words with will

Missions Mobile...

2011-05-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

Yup - it’s that time! With 3 kids in the car, things are getting awfully tight in our Honda Wagon! While Eisley is still peacefully residing in Lori’s belly, any day she will be out and we will be cramming her infant seat in-between the boys booster seats in the back. Don’t even get us started on how traveling will work with these 3 kiddos! We overflow the car with just the boys as it is, not sure how we’re going to add the baby’s stuff to the mix when it’s time to go up to Oregon this summer - camping no less! This is why a larger vehicle has become necessary for the Barrow Bunch.

We have been looking at different vans, and the Honda Odyssey and the Kia Sedona are our two top picks. We’ve found a couple of each that could be within a good price range for us, so now we just need the remaining funds to make a deal! So far we have been able to save up about $5180 with our tax return and some generous gifts, and our goal is to raise almost $5000 more! We hope to be able to sell our other car, the Dodge Neon, for a couple thousand, but there is some work we need to do on it before we can proceed with that. Hopefully we can get that in the shop next week and have it sold before we know it!

This is where you all come in! We need to raise the rest of these finances to be able to purchase this van as soon as we can for ease and less frustration for Lori wrestling with car seats! :) Please consider donating to our van fund and thanks to all who have already!

If you would like to donate towards our van. We would really appreciate it, and all donations are tax deductible.

If you live in the US:
you can donate online at http://www.ywampismobeach.org/donate.html

or you can mail a check made out to Youth With a Mission at;
YWAM Pismo Beach & Central Coast
791 Price St. #119
Pismo Beach, CA 93449
Include a separate note designating Barrows Van Fund

If you live in Canada:
you can donate online at http://www.ywamcanada.org/donations.html

or you can mail a check made out to Youth With a Mission at;
YWAM Canada
Project Funding Office
PO BOX 57100
Vancouver, BC V5K 1Z0
Include a separate note designating Barrows Van Fund

If you have any questions, leave a comment or send us a email at willinpismo@gmail.com.

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Will, Lori, Eli, Liam and on her way slowly but surely, Eisley

Missions Monday

2011-03-28T14:41:00.001-07:00

Last week was crazy busy for me. I got to work in Eli's school two days last week and Lori was teaching in our YWAM Pismo Beach DTS. So last week I missed my Music Monday blogpost. But 6 out of 7 weeks isn't that bad. This week though, I thought I would switch it up and post a video that I saw on the YWAM facebook page.

We spent part of our morning praying for the countries in North Africa that God would use these times to bring more people into relationship with him through Jesus. We prayed this portion of Psalm 72 from The Message;

Because he rescues the poor at the first sign of need,

the destitute who have run out of luck.

He opens a place in his heart for the down-and-out,

he restores the wretched of the earth.

He frees them from tyranny and torture—

when they bleed, he bleeds;

when they die, he dies.

Please continue to pray for the people of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan and the surrounding areas.

Music Monday - The Honey Trees

2011-03-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

Music Monday this week features The Honey Trees. Becky Filip and Jacob Wick make up The Honey Trees. They have some really amazing music. I'm not going to write a lot, but what I am going to say is that you should definitely check them out.

If you happen to live in the Central Coast, they will be playing a free acoustic concert at Kreuzberg,CA in SLO at 9pm. They will also be playing on April 10th with Sparrows Gate and Bonnie Dune at SLO Brewing CO. for the amazing price of $12.

Check them out on Facebook or Twitter. If you want to purchase something find them at http://thehoneytrees.bigcartel.com/

Now take 4 minutes and let your ears enjoy some amazing music.

Music Monday - Gungor - "God Is Not A White Man

2011-03-07T23:27:00.001-08:00

I saw this video a couple weeks ago by the band Gungor. Michael Gungor leades the band, which use to be named "The Michael Gungor Band."

Gungor lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife and is a christian worship leader and singer/songwriter. It is here that they founded a community of believers called "Bloom."

I really like this song, one of the lines that he repeats is, "But God is love, God is love, and He loves everyone. God is love, God is love, and He loves everyone." This is something that I have really been trying to live out. That I would be able to be the type of Christian that displays God's love. Unfortunately, a lot of times the church does not do a very good job representing the love of God. There are the people from westboro baptist that are definitely not displaying the love of God, and it breaks my heart every time I see them on the news. I did just see a cool article about these veterans that are going to the same places as the westboro baptist protesters and blocking the grieving families from seeing them with their hateful signs. For that article click here.

To read more about Michael Gungor check out his site here.

Music Monday- U2

2011-02-28T21:28:00.000-08:00

I came across this cool book/interview with Bono and Michka Assayas. Some people may not enjoy Bono, or the way that people use his name for everything. I have enjoyed U2 for a long time, and I really think the things that Bono is bringing to light and using his fame to bring awareness to are amazing. How many celebrities use their fame for really pointless things, too many to count. The work that Bono has done to bring awareness to AIDS in Africa is amazing!

I loved this article, so check it out and when your done enjoy a sweet video!

Bono Interview: Grace Over Karma
(Excerpt from the book Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas) from The Poached Egg blog.

Bono: My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don't let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well, I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that's my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that's not so easy.

Assayas: What about the God of the Old Testament? He wasn't so "peace and love"?

Bono: There's nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you're a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

Assayas: Speaking of bloody action movies, we were talking about South and Central America last time. The Jesuit priests arrived there with the gospel in one hand and a rifle in the other.

Bono: I know, I know. Religion can be the enemy of God. It's often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. [laughs] A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship. Why are you chuckling?

Assayas: I was wondering if you said all of that to the Pope the day you met him.

Bono: Let's not get too hard on the Holy Roman Church here. The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. The physical experience of being in a crowd of largely humble people, heads bowed, murmuring prayers, stories told in stained-glass windows

Assayas: So you won't be critical.

Bono: No, I can be critical, especially on the topic of contraception. But when I meet someone like Sister Benedicta and see her work with AIDS orphans in Addis Ababa, or Sister Ann doing the same in Malawi, or Father Jack Fenukan and his group Concern all over Africa, when I meet priests and nuns tending to the sick and the poor and giving up much easier lives to do so, I surrender a little easier.

Assayas: But you met the man himself. Was it a great experience?

Bono: [W]e all knew why we were there. The Pontiff was about to make an important statement about the inhumanity and injustice of poor countries spending so much of their national income paying back old loans to rich countries. Serious business. He was fighting hard against his Parkinson's. It was clearly an act of will for him to be there. I was oddly moved by his humility, and then by the incredible speech he made, even if it was in whispers. During the preamble, he seemed to be staring at me. I wondered. Was it the fact that I was wearing my blue fly-shades? So I took them off in case I was causing some offense. When I was introduced to him, he was still staring at them. He kept looking at them in my hand, so I offered them to him as a gift in return for the rosary he had just given me.

Assayas: Didn't he put them on?

Bono: Not only did he put them on, he smiled the wickedest grin you could ever imagine. He was a comedian. His sense of humor was completely intact. Flashbulbs popped, and I thought: "Wow! The Drop the Debt campaign will have the Pope in my glasses on the front page of every newspaper."

Assayas: I don't remember seeing that photograph anywhere, though.

Bono: Nor did we. It seems his courtiers did not have the same sense of humor. Fair enough. I guess they could see the T-shirts.

Later in the conversation:
Assayas: I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?

Bono: Yes, I think that's normal. It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Assayas: I haven't heard you talk about that.

Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

Assayas: Well, that doesn't make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I'd be interested to hear that.

Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled . It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.

Assayas: That's a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it's close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world's great thinkers. But Son of God, isn't that farfetched?

Bono: No, it's not farfetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: "I'm the Messiah." I'm saying: "I am God incarnate." And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You're a bit eccentric. We've had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don't mention the "M" word! Because, you know, we're gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no. I know you're expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he's gonna keep saying this. So what you're left with is: either Christ was who He said He was the Messiah or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. This man was like some of the people we've been talking about earlier. This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had "King of the Jews" on his head, and, as they were putting him up on the Cross, was going: OK, martyrdom, here we go. Bring on the pain! I can take it. I'm not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that's farfetched

Bono later says it all comes down to how we regard Jesus:

Bono: If only we could be a bit more like Him, the world would be transformed. When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all my s--- and everybody else's. So I ask myself a question a lot of people have asked: Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was He just a religious nut? And there it is, and that's the question. And no one can talk you into it or out of it.

Music Monday - OK Go

2011-02-21T17:57:00.000-08:00

Music Monday this week features OK Go with their song "This Too Shall Pass." OK Go is originally from Chicago, Illinois but now, like almost every band/star, they reside in Los Angeles. When you think about it though, who wouldn't want to live in California? Besides all the debt in California, it really is a beautiful place to live!

I first heard about OK Go a year or two ago with their song "Here It Goes Again." These guys are super creative when it comes to their music videos. The music video for "Here It Goes Again" is the band doing a crazy dance to the song on treadmills.

Then last year sometime I saw their video for this weeks song "This Too Shall Pass." After I decided to feature OK Go on Music Monday this week, I thought I would really check out the lyrics for this song. Some of the lyrics from the song say;

You know you can't keep letting it get you down

And you can't keep dragging that dead weight around

Is it really all that much to lug around

Sadly, a lot of us do this. We keep all this dead weight on us, and things keep piling up on us until we feel like we can't take it anymore. There have been some times where this has been so true for me. What has helped me in these times, is I give these things to Jesus. I lay them down, and try to keep moving forward. I don't want to pick up the things that have held me down. Psalm 55:22 says;

Pile your troubles on God's shoulders—

He'll carry your load, he'll help you out.

He'll never let good people

topple into ruin. (the message)

I'm not sure if this is there were going for when they wrote the song, but it's what I'm getting out of it. So in the words of OK Go;

Oh, you can't keep letting it get you down,

No, You can't keep letting it get you down!

Music Monday - Mumford & Sons, Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan

2011-02-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

Maybe you've been living in a cave or under a rock some where, but you really need to check out these two bands.

Mumford and Sons are an amazing folk rock band out of England. They have been my most favorite Pandora station as of late. They formed in 2007, and released their album Sigh No More in 2009.

The other is The Avett Brothers who I just recently found out about, and they are equally as good! I recently heard that one of my friends saw them live and said it was the most amazing night of his life! So take the next eight minutes and treat your ears to some amazing music.

Here is Mumford and Sons, The Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan performing at the 2011 Grammy's.

