An exciting announcement

So.. We're pregnant.. 

We are very excited to announce that Erika is due at the end of May! We're not sure of the sex yet, but we will let everyone know as soon as we do! Erika had been feeling pretty lame so far, but it seems as though things are getting a bit better.  She is growing a human after all!! 

So happy to announce this and have you share in our excitement.  Love you all 

Jason and Erika

Autumn for the Goodfellows

So far it is a lovely autumn here in Lakeside.  We have crisp, frosty mornings, and then the fog rolls in for most of the morning.  After that, we have clear blue skies and sun for the afternoon.  We are trying to soak it up, because winter could come any day!

We are currently busy getting ready for the Winter DTS students who arrive in January.  Jason and are setting up the school schedule, corresponding with our students, and booking speakers right now.  We meet weekly to pray with our group of 14 staff over new student applications, as well as just praying for God to work in students' lives, both now and when they come for DTS.  We are still helping out in a few logistical positions for part of the day, too.  Jason is working in housekeeping, and I am trying something new by helping in the accounting office.  I am blown away by the amazing generosity of all who support this ministry and the people in it as I work there!  You all probably have no idea of the incredible impact that people like you have all over the world by your generous gifts and prayer for YWAM's ministry and its missionaries.  Know that I thank God for you all and pray his blessings for you as I work there!

We are also helping out with the Alpha course this fall.  Our base is hosting it for the first time, and if you haven't heard of it, it is a weekly meal with a talk about various important topics in Christianity, followed by a discussion.  It is geared toward non-Christians, and a very relaxed and non-confrontational way for them to learn more about Jesus and to be loved by his followers.  We have a small faithful group that has been attending, and we are so excited for what God wants to do in their lives through this, as most of them are not Christians.  It is a time for them to discover the meaning of life, and the giver of life.  We would appreciate your prayers for this new endeavor!

Jason reached an important milestone this year.  He was honored this past week at a staff gathering for 5 years of service at YWAM Montana.  He is actually coming up on 6 years here, but they honor staff for 5, 10, 15, etc. years once during each year.  I am proud of him!  He has served faithfully during his time here, and is so committed to helping people discover God's calling on their lives.  Jason is passionate for people to realize how deeply they are loved by God, and for that revelation to transform the way they live their lives.

We really feel full of thankfulness in this season, and we are especially thankful for you!

Your long-lost friends, Erika and Jason :)

Hello!

It has been awhile since we last updated....we have had a very full summer!  It's only the second week of September here in Montana, and already the air is turning brisk and colors are in the beginning stages of changing.  We hope you all had a great summer, with time to relax and be refreshed.

We have something very cool to share with you all.  Our YWAM campus has just completely reinvented our website, and it is amazing!  It presents what we do here in a much easier-to-understand way than maybe we could even communicate in person.  Photos, videos, and articles are good at that.  :)  Please take a minute to check it out!  It is beautiful and easy to navigate.  The website is:   http://ywammontana.org/
   
Also, this article was written by a great student of ours from this past Winter DTS.  She shares her story of DTS and reaching out in Brazil in a lovely, poetic way.

We are looking forward to a wonderful Fall quarter here.  We are expecting around 120 new students to arrive in less than 2 weeks, hungry to learn more about God and to be equipped and sent!  Jason and I will spend the majority of this fall preparing for the upcoming Winter DTS, which we are leading again.  This involves lots of emailing to put things in place, reviewing/praying over applications, and doing staff training.  We are looking forward to what God has in store for this group!

Jason and I remember you all often and thank the Lord that we have such wonderful people in our lives to pray for and support us.  We love you!

Brasil photos

Happy Summer!  We are so grateful that summer has come a little early in Montana and that we've gotten to enjoy a few warm, sunny days.  This is usually a rare thing in June!  Here are a few photos from our time in Brazil.  We will be sharing them little by little with you all, as well as stories.  I know pictures usually say it best, though.  :)

55 people walking through a favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro!

Borel....a slum where people have prayed for many years.  Now, this place has very little
violence and has seen a few drug lords come to know Jesus!  So awesome!

A school in Rio where we sang, did dramas, dances, and shared testimonies.
So many students were touched with God's love!

Rio school

Powerful drama about freedom

Dance

Jason and Erika on Ipanema Beach

Celebrating Easter in Rio...we surprised the students with an Easter egg hunt.  :)

We also celebrated Easter with a Brazilian style barbeque.
Jason's dad joined us for ministry in Rio....it was wonderful!

Some of our students with Brazilian students and YWAM missionaries in Curitiba.  

A much needed date for Jason and me in downtown Curitiba.
We were so surprised to find this beautiful cafe!

We helped build a  new house for Rosalie...her house was destroyed by termites.
She was a grandmother to all of us!

I'm serious about painting here!  

These are just a few photos...you'll have to check back next weekend for some more!


Love, Jason and Erika

We're Home!

Hey everyone!

