On an adventure with HIM

Staff Reunite and Get Ready For DTS!!

2012-01-27T21:17:00.001-08:00

Our other team from PNG and Bali just got in late last night at 2am! So glad to reunite and get ready for the school!!

Our first official staff meeting with the new staff.

Getting the class rooms ready!

We are so excited for the students to come!

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Our New Staff arrived!

2012-01-21T02:57:00.001-08:00

We took our new staff for a shopping trip today to get all their basics for living in the staff house! Then we went for a swim! I'm so glad they are staffing our DTS!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Planning For The DTS School

2012-01-19T00:25:00.001-08:00

This is our life this month gearing up for 32 students coming Feb 13 the to the Sunshine Coast for their missionary training school also known as a DTS (discipleship training school). It's our first time leading so we're really exited and can't wait to see what God does!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

It's Been a Busy Month! So many changes!

2012-01-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

We have put quite a few of these pictures on face book and we told you a bit on our Christmas update but here are a few more pics for those who don't do facebook.

We got back from outreach Nov 18th and graduated the students.

Then Luke and I celebrated our 5 year Anniversary

Then we drove 11 hours south to New Castle to do a gov course called Cert 4 (it was two weeks)

Then drove 20 more hours down to the bottom of Australia - to Melbourne for Christmas

We are now back up in the Sunshine Coast planning everyday for the Feb DTS

We are so excited for what God will do- It starts FEB 13!

We have 15 staff and 32ish students

Pray God gives us the wisdom and stamina to run this entire operation! Love you

Bethany and Luke

I always enjoy a good detox after coming back from outreach!! YUMMY!!

Luke loves Caprese

Thanksgiving all together as a YWAM base... well some of us Americans that is..


We had our 5 Year Wedding Anniversary!! It was so great. I can't believe 5 years have gone by. We feel so blessed by God that we've been able to do so much in those years! He continues to blow us away. We are so excited for the next 5 years... I bet a lot will be changing.. We'll keep you updated...

Okay so we took a road trip down the coast for Christmas and we came across THE BIG BANANA!! Ha! And we HAD to stop. They had a whole plantation and store and food court with EVERYTHING banana.. and if you know the history of the past year here in OZ they had a huge flood and almost all the banana crops were wiped out! So this was a big moment for us. haha..

It was really nice to just relax after 10 MONTHS of back to back DTS and outreach etc..

We had to do this 2 Week intensive government course (required for DTS Staff) down in Newcastle. We met some really cool people from other YWAM bases. There were people from Fiji, Tahiti, Ireland, Switzerland there.

On the weekend after a LONG 10 hour a day study week we took a trip into the city of Sydney!! SOOOO AMAZING!! I loved this city! Would go there again in a heart beat!

The famous Sydney Opera House


We even went to Hillsong while we were there! This is where they meet for church! Pretty crazy...

We had a Christmas Party at our Cert 4 Course. It was nice to get a break from working online for 10 hours that day..No joke!!

We love the different cultures God makes. Our Fijian brothers did a fun dance for us.. and if you look closely you will see that they roped Luke into the dance... haha so funny..

Down in Melbourne there was some pretty fun surf for Luke..

We had such a fun crew to hang with. Friends from our church GoodLife.

We drove to Philip Island and on the way is this cool structure.. We couldn't resist..

Christmas Day was fun.. The family we were with decorated the back yard and we all ate together and opened presents!

We traveled into the city of Melbourne.. it was a bit of a gloomy day but still fun!

Our good friends Richie and Antje

This is on The Great Ocean Road... (which is located on the bottom of Australia near Melbourne..

The famous Twelve Apostles!


And of course I have to put a food picture in there.. I had the most amazing veggie burger...

And we even got to see wild Koalas, which you'd think would be a normal thing here in Australia but in fact it's quite rare.


Well it's Jan now and we have been tirelessly working on preparing for the FEB DTS!! And we are so excited! PLEASE PRAY FOR US as this is the first school we've ever lead on our own so we just want to be so reliant on the Holy Spirit! Bless you guys!!! Talk to you soon! Thank you for loving us from afar!

We are BACK in OZ! Check out our outreach VIDEO at the bottom of this post!

2011-11-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! What's up?! Well... We are back in Australia after 2 months in Thailand and India! God has been so good to us! Praise you Jesus!

Towards the end of outreach, I think Bethany and I were starting to feel pretty tired -- we have been going hard for the last 10 months straight! But upon arrival in Australia, I had a cool revelation. I realized that I NEVER get tired of Jesus!! As soon as I had a free minute to myself.... it was like my heart was just calling out... Jesus! He is so good and so faithful. I want my life to be built on his abiding Presence...nothing else is worth it. Everything else fades away.

Here are some pictures from our last week or so. We did our last week of lectures on an island in the Gulf of Thailand, just south of Bangkok. We spent time as an entire school, shared stories of the good, bad, and the ugly, prepared for what was ahead, worshipped and prayed together, ate great food, chilled on the beach etc etc. It was awesome!

Scroll through the pictures and CHECK OUT OUR OUTREACH VIDEO AT THE BOTTOM!!

(made by one of our students!)

Jumping on the speedboat that takes us to the island!

...packed full of all our crap

Hanging out with some of our crew

Checking out the beach... so beautiful

Trying hard to concentrate (some of us) on our last week of lectures...we could hear
the waves gently lapping a few feet away....aaah!

We rented mopeds (so frickin cheap!) and cruised all around the island together.
Probably my favorite part of our trip to the island ha ha! If you've never ridden
one of these things before -- get on it, immediately!

A little R&R...where's the Corona?

Our last dinner together overseas.

Pineapple fried rice... nuff said.

Back in Australia for DTS graduation!!

It definitely feels good to be back :-)

Enjoy the Video!!

Thank you everyone for all your prayers and support -- We love you all and MISS you like crazy!

PEOPLE ARE GETTING HEALED!!

2011-10-31T00:55:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

Greetings from India! Bethany and I are on the homestretch of our time here in Chennai (the southeast coast) with only 2 weeks left!! It has been a wild ride to say the least!

Before arriving here, Bethany had a dream: She was walking and she saw a line drawn on the ground and on the other side of the line was the word "INDIA" written in big letters. It was all dark and creepy looking. As soon as she stepped across the line, she was attacked by a giant rat which represented the demonic realm. But she fought it off and just began walking in the Spirit. Then she saw a person sitting in a chair, sick with a fever. This person's eyes were bright blue (the color blue usually represents revelation) indicating that they were "seeing" a revelation of Jesus! She put her hand on the person and said "In Jesus' name, be healed" and instantly the fever left!

Sooooo....check it out. I have been reading this book "When Heaven Invades Earth" by Bill Johnson, the pastor of Bethel Church in Reading, California. It has been rocking my world! But long story short, I have been stirred to a place of crazy faith, believing God for miracles, healings, signs and wonders - BIG TIME!!

So, we arrive in Chennai and our whole team is under massive spiritual attack! People are getting sick, struggling with homesickness, and we start having issues with our team unity etc etc. Well, we persevere through it, thankfully. Part 1 of the dream fulfilled. Then we meet our next door neighbors, a family of three, who are a muslims. We start becoming friends with the father, Nazier. He is super friendly and he invites us into his house. He tells us that of all the foreigners that have stayed in the building (YWAM teams) we are the first ones to come into his home, ever! We are so honored!

We start praying for him every day and asking God for an opportunity to share with him and his wife. After a few days of hanging out, opportunities don't seem to be coming. But then the Lord starts speaking to me "Demonstrate who I am, show him the Kingdom". So I am like "well, he's not sick or anything, what can we do?"

Well, we don't see him for the next day or so, and we come to find out that he's been really sick, just laying in bed! Weird? We finally see him laying on the couch, sleeping with the door to his apartment open. Bethany and I both feel like the God is saying "go pray for him". So we walk in (uninvited) and wake him up and ask how he's doing. He is dripping with sweat and he tells us that he has a fever! Sound familiar? Plus, he is wearing a bright blue shirt! Interesting. So we pray for him and his fever breaks and by the end of the day he is feeling totally better!

It gets better. I see him the next day and ask him how he's doing. He tells me his sickness is gone but he's been suffering from pain in his elbows and joints. He asks us if we can pray for him now! Of course, we do and God heals his elbows! Then he says he's been having bad back pain -- we pray and God heals that!! So after all this we are blown away! Then last night he comes to us and tells us "I am praying to Jesus now, because there is POWER!" We are speechless. He doesn't know much yet but he knows that Jesus heals!! Praise God!! Now that is the Gospel of the Kingdom!

"For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power." – 1 Corinthians 4:20

Well, here are a few photos from our time here in India so far!

Our main blog that we've been updating more consistently with more pictures is

http://thailandindiaoutreach.blogspot.com/

love you guys!!!

Our Thailand India Blog

2011-09-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

For the next two months we will update this blog. So just click on this address

http://thailandindiaoutreach.blogspot.com/

God is good! Love you guys!!

Bethany and Luke

7 DAYS LEFT!!!!

2011-09-10T08:21:00.001-07:00

This DTS Lecture phase has flown by! Wow. I think I say that about every time I talk about DTS! It must mean I am getting old! Ah man! Oh well.

Last week was Prayer Week. We split up into groups and prayed from 6am-12am each day (18 hrs of prayer a day) It was awesome but an exhausting week. We did lots of worship and intercession times, personal time with God, corporate time and everything in between. 4 of our students got the gift of tongues!! SO COOL! One of our speakers talked about how he has his staff pray in tongues each morning for 3 hours before they do ministry. I was like, "wow that is a long time".. The bible says that when you speak in tongues that is edifies your spirit. So I thought, why not. So one day I prayed in tongues for 1 hour and it WAS AMAZING!!!! I felt so good. I prayed about so many things, God showed me some crazy stuff in the spirit, I laughed, cried... and by the end I felt so light! Ya so that was prayer week.

This week we are learning about differing worldviews. We have a speaker named Neville. He is Aussie and super smart. He taught us about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam and why they do certain things based on their world view. We are learning all of the misconceptions they have about what a "Christian" is and how to show them what it really means to follow Jesus. Neville has so much information that in 4 days one of our girl students, Cari, took over 21 pages of notes!! Wow...

We are doing a fun team building exercise... trying to get our whole class from one side of the tarp to the other without anyone touching the ground. Good times! It helps you see who is a leader, who is a follower, who is a strategist etc...

I thought this tree was super cool!

Us and the two Norwegians, Solveig and Juliana

One night all of us staff made a surprise dinner for the students. We catered a three course meal and washed their feet and gave them words of encouragement. It was so much fun!

One weekend we decided to have a BBQ on the bluffs by the beach. So of course I wanted to do Veggie kebabs!

Beautiful Australia!

For one week we went down to Byron Bay and did evangelism. Byron is the hippie mecca of Australia where thousands of backpackers travel through weekly so it's a great place to chat and talk with people from all over the WORLD!! It's amazing. Here we are getting ready to drive down with all our stuff!

Kevin, the YWAM leader for Byron Bay taught us about evangelism and took us out a few nights where we put into practice what we learned.