Music Monday - Eisley

2011-02-07T16:26:00.001-08:00

So this week's musical selection is in honor of my coming daughter. Lori and I have been trying to decide on a girl's name for a while. We went back and forth on names, well it was mostly Lori suggesting names and me saying no. Lori was looking through a baby book and saw the name Eisley (Apparently it wasn't in the book, Lori had heard the name from our good friend and author Mary, check out here blog at http://mchristineweber.com). We both really like it. It didn't have anything to do with the band, they do have some really great music though. So check out one of their songs below and if you like it check out their website at http://www.eisley.com/;

Music Monday - Lakes

2011-01-31T07:47:00.000-08:00

Today I'm bringing you the sweet sounds of Lakes. The local Central Coast band that started in June of 2006, . They released their first EP, "Photographs" in 2006. Their first album, "The Agreement" was released in September of 2010.

Lakes is the creative genius of Seth Roberts, Jeremy Wells, Matthew Covington, Justin Sears, and Jacob Wick.

Show them some love and repost their video.

you can find them on:

the web: http://www.lakesband.com/
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lakesband?ref=ts/
twitter: http://twitter.com/lakesband/
myspace: http://www.myspace.com/lakes

Steps of Justice

2011-01-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

One of my good friends Phil Cunningham, who just so happens to also be from Canada, has created an easy way to not only learn about justice issues but also gives you some ideas on what to actually do about it.

Alot of times you hear about justice issues, and it leaves you with this feeling of, what can I do about it? Well, Phil and his good friend Wayne Shaun created and dreamed up the "Steps of Justice Prayer Guide."

The Steps of Justice 30 day Prayer Guide is a great way to spend a little bit of time each day reading about injustices like, slave labor, child prostitution, unclean drinking water, lack of opportunities for education, lack of medical care, overwhelming poverty, corrupt government and many other issues affecting our world. It's a great tool to help direct you in steps you can take to bring justice and God’s light to a world longing for it.

More ways to find Steps of Justice;

web: http://www.stepsofjustice.org/
facebook: click here
twitter: http://twitter.com/stepsofjustice

creative...

2011-01-17T22:54:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago now, it doesn't seem like it was that long, but i started Hope Eternal Clothing. I came up with a couple of designs that i really liked. One of them was a giant print with a fingers crossed, and the other was a dandylion being blown in the wind.

I have been busy with other projects, so i recruited our Swedish staff friend Paulina, who is amazing and incredible and newly engaged to Robert. Our boys love Robert, he's amazing too! The idea with Hope Eternal is that all the proceeds will go towards medicine, food, clothing and shelter. We have a couple different ministries that we are going to be giving toward to cover all of these areas. One of the areas we want to see an end to is the horrible crime of human trafficking. So here is our newest Hope Eternal Design...

Heading to Nicaragua!!!

2010-11-08T11:15:00.001-08:00

Dear Family and Friends;

As I leave for Nicaragua today, I was reminded of Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” After praying we decided that only I (Will) would go on this trip to Nicaragua, while Lori and the boys stay at home. We are looking forward to some huge things that God is going to be doing while I am in Nicaragua.

I’m writing you to ask you if you would keep our family in prayer over the next 7 days. Two weeks ago, one of our cars broke down. Luckily we have two cars so we have been able to drive our second car. However, last night we got a flat tire. It was one of those awesome times where you get to change the tire in the rain! So after one of our friends had come to help us, the spare donut tire got a flat 1/2 a mile down the road. Luckily he was still following us and was able to take us home. I really felt calm the whole time, which, as we all know is not the way most of us want to respond in those times. Today I have the added pleasure of getting a new tire for the car in addition to my last minute preparations before leaving for Nicaragua at 4.

So we need prayer! I will be gone from today, November 8th, until next Tuesday, November 16th. Please be praying for me and my family. Pray for safety & health as I travel to and from Nicaragua, for Lori and the boys at home that they would be safe, for Lori to have a peaceful week with the boys with extra patience, healing for Liam as he has had a cough for a few days now, and for Lori to not get to sick this week from her pregnancy (or anything else!).

Thank you for all your prayers, we know that you support us so much during these times of travel and separation.

Psalm 71:14 “But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.”

God Bless!

Will, Lori, Eli and Liam

Jesus said what?

2010-05-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

I wonder what life would be like if we really lived the words of Jesus. I think life would probably be a whole lot better.

I've been reading articles and books on injustice issues happening around the world. It makes you really angry sometimes that there are people around the world that could take advantage of people the way they do. We showed a video at Fathers House Church a couple of weeks ago, about the wonderful people at Westboro Baptist church in Kansas.

Matthew 5:43-48 states it well. Pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

I love the way that the message says it. Matthew 5:43-47 "I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that."

I recently read an article in the Mission Frontiers Magazine titled, "Loving Bin Laden - What Does Jesus Expect Us To Do?"

What does it look like to love our enemies, to let go of bitterness, hate, those people that have said horrible things about us, done horrible things to us. What does it look like to do what it says in Luke 6:28, "bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."

How will you respond this week when; you learn someone has done something horrible, the person that cuts you off in traffic, the one that gossip's about you, that co-worker that has it out for you. How will you respond to your enemies? My challenge to you is to take a deep breath, say a prayer, and if at all possible, love them and bless them!

Pictures To Save Pictures...

2010-04-30T16:19:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, in an attempt to quickly see what my son was up to. I tripped over a cord connected to my laptop and knocked my external hard drive off of my night stand. It only fell about a foot, onto a backpack, but it no longer works. I've taken it to several people and the only hope there is for my hard drive is to send it to San Francisco, and have these guys take it into their clean room and fix my hard drive.

The mac superstore gave me their number, I called them and after their diagnosis, the told me they had great news. Because all that was on my hard drive was jpeg's, so I qualify for the jpeg discount. "Sweet," I though to myself. Then the guy on the other end of the phone said, with your 10% referral discount and jpeg program, it will only be $950.00. Wait a second, I though he said he had good news for me.

Because this hard drive has all of Eli's baby pictures, and a ton of pictures from around the world, we've decided to do it. Well to cover the cost of the hard drive repair I've decided to try and sell some of my pictures to save my pictures. I've been trying to decide which one's i want to put online. I'm going to try and create a site, but here are some that i'm considering. If your interested in any of these photo's at all, let me know.

Love, Peace and Justice

2010-04-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

Well here's my attempt at trying to blog again. I go through blog phases where I post alot, then not so much. So I'm going to try putting up small posts once or twice a week. We'll see how this goes. It may take me a time or two to find my voice and actually get my words out right, but here goes.

This week I'm going to start with a trailer for Hillsong United's new movie "The I Heart Revolution: We're All In This Together" and a look at Matthew 25

I've been on this journey learning about Justice issues around the world and what is God's heart for these issues, and what are we suppose to do. This video has been rocking my world the last couple weeks. So take 4 minutes and watch this trailer and then lets take a look at Matthew 25.

When we forsake the lives of others, We actually forsake our own. WOW! I think this is what Jesus is saying here;

Matthew 25:34-40
³⁴"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
³⁷"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

I think that Jesus is calling us to act. Each one of us has something that we can offer to the horrible injustices that are happening around the world. Even the ones that are happening in our own backyards. There have been several reports of human trafficking right here in the Central Coast.

• How do we help the poor in our world – Whether in our backyard or across the globe?

- If they’re hungry … we bring food.

- If they’re homeless … we provide shelter.

- If they get sick … we provide medical care.

If they get abused … we bring relief and advocacy.

It seems pretty clear...

I recently drove out of Burger King and saw a homeless guy sitting with a sign. I had just come from a meeting at our church. It was 9:00 pm and not really the time you see someone sitting with a sign at the end of a Burger King driveway. I saw him while I was waiting for my food. I thought about giving him some money, but then like the movie above, the thoughts of what if he spends it on drugs or booze. So I drove past him on the way to my friends house.

I got half way up the street and had to turn around. I drove back to the parking lot and parked my car. I had $10 in my wallet, so I walked over to the guy sitting on the curb holding his cardboard sign. For the next 30 minutes I sat and talked to the guy that so many people had driven past assuming he would spend the money on booze. While I was sitting there I got to learn that he was staying in a hotel up the street with his wife and two kids because they had just lost their home and job. I got to pray for my friend, and gave him some options for help in our area. I haven't seen my friend holding the cardboard sign again, but i've been praying for him and his family.

I'm not saying give money to every homeless person you see, but maybe we should? I know some people buy gift cards to fast food places, all good options.

I think the important thing to remember is to not just drive by/walk by and assume we are to do nothing, but we should pray and ask God what he would want us to do.

Haiti Update #3

2010-01-21T15:19:00.000-08:00

Hello from Haiti,

Today was a great last day here for us in Haiti. We spent the day registering people into a ID card system so that they can be registered as refugees from Port Au Prince. We registered at least 150 people today. Not quite the mass numbers that we had heard yesterday but it was definitely a great day meeting people. The sad part was seeing all these people coming through that have lost everything. We got a few times today where we had some lulls in between people coming through, so I would go over to the area next to the YWAM base where we have all the people that are sick. It was so good to just sit there and play with the kids, laugh with them and attempt to speak french with them.

At the end of the day we took a walk through the local neighborhood and took some pictures of the kids and and some of the adults here. We had a parade of children behind us as we were taking pictures. Haiti is a beautiful country full of just beautiful people. Please keep praying for all of the people here in Haiti and all the teams that will be coming through.

Tomorrow we will be heading back to the Dominican Republic to catch our flight on Saturday. The time has gone by so fast here and I wish we could stay even longer, but I'm really excited to see my wife and boys.

We will be praying about ways that we can come back down to Haiti and bring more care, support and love for the people of Haiti.

Thanks for all your prayers!

See all you Central Coast people this weekend and don't forget about the Missions Evening at Fathers House, 2100 Ramona Rd in Atascadero, California on Sunday, January 24th. Please come and Join Us!

God Bless!

Will

Haiti Update #2

2010-01-20T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hello from Haiti,

Today was definitely a crazy day. As most of you have probably heard we started the day with a 6.1 earthquake that was later downgraded to a 5.9. Where we are here in St. Marc it only lasted for about 3 seconds and definitely didn't feel like a 5.9. However waking up to a earthquake is quite an experience when your in a room with about 30 guys on the second floor. We all jumped out of of beds and ran downstairs in our boxers. I'm pretty sure it was done by the time we got out of bed, but it was a crazy way to wake up.

