Las Noticias de Manwell

I'm going to be living out of this badboy for the next 2 months.  We leave here tomorrow at 10:00 am, drive to Sacramento for our flight to LAX at 2:54.  After arriving in the land of angels around 4:30, we get to spend 6 hours at the terminal until 10:30 where we board our plane for Nadi, Fiji.  Then after a 10hr 45min flight, we'll be showing up in PheeGee at 5:15 their time to tear it up for Haysuce .

Next post will be from across the Pacific, so look forward to that.
Vaya con Dios.
-Manwell

Sorry for the deluge of videos lately, but it's how I'm de-stressing as we get ready to leave in 3 days.

Plus, this is quality.

Man, I'm just flat-out tired.  11 weeks of relatively intense lectures, and 1 left to go, and then the REAL missionary stuff starts. 

My family came to visit this weekend.  It was really good to see them.  Just makes me want to be back in MN even more.  I know people always talk about "the REAL world" like it's this terrible monster that tosses you into the rat race and mediocrity for 40 years, but those people aren't coming out of 20 years of school.  This is literally my 20th year of schooling.  I'm developing an allergy to all things scholarly.

I know our outreach is going to be amazing, and it will shatter my worldviews and all that stuff.  They say YWAM "ruins you for the ordinary" but to be honest, the ordinary is what I desire more than the set-the-world-on-fire thing.  I support everyone else who feels a call to international missions, and I hope to be able to support them financially one day.  But with all the prophecies I talked about in an earlier post about me being a pillar and an oak, I'm thinking I'm called to be planted.  And Minnesota is beckoning.

I'll leave you with a thought from this week's lecture:
"Sometimes the Good is the enemy of the Best"

Hold out for the Best.
-M

You heard of Minnesota nice?
Well I'm that Minnesota Ice.
I'm that frost in ya breath
all crystallizin ya eyes.

This week was about Spiritual Gifts.  Our speaker Ken Bluemel, did a really good job of presenting the gifts in an approachable and...not-freaking-me-out manner.  My favorite part of the week was when our group broke into 2 groups of about 10 people each.  We each took turns standing in the middle of our respective groups, and then everyone not in the middle waited on God to see what he wanted to say to the middler. 

(Disclaimer: I come from a church background that focuses very little on the supernatural, and I knew very little about spiritual gifts before coming here, so please don't take my account as some fanatic with a screw loose.  Those of you who know me, know that this was not true when you knew me, and I assure you I'm as sane as ever.  I do, however feel closer to God than I have in a long time.  Now I'll continue to the topic at hand.)

I'll post all the things people said to me this Friday, but I'm going to save that for last.  Not because it's spectacular, but because it's most recent.  Here's a chronological report of what various speakers/students have said to me in the form of prophecies.

(for future reference, "Prophecy" isn't like fortune telling or anything.  It's not always dramatic like the prophecies in the bible.  When I say "Prophecy" I basically just mean things people have spoken over me about things God has in store for me.  I think you'll get the vibe as I list them off)

Week 5: Plumbline with Jerry Praetzel
Jerry had a few interesting prophecies, and this was the first time I was aware of someone prophesying about me.  It was pretty straightforward.  Jerry's prophecies were:
-Teaching:  He said he saw me teaching in the future
-Writing: He said he saw me as a writer and "the pages come alive"
-Loving: Jerry said he saw me as a real lover.  Not just of my wife, but of everyone I come into contact with.
-Revelation: He told me "The coin is going to drop". This is his phrase for one's faith going from head knowledge to heart convictions.  This was probably the most welcome thing he said to me, because I'm a very cerebral person, and I really want to experience God in a new way.  A more living way.

Week 9: Small group with Joe (The Basic Leadership student here)
Joe has been leading our small group meetings on Thursdays.  We meet twice a week, and it's just me, Joe, and Sam, the male leader of our DTS team.  Joe's idea was to ask God what he thought of us, and then to ask God what he thought of the other 2 guys in our small group.  I didn't really get much about myself, but here's what Joe got about me:

-strength under control
-meekness
-humorous to God (I asked Joe about this, and he didn't mean that God laughs at me, but rather gets a kick out of my sense of humor)
-hidden treasure
-yet unspoken prophetic words
-brotherhood (between friends, but especially with my family)
-Loyalty
-willing to gamble (not sure what this meant, but Joe encouraged me to "go for it".  I think it means I'm willing to take risks)
-walk to the edge for Jesus
-Constant and reliable
-one of a kind
-Amazing father figure (Joe said he was going to put "father figure" but God wanted him to say more than just that)
-hidden warrior "for such a day as this"
-constant thorn to the enemy
-repairer
-God's thunder (makes people quiver and quake)

And now we come to the most recent week:

Week 10: Spiritual Gifts with Ken Bluemel
This week had 3 separate instances where someone prophesied something about me

First instance, Ken picked me out when I was just sitting there, and came over to share this with me.  He had done this a few times before, it was like God was dropping things into his mind to say to specific people throughout his lecture.  I made eye contact with him (something I was trying to avoid) and he came over to tell me this:

-He told me that my silence was loud.  Even though I was sitting pretty still and not saying anything, I was still communicating a lot. I believe he said I was screaming in my silence.  Some of the students here told me they were afraid to give their Chapel Talks (basically short messages we're preparing for outreach) in front of me, because I was intimidating them.  When I asked Ken about his during our break, he told me my silence was "thundering".  Kinda like Joe's prophecy of me being "God's Thunder".
-He told me God was going to open up my box; that he's been slowly opening me up to more and more of himself.
-I'm going to experience God in "mind-blowing ways".  The wording of this was important, because Ken wanted to elaborate on it, but he said that was the only way he could explain it.  This was the exact phrase Joe and I were using earlier in the week during a small group when he was praying for me.  It kinda confirmed that that prayer was heard.
-Ken said that there was a lot of spiritual activity around me, and I think he meant that the Holy Spirit was doing a lot or preparing to do a lot.

After Ken finished, another man in the class, Bill, leader of the Crossroads DTS (DTS for people over 30) said that he felt like he had to say more to me.  Here's what he said:
-He told me I'm like a soldier in Gideon's army.  The ones who made the final cut in this army were the most alert.  I've been analyzing everything the speakers say, so this made sense.
-He also called me a "Berean" and I had no idea what that meant, but in Acts 17:10-15, it tells of the people Paul and Silas went to after Thessalonica, who were more noble than the Thessalonians, and they checked everything the Apostles said against the Word.
-Bill also said my background in my denomination has brought diligence with the scriptures

That was the first experience.  The next day, Karen, a Crossroader who I don't think I've talked to, tentatively asked Ken something like "Is it ok to say something if we're not sure what it means and can't really elaborate on it?" and he said "of course".  All she said was "God has something really powerful for Manny".  As she said "God has something really powerful..." I knew it was going to be me she was going to say.  Ken asked her if she had ever prophesied like that before, and she said "no". 

Alright, this is already quite long, but it's about to get longer.  Our last day with Ken was the one in which we made the aforementioned circles and prophesied.  Here is what my group said about me:
- one man saw "God writing out (my) life on a blank piece of paper, writing 'I'm pleased, I'm pleased, I'm pleased'"
-same man saw me walking down a street, seeing a sign from God that would thrill me from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, and it was going to be my calling in life.
-A woman said "steadiness, steadfastness, like Mt. Zion"
-someone else compared me to an oak tree, with deep roots, dropping acorns as seeds around the world. 
-someone said I'd have my own church, and would send out waves of missionaries, and I'd weep for my flock.
-Joe got an image of me with a flamethrower in place of my mouth, and a spiritual spear that never misses.  There's a lot of metaphor in there I'm sure I didn't catch it all, but it gave me the impression that I'm going to be a speaker.
-A man saw me as a pillar of stone, but then he said the pillar was made of flesh, but with a really strong bone core.
-A classmate saw me with a "big pounding heart"
-another classmate saw me in a gym with basketball hoops, standing in the middle, anticipating people coming in.
-a woman said she saw a radiance about me, and said that people will say that talking with me is like talking to Jesus.
-at this point Ken came over to throw his own 2 cents in.  He told me that from the moment he saw me, he thought I looked like Timothy.  Like, Timothy from the bible.  A girl in our group seemed to agree wholeheartedly.  Timothy was a pastor at Ephesus, but Ken said that I wouldn't always be in the front places, but very powerful.  He told me to not underestimate what God will do through me, and to not say that this prophecy doesn't fit me (because I sure would if he left it open)
-A man said that I was going to be a great lover of my wife, and that I was going to be spending a lot of time in the Nursery.

Phew, I'm starting to develop carpal tunnel.  I'd like to include a few more things yet that probably aren't prophetic, but things people have said about me nonetheless.  When we took a quiz in class about what our dominant "Motivational Gift" was.  This is the category of spiritual gifts found in Romans 12 and 1 Peter 4:10.  The options were: Prophecy, Ministry or Helps, Teaching, Exhortation (encouragement), Giving, Administration/Leading, and Mercy.  I was the only one in the class who got Teaching as my dominant gift.  Ken said "I could've called that" and everyone seemed to agree.  Along the same lines, there's a Crossroader who keeps telling me she thinks I'm going to become a pastor/preacher. The pastor of my home church has wanted me to consider going to the Seminary, as does the Director of Pre-Pastoral Ministry at my college.  Those two, coupled with all the prophecies, make it sound like God has a different path in store for me than I currently foresee.  I've never closed it off, but I have said that God's going to need to make it pretty clear if that's what he want's me to do. 

But until then, I'm going to pursue whatever work I can find once returning home, and serving my community in the ways that open up to me.  I have a lot of desire to be back home and plug back in to the places I left.  So for those of you who fall into that category, I can't wait to be back with you, but Fiji and Samoa are calling me and I'm going to answer for 2 months and see what God can do through us.

Peace y'all.
-M