We did free BBQs, had live music and just chatted with the people down there. It's so fun to love people with Jesus' love. I met a german girl that just looked so troubled and lonely. I just listened to her stories and loved her. Each second I was with her I could see her hardened heart growing more and more soft. I love how God does that! If we truly knew how much he loved us we'd JUMP into His arms!

While we were in Byron we stayed at this church and slept on the floor. But one night the church needed their sanctuary (where we slept) for their youth group meeting so we were put back in the kids room for about 3 hours. And boy did we have fun! You wouldn't think a group of 18 year olds could have that much fun in one room for that long.. but oh we found stuff to do alright. Check out our video!

This is Colleen. She is one of the girls I disciple. She has come from a hard past and really wanted to be free from the guilt and shame she has felt before. So we wrote down some major things she did in the past and gave them up to Jesus. We burned the paper and left it on the beach as a declaration that they are dead and GONE!! and that she can now be free! When we did it she felt SO much better! I love that God is a forgiving God. He loves us so much! He will take anything we are willing to give up to him.

Okay this may seem crazy to some of you and it was crazy to us as well, but I help lead worship at this ministry called the 24/7 Burn Prayer House. Once a month a lot of churches get together and people pray and worship for 24 hours. WELL while we were doing this, one of the ladies that runs it started praying for miracles and in faith she started placing coins on the wall and asking God to defy gravity... AND IT WORKED!!!! YES these are the coins. I didn't believe it myself until I came over and put my own personal coin on the wall and it stayed! Don't ask me why, its just amazing that God can do anything!!

One weekend we went to this family's house and helped paint because the husband is very sick and dying of cancer and cannot finish the house. So we all pitched in and helped them out. We actually just found out today as I write this blog update that Fred (the man with cancer) went to be with Jesus. Please pray for their family as this is a tough time for them.

THE BIGGEST EATING CONTEST OF THE YEAR!! Well for us at least. Luke thought how fun it would be to challenge the "big eaters" of our group to have a pasta eating contest. We had three guys and one girl (champ) sign up for it! The rest of us just gathered around and cheered them on. We did it late Friday night and boy did they pay for it the next morning.

One guy, Jason who looks like Luke's twin, was doing push ups getting ready for the contest. They all took their shirts off getting ready for the sloppy mess.. and we counted down... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 GO! They had 5 minutes to eat as much as they could...

Jason, the push up guy, WON!! Luke tried but his twin out-ate him.

Andrew was disqualified as he threw up half way through eating his bowl of pasta! Ya GROSS! But it was hilarious! He was a good sport!

They were SO FULL afterward!

Well that's it for now. Luke and I went on one last nice date before we head to the jungles of northern Thailand, and the slums of India. God is so good to us! And we are SO THANKFUL to our supporters for blessing our lives, our marriage and allowing us to take students to the nations to touch people with the love of Jesus Christ!!

Team Thailand/India

Jason, Jenna, Fleur, Ali, Cari, Me, Lyndzie, Cassie, Solveig, & Luke

We have ONE WEEK LEFT!

Please pray: for our VISAS to come back from the India Consulate for they are taking longer than expected. This always happens and when we pray God always comes through so we'd love prayer for this. Also for team unity (it's actually really good now but Satan always attacks in this area so we'd just love some pre-prayer for that to stay strong). For our marriage to stay strong as we travel and lead the team, and for staff unity with the other girl Fleur who is leading with us as it can be a challenge with three people leading.

Thank you SO MUCH!!

We love and miss you and will get you an update when we get there!

Half Way Through Lecture Phase! 5 weeks before Outreach!!

2011-08-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, Lecture Phase has been zooming by! Our students have been learning so much about the Bible and about how to grow in their character. We have different Bible reading plans that the students can choose from while on DTS and the hardest plan is called The Big Daddy Reading Plan. They read through the whole Bible in 5 months! Our student Mandie has been charging and she's not only all the way caught up but she is AHEAD and LOVING it! The other day she came to me (bethany) and put her hands on her head and was like, "wow I am getting SO much more from the bible than I ever thought!! It's been changing my life".... So cool how God's word does that. There is no other book like it.

Add caption

This is Noah, our wonderful Mission Builder for the quarter. A Mission Builder is someone who volunteers to help serve in whatever way a YWAM Base needs. So Noah decided to come for three months and make and serve us "morning tea" when we have a break in between lectures. He has been SUCH a blessing to us. Each week he gets more and more creative in how to put oranges, apples and lettuce together to make some crazy concoctions. This one is a Kangaroo.

We had Jason Solari speak on hearing God's voice. It was the best and most practical teaching we've heard on the topic yet. He had us do a really cool but uncomfortable exercise where we had to sit in pairs and stare into each others eyes for 2 minutes WITHOUT looking away at all! At first you are super uncomfortable cuz your eyes speak soo so much and they really are the window to your soul. You start laughing but you CANNOT look away... by the end of the first minute you get more comfortable and then by the last few seconds you feel like you can go much longer. After doing that you realize how much you can know or learn about someone by just staring in their eyes. We weren't allowed to speak at all or say anything. And Jason was saying that so often we want God to speak to us with words but you can learn so much from Him through other forms of communication. He was a comm major in University and he said that 93% of communication is NON-VERBAL and yet we as Christians get so upset when God doesn't speak to us in words. Anyhow, I could go on and on but it was really cool...

Here is our little class of 14 students and 7 staff.. a booming 21 of us!

This is Solveig. She is from Norway and believe it or not she was born with only one arm. You obviously can't see it from this picture but her left arm is missing. You'd think this would make a lot of things hard for her but no, she is AMAZING.. and can do almost anything. You would never guess that she is handicapped. She has taken a liking to surfing and at first we were like, "well this might be hard for you".. but after a few days of getting roughed up she can totally get up and stand!! Go Solveig. She loves Jesus and will be on our outreach team.

There are only two guy students in our school and luckily one of them is as tall and white as Luke.. haha... Okay so it's the winter for us. This is Jason. He will be on our outreach team and we are super stoked to have him with us. He really has such a heart to grow in God and we have already seen many changes in him since the first day of DTS!

These are my beautiful students I get to disciple and become good friends with. This is Cari, she is from Colorado and Hawaii. Ya we have Hawaii in common. Her family lives in a house on the Big Island for half the year so she has grown up there half of her life. Pretty cool. It's not too often I get to chat with someone who understands where I grew up. Cari came to DTS with her boyfriend Jason and they are just seeking God on what He has next for them and how their lives can reflect Jesus more.

This is Colleen. She is a brand new believer and has just BLESSED my life SO MUCH these past couple months! Her heart to know God and get rid of anything in her past that would keep her from knowing him more has just encouraged and challenged me to do the same. Seeing the Lord through the eyes of a new believer in Christ is so refreshing. Her prayers are so cute and honest and just full of sincerity. Keep her in your prayers as she learns how much God loves and treasures her.

Luke and I are still doing our Date nights which have been such a help to our marriage in this busy season. We went to a concert in Brisbane and saw a band that Luke really likes called Rise Against. Not Christian but man can they rock out!! It was fun!

Well that's it for now!

We love DTS and seeing peoples lives change and becoming more like Christ.

We LOVE you and are so thankful for your prayers and support to us!

Oh and P.S. I think we put this up on facebook but for those who didn't see our message we picked outreach locations!!! WOOOHOOO!! We are taking a team to Thailand/India. Super excited about that! We'll give you more of an update when we get closer to leaving which is coming up soon. Sept 17th!

K bye for now!!

Luke and Bethany

First Week of July DTS!!! 14 Students (12 girls 2 guys)

2011-07-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

We are so excited for what God has planned for this July DTS! Hear a little bit about our time of rest and what we are looking forward to! Love you all

July DTS Update from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

2011-06-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Well WE DID IT!!! First DTS done and finished here in the Sunshine Coast of Australia. Taiwan was an AMAZING outreach and we are so excited to show you our video. Here is a little snap shot of what God did through us. Enjoy

Taiwan Outreach Video from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

If you want to see any more stories about what we did you can go to

http://outreachtaiwan.wordpress.com/

2011-03-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

Here is a little video we made for all you to MEET OUR TEAM!!! These are the students (and the other leader) we will be going to Taiwan with on outreach! We love you all....and really miss you guys! Please pray for us as we head out -- here are a few ways you can pray:

Please pray:

1) That we will be unified as a team and that we would really love one another (we feel this will be our greatest witness)

2) That our hearts would really break for the people of Taiwan -- especially those who don't know Jesus.

3) That God would anoint everything we do -- teaching English, preaching the Gospel, performing our dramas and dances, just hanging out talking to people in coffee shops etc.

4) That EACH STUDENT would increasingly know God's love for them, that they would be encouraged that God wants to use them for His Glory, and that they would be released to become all that God has in mind for them! (this is one of our main goals!)

Thanks a million...we know that your prayers are vital for us to see God do anything! We need you! We love you!

Luke and Bethany

The Taiwan Team from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

Greasy, sweaty and tired.. but going strong!

2011-03-12T20:03:00.000-08:00

Untitled from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

Can you believe it's been a MONTH already?!!

2011-02-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

This month has flown! DTS is on it's 4th week and we are learning SO MUCH! It's amazing how much you can learn when you lead a DTS. WOW everyday is a new learning experience. It makes me have more compassion for pastors and church leaders. Working with people is just messy. Yup, everyone is at a different place in life, from different backgrounds and different cultures. It's been stretching but SO GOOD for us.

I think the biggest thing is that we have had to rely on the Lord for almost every situation. More than anything God has shown us that PRAYER is what changes things. Yup that's it!! Who would have guessed... but PRAYER is what works! I think God has really shown us this because we will have some issue with a staff member or student and we don't know how to address it so instead we go to prayer about how to deal with it and then almost INSTANTLY things start changing with that person before we said ANYTHING to them, almost right before our eyes.. ya it's been amazing.... like God is showing up EVERY time for us. I feel like it's more than normal because God is almost shouting at us that He is the ONE to can change the heart. All of our staff are feeling this too that prayer is what is changing our school so we've been praying more.

When all of the students get here each one is at a different place in their walk so it's like herding cats sometimes to get them all on the same page in the Lord, especially in the beginning of DTS. Some of them were hard core partiers, some were good Christians, some have good families, some have no family! Ya so learning how to deal with each individual has been a challange but really good for us to learn how to love everyone individually. We feel kinda like the parents here seeing that we are one of the only couples on staff but it's been good.

Anyway, date nights have been good- actually LIFESAVING! God knew to get us into the habit while in Santa Barbara. By the end of the week we are just LONGING to be together without anyone else around. Yay so it's been good!

We are still looking for a car so if you could pray for us to find the right one that would be awesome. Strangely enough it actually feels good to be in need for a little while, cuz God has been so good in taking care of us with all of our needs that actually needing to rely on him for a ride from here to there has been cool. It makes life simple when you have to walk everywhere. =)

We found an AWESOME church here. Actually a real surprise seeing that we've heard that Australian churches can be known to be shallow on God's word and more about what's flashy or cool etc. Our pastor Tim is SO REAL.... We grow EVERY TIME we go. It's been so refreshing. We met some local couples at the church and have been making friends. It's been fun adjusting to life here. It's honestly not been too hard. God has been good.