The hard part is that right next to where we are staying in the sports field is the temporary refugee camp with people that they can not fit at the hospital. I believe there are 56 people here that are injured. Most of these people should still be in the hospital. I'm pretty sure there are people with broken bones and cuts that are very infected. All of these people are laying on mats underneath a steel structure. So when the aftershock that was very similar in sound to the massive earthquake they went through, got up and tried running out from under the building, most of which should not even be walking. So when we got down stairs it was a mass of wailing and crying as people were hurt again from trying to get out from under the building. These people are living in so much fear of the earthquake as they have gone through so much pain and loss.

We started the day out praying for Haiti, YWAM's Rescue Net team in Port Au Prince and that God would continue to guide them to rescuing people from the rubble and give them wisdom when they come to something beyond them. We also prayed that God would miraculously heal people. We also prayed that God would give YWAM a strategy for reaching out to the country of Haiti. After our epic prayer time, we had breakfast. Then we got to enter all the peoples info next to us into computers and create ID badges for them.

***When I dropped French in ninth grade, I told myself I will never need this again. Little did I know then that I would be coming to Haiti. My French has been coming back slowly and has been a help when trying to communicate with the people here in Haiti. Most people here speak Creole, which is a mix of French and Tribal stuff, or they speak French.

This afternoon, we attempted to move about 40 of the injured people to another facility to free up room here at the YWAM base to host teams. We were told that the location was only a couple minutes away. I guess that's Haitian time because we drove for about 40 minutes through the jungle out of the city, across rivers, through very uneven road, and massive puddles, all with very injured people. When we got to the location we found out that the rooms were up about 100 yards from the road and we had to climb about a 45 degree hill to get there. So to make a long story shorter, we ended up turning the trucks around and bringing the people back here to the YWAM base to stay here again.

Tomorrow begins the massive project that some of the staff have been trying to co-ordinate, in bringing 3000 people up to St. Marc from Port Au Prince. Now that was an early number from yesterday, today that number is up to possibly 8000 refugees that will be coming to St. Marc from Port Au Prince. Please be praying that as this massive operation takes place that God's safety, patience, peace and grace would be on all involved.

To catch you up on Tuesday we spent the morning helping clean and gut out an abondoned school house/clinic building. A team from Lancaster County, PA (in my opinion the missions sending capitol of the world, every person I meet in missions from PA is from Lancaster County) fixed up half of the building today so that YWAM can start using it as a clinic.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon with the refugees next to where we are staying helping nurses clean peoples wounds...while wearing gloves :) It was a full afternoon of caring for people.

Please be praying for us tomorrow and everything that will come our way! Please also be praying for my amazing wife that is at home with my two adorable boys. Lori has been such a blessing to me as we prayed together and felt like I was to come down here this week. Pray for peace, rest, strength and patience for her as she is home with the boys. I miss them like crazy!

God Bless!

Will

HAITI UPDATE

2010-01-18T18:15:00.000-08:00

Hello Family and Friends,

Here is a update of our last couple days of travel which I will try to write as best I can, I don't have Lori here to edit for me ;).

Friday we ran around like crazy getting the final things before we left for the Dominican Republic and Haiti. We left Pismo around 9:00 pm. We had to stop in Santa Barbara and pick up some supplies for Rescue Net a medical first responder team from YWAM. We made it to YWAM LA somewhere around 12 or 12:30 at night.

We woke up after 2 or 3 hours of sleep to leave Saturday at 4am for the airport. After a long day of traveling from LAX to Chicago, to Miami, to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic (D.R) we arrived at the YWAM base at 2 in the morning Sunday. We were planning to leave first thing on Sunday for the border on a taxi and then were going to have to figure it out from there. It turned out we ended up spending Sunday in the D.R, which was a good thing.

A team from Pennsylvania showed up with 16 people, and we were able to ride on a 50 passenger bus with them to the border on Monday. We then get on another mini bus from there to St. Marc, Haiti. ***i got a free tetnus shot at the border as well, because I couldn't remember the last time I had one. Don't worry it was all clean :)***

So crossing the border actually ended up being very easy. We were also part of a World Vision caravan that when we got to the border they just opened the gates and let us into the country. So I guess because I have no stamp in my passport I haven't officially been here. The plan was for the group that was coming here to St. Marc to go part of the way to Port Au Prince (PAP) and then take a north route to avoid the craziness of PAP. The World Vision group would continue on with our SWAT style Police escort that all teams must take from the border due to safety issues :) Somehow our van ended up driving all the way into the craziness of PAP. It was heartbreaking. There were so many buildings that had fallen and apparently we didn't even see the worst of it. We saw many refugee camps set up in parks and empty lots around town. We drove right past the Presidential Palace. It was completely destroyed. We drove by one gas station that had atleast 15 people standing around the pumps with cars lined out the driveway and down the street. It was hard to drive past all the people and see the hurt on their faces. Many of these people have lost loved ones. We pulled in to the main police headquarters and then realized we had not taken the right road. Our driver then drove very fast through the streets of PAP to get us North towards St. Marc.

Our original plan was to stay with a DTS student from last year whose family had moved just north of PAP. It now turns out our past student Philip will be staying the week with us here in St. Marc. There are many people that are fleeing from PAP and coming to the surrounding cities. Just today the local hospital who should only have 120 people but currently has 410, brought 50 people to the YWAM base to lay in their soccer field under shelter. Tomorrow it sounds like we are going to be gutting an old school and turning it into a temporary clinic.

There is so much that needs to be done here. Just today this temporary clinic here at the YWAM base gave a boy 5 stitches that he has needed since last wednesday. The hospitals and clinics have been giving people amputations if they have a compound fracture. This is just crazy that someone will not have one or more of their limbs for the rest of their life because of a compound fracture.

I will try and write more tomorrow. After we have spent the day out in the city.

Godbless and THANKS for all your prayers and support!

Will

rest for my soul....

2009-03-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

So for the last couple of day's i have been enjoying the great Northwest. I led worship at our church sunday morning and had a great time. God really showed up and i had a great time worshipping him. Immediately after church we hopped in the car, grabbed some in n out and headed for San Jose. I got on a plane and flew to Portland. I got to spend Sunday and Monday with Tierney in Portland and going through all the YWAM stuff.Tuesday for lunch me and T had a delicious Lebanese lunch. It was really good. Some amazing lamb and chicken kabob's. Tuesday afternoon i headed to Salem.

I've had a great time here the last two days just relaxin and getting refreshed. I spent some time reflecting on the positive things God had done in the last year. Some of the things I came up

with were Lori, Liam and Eli, God's provision in our lives the last year, Growth personally and as a base, vision for the future, picking focus countries for the base. It's been a good time, connecting with God and friends.

....

This post didn't get posted the other night, but now i'm back in the central coast. It's good to be home with my amazing wife and super cute little boys. I really needed the last couple days. It was really restful for my body and my soul. And so now it's time to go enjoy some pancakes with my family, while listening to the once soundtrack.

Sabbath

2009-02-26T08:11:00.000-08:00

Sabbath is generally a weekly day of rest and/or time of worship that is observed in any of several faiths. The term derives from the Hebrew shabbat (שבת), "to cease", which was first used in the Biblical account of the seventh day of Creation. Observation and remembrance of the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments (the fourth in the original Jewish, the Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestant traditions. Many viewpoints and definitions have arisen over

the millennia. - wikipedia

I've been realizing lately that even though I'm an extravert, love being around people. I need to have some time to myself.

Growing up in church, I know that it is biblical for me to take a break and call it a "Sabbath". Someone I know said that "Sabbath" is just about not doing anything, but is to take your soul and give it a break.

For me it is easy to get doing a million different things and become busy with a lot of different little things. I need to remember to set aside time for me. I set time aside for my wife, kids, work, but I need to remember to set time aside for me as well.

Jesus said, "man is not for the sabbath, but sabbath for man". I think this is what I have been doing lately. I have been going to church on sunday and being around people and calling this my "sabbath", but I think i need to find a place just to myself. A place where my soul can rest and recharge my soul.

So hopefully I can move forward in this area, and start taking better care of my soul.

The Freedom Project

2009-02-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

Our friends Troy and Alisa were here teaching in our Discipleship Training School this last week. They are apart of an organization called The Freedom Project. I don't know very much about human trafficking but I want to become more aware. As I've started learning more about human trafficking, I'm starting to learn that it's right here in our cities.

With an estimated 27 million people in the world living in some form of bondage, human trafficking is the second largest criminal industry in the world. Slaves make bricks in India, they work on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast, they are forced to beg on the streets of Europe, their organs are sold on the black market in Asia and they are tricked or forced into prostitution all over the world.

Human trafficking is slavery.

Slavery is not a new concept. Modern technology and communication has transformed the old idea of slavery into a dangerous and illusive force called human trafficking. Human trafficking involves the buying and selling of human beings into some kind of forced work for little or no pay.

Human traffickers:

• buy and sell people over the internet
• they pose as boyfriends or as business owners with quality jobs to offer
• they may personally know their victims or are a friend of a friend
• they might simply be a normal person who have been given an unethical opportunity to make a bit of money by selling someone

Trapped by the lies of their traffickers and by their seemingly hopeless circumstances, trafficking victims feel like they can’t escape. They bitterly resign themselves to do the work they are being forced to do.

Victims of human trafficking come from all over the world. In Eastern Europe, young women look to Western Europe and North America for job opportunities. Going to a new country makes them vulnerable, especially if they don’t speak the language or they don’t know the person who is getting them the job. Many Eastern European women end up as prostitutes in the international sex trade, stocking brothels in Amsterdam and New York or working in rundown massage parlors in the United Kingdom.

The fight against human trafficking is a fight for human freedom. It is a fight to give all people everywhere the freedom of choice, the freedom to not live in constant fear, the freedom to pursue their own dreams and live as the sole owner of their life. Everyone should have the freedom to not be bought and sold.

That is why we are the Freedom Project,
because we believe that freedom should exist for everyone.

So reading this you start to feel like what can I do. I'm only one person. I possibly can't bring change. Well luckily my friends over at The Freedom Project have come up with some answers.

