Austin Ochs

This week has been pretty legit. Austin Ochs came and talked to us. He is really cool guy. He told us a little bit about his past and growing up what things were like and if I could say one thing about him is that he does stuff. He will come up with an idea. Often a pretty big idea and act on it. Why not right? I was inspired, what is stopping you. He had an idea to form small groups at his school his softmore year and by the second semester 100 out of the 105 kids in his cool signed up wanting to be in small groups. It was amazing, he a softmore God used in a mighty way. Now he is a part owner of a few companies, his primary company being one called seat king. They build industrial seating, seems kinda boring and pretty basic to me, but the catch is the employees are all in prison. The manufacturing building is in the prison and they get to work for 8 to 15 dollars and hour, to send to their families or buy various approved amenities for their cell. They have started a seminary through that, and nine inmates are a part of it, they are studying and learning and changing that prison. Everyone who comes in that prison is given an opportunity to work and share in joy of Christ. Some are in for life sentences, but are content in the place that God has them, have repented from old sin and are now trying to help others. It is amazing some of the stories that come out of there. Then He is also working on a project in Honduras for hydro electric power. It is pretty cool. It was like an 8 million dollar project that will provide energy for a village they sell the electricy back to the Honduran government to provide energy there. His wife has now come up with an idea of praying scripture over others and started a website that will email you a verse each day as you go through different books of the Bible and you just insert the name of the person you want to pray for an it will incorporate it into a prayer based on the verses for that person. You can also go through it quicker on the website looking at the verses and the prayers they have written from that. It is really cool. Today is my little sisters 18^th birthday so that is crazy. She isnt allowed to be 18, but I knew she was gonna grow up on me at some point. So that is exciting, we will get to be in college together next year at pepperdine. Legit! So pumped. Tonight I went over to the Chanceys and cooked some venison for them and brought Matt Lydia and Xenia, we had a great time getting to know them better and sharing a little bit of our stories. We also had our pancakes and praise deal, which was fun. The song the more I seek you has just been really moving me lately. I cant get enough of it, but the versions on youtube are just ehhh. Live worship with my Link Year family is where it is at. Shout out to Sarah Emerson :D she probably doesn’t read my blog, but that’s ok. Austin challenged us with something I am going to take very seriously. Think of one thing you would do for God’s kingdom, if you had unlimited resources. I challenge anyone reading this to think about this as well. I don’t know what kind of following I have, but I would love to hear what you would do. I believe that God would provide me with the opportunity to gain whatever resources I need, so sky is the limit, lets go, I just gotta come up with a need and a God size idea.

Weird Week

It is weird to think that Link Year is almost over, this week has been unusual. I wasn’t here for class Monday morning, I was still in Dallas flying back. Had a cool conversation with the woman I sat next to o the plane about Link Year and about Jesus. It was awesome that God gave me that opportunity to share with her. She knew about Jesus and had been to church before but she didn’t really open up about where she was at with God. Anyway I’m praying that God will continue to work in her life. Class on Wednesday was with Rich, he runs Joshua Wilderness which is a different gap year program. It is in Hume Lake California kinda near Fresno. They are in a lot of ways very different than Link, partly because of location/isolation, but he spoke to us a lot on his trips to Israel and teaching about Jewish and Israeli culture. That was interesting. Then on Wednesday we had our small groups, which felt weird because that is normally on Mondays, we went through the study we are doing on identity, confronted some issues about times in my life where I am trying to be God is some way, trying to control things, or change people, or not wanting to ask for help from others. Our culture tells us a lot of things about what men should or shouldn’t do and a lot of times it contradicts the Bible and so we have to be careful not to get caught up into what we have always heard and what we are used to, but instead match it with the word. I got a ton of stuff done that afternoon, trying to get some things sorted out for the fundrasier I am trying to do for Fiji missions (Island encounters). Hitting a few road blocks, but nothing I think we cant get around. This morning almost all of the guys got up and we had a time of prayer together. It was really cool, we are going to do this every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of Link Year. I cant believe that it is almost over. It has been a blast. Choosing between Pepperdine and Westmont probably in the next week or so, by next week I will either be a Wave or a Warrior. Either way I am pretty pumped. I gotta go get some maintenance done, Later.