End of the Semester

This week has been awesome. The final week of the first semester. It is crazy to think how fast it has gone by. Brett Jensen spoke to us this week. He was pretty cool. We had a Q&A with him last night after the fort, and got to dig into some great questions. He talked to us today about several things, one off them was consumer Christianity. It is the idea that Christians look for churches based on what is good for them. Do I like the teaching style here, do I like the music there, and when you no longer like the church you just go to a new one. It should be a commitment. Last week I lost my keys :p so I had to get a new key made. But I got it taken care of and life goes on. Hopefully the key will be ready tomorrow so I can drive myself home. Otherwise I will probably just ride with Kelsey or Hannah. On Sunday we had our Christmas party. We brought white elephant gifts and went out to eat. It was really fun, the gift I brought was a pair of socks that had a walrus wearing a Christmas hat on them. I also bought an eye mask with sunglasses on them. The gift I got had some fruit roll ups, gushers and fruit by the foot. I have eaten some of them. It took me back to my childhood days when these were classic snacks. I was looking at something in Luke 8:9 after the parable of the sower it shows the deciples asking Jesus about the parable and he tells them

Luke8:10 he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that 'seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.'

This verse bothered me. It made it seem like the deciples were the only ones who Jesus was really teaching, the rest were just confused. But as Brett was talking today we went to the same parable in

Mark 4 verse 10 it says “And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.”

This shows that there were others who wanted to seek the truth in Jesus teaching. So while Jesus did scatter the crowd and many did not understand him. It isnt always about immediately understanding, but about seeking the truth that is in his words.

Thanksgiving break/First Week back

Well a lot has happened since I last blogged. I went home for thanksgiving break. That was so much fn. I got to celebrate thanksgiving on Tuesday with my mom’s side of the family. Unfortunately my older sister sarah beth and cousin Bethany could not be there and my cousin Mary Faith also couldn’t be there. I cant wait to see them over Christmas break. On Wednesday we went out to a friend of ours ranch near Amarillo. It was awesome. We heard some history about the property and got to go hunting. On the last day I killed a 9 point mule deer. It was so cool. The biggest deer I have ever killed and it will be my first one to make the wall. My older sister made it into Amarillo for thanksgiving day. I was so happy to see her. She goes to school in Kentucky so I don’t get to see her as often as the rest of my family. Then over the weekend I had some friends over to my house before coming back up to Link Year. Now I am back in Missouri and man is it cold. It is getting cold in texas too. We got our first snow today which was exciting and if you have not heard we are doing something in the community next week called Project Affordable Christmas. The name exxplanains the basic idea (to make Christmas affordable for people) Please go look at my facebook for more information. Or just google Project affordable Christmas Branson. It should come up in several places. If you would like to support you can go to the kanakuk website and project affordable Christmas is a choice under donations. We will post pictures as we go through and help the families in the community that need it.

Have a great week cant wait to tell you all about it. 

Week 8

Another week at link year and more exciting things going on. This wee Shay Robbins, one of my heroes came and spoke on intimacy with God. I think often during my relationship with God I seek knowledge and wisdom, but the idea of being intimate with God was always hard to wrap my mind around. It was really awesome to talk about the ways that we grow closer to God and begin to share more and more with him about what we are going through in our everyday life. We talked about spending time in solitude with God. No phone no computer no friends. Just you and God, giving yourself time in self examination, while sharing with God the details of your day to day life. To discern that which is displeasing to him and take steps in obedience to cut those things out. 

Next we talked about spiritual gifts and not only determining which gifts but how to use them. Paul writes to Timothy in 2nd Timothy 1 to fan into flame the his spiritual gift. Just because God has given us a spiritual gift doesn't mean we are using it. It is our responsibility to use what we have been given. Tomorrow we have another TGIF so that should be exciting. I am not sure what we plan to do, but it doesn’t start til 9:30 and it is an indoor activity that is pretty much all I know. I am still in the planning process with my group about how we want to do our final semester project, for the most part we are planning to do the same thing, we just need to go out and actually do it.

Week 7

This week was a ton of pretty crazy a bunch of stuff going on. Saturday I took the SAT I think it went really well. Selby helped me prepare for the essay portion. Using literature to support my answers. This week Marvin Daniels came and spoke to is. He works for KAA. He talked to us about some ethical questions that are difficult to answer. If you agreed with the statement you would walk to one side of the room if you disagree you go to the other side. Then we would have some healthy debate about why we chose the side that we did. We had some really good conversations. Some of the topics I have thought about before while others I had to think about and make a decision about quickly. One of the topics was “If we could clone a person, would it have a soul?” I argued that it would have a soul. Another question was about if there was any situation where you think abortion is acceptable. On Tuesday I got some recalls done on my car and bought the tickets for our groups flight to New Zealand. There are currently 9 of us going. I am really looking forward to it. Then on Wednesday my parents came in. I made some quiches and then on Thursday morning we made eggs bacon sausage and waffles for everyone. It was a big hit. Now we are going country dancing so that should be a lot of fun. I have done a lot of swing but not as much country so I look forward to getting better at this. 