If you only have

1 minute:
-PRAY for victims of human trafficking and for a generation to be mobilized to stand against injustice

1 hour:
-RESEARCH trafficking on the web and arm yourself with knowledge
-TALK to a friend about trafficking and challenge them to action
-WATCH a documentary on trafficking or if you have more time rent the movie Human Trafficking

1 day:
-VOLUNTEER your day to a local organization that helps stop human trafficking
-DONATE a day's wages to an anti-trafficking organization like International Justice Mission or The Freedom Project
-ATTEND a public awareness event that focuses on human trafficking.

1 month:
-ORGANIZE a fundraiser to benefit victims of trafficking. For idea's check out www.stopthetraffik.org
-TAKE a short-term trip overseas to actively prevent human trafficking or assist victims.
-PLAN a rally to raise awareness in your community, school, or work place.
-CHALLENGE lawmakers to prosecute traffickers and protect victims.

1 year:
-WORK full time with an anti-trafficking organizatioin.
-BECOME an activist against human trafficking in your city.
-EDUCATE yourself by taking a class on injustice.
-CREATIVELY use your gifts and talents to be a voice for trafficking victims.

1 lifetime:
HELP stop
-poverty
-poor education
-disease
-starvation
-economic hopelessness
-political corruption
-oppression

all of which contribute to the global epidemic of human trafficking.

my boys that love being in front of the camera

2009-02-15T22:04:00.000-08:00

So one of our good friends and old dts students katie came out to visit us for a couple of days last week. Katie and her boyfriend Kyle have a photography business in Michigan. So when Katie came out she brought her camera and a bunch of their lens. She let me use her Canon 50mm 1.4 lens and i got some fun shots of the boys.

thanks katie

trust...

2009-02-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 3:5-6

(vs.5) Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

(vs.6) in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Matthew 6:25-34

(vs.25) "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

(vs.26) Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

(vs.27) Who of you by worrying can add as single hour to his life?

(vs.28) "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.

(vs.29) Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

(vs.30) If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

(vs.31) So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'

(vs.32) For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

(vs.33) But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things wll be given to you as well.

(vs.34) Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I've seen God be faithful so many times, and yet these are the hardest verses for me to live out. I am constantly worrying about situations in our life.

Lord help me to trust you with all of my heart, and to lean not on my understanding....

...

2009-02-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

one thing i have asked of the Lord,

this is what i seek:

that i may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life;

to behold the beauty of the Lord

and to seek Him in His temple.

let me grasp the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him always....

enjoying life

2009-01-23T13:47:00.000-08:00

I'm loving today. It's such a cool day with the rain falling. I love what i do (almost everyday), my kids are great. I have an awesome wife. I'm sitting here doing some graphic stuff for our church and one of our staff. Listening to the great online radio player pandora.com. I'll also love the noise of the rain on our roof, and the way it falls onto the concrete out the back door. This was from a day we spent at the beach before we went to Colombia.

Howell - Beckett wedding in San Simeon, California

2008-11-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege to add another thing to the list of many things i've had the opportunity to do. I got to take my friends Elizabeth and Jason's wedding pictures. I was pretty nervous to say i would do it as i have never taken wedding pictures before in my life. I talked with some of my friends that actually are Professional Wedding photographers and they told me to just have fun and put my heart into, and that's what i did.

On October 25th, Jason & Elizabeth got married at the pier in San Simeon, California. It's a really beautiful area about a hour north of Pismo Beach. It was really foggy along the whole coast the day of the wedding, except right on the pier. There was totally a great spot right on the pier that was the only clear spot on the coast. The sun was shining and it was great. Here are a few photos from the day it was tons of fun.

Fall fun

2008-10-28T15:12:00.001-07:00

We are really busy this time of year. We have 6 new staff joining our YWAM base this next week. Most of them have arrived this week. It has been really interesting because the house 5 of them were suppose to move into fell threw on Thursday. So we have them staying all over the place right now.

It makes this already crazy time of year a little bit more crazy. The first two weeks of November is new staff orientation, followed by two weeks of DTS staff training. Then we are in December and that's a whole other crazy month.Once a month we have a staff fun day where we close our office and go and do something fun together. With it being October we went to Avila Valley Barn and hung out at the pumpkin farm. Lots of fun animals for Eli to check out and even a hay ride.

Maybe if i try posting more on here it will help me keep taking new pictures of the boys as well. Or atleast take pictures of Liam. Here are some pictures of the boys, and one of me to keep Phil happy.

Liam chillen on the couch

Liam smiling on the pumpkins

on the hay ride

familia picture '08

Eli being super cute

Eli falling of the pumpkins...Eli and Daddy

2nd baby days...

2008-10-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

So i feel horrible, but we have not been as good at taking pictures of Liam like we did with Eli. I think there are already like 2000 more photos of Eli when he was 2 months old than we have of Liam. But here a few. I still have more on my camera that i have to take off this week.

here are some pics of the last couple months...

Eli making one his faces

Liam being cute in a Tonka truck
more cuteness in the truck
Eli wearing my hat
Eli with his cousin(on left) and Liam
Eli playing in his pool at Grandma's house

Eli and his friend Pablo

Eli sort of riding a bike...he was sitting and i was pushing him

some new shirts to come....

2008-07-16T17:12:00.001-07:00

Hope Eternal the t-shirt company that i started with YWAM Pismo Beach at the beginning of the year, is starting to take shape. We have almost sold all of the shirts that we printed, and are in need to order more. We have our shirts available online, in a surf shop in Pismo and a bookstore in San Luis Obispo.

We are hoping to print two new t-shirt designs by September 1st. The following designs were made by the amazingly talented Jon Lunsford.

Jeremy Sizemore came up with some ideas to create a shirt for Tibet where all the proceeds go to helping families living in Tibet.

We were praying for Tibet and felt like through God we could see true freedom for Tibet. Everyone has seen the bumber stickers for Tibet or the t-shirts that say Free Tibet. Even if we see Tibet freed from China there are still the spiritual aspects that hold the country back.

These are two other designs that Jon has done for us as well. Blogger is being a little bit annoying right now, so it won't let me upload pictures right. So i'll have to add the other designs later. We really love them both and are waiting for the finances to come through to print them. Thanks again Jon for all your great designs.

new blogs to come

2008-06-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

I've been really busy traveling and doing stuff i don't really want to be taking care of.

But i now have a red tomato growing in my garden. It's very exciting it is just a cherry tomato, so it will be gone in one bite. But maybe i will cut it up into little pieces and make a salad or something with it.

I also had a random realization yesterday while trying to get eli to say "w." That when you say w it sounds like double u. which it sort of looks like. Then while writing this i realized that the french have it a little closer with the way they say it like doble vey cuz it looks more like two v's.

Anyway...i'll post some sweet pics of my cherry tomato's soon.

A short rest...

2008-04-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

We got all the DTS students out the door and onto outreach. Our Justice & the Arts DTS left on the 1st and our Surf DTS left on the 6th. Our surf DTS flew out of SLO, and apparently you can't check bags over 6'8". The surf team had two bags that were 10' and one that was 7', so i put there surf board bags in the van and drove down to LA at about 8 sunday night. I made it down to LA around 11 and met the team outside of LAX and gave them their surfboards. I was so tired that i ended up staying at a Motel 6 in Thousand Oaks. We have heard from the teams and they both made it to their outreach locations successfully.

Lori, Eli and myself are going to be going and visiting the teams in May. We are going to be going and visiting our surf team in Phuket, Thailand for 10 days. We have never been to Asia so we are really looking forward to this trip. We have 6 students and two staff that we are going to be meeting with, encouraging and ministering along side.

From Thailand we are going to fly back to Hong Kong and then head down to The Philippines.

We have a team of 16, 13 students (all girls), 2 girls and 1 guy staff that are there. I think Cody is going to need some serious man time when I get there as he will have spent the last 6 weeks with 15 girls. We will have to go kill something or do something really manly. We look forward to seeing the teams it is going to be a good time. I think we are buying our tickets today or atleast reserving them so that we can buy the tickets in 7 days. We still need some money, but God is always faithful to provide.

We are praying that everything goes smoothly as this will be the first time that we are taking Eli overseas. We are praying that he will be able to adjust to the time and the food. I'll try to keep this updated as we are heading out.

Eli playing at the park...and home

2008-02-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

So we went to the park the other day. We really should go more as it's about 100 feet from our front door, and it's probably even closer than that. Eli loves the slides and running around at the park. This is a series of pictures of him on the slide.

We thought this was pretty funy. His hair was so Stat-icky. (i think that's how you spell it.) It was like his hair loved the slide as much as he did. He is starting to talk more. Not really words but just babble. But it's fun to see him start trying to talk more.

We took some photos of Eli around the house the other day so here's those as well:

so serious...i loved the way this picture turned out though...

sitting on his fire truck

posing on the couch

playing with keys after lunch

pizza induced trance

Living your Values

2008-01-30T15:29:00.001-08:00

So...this week I have been really being hammered. Lori and I last Thursday watched the movie Amazing Grace. It's about abolitionist William Wilburforce and ending the slave trade in England in the early 1800's. He eventually saw the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807. Watching this movie really stirred me as I have been starting my T-shirt ministry through YWAM Pismo Beach.

About a year and a half ago, i felt like i wanted to try and do something to help people overseas. When we went to Tanzania over 3 years ago. I heard stories of people that would die because they couldn't afford the 3$ malaria medicine.

So i decided to try and do something about it. I decided i was going to start a t-shirt company. Some of thoughts i had were:

Hope to bring Change

Hope to bring freedom

Hope to bring life

Hope to bring a future

Hope to make a eternal difference.

So after going through all of this i decided on calling it Hope Eternal. All of the proceeds go towards buying medicine, food, clothing and shelter for those in need around the world. In December we printed 2 designs.

All of this to say I have been thinking a lot about living my values. I have this ministry that is trying to help ministries bring change to social injustices around the world. However in my personal life i don't think twice about the products i buy. So in one part of my life I'm trying to raise funds for ministries to stop these injustices, and in the other part of my life I'm totally supporting the injustice.

I started looking at some justice sites. I checked out stopthetraffik.org. It was crazy to see that even chocolate is using slave labor. In Cote D'Ivoire, 12,000 children have been trafficked into picking the cocoa beans for chocolate companies.

So i know i need to change slowly, but i want to try and change. I know it won't always be convenient, but i want to try.

