1st Semester

Nathan's Life Action Site

1st Semester

These are all the updates from the crusades before Christmas...

9/18/02

I'm here! Ok, actually, that statement is completely pointless, because I could never be anywhere but "here." You know what I'm saying. I'm in Chariton, Iowa, and I have been for a week and three days. Sorry I haven't updated until now...no excuses, I'm just sorry (and if you don't forgive me, then you have some biblical issues you need to work out...we'll talk).

Here's what's happened since Thursday, September 5, the day I left Buchanan. Everyone (or almost everyone) came out to say goodbye...we all took pictures, some cried, others laughed, all talked, and we basically just stood around and said "bye" like seventeen trillion times, until we finally just got on the bus and left. We went to Chicago (Dave Safstrom's home town...he's one of our tenors on the team) and spent the afternoon there: ate at a place called "Ed Debevic's," where they are rude to you on purpose and it seemed all the team members didn't take it right...I was jokin around with our waitresses and stuff and everybody else just kinda clammed up. I guess I enjoy being boistrous and goofy since I've spent two summers workin at TBarM. Dah well. We DIDN'T see the Sears Tower (gyp!) but I did walk into some SWEET stores...Nike, Sony, ExpressMen, North Face, etc. It was fun, and I even got to give a lady a tract! She was handing out advertisements for her abilities; nobody on our team really expressed a desire for one, so we continued on, and then I said to JJ (our team director and revivalist's son), "Why didn't you give her a tract, LEADER?!" And he was like, "I'm out of it today." So I ran back to her and asked her if we could trade, so I took one of her "tracts" and she took mine! Praise the Lord for that! :) So we then went and had Chicago-style pizza (yum!) and then went back to Dave's church. We had some host homes arranged for us, so we spent the night at different ones, and met back at the church at like 7:30 or so the next morning (Friday). FINALLY we were on the road to Iowa...

The bus trip was relatively uneventful. We made quite a few stops (and it seemed like I was always the last one back on the bus....hey, I can't help it, I'm curious, just like a cat! Some of my team members call me Whiskers. If you don't get that, don't try), and finally got in at 5-ish (central time, yes, I'm on home-time now). We ate at Hardees (only the best for Blue Team!) and then went to our host homes. I'm at mine with three other guys: Derek Martin, Joel Smoyer, and Rick Roberson. Now, before I came to my host home, I was told by JJ not to ever skip rehearsal or have anything from my host home detract from my ability to minister. These "distractions" being a couple of wave runners he told me about. Well, I didn't know he meant a couple PER PERSON. Neither did he. My host dad owns one of the biggest Harley Davidson (and just motorcycles/motor sports vehicles) shops in the country. He and his family have a HUGE house with two kitchens, two living rooms (each with a monster TV), a very nice gameroom, their own private lake (that they built about 6 years ago), 7 waverunners on it (right now, that number changes all the time...he brings them over from his shop), too many 4-wheelers to count, 3 trucks, and 250 acres of "homestead" to top it off. I cannot explain to you how much in heaven we were as they took us through the house. I look outside every morning at breakfast to see the sun just beginning to softly illuminate the rolling hills across the lake, which looks like a monstrous, odd-shaped panel of glass with the occasional disturbance by a fish or bird. Praise the Lord for nature's beauty, for giving Mr. Chipp (my host dad) this property, and for Harley Davidsons! We'll go into that more in a bit.

Sunday the 9th marked the beginning of the revival meetings at Grace Baptist Church, and we tried to keep the music calm, conservative, and concise (not a great choice for that last word, but I had to keep the alliteration going...sorry!). Basically, there are some people at this church who do not like music with any type of drum beat whatsoever. Nothing wrong with that...I personally don't share that conviction, but they have it, so in order that our music might not be a stumbling block to their receptiveness of the message, we're trying to tone it down a bit.

