WEEK 8: Trip to Pine Ridge

We are back in Minnesota! We had such a great experience working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We met up in SD with a high school youth group from Aberdeen, SD. We worked with them throughout the week. There are lots of stories to tell, but we’ll try to sum it up as best as we can. :)

Saturday (11^th)

Most of our class left for Pine Ridge while we stayed back here at the base. We had such an incredible catching up and fellowshipping with two of our friends, Becca and Kendra, from Grand Rapids. They stayed overnight with us in our apartment for their last night of their road trip.

Sunday (12^th)

The remaining six students from our class left around 7am for the reservation.  Nate drove for the first 5 hours until we stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. We ate our sack lunches there and looked around at the tourists shops.

We arrived at the reservation for dinner. Then we traveled to White Clay, Nebraska where we were going to be sleeping for the week.

Monday (13^th)

We spent the morning preparing for the Vacation Bible School for the local children in Allen, SD on the reservation. We were planning on having them come that afternoon, however, the children did not know there was a VBS. So we instead took a trip to Wounded Knee. In 1890 a massacre happened to the Lakota Sioux in this town. We visited the memorial burial spot. It really helped us to connect with the history of the local people. We were all very glad that we were able to go to Wounded Knee.

After dinner we all gathered for a debriefing time. We began to worship, thank, and praise God for what He had done throughout the day.  Some of the students from our class began to pray for the youth group students. Soon the youth began to pray for each other. The worship time continued for over an hour with everyone praying for each other. We could feel the presence of God in the room. It was such a great way to kick off our week!

Tuesday (14^th)

We worked in the morning at a location organization in White Clay, NE called Lakota Hope. White Clay is just outside of the reservation, where it is legal to purchase and sell alcohol. Over 10,000 cans of alcohol are sold there a day. The organization working in White Clay tries to connect with the men and women living on the street and to give them the hope of Jesus Christ. We spent our time pulling weeds, moving tables, and scraping paint off of the building.

After lunch we traveled to Allen for the Bible School for the local kids. Julianne worked with the 3-6 year olds while Nate worked with the 10 years and up group. It was a lot harder than we had thought it would be. Nate’s group was especially tough. A lot of the children come from tough home lives. The older children were very disrespectful and trying on Nate’s patience. We were a bit afraid of what the rest of the week was going to look like.

Wednesday (15^th)

We again spent our morning in White Clay working at Lakota Hope. We scrapped paint off of one of their buildings that was going to be repainted.

Once that was finished, the team was split into groups to go walk the streets and talk to the men and women there. An older lady started to yell and threaten Nate because he looked like a guy she knew named Clay. (And so we jokingly called Nate “White Clay” for the rest of the week.) Nate got a chance to talk and minister to some of the guys on the street. Julianne had stayed back and was praying for those out on the streets.

We went to Allen after lunch for the VBS. Some of the older kids were acting off before it began and were told they had to go home. It was sad to see them leave but a blessing as well.

It almost felt like a completely different group of kids. The whole afternoon was much more behaved and organized.

Thursday (16^th)

Yeah! Our 2 month anniversary!

We spent the morning in White Clay again. We scrapped more paint off another building before going down town.

Half of our group worked in the thrift store sorting clothes while the other half talked with the people out on the street. Nate met up with one of the men he met the day before. On Wednesday they had talked about angels and demons since the man said that he could see into the spiritual world. Nate told the man that if he saw a demon to “rebuke it in the name of Jesus.” That night the man had seen a demon standing by his feet. He had tried to hide from it but kept seeing it. He remembered what Nate had told him and so said to the demon, “I refute you in the name of Jesus.” The demon, of course, left him. It was so exciting to hear that story! There is power in the name of Jesus!

We went to Allen for our last day of VBS. We had a lot of fun playing with the kids. We ended the day off with a huge water balloon fight. The kids had such a blast.

It was a bit sad to see them for the last time. We can only hope and pray that they will remember what we taught and showed them throughout the week.

Friday (17^th)

FREE DAY! Before we left for the day, we cleaned up the house where we had been staying. The youth group left to go back to Aberdeen while our class took a trip to Mount Rushmore. We spent a couple hours there sightseeing and then got pizza for dinner. It was a fun relaxing day.

Saturday (18^th)

We once again pilled into the vans for the 11 hour car ride to the base here in MN. It felt so good to be back home again.

We cannot believe how quickly this summer has flown by! We only have three more weeks left of our class before we will begin preparing to help lead and staff the next upcoming school here.

            We could love and appreciate your prayers for us in this next season. We are excited for the DTS. We know this is where God wants us to be next. We are looking forward to it and, yet, a bit nervous about leading.

            Thank you for all the support you have shown us over these last two months! May God continue to bless you!

In Christ,

Julianne and Nate Gibbons

SOMD Week 7

            Hello everyone! Wow, did we have a great week. This week was all about other religions and how to reach them.

It was so great to learn about some other religions and how we can reach each of them. We learned about Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam, Buddhism, and Witchcraft. We continued to see that, although all of them were far from truth, they each had a bit of truth in them. It showed us that God is always so faithful to point back to Himself. He never gives up on His people. To every people group and religion, God always makes Himself known. That gave us a lot of hope. Some times it can be discouraging when talking to people of other faiths; it seems like they will never understand. We can know that God is faithful and loves them. We will share with them and let the Holy Spirit minister to them on a deeper level.