DTS Students '08

2008-01-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

DTS 2008 Surf School

Andrew from Australia

Matt from California

Tyler from Minnesota

Benedicte from Norway

Maria from Norway

Kirsten from Florida

DTS 2008 Justice and the arts DTS

Abby from Australia

Betsy from Pennsylvania

Gabby from California

Jacque from Colorado

Mackenzie from Michigan

Mariel from Colorado

Natasha from California

Paulina from Sweden

Sacha from Canada

Sarah S. from Colorado

Sarah T. from California

Serene from Australia

Sue from Switzerland

Eli's first Birthday

2007-12-22T12:58:00.000-08:00

Well I haven't posted in a little while. It seems like we have been insanely busy. I thought i would put some pictures up from Eli's birthday party. These pictures are from his birthday on the 7th. We had a party with my parents and lori's parents.

These pictures are from Eli's birthday party with a bunch of our friends. I think there were something like 20 kids there. It was insane.
Eli is getting so big, we are starting to see more and more of his personality. He is starting to talk more. It's still really just blabbering. But he it really sounds like he is trying to communicate with us. Here is one of my favorite photos of Eli and Lori.

tragic news...

2007-12-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

Please be praying, as i'm sure you all have heard by now about the shooting at YWAM Denver. Please be praying for our friends that are on staff there and for the families affected by this shooting. It's crazy to think that someone walked into the base and started shooting people. Below is a letter from our friend and the Denver base director Peter Warren that i got off of another friends blog. This really sucks...Pray for peace, and comfort in this time of grieving for YWAM Denver.

Dear friends of YWAM Denver,

Linda and I just returned from the hospital at 6am. Along with a number of
our staff and students we were awaiting news of our four staff who were
shot last night. It's with a heavy heart I need to tell you we just lost
two of them. Tiffany Johnson and Phil Crouse passed away in surgery in the
early hours of this morning, Sunday December 9th. They were wonderful
young YWAMers in their early twenties. Dan Griebenow is in critical but
stable condition with a bullet still lodged in his neck and Chuck Blanch
has two bullet wounds in his legs but will be fine.

Thanks for praying for us. Our whole community has been uprooted as the
base in Arvada has been declared a crime scene and no one can return to
their beds during the investigation. We've relocated everyone up to our
mountain campus, Eagle Rock, for however long this takes.

Please lift up the family and loved ones of those who were lost in prayer.
We're so grateful for the worldwide YWAM family that is reaching out to us
during this difficult time.

Your brother in Christ,
Peter

It's raining it's pouring

2007-10-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

Well it's finally raining here in California. I can't remember the last time it has rained here. It's been awhile. Hopefully this rain will help with the dry stuff down south of here. For those of you that have been wondering we are quite a way from the fires. So we are all good.

We went on vacation last week. It was a much needed vacation. We haven't been away just us, in forever. We are usually traveling with friends or visiting family. So it was a nice break to just get away and hang out together.

We went up and stayed at the YWAM base in San Francisco. It's not the nicest part of San Fran, but only 2 blocks from everything downtown. One of the benefits of being in YWAM is usually can call up any base in the world and see if they have any hospitality rooms availabe. So we went up on Tuesday, ate this Indian restaurant place we love called Naan & Curry. Then on Wednesday we went out to Alcatraz. Neither of us had been out there, so it was a neat experience. We got to go on this Myth's of Alcatraz tour that took us to all these parts you don't usually see. We got to go down where they filmed parts of the Rock. It was a good time.

We came home on Thursday and made a stop at one of Lori's favorite places on earth...IKEA. We were able to find some great things for our house. We don't have very good lighting so we found some things to brighten up our house. It's starting to come together.

On Friday we had our staff fun day out at Avila valley barn. We dressed Eli up as a cow. It was fun. We got some great pictures of him. Had fun with our staff out there, and then went and hung out at one of our staff houses. We went from there to a friends birthday party at this new karaoke bar. It was fun, i sang some fun songs. Now we are just trying to enjoy the rest of our weekend.

Me and my boy...

2007-10-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

So this weekend Lori went to a ladies retreat with our church. She left Friday around lunch and came home on Sunday around 5 in the afternoon. I was kind of worried about the weekend and having Eli with just me. BUT...it was amazing. Eli is really a good little baby. We had tons of fun. We went to the park, and hung out. He slept amazing for me at night. It was really a good weekend. We got to watch some football on Sunday afternoon. He didn't make it through the whole game though. It was pretty cute though. He fell asleep on my lap. He slept for about 2 and a half hours. Which is also a miracle. I really love having a son. Even this afternoon when he didn't take a nap all afternoon, it wasn't as bad today because Lori is home again.

I have been feeling super creative lately. I'm in the process of starting a not-for profit business called hope eternal clothing. I have been dreaming it up for the last 2 years, maybe year and 1/2. This last week someone gave me (until i can get a better computer) their old pc. I was able to get photoshop on it. So after Eli went to sleep on Saturday I stayed up until 2 working on some designs. The idea of the company is that all the proceeds go to buying med's and food and helping people overseas. I will write more about that soon.

Thankfulness

2007-10-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to write a post about how thankful i am for everything that God provides for us. I have been thinking alot lately. Our friend died two weeks ago in a motorcycle accident. He was 28 the same age as me, he had a wife and had been married for about 5 years. We went with his wife to Mississippi after hurricane katrina.

His accident has made me start thinking lots lately about how we are fortunate for every day we have. To make the most out of every day that we have. To be thankful for everything. God has blessed me with an amazing wife. Lori is so good to me, and some days i feel like i don't even deserve her, and i don't but i'm lucky enough to spend the rest of my life with her. Then we have an awesome little boy, he's healthy, fun, full of energy, and so much joy. He has the best smile, he makes me laugh so much, and i love getting to spend every day with him. I love that we work a job where i get to have around me everyday.

We had some friends over last night, and they were asking if we still get amazed at God's provision. I told them that we do. That it still amazes me every month when God continues to meet our needs and provide for us. We have two great cars. We just moved to a great house only about 2 blocks from the beach. It's totally great. We moved in and it had a washer and dryer. Which we haven't had for the last 7 years. They lasted for about a month and then our dryer died, but somebody had a washer dryer set to give to us right away. It's just been really good.

I just wanted to write a post about how thankful i am...Thank you Jesus for everything you do for us!

Barrow flavored M&M's

2007-08-08T20:55:00.000-07:00

So i've been finding all these weird sites where you can make yourself look like some kind of charachter. It started with the Simpsonizeme.com site. You can see us as Simpson's pics below. But today i found the site that you can make a m&m look like you. Here is our picture of us on the mission field.

We are doing good. We are getting ready to head up to Montana early Saturday morning. We have a DTS conference to go to. We are there for the whole week.

The house hunting could be done on Friday night. We are meeting with a landlord at like 9:30 at night. They live up in the bay area so we have to wait for them to get down here. Then we have to get up at 4 and drive to Montana. Hopefully it goes well with our meet with the landlord. We still need some more moula but God is always faithful. We'll post some real pictures of us soon. i promise....

2007-07-30T16:14:00.000-07:00

So we are moving to Oceano. I hate moving. I like the new house part. I just hate the looking part. It always stresses me out. We feel like we are suppose to live in Oceano. So the scary part is that we don't have a place to live in Oceano yet, but i just gave notice that we are moving to our landlord. So Jesus needs to help us out now.

We are trying to find something around $1000.00. We are looking for atleast a two bedroom place. We don't want to have a place where there are people above or below us. I know we are being kind of picky. I just hate how people are either really loud above you or you have to watch how quite you are above someone else.

For those of you reading this not from california. Rent sucks here. Most two to three bedroom places are 1200 to 1500.

Anyway if you can be praying for us. We would love it. If you want to start supporting us monthly to help up out with our expenses that are going up. We would greatly appreciate it. If you want to help support us send me a message and we'll work it out.

Thanks

Will, Lori and Elijah

The Simpsons movie

2007-07-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

So in honor of the Simpsons movie opening today, Here is our family in Simpson's form. There is this cool website (simpsonizeme.com) that you can upload a picture of yourself to and see yourself looking like a Simpson. I want to make a website of all our staff. Maybe check out ywampismobeach.org/simpsons. Besides looking like Sipmson's we are doing ok.

2007-07-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well...what have we been up to. Eli is starting to try and walk, and he's getting very good at standing by himself. It's crazy to think that he is only 8 months and trying to walk. It's been so much fun to watch him grow and the new things he does everyday. Here are a couple of pics of eli from the last couple of days...

I have also been reading a couple of books. I started out reading "Letters to a Young Evangelical" by Tony Campolo. It was a really good book with lots of challenging thoughts in it. I would encourage everyone to read this book. I'd put some quotes down but one of our friends is borrowing it right now.

Then there are a couple of books i have to read for our worship department at church. But they have been really good reads. The first one was "Facedown" by Matt Redman. It was amazing and only around 100 pages. It had great thougths on worship and worship truely is. Worship needs to stop being about us and about bringing glory to God. Great little nuggets in this small little book.

The last book that I'm attempting to read right now is "Cat and Dog Theology". It's a really good book as well. It's about the difference between the way that Cat's and Dogs think. Cat's are always looking for ways that they can be blessed, but dog's bless you just because they can. It's how we always look for God to bless us, instead of looking to bless him, even if things aren't going well in our life.

Well that's it for now...i will try to blog again soon...

4th of July

2007-07-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well we attempted to watch the fireworks on the 4th in Pismo, but so much fog rolled in you could only see the fog change colors. Oh well...we saw some as we were driving back to San Luis Obispo.

We hung out with some friends every tuesday night and play some games, have pizza, and just hang out. Well this last week, with everyone having wednesday off. We had a sleep over at their house. I had this great idea to make funnel cakes. The only part that sucked was that we started this at 1am. Then we realized we didn't have enough oil. So i headed out at 1 in the morning. Everything was closed, Vons had closed an hour earlier. So i ended up getting it at 7-11 for the smallest bottle of oil for 4$. I finished making the funnel cakes at 3 in the morning. We ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep, because there were 9 kids there all under 6 years old.

We went to the park in the afternoon on wednesday. Here are some of Elijah's first time to the park pictures...

Eli vs The Chair

2007-06-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

Here's the story. We left San Luis Obispo around 7am yesterday morning and made it to Portland around 1 am this morning. The fight of the century took place this morning between Eli and The chair. Here's the stats on both...