Bring Back The Glory (the first Sunday night) went pretty well. Two or three minor incidences. One: we could barely fit all the stuff we have to use into the church, therefore the area where we walked, sang, and acted in front of the video screens was a little smaller and kinda differently-shaped than we had practiced with. As a result we often found ourselves kicking staging blocks in the darkness or other things that shouldn't have been happening but weren't too big of a deal. Two: (for those who have seen Bring Back The Glory, you might remember the "chase scene" where it's just silly music playing in the background and people running around on the stage doing goofy stuff trying to steal a money bag from each other) in the chase scene, the outfit I wear is called my "homesteaders' outfit" and I had a little trouble with it. It consists of a pair of elastic overall-ed pants and a baggy solid blue shirt. I was changing backstage (oh yeah, another thing, we had no place to change outfits, so the s changed in the baptismal room behind the stage, and the guys changed on the staircase below the baptismal room...needless to say we had to set up some curtains), and as I pulled on my pants, something felt wrong (and let me bring to your attention that this is a quick clothes change...not much time for it), and I looked down to see my suspenders between my legs instead of on the outside of my legs like they should have been. Trouble. So I yank 'em off and start frantically trying to fix the suspender problem but I was so rushed that I couldn't do anything, so I just pulled them on (backwards, I think), threw on my shirt, and ran out. Well, in the chase scene, I fall on the ground, so after the lights went out at the end of the scene and I stood up to run grab my microphone, I heard a "riiiiip!" With a sense of dread I looked down at the pants and saw there was now a two-inch hole in the front seam of my homesteader pants, which I still had to wear for the next scene. Not funny for Nathan. So I just ignored it and hoped nobody would notice! Three: The speakers went off for about 2 minutes during one of our songs, but as soon as Richard (our sound guy) realized that he had ally shut off the connection to all the speakers (except the moniters pointed at US, which we could hear but nobody else could), he switched them back on and we continued, praise the Lord. So that was BBTG.

Monday, L'Ray Spray (no, it's not a hair product, she's a returning singer on our team) went to the doctor, because her voice had been bothering her, and he told her she had "vocal nodes" which is basically lymph nodes on your vocal cords, which is not good and requires a good amount of weeks of complete vocal rest (no talking, singing, nothing), and often surgery. So be in prayer for HER, please, because it's very hard to lose a team member, even if it's just for a while. One of my roommates at training camp did some mathematical figuring and came to the conclusion that spending one year on the road gets you as acquainted with your teammates as you would be after spending three years in high school becoming friends with someone. So L'Ray is at home in Waco, Texas right now, resting and learning from the Lord, I'm sure.

The revival has been going well...God has showed up and affected many people...4 people for sure, because 4 people got saved on Sunday (the 15th), praise the Lord! Our songs have been insane, in the sense that it's our first crusade, and we're mostly new singers, therefore the songs don't sound quite as good as they should, but it's ok because the people here don't care, and don't really know the difference. They're so fun! Sunday night (the 15th again) we literally had no idea what we were singing until about twenty minutes before the presession started, and we then decided we'd do one we did earlier in the week. Well, Steve changed that right when the presession began, so we couldn't get to some of the singers to tell them about it (because they were in the teen presession or whatever) and therefore a few people didn't know the song had changed until about 10 minutes before we sang it. Please keep in mind that we had not practiced this song since I don't know how long. We made it through it, but it's rough because we're having to cut so many songs simply because the music won't go over well at this church. Praise the Lord for lessons on flexibility and reliance on Him! Crishonda, our music director, is a great example of that...nothing fazes her! Moving on...

There's been a pretty good response to the messages overall...on the night Steve preaches "Grace," the prayer room was packed, and, despite a few complaints about music, no offering plates, etc., God's changing lives, and one of the people who got saved yesterday was my host brother Greg. He's 21, and finally dropped his pride yesterday and admitted that he'd just been playing the game (these are his words). He'd prayed a prayer when he was 9, but didn't mean anything by it, and he knew he needed the Lord now. He's getting married next month, so I figure he couldn't have picked a better way to begin it! Praise the Lord for His salvation "For His mercy endures forever!"

Monday (the 16th) was our day off (praise God), and I slept in, and the whole blue team came over to the Chipps house (my host home) and played. I literally was either on a wave runner, jet ski, or somewhere in between from noon to about 7 pm, with the exception of lunch and a quick sand volleyball game. They had 6 wave runners out on the lake, and I have no idea how many 4-wheelers! It was a good day, a GREAT day, except my eyes are burning and blurry from either dust or water being thrust into them at high speeds! I got sun on my face too! YAY! It'll be gone soon enough, though, and I'll once again be as pale as ever. Oh well. Enough for now, I'm tired and I still have to put the pictures on here. Yes, yes, I put pictures on here. Enjoy...I'll work on details more later, for now, pictures will suffice. Goodnight to all and to all a good night! May the Lord give you abundant grace and peace.

Nathan

9/28/02 1:03 AM

JJ would kill me if he ever read my website and saw the time that I write most of these. Actually, I did tell him about the last one, I guess I'll just have to leave another note in his box tomorrow. Oh yeah, we're in Kentucky.