Week 6

This week has been very exciting; we got to hear from BJ Thompson. The main thing that I took away from BJ’s talks was that we need to accept our brokenness. Once we realize our brokenness we can accept that we cannot do it on our own. We can then move towards a dependence on God and seeing our need for Christ as our savior. When we try and do things on our own we demean what God accomplished through sending his son to die.  So by realizing our own depravity we can then move to grace instead of trying to do it on our own and focusing on legalism and our own performance. 

            Now we are working on our paper on growing in gratefulness so that is a awesome experience. Learning to be grateful for everything that we are given and using it for Gods glory.

I also made my final plans for New Zealand; we are buying our plane tickets and bus passes  on Monday so that will be good. I also bought my plane ticket for Australia for the 5 day trip so I am pumped about that. Haven’t quite finished the plan for what I am going to do while I am in Australia, but I am probably going to go to the opera house and the bridge. We are also talking about going to hill song church on Sunday so that will be good. Then we might go hang gliding and stuff. I think the great barrier reef is pretty far from Sydney so it looks like I am going to have to make another trip to Australia at some point in my life. I am going to see if I can find 42 Walabee Way Sydney.  Find it for the Nemo memories. Anyway talk to you guys later.

Week 5

This week has been awesome. One thing that I have been working on all week aside from my usual work is a trip New Zealand. If I haven’t told you guys yet, I am going with like 19 other students to Figi for our study abroad program. We will be building house for a ministry there that mission groups will be able to come and use for years to come. This will be the first time link year goes there and we will set the foundation for next year and the years after that.

            So we have a 5 day break after 2 weeks that some of us are going to Australia so that is going to be sooo legit. My friend Josh Ong is working on what that would look like as far as activities and cost.

            I have been working on the New Zealand trip. I am so excited for it. We will be there after the figi trip during our spring break. The presentation that I made that shows the activities and cost to do different things. I am soooo pumped. I cant wait. If anyone wants to fund some of my activities as a Christmas gift I will post the prices for different things and feel free to do that. It would make this already amazing trip even cooler.

            For example some of the things we have an opportunity to do. Skydiving, Black water rafting, horseback riding, sailing, hunting, and surfing. Just to name a few. There are several waterfalls and nature hikes we plan to go on as well. We will start in Auckland and travel around the North Island of New Zealand. Ill tell you guys more about it later but it is gonna be super legit.

Events to sponsor

Travel Pass ($300)

Black water rafting ($160)

Skydiving ($200)

Horseback riding ($120)

Sailing- If you want to go crazy and charter the boat for our group. ($370) My cut will probably cost $50.

Surfing is $72 for a 3 hour lesson.

The free thing you can give me is prayer. We are going to be doing a lot of ministry while we are abroad and could use some prayer that it wouldn’t be anything that we say or do, but that God would speak and work through us. 

week 5

This week has been awesome. We have had several really awesome speakers. One of my favorites was Karen Chancey. She gave us a biblical overview, which was so awesome. It coincided perfectly with B90X which is the challenge to read the bible in 90 days, so when we were talking about progression in the Old Testament I could really follow along well. Then today we heard from ward Weibe who talked about the Gospels and how they are different and how they are similar, so that was awesome and just added a lot to her overview. He talked about who the authors are writing to at the time which explains why they might have included certain information in their books that the others may have not. It was super interesting. I also finalized some things for logos so we should be getting the software sometime next week and be able to start using it. I am so excited. Ring able to study the words in the Greek and dig into their meanin will be so awesome. I can't wait. I am going home this weekend for the first time so that will be fun. I will wait to post this so my mom doesn't see, because her birthday is tomorrow and I am surprising her. So that is fun :) hannah and Kelsey are carpooling with me which is really fun since we are all from Dallas. This will be the only time I come home before thanksgiving so it will be nice to see my family before heading off. I won't get to see my big sis for a while so that is a bummer but that will just make it that much more special when I do. At black oak grill this week I got to share the gospel with 2 of my co workers. It was so awesome. I was studying for my new city catechism questions and my co workers would ask me about them and I would get to tell them all about Christ and his life and death. It was awesome. Until next week 

Week 4

Well TGIF last week was really fun, we went paintballing at a course in Ozark Missouri, it was a blast, we were playing capture the flag games and eliminations games it was awesome. I did get a little carried away at one point. I was in an epic battle with one of my adversaries on the other team, we were trading shots back and forth as we ducked behind barriers. Then I saw an opportunity as my opponent ducked down. I ran forward and when I was about 10ft away (probably too close) I shot my opponent in the top of the head. It was Alexis…and apparently it hurt pretty bad. I realized that was probably a bad idea right after I shot her in the head. Then as I was checking to see if she was okay, who would come around the corner, but Sarah Emerson, close range about 4 shots to the chest. I got some good welts from that one. Alexis ended up forgiving me, and my welts are now gone, just another successful TGIF I enjoyed with my link year crew.

Friday night I had work at Black Oak Grill, funny story my jeans ripped when I bent over to pick up a napkin, so I had to strategically move around the room without revealing the tear in my jeans. I made it through the night with incident and my boss didn’t notice until the restaurant was closed. Then I went back to Link Year campus and taught some more swing dancing. It was really fun.