Eli the fly guy
Height: 2'6"
Weight: 22lbs
Hometown: San Luis Obispo, California
Advantage: cute
Weakness: cant walk well

The Chair

Height: 3'4"
Weight: 12lbs
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Advantage: hard steel parts
Weakness: not cute

So it was a interesting fight. Eli started out very aggressively crawling over to the chair. He was making all the first moves as the chair stood still as a post...or chair. Eli took the first moves at trying to climb The Chair. But it was The Chair who came out victorious. Eli fell fast and hard with a blow to the head. After some ice on the head, Eli was back to his smiling self again. Here are some photos of the first battle wound on Eli.
We made it about 4 or 5 hours from Portland and the traffic came to a complete stop. This was us standing outside the car on I-5. We were there for about 2 1/2 hours. Apparently two big rigs got in a accident and one of the drivers died. It was really sad. I took a picture of the truck. While we were waiting on the road we stood in the shade of the big truck in front of us. I took a picture of Eli next to the trucks wheel.

DTS has come and gone....

2007-06-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

It seems like only yesterday that 15 students from all over the place showed up here in Pismo. We started the DTS on January 7th i think. It's crazy how fast the time goes by. Lori and I ran this DTS with Mary one of our staff assisting us. We also had two other staff Brandon and Cindy who led the outreach to Kenya and Rwanda.

This has been the best DTS I have been able to work with our be around. They all had amazing hearts and all had a call to missions in some form. Here are some pictures of the group.

The whole DTS group

The Boys of the DTS and Will's small group
(left t0 right - Matt R., Me, Eli, Matt H., Cody, Coffe, Zach, Brandon)

The girls

Lori's small group
(left to right - Shelly, Katrina, Beth, Lori, Eli, Amy)

Cindy's small group
(left to right - Lauren, Stephanie, Katie, Cat, Cindy)
Mary's small group
(left to right - Crystal, Rhiannon, Mary, Kara)
The surfing track that me and brandon worked with.

So most nights the boys would go to sleep like this on outreach....
and wake up like this.

We really miss all of these guys. they are at home for the most part now. I look forward to hearing about the amazing things they are going to do.

For us, we take a little bit of a breather and start preparing for the next DTS to come next january. We start meeting with the staff that are going to work with the next school, figuring out speakers, and housing.

We are going to Portland on Monday to visit Tierney who use to be on staff with us but left to go and start YWAM portland. We look forward to going up there and encouraging and spending some time with her and her staff.

more of Rwanda

2007-06-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here are some more photos from my time in Rwanda. It was a good time. This are some of my favorite shots that i got.

one of the orphans praying during church

a family at the church that we worked with

my favorite picture. we saw this kid when we
went up to a village to play soccer. It had just finished
raining and this kid was so muddy.

another kid that came to watch our soccer game

i loved having my new camera and getting great portraits

this man was one of the coolest people i have ever met.
his story was amazing. the stories of him surviving through
the genocide and how god protected him are wild.

we met this man that was crippled on our street. we saw him
almost everyday. our last day there i printed him this
picture and took it to him.
he was so happy.

this is a picture of beth among all the people that came
to our soccer game.

Cards from Africa

2007-05-22T09:35:00.001-07:00

Well after the excitement of last week, and my new baby. I thought i should post some pics from my time in Rwanda.

So my last day there the DTS team moved from theplace we had been working with over to the YWAM base in Kigali. One of the guys on staff has this ministry called Cards from Africa. It's located just down the road from the YWAM base so I walked down there right before i had to go to the airport.
This little guy followed me all the way down there holding my hand. It was really cool once i got there. They have this nice building where all the youth work.

Their mission is to employ orphaned youth of Rwanda, and teach them about business and to give them fair wages. Our YWAM base in California sent me with 50$ so that we could sell some cards in our storefront, and hopefully continue supporting them. They had worship music playing as there were probably about 30 youth sitting at 6 tables working on cards. They make all of their cards from recycled paper. You can actually see on their web page how they make the paper.

Once i got their i asked them if i could take some pictures of them working. It was fun going around and taking their pictures. Some of them were shy as i started taking their picture. Then i would show them their picture on the back of my camera and their faces would light up. It was a really good time. And a great last day in Rwanda. I'll post some other stuff tomorrow...

Our new baby....

2007-05-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

So we got a new baby and her name is Taylor. She is made out of sweet sitka spruce and sapele wood. She's a beauty...and here are some sweet pictures of her...

So it was such a good deal. It all started this morning. I just got back from Rwanda on Wednesday night. Yesterday was kind of a blur and so i thought i'd call my friend Jeremy and see what he was up to, maybe go and catch up at Starbucks. He didn't answer, but called back and told me he had amazing news. That he was at the guitar store and that i needed to come see this guitar.

So apparently the first time i called he was talking to the guitar store guy...his name is butch. Jeremy was in the middle of telling butch that the guitar would be perfect for me and then i was calling him. So i went down and looked at it. It was really nice. It was on sale for a really good price. So I came home and talked to lori about it. You can read about the conversation on her blog here. i'm definitely going to have to take her out somewhere nice or something like that.

I've been wanting a nicer guitar for a couple of years now. I had been playing a samick for a while. Then when me and lori got married i've been playing her samick which was a little bit better than mine. It had a pickup and was a cutaway. But you could tell in the sound that it wasn't the most expensive guitar. But it has served us faithfully over the years. We've used it for a ton of worship times. It's been to mexico, and canada. It's gone lot's of places. I'm so excited for this new guitar. I thank jesus for this sweet new guitar and the blessing it's going to be.

So thank you jesus for the sweet new guitar.

In Rwanda

2007-05-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

So we have been super busy. As i stated in our last post. We left our house at 7:00 am on Friday and got to Kigali, Rwanda on Friday at about 11:00 am. We were pretty tired but i figured the best way to beat jet lag, was to not rest at all. So on Friday afternoon i went with all the guys on the team and we played football(or soccer) with a bunch of street boys. We played for about 2 hours.

Saturday we went and changed money and then went to a church that has about 50 orphans at it. It was pretty cool. Saturday afternoon, we went and baptized a bunch of people. Brandon and Cindy, two of our staff got in the water and baptized some local people with one of the local pastors.

Sunday we went to church and it was a great time. In the afternoon we had a time of intercession with the students.

Today we drove about an hour and went and visted a aids clinic. We spoke on hope and tried to encourage the people. We gave them our lunches as they had nothing to eat. We then went up the street and the girls on our team played against the local girls. We got smoked 4-1.

Lori sent me an email and told me that both of our cars broke down. So we need prayer for that. Hopefully it all works out ok. I have taken some pretty good pictures of the people of Rwanda. It is amazing here. It is nothing like what preconcieved ideas of it are. We are going on Wednesday to see some sights. I don't think it's going to be a very exciting day. We are going to try and go to the hotel mecolines, and some other memorials.

Talk soon

Heading to Rwanda

2007-05-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

So today is my last day here before I head to Rwanda. I'm leaving tomorrow at 7:00 to drive up to San Jose. Then begins the crazy journey of flights. We leave San jose at 12:00 noon and get to Minneapolis at 5:44 pm. Then we leave Minneapolis at 9:30pm and get to Amsterdam on Thursday morning at 10:00. We then have to spend the whole day in Amsterdam until 9:00pm when we get to Nairobe at 6:30 on Friday morning. Then we have to wait until 10:00 to catch our flight from Nairobe to Kigali.

So once i get to Rwanda and hopefully not super tired. I'm going to be working with the DTS while I'm there and partnering with them. We are going to be working with a local church that has ministry that works with the local street kids.
I'm looking forward to our time there. It should be really good. We are also going to be working with the church there. The DTS and possibly me are going to be speaking at a conference there and praying for people. We can't wait to see what God is going to do during this time. This is a picture of some of the local street kids. Please be praying for my time there, and for Lori and Eli as they are going to be staying home. I hate traveling and being away from them. Please also be praying for my time with the DTS, and that i can speak into their lives and encourage them while we are there.

family

2007-04-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

So it was good to be in Canada like i said in the last post. We had a great time with my family and Elijah got to meet everyone. He loved getting to see all his family and definitely loved all of the attention. He had a great time playing with his uncles especially.

He's definitely feeling better. He's sitting in his swing with his big smile. He's going with Lori to her family girls get together. Here are some photo's of our time in Canada and Eli with his family.

Flying through the air

2007-04-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

Well we are sitting in LAX. We left Toronto about 7 hours ago. We are just waiting for our plane to board which should be any minute. We had a great time in Canada. it was fun seeing everyone and getting to enjoy canada but we sure are ready to get home.

I leave on Wednesday for Rwanda for two weeks. I'll blog more about that this week though. I'm going to work with the DTS for the two weeks. But i have to start putting my laptop away now.

Ben Folds?

2007-04-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

Kind of an interesting video by Ben Folds. I saw this on a friends Blog and thought i'd put it on here.

My blog name must change

2007-04-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Lori told me today that she wants her own blog. We'll see how that goes. I bet she'll blog more than me now just to prove me wrong. So this isn't going to be "words with will and sometimes lori" anymore. It's just going to be "words with will."

Last night I fed Eli. We just started giving him Rice cereal and he loves it. He started out just taking the spoon nicely and enjoying his cereal.

Then he decided that he didn't want to just sit there and enjoy me feeding him. He was ready to use the spoon by himself.

Once he stole the spoon from me, he threw it down on the floor and decided that utensils weren't necessary and just wanted to chug his food out of the bowl.

I had to wrestle him to get him to finish his food. Lucky for me he has no defense against the leg lock. : )

new pics

2007-04-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

So i just got some pictures off of one of the DTS students camera's. He got some sweet pictures of me and Eli. So we were praying at one of our Staff houses and I was standing there while everyone was praying. I'm leaning against the counter when i feel a strange warm sensation against my body. Eli decided to pee all through his diaper and then onto my shirt. As you can see from the picture Eli was extremely happy and i was not.

So a couple of weeks ago we went to Boomers for a fun day. Once a month our staff stop working and just have fun together. This month our DTS joined us and we all had great fun driving go-carts, mini golfing, playing arcade games and bumper boats. So me and four of our students went on a adventure on the bumper boats. From left to right are Zach, Matt, Me soaking wet, Katie and Crystal. Notice that I'm the only one soaking wet, well even wet for that matter.

And then i got this sweet pic. A couple of weeks ago while we were getting ready to go to San Francisco i needed to shave. i came out and had this sweet look. Needless to say i went right back in and shaved it off when lori saw it.

