Kona Update - February

Hello! If you follow this blog regularly, I am sure you have noticed the lack of activity. Most of the updates have been on our Facebook group, so join us here! ~Humphreys YWAM Trip~ We have been posting stories, pictures videos and random updates there often.

So we are in Kona, Hawaii! Tough learning missions isn't it? Here is the run down so far, we spent the first month on Catalina Island in a boy scout camp in Emerald Bay. Beautiful place, but also very isolated. We had some amazing teachers there and were able to really come together as a group, more of a family really. Our class has families that brought babies, to teenagers and some in every decade of life right into the 70s! A very diverse group. We had four different teachers on Catalina, and they all centered around the same idea, our identity with God and His heart for us. The last few days on the island were crazy as our 2 1/2 days of clean-up and pack-up quickly turned to 1 as there was a storm coming in and we had to pack in a hurry. We said our goodbyes to the staff of Emerald Bay and half the group took the local ferry and the rest of us had a lovely 3 hour trip on a sailboat to get back to the mainland. The next 3 days were full of adventures themselves as we all lived in offices and a gym, waiting for the day when we would fly to Kona. Then on the evening of February the 8th, we arrived here and were carted off to the University of Nations for the rest of our classes and training before we go on our individual outreaches.

Life here on campus in Kona is incredibly diverse and certainly unique. With nearly 1000 "Y-Wammers" running around it is a stark contrast to the isolated island of Catalina. But we have met with amazing people from all over the world. They have many scientific inititives here on campus, such as the new transmedia center, the food machine and many more (you can read all about the campus here). It would take pages to just scratch the surface of all they do. So maybe a future update :) . In short, experiencing the incredible environment of Kona (snorkeling, the ocean, weather and people) and the enticing life on campus has been an eye opening and certainly enjoyable.

Onto the future, as we will be going on outreach to Australia at the end of March! We will be heading to Townsville to meet up with our outreach leader who has been stuck in Australia as she is trying to solidify her citizenship there. Then we will be going around to many towns, cities and various villages (Ozzy and Aboriginal) to bring hope, aid and whatever else we can for the people there. Along with that we will be helping to pave the way for the flying car (Maverick) to arrive which will be used to reach villages that would otherwise be lost on their own in desperate need of social and medical help. The original plan was to spend about half of the time in Australia and the rest of the time on a medical ship to Papua New Guinea, but unfortunately that fell through as the ship became full before we could be accepted. We will let you know if that changes though!

In you want to support us, the best way is to pray! That is always the first thing we need for success here. Secondly, we still need financial support to finish this trip and get us to Australia. We have about half of the outreach fees in and all we need to do is pay the rest and support our personal bills through May. To give, either mail them to us (660 Arleta PL NE Keizer, OR 97303) or you can even pay online here! Just make sure to put in the comments that it is for Eric & Lauren Humphreys' outreach. We will try hard to continue to update you all, and thank you for the prayers!

Sunday Update!

Sunday Update: January 8, 2012

Where We Are
It is January 8, 2012 and Lauren and I are at a boy scout camp on Emerald Bay which is part of Catalina Island in California. We do have a little cell phone service, just enough for texts and phone calls. This last Friday we arrived by boat at Two Harbors, which was pretty crazy with 5 foot swells and a speeding cruiser. YWAM (Youth With A Mission) staff met us and drove us down dirt roads on steep cliffs to the camp.

We are all living in cabins; each with electricity, 4 bunk-beds (8 beds) and a space heater. The showers are another thing, because of the extreme expense of water on the island (which is classified as a desert island) we have to take “combat showers” which means getting wet, soaping up, then going back to rinse off. There are 3 other married couples with us and we are each blessed with our own cabin. Lauren and I used 6 of the mattresses held together by a sheet to make a bed for us on the floor. We use the other 2 mattresses and another sheet to use as curtains since all of the windows are bare. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

What We Are Doing Here

This weekend has been all about resting up and grouping up. The staff and fellow students are all incredible people. There are also about as many church denominations as there are people, from Pentecostals and other charismatics, to Messianic Jews and even Baptists ^_^. YWAM, which has graduated almost 4 million students through DTS programs all around the world represent over 200 denominations and 96 languages.