Anyway, I could go on forever but know God is working in us so much. We feel your prayers and support! I think more than anything God has been showing us that even if no one else wants to come along in the journey to radically follow Jesus that it won't stop us from continuing to pursue him. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. Some students want God so much and some are half hearted, but through prayer anything is possible. Keep praying.

Love you all!! We really think of you as our family! Talk to you soon..

Bethany and Luke

Here are some fun pics. Our goofy staff! Always fun!

Staff bonding time. Playing Wii. Like the short shorts? That's popular here in OZ.. ya I don't think Luke will go for it. Not yet anyway.

I made lentil soup for everyone. The base food isn't the best so they were glad to get something good. =)

Gotta love YWAM. They always eat junk food. Aaron and Nate eating candy worms dipped in coke. Yuck!

So we thought we'd combat them with our carrots! =)

A typical Aussie BBQ. They call hot dogs snags here.

Me and beautiful Kelsie... she is from our church Reality back in Santa Barbara and God lead her to do the DTS that we happened to be staffing. God is so good. We absolutely LOVE having her here!

The feeding line!

Date night!

Heading to the beach!

Driving on the other side was hard at first but now only after a month I barely think of it. I think the hardest part is driving our huge buses that are stick shift with the LEFT HAND.

Luke finally getting to surf. So fun.. and I actually went surfing too... yes ME! I know I know shocker but the water is so warm it makes it easy to go in.

Of course I have to throw my food pics in here. I make Vietnamese PHO soup. Super yummy!

Class! We've had some great speakers so far.

This is my (Bethany) kitchen prep crew. I "happened" to get put on kitchen prep duty which was such a God thing cuz I was able to introduce some of my recipes here to help the health of this base. Here they are cutting up FRESH vegetables.. not frozen TV dinner veggies.

Serving my lentil soup and brown rice. Yay

This is our Local Outreach team. Each Friday we try to reach the community of Maroochydore. People are really into exercise here so our team decided to make up a free exercise circuit on the beach for anyone to join. We made flyers and got music and drinks for anyone who wanted to come. We pray each time, hand out flyers, share what we are doing with YWAM and invite them to exercise with us. Last week we met this sweet guy names Philip who seemed lonely and wanted a friend so he came along and worked out with us. He said he wants to come regularly so we were super excited to love someone for Jesus!

Jan 26th is Australia Day which is like our 4th of July so we all had a party and goofed around.

These wonderful girls are my staff buddies! We had a girl bonding time this last weekend and hung out, made french toast, played in the pool and prayed over each other. I am SO GLAD they are part of our team. I love them very much.

The girl on the far right is Whitney and she is leading an outreach with us to TAIWAN!! We are super excited. Tell you more soon!

With all the craziness of DTS it has been SO SO SO GREAT having date nights each week. Thursdays are our night so if you think of us pray for us on Thursdays to get refreshed and built up for the next week. It's been so great!

Well we love you all! God is just amazing! Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. We don't always have access to Internet every second so I hope this blog makes it to you! Would love to hear from you guys! We miss you all!

Bless you

Bethany and Luke

We made it!!!

2011-01-08T18:42:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone!! We actually made it with all of our stuff! God is amazing. Here is a quick video in the LAX airport after we went through security with ALL ELEVEN BAGS!! God is amazing!

Flying to Brisbane from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

How much stuff can two people bring to Australia. But man are we glad we have it cuz we just went to the store and it is super expensive....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We left Dec 31st at 11:50pm so 10 minutes into the flight the pilot said Happy New Year and everyone cheered. Since it was a fabulous international flight they had free rose' champagne so we got some and cheered to our new life and new year together in OZ!

When we arrived two guys from the Sunny Coast YWAM base were there to pick us up.. they are awesome and packed all our stuff in their van. Good thing they brought such a big van!

Okay so we have to learn how to drive on the other side of the road so here I am NOT in the driver's side yet.. I am too afraid to do it.. so I let Luke learn and then I'll make my way over.. =)

This is our temporary living space for now. It's called a Granny Flat which is like a little studio downstairs from one of the YWAM houses. It's small but works for now. God is always good to give me a kitchen... Yay! He is so good..

This is Mindy, she is one of our DTS staff. We already started prepping for the DTS students who will be arriving in a week! We bought paper and goodies for welcome baskets etc..

Aaron and Andrew trying to help. =)

It's hard to find anything healthy here to put in the baskets.. even these juice boxes that say "just juice" is quite far from the truth. =) Good times! It's going to be a challenge to feed these students something healthy. I'm on a mission to change that. We'll see.

Well that's it for now. We are loving it so far and already are feeling at home surprisingly. We LOVE the area. We are 3 minute drive to the beach and shops and it's wonderful and warm. Keep us in your prayers as this next week is the first week of DTS and it's going to be BUSY! But oh we are soooooo excited! We love DTS!

Talk to you soon!

WE LEAVE TODAY!!!! AUSTRALIA bound!

2010-12-31T10:53:00.000-08:00

Well here is our last US side update! =) We had a wonderful time in Hawaii over Christmas seeing my family! It was so good. Here are some fun pictures. After we got home to Santa Barbara we had three days to, sell our car, say goodbye, pack everything and head off! It was busy and packed but SO FUN! Today is the day we leave... actually in 2 1/2 hours we drive to LAX with ALL OUR STUFF!! So anyway, God is good. Here are some pics.

With my brothers Jordan and Micah

Hangin with Dad! I love him so much!

Luke and I got to spend a week with my Dad and my step mom Suzanne.

Dad is recovering from open heart surgery a few months ago so I was on a mission to feed him really healthy! So for a week I labored away making all of my best vegan recipes. So fun. And he actually liked them. ;)

Veggie Sushi! Yummy!

While we were with my Dad we got an email from the VISA PLACE and our VISA WENT THROUGH!!!!! YAAAAAY!! Here is a picture of us earlier when we were in the doctors office trying to get that X-Ray .. jumpin through hoops! But we got the Visa. Praise the Lord!

Checkin da surf!

Gotta love the Christmas attire! Go Aaron.

All of us at my mommy's house. We had so much fun! She always makes our stay wonderful! I will miss her so much!

Well after 15 wonderful days in Hawaii we arrived in LAX with our favorite friends there to greet us. Julia and Dale are the best. We knew that we didn't need to eat the crap food on the plane cuz they'd have snacks in the car! And OH BOY they did!

The coolest thing is that THE DAY we got back we SOLD OUR CAR!! Which was a miracle seeing that we only had 3 days left before we moved. We thought for sure it wouldn't sell that fast and that easy. But when you have Jesus as your father, He can sure pull some strings when you need it. This wonderful guy, Josh, called us from Salinas and drove 2 hours to check our car out.. liked and bought it right out! We couldn't believe it. But to make it even cooler, he not only is a Christian but a missionary! Go God!

Okay, nose to the grind stone! How do we FIT ALL OF THIS STUFF IN OUR LUGGAGE!!?

Finishing our last Newsletter to all our friends!!
Went on our last date!
Last hair cut!
Julia and I had our last smoothie together. Look how sleepy I look. lol
Last pedicure!
Last dinner with Julia and Dale. =(
They made our favorite: Portabello Mushroom Burgers!
Dale packed our car! He is the MASTER PACKER!

And we're OFF!!! To LAX. 15 hour flight, straight to Brisbane Australia. We arrive Jan 2nd at 7:45 am. With ELEVEN bags!! Yup.. pray we can get them all on the plane.

YAY WE DID IT!!

We LOVE and MISS you all already!! THANK YOU for loving us and blessing us so much over these last 6 months. It has truly been a time or refreshment! We will never forget it! Lets keep in touch. You'll be hearing from us soon....

The DTS starts the day after we get there so keep us in your prayers as we hit the ground running!

God bless you! See you in Aussie land!

Luke and Bethany

IT'S COMING DOWN TO THE WIRE!!

2010-11-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

Can you believe that it's less than a MONTH before we leave?
Well kinda! We are going to Hawaii Dec 12th-27th to see my family for Christmas. Then we get back and will leave TWO days later for Australia! ahhhhhh Luke and I are frantically getting all our ducks in a line for the big move. Here I am burning a TON of paperwork that I hadn't gone through in years.. just to lighten the load before we go. Just old tax info, receipts, letters, etc... Julia Dellar and I had a blast sitting here and burning it in her fire... we had the HUGEST pile of ash after we were finished!

Then the LAST BIG GARAGE SALE!!
We had WAY too much fun making garage sale signs. At first it was like, "oh just grab some cardboard and a black marker and make a sign.. but if anyone knows Julia there's NO way an ugly ol sign is going to be made... She puts her hands to anything and it turns into gold.. so we made ya know the "usual ol" Garage Sale Sign.

We put out pastries and coffee to sell for a fundraiser for Australia. =) I mean why not?

HOW DO WE PACK ALL OF THIS?
We spent the day figuring out what to get rid of and what to pack... It's a good thing Quantas Airlines let's us bring surfboards at no extra cost! Thank you Jesus!!

JUNIOR HIGH
We got the privilege of being our Church's Junior High Missionaries of the Month! Reality is teaching the younger generation about missions and thinking globally so they asked us to share our story and where we will be headed so they can be supporting and praying for us. How cute! Here they are all praying over us. It's amazing some of the prayers that come from the heart of a Junior Higher!

4 Years Together!
Nov 5
We celebrated our four year wedding anniversary up in Solvang!
It was a blast! God just refreshed us and gave us a deeper love for one another. We know He is gearing us up to pour out to DTS students in Australia.

Okay, for those of you who knew about my obsession with this suitcase set I wanted and how God had it delivered the DAY before we left for our anniversary... here is the picture and of me an o so happy wife! =) I'm such a girl! Isn't it cute though? It's a cheap set but you know how girls are.. beauty before function. =)

SHARING NIGHT

Luke and I had a Sharing Night this last Sunday at the Dellars and it was SO MUCH FUN!! For all of you who don't live in Santa Barbara here is a video of our time. Luke and I shared about where God is taking us and what He will be doing with us over in Australia.

Luke and Bethany's Sharing Night from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

They prayed for us at the end! It was such a sweet time!

Well that's it for now!

We'll be reporting in again soon though cuz time is running short! We love you all! You are our family and we LOVE YOU!

P.S.

Oh ya and I made sushi the other day so much fun.. Just had to throw these pics in!

YUM!!

Okay we'll go now... bye!

Boy has the time flown by!

2010-09-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

Okay so it's been a while since we did an update...
I looked at our last post as was like, "Dang has it been that long!!"

So anyway time is flying.

We are super excited about Australia!!!
We are planning to leave the very beginning of January!

What have we been doing?
Resting
Reconnecting with Jesus
Reconnecting with each other. We have been making Wednesdays our Date Days!! Yay!
Reconnecting with friends and family
Serving at our church, going to Night For The Nations, and Prayer For The Nations
Helping lead worship from time to time with groups of friends and a church up north
Moving anyone and everyone! Since we've been back we've had like 5 people move!
Working on logistics: mainly VISA issues, stuff concerning moving, selling our car, figuring out taxes over seas, etc.
Raising Support

Raising Support.