No name for me....

2007-03-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

I was trying to think of something creative to title this blog. But instead of taking tons of time to title the blog. I'll just talk about our last couple of weeks.

We can now take a little bit of a breath for now. The DTS that I have been leading leaves for Kenya and Rwanda on Tuesday. I have really enjoyed leading this DTS but I'm ready for a little break.

Four weeks ago we spent the week in San Francisco for one of our lecture weeks.
Then we went straight to Modesto(also in California), for a weekend ministry time. We got to do some really cool stuff in Modesto and learn about the injustice's happening in this city. We helped them plant a community garden, that once it produces produce,
they are going to hand out to homeless people in the city and people in need. We also did a community garden.

We took the DTS camping up the coast to one of our fav camping spots called Plaskit Creek. We surfed and hiked at this other campground called Lime Kiln.
It was a fun weekend. Although we forgot several things like can openers, flashlights, and utensils to eat with. But we managed. I cut our cans of chili open with a hatchet. Luckily no one at shards of metal, that we know of.

We leave for Canada on April 11th for 2 weeks or so. It's nice we had a bunch of Airmiles so we were able to fly from San Luis Obispo to Toronto for like 200 total. It's going to be a nice to time to rest, see all our family and friends.

Then I get back and i go to rwanda for 2 weeks to do a pastoral visit to the dts and make sure that they aren't killing each other. It will be really good. I'm looking forward to going.

taking a day to breathe

2007-02-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

so once a month our ywam base takes the day and we stop working and spend the day in prayer. It's actually really a great refreshing and restfull day. We call it Silence and Solitude. We generally don't have an agenda, except to just quiet our minds and listen to God. One of the things that we try to do is contemplative prayer. I don't really have the time to type it out here. So look it up on google or something. Basically it's just quieting your mind and listening for God's voice.

So this last week we went out to this beautiful state park called Montana de Oro. We went out there with our staff, and DTS students. I spent the day with my ipod and
walking along the coast taking pictures and listening to Damien Rice and some Ryan Adams. It was an amazing day, it was beautiful and warm (sorry people that are living in cold places). It has been amazingly beautiful here this last week. I was just looking for God in Creation and being able to spend the day worshiping him looking at creation. Like in:

Psalm 19:1-6
vs1God's glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
vs2Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening.
vs3Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded,
vs4But their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere. God makes a huge dome for the sun - a superdome!
vs5The morning sun's a new husband leaping from his honeymoon bed, The day breaking sun an athlete racing to the tape.
vs6That's how God's Word vaults across the skies from sunrise to sunset, Melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith.

This was out of the message. Gotta love Eugene Peterson. And a nice pic of our little guy. He's getting so big. He's great.

Time goes fast

2007-02-12T22:53:00.000-08:00

Like I said in our last post. I'm horrible at blogging. I guess it comes down to the fact that i never know what to say. But we have been doing pretty good. We have been super busy now that the DTS has started. I'm excited about the students we have here. They are a great group.

Elijah is such an amazing little boy. He really is becoming a little boy. I see him and can't believe that he is only 3 months old. He makes us laugh all the time, and i feel like i'm always saying "lori, look at how cute he is." Which is usually followed by me going and getting the camera and taking 1500 pictures of him in like 10 minutes. Here are some pictures of him from the last month or so. I love taking pictures of him and it's been great. Well that's all i got. We're doing good.

talk to you guys soon

I'm horrible at blogging

2007-01-07T23:28:00.001-08:00

So i'm sorry for all the die hard bloggers who type one out every day as they are getting ready for bed, or sitting with their morning coffee. I'm just horrible at taking the time to type these out. This blog is my once a month serious blog and quite random. You can skip to the end if you want to just see pics of eli...anyway...here goes:

We have been so busy, the DTS started today. We have been running around all week, frantically getting all the last minute stuff together and it has finally arrived. I'm going to be leading this dts(will), so there is a little more responsibility on me. I'm so excited for it though. I'm ready to see all these students (15 in total) have their worlds completely changed(hopefully).

So i've been reading this book that is totally rocking my world. It's called the Irresistible Revolution, by shane claiborne. Freaking amazing book, super challenging stuff in it, and lots of taboo stuff. Especially living in a super conservative, republican part of the states. So in these last chapters i've been reading they've been talking about war, and how it's not really christ like, besides the whole just war theology, and old testament thoughts on war. He goes on to talk about christ and how Jesus was about loving his enemies. It's been amazing. One of my friends phil, his blog is listed over on the side. He had a link to this blog by a guy that was commenting on something shane claiborne had said. He talked about showing love through a noose and the recent saddam hussein execution. He went onto talk about terrorism and war and the sauls of tarsus, osama bin ladens and saddam hussiens. I'm kind of glad God didn't have Saul wiped out, or something like that. It starts to make you wonder. Saul was doing horrible things killing christians and was one of the most feared people(like some of the radical terrorists of today i would imagine). It just makes you wonder what God thinks about all this.

It's just making me do a whole lot of thinking. So here are some pics of eli. He's getting so big. We are doing good, starting to get a little more sleep. And speaking of sleep...i must go...

Driving to the snow!

2006-12-10T21:36:00.000-08:00

I love that i can say that. Sorry to my friends in Canada that have it permanently, but after growing up for 21 years. I love the fact that i have to drive to snow. We went to Lori's family christmas this weekend up to Shaver Lake which is in the Sierra Nevada mountains (i think).
Anyway it started out snowing just a tiny bit on saturday night. So we took Elijah out for his first snow picture ever. We went to sleep and woke up to atleast 6 to 8 inches of the fluffy white goodness. I think i'm only calling it that because i get to drive away and leave it there.

I felt so un-canadian as i was digging our car out of the snow. i was using a dust pan to dig my car out of the snow. That's also the real picture of our new car. It was so nice up in the snow this weekend. i had fun using the 4 wheel drive as well.

We are having a blast with Elijah, and loving being parents. He is starting to sleep well. It's so much fun. i love him so much....he's now passed out on my chest as i type this out. I love just having him lay here. I love our dad n me times.

some more pics of me

2006-11-11T12:04:00.000-08:00

Well we are doing good. Eli is staying healthy and strong, Here are some good pics of Eli and his mom last night. He is just so amazingly cute. I can't get over it. He's so nice and alert right now, and getting rid of his jaundis. He's making so many funny facial expressions. He's constantly making us laugh.

I'm finally here...

2006-11-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

So on Tuesday, November 7th at 6:34pm, our new little boy came into the world. Elijah Chaz Barrow weighed in at 8lbs 13 ounces and 21 inches. He was a big guy. Lori had to have some stitches, due to Eli being huge and Lori not so huge. He's being doing really good. We brought him home Thursday afternoon. He has a little bit of jaundis (i think that's how you spelll it). So we are trying to get him to eat lots. Eli wasn't latching on quite right so lori got a little tender so we are taking a day off and having formula today. He had a reaction to the stuff they put in their eyes, so he had great big swollen eyes. They are now back to normal pretty much.
Last Night was great. We went to bed around 12 and he slept until his feedings, was up for about ten minutes and then back to sleep. We were able to sleep last night it was great.

God is good...

2006-11-04T22:15:00.000-08:00

So when we got married about 5 and a half years ago, Lori's grandparents gave us a 1989 Dodge Colt. She was faithful but we sold her to someone else in September. It was sad to see her go but her time. We sold the Colt because I was lucky enough to get onto the wheel of fortune and won myself 4 grand. It was great. So we moved into the 90's and bought a 1995 Honda Accord Wagon. I wish i had a picture of it...maybe i'll post another one another day. So we've been driving that sweet Honda for about 2 or 3 months, and minus a few flaws like needing to replace the front cv boots and half axels, it's been a faithful car. God has definitely been good to us this year. We've been to Portland, Louisianna, Las Vegas, and Nicaragua, and now we are expecting our boy any minute now.
So last friday we were at our Missions night at our church, and our pastor was like "i hear congrats are in order". We had no clue what he was talking about. He said "congrats on your new car", Lori told him we got our car in June but thanks. He then told us that someone gave a car to us this week through the church. We had no clue. Someone gave us a 1991 Nissan Pathfiinder.
This isn't the actual car, but it looks almost identical, same color, same doors. I have one of those wheels across the back hinge though. We couldn't believe it. We are so stoked. We were wondering what we were going to do in January when the DTS starts. I'm going to need to be there most days and lori only part of the days. We were trying to figure out how it was going to work out with the baby and all. I know lot's of families make it with one car, but we were definitely thinking it would be alot easier with another car. We even thought about getting a motorcycle or vespa, but i've not had very good luck sitting on vespa's.
It's been amazing to see the way that God has provided for us this last year. We are definitely very thankful and feel really blessed.
Here are a couple of pictures of Lori from the last week. The one on the left is from a week ago today, and the one on the right is on thursday which was Lori's due date. Still waiting for some significant amount of contractions to get this baby out here.

dinner with jon lovitz

2006-10-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday was an interesting day. I slept in a little while and tried to catch up on some rest. We then had to go to our church for this saftey class, because we work with kids at our church. It was allright, then we had our YWAM baby shower for us. It was for people that know us through YWAM. Afterwards my good friend Jeremy from Onetruth clothing wanted to go out for a burrito. So we drove to this yummy restaurant called Tio Alberto's. Good mexican food. We order our food, and sit down. Because we live in such a crazy college town and it being 10:30 on a saturday night, it's very normal for there to be alot of drunk people. We were sitting close to the door when some drunk college kid started screaming through the door about going to subway. I was like what is this guy talking about. It turns out Jon Lovitz was eating at the restaurant with us. Well he was eating with some other people but we were in the same little mexican restaurant. Apparently he did a comedy show at our local university and then came out for some late night mexican food like us. You may know Lovitz from such great hits as City Slickers, Wedding Singer (He's going crazy, and i'm reaping all the benefits), old school yellow page commercials, The Benchwarmers, and most frequently the subway commercials (which explained the crazy drunk kid yelling about subway).
That was our little Californian moment of running into random famous people every once in while. Thanks to those of you that cheered me up on Friday.