As we learned about all these religions, Islam and Buddhism both stuck out to us the most. We feel like we are called to working with people who believe in those two religions. This is just even more confirming for our heart to spread the gospel to China. It was pretty cool to get a new piece of what God has in store for us in our future.

On Tuesday afternoon we went on a tour of down town Minneapolis with John Mayer. It was a great experience that we learned a lot during. Minneapolis is home to so many immigrants and especially ones whose homelands missionaries cannot get into.  For example, Minneapolis has the largest number of Somali, Hmong, Oromo Ethiopian, Liberian, Karen Burmese, and Anuak populations in the US, as well as the second largest Tibetan population. We don’t have to go around the world anymore to reach people of a different nation, they have come to us. It is like the great commission has come to us now.

                                           This is John Mayer

                 These are two houses that are right next to each other. The top one

                 has 5 people living in it while the bottom one has 70-90 people living

                 in it. 

This is a garden that is used by some witches around the area

This is the produce section of a Latino store in Minneapolis

These are some Somali kids

This is a mosque above a store

They have camel burgers at the world market.

This is us with our food we got at the world market. It was really good.

It really was a great week that we learned and got to see a lot of neat things. Next week we will be in the Pine Ridge Native American Reservation leading a youth group on a one week mission trip. Prayers for that would be amazing. We leave Sunday the 12^th to drive there and will be back on Saturday the 18^th.

Please pray that we will be able to help minister to the youth group students. They are middle school aged students on their first mission trip. Pray that God would give us the words to encourage them in their faith. Also pray for the Native America children we will be working with. Our class along with the youth group will be giving a Vacation Bible School in the afternoons for the local children. The program is for 5-10…but we are expecting younger and older kids as well. We are excited and know that God is going to do great things during our time there. Thank you so much for all your prayer!

God bless you,

In Christ,

Nate and Julianne Gibbons

Week Six

WOW!!! We're half way through the School of Ministry Development! We can hardly believe how quickly the class has just flown by.

Over the past weeks we have been attending a church in Plymouth, MN. We are really enjoying our time there meeting new people and fellowshipping while studying God's word. A group of us from the YWAM base head out there every week. This past Sunday the church held its annual service in the park. We had worship and the preaching outside at the park on our lawn chairs and blankets. After the service we all walked down to the lake for a baptism. Then we returned back to the pavillion to grill our hotdogs and burgers. It was quite fun. They had some games for the little "children." Our YWAM group of course joined in the fun of the water balloon toss. Some of us got quite wet. In the last game we played, Nate decided that he was done tossing and instead threw his balloon straight at our friend, Jarryd. It was a good time.

This week in class we talked about "Community in Development." We learned that God has created us all to be together and become one as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. We talked about how we can truly be the church, the body of Christ, by removing the focus off of ourselves and back onto God. Our speaker reminded us that sometimes we can get so "caught up" in whether or not we liked the songs we sing at church or the message or the colour of the carpet that we totally forget that coming together with other believers at "church" is supposed to be about worshipping God. We need to stop focusing on our "experience" and simply worship our holy and loving God.
We also were reminded to stop tearing apart our brothers and sisters in Christ, that we each are a part of the body. Some of us may be hands while others are noses and still others are toenails. We each have a ridiculously important job to play, and we cannot spend our time tearing each other apart. It was good for us to remember that we all together form the body of Christ, the church.

We had another Mission Adventures team come this weekend. Nate and I had a chance again to lead worship with the teens. And this time we got to sing together. It was a lot of fun! This team is heading out to the Native American reservation in Pine Ridge, SD. We are excited for them as we will also be heading out there next weekend.

Nate and Julianne leading worship

SUPER AMAZING STORY:

We had a MA team over at the base two weeks ago while they were doing Vacation Bible Schools in Minneapolis. Some of the students and staff at the base got to know the kids really well. A couple students in our class felt like God was telling them to pray for a certain girl on the team. They believed that God wanted to show her His love through them. While praying, they wrote down different things they believed God was telling them to tell her. When they talked to her, she confessed to them that she had given up on God and had been seriously contemplating suicide. She said the last week at MA really changed and probably saved her life. GOD IS SO GOOD!

The MA team loading up supplies

This weekend Julianne's family came up from Michigan for a vacation. They will be camping throughout MN and through the UP. They stopped by the base Saturday night to eat dinner with us. Julianne's sisters, Hannah, Bethany, Moriah, and Sarah, spent the night with us. They came with us to church and then we all drove up to Pease, MN to eat lunch with Julianne's family. We had an amazing time visiting with them.

Thank you so much for following along with us on our adventures out here in Minnesota! We are having such an incredible time our here learning more about who God is and who He has created us to be. We are getting very excited for the upcoming fall DTS. Please keep this school in your prayers. We are still needing more students. Continue to pray and listen to God as He tells you names of people you know who could have a life changing experience through a DTS.

To learn more about DTS, click on the link below:

http://www.ywam-mn.org/index.php/focus

We would also love your prayers as we will be preparing to leave for the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Pray that our hearts and eyes would be open to see these people the way God sees them. And also that their hearts would be open to receive the love that we want to show them. Thanks so much!

We are so thankful for all of you!

Love in Christ,

Julianne and Nate Gibbons

P.S. Julianne went a bit crazy this week...and decided to dye her hair BLONDE! Pictures will be coming soon! :D