Winter Quarter Update

Getting ready for outreach!

Well the time has come where seven students and myself will embark on a journey of showing people the love of Jesus Christ. We will be heading to the tiny Island country of Western Samoa. Samoa was hit with a Tsunami that was caused by an earthquake in the south pacific ocean on Sept. 30th, 2009. The tsunami caused large devastation to the island, destroying entire villages and businesses that the people of Samoa relied heavily upon to live day to day. We come with a message of hope for the people of Samoa. The island of Samoa is mostly a “Christian nation” (largely mormon though) but under a spirit of religiosity. A large part of our ministry will be the people of Samoa, making relationships and meeting their needs, physically and spiritually. We will be ministering in the churches there as well, helping re-build at the tsunami site. Our nights will be filled with doing street evangelism and dramas, we really believe God wants to bring healing through our team to people so we are praying for the miraculous! Please pray for team unity, divine appointments with people, health, and traveling mercies! We will leave March 27th and return May 17th 2010.

If you would like to keep updated with our team please send your e-mail address to the address below and we will add you to the list!  ywamsamoateam@gmail.com

My time in Mexico.

I was recently invited to Tijuana, Mexico to help minister in a DTS (discipleship training school) on the topic of “Holy Spirit.” As I was there I had no idea what to expect or how the students would respond to the topic of teaching for the week. I was simply blown away, God really broke down walls that week. I saw students receive deep healing from the Lord that only He can bring, as well I feel it opened them up to a whole new view of what it means to have God’s Spirit living within us. The students and staff were so hospitable to us that it was actually very hard to leave. They kept asking us if we would accompany them to India for their outreach.

Wednesday night was local outreach for the students so I decided to tag along and do some evangelism and test out what little spanish I knew. We went to a place called “zona norte,” this was the red light district of Tijuana. I have never seen anything like that before, prostitutes everywhere, strip bars and drug dealers on every block, I felt as though I had culture shock. We handed out soup and bread to the homeless, prostitutes, and destitute of the area and prayer walked around the bars. God once again broke my heart for what breaks His and reminded me that Jesus always met a physical need then a spiritual need.

It was amazing getting to minister to students in another culture. God really gave me more of a heart for teaching and I pray that He opens up more opportunities for me to go and do just that. I needed this time away, although it was still God moving through me to give out and minister, at the same time it gave me a refreshing and more of a drive to do His work.

Please be praying for these students as they travel to India to share God’s love with the people there!

YWAM Haiti

I just wanted to give a brief sample of YWAM’s involvement in Haiti.

In Luke 16 it talks about, Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, I feel as though we can see this displayed so much in YWAM’s involvement in Haiti.

“It’s not just the physical medicine they need,” Snow said, “but the caring touch of the genuine love of God. The Haitian people are stirred to place hope in something lasting.”

Terry Snow, YWAM Haiti’s national director has been entrusted (staff included) with registering all of the refugees coming from Port Au Prince with identification cards so people may seek help and obtain food as a refugee. This is a large task and quite important one, without these cards they will not get any relief aid unless they have identification to prove who they are. YWAM has been taking on efforts to help with both long term and short term relief. YWAM as well has ordered 200 tents which will provide shelter for refugees as they seek jobs, family members and permanent housing. Up to eight people can live in each tent at $300USD/ tent.

For more information on what YWAM is doing worldwide visit:

http://www.ywam.org/News-Stories

Well until next time, which will be when I return from outreach (May 17th). Thank you for all your prayers and support, remember you are just as much apart of my ministry as i’am!

If you would like to support me, please send it to:

Matt Watson

12750 West 63rd ave.

Arvada, CO. 80004

*All donations are tax deductible.

Fall Update ’09

Winter is on the rise here inColorado!

Iʼd like to send out a huge thank you to everyone that has supported me prayerfully, financially,and with words of wisdom and encouragement in my years of ministry so far. Im entering my 5th year of full time ministry and missions this year. As I look back and reflect at this crazy journey that I have been on I can say it has been a wild one. The Lord has given me the privilege to minister in over 8 different nations in my time here at Youth With A Mission, Denver and my hope is to be able to minister in many more as the years go.

-Currently-

Right now Im currently working with our School of Ministry Development, commonly known as SOMD (we love our acronyms) This school is about equipping young men and women for future ministry, whether that is being on staff with YWAM or serving in churchʼs around the world. Students learn such topics as Biblical Worldview, Bible Study, Pitfalls of Ministry, and many more. My role this fall quarter is facilitating a small group with four young guys who are interested in being in ministry lifelong. They are all eager and hungry for the things of God and it is my pleasure to walk with them as they discover and wrestle with things that many young leaders are faced with. Please be in prayer for these guys, Clayton, Derek, Scott, and Stephen.

-Future-

So you may be wondering what is next for me? Well glad you asked (even if you didnʼt I will tell you!) Through prayer and wrestling a bit with God I have decided to go ahead and stay one more year on staff here at YWAM Denver. Iʼm very excited to be staying another year and experiencing what God has for me and where he will take me. This winter im traveling to teach at a base in Esenada, Mexico on the Holy Spirit with another staff member from the base. We will be teaching for a week from March 1-6. Please be praying for me as this well be my first time teaching abroad and for the students we will be ministering too! This winter  for our Discipleship Training School (DTS) Iʼm taking a team of 10+ to Western Samoa, this is a tiny island located in the south pacific near Fiji. We will leave in March and return around mid- May. We will be involved with the rebuilding of some houses and surf camps that were destroyed in the tsunami that had ripped through the islands earlier this year. We will be working with orphanages and doing preaching and teaching of the locals, as well as visiting villages and ministering in churches.

