The night is darkest before the dawn.

It has been such a great week! God is good. Did you know that? He is good when things are going great, and He is good when things are going terribly.  How often do we feel that when things are going badly for us, God is somehow not good anymore? It is all based on our perspective my friends, God is unchanging. God says that He loves us and values us, that too is unchanging. I just wanted people to read that and I pray that it encouraged some of you!

So once again, this has been a great week. I began taking classes at the BSC (Biblical Studies Center, or Center for short), and I love them. It is so awesome learn in a classroom setting about how the Bible was put together, how to defend your faith, the context of stories in the Bible, and how truly awesome our God is. I have got to meet several awesome people who I have began building great relationships with and I am so thankful for that. Several of these people have already invested in the ministry that I am trying to build here and have a true fire for the Lord.

As some may know, I am now an old man. I turned 22 on Monday and it was a great birthday, albeit a little different than I am used to. I have never been away from my friends and family this long, and never around the time of my birthday. Honestly, it didn't bother me the way I thought it would. I missed everyone of course, but that knowledge that God has me for His purposes is comforting beyond all belief and has really helped me with any homesickness that I have been feeling. I am so blessed. Tangent time. Do we really realize how blessed we are to know Christ and live in this wonderful country? I was laying in bed, and all I could think about for a while was how lucky I am to have a bed. To have central heating and air. To have food. To have water that flows continuously and is clean. To have a bible. To have freedom. Christianity is not growing like it did in America years ago because we have everything we could ever want. We have made ourselves dependent apart from Christ, and we forget that Christ is the one who provided the means for us to have all these things. My question to myself and you is, if everything was taken from you, would you still follow God? That is a tough question to face, but every second of every day people in less developed countries make the choice to follow Christ no matter the circumstances.

Tangent over.  So anyway, God has truly blessed me with friends back in Lubbock, and He is now blessing me with awesome friends here in Boise  who love Jesus. People who barely know me decided to throw me in impromptu surprise party for my birthday and we got to bond and share our vision for our respective ministries together. God has already provided people who are more than willing to help with the ministry we have here and it is such an answered prayer! I am telling you folks, prayer matters. I can't stress that enough, prayer matters. We had our first free lunch for all the student body at BSU today, and we had about 30-40 people show up. Most who did so were people that I knew and who knew Christ, but God brought others who I had never met before and it is my eager prayer that they will continue to come and we can form stronger relationships and grow in Christ together, or introduce them to Christ.

I had a great conversation with my friend Elisa who is helping me out with our ministry. We were talking about witnessing to people and I told her how I had been feeling really down and out because I could not work up the courage to simply go talk to someone about Jesus just out of the blue and share my faith. She encouraged me and really prompted me to listen to what God says and look for the opportunity. Just because I am a missionary does not mean I have some super awesome Jesus skills that I did not possess  at home. The same fear and trepidation that I experienced back home are still here, they don't disappear. But the key to overcoming these feelings is to trust Christ and listen to what He is telling you! This does not go just for me my friends, Jesus calls out all of us! We talked about relational evangelism and how that is usually the way that people respond the most positively in this area, as well as around the world. I can do that. But if God calls me to go witness to someone I don't even know, I pray that I will be strong enough to trust Him. Micah Roddy told me something about youth ministry several months back that will remain in my life forever. We were talking about investing in youth and really sharing Christ with them and he said, "You have to remember, this is not life or death we are talking about. This is heaven and hell."

Hell is not exactly a place that we like to talk about is it? But it is real. And here is the thing. God doesn't send anybody to hell, we are already going there (thanks to David Wilson for that awesome lesson). In fact, God doesn't want anyone to perish, that is why He is so gracious to wait before He comes back in final judgement (2 Peter 3:9). God has placed so many obstacles in our way on the path to hell because HE WANTS US. When we don't choose heaven and the free gift of salvation, we choose that we don't want to spend eternity with the one who desires to have fellowship with us, and God is just and good and honors our desire to not know Him and allows us to spend eternity away from Him. The price has been paid for sin, but until we repent and turn to Him, we never receive the free grace that has been given. Sin and God don't mix. But God took care of it, all you have to do is accept Him and his free gift. Isn't it so awesome to know that you don't have to be good enough to go to heaven? I could go for hours on this, and if you are interested in salvation and what it looks like, contact me! This is real my friends. This is truth. This is awesome.

I love you all, and once again contact me if you need prayer for anything. I also ask that you pray for Luke Anderson. His father passed away yesterday from liver failure and we need to lift him up with our thoughts, prayers, and actions. But don't worry, God is in control and Luke told me that his dad was a believer.

God bless,
Phillip