Harlan, Kentucky, to be exact, but it doesn't reallly matter, these little mining towns are mostly the same. If you've ever seen Dante's Peak (with Pierce Brosnan...you know the one), that's actually very similar to the look and feel of this town, except the mountains around here aren't quite as big (they're more like "foothills"), and the air (at least not yet) doesn't smell of sulphur.

I'm muy excited about this crusade, though, because it seems these people are starving for revival. They've only had the crusade scheduled since July, and they've been praying a good deal since then, and from what my host family told me tonight, God has already done some pre-crusade work, which is a good thing! I'm in this host home with Nathan Paulus for this crusade; he was one of my cabinmates back at training camp, actually. Our host dad is the mayor of Harlan, and their house, though very old (like the 30s), is really quite nice. They have a piano they never play, and my host mom asked me to play this evening :). It is terribly out of tune...like the worst I've ever heard, and she said she wanted to get it tuned on Monday (I guess I'm REALLY gonna have to play it now that she's doing that!)

The pastor of this church has a huge desire for revival, and he told us his prayer is by midweek to have to move to the football stadium for the meetings because of the turnout. Their church holds alot, too. So pray that these peoples' holy passions for God's spirit would be satisfied by a visitation of His presence. I really do feel that, because of the devotion and desire of these people, God's going to do some great work at this church.

We found out on the bus trip here that one our team members' mom is having some major health issues (namely cancer), so please pray for his continued peace and his family's. It's amazing how tight we all are already: when one hurts, we all hurt!

Lastly, before I hit the sack, Corrie came in today. Corrie Vermillion, for those of you who don't know her, was on blue team last year and played a majojr part in recruiting me. She's here because L'Ray is still home and will be home for another 3 weeks or so (she hopes to be back by the Louisiana crusade) and Corrie, therefore, is going to take her spot in Bring Back The Glory. Tomorrow we will therefore rehearse it like 100000 times. So I must sleep now. I'll put pictures on here when I get 'em, so for now you're just going to have to keep looking at he Chipps' house! I pray a specific prayer of blessing for you (all who read my site) and hope tomorrow the Lord gives you a new, fresh reason to rejoice in Him!

Nathan

10/3/02 11:36 PM

It's a little earlier than usual tonight for my update. I realized last time that I deleted my update before the last one without saving it anywhere, so that one's gone forever. Good one.

Well, let's see...Bring Back The Glory went pretty uneventfully, in the since that nothing unexpected really happened, oh, except that during the first video segment all the equipment backstage locked up and Nathan Paulus (the guy who runs the video and projector stuff) had to do all this stuff manually to try to get the program going again, but after that we were fine! Ha ha. Corrie did fine, though: didn't completely forget what she was doing and ruin the whole program, or anything like that. She went home Monday morning.

This crusade has been quite tiring so far: we seem to have a lot less free time, part of that being because some of the songs we are doing, we haven't sung for over a month, because we couldn't sing them at the last church. That means more rehearsal time, although I must admit the rehearsals haven't been bad, and we still aren't rehearsing as much as we did last crusade. I do have to do some extra rehearsal with Chrishonda, Brad, and Stephanie because Brad and I get to play guitar during worship time at this church, which is so much fun, and is drastically improving my proficiency at the guitar, but does tend to take up free time!

I've talked to L'Ray on the phone a couple of times: she's getting some vocal training to help her sing alto correctly (she's really supposed to be a soprano, but if she sang soprano, we'd have 5 sopranos and 1 alto, being Chrishonda, which is not good), because that's the main thing that caused her to develop nodes: she was singing incorrectly. So, she'll probably be back with us in Louisiana, which will be a great blessing because we all miss her a ton and she sings a bunch of solos, so we'll be able to sing things the way we learned them instead of changing stuff around.