-Finances-

With entering this new season I have been evaluating the area of “finances,” I have been short about $400 of my monthly goal, if I could get 16 people to partner with me at $25/month I would meet my goal, no amount is too little. As many of you know I donʼt get a paycheck for what I do, I work solely on support from people who believe in my ministry. With the down turn in the economy a lot of us staff have been struggling with finances. I have been living on support for the last 4 years of my life and have never went without, God has always provided for me and I thank Him for that, serving Him is truly a privilege. Would you please pray about monthly or a one time gift to the ministry I do here? If you would like to support me monthly or bi-monthly or even tri-monthly, every little bit helps. All support that is given is tax deductible and you will receive a receipt from our accounting dept. for your donation.

-YWAM Internationally-

Currently YWAM has…

- over 17,000 full time/part time staff

- serving in over 1,200 bases worldwide.

- sending out over 20,000 short term missions teams per year

These numbers are astounding to me not only because I have served with this organization for over four years but each and everyone of you out there that has supported, prayed, or interacted, with myself or other YWAMʼers are a part of this. Please continue to pray for me as I serve here as well as YWAM globally. Next year YWAM will be coming up on 50 years of ministry and missions, praise God for His favor with us!

Please send support to the below address:

Matt Watson

12750 West 63rd ave

arvada, CO. 80004

Please feel free to contact me directly!   605-484-8398

Canada Trip

Day 2

We awoke to a beautiful cool morning in the valley of Creston, BC. We started getting ready and about 6:30am and started driving again at about 7am. The couple that we stayed with explained to us that if we drove south into the states (Idaho) and then drove to Bellingham from there that our trip would be about two hours less of driving as well as cheaper gas, in Canada it has been about 1.07/Liter. So we drove south to the border which only took us about 15 min. to reach and drove on through to Idaho.

As we were at the border crossing a really cool thing happened. We were speaking with the border patrol, actually, more or less being drilled by her as to what we were actually doing going into the states. She has asked me what I do for a living. I explained to her that I work for Youth With A Mission and her eyes lit up with excitement! Apparently she was working with the ’96 Olympic games outreach and everyone that she asked wouldn’t help her except for a group of YWAM’ers, I guess they really blessed her and made such an impact on her life. Well needless to say when she found out thats who we were associated with she stopped asking questions, gave us our documentation back and passed us on through right away. God is so cool, He shows up even in the little things like that and shows that He is SO in control (with all the questions she was asking I wasn’t sure if she was even going to let ME get back into my own country!!)

We drove through northern Idaho, which like Saskatchewan, there wasn’t much too look at while were driving. Now that I think of it as well, eastern Washington was quite boring as well. As we were starting to get closer to western WA. the landscape changed into beautiful trees, lakes, and rivers. So after about 11hrs. of driving we made it into Bellingham, WA. We met up with our friend Jake at his house and he took us out to see the sites in Bellingham, I do have to say that this area of the Pacific Northwest is the most beautiful i’ve ever seen. We went down to the bay and walked along the boardwalk as the sun went down and Jake and I strategically climbed into the blackberry bushes to get a little snack!

Tomorrow we head into Seattle for the day to see the sites etc.. Tomorrow night we will be heading into Abbottsford, Canada to spend time with my friend Josiah as well as see Vancouver. We will be there for about four days. Please pray for safe travel and lots of fun!!! I will update again very soon.

-Matt

Canada Trip

Day 1

So I flew into Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada on July 31st. When I arrived I was greeted by one of my good friends Danica with not only her presence but a Tim Hortons coffee as well. That night she showed me around the city a bit as well, we enjoyed “The Fringe” for a bit. The Fringe is a little music and arts festival in downtown Saskatoon, it was pretty chill, this was just a good time chill and enjoy finally being on vacation.

The next morning we woke up early and got ready to start our road trip across Canada, we loaded up and were ready to drive at about 6:15am. Most of the drive through Saskatchewan and Alberta was quite boring until we hit British Columbia which looks so much like Colorado! We drove for about 12hrs. and stopped overnight in Creston, BC. Creston  was so beautiful, this area of BC is set in a valley and is mostly orchards and vineyards. The couple that took us in for the night was amazing they treated us so well and took good care of us.

So this is blogging huh?

Blogging is a whole new world to me. I figure I should be using this though to keep people updated about things going on in my life.

I’ve recently returned from leading an outreach team of 19 students to Mexico. The outreach went very well and we saw much fruit from the work that we had done in each of the cities we stayed in.

I have been home about two months now and have dove head first into learning graphic design. About three months ago I started learning a little bit here and there, now that YWAM Denver’s head designer left, I and another co-worker have taken on the load (he is measurably beyond me in the field!) I have to say that I just see God’s faithfulness all over this area in my life. Ever since graduating from high school I never wanted to go to college except for graphic design. God obviously had other plans and lead me into full time missions work, I have loved every second of the last for years of my life even though it has been some tuff times I have been blessed beyond measure! So in turn I feel this is another area of God’s faithfulness in my life to be able to learn graphic design and not get into debt doing it!

I will be posting some of my recent work up on this blog. Please feel free to comment, write hate mail if you like, I wont be offended! To all my designer friends out there PLEASE! comment I need your feedback and correction.

I leave next Friday (the 31st) for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Thats in Canada for everyone who may have thought otherwise. I will be doing a road trip all over the western half of Canada (BC and Alberta). So if you think of it please pray for us, we will be driving almost 2500 miles. This is like a vacation for me, since getting back from leading my team to Mexico I haven’t had any time really to just chill and reflect on the last 6 months of working the school.

Thank you for visiting my blog, if you like it suggest it to your friends!

Blessings

-Matt