This week we had a few different speakers, on Monday we met with our accountability groups and our Jonathan groups, which is like a small group for just guys, so that we can fellowship and encourage each other. Then on Tuesday we had Donyes speak to us about our seven pillars papers, it was an overview of all of them, we will go more in depth on them as we write our seven pillar papers. On Wednesday Amy Simmons came and spoke to us about the way that God had an impact on her life as she went into prisons to speak, she spoke at the white house and wrote two book about the way God has interceded into her life.

Then today we were shown how Logos Bible software works and we are trying to make an elective course for Logos so that we can learn to use it and get a discount on it. I am really excited about it. Tomorrow we are going on another TGIF, I wonder where we will go. 

CCLP/Brian Wang

            One of the projects that Link Year assigned right at the beginning of the program was the CCLP, which stands for the Christ Centered Life Plan. It was a project that we spent several hours working on and thinking about. We wrote about how we would want to be remembered when our life was over. How we would want specific individuals or groups to remember us. The first was how we wanted God to look at our life. The others were our choice of who we wanted to represent. Most of us chose to write how we wanted our parents to remember us, our kids (when we have them) or future spouse, co workers..ect. The purpose of this is to make a plan for how we will be remembered that way. It is not something that will happen by accident. So we made “accounts” which are the priorities that need to be in place for us to achieve our goals. By making “deposits” in those accounts we add value to each of them. For example some of my accounts were. God, Family, Friends, Finances, Giving/Service. So I supported each priority with a Bible verse and then put tangible steps to build value in those “accounts” by doing this at the beginning of the program we can practice good habits or putting these as true priorities.

            Brian Wang talked to us about taking time to really think about the direction of our life. To go somewhere put away the cell phone and be alone with God and really give yourself time to think about our priorities. The Bible verse he gave use was Proverbs 16:9 “ The heart of a man plans his way, but The Lord establishes his steps. While our plans will not always go as we planned them it is clear that God asks us to make a plan. Don Ford talked to us about making plans and he said “ Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Week 3

Well to continue from where I left off last week. I have now finished and turned in my CCLP (Christ Centered Life Plan). So I think that went well. We also had our first group of people answering apologetical questions, so that was exciting. I do not have to answer mine until October 10^th, so I still have some time to prepare, but I feel pretty ready for them. My three questions are: What is life style evangelism? Since the Bible doesn’t mention masturbation is it still sin? How can I be certain that Christianity is the only way? So I will be asked one of those three questions and random and have to defend my answer. One of the directors will be playing the devils advocate. The only thing we have is a Bible, no notes or phone a friend.  So next week I will be sure to let you guys know how it goes. I am starting work at Black Oak Grill as a server tomorrow. I have been in training up to this point, but tomorrow I get my own tables, so that will be fun. There is a software called Logos Bible that I am planning on getting, it is an amazing tool that helps you study the Bible deeper, digging into the Greek words and the history of the people of the time, so that you can understand why something maybe Jesus did was so unusual and realize how radical he really was. Right now they are working on getting the people in our program a discount, but I am really excited to get it when they work out the details. We are doing a biblical foundations program called New City Catechism. You can look it up online, it is free and you can follow along with what I am doing. We are studying in order, 3 questions per week and tested on them every Wednesday. Next Wednesday we will be responsible for questions 1-6 and then the next week 1-9 and so on. That way we retain our information. We memorize the verse and reference that supports our answer to the question. It is often fairly basic concepts to someone who has grown up in church all their life, but I think it will be very useful when trying to articulate my faith to someone who has never been to church or heard about God. Tomorrow is TGIF (random fun Friday activity) and all they told us to wear clothes that we can get dirty and to wear old tennis shoes. So that should be exciting. My only thought is that we could be caving. I know we are going on a bus to go somewhere, but he probably realizes we will think that so it could easily be something else.  

Week 1/2

Well I have been at Link year for almost two weeks now and it has been one of the best decisions of my life. I have learned so much since I got here. First things we have done have been focused on understanding ourselves. Once we understand our strengths, weaknesses and challenges we can make a plan to use and cultivate our strengths while improving the areas that we are weak on.
     We have also taken time to try and get to understand each other, by sharing with one another what we have found in our self reflection and through the Birkman assessment we took. It has helped me grow closer and understand my friends so much better.
      We are now taking the time to think about our future and our priorities. We are making a plan for our future on how we want to move forward with our priorities. making specific and measurable goals that are both ambitious and realistic. We will be encouraged to look back on this plan, so that we can see our progress and maintain the course we set out. It is nothing set in stone, we will change things as needed, but having Goals is a good start.
     For each goal we support it with at least one Bible verse. If the Bible is not calling us to make something a priority in our life, we have no business making it one. The experience has given me a lot of time to think about my future and what is really important to me.
      I miss the people in my life that I am so used to spending every day with; my family and friends, but know that God is shaping me into the man He wants me to be and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Love you Guys,
                            Mason DeLoache