Hello Idaho

Yesterday I drove from Springville up to Preston, ID. It is absolutely beautiful up here! This week will be more or less a spiritual retreat for me before I get back to work down in Sprinville. Im staying in my own cabin... its kind of insane, I have a desk to write/work at, a tv, a refrigerator, an amazing chair to read in and my own bathroom. Kind of overwhelming but insanely awesome at the same time.

Today I got to hang out with Gloria and have chai tea while talking about books, ministry, and God's plan. Pretty much a fantastic morning in every respect. Then I was able to sit outside and read a few chapters of "The Pursuit of God", once again Tozer is rocking my socks off. Finally this afternoon Bill and I went and dug a hole for a clothes line they are putting in and moved dirt. After that we went for a bike ride and talked about life, ministry and God. Again, a fantastic way to spend time!

This week is going to be an awesome time for me to glean as much knowledge and wisdom from these amazing people as I possibly can! I'll post more of what happens as it happens.

For now, please be praying for God to use this time to continue to transform me and remove the veil of my "self-life" as Tozer puts it, which separates me from living in the presence of God. Also please continue to pray for the conversations that were had in Manti, that the seeds that were planted would grow and that God would bring about continued interaction with those He wants me to keep