Ok, tonight was borderline hilarious. I think I had the most fun tonight than I've had in a crusade yet. I was with happiness club all night (except when I sang in service, of course), so I got to act goofy and crazy and have tons of immature fun, which is what I do best. But, during service, our first song was called "The King" and it's a medley of three "king" songs. It's a gorgeous song, very fun, very high, very hard, and we had not sung it for a month, basically, because the last time we sang it was at training camp, I'm pretty sure. So we kinda "relearned" it today, and felt decently confident about it (although for me, that's kinda pushin it, because I missed part of rehearsal). It starts slow and majestic, and then pretty soon gets fast and light. So we got a little ways into the fast part and all of a sudden the track starts to skip. I would d to see how we reacted...I tried not to get a weird look on my face: I probably just smiled, and I looked down at Steve and Debbie (something Chrishonda told me never to do) and they're silently urging us to continue. Finally Richard shuts the track off and we're singing this peppy, nice little song a cappella. This began to concern me, because this song is long, has too many key changes to be sung a cappella, and I don't know that any of us knew it well enough to sing it a cappella. All these things raced through my mind as I sang. I looked at Steve and Debbie. Steve is conducting us in the front pew, and Debbie is sitting next to him, mouthing the words. The part we were on was a verse, and we sing it the first time in unison and the second time in 4 part harmony, so we got through it the first time and I thought, "Praise the Lord, we made it, we can stop, get off the stage, and do some worship songs," but Steve makes a sign as if to say "keep going!" Yes sir. So Chrishonda comes in on the verse again, early, singing her alto part. None of us recognized that part, so we thought she was singing the melody, therefore that meant a key change had taken place. A key change DOWN. That is not a good thing. Throughout this ordeal, I kept wondering why Steve didn't just cut us off, and I finally realized afterwards that it was because we were on the radio tonight! So as we all sing the words, searching for our new notes and making up quite a few as we go along, we finally get into our new, much lower key (I was doing more growling than singing) and finish that verse, ending at about half the tempo we started at, and with about 1/100 of the confidence! :) Good times!

Looking to be convicted? Read what Laine did our team Bible study on this evening: James 1:26 and James 3. God showed me I needed to ask forgiveness from the team and others for my lack of wisdom in the words I speak. He revealed my words: often rude, sarcastic, negative, and discouraging, and showed me the heart behind them which is sadly the same, since, as Christ said, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. There's my major project for the next whatever period of time....

Oh yes, one more thing spiritual that God's been showing me. A book called The Practice Of The Presence Of God by Brother Lawrence. It's Chrishonda's and I'm reading it and it has the potential to be literally life-changing. It is beginning to change my outlook on and response to situations that don't seem to be directly sent from the Lord (although I know they all are sent from Him...you know there are just those lousy tasks you get assigned to do, or that seemingly ridiculous thing you are forced to spend your time doing). This short book exhorts believers to treat every...EVERY situation as being a direct mandate from our Lord. Brother Lawrence encourages us to, as far as it is possible, do our tasks without any regard for man but only with the goal of pleasing our Lord. It has changed my attitude on some of those things I am made to do by authority that I completely do not WANT to do! Anyways, enough rambling for one night, it's now 12:20! Goodnight/day to you, I'll try to get some Kentucky pictures on here soon. The Lord break you, the Lord mold you, the Lord lead you, and the Lord walk with you. Gimme a call!

Nathan

Hello out there in the homeland!

Well, it's October 8th, and only 10 minutes 'till 11 PM! Hmm...Saturday was the all-day seminar....Family Revival Seminar, FRS, whatever you wanna call it. Not too many s there. Around 30, I'd say. More teens than s. It was kinda depressing. But Sunday there were quite a few people there again, so it was good. Sunday night I met a deaf guy who came to the service with his interpreter (she works for the school district interpreting for a few kids there), and it was a huge blessing. Wait, that was Friday. Yeah, I met them Friday. They were back this evening with two more deaf people, though. It was really encouraging to see them there. Good times. Monday I thought was going to be the worst day I've had since I came to Life Action. It was our day off, and I really just wanted to go home. Sunday night I just wasn't feeling like doing anything, but JJ and Dave said they'd call Monday morning and a bunch of us guys would go hiking. JJ said he wanted to leave at like 10:30. So me and Nathan Paulus (my roommate here) got up at like 9:30, went out and ate breakfast (our host mom works, so she set up an account for us at at local restaurant called "Jay's," so that's where we have breakfast every morning! good times!), got back at 10:00, and waited. A little before noon I gave up hope and called Chrishonda to see what she was up to, and she basically told me JJ and Dave had gone golfing and wanted to go hiking in the afternoon around 2:00. Another guy (Derrick) was supposed to call us and tell us that. He never did. So FINALLY the day got better as we went out at about 2:30 or so to this hiking trail we'd heard about. The end of the trail (after a horrific and painful uphill hike which seemed to take forever and just about KILLED us!) before you head back towards the beginning is the top of the "mountain," if you will, called Knobby Rock. Gorgeous view from up there. See my pictures I put on here! Just click on my photo album over there on the left and then click on the link...it tells you what to do on my photo album page! We had a good time, did crazy things, probably stuff that all of our moms would kill us for doing if they ever saw it, but we're big boys and it was so fun! Ha ha! So it turned out to be a GREAT day....we went to a cookout at somebody's house that evening and it was WAY fun...we had a campfire, smores, those little glow-sticks that you wave around in the air and they have that glow-liquid in them...you know what I'm talking about? They had those in sticks, in straws, and on these things you can put in your mouth, and after all the s had left, we burned some of them and it was the coolest thing ever! One of them sprayed this flourescent stuff everywhere, and it was so fun!