We are a ALMOST at 1/2 way to our monthly goal of $3000/mo! YAY!! We are volunteers so we must cover all of our own expenses. It is a slow process but the Lord knows.

Our monthly bills in Australia will look something like this:

Rent $1,100
Food $500
Utilities $ 100
Internet $65
Car Insurance/Gas $200
Health Insurance $ 100
Cell Phone $100
Toiletries $50
Clothing $25
Extra Curricular Activities $60
Student Loans $90
Tithing $300
We also will have to purchase over seas tickets 2 or 3 times a year for taking students on outreach to Asia, which will be around $3500/year at least.
Divided by 12 months is about $300/mo

TOTAL: $2990/mo

This is a rough estimate but it's pretty accurate. If you or anyone you know would like to sponsor us monthly we would be so blessed to partner with you.

For those that are interested checks can be sent to:

YWAM MONTANA
501 Blacktail Rd
Lakeside, MT 59922

Make checks to YWAM MONTANA and please DO NOT put our names in the memo. Instead put our project number 3715 and attach a note with our names on it as well as mentioning that you are a monthly supporter. You will get a tax deductible receipt and a slip for your next donation. We also have Auto Withdrawal forms. If you would like one we can mail one to you.

Other than that we are loving being in Santa Barbara
and are excited to see how these next 2 1/2 months pan out.

Here are some fun pics:

Our date days have been very good for us. We are learning to make them a priority now so that when we get to the busyness of Australia and DTS that we will make sure to continue to do them. We have a hard time saying no so having boundaries over our time together is really healthy for us.

Moving Moving Moving!!!
So many of our friend have moved since we've been back.. it's like our little side ministry right now... We have another one on Friday! Good times!

Luke and Dale working in the yard!
It's been SUCH A BLESSING living at the Dellars. They have shown us so much generosity and kindness it's unbelievable. Thank you Julia and Dale!!

It's always nice to eat a little grub after a long day in the sun. And no one better to be at the grill than the man himself
Dale Dellar, Master Griller!!

Julia and Dale

CRAZY STORY..... Prostitutes?
Okay so this might sound crazy but I (bethany) have been asking the Lord to speak to me in dreams lately. So about a month ago God gave me a dream that Luke and I were on Milpas Street late at night ministering to the transvestites and prostitutes that work in that area. For those of you who don' t know Milpas it's the most ghetto part of Santa Barbara and has a large Hispanic population. In my dream I had roses and were handing them out and telling the transvestites that Jesus loved them!!
I woke up and began to pray, "Lord why did you give me this dream?" Well I could think of no other reason other than for us to go and do what the dream said! So we did! Our good friends Jason and Rachel came with us. We gathered people to pray for us and went to Milpas Street on a Friday night from 11pm-1pm. I made coffee to hand out to them thinking that maybe they'd be cold standing out there all night. We did a prayer walk around the area and found this one club where there was a huge prostitution circuit going on. We were kind of standing out as we walked around, seeing that we were the ONLY white people on the block, but we just prayed and prayed over the area. At one moment we went under this over hang to pray, then right when we finished a prostitute came out from a dark alley way behind us with a man. He went one way and she went the other right back to the dark corner of the back street to wait for another customer. My heart sank. I was so excited to walk up to her and give her a rose but by the time we got to where she was she was already gone with another man. Oh Lord I want to love her for you!! I pray we get another chance.
We felt that our first time down there was more of just seeing the scene and learning how to pray. The prostitutes were on such a tight circuit that it was hard to interrupt them. Pray that God opens more doors... After a couple hours we met some sweet homeless people and gave our coffee away to them. So ya that was our crazy night! Life is never boring when Jesus is in charge. I just pray we get another chance to love on those people.

It's been nice to catch up with old friends. This is Ben (Luke's old roommate) and his wonderful girlfriend Carrie.

We felt the Lord leading us to go visit our friend Austin. He used to be our neighbor when we lived in Santa Barbara. He moved down to San Diego to be with his lovely fiance Fiona so she can finish school. It was so good to see him. He took us to Sea World. Now who can hate that!

We got drenched!!

Ok so this is random but Luke and I have been addicted to these awesome veggie sandwiches we've been making like every day!! My friend Meg took this picture.. Isn't she a good photographer? It makes it look all professional.

We also got to see our friend Jevon and his family in Murietta. This is his cute daughter Brooklyn. It was a really good time of just hanging together and encouraging each other in the Lord! Pray for the Lord's provision in their lives as they have a big family with a lot of mouths to feed!
Okay ONE LAST THING....
Luke got a job! Yay... we have a friend who needed some help with construction so Luke is helping him when he can. I was all excited and got up early, packed his lunch and sent him off to school... oh wait.. work... okay so I was so excited I forgot what he was leaving for but I was just so excited to see him off ! =)
EWW! So he came home SO DIRTY... I was like, "I love you but do not step foot into this house..." =)
But then he brought me roses so that made everything better!! I'm such a girl!

Well that's it for now!! We love you more than you know!!

Bethany and Luke

San Fran, Santa Barbara, Rhode Island!

2010-07-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!

Here are a few pics from the last month or so: Enjoy!

We stopped in San Francisco to visit our friends Tarik and Erika on our way back to Santa Barbara. They showed us all around the city and gave us the warmest SF welcome -- we had a blast!

They both moved up to San Francisco to be a part of Reality, a church planted by our home church, Reality Carpinteria. The church is brand new and already full every Sunday!

Our friends, Jason & Rachel, two of the coolest people we know -- grinding on some burgers!

This last month we we were house sitting for our friends Dale & Julia while they were in Hawaii. It was a great time of rest after 10 months of doing ministry. They have a sweet garden...and we got to enjoy the fruit of the land! Never mind the dork in this pic... he is simply trying to show that the zucchini was the size of his head.

We've never eaten so many apricots ever!

Bethany dried them out in the oven and made apricot jam... I know it's pretty rough being married to her :)

Back on the RIGHT COAST!!
Rhode Island!

This is my parents summer house...nah just kidding...

Bethany with my sister Becky (left) and my brother's girlfriend Caroline (middle)

We stayed with my Aunt Kathy and Becky and pretty much did everything together. This is us post-exercise... together.

Hanging on Block Island

We saw our buddy Andy Collins out on Block Island. He lives there in the summer and is GETTING MARRIED out there in September!

There's nothing like a beer after a long day of bike riding, or a long day of anything, for that matter.

This is Mel. She was a student in the DTS we staffed in Montana. She lives in Massachusetts and made the trip down to RI to hang with us for a day. We love you Mel!

My sweet Mom and Dad

There were actually some fun waves while we were there -- and the water temp was around 74 degrees!

We did the cliff walk in Newport and checked out all the mansions. We were looking to buy but nothing was big enough for us. Ssshhhyyya!

It was so cool getting to spend time with my brother Andrew and his girl, Caroline. Love you guys!
It was an amazing time together! Thank you Jesus for my family!

So, we will be in Santa Barbara for the next few months preparing to move to Australia. Our goals during this time are to re-connect with our friends, to re-connect with our church, to raise the needed monthly financial support, to find some sort of job (Lord willing), and to gear up, physically and spiritually for our new life in the Southern hemisphere!

Please pray for us !!
Pray:

* for wisdom in how we spend our time (friends, church, working etc.)
* for discernment regarding jobs (where should we work? how many hours? Doing what?)
* that we would be a blessing and an encouragement to our Church family
* that the Lord would put it on specific people's hearts to pray for us and support us financially
* that we sell our car before we leave ('98 Honda Prelude)

We love you all!
Luke and Bethany

The big move: To the Land Down Under!

2010-06-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Yup you've guessed it... God is up to something again---except this time it's pretty big! Long story short, God spoke to us a year ago about Australia and after scouting out the land on our last trip, He has spoken to us about moving there! Um ya... Check out how he did it on our quick video. Love you guys...

Oh ya...We'll be coming back to Santa Barbara June 12th for a little over a month to see friends, raise support and figure out how to move all our stuff. So we'd love to see whoever is around. We are so excited!

I'm always making some funny face our videos.. =)

Below are the rest of our pics from Australia!

Met up with some great people!

Luke finally got to surf.. quite a few times actually!

This is our wonderful friend Whitney Hilliard. We will be staffing with her at the Sunshine Coast YWAM base. She is the BEST!! We are so lucky to staff with her.

Brisbane is a really cool city. Really tropical.

The city is not by the ocean so this is for all the city people to tan at. Pretty cool if you ask me.

We went down to Burleigh Heads and stayed with my old roommate Jessica and her husband Tony. While we were down there we ran into some friends of friends. God is full of fun divine appointments.

Tony and Luke snuggling up together!! Aren't they cute? ;)

Burleigh Heads was so beautiful. We just felt spoiled getting to hang out there with Tony and Jessica. Man they spoiled us! Thank you Jesus. We really needed a nice rest after India.

Me and Jess! Love that girl!

Australians are so nice that when it started raining a lady, with the HUGEST umbrella ever, kindly offered to walk Luke and Tony through the rain! I had to take a picture!

Luke found a shop to rent a board and got to surf a bunch! The waves PUMPED the WHOLE time we were there. And just as we were leaving they tapered off. He was happy about that. Not missing out on anything.

We found a friend.

Australia is known for their Ginger Beer. Kinda like a soda but made with real stuff... Come on America would you just catch up. ;)

Our trip was finally ending. On our way back to Montana, which by the way took about 40 hours, we missed our flight in Denver BUT IT WAS A TOTAL GOD THING cuz our wonderful friends Ivan and Krissy came and picked us up and fed us, housed us and drove us back in the morning. We are so grateful for good friends! It was so refreshing to see them! Go God. Divine appointments even up to the last second.

Well here we are... POOPED from traveling... but we did it. God was so good... I can't believe the life we get to live. There's nothing more exiting than following Jesus!

Bless you all. We'll see you soon!

Luke and Bethany

India to Australia! We made it!

2010-04-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

Okay for those of you who didn't see our facebook photos or would like a bit more info on what we've been up to, here's a little snapshot.

Lonavala, India. Everywhere there are cows just roaming around doing nothing but eating trash. Pretty funny considering they are a "sacred god". I wouldn't trust my god if all he ate was trash all day long.. would you?

This is Shibu. He is a believer who is involved in YWAM -- an incredible guy. He leads worship for a church and he asked if I would like to help him. It was a blast. Shibu has an amazing testimony: When he was young a disease began to take over his leg and he began not being able to walk. He had to stop playing sports, running or doing any type of athletic activity. His mom was Hindu but one day a believer began to tell her about church etc. So she started going and eventually gave her life to Jesus. She told Shibu about the Lord but he didn't believe. One day Shibu said, "God if you are real then you'd have to power to heal my leg"... The very next morning he woke up to a PERFECTLY healed leg! He has never stopped serving the ONE who can heal - Jesus!

Their bananas are amazing... we ate them every day!

How cool is this guy!

On our way to Varanasi we saw this headline.

These are Rickshaws. We took them everywhere. You always have to barter for a price but that's half the fun!

