuesday the rain began... Tuesday night there was a 6.5 earthquake in Panama somewhere... and by Saturday the river had risen almost 10 feet even though it was like a few hundred meters wide. Yeah, so... all of our ministry was canceled and we sat inside a house on higher ground watching a natural disaster for almost 10 days... welcome to outreach. Honestly, it was a rough time... a hard time... because we wanted to be doing ministry... not trying to complain... but it was tough. The hardest thing about it wasn´t safety... or food... even though we ate tuna and rice for a few days before the roads were restored because the market ran out of food supplying all 3000 people in the immediate area - the hardest thing was feeling absolutely useless while being on a trip where you want to be used by God in the short time you have.

So yeah, we just got back to San Jose... my rainforest experience was interesting to say the least. Now we´re trying to patch together that last week and a half of our outreach since these 2 weeks have been washed away in the flood.

Please be praying for the last week of our outreach... that we would have some teaching time and that we would recouperate well seeing how the last week and a half were rather hard (I think I have giardia now because of the water filters being messed up by the flood too). Also be praying for the 8000 or so people around the river near Bambu who lost all of their crops in the flood and now are looking at around a year to restore what was lost. Also be praying for the YWAM base there in Talamanca because the house on the river is being torn down... they will save as much of the material as they can and hopefully rebuild on higher ground.

(PS = 2 other posts today also before this... check them out too)