Blah

2006-10-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

Today is just one of those days when you wish you could just go back to bed and wake up tomorrow. I don't know what's going on but there's just something that's getting me down today. Everything is pissing me off, and people are driving me nuts. But then i stop and i still feel like crap, but there's so much good stuff happening. I'm about to be a dad. i have an awesome wife. i have so much to be thankful for. Especially after i just read my friend ang's blog about all this crap that's happening in the sudan. but regardless i'm still having a crappy day. i found this cool picture on flickr.com. it kind of represents my day it seems dark and gloomy, but there's still some good in it. We're about to go and have thanksgiving, i know it was on monday. our staff all get together every friday night and have dinner, so we just decided to have our canadian thanksgiving tonight instead. Sorry that this hasn't been a happy joy blog.

The Stages of Lori

2006-10-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Well here's a collection of the stages of lori. I threw in one of us together. The first picture is of us camping. We went right around easter. It was pretty fun, even though it rained most of the time.

These are some pictures of Lori getting her birthday present. She got it way back in February. The first picture is about 20 minutes into it, and the picture on the right is the finished product.

Here are some pictures of Lori along the way. The first one was 17 weeks, then 20 weeks. The last two were taken today and Lori is 36 weeks. The other two were somewhere in between i'm not sure exactly when they were taken.

Nicaragua

2006-10-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

So my time in Nicaragua was great. It's an amazingly beautiful country. While i was there i found out that Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and has many children who are forced to work because of the economic conditions. 80% of the population lives in poverty. Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America but the least populated. It was hard to see how poor these people are and not be able to help them more than we did. Alot of the homes we saw were just made out of corrigated steel, and some even used cardboard as walls. It was hard to see the level of povety these people are at. It definitely makes you think everytime you go and buy a 3$ frappachino.

The first week we were there we worked with YWAM and taught at their school for grades K-5. We taught the kids bible stories, crafts, and physical education. It was a good week, and a good place to start our time in Nicaragua. We played football or soccer for us almost everyday with them. They worked me quite a bit, but it was still fun playing with them. I spoke at a youth group for boys. We played soccer for an hour and half, then had a bible study, then played soccer for another hour and a half. It was pretty tiring but so much fun.

Our second week in Nicaragua we worked with an organization called Rise Up Inc. (www.riseupinc.org) check out their website it's pretty cool. What they are doing is starting a foster family home for girls. It's really cool. While we were there we went to a place called Chureca. Chureca, which is literally translated “scavenger,” is one of the largest dump communities in the world. The area is infamous for crime, extreme poverty, and hazardous health conditions. We went one day and just walked through the community. We met a lady and she asked us if we could pray for her husband. There was something wrong with his back where he hadn't been able to sleep well for 4 months. He was given a bunch of different pills but because they can't read he had no clue what he was taking or what he shouldn't be doing while taking them. We prayed for his back and saw him two days later and he said he was feeling much better.

The second time we went we brought rice and beans to give out to families. The last lady we gave out a package too, asked us to come pray for her baby because it had a respiratory infection. We later found out that her house was full of smoke with no windows open and the baby was just sitting in there breathing that smoke all day long. When we showed up we prayed for her baby and when we finished it went to sleep and was super peacefull. This lady was the poorest person i've ever seen. And i've seen some poor people. We all felt like we were suppose to give her all the money we had. We only had like 15$ out of the six of us, but to this lady it was the biggest gift. We told her that we don't know her from anyone else but hoped that she would be wise with the money. Not something in the Missionary 101 handbook to do.

We also got to go to another city and hang out with some boys that sniff glue. They are super poor and sniff the glue to forget that they are hungry. The only thing that sucks is that they are now addicted to the glue and walk around high all the time. We bought lunch for two of the kids and tried to keep them there long enough to come down off their high. I would love to be able to go back and work with these kids again.

It was a great trip and i really want to get down there again and see if we can help these people more long term. I know the guys at Rise Up are starting some really awesome programs at the Chureca and with the boys. Check out their site and see if there's anything you can do to help.

Finally home

2006-09-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

So my insane summer has finally come to an end. Since the beginning of June i have traveled 28,000 miles or for those of you who live in non miles locations about 44,800 kilometers, i think. It was hard to figure out the conversion. Anyway. It's good to finally be home and not be leaving anywhere in the next 10 days. I'm going to take the next weeek off and try to get some good rest. It's only 6 weeks until our baby boy arrives and I can hardly wait. I'll post some pictures of my trip to Nicaragua this week. It was an amazing time and probably one of the poorest places I have ever been. Here's a picture of lori from two weeks ago. I'll post another one of her this week. But i've been gone for the last two weeks.

Continuing Discipleship....

2006-08-25T13:34:00.001-07:00

We are currently in Chico, California for about 10 days of conferncing and workshops. The last 6 days have been for our Discipleship Training Schools(DTS), and then the next four days are our west coast staff conferences.

As I sit here in the lobby waiting for all our friends from other YWAM locations to show up and the rest of our staff I've been thinking alot about continued discipleship after students leave our schools. This was a topic that came up during our DTS workshop. As YWAM we have been so good at training students and "ruining them for the ordinary", but we have been horrible at seeing them continue in discipleship after they leave our little green house environment. We set up this super cozy super unrealistic environment for 5 to 6 months and then release them to the hounds once they leave our staff. We have them in 12 hours of lectures, 3 hours of intercession, worship 3 times a week, small groups, tons of accountability. Then we send them home to people that sometimes don't understand what has changed in them or how their worldview has been insanely changed.

So we are trying to create ways to have them flow into continued discipleship after they leave our base, and that we don't just drop them after they leave. We are going to try connecting with their pastor before they leave, what they expect, ways they can help them when they come home. Sending them materials when they get home. It's been really cool. It's something i'm going to try committing to see changed at our base and the way we run our DTS's in Pismo!

I'd upload some new pictures but we are in the middle of nowhere. So it would take forever. I may put some new pics on this weekend when we go to starbucks or something.

We're Alive

2006-08-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

Well...It's been a crazy summer so far. We've gone from Portland, to Vegas, to Oakland, to Louisianna, and then this week to Northern California and then on the 8th I'm going to Nicaragua for 2 weeks.

We've been super busy. But I've been loving it for the most part. We started out this crazy summer with a staff outreach to Portland, Oregon. We worked with the Portland Rescue mission and also got to do some ministry over at the world famous, Burnside skate park. It was a really great time. We were also scouting out the area for one of our staff that is heading up there to start a new YWAM base in Portland.
We headed from there to Las Vegas where we helped lead some groups with the Mission Adventures program there. We worked with two groups for 10 days in the blasting heat of the Las Vegas desert. It was stinking hot. We go to do some cool ministry there on the Las Vegas strip. I also got to lead worship for the week and also spoke on a thing called the committment service. It's a time challenging the students on Lordship and having them listen for God's voice.
We also went to Oakland to train a youth group that we took to Louisianna to help with Hurricane Rita clean up. Hurricane Rita is the forgotten stom down there. It was a good time both in Oakland and when we took them to Louisianna. We were able to bless the family that we worked with and it was a great trip.

Will is going to Nicaragua for two weeks with some of our staff. There are 4 new staff that have joined our base and part of their orientation is to go on a outreach. So will is going with them to Nicaragua and help facilitate their trip. He will be back by the 22nd of September. So have no fears. Unless the baby comes 6 weeks early there is nothing to worry about. Lori is doing good, and we are like 29 weeks along. We are both really looking forward to the baby coming. We are going with Elijah, but we don't have a middle name yet.

the devil must use a pc

2006-05-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

So i've been working on these horrible base computers that our YWAM base has. The one freezes in xp as soon as you click on your screen name. Then i put it into one of our other computers and i am able to get the files off but now the cd burner isn't working. I've been trying to convince the people i work with to switch our base computers over to mac. It would be so much nicer .
These computers have been the bane of my existence this last week. I wish the info on them wasn't so important. This picture is a sweet little representation of what i want to see happen to them. Anyway, just the ramblings of a happy mac user. YEAH iBook.

Invisible Children

2006-05-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

There is this movie called the Invisible Children. This is something that Lori and I are super passionate about. These three guys from San Diego went and made a movie in Uganda. The movie is about kids in Uganda that walk miles every night from the bush into city centers so that they are not kidnapped from their homes in the middle of the night by rebel forces(the LRA). Once the LRA kidnaps kids they force them to fight as child soldiers. It's only about 55 minutes long. It's very worth watching. You can also check out the site at www.invisiblechildren.com.

Click on the poster below and you can watch the whole movie.

Staff Fun Day

2006-05-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

We recently had a staff day. We set aside the day and just have fun together as a staff. So this last friday we did a photo scavenger hunt. The picture to the left is us serving drinks at a local jamba juice. The little girl got freaked out and hid her drink from us once we handed it to her. Oh how fun. We alos had to do the Rocky run up our Pottery Barn stairs. Well i'm not quite sure how to get the video to work. So i cheated. I uploaded it to my myspace account so go to www.myspace.com/willnlori and look under my videos under my picture.

bullied into posting

2006-05-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

so i talked with a friend today and they said i need to start blogging. So here it is. We skipped church easter weekend and went camping up the coast. We had a great time. This was the biggest group of poppies. It was really cool. That's the ocean in the corner of the picture. We just chilled out and enjoyed God's creation. I've been trying to take alot more pictures recently. I've been playing with the macro feature on our digital camera.
I really am lucky. I live in a very beautiful part of the country. Well that's it for now. Paul your probably the only one that is going to read this. Thanks though

Thousand Foot Krutch at Creation

2005-08-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

it was fun to see steve and tfk at creation...they played a great show

legal smeagle

2005-07-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well today and the last couple of days have been super long. We are preparing the 300 acres of land we just recieved to host teams on. So i've been going nuts trying to get everything in order. Everything from ordering porta-potties. Which are funny little things. To getting our stage all set up and getting all our sound equipment out to the middle of nowhere. We were just driving there today and i realized that they make the road all windy so it feels like your going way out of town, but realisticly if the road was straight it would only take two minutes to get there, and you would still be in town.
We had our YWAM legal board meeting today, i'm the treasurer, so i have to present what's going on with our finances as a base. It's interesting. I use to be nervous about them, but it's really not a big deal anymore. Well that's all that's exciting for today. I'm still trying to figure out this whole blogger site thing...but hey will see...

for now

i'm out

hey there blogging world

2005-07-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Well, i always suck at these things. I try to keep them updated, but then i forget or get to busy. Or i just don't know. Or i can never think of anything creative to write. But hey i'll try. But don't hate me if there is never anything exciting here.

will