This is the YWAM Widow's Home. They built this a few years ago to house widow's who are left for dead in Varanasi by their relatives. Indian's believe that if you die in Varanasi you'll be released from the endless cycle of reincarnation (their version of heaven) So they purposely "lose" the widow's in their family here because they are old and getting close to death. So sad. So the YWAMers here find these women, house them, feed them and give them jobs so they can support themselves. They are welcome to live here for the rest of their lives.

These are some of the products the widow's make.

This is one of the widows who lives here.

We helped the YWAMers with this program they are trying to start called "Adopt a Granny" where people can monthly support (adopt) a widow. So we interviewed all who were living there, got a profile typed up, took pictures of them and got it put on a website. Pray that people will want to adopt these wonderful women.

These dogs are everywhere. They just lie around lifelessly. So sad. No one to pet them!

We taught some school children bible stories, played games with them and just loved them like Jesus would! They are all so cute.

VARANASI: The Holy City
Varanasi is considered the holiest and most ancient city in India. The Ganges River winds through this city and there are tons of stairs, like this one that go down to the water. Indians worship this river as one of their gods. They bathe in it - thinking that it washes away their sins. They drink it, put their dead in it, wash their animals in it etc... So you can imagine how dirty this river can get.

Indians worship millions of gods. I imagine it must get tiring knowing who to ask for what.

You can get a boat tour along the Ganges and see the place where they burn their dead 24 hours a day and place them in the river. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. Here are some pictures.

Carrying a dead relative to the wood pile to be burned. Indians travel for days just to burn their dead here believing they go straight to heaven. Pray for these people to come to know Jesus for He said, "I am the Way the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

It took my breath away when I saw their feet.

This couple is John and Natalie (not their real names). They are an incredible couple who live in India. We met them through friends from our Church Reality who wanted us to connect with them. They were so hospitable and welcoming. They are doing so much for God's kingdom. They have started many house gatherings, and after years of sowing seeds they are suddenly seeing TONS of fruit - people are coming to faith all over the place. Women are being set free from demons, husbands stop beating their wives and come to faith in Jesus, children are getting healed.. it's incredible the stories they shared with us. Pray for them as the enemy has been attacking in the areas of sickness.

We joined another ministry happening among the backpacker community. Many travelers come through who are seeking truth and a real spiritual experience. This ministry reaches out to these people, offering meditation that is Bible focused and fellowship that is Christ centered. I talked with a German girl who was really seeking and God just opened up her heart and she felt Gods touch as we spoke together. I could see tears in her eyes. Pray for her to come to know the Love of God.

LUKE turned 30!!!!!!!
I woke him up on his birthday (April 15th) and made him french toast in India!! I tried my best. =)

The sweet family we were staying with got Luke a cake and surprised him!! So cool.

I took him for a fun day at the nicest hotel pool I could find. I know he'd rather be surfing but this was the best I could do.

Good times!!!

Good Bye India.........

AUSTRALIA

We made it!!
From India to beautiful and clean Australia. We have been here a little over a week, and are having an amazing time. We have been meeting up with some of the YWAMers here at the different bases, checking things out, seeing how it might feel if God called us here for a season. We are just soaking in whatever God brings our way.

How white are we? =) Hysterical

Please pray that God clearly shows us what His plans are for our next step in this adventure we call life!

Love you all... more OZ pictures to come shortly!

Luke and Bethany

Cold to Hot, Rich to Poor- London to India

2010-04-03T04:17:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

London was amazing. God gave us a lot of divine appointments. One in particular: We met a girl named Gabriella. She was so sweet... just a wanderer but really smart. She was traveling for school. She got a scholarship form Princeton University to study people who do Communal Living. How interesting I thought... YWAM does communal living. I asked her where she was traveling next. She said Varanasi India! What! We are going to Varanasi! She couldn't believe it. What a random "coincidence".. We told her all about the YWAM base over there and for her studies she might "check it out".. Pray for her to find Jesus in Varanasi.

We are in Lonavala India, right by Bombay. It has been amazing! I think our craziest moment yet is getting on one of the local trains during rush hour. 2 million people a day travel on these trains in Bombay and we decided to take it! OH MY GOSH.... They separate the women and the men so Luke and I had to be separated.. Luke was SMASHED in this one dirty train cart with no room to breath.. meanwhile I was smashed (not as bad) in the woman's cart. We were yelling to each other through the iron gate that separated us trying to figure which platform we had to jump off of to get to our hotel. If you don't FIGHT to get off you won't make the stop cuz it only waits for 30 seconds before it leaves again.. All our Indian friends we told this to couldn't believe we took a Local Train being a foreigner.. Well hey we want to get into the culture. I don't think we will ever forget it!

Well, tomorrow we fly out to Varanasi India. We met am amazing couple here at the YWAM base that "happened" to be from Varanasi. They were from America but had been living there for 10 years and said we could stay in their house instead of paying for a hotel. GOD STORY... yay! We are super excited. God has opened so many doors already and we are so excited to see what He will do next. There's nothing quite like following Jesus! He always takes care of us.

Bless you guys.. We LOVE YOU... Thank you for praying.. we can feel it! Talk to you soon

Luke and Bethany

Here are a few pics. We were trying to add more but the Internet is not good so this is it for now... love you all!!

We got to go to Reality London, a church plant from our Church back in California. So awesome!

Mark and Lizzie lead this church plant.

Luke got to meet up with an old friend from his missions trip in Indonesia. So cool.

Well the old bag turned 29 on March 29th so we made some yummy food and Luke took me out to see a show. You HAVE to see a show if you go to London. So we splurged!

Sitting in the Theatre waiting for it to start. We saw Wicked. It's a great story about the wicked witch of the west in OZ being not so bad. It's like her take on the story of the Wizard of OZ.

Bombay (Mumbai) India

WE LOVE YOU ALL... more to come in a few weeks!! God is good!!

London, India, Australia!

2010-03-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

Well we have begun the journey. Here is a quick video of what God has been doing... He is so awesome!

Video

1st London Update Video from Bethany Roque on Vimeo.

Colorado, Mini-Outreach to Portland etc...good times

2010-02-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

Hey hey... here we are again... just giving you a snapshot of what's going on with us!

Well, recently Bethany got an opportunity to sneak off to Colorado to hang with our friends Meehan and Dan. Since we have been married we have only taken 2 trips without each other -- but with this one, we prayed and felt like Bethany was supposed to go alone. Our friends actually only had enough frequent flyer miles to fly one of us out to Colorado. It turned out to be a total "God thing." Meehan just got married to Dan (who speaks all over the world in YWAM) and they are about to move to South Africa for a Church-planting school. And Dan was gonna be hanging with all his buddies for some of the time in Colorado. Meanwhile, Meehan would have a lot of time all by herself... so Bethany being there with her was just really sweet.

Meehan and Bethany

Dan cooking pancakes with the "boyz"

The view from the condo

It snowed almost the whole time they were there!

...and yes, of course there was some health food shopping...Surprise!

Back in Montana, this is the music track that Bethany helps lead with Wells (the broseph in the white T-shirt)

Jammin'

Kickin' it at a great local coffee shop that plays live music.

Ok, so these next few pics are some of the benefits of being married to a woman who can cook...really well. Let's just say I haven't been starving :)

Fresh baked bread

Salads w/green apples, candied walnuts, and goat cheese

I honestly don't know what this is BUT it was GOOD!

Pizza, obviously

Doing what I do best!

Tom-Kah soup (Thai coconut curry)
The rest of these shots are from a one week outreach to Portland, Oregon (an 11 hour drive west of Montana. At 5:30 AM one of our vans wouldn't start. JUMP IT!

We arrived in Portland just in time to pack into Rick's house for the Super Bowl! Rick is the pastor of the church we stayed at for the week.

Lots of shoes piled up at the door means lots of hungry mouths to feed -- Rick and his wife hooked it up!

We cooked food for a bunch of guys at a transitional housing shelter. We got to sit down and chat with them afterwards, it was so awesome!

Our friend Brian got a company to donate a slack line (kind of like a tight rope...but not tight) to YWAM for the purpose of meeting people and sharing the love of God. This is a bunch of us testing it out to see if we could do it. It was so much fun.

Playing the game "chubby bunny" where you have to stuff as many marshmallows into your mouth as possible. We lost... because of Bethany...

Cleaning at a women and children's shelter.

Bethany and some of our students leading worship for a high school group.

...and then playing basketball with them

This is the slackline in action in a park in downtown Portland. It was such an amazing way to talk to people. We shared Jesus with TONS of people!

Our time in Portland was INCREDIBLE!! My heart just felt like it got stirred up, in a good way. We got to pray and share with so many people and God really changed my view on homeless people. Before this trip, I just felt that homeless people were for the most part, mentally insane or addicted to drugs and I just had a hard time knowing what to do with them. But after meeting so many awesome people, I realized that even if my judgment was partially true (some are crazy and addicted to drugs)-- these people are valuable to God and they need love and a listening ear just like any of us. These are the people that Jesus would hang out with. Who am I to overlook them?

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

Philippians 2:5-7

We love you all, and hope this blog finds you well!
Much Love, Luke and Bethany

In the beginning....

2010-01-20T13:32:00.001-08:00

The Winter DTS is finally here!

Our students have all arrived! We have 2 girls from Thailand, 1 girl from Belgium, and a bunch of guys and girls from Canada and the U.S! They are all so frickin cool!

This is our school theme -- ALL OUT -- Our leaders really felt that God wanted to do some radical stuff in all of our lives, so we are going ALL OUT in our pursuit of Him to see what He has!

It's pretty cool -- The Lord has opened up a lot of opportunities for me to teach and speak in front of people. I LOVE IT!!

Mason and David...hangin'

Bethany took a bunch of students to a restaurant down the road, packed like sardines.

So packed... that Ryan chose to ride in the trunk...and they totally forgot about him in there! Nah, just kidding, they let him out.

These next few pics are from a "murder mystery" party we went to. Everybody was supposed to dress "Hollywood"

Our friend, Joel, from my DTS in Kona, came to visit us! He is an awesome kid and we had a blast together. Please pray for him, he is trying to figure out what God wants him to do next. Maybe Montana?

California and Hawaii seem like a distant dream...

Of course, we had to take him sledding. It's just what you do in Montana.

This is "Welcome to Montana Night" where we just dress up like hicks and PARTY!

Frightening... I know

mmm...BBQ beef sandwiches, and other goodies

Our friends, Becky and Randall, pullin off the white trash look...

Praise Reports:

1) Our first speaker spoke on Grace and Holiness. A few students understood for the very first time what actually happened when Jesus bled and hung on the cross in their place and then rose from the dead 3 days later! One girl, Samantha, said "I grew up in the church and I have never realized the wonder of God's grace -- that He is totally satisfied with me!"
It was amazing to hear their responses as they just "got it!" As the scripture says: "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32

2) Bethany is leading worship a bunch as well as leading the music track. Music track is an avenue built into DTS to allow students with a passion for music to grow in their gifting as well as learn how to use that gift to glorify God and expand His Kingdom!

