Speaking of Oakland, who wants to hear about our time at Shiloh church? I see that hand!

Can I just be honest? There is a certain level of nervousness that occurs when you find out that you, a bunch of white kids, will be performing hip-hop dances in a mostly African American church. Say what? Okay then… Let’s do our best to look like we got swagger, because if we don’t they just might not invite us back. Fortunately, they LOVED us! So much that we were asked to perform one of our dances for all three services on Sunday morning. In front of 4,000 people. Who all gave us standing ovations. Praise Him!

The dancing was great, but watching Kristin Tanon give her testimony at her home church was so much better! She did marvelous and her church family was thrilled to see the change in her heart. Going to Shiloh was really a part of her healing and God was so faithful to give her all of the confidence that she needed to be there.

You have to understand the legacy of the church to know how cool it is that we were able to minister there. I won’t go into all of the history, but basically, the senior pastor’s grandmother is the founder of the church and she was baptized by Aimee McPherson, a well known Christian who started revivals in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the early 1900′s. Basically, this church has been a very influential place since the Jesus movement and it was incredible that we were given the pulpit for a night.

So many young people were again set free, filled with the Holy Spirit, and inspired to find their purpose and destiny in life! Every city that we visit we have full confidence that the Lord is going to move in miraculous ways and we are learning to love that expectancy!

On Saturday we all took a trip to San Francisco. Connor even told PT, Eli, and myself that there was a Giants game that day. However, when we got to the stadium, he realized that they were actually playing in Arizona that day. Bummer!! Here are some shots from the day:

After our time in Oakland, we decided to camp for a couple nights on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It was so nice to have a few day to relax, enjoy the sun, and get some much needed r&r!

Can you tell how much fun we are having?? Stay tuned for our next post… I will be filling you in on quite the adventurous excursion Eli and Connor decided to take. It involves an air matress, two shovels, and the Coast Gaurd. You won’t want to miss it!

How do we communicate our heart to these people?
Will they catch our dream of a generation that finds healing through falling in love with Jesus?
Will they invite us back?!

Jesus is so faithful to calm these irrational fears and answer them all with a big, fat YES!

Sanctuary in Concord was one of those communities that opened their hearts to us and we have fallen in love with them!! They are genuine people who love the Lord with all of their heart and have dedicated their lives to listening to him and obeying what he says.

We spent a couple days as work days and really made an effort to bless the community. We were able to paint the entire church in one day and I personally had so much fun! Here are some pictures of the day:

Our service on Sunday morning went so well! Ruth Merry gave her testimony with power! We are so proud of her and how well she is communicating what Jesus has and is doing in her life. I asked her what they key to beating insecurities is in which she replied with this:

“I had to force myself to speak out and think hard about submitting myself to the Lord. When you don’t say something, you can be disobeying God! I just want to continually submit myself and my voice in obedience to Jesus and I have SO much fun when I do it!”

Go get em girl!

We were sad to leave Concord. So many good relationships were made between young people and especially our house parents, but we know that God has just begun there! To our new family in Concord:

We are so thankful that we had the opportunity to meet you and spend the weekend with you! Thank you for letting us into your hearts! We love you!

Now, we are in line to tour the Jelly Belly factory! We will check in soon!

“Oh look! This is the naval weapons base that the Pentagon recently closed. And that over there is Mt. Diablo! Look! Look! My house! That’s my house!”

I love her enthusiasm.

Remember when Jesus promised the Holy Spirit?

“I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. You know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!” (John 14:16-17 MSG)

Jesus had just finished telling His dear friends, His disciples, that He was going away. He was going somewhere that they weren’t allowed to go yet. And they were devastated. It was like their BFF (best friend forever) was moving to another country and there was just no way that they could go with Him. Can you imagine? Put yourself in their shoes. They followed Him everywhere. They saw miracles, people healed, even raised from the dead! Demoniacs were set free right in front of their eyes! “Hey! Did you see that?! Jesus just sent a thousand demons into those pigs and they ran off that cliff! He’s the coolest!”

But now the wicked awesome exorcist, sickness-smashing, pharisee-pummeling, savior of the universe is peacing out to a place no one else can go. If I was a disciple I would be feeling the cluster of emotions known as sadness, confusion, and hopelessness.

He knew that they would react this way. He was fully aware that the fisherman were going to freak out. In fact, maybe He broke it to them bluntly just to get the reaction from them. I’m a firm believer that Jesus had a sense of humor and thankfully His humor sits on the foundation of His perfect integrity and character. He had a promise hidden in one hand behind His back and He was about to ask the disciples which hand they wanted to choose.

So Jesus offers them the Comforter. The Helper was on His way as soon as Jesus left for Heaven. Oh, and by the way, the Comforter was going to come with the same power that Jesus was using to exercise, heal, and pummel. Oh, and by the way again, when everyone received the Helper, they were going to get that same power! Suddenly the thought of Jesus leaving had some hope behind it! And when Jesus did leave, His friends received the Comforter and the Power and went out to take down the Roman Empire. Amazing.