This next week we start classes, LOTS of classes. They have about 9 hours of class planned for each weekday. For this upcoming week the focus of the class will be “The person of Jesus and the cross” taught by Brian Brennt. We learned today that all the lessons we will be learning will be posted free online! So for anyone who wants to learn along with us, I will post the link/information as soon as I know it. Future speakers include the following: John Dawson, Dan Sneed, Loren & Darlene Cunningham, Dean Sherman, Christian Fox, David Hamilton, Danny Lehman.

We are very excited as there are some very big names on the list to come and speak.

For our time here on the island, we are supplied with a wetsuit and snorkeling gear. As I type this Lauren is out with a group snorkeling around an island just outside the bay. It is very beautiful here and a surprising amount of wildlife. Yesterday a couple in our group woke up to a bison right outside there front door.

Last night, we have a special dinner where we invited representatives who wanted to welcome us to the island as we study and grow together. There were pastors of churches from the 2 major cities, Two Harbors and Avalon. There was also a family who were descendants of the natives that first lived on this island. They gave gifts, and told amazing stories of what God has been doing. For example, decades ago the churches on Catalina divided, even amongst themselves. But a faithful few have been praying and working toward uniting them and today the churches are not only whole together and join as churches as a Catalina family.

Where We Are Going

Now that we have finished orientation, we have a very clear idea of what the next 5 month will look like. The mission statement for YWAM is “To know God and make Him known.” It implies that to make Him known we have to first know God. This is why there is so much training involved. This trip is a DTS (discipleship training school). Anyone who is involved in YWAM has to complete it. By the end we will be considered trained enough to be full time missionaries, that we will be able to go out and be effective. This does not mean that we are going to be missionaries, there have been 4 million graduates but many of them will instead support and send others, having an appreciation of what they are doing. Regardless of the future outcome, the focus is for both Lauren and I to learn about God in a place without the normal distractions of life. It really is an amazing privilege to be here and be able to release old habits and form new ones that will be with us the rest of our lives.

As for the outreach phase, this Friday we will know how much they cost, then we are to pray over the weekend and decide where we are going. So by the time Sunday roles around again we will be able to tell you where we will be going and how you can support us.

Here are the options of where we could be going:

-Australia/Papa New-Guinea

Here we would be touring with a flying car (the Maverick), filming it in action and using it to reach remote villages and the aboriginal people.

-Catalina/Mexico

Here we would spend a month in Catalina and a month in Mexico reaching out to local residents.

-Amazon

We would be in Brazil on a river boat called Bethesda helping bring aid and the gospel to the river people. They are not even recognized by the government because of the level of poverty among them.

-Europe

We would sail around various ports in Europe to promote the Olympic games in the UK while evangelizing to people.

Follow Us!

The morning of Wednesday January 4th 2012, Lauren and I will leave to go to the YWAM base in Huntington Beach, CA. We really want to thank everyone for supporting us. We have taken down the meter because at the moment we are pretty much there! We have someone who is living in our space back here in Oregon, and we have enough money for the tuition, our bills for 5 months and about 1/3 of the outreach phase! That means that within the next month we will be letting everyone know what we will be doing for our outreach and what further support we will need. Thank you, by the way, all you amazingly loving and generous people who have helped us fund this adventure. FYI, in case some of you didn't know, the DTS program with YWAM is an accredited school and we will both be receiving college credit for the trip!

We plan to update everyone on facebook and on our blog at least every Sunday, if not more often. We are still not sure why God has led us to go on this trip, but we hope to keep you all informed and share the exciting things that God is doing in and through our lives.

Help Send us to YWAM!

Lauren and I have an exciting opportunity this coming January to go on a 5 month school missions trip with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The school/training would be in Hawaii and the missions would be done off of a ship in either Colombia, Australia or Scotland. We are so excited for this opportunity to help people around the world. We ask for your prayer in the areas of fund-raising, our housing situation, and God's will. Thanks so much for your support! We will share more information with you soon.

Eric and Lauren