3) I have been getting quite a few opportunities to teach and speak. I am also helping to lead the snowboard track where we work for a local mountain, snowboard, build relationships, and share the Good News with those we meet! So dang fun!

Prayer Requests:

1) That we would all (students and staff) be blown away with the love of God and be daily conformed to the image of Christ!

2) That our marriage would be protected as we take on more ministry and that we would fall even more in love with each other as we serve our Lord together!

3) That we would have clear direction for April and May as we are not leading an outreach team during this time. We have a desire to take a scouting outreach to India to explore the possibility of leading a team there in the future. We also have a desire to "spy out the land" in Australia as we feel that God has spoken to us about living and serving there someday.

Thank you everyone for loving us and praying for us! You all mean more to us than you could ever know! Blessings!

Luke and Bethany

One More Day Before the New Year!

2009-12-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

As we sit here by the fire and look back 3 1/2 months ago when we first got here we find ourselves overwhelmed at God's faithfulness. He has guided us, clothed us, housed us, given us new friends, and is continually stretching us. But all of it we embrace with open arms because we know the more we grow the closer we are getting to him.

In being here and looking at the many opportunities the base offers, Luke and I have discovered that staffing DTS (Discipleship Training School) is where we will grow the most in our giftings and desires. God opened up a way for us to be on Short Term DTS staff and we are so grateful. We love the nations; we love seeing young people get fired up for Jesus and seeing them get a taste of the incredible world out there that God so desperately loves! We keep feeling more and more that God is saying that this time here in Montana is a time of TRAINING. He often speaks to us with one word themes so this is the word for this season. And we are so grateful for it. We know we need training together as a married couple and this seems to be the place God has chosen for us.

With that said, the base here has asked us to come on Long Term Staff which means we would commit for 1 1/2 years here staffing DTSs. This means we would get lots of hands on experience/TRAINING leading groups of young people to the nations. That excites us! So we prayed about it and felt like we should apply. We haven't filled out the application yet seeing that we got this in prayer yesterday but we would LOVE your prayers that the leadership would hear from God if this is the right choice for us and them. We will need housing which is a bit tight here on the base but something could open up so please pray for all the details to fall in line.

Here's a beautiful shot at sunset by our lake!
I actually got this shot as we drove by.. not bad huh?

Our first snow you can tell we got a little excited!!! We took out our sleds and went down the road. Maybe a little too prematurely cuz we kept hitting the asphalt. oops!

Needless to say we had fun! =)

We even did snow angels in our front lawn.

CHRISTMAS VACATION

Our Christmas was WONDERFUL. We ended up driving to Seattle to see my younger brother Micah. It was so refreshing to see him and to just encourage one another in the Lord. He went to school for Video Game Design and has a heart to reach the lost through the gaming world. My Mom flew up to Canada to see her mom so we all drove up there and hung out for Christmas. It was great.

On our way we had a WONDERFUL surprise.. Our good friends from Santa Barbara Shelly and Taylor and their little one Regan were in Spokane visiting their family. So we stopped by and stayed the night. It was SO fun! We talked endlessly - the boys about politics and the girls about health. The usual! =)
We wish it could have been longer. Next time right guys?

This is Taylor's Mom and Step Dad. They treated us to a wonderful dinner

We also got to see our good friend Alex from Luke's DTS. Ya this little Christmas trip has certainly turned out to be the "visit everyone we know" trip. We had a blast hanging out talking all about what God has been doing.

We finally got to Seattle and of course you can't go to Seattle and not see Pikes Place Market.
The funny thing about this picture is the hooker in the back ground. That's always fun...

The city at night. So beautiful! All lit up with lights!

My brother Micah lives in the University District and is working at Nordstrom until he gets his foot in the door with the gaming industry. In Montana I made him his favorite dessert - Carrot Cake and brought it to him as a surprise. He was so stoked.

We drove to Canada to see my Mom and Grandma and the rest of the gang! It was so good to see Grandma. It has been a few years. She is 84 and still sharp as a tack!

Fun times on the fishing dock!

Me and Micah

Me and mom!

Me and Grandma!

After Christmas we headed back to Seattle to then head
back home to Montana! So fast but so fun!

One thing I did have to do before I left Washington was go to my favorite grocery store in the world - TRADER JOES!!! I missed it sooooooooo much!
We went CRAZY and bought as much food as we could fit in the car... It's so much cheaper than the health food out in Montana!

Ya I wasn't kidding!!

THE NEW YEAR!
Well as the new year is right around the corner we can't help but feel an eager expectation of what God has in store for us all. His plans are so much greater than anything we could ever imagine and following Him with everything we have is the only way to truly live.

We love you and thank you for remembering us and praying for us.
Like we've said before we can truly feel it!

God bless you!! See you in the New Year!
Bethany and Luke

'Tis the Season!

2009-12-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

Hello and almost MERRY CHRISTMAS... Oh man it's coming up so quick.

Below are the many fun festivities that we have been involved with up here in the "sticks"... One thing YWAM is good at is doing Events cuz there's not a whole lot to do up here so they certainly find things to do..

This is Jeannene, such a wonderful friend.
We had Thanksgiving at their place with some friends.
So fun.

The Girls!

The Boys!

Okay so Luke and I were getting bored one day and we found some old hats in a box and all of a sudden got in the Christmas spirit and started decorating!!!

Putting lights up!

We even put light on our tree in the yard. We seriously could just chop this thing down and stick it in our house.. I don't know how much the people who live here would appreciate that though.. hehe... So we thought we'd just leave it outside!

GOD STORY...
Luke is helping lead the Snowboard Track in the DTS so we needed to get him a board, boots and bindings. But as many of you know that is SUPER expensive. I was like, "Lord how are we going to do this?" So I prayed that we would find a good deal. On black Friday we went to this Pawn Shop and the FIRST board we looked at ended up being the one we got. I bartered with the guy and we got the board, boots AND bindings all for $100!! Yay go God!

Christmas Parties Galore!!!

This is Lori. She is one of the staff. SUCH a great girl!!

We had a white elephant party and we won probably one of the nicer gifts going around - an electric water kettle.. so awesome!!

Some of the wonderful friends we've been making up here. They all came over for a Birthday Party we threw for Lori.

This is Lori. She got her favorite cake... it's called an Australian Date Pudding Cake. Sounds kinda weird but it's SO GOOD!

Well.... We are off to Spokane, Seattle, and Vancouver, Canada over the Christmas Break. We leave tomorrow and are super excited. We are praying the God gives us many divine appointments along the way. We'll share more when we get back...

Love you ALL!
AND
MERRY CHRISTmas!!

When God gets a hold of your heart!

2009-11-24T11:11:00.000-08:00

I know... I know... we haven't done a blog entry in what feels like forever!! We have been working on our newsletter so that should be coming to most of you. If you didn't get one and would like one let us know.

We shared a little bit about last Friday on facebook but for those who didn't see that... we had the COOLEST divine appointment with a guy named James!

We had an incredible speaker named John Goodfellow speak at the current DTS about Evangelism. He is like an old school Biblical-type evangelist! And he got us soooo pumped up about sharing Jesus with people. He is the farthest from a TV Evangelist if that's what you first think of when you hear that word. He used to live on the streets of Amsterdam, was a drunk and a street fighter. Then one day a young YWAM girl walked up to him, bought him a sandwich and shared the love of Jesus with him and he accepted the Lord. From that day on God began to grow in him the desire to tell others about Jesus. So for the past 15 years in Amsterdam he does street preaching and thousands have gotten saved. He has an incredible book full of the craziest stories - people running up to him to hit him, stab him, scream at him, people manifesting with demonic voices etc... it's intense but God uses that man SO MUCH!

Anyway, we were so moved by this man's story that we wanted to go out and tell others about Jesus. That weekend we thought of a place Jesus would have gone, to the downcast, lonely and hopeless - the bar. He went and hung out with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes... and the "religious" people mocked him for it. So we went to the downtown bar here in Lakeside and just prayed for God to bring someone our way.

In prayer we kept getting the picture of us sitting at the bar counter and not at a table. So when we got there we sat immediately at the counter and in no more than 20 seconds we started talking to this young man named James sitting next to us. He started to share that he had just moved up here, that he had a few bad luck streaks and now lives back with his parents to save up some money etc. After a little while he really started to open up to us, saying that he almost died 3 times and that he actually used to deal drugs and that's what got him into some trouble. Anyhow, by the end of the night we sat there and talk talked to him about Jesus until the bar closed! His heart was open and God was there! We spoke words over him and told him so many things that Jesus was telling us about His life! He was captivated by God's love through us...

We didn't get to lead him to the Lord that night but can you PLEASE pray for James that he would reach out to Jesus and ask him to be his Lord and Savior! We have a feeling we'll see him again!

Whew!!! Okay, what have we been up to lately?

This is our wonderful friend "Lemmon". Well at least that's what everyone calls him. It's his last name. His first name is John. He has a crazy story too but I'll have to save that for another blog or else it's gonna be another SUPER long one like I always seem to do. Luke began a bible study with John and it has been so good! He is growing more and more everyday and as of a few days ago John applied to come to our DTS that starts in Jan. Please pray for him. He has a daughter back at home, has some legal issues to deal with and not a lot of money. But we believe God wants him here for this time! He has been a blessing to this whole base! We don't want him to leave!

INTERNATIONAL NIGHT!!!
Every Sunday night Luke and I have been having people over for what we call "International Night" where we pick a food from a certain country and find a movie that matches! It's so fun.

Our first night was Taiwanese Night
Second night was Mexican Night and we watched Nacho Libre
Third night was Indian Night and we watched Slum Dog Millionaire
Fourth Night was Italian Night and we watched the Italian Job
Next Sunday is Greek Night with My Big Fat Greek Wedding!

Here is a quick clip of Mexican Night our favorite!!!!

One day we walked outside and this was in the sky! So fun! This is one of the base dorms and our water tower.

Since we have a kitchen I've been able to cook some delicious and healthy food! Yay! Thanks Lord!

Organic Buckwheat Pancakes and Eggs, Spinach, and Tomato Scramble!

This is great! I finally felt like a "Montanan" when we ordered 2 truckloads of wood. The guys who delivered it were true bonified Montana men! Hat's, "yes Maam"s and all!

Luke helped them stack! He looks a little outta place huh? =)

A wonderful band "Rend The Heavens" came to play worship for the week in DTS and they stayed with us at our house. It was so fun!

THREE YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!!
November 5th was 3 years together! Luke found these adorable little cottages for rent in a cute town near by called BigFork. We went out to a fabulous dinner and stayed there. He also surprised me and had bought tickets to a Jars of Clay concert that happened to be playing on that night! Go God!! I love my husband.

It has been the best 3 years of my life!!

Our cottage. So cute!!

Well that's it for now!
We'll try to not wait so long next time!!!

Snowy Montana! ALREADY??? =)

2009-10-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

We've been having a really good time being here. Finally feeling like we are adjusting to everything: people, climate, and being really busy. It's been great. We were told about a week ago that we are for sure going to Staff the Winter DTS that starts in January!!