Oh yeah, the car our host dad got for us from the rental place (he's the mayor so he basically, I think, just went a got us a car) started smoking on Monday, so we got a new one today. A Mercury Mountaineer. Like a souped up Explorer. It's nice!

Today we got to go to the high school here in town (there's only one...Harlan city only has like 2000 people in it or something...there's like 20000 in the whole county I think) and sing and JJ preached a salvation message. It was actually at the PUBLIC high school, and it was a school-sponsored thing, where kids could sign out of class and go to this thing, which they actually have every week, called First Priority, at their high school! SO a God thing. Alright, so there are like 400 people in their school, k? The youth minister of our church was figuring on between 50 and 100 being there. 300. Oh yeah! Praise the Lord for that! So I think some of them actually came tonight to the crusade. So pray for them! Other than that, I don't know of much more that would even remotely interest you. I'm so crazy-busy around here. It's hilarious to call the 3:00PM-4:00PM block "Free Time" because half the time it's NOT at all! :) God's really teaching me to serve Him with joy and gladness, though, so it's all good! Call me, email me, or just do nothing (I have a feeling you'll probably do the latter). Pray!

Nathan

Ok, as of me writing this, I'm not technically "on the road": I'm still in Harlan. BUT, in less than 48 hours from now I WILL be on the road, headed for Ruston, Louisiana, the next "Smalltown, USA" destination on this year's Blue Team Crusade Schedule. Not that I have anything against small towns, I just have nothing against thriving metropolises either (how do you pluralize "metropolis"?). I guess those high-falootin big-city people just don't think they need revival! Their loss.

It's one of those days where you wanna just lay around inside and do nothing all day long, ya know? It's cool outside, drizzly (actually I think it may have stopped now), and I have the whole day off. I'm gonna go crazy.

The nearest mall is almost 3 hours away....I'm actually contemplating going...my host mom asked us if we wanted to. We'll see. It's 12:15 right now. PM, that is.

We obviously decided not to carry the crusade over, I don't think necessarily because God wasn't working as much as we didn't feel any need to stay. That's just my opinion, though. God was working here before we came, and I believe He'll continue to do so after we leave; we just kinda helped the process along a little, I think. So that's good. Off to Ruston! L'Ray is supposed to be rejoining us in Ruston on this coming Saturday, if everything goes as planned, so that's quite exciting!

Our team was under a whole lot of spiritual attack last week...myself included, which is exciting in a sense because that means God's growing us and also that He wants to work in this city, and on our team, but also annoying because...yeah...it's just annoying and inconvenient :).

Just over 6 weeks and our team will be headed south to my house for Thanksgiving! I'm already excited...good times! Ah yes, for the musically inclined out there (others may ignore this if you wish), I ordered a book and 2-CD set by Seth Riggs (one of the top vocal coaches in the US....he's taught lots of popular secular artists: Micheal Jackson, Janet Jackson, Josh Groban, Jennifer Lopez, and countless others) on "Speech Level Singing." The book is called "Singing For The Stars" and it teaches you to sing with the comfort of speaking, from the top of your range to the bottom, without having to "raise your soft palate," "breathe with your diaphragm," "pull the sound forward," or do any of those other stinkin music-teacher cliches (nothing against music teachers at all, I simply can't stand those phrases, so Seth avoids them and everything related to them). It's amazing, and has helped me a little already, and I've just begun to train with it. Seth didn't pay me to say that either :). Anyways, it's fun!

I was thinkin the other day about people who stay here for more than one year.....you only get 5 weeks off per year! 2 1/2 for Christmas, and 2 1/2 between the end of the crusade year and the next training camp! Isn't that precious? Dah well, I guess it makes you more appreciate the time that you do have with your family and friends from home! Ha ha! Enough for now; we leave Thursday morning at 8, I think, but I could be, and probably am, wrong. We'll stop in Alabama that night, and get to Ruston the next day. Please continue to pray for us, and I thank you that you have been doing so up until now!

Today's random thought: How DO you pluralize "metropolis?"

Philippians 2:14-16a "Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life." EVERYTHING? Ouch...

