Determination For Jesus

Hello Post Christmas Celebrating People,

I hope that all of the holidays went well for everyone and that Jesus was celebrated more than the wrapped stuff under the tree.

Well, it was a crazy weekend here at Jonah. We had the first winter camp for this year: Resolution: Determination for High Schoolers.

 It was a good time of fun, craziness, friends, and Jesus. We had a lot of great things to do including a crazy relay involving soda, bats, and kid tricycles. 

We also had the opportunity to make some great snow men.

Story time was enlightening to be sure and Chapels were seen as a 

perfect time to learn about Jesus and worship Him with great music. 

The speaker spoke Jesus, the band rocked for Jesus, and the Staff served for Jesus.

Thank You Jesus.

Another great thing about the weekend was that we had all of the summer staff from last year back at Jonah for the Staff Reunion. Many 

of the college age help out with staff winter camp and the high school staff came as campers. After the Winter Camp was over we had a good couple of hours to reminisce and talk about how God has used last summer to continue teaching us and challenging the way we live our lives. The number of stories, where God continues to stretch and grow the staff, were encouraging.

 

I would ask that you continue to pray for Jonah, God’s provision and the next winter camp for Jr. High. We want to improve with every camp and that means a little bit of revamping and changing for age group difference so this will take a little bit more planning and a lot of God inspired ideas.

Keep us in your prayers.

Proud to do Kingdom Work,

Soka

Picture of Destruction

Here is a picture of the igloo post mortem. 

Snow and Fire

Hello all you Jonah loving, Christmas celebrating people,

Here is just a little update of the Jonah world.

Thankfully, there is snow here in Trout Lake and that means there will be snow for winter camp. But there is also snow a lot of other places and it is affecting people’s ability to move around. For instance, I am stuck in Portland right now.

I would ask that you would be praying about Winter Camp.  My prayer is that God is glorified through that camps and that all praise will go to Him and not men. Pray that campers will be reached and pointed to Christ and that it will be a fun weekend.

I also have some bad news. A couple days ago the famed igloo and all the things we stored in it for the winter caught fire and we lost a lot.  The picnic tables, Camp Trailer, motorcycles, some fridges and other things were destroyed and it is looking to be quite a loss. However, no one was hurt and that is definitely something to praise God for. This is a tough loss and we pray God will provide the replacements we need.

I wish you all a great Christmas and that you see Jesus’ grace before your own gifts and glorify Him. Please pray for us, our ministry and Jesus’ provision.

Proud to do Kingdom work,

soka

It's Cold

Hello all you people,

First, I hope you all are warm. Let me tell you it is not warm here. Though I suppose the term “warm” is relative, but regardless it is not warm here. Currently, including wind chill, it is a whopping zero degrees and not Celsius. 

The coldness did bring some good things. It did snow which is a great blessing for Winter Camp. I was slightly worried about whether there was going to be any snow for Winter Camp and snow is kind of important for Winter Retreats, so I thank God for bringing snow which translates to fun for campers.

What are the happenings besides the cold here at Jonah? Well, last night we had the 2008 Christmas Cantata. For the cantata, the churches here at Trout Lake put together some music for the Christmas season and come together to enjoy a musical program and dessert around a well decorated table. It went well and it was great to see a lot of people in attendance, enjoying the cantata and Jesus was worship through music.

The next things on the horizon, besides Christmas of course, are the Camp Jonah Winter Camps. We are excited about the Winter Camps and I am positive that God is going to use these camps to glorify His name and bring people to Him. If you could join me in praying about these camps, that would be a huge blessing, I want to give the camps entirely to Jesus and have them be all about Him and never about any of us. I would hate to see them ruined because the focus was not on Jesus.

I pray that God is challenging you and your life to be all about Him and never about yourselves. This life and everything about it should be about God and glorifying Him in any and everyway that we can.

God is using us and I pray we will be able to give more up to Him. As Mark Driscoll says, “help us to worship you (God) and not take ourselves seriously.”