   We are home!  We got home last Friday after a long flight from Rio De Janeiro.  Our time in Brazil has been incredible!  People here keep asking us how Brazil was and that is one of the only responses we can give.  The whole DTS did so well there and it was very rewarding for us to be leading a group like that.  Ministry was like cutting through butter because of God, and we tangibly felt the prayers that people poured into our time in Brazil.  Really, it made such a huge difference to have a lot of people praying for us, and for that we are thankful.

We have been waiting to share a story with you guys until we got back to keep it as a surprise....so here it is!!  I know it is a little long, but I promise if you read the whole thing you'll be glad you did :).  It takes time to tell from the heart a small piece of what God did on our outreach.  Again, we are so grateful for your prayers.  We feel like this was a total divine appointment of which you are a part, also.

     This is a picture of a lady named Rosana (pronounced Hozana), and her husband.   We met her in Curitiba, Brazil, in the south.  We did a soccer ministry in the mornings there, and then visited the parents of the boys that came to play in the afternoons.  So one day, we were walking around the poor community with our ministry contact, and felt like God was leading us to go Rosana's house.  We found out quickly that she was very upset with something that was going on in her life: she had recently been told she would die of cancer within the year.  She told us that she was going to the hospital at the end of the week to sign a document refusing further treatment, as the doctors gave her little hope of it making any difference.  So we prayed for her there and then invited her to a weekly worship service that the YWAM base was having.  She showed up with two of her sons, and we all prayed for her at the end of the service.  She seemed to appreciate it, but left without saying anything.  The next Monday we visited her to see how she was doing, and she was very excited to see us.  Through the translator we found out that her doctor had run tests and scans again and came back completely dumbfounded.  He was confused at the fact that there was NO CANCER IN HER BODY!!!  Rosana told him that she had been prayed for the night before and that it felt like fire had gone through her body as we were praying. She told us that she slept through the night after we prayed for the first time in forever, without pain, because God healed her of cancer.  Needless to say the doctor was stunned, we were stunned, and she was incredibly grateful that God gave her life again where death was coming to take it away.  It was so exciting and wonderful to celebrate what God had done with her  and her family that day!

There were many more things that happened on this outreach, but this is definitely a taste of what it was like in Brazil.  We love this country and would go back again any day!  Feel free to call us or email us if you want to hear more about the trip.  There will be a ton more pictures to come.  Check out our Facebook pages as well for pictures.

Love,

Jason and Erika

Update from Curitiba, Brazil

Hello Everyone! 

We are very excited to share a bit of news with you guys!  We left for Brazil a month ago having no idea what to expect.  In such a short amount of time Erika and I have so enjoyed our time here: with the people, the culture, and the ministries we've worked with.  Though we have come to serve, we have experienced the most amazing hospitality here.  We have learned so much about friendship, and have been blown away by the way that even people who have hardly anything will bend over backwards to show our team that they are cared for and loved. (The food is also really good...we have both been saying they really know how to eat down here.  The Brazilians take their food very seriously, a lot like us..haha.)

Our ministry times in Curitiba have looked like this: 

-Reaching out to a poor community by going door to door and praying for people and sharing the gospel with them.  We have seen several people healed and touched by God so far. Amazing to be a part of! 
-Playing lots of soccer and sharing testimonies of how God has worked in our lives afterwards with kids from the surrounding community.  They come for English classes, soccer coaching, woodworking, and discipleship with an amazing YWAM ministry here in Curitiba called Hope Project.  
-Helping build a home for an older widow whose home was destroyed by termites :(. 
-Teaching English and much more! 

We are very thankful to be here and work alongside the long-term Brazilian missionaries here...we have learned so much from them!  They are amazing and so hospitable and loving to our team.  Wish you guys could see and hear everything for yourselves, but here is a little taste :).  Bless you today! Hope you are doing well! 

Love, 

Jason and Erika 

Reaching Out To Brazil

        What an amazing country Brazil is!  We feel so blessed to be here doing God's work.  We are in one big group of 57 people (including Jason's dad for 11 days) and man is it fun to be together like this!  It is our first time to do outreach with such a big group, and our ministry times on the streets attract people right away.  Worship has been an amazing way to draw people in, as well as dramas, dances and testimonies.  Wow, has it been fun to be able to encourage each other from different perspectives of what God did during these times.   Jason's dad hasn't been on an outreach in about 10 years, so this has been an incredible experience for him as well to be able to go out with a group of people and minister again.  He is such an encouragement and example to all of us, as staff and students.

One highlight of our outreach times so far has been doing evangelistic programs at schools in a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro.  At 3 different schools, we have been able to share the gospel with close to 3000 teens!  It is so evident that the Holy Spirit is touching their hearts, by their tears and their desire to pray with us.  We also had the opportunity to prayer walk/worship through a favela (slum) that used to be one of the most violent ones in Rio.  A man named Pedro has been ministering there for the past 22 years, and said that through God's intervention and doing prayer walks there in the past 5 years, it is now a safe place for everyone!  They no longer war with the neighboring favelas.  Also, the top drug lord of that favela came to watch us pray and worship for a while, and Pedro said that he had an experience with Jesus recently that changed his life!

