January Update

hey!
Wow, this last month has been one of the craziest and most eventful months since moving to Vancouver! How have you been? Let me know some of the events in your life...

Going through changes
So there are a few pretty big changes going on in my life right now. One you already know about, I am getting married to the wonderful Alexa Blevins on the 12th March 2011.  With all that comes married life together and the changes that brings as you can imagine. Also over the last few weeks I have been praying and processing a lot about my calling in Vancouver and where I feel God is taking me and where God is taking Alexa and I.

Let me try to unpack all of the recent goings on. As you may have read over on the right in the prayer requests before reading this that I will be leaving YWAM Vancouver. Now this wasn’t an easy decision to make but it has been a decision that has brought a lot of excitement to me as I believe God is calling me to something more suited to where I am at right now and I am excited for what that holds. I will be joining a different YWAM group that is based in Vancouver called “YWAM Nexia”. This group is a national team that is based in Vancouver. They focus heavily on promoting missions around the country and continent. They go to churches, schools, youth groups and talk about missions and YWAM and how people can get involved. I have a heart for this. But the biggest reason to “switch bases” is that YWAM Nexia are running an internship that is already established and already has leaders and structure. This is something that I have realised that I have really wanted. Since being in Vancouver it has been a journey of trying to pioneer an internship which has been unsuccessful because at the end of the day that was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to be part an internship that looked like the one I was pioneering but much of my time was taken up with the administration of it all rather than the “doing”, this started to cause restlessness. Another reason for me preferring the internship that YWAM Nexia are offering is that I am at a place where I feel I need more self-development and growth, I talked about this in a recent blog. I felt my priorities, in short, were to work on my relationship and growth with God and really focus on that and give more time to that and to work on my relationship with Alexa. With these in mind the internship with YWAM Nexia seemed to suit well. Alexa is also very keen to do this internship and we decided as a couple, before we were engaged, that we wanted to do it together.

I’ll try to bring it all together…
I will be leaving YWAM Vancouver on the 11th February and flying down to California on the 14th February, spending a month there planning our wedding, going to pre-marital counseling, and also serving with YWAM in Modesto. I have been blessed with a place to stay and my own room for the time while I’m there. We will be getting married on the 12th March and then after a honeymoon, approx 10 days, we will be moving to Vancouver as a newly wedded couple and starting the internship with YWAM Nexia on the 4th April 2011. The internship is a year long and our plan right now is to go to England in April 2012 where we will look to find somewhere to live while we serve with outreaches during the London summer olympic games and then come September 2012 we will start a Bachelor of Arts in Theology and World Missions at Oak Hill Bible College, in North London. Three years later we will complete the course and then who knows! We both have a big passion for working in the local church and in missions.

How’s that for a lot of information, eh? So to try and portray in one e-mail is hard so please be checking my blog to get a better feel for my heart behind decisions and also just for more frequent updates. Also please do write to me, I love to hear from you and I love to answer questions, be challenged and walk on this journey knowing I am in relationship with you.

For wedding updates and information please visit our “Wedding blog”. We currently have very little money towards it, so if you can help in that way the please get in contact, more details on the blog.

Finances. The subject I don’t like to talk about but I need to share with you where I am at and where I need to be. Currently Alexa and I have around $850 a month support coming in from very generous and faithful givers. This has been able to keep me serving as a single in Vancouver. Alexa and I need, as a couple, a bare minimum of $1,500 a month, ideally closer to $2,000. Feel no obligation or pressure to support us financially but if you feel led to partner with us for this year as we do an internship and start married life together then please get in touch.

Thank you again so much for reading these updates and for partnering with me so far in this journey, in prayer and encouragement. I hope that I have kept you informed to your satisfaction. I would love to be praying for you so please do let me know how I can be. With distance and business going on I am sad that I don’t get to chat with you more.

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I want to leave you with a passage that’s been speaking to me:
"….I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." [Eph 4: 1-3 - NIV]

Blessing to you in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ,

Your brother,

Joel

Anyone would do it.

Today as I was walking to the building we meet as a YWAM group I watched an older gentleman stumble and fall to the ground. Face first as there was nothing he could do to stop himself. I rushed over to help him up and to make sure that he hadn't injured himself. He slowly got up holding onto my arm and then thanked me as I briefly looked over his face for cuts. 

We both went on our days.

My first thought was anyone would have done the same thing in my position, I didn't do anything special. Atheist, Christian, Agnostic, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, anyone... They would have all done the same thing. Maybe the only difference is I prayed for that man as I walked away that he would remain safe and get home. 

So my first thought is "what makes me different?'


This led me to keep thinking and it is so clear that anyone in my position would have helped that man, anyone. 

Why? 

Why do we feel like we should help him? We don't know him, he is just a random person. He isn't going to reward us or marry us off to his gran-daughter. What is inside us, all of us, that causes us to want to help that man?


CS. Lewis calls it the Law of Human Nature. We have installed in us from the day we were born that there is a real right and a wrong way of doing things.

Why is that inside of us? How did it get there? Why does everyone around the world, whatever background, whatever stage of life, however they were brought up, know that it is Right to help that man up?

Why?
 


I'm going to end with a quote from CS. Lewis' book "Mere Christianity":

These, then are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

The New Year.

Happy New Year everyone. Thanks for being with me over the last year, your support and prayers have been incredible. This was my second Christmas running that I spent in Vancouver, but it looked very different to last years.

The new year brings changes. I am currently praying and talking through some things that could cause big changes. I will keep you posted as they develop.

The first change that came with the new year was that I decided to no longer have a laptop. This came after some prayer and consideration on what I actually need it for and if it is more of a distraction than a tool of production. It also became clear that Alexa would really benefit from having a laptop as she works on raising support and finances to continue her work with YWAM. With this decision came the purchase of a iPod Touch (4th Gen) using Christmas monetary gifts from family and friends. It became apparent that most of what I use a laptop for can be done on an iTouch. I am able to check e-mails and stay in touch. But it is harder to stay on it for hours on end wasting time. I have already started feeling the benefits and feeling more free. The iPod Touch has replaced my laptop and my mp3 player (which I also gave to Alexa). In all of this YWAM has donated me an old desktop eMac which I will use to do word processing and write support letters or blogs (such as this); things that I do find more difficult on an iTouch.


So far I feel like this has been a good decision. I am trying to remove distractions from my life and also exercising the value of giving and letting go of things that I feel I need.


So yeah, that is a brief update. I felt I should share.


I will hopefully be sending out an update letter with "bigger" news by the end of next week. After I have moved into my new place.


Stay in touch. Do write or Skype (joey.upton).