So Ruston's history. Sorry, so sorry about the lack of updates this crusade. Road life is crazy, hectic, draining, and everything else that keeps me from getting to this site. Also when the site refuses to update it only puts a damper on my desire to keep trying. Finally it's working, though. Praise the Lord! The crusade here went well. Probably between 5 and 10 people got saved...I think lots of broken families were changed, or at least impacted in some way. There were many powerful testimonies, some about being saved, others about submission to authority, others about anger, others about living in to certain sins, and still others about family relationships.

We head to Greenville, TX next, in case you didn't know. We'll leave Friday morning at 10:30 AM. Don't know much else concerning that, except I'll finally be in the possibly vicinity of a Whataburger again.... *sigh of relief.*

Well, in my life, it seems God's been doing house cleaning, but I don't really know what the finished product looks like yet...I'm kinda in the middle of it still. I guess you could say He's burning away the dross to refine my gold. See 1 Pet. 1:6-9. He recently revealed to me the god of materialism I had begun to enthrone. Caused me to change some spending priorities and some free-day scheduling! :) He's good to me though, there's no denying that. Even if I don't feel at all like He's being good (and I don't) I can say that because I KNOW that He is good to me (Ps. 72:18). So I continue on in this weird thing we call faith, which I can only attribute to Him, for it's not something I can produce on my own (I've tried many a time).

Sorry I don't have any pictures from this crusade. Not much happened worth taking pictures of. It basically rained every day for the whole crusade...literally. It started raining the Saturday we unloaded the truck and I really don't think we had a completely dry day until today...2 weeks and 4 days later!

My host family this crusade consisted of Bobby and Cindy Kranz, two schoolteachers and wonderful parents, and a little 7 year old brother named Lain. We had tons of fun. Sadly, our bedtimes and wake-up times don't really coincide, so, although they stayed up relatively late to chat with us the first week, we haven't gotten to see as much of them as we would have liked. When I say "we" I mean Dave and I. I'm rooming with Dave Safstrom this crusade, or I DID room with Dave this crusade...it's basically over now. We had a good time, some great conversations, and too many late nights!

Thank you for your prayers; they are so incredibly valuable to me. Your support is a great encouragement. The Lord bless you today. See ya sooner!

Thriving under His grace,

Nathan J. Bechtold

Yeah, I know it's spelled G-R-E-E-N-V-I-L-L-E, but it's pronounced "Greenvull." Texas, our Texas, oh hail the mighty state! Texas, our Texas, so wonderful so great! (That's all of the state song I know...) We're here at Aldersgate Church. We've been here since Friday, but I haven't been able to update until now. It's a nice place...I mean, we're in Texas...how could it NOT be nice?! The weather is gorgeous...60s and 70s. Kinda breezy...a beautiful November in Texas! My family came in on Saturday to see me and to see us do Bring Back The Glory on Sunday night. They brought Matt Wells with them (this weird guy from home...), but they didn't bring Ferret or Cookie....dah well. It was good to see them, though...parting on Sunday night wasn't too difficult, either, considering I'll see them in two weeks for Thanksgiving...yeah, the whole team's coming to my house for Thanksgiving. I also had some cousins and my aunt and uncle from Dallas AND my piano teacher from years past come see me too, so it was good times all around! I'm by myself in my host home this crusade...kinda different, but hey, if you know me, you know I thrive on change...(actually, if you really know me, you'll know the complete opposite about me)! Dah well...my host family's really nice and my host mom cooks breakfast for me, and my bed is huge...and low to the ground (I love that), and not too soft, not too hard, and so I like where I am pretty good! Know who I appreciate the most today? The people at headquarters! They're the best...they are such examples of true servants...willing to work (often) out of the spotlight with joy! They encourage me a ton by all the different stuff they do (we literally could not be on the road without them).

I encourage you to let the Lord be your "Abba" today...to allow Him to become more real in your life. I say that because it's what He's teaching me...making my Christianity more of a love relationship. I pray that you may walk in the joyful awareness of His presence today!

Grace and peace,

Nathan

Dear people at home,

It's Wednesday, and the crusade's been....pretty good. Testimonies last night were VERY good, though; they were all about different things that God is doing in people's lives, all "brief" all "specific" and God was glorified. So that was very good. I'd like to see more results, but it's not about me, so yeah....