Thank you for sending us to Brazil.  We feel so privileged to be a part of what God is doing here.  We have seen a lot of lives touched and we still have 6 weeks to go!  Please pray that we would have energy to continue to press into what Jesus has for us here; we want to be involved in all of it!  If you want to see a few photos of what we are doing here, check out Erika's facebook page!

Love, Jason and Erika

Hello Seattle!

Hello from Seattle!

The entire Winter DTS and staff are here for the week to share God's love with the people in this city.  We are being hosted by an amazing church, Westminster Chapel, that is the home church of some good friends of ours who are on staff in Montana.  We are partnering with them for some outreach opportunities, as well as just showing up in parks and places where people congregate and asking God for opportunities!  So far, our group has been able to talk to a lot of people and pray for them and bring encouragement.  Seattle has a very diverse culture, and our students are so excited to understand and share God's heart with people who are often ignored or marginalized.

This week is such a great opportunity for us to put into practice all that we have been learning these past 6 weeks.  I think one of the most important things is that ministry MUST flow out of our own place of rest in God's love.  If we aren't filled by him, we don't have much to give.  The little that we do have is then given out of our own strength, and then, we burn out quickly.  If we learn how to stand at our full height as daughters and sons of Father God, we can see people the way He sees them, and have something to share whether or not we have anything in common with the people we meet.  Jason and I personally have been so challenged and refreshed by the reminder that we must be continually going to the Lord to fill us before we try to give anything away.  I hope it is an encouraging reminder for all of you as well - don't go it alone!  The Father has so much rest, love, and peace that he wants to lavish on you today.

Please be praying for divine appointments, health, and safety for us this week!

Love, Erika and Jason

So thankful for a place of rest!

So.....in absence of a typical update this week, I finally did something I know I told you some of you I would do over a year ago!  I uploaded some photos of our little home!  We have only lived here like a year and half now.  :)  I will try to do photos more often on the blog, but I guess because my laptop is so old, it literally takes 20 minutes to upload 10 photos!  I am just praying the trusty old thing holds up a little longer.  Our home is kind of like an efficiency apartment.  It was renovated from an old hotel building.  The story behind it is so cool!  This hotel was located on the lake about a mile from where we live.  The hotel was old and not in fantastic shape, and a couple in the community wanted to donate the lakefront property for a city park.  Instead of demolishing the buildings, they donated them to YWAM, AND paid to have them moved onto our property!  It was an incredible answer to prayers here over many years, asking for more staff housing.  Some amazing staff here renovated them into little apartments that have been lived in since Fall 2010.  Our cousins, Josh and Emily Brooks, made a fantastic short video about this gift.  Here is the link if you are curious!  

We feel incredibly blessed to have such a cozy and peaceful home to come home to after very long days of ministry.  Thank you all for being a part of providing a place that is a haven of rest for us, and also one where we can invite people in and show hospitality.  Hope you enjoy your little tour!

Love, Jason and Erika

Our front door

Right inside the door

The living room

Kitchen area

The kitchen itself!

Main part of the "house" - living/dining/desk :)

Bedroom...sort of a room, I guess.  :)

Bathroom

I love this little fire pit area that a church team made for us this summer.  

The outside of the building - obviously it doesn't look like this in February.  :)

                                                And that's it!  Come visit us sometime!

A New School for a New Year!

Well, it has been much too long since we updated.  I guess that is just an indicator of what a whirlwind it became once we started doing staff training for this DTS.  We began staff training in November and continued until Christmas break.  It was a great time of discovering God's heart and vision for this group of students together.  We not only were able to train staff with the logistics of running a school, but to also learn together how to be better disciplers and servants.  This time was so essential to us coming together as a team and being equipped for this task that is now upon us!

Jason and I were really blessed to spend a wonderful Christmas with his family in South Carolina.  All of the family got to be together and we made some really sweet memories, as well as just getting to relax and be spoiled with good food.  :)  It was such a blessing for us to rest before jumping into the full-on schedule of DTS.

So here we are, on week 3 of the Winter DTS!  We have a really mature group of students who are ready to go after all that God has for them.  I know this training/discipling time will fly by.  The school is really excited about outreach - we are taking the entire group to Brazil!  We will be all together for a couple weeks, and then divide into smaller teams and disperse to different cities for a few weeks before coming back together.  Jason and I will be going, along with 6 other staff.  We are so looking forward to how God will use these students to bring light to dark places.  Please be praying already that God will create divine appointments for our team in Brazil!

We hope that each of you and your families were blessed with a peaceful Christmas, and that this New Year is full of fresh revelations of how deeply Jesus loves you.