So what are we doing right now? We are helping out with the Fall DTS which is currently going on. Bethany is leading worship from time to time and I (Luke) have been helping an outreach team prepare to go to Indonesia! (Contacts, Visas, language learning etc.) We have both been involved in praying for others during worship times, setting up prayer stations, and working on power point slides etc.

We are also helping to pioneer a new program that would assist students in the next step of their lives, upon completion of a DTS. A lot of students go back home to bad environments where all their friends are smoking weed and wasting their lives -- and they backslide in their walk with God. We really want to change that by getting them QUICKLY to what God is calling them to, post-DTS.

DTS students in Lecture

In addition to helping with the Fall DTS, We have begun preparation for the Winter DTS! This has been awesome. We've been meeting with all the staff and praying over every application that comes in. At this point, we don't know whether we will be leading an outreach team overseas or not. It looks like we won't be, but we are praying that God will open up a way for us where there seems to be no way!

So it's October and all of a sudden it got REALLY cold and then this happened:

VIDEO

VIDEO

It's a winter wonderland!

YAY!!! Thanks mom and Julia for sending us some warm clothes!!!

Good times working in the kitchen

Bethany and our friend Mackenzie making organic granola bars.

Ways you can pray for us:

1) For protection over our marriage. We have been really busy so we haven't had a lot of face-to-face time, just a lot of side by side time (if that makes sense).

2) For God to use us in discipling others at this base. God has opened up some great opportunities.

3) That God would open up a spot for us to lead an outreach team overseas. Our heart is to show Jesus to the Nations. We would love to inspire and train others to do that as well as do that ourselves!

Thank you so much, everyone, for loving us and praying for us! We love you all!

YES THE WIND BLOWS WHEREVER IT PLEASES.....

2009-09-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

DAY ONE:
Santa Barbara to Eureka, CA (drive: 10 hrs)

We packed up our car full of everything we could fit: Clothes, snax, pots and pans, sleeping bags, tent - in case our car broke down and we needed to camp on the side of the road... ya know just in case. ;)

I made lots of snax for Luke. They were gone pretty quick!

It took us about 10 hours to get up to Rio Dell, CA. which is by Eureka. It's on the coast and beautiful.

We stayed with my Dad's good buddy David Fouche'. It was so great. Such a wonderful man. I hadn't seen him since I was like 10 years old. The craziest thing is that he is like my dad incarnate. It's like they were brothers who were separated at birth or something. So cool!

One of his sons Ben walked in the door while we were sitting on the couch and we started chatting it up. Come to find out that Ben had been thinking about doing a school of worship up in Montana! Oh how interesting... we happened to be going that way. We encouraged him to get back out there for the Lord. It was a great time.

DAY TWO:
Eureka to Portland, OR (Drive: 10 hrs)

"On the road again!" Another 10 hours! Organic Peanut butter and banana sandwiches go a long way. =)

We spotted this Elk on the side of the road in the middle of no where... We were stoked.
The beautiful Oregon Coast.
This is my good friend from high school Kale and his wife Kelly. They live in Portland and let us stay with them. We had a blast checking out the city, going to awesome coffee shops (there is no shortage here- and they all make Starbucks seem low end) We went to their church and just got a quick snap shot of their lives. We really liked Portland.

DAY THREE:
Rend The Heavens

Another super cool confirmation that we were supposed to take this trip is that my old small group leader from my DTS in Montana (10yrs ago) plays in this band called Rend The Heavens. They are so worshipful and the most passionate band I know. They are on iTunes if you want to check out their music. Anyhow.... Before we left on this trip I had to check out their website to see if they were touring anywhere in that area... AND THEY WERE.... the DAY we were driving through!! So cool. Luke has always wanted to see them play.. So we went to this Christian festival (at Mount Hood Village) and met up with them. It was good to reconnect!

Aaron SternkeAaron and his beautiful wife Jillian!

I also found this AWESOME health food store where you can sample all their jellys and peanut butter. So cool...(there are tons of stores like this up here - "that's it I'm moving to Portland! Juuust kidding)
DAY FOUR:
Salem meets YWAM Kona

Okay ANOTHER amazing divine appointment is that the very next day our leader from YWAM Kona- Dan Baumann and friend from DTS Tim Feddes- happened to be speaking at the Salem base for a week. Dan found out we would be passing through the exact day he and Tim were flying in so we stayed and hung out with them. Our other friends from DTS were there too... we had no idea.. What a blessing!

(left to right): Luke, Tim, Caroline, Andy and Dan.
DAY FIVE:
Salem to Lakeside, MONTANA!! ( Drive: 11 hrs )

WE MADE IT!!!
YWAM MONTANA!
This is the amazing new student center.
This is the top of the mountain that the base rests upon.
So beautiful!
This is Flathead Lake, about a 5 minute walk from the base.
It is the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi!

We got together with our friends and they decided to immerse us quickly into Montana culture so they took us to Moose's, a lovely cowboy type restaurant. This place is in no way trying to be "cowboy".. This was the "real thang."

DAY SIX:
"Okay Lord what do you have for us up here? You told us to come and so we are looking for your hand in this. We trust you will guide us."

We woke up in the morning and found out that the Fall DTS was about to start and everyone at the base was quickly getting a ton of last minute things into place. So we decided to help.

There was so much going on: dusting, sawing, moving chairs and tables, organizing whole class rooms, setting up the new sound system, etc. It was neat because through serving we ended up meeting almost all the staff on base.

The Lord started to open doors...

Over the weekend we went to Glacier National Park. It is INCREDIBLE!

So..... many of the staff members were really excited that we had obeyed the Lord and had just come up here on a whim. Kristy, the DTS director, really started to feel that us coming up here was another confirmation of something that has been stirring in her heart and the other leaders hearts over this past year. They had been sensing that God was about to do something new, that the base was going to begin to change in some way.

So we began to pray, "Lord are you telling us that we are going to be staying here?" At first it didn't look like there was any housing available etc. but the leaders were really encouraging us that if we felt like God wanted us to stay that they would make room for us. We asked the Lord that if he wanted us to stay that He would have to provide housing. The very next day we heard about a guy who needed someone to sublease his place, which is rare in this fall season. We thought, "sweet, a little dorm room would be great!"... well come to find out it is a totally furnished 3 bedroom house right on the base!!!

What Lord! You are so awesome!

So after praying and seeking the Lord we feel that
He has opened the doors for us to
STAY in Montana!!
Yup crazy!

We don't know how long but so far it
looks like we'll be here till at least March or April -
could be longer, we'll see what He says!

The leadership feel that there is something new on the horizon and will be working with us to spearhead a new vision here.

We all are not sure what all that will look like but we know this is where God has us and that He will show us as we go along. One thing they want us to do as staff is to pour into the young DTS students, many of them who come from quite broken families. (we are so excited about this) For now, we will be working in the mornings, discipling students etc and in the afternoons working in the kitchen helping prepare food for the 300 or so people here at YWAM Montana.

Keep us in your prayers as we discover all that He has for us here. That we are able to get enough winter clothes, and financial support. God has been SO FAITHFUL so we are just excited to see how it all comes together.

BLESS YOU ALL... Thanks for following along our journey with Jesus...
There is never a dull moment with God!

Luke and Bethany

p.s.
Here's a little something fun to watch. They have a welcome night here called "Welcome to Montana Night" where everyone dresses up the most hick they can be... it's hilarious. We had a huge BBQ and a full country band and square dancing. It was a blast! Some of these costumes though I'm not sure what they were going for... =)

Well there you go.. from SB to Hickville ... what is God going to do next?

"GO TO THE LAND I WILL SHOW YOU"

2009-09-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

RESTING:
These last two months have been a WONDERFUL time of resting. We knew that's what God said to do and so we did it. He said to be INTENTIONAL with people and with him. We subleased from our neighbors till August 23rd. We knew after that our "resting" time was up.... So as the date got closer and closer we were like, "okay Lord we trust that you will show us our next step."

THE ELEVENTH HOUR:
I have often heard that God is 'rarely early, never late, but right on time.' And I believe He does that so that we rely on Him and not ourselves. Every time He comes through it grows our faith. Such has been the case with us as we have continually put our lives on the edge, leaving no room for anyone else to come through but Him. And it has been amazing! We wouldn't have it any other way.

SO... Here's the story.

August 23rd was the date we had to be out of our sublease. That same day Meehan and Dan were getting married (our dear friends). We had prayed earlier that day for an "Invitation" from the Lord. Not just any invitation but that we would know it was from God and not man. So while we were at the ceremony Luke is approached by one of the guests. He is a YWAM guy (by the way there were TONS of YWAMers there cuz Dan has been involved with YWAM for years. The guy found out our story-- that we have a heart for long term missions and that we were about to be up in our lease and were waiting for the next step from God. So he goes into "inviting" us to come to Kona. He had all these great ideas for us, ways to plug us in and get us going etc. But for some reason both Luke and I felt such hesitancy! We were like "Lord is this our Invitation? Cuz we don't feel any peace." We left the conversation feeling torn in our hearts...

Then... right after that we run into a couple (Johnny and Jenni) who had come down from YWAM Montana. We have some dear friends up there (Brian and Mackenzie) who did DTS with us in Kona. They had written a letter and given it to Johnny and Jenni to deliver it to us. So back to back we are invited to Kona then here we get a written "Invitation" with our names on it from Brian and Mackenzie. I open it up and basically it said that they missed us and knew that God would show us our next step. And they said that if we "ever wanted to come up and visit the base in Montana that we could totally stay with them and check it out."

We were like "Lord is this you?!" The next day, after the wedding, we both went off for 2 hours and spent time with the Lord and God totally showed Luke that we should take a road trip up there to Montana and check out the YWAM base. God gave both of us, separately, the verse in Genesis "Go to a land I will show you" that God had given to Abram when he was to go to the Promised Land.

SO, that's what we are going to do. Leaving around Sep 10th we will be driving up to Montana to visit. We don't know what God has in store for us but we are confident that as we go "On an Adventure with Him" that He will show us the way.

So we'll keep you posted on the adventure. We really feel there will be a lot of divine appointments along the way, which is one reason why we felt we should drive and not fly.

Keep us in your prayers that God continues to cover our marriage and uses us till we are spent in Him!

Love you guys...

Luke and Bethany

YES, WE ARE IN SANTA BARBARA!

2009-07-10T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, sorry for those of you who were confused with "Where in the world are Luke and Bethany?" We are in Santa Barbara for the summer. The Lord opened up an apartment for us to sublease right upstairs from our old apartment! It is actually our friends' and old neighbors', Chase and Cassie's place and they needed someone to sublease while they were traveling to the east coast for the summer. It worked perfect! We will be here until August 23rd.

So, God has really shown us that this time is a time of resting. He gave us the word "intentional" and told us that we are supposed to be intentional in our time with Him and in spending time with friends. Yeah, that is pretty much it... pretty sweet if you ask me.

In coming here, I (Luke) was a little nervous that we were gonna get stuck again -- working restaurant jobs and waiting... but the Lord clearly spoke to me "Do you trust me?" And He has reassured me that this is not going back to old things but it is something brand new, for a time, in a familiar location. He also told me that He has awesome plans for us and that we are not gonna have to try real hard to figure out what those plans are but we are gonna just fall right into it.