God has been working a lot, I think, in the area of clearing consciences and in family relationships. There was an amazing testimony last night that one of the elders in the church told. There was a situation in his business a while back that left the potential for him to be very bitter towards another man. I would prefer not to share details, but let's just say it would have been hard for ANYBODY not to be bitter in this situation. He said God told him to forgive, and he had done that, but that God also told him (during the crusade) to restore that relationship...they hadn't talked for 2 years, and the man had not returned his calls. So he said "God, if you'll let me, I will restore that relationship." The next day he went to a food bank to donate some food or something like that, and there was that guy and his wife. They forgave and cried and God was glorified. I LOVE hearing testimonies like that, so it was good.

One week from today and I'll be HOME!!! Don't think about it, just keep your focus, Nathan.....Thanksgiving's gonna be so fun, though! In case you didn't know, the whole team (or MOST of the team) is coming to my house for Thanksgiving...call 210-651-5299 for information on how to help out with meals! :) Yes yes....what else?

I'm in Happiness club this crusade, I love Happiness! The kids are so fun!!! YEEEESSSS.....Uh.....

Our day off! We went to Dallas...by "we" I mean Rick, Richard, Jenna, Chrishonda, Dave, and me. Shopped at the Galleria, got some good Christmas presents, and Jessica's birthday present, since I'm getting home next week on her birthday! Ate at Johnny Rocket's, very fun restaurant, but three bucks for a stinkin hot dog! Dah well. Then we went to the Sixth Floor Museum for a little while...the building JFK was shot from, and on the seventh floor they have all of the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs and some history behind them...I'd already been there this past spring with my family, but I'm glad everybody else got to go and see it for the first time....I didn't mind it the second time either. Uhhh, seriously not much else to report here. Starting to pray about whether or not God wants me back here next year....I'm figuring He probably does, but then again, I figured I'd be at Baylor this year too, so who knows?! So pray for me if you don't mind, and pray for this church too...that God would continue to work in the hearts of the people and the staff especially! Thanks for checkin up on me...sorry if I bored you....Bye bye for now!

-Me

Ciudad de....Archer...

12/2/02

Happy December all! Yeah yeah, so my Spanish is a little rusty...just don't tell Sra. Cantu.

So much has happened since I last updated...you can tell because I've been doing so much other stuff that I didn't bother updating. Sorry. Now, where was I? Ah, yes! We're in Archer City, TX now! We arrived on Friday afternoon, after a not-so-long drive from my house (I'll explain momentarily). This is an 11-day crusade in case you didn't know, which means we will go through next Wednesday instead of doing 3 Sundays. We did NOT do Bring Back The Glory this crusade, even though the people here thought we were going to: I believe they were told that by Del Fehsenfeld, who did the pre-crusade for this church. I don't think he knew that it was going to be an 11-day crusade. I would d to do it again, but we are kinda lacking an emcee and a stage hand, since the Canfields (minus J.J. and Ben) are on vacation right now. So that's that. Now to explain what happened between Greenville and here. We (being the majority of the team) went to my house for Thanksgiving. It was about 6 hours or so from Greenville, but since we have to stop every hour or so (sometimes we can go two) to go to the bathroom, the going is slow. So anyways, we left Greenville on Tuesday, November 26, at about 11:00 AM. We arrived at my church's parking lot at approximately 8:00 PM on the same day. It was good to be home and see the fam, the friends, the house, and of course, the ferret. The s all stayed at a friend of mine's house (notice the space between "girl" and "friend"...just clarifying). Wednesday we all went to downtown San Antonio to walk the Riverwalk in surprisingly cool weather for a November day, and to check out the Rivercenter Mall and Alamo. We got lost for a while....couldn't figure out how to get from where we parked to the mall, but we finally got it, and then proceeded to eat lunch, and split up. Some shopped while others went to the Alamo. We left there at 5-ish, I think, and walked to the Tower Of The Americas (see the pictures...yes I put pictures on here!). That was fun....me, Dave, and Ben hung around outside in the increasingly freezing weather and played with my digital camera, while most of the others went up to the top of the tower to look around. So finally we went home, ate a great mexican food meal that my mom and others had prepared, and just hung around at my house until we decided it was time for the s to leave. Oh yeah, AND we celebrated my little sister's (Jessica's) birthday! Good times. The next day (Thanksgiving Day), the guys (except Brad) went to the park and played a game of noon football. We then came back home to find Chrishonda, Steph, and others working in the kitchen. The rest of the s came over later, and around 3:30 or 4:00 we had our Thanksgiving Dinner. It was mighty good. We took a team picture afterwards (notice the increase in weight amongst team members as compared to the day before in downtown...hee hee!). The next day we left at about 8:30 AM for Archer City, and there you have it! So far the crusade's gone quite well...the prayer cards are detailed...many of these people are very desperate for revival. Even the pastor told his congregation that (and I'm paraphrasing) "if God didn't do something in [his] heart and life, [he] might as well just leave." So praise the Lord that people are already being changed and seeing their need for the Lord, and it's only the first few days! Oh, right! I'm staying with a great family (not like any of my others WEREN'T great....you know what I mean)...their last name is Conrady, and I have three host siblings! A host sister who's 24, and two brothers who are, I believe, 6 and 8, or something close to that. I'm livin on a dairy farm! They milk their however-many cows at 2:00 AM and 2:00 PM. It takes about 4 hours to milk, and then an hour or so to clean up afterwards, so needless to say it's a different life. My host dad actually doesn't do the bulk of the milking, though...he has 3 other people who work out here and they have rotations. Lots of work, but they all seem to love it...I think it looks kinda fun, although I could never imagine doing it my whole life, or especially getting up at 2:00 AM to milk a cow. Oh, before I close this, for those of you who know him, I got to see Brian Cornish's mom Sunday night! For those of you who don't know him, Brian Cornish is a tenor on Red Team and such a fun, godly, and friendly guy. His hometown, Lawton, Oklahoma, is not quite an hour and a half from our church, so his mom and sister came to the service Sunday night! She walked into the prayer room where Dave, Gretchen, Steph, and I were, and introduced herself and we were all like "HI!!!" as was everyone else who met her. Cornish, if you're out there reading this, know you're loved! :) Must go. Talk to you soon. Please pray for the people of First Baptist, Archer City! Questions, comments? Call me! I left my phone charger at home after Thanksgiving, but the parents sent it to me, and it's in the process of being charged this very moment! I'm going. Bye.

