Friday, March 19, 2010

Haiti

Grace and peace from Chad Reimer in Alaska March 20/ 2010


-Well I'm still here in Homer, Alaska for about 2 more weeks preparing our team for our outreach. The first week of our 2 month outreach we are spending on a Island village just south of us called Ouzinkee where YWAM Arctic Mercy has done a fair bit of work both relational and construction so we will be continuing that by doing some major renovations to the Baptist mission there.


-From there we will be going down to Haiti for 6 weeks, we will be a part of this stage in between the first stage of basic survival and the second stage of rebuilding so I am sure we will be a part of the humanitarian relief but also part of the spiritual, physical, relational, emotional rebuild. We are joining Youth With A Mission Haiti as they have been there for years and have doing doing extensive relief already. I am co- leading this team of 8 people; the 4 students, 2 former staff, and me and my co leader, and so I am in charge of purchasing the tents and other basic living gear, and preparing the team for this service of Gods kingdom, among other things right now. Some of the projects YWAM Haiti are involved in are; the rebuild of the Haitian church, Adopt a community (where we serve a community in what ever way it needs; food, erecting tents, rebuilding houses, spiritual needs, water management).


YWAM Arctic Mercy is dedicated to bringing the Mercy of Christ to the nations, we are first and foremost dedicated to Alaska, we just sent a team of staff back up to St. Lawrence Island yesterday for 2 months, we are seeing incredible fruit coming from our commitment to persevere in some of these northern villages. Thank you for your prayers and support, it means a lot to me to know people are behind me so don't be scared to contact me, just to say a simple I'm praying for you.

There are a few different ways you can invest into our outreach.

  • we have to purchase 2 tents that are going to cost about $250 each.

  • if you have American airlines airmiles that you want to donate.

  • this trip is ending up costing $2750 due to high travel costs, I have paid off most of it already.

  • If you want to even support one of our students who is in more need of money than me.


You can also help simply by prayer and praise.

First of all praise the Lord for:

  • He makes all things possible

  • His love goes before us and follows behind us

  • He is constantly praying for us

  • He is sending us to be His hands and feet in this time of need

  • He is sovereign

  • the battle belongs to Him

    And then pray for this team

  • that we will be the first to volunteer and be servants of all

  • that God will protect us in our time of need

  • that God would use us in spiritually rebuilding this country for His purposes

  • that we will be obedient to following what God has for us to do each day

  • for me as the leader, trying to maintain what God has built in this team

  • for deep wisdom beyond my years that only can come from walking with God

Chad Reimer chad.reimer@gmail.com 1-907- 235- 9339 (feel free to leave a message)

to support me/us financially you can contact my parents (Klaas and Helen) or go to http://www.ywam.ca/donations/index.php ( send cheques to YWAM to the address given with a note on

it saying Chad Reimer YWAM Arctic Mercy)

Monday, March 15, 2010

revised letter =]

A big hello from Homer Alaska March 10/2010
Wow the first two months have just flown by, the first month spent in Homer, Alaska being thrusted into leadership, being lovingly stretched into responsibility, and the second month which started in Homer and ended in Homer that had 2 weeks of Vancouver 2010 Olympic outreach in it which was a great learning experience, from learning a bit more about what I would call more of a casting out your nets type ministry, and learning the balance of being intimate yet casual, making eye contact yet not forcing anything, serving the greater community of Vancouver yet being a light to the nations. So before I left Winnipeg I didn't really know what my position with YWAM was going to be, but the day before I left I got asked if I would consider being school staff, I said I would pray about it on the train ride, so my 33 hour train ride from Grand Forks to Seattle ends up being a 37 hour train ride, I miss my flight fly standby, miss my ride from Anchorage to Homer but then end up getting a different on the next day from my uncle and aunt Jim and Norma, through this Gods teaching me trust, and it all works out amazingly, He also leads me towards being part of the school.


So I'll tell you kinda what I'm up to, We (YWAM(Youth With A Mission) run schools called Discipleship Training Schools(dts) which is 3 months of intense study of Gods word/ life application, and 2 months of going out and applying what God has been teaching us. Its the program that I went through a year ago, I am now one of the leaders of this school. Which has been so awesome, I get to be a part of a life changing event for the students while totally changing my life too. Each week of the lecture phase we have a speaker with various topics touching on different areas of our walk with God, we really have a awesome opportunity to open ourselves completely to Christ and have him do surgery, taking out things that hold us down and repairing our hearts so that we can shine His love to those around us. So we have a pretty small school this semester 4 students, but its like a family, we really have a great team. So our outreach will be 2 months long, We are going to Haiti, and I am co- leading the team of 8 people. The YWAM base in Haiti has called out for help because there is so much to do involved in rebuilding and just basic survival for these people, I'm going to be sending out a mini update in a couple weeks to update a little more specifically. We normally have our main outreaches in Alaska, but since we have a student from the town in Alaska that we normally do it and we have to give a cross cultural outreach we started searching for something else and Haiti came up. There is a team of staff going up to the Island up north that we normally go, so I feel at peace about it.