Wanna hear something even cooler? He told us not to work at all while we are here! What?! And He has been providing in awesome ways! So Praise Him! It is so dang FUN to walk with God.

Bethany and I went down to our friends' Peter and Josie's wedding in Pasadena a few weeks ago. GOOD TIMES! (They had hula hoops to play with right by the dance floor, NICE TOUCH!) Bethany almost knocked herself out with her own knee trying to jump thru one that I rolled on the ground by her! Gotta love it!

Anyways, we love you guys -- and for those in SB lets hang soon!

Izmir, Istanbul and HOME!!!

2009-05-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

Well here it is!!! Our last city in Turkey - Izmir. This is where the church of Smyrna is found. Also about an hour away is the ancient city of Ephesus!!

This is Izmir. God brought us SO many divine appointments there's no way we could write all the stories right now. But here are some pics etc. We'll have to share more when we get back home.

Izmir is right by the ocean. This is a water inlet where you take ferry boats back and fourth across to the different city centers.

They have incredible produce... and it's DIRT CHEAP!!

Luke and I found some funny things here that just perfectly show the "randomness" of another country other than your own... like this huge pile of over-sized underwear all for a buck each....

or this fat mannequin for the pleasantly plump... =) Luke found this amusing... that's a big chick! She's like 6' 6"!!!

Or check this poster out! I thought this was such a perfect depiction of what goes on in a woman's mind even when she doesn't look that fat... Oh if only men would understand...

And how bout this sign! Gotta love it!

And this last one is great.
Luke in a sea of Muslim women! AAAAWKWARD! hehe.. ya woman and men don't quite mix.. it's like oil and water!

They have nice flowers here!

and awesome bread!

Our apartment we rented was super dirty so we decided to do a little spring cleaning! Go Hanne.. that fridge was FULL of mold!

And poor Luke had the job of cleaning the bathroom... here's the classic poop brush... FULL OF POOP! uhhhh

One morning we prayed and felt like we should just go out to the park area, bring a guitar and start playing... and praying.... to see what God might do to bring people to us... and...

...we found some friends: Mehmet and Alex. They are from Marmaris, which is a few hours away. They were up here for a few hours trying to get Visas at the embassy and had to wait for the processing to go through. Soooo they decided to talk a walk at the park... and who did they run into?... US!!! It was so the Lord... we hung out the WHOLE time and gave them gospels of John ... we both realized it was God who put us together... We had so much fun!

We met two guys while sitting here by the water drinking cay (chai in Turkish) which means tea... not like Indian Chai... it's just black.

They brought their other friends and we ended up hanging out ALL day.. playing cards, talking about life and our beliefs. These friends ended up being people we hung out with the whole time we were in Izmir. They are so awesome!

They invited us into their home and made us an amazing dinner!

We worked with this small church plant. There were two new converts and we helped with the baptism. It was so cool! This church is so small... just starting up with only a couple members.
I played worship with them.. it was so cool seeing Turkish believers worship Jesus. There are only 3000 known believers in ALL of Turkey so it was really cool to encourage them in their faith!

There is no place by the ocean where we could baptize them so they got a baby pool.. Hey whatever works!

After months of Turkish food we were dying for an AMERICAN BURGER... so we went to the market and found some ingredients!

And cooked up a storm!

The ancient city of
EPHESUS

Luke bought this headset that told us about each station we stopped at in Ephesus. He would get all the info and then teach us...it was perfect! Luke's such a good teacher!

Oh my Luke has boobs! Babe!

This is the amphitheatre where in the book of Acts there was the riot about their goddess Artemis!
Ephesus was one of the coolest things we saw here in Turkey.

ISTANBUL
We left Izmir and headed back to our first desitnation- Istanbul. We spent 3 days there to debrief and then head HOME to Hawaii! The crazy thing is that we came to Istanbul for "rest and relaxation" but we really wanted to see all our Turkish friends we had made. So we just went ALL day and saw EVERYONE! God met us more that we could ever say. It was amazing the timing of everything.

We hung out with Savas and his friends and family! They are Kurdish and SO SWEET. They cooked us dinner! We love them!
This is his sisters and cousin!

Savas, Luke and Ikmet

HERE IS A COOL STORY
ABOUT A GUY NAMES BENJAMIN!

We got back into Istanbul from Izmir and happened to run into a guy named Benjamin. When we first got to Turkey we met Benjamin on a ferry boat. He really wanted to learn English and instantly started talking to us. We shared with him that we were believers in Jesus and that we were traveling around Turkey telling people about God's love for them. At the end of our time we had given him a gospel of John and an apologetics book explaining the differences between the Koran and the Bible. We prayed for him and then said goodbye and left.

So we travel all throughout Turkey and Northern Iraq not thinking we'd EVER see this guy again. Well on our LAST week in Turkey we travel back to Istanbul to fly out. On one of our last days there we happened to be by the ferry again. Keep in mind there are 17 million people in Istanbul alone... and at the ferry there are thousands of people traveling every hour. So we are heading to get on a 2 o'clock ferry and as we are standing back to back with a million other people Luke hears this voice calling out amongst the crowd. Catching his attention he looks over and who is standing 3 people away from him.... Benjamin!!! Oh my gosh... we couldn't believe it! So we sat on the Ferry together and Benjamin in all of his excitement just talks our ears off. In the 2 months we were gone he read everything we gave him, he remembered EVERY little thing we told him about God and he remembered when we prayed over him. And he just kept saying how cool it was that we "work for God"... that it's the greatest profession out there... granted he is Muslim but he is open.

So by the time we got to the other side of the waterway we told him more about Jesus and got all his info and will be keeping in touch over Skype and email. He really wants to learn more and more about what we believe. We said goodbye and headed for our hotel just jaw dropped! So yes please keep praying for Benjamin. He seemed like an Apostle Paul if he gets saved. He is very smart and bold and unafraid! I KNOW that God had us meet him again.
What are the chances?

We headed to the airport and this is our little marshin saying goodbye to Tukey for us.... Ohhhh so sad!

Goodbye Turkey!!!

HOME!

Well it's been a fun run! You all have been AMAZING! Thank you for ALL of your prayers and for traveling with us! It would not have been the same without you! We are so excited to see you all in Santa Barbara.

We will be in SB for 8 weeks leasing our neigbors apartment while they are gone... then we'll see where the Lord leads us next........ on an adventure with HIM!!!

Beautiful Antalya

2009-05-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Here are some pics from Antalya. It is absolutely gorgeous here. We met up with some people from the Kona base and worshiped and prayed with them.

This is the port the Apostle Paul sailed into on one of his missionary journeys! So cool!

There is a small church here called Paul's Place. We met a young Turkish guy named Halel who just got saved last year. He is SOOOO passionate about Jesus. I don't think there is anything sweeter than seeing a Turkish believer worship the living God. Especially since there are only about 3,000 known belivers in all of Turkey. God is on the move here.

Two Kurdish guys came that night who were just checking it out and I realized I had some Kurdish literature with me for them and it happened to be in the right dialect. Praise the Lord. Pray for their hearts to be open to the truth as they read God's word.

We also went out and shared the gospel with some Turkish people in the park. It's amazing how God opens up doors.

Thank you for ALL your support! We LOVE every email and little facebook note etc. you all have given us. Althought we aren't always able to write back to everyone please know it makes our day to hear from you! Bless you all...

We just arrived in Izmir and this is our LAST main location before we head back to Istanbul for a couple days then fly home to Hawaii.

Please pray for the church in Izmir! Before arriving we all felt a lot of expectancy for God to do something here! And man do WE HAVE some stories! From the second we got here there has been almost back to back events God has divinely put together.
We'll save it for the next entry..

love you all.. we have to get some rest.. it's late! Smooch!!

Antakya (The Ancient City of Antioch)

2009-04-30T05:15:00.000-07:00

The long treacherous bus ride. 18 hours! Uhhhhh but we made it!

ANTIOCH!!! (Antakya in Turkish)
Lord save this city! Take it back again for your glory!
Here is the center of the town. It feels a lot like Santa Barbara with the mountains etc.

The Lord has been SO faithful! Every day we went out in Antioch, Jesus brought us someone to talk to. We met our closest Turkish friends here!

This man in the picture (below), his name is Ali! He owns an incredible juice bar where everything is made from scratch! We would come here almost every day. He is not married anymore but has an eight year old son. We just connected with him right away and felt the Lord knit our hearts together. He really is so amazing and really just wants love. We pray he comes to know the love of God, that he was created to know Jesus and know how special God made him. Please pray for him! He is our closest friend!He also plays the Saz (Turkish guitar). He rips! Listen to him!
VIDEO:

We also met a man named Maysem in the park.
He is Alevi Muslim which is similar to New Age. They believe in a lot of gods. They take a little from each religion and believe kind of what they want. The cool thing was that Maysem took us to his family's house. His mom (the woman with the pink on) had a broken arm, and his father (farthest right) has been blind for 24 years from working in the sun. We asked if we could pray for them and they said yes. So we did and gave them the bibles. Pray the Lord gives them a clear cut understanding of who Jesus is. They were so nice!

Not only did we meet amazing people but we were able to see some of the coolest places the Bible talks about. Obviously Antioch alone is where Paul was commissioned but here in the picture is ancient Seleucia ( Acts 13:4). The Romans made these huge aqueduct systems that ran all through the city. Here is a place where kings or government officials were buried in these tombs.

This is St. Peter's Church the first church for the Gentiles. It is built into the side of a mountain. Super cool. It's like a cave. This is where they were first called Christians. They were hiding up here from the persecution in Jerusalem.

This was an escape rout in case they got trapped in there! We tried to crawl up in there but the security stopped us.. hehe! oops! Getting a little too into it I guess! =)

Outside of the church you can see this face like structure. It was an old ancient goddess the pagans carved out of the rock during a drought, so that it would rain. Who knows if it did!

We helped teach English at this Language school and met the coolest group of students. We all hit it off and ended up hanging out with them a bit. We ended up giving almost all of them Bibles. It was awesome. Pray for them.

Here's some of the guys! We all went out for the most AMAZING Turkish food. Probably the best we've tried yet! It's all about going with a local! They know the good spots!

We hiked up to this look out. Pretty breath taking... and windy =)

There is a lot of water in the city and they find creative ways to channel it! You can sit here and eat lunch besides a waterfall! So cool!

Julia Dellar! We couldn't resist! It always makes us think of you!

This highway is known as Salvation Way. It was the road that Paul frequently walked down! Obviously it's a little more built up now...

Prayer Requests!

There is a spirit of division here among the churches and believers so please pray for unity like it used to be in Acts! I think since Paul and Barnabas split ways here that spirit seems to seep into the hearts of the people. Pray for unity!

Our team is 1/2 way through outreach and we need to amp up again in our hearts. We felt a little dis-unified here at times, (makes sense seeing the spiritual climate of the place) but are going strong. We just need fresh vision and refreshment to continue to pour out our hearts into the lives of the people we meet!

GOD BLESS YOU ALL! THANK YOU FOR TRAVELING WITH US!
Can't wait to see you when we get home!

Luke and Bethany