OH YEAH! NOTICE ON MY PHOTO ALBUM PAGE, THERE ARE PHOTOS FROM GREENVILLE AND FROM SAN ANTONIO (THANKSGIVING). CHECK 'EM OUT! ARCHER CITY PICS SOON TO COME...JUST BE THANKFUL YOU HAVE THESE! :-P

NOW I'M REALLY GOING...I'M LATE TO BED!

In Our Lord,

Nathan

12/16/02

The first Monday of my Christmas break! I honestly have no idea why I'm investing any time whatsoever in this site during my BREAK considering....I'm on break, and it's probably not any interest of yours what I'm going to do with the next two and a half weeks. So this (sorry to all of you who are reading this) is basically for my own benefit, and for posterity's sake (The Princess Bride, Count Rugan, "Now remember, this is for posterity, so be honest. Tell me, how do you feel?"). Moving on.

I got home on Thursday, December 12: the last day of the crusade was Wednesday, so Colt and I met between there and Denton (where he goes to school) and we drove home in his truck. Basically my break consists of seeing people, and getting some chores and "to-do" things done at home. We go to Corpus Christi on the 21st to have Christmas with Mom's family. Then the 26th we head to Misourri to have Christmas with the Bechtold family until the 1st, I believe. I'll get home probably that day, maybe the 31st, and then I fly back up to Michigan on the morning of the 2nd. That's that.

The Archer City crusade was wonderful: the pastor seemed to be very changed by the end, very humble and in obedience to the Lord and thankful for what He has done and is doing. Very encouraging! I LOVED (and still love :)) my host family! I had a different relationship with each one, but quickly grew to love each one dearly!

I'm so thankful to the Lord for His love and mercy for us. This "first semester" has been such an amazing show of His greatness, faithfulness, and agape love! In the times during this year that my heart denied Him, didn't know what to do with Him, or if He even was who He said He was, God still gave me the strength to endure, to continue pursuing Him, and to continue serving! Through a lot of the emotional and spiritual and mental struggles I've had this year, He's shown me how very much He loves me, and that He rewards my perseverance in pursuing Him. The best thing about that is that HE gave me the strength, ability and desire to seek Him when I asked Him, and He prompted me to ask Him, so that makes Him all the more great and loving! I LOVE what He's doing in me so decidedly and intentionally, and all of it has taught me to love Him in a passionate, REAL way that I have never experienced before. His grace amazes me daily, and I am SO THANKFUL to Him for choosing to change me, to draw me into a relationship with Him, to continue to purify me, and to look out for me. I've found He cares more about my spiritual and physical well being than I do, through many occasions in which He worked out things that I wouldn't have even asked for, but later realized that it was to my benefit. He is a good God! I'll put some pictures on here throughout break, and be back online sometime in the first week of January, when our first crusade of the second semester begins in Big Bone, Kentucky!

Thriving Because Of Him,

Nathan

Sing to the Lord a new song!