That's a little bit of what I'm doing. What I wrote is quite vague but there is a lot of responsibility that I have taken with this position so pray for wisdom for me in leadership. Now I will share more about my time in Vancouver. We went not really knowing what our role would be, as we were working with a lot of the churches in Vancouver, working with a big organization called More Than Gold. But we ended up doing a lot of radical hospitality stuff handing out free hot chocolate/ coffee on the streets/ at the sky train stations for Salvation Army which sparked up tons of conversations about God it was amazing, so encouraging. We also did prayer stations where we wore vests that said prayer changes things and we held free prayer signs, which as a whole brought lots of attention and in my half and hour I prayed for 6 people (They were all Christians but it was still cool). And we did a lot of different things, these are just 2 things we did in those 2 weeks. Met lots of people, from the homeless to the tourists from around the world, wish I remembered all their names, got to share my life, got to share a cup of coffee, a genuine smile and it was so worth it. Any questions, comments, prayer request. Feel free to give me a shout. Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

Chad Reimer

chad.reimer@gmail.com 1-907-235-9339

http://withgracealone.blogspot.com

For more info on Financially supporting me http://www.ywamcanada.org/donations.html

write a note that says Chad Reimer YWAM Arctic Mercy with any cheques

Thursday, March 4, 2010

update letter to be revised with more outreach info

A big hello from Alaska

Wow these first two months have just flown by, the first month spent in Homer, Alaska being thrusted into leadership, being lovingly stretched into responsibility, and this second month which started in Homer and will end in Homer but that has 2 weeks of Vancouver 2010 Olympic outreach in it which was a great learning experience, from learning a bit more about what I would call more of a casting out your nets type ministry, and learning the balance of being intimate yet casual, making eye contact yet not forcing anything, serving the greater community of Vancouver yet being a light to the nations. So before I left Winnipeg I didn't really know what my position with YWAM was going to be, but the day before I left I got asked if I would consider being school staff, I said I would pray about it on the train ride, so my 33 hour train ride from Grand Forks to Seattle ends up being a 37 hour train ride, I miss my flight fly standby, miss my ride from Anchorage to Homer but then end up getting a different on the next day from my uncle and aunt Jim and Norma, through this Gods teaching me trust, and it all works out amazingly, He also leads me towards being part of the school.


So I'll tell you kinda what I'm up to, We (YWAM(Youth With A Mission) run schools called Discipleship Training Schools(dts) which is 3 months of intense study of Gods word/ life application, and 2 months of going out and applying what God has been teaching us. Its the program that I went through a year ago, I am now one of the leaders of this school. Which has been so awesome, I get to be a part of a life changing event for the students while totally changing my life too. Each week of the lecture phase we have a speaker with various topics touching on different areas of our walk with God, we really have a awesome opportunity to open ourselves completely to Christ and have him do surgery, taking out things that hold us down and repairing our hearts so that we can shine His love to those around us. So we have a pretty small school this semester 4 students, but its like a family, we really have a great team. So our outreach will be 2 months long, right now we are uncertain of our location, we have applied to work with the YWAM base in Haiti but we haven't heard back from them yet so we are waiting for that response. The reason we arent going back to St. Lawrence Island the place where i did my outreach is because we are fortunate to have a student from SLI but we also have to give him a cross cultural outreach with the type of school we are running, so while its sad that the school wont be going to SLI, I am glad to see the fruit of our work( and there is a team of staff going to SLI, which might be what is needed( a more mature outreach team)). But if we dont go to Haiti we are probably going to be going to a island off of Kodiak Island which is just south of us called Ouzinkee.


But yeah thats a little bit of what I'm doing. What I wrote is quite vague but there is a lot of responsibility that I have taken with this position so pray for wisdom for me in leadership. Now I will share more about my time in Vancouver. We went not really knowing what our role would be, as we were working with a lot of the churches in Vancouver, working with a big organization called More
Than Gold. But we ended up doing a lot of radical hospitality stuff handing out free hot chocolate/ coffee on the streets/ at the sky train stations for Salvation Army which sparked up tons of conversations about God it was amazing, so encouraging. We also did prayer stations where we wore vests that said prayer changes things and we held free prayer signs, which as a whole brought lots of attention and in my half and hour I prayed for 6 people (They were all Christians but it was still cool). And we did a lot of different things, these are just 2 things we did in those 2 weeks. Met lots of people, from the homeless to the tourists from around the world, wish I remembered all their names, got to share my life, got to share a cup of coffee, a genuine smile and it was so worth it. Any questions, comments, prayer request. Feel free to give me a shout. Thank you so much for your prayers and support

Chad Reimer

chad.reimer@gmail.com

1-907-235-9339