Why am I telling you all of this?

“Josiah,” you say, “I thought you were going to update us on what is going on in road trip?”

I tell you this because this very thing has been happening for the last week! The Comforter, the Helper, the Power, the Holy Spirit has been following us to every stop and taking each place by storm! We have been having an incredible time! Our ministry services have not been successful or influential because we have well polished testimonies or fancy hip-hop dances, although, our new hip-hop dance, “No Limit”, is pretty fancy for a group of white kids.

The stories we can tell from what has happened are endless! We just spent over 2 hours on the bus talking about all of the great things Jesus has done! So many young people were led to the Lord. More people were filled with the Holy Spirit than I can count on one hand. The Helper helped those who needed deliverance from addictions, fears, insecurities, pride, lust, doubt, unbelief, and every other form of darkness. Where is Kelsey Blome when I need her? I need a word association to describe it!

Rather, I think I will let these testimonies do the work for me:

Meghan had the opportunity to pray for her aunt, who has fibromyalgia. She is in constant pain and when Meghan prayer for her, the pain instantly left!

Sunday night we ministered at Christian Faith Center in Oroville and we ended with an hour of ministry asking the Holy Spirit to fill those who hadn’t received him. Instantly several began speaking in tongues and felt the power of God on them! David prayed for a guy and he was filled!

We went to Faith Christian High School, my school for all of high school, and truly started a fire. You have to understand- most Christian schools are dead. It often feels like you are speaking to a group of zombies that only have lunch on their minds. However, it was so different this time. The GL’s were able to speak life into the school and see such an incredible response. I had the opportunity to meet with one guy for coffee the next morning. The conversation started off pretty light but ended incredibly when this kid asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit… In the Starbucks parking lot! It was great! He was so fired up that he went back to school that morning and spread the news of what had happened to him. Since then, I have been getting text messages every day with reports of healings, people getting filled with the Holy Spirit, and all sorts of powerful moves of God!

Brie and Mackenzie had the great opportunity to lead a young girl to the Lord. She has been living quite the rough life, with her husband in jail, and it was so great to see her come alive when she met Jesus.

So many other things have happened, if I wrote them all out, I would have a book to publish. You, however, are very fortunate reader. You are reading the testimonies of what Jesus is doing in lives. These are the testimonies that prove the power of God! The power to change a life. Keep us in your prayers! We need lots of energy and strength. Ministry work is very tiring! Nonetheless, we are amazed and so thankful to see the goodness and faithfulness of Jesus.

Sorry for the delay in updates. We will do our best to keep you updated during out busy schedule! Thank you for reading our blog! We are so glad to have you a part of our journey!

Gameface.

The premise is simple. Take a picture of your ugliest face and hope that it is ugly enough to win.

Here is where you come in. Below are some of the ugliest looks in GL. It is up to you to determine the winner. All you need to do is post a comment below, or if you’re on Facebook, find the Generational Leadership page and post on comment on the post.

Ready?? Vote!!

Alivia Bryant

Josiah Reimers

Kristin Tañon

David Volz

Jaimee Nelson

Meghan Cochrane

Maddison Haag

We are currently en route to sunny, warm Yuba City, California! Don’t be jealous- the sun shall return to Washington one of theses days… Yuba City is the first stop on our road trip and we are so excited to be heading there! We will be ministering tomorrow night at the Church of Glad Tidings, a church that we have loved for many years. Sunday morning we will be in Oroville, CA at Christian Faith Center for a Sunday morning service and a Sunday evening service followed by another service Monday afternoon at Faith Christian High School. We are definitely hitting this trip off with a BANG and we are so expectant of what Jesus is going to do through our lives and in the lives of the people we meet!

Currently, we are traveling 65 mph down I-5 in good ole’ “Gus the Bus”. Our ETA is approximately 7:30pm and Jim Mabry is at the helm! When asked how the driving was going, he responded speechless. It must be THAT good. Here is an interesting fact: the gas gauge on the bus has been replaced this year. For the past several years, gas has been estimated based on engine hours. A full tank of gas will usually take you down the road for a solid 10 hours! Thankfully, we won’t be worried about running out of gas on this trip. With our fancy new gas gauge we will be cruisin down the road in complete confidence.

Life on the bus is pretty quiet, especially in the mornings. It’s only around 10am, so many on the bus are still in dreamland. I suspect that these sleepy students with start to wake up in the next hour or so. If they don’t, they may be subject to the shenanigans of restless interns needing something to pass the time. It’s just one of the consequences of sleeping in public.

Here is our current view from the cockpit:

As you can see, we are having the most delightful time on the bus! This is the first of many blog posts to come and this is the place to get all of your information regarding our wild adventures on road trip!

Until next time…