Hello friends! This is my second post and it's all about my brother Jon!
Remember my last post about Ignition? Well, this next post will start there. Jon went with his youth group to Ignition one year. While talking to God, he heard God tell him to be a missionary. Of course, he thought this was ridiculous. When he was younger, he heard about missionaries and dreamed of becoming one. But actully being one? Wouldn't that be scary? It probably wasn't even God. It was just some crazy dream that popped into his head, it'd go away. He'd just stay home, it was safer there.
Well, as some of you know, it didn't go away. It grew. But now it was more specific, he was to go to Peru. Now I don't know about you, but I never thought about going to Peru as a missionary. I don't think I had ever heard about it before then. Even if I had, I never thought about it. But that's just how Jon knew it was God. So he did some research and found Youth With a Mission (YWAM). They had four Discipleship Training Schools (DTS) available. A DTS is basically a starting point for missionaries, it deepens your relationship with God and sends you out, ready to share the gospel. The school lasts for about six months, and is split in two parts: lecture and outreach. The lecture phase is learning about God, and it gets you ready for the outreach phase. In the outreach phase, you go to different places, telling people about God through dramas and testimonies.
Jon went to the school and came home in August. But he knew that his work was not done. Having done the DTS he went back to be on the staff team. As a staff member, he has many responsibilities. A few of these are discipling the students (he likes to talk to them one-on-one), he leads worship, and he does some ministery. This is an nonprofit job. Actually, he has to pay to live on the base. But it's worth it. He's changing things. He's making a difference in peoples lives.
This is a story from Jon's blog in his exact words, "I was with one of my fellow staff members here at the base, and one of the two teachers of the evangelism training, who was staying at the base. We had had breakfast at the conference that morning, but there was quite a bit of left over, so we, being the missionaries that we are, decided to go and hand it out to homeless people on the streets. So we loaded it all into bags and took off for the plaza, where, we knew, there were quite a few homeless people. So we start handing out food and we come to a guy in a wheel chair and we decide to pray for him. So we are there praying, and this guy, seeing that we are praying, comes up to me, falls down at my feet, tells me he is a drug adict, and begs me to pray for him. So, of course, I do, and as soon as the others are done praying for the man in the wheel chair, they do to. We starting praying for him, all three of us, and he starts whrithing on the ground, uncontrolably. We talked to him. Spoke words of life to him, but it was very clear to us that he was drunk. Then we asked him if he wanted to accept Jesus into his heart and he said he did, so we lead him in a prayer. He fell to his knees as he repeated the words we told him to say. Then, when we were done, the most amazing thing happened. This drunk guy got up, thanked us all, shook hands with us, declared that he had been set free by Jesus Christ, and walked away, completly normal, as if he had never been drunk!"
Ignition is making a difference the lives of Peruvians through Jon. They have never heard of Ignition, but if Jon had not went, he may never have gone to Peru and changed their hearts.
So that brings us to the end of this post, thank you for reading and God bless!
Sarah