Keep us in your prayers that we may glorify Him and never ourselves.

Proud to do Kingdom work,

Soka

 

Bazaar for Jesus

Hello holiday anticipating, blog reading, jonah loving, jesus following people,

I hope everything is going well for all of you and that you are finding this holiday season one to be very thankful in. I hope Jesus is the focus of all the cheer and that the realization of His gift to us is something that can bring a break in your voice and a tear to your eye.

Thing are going well here on the Jonah side of it all. This last weekend we had a group here which was good. The Vancouver Christian High School Basketball Teams came to the Trout Lake tourney and played a little b-ball. I am sad to report that they lost at least one game. Bummer.  They may have won more though, but I am not sure.  Maybe, I should ask some more questions.

Also this weekend, the Trout Lake community put on a Holiday bazaar, encouraging many people to check out all of the local businesses including Jonah Ministries. It was great to have people come and check out what we do here. We had cookies for all to eat and a Santa to take pictures with. It was a very good thing to be able to open our doors inviting the whole town to come in. There were quite a few people that had never been in Jonah before that were able to take a tour and see what we do with the old school.

Also some of our loved staff and future staff were able to come up and help out with the Jonah open house. It was great to see a bunch of great people that love to serve Jesus in whatever way they can.

Last weekend was a great opportunity and we saw Jesus use it well because now more people know about our ministry for Jesus here in Trout Lake.

I hope you all see and serve Jesus this holiday season with joy and thankfulness.

Proud to do Kingdom Work,

Soka

Thanksgiving and Grace

Hola Jonah Lovers, 

I know that you are all distraught because there was no blog last week, but it is ok because here it comes again. There was a little hiatus due to the wonderful thanksgiving holiday. I hope that you all took the opportunity to thank our living God for His grace, evident in every blessing we experience in life from breathing to health, but ultimately seen in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross on our behalf, using His death as a substitute for our own.

Here at Jonah, the Duke family had quite a thanksgiving holiday with over 60 people and a feast to accommodate them. Thank God for family and food. Personally, I am a huge fan of Thanksgiving and love to be with family during such a great holiday. I had the blessing of visiting much of my family up north in Port Orchard. It was truly a great thing to just be with family during a time designated for giving thanks.

I also was given the opportunity to lead musical worship for my Grandparent’s church. I sang six songs all about Jesus and, while explaining the true beauty of the grace that God gives people completely deserving hell, I found myself being brought close to tears to realize yet again how incredibly blessed I am to have so many things I do not deserve. God, instead of sending me straight to Hell which I completely deserve, instead chose to sacrifice His own Son to atone for my sins. This truth is completely absurd and something I am thankful for beyond words and can grasp barely any comprehension. Each and every one of you deserves hell (Rom. 3:23), but God in His magnificent love and grace chose to give His son to appease His good wrath and satisfy justice (Is. 53:10). God is a good God, He alone is good. I pray that if some of you do not know God in a saving way that you will repent of your sins and give them to Jesus who died for them. Give your life to Christ that you may have a new life because of His death. To top it all off, Jesus rose from the dead and God gave Him the name that is above all names (Phil. 2:9). So worship God with all of your life because we have life only in Christ.

In other news, Christmas is coming up which marks the beautiful event of God coming to earth first as a little baby that would grow to be a man that would die for the sins of the world, but more on that later. During the Trout Lake Holiday Market, it is community thing for the holidays, there will be an Open House Christmas Party here at Jonah. I would like you all to come out for the party it will be December 6^th from 9am – 4pm. You can come and as you would like because it is an open house kind of thing. There will be cookies, drawings, tours, and the chance to sign up for summer camps with added savings.

Well, I hope to see many of you at the Christmas Party, though admittedly I do not know how many read this blog so I do not know how many is “many”. But I want to see a lot of people regardless.

I pray that the beginning of the holiday season will be the beginning of constant reminders that God has given us grace through His Son when we deserved nothing but death.

Proud to do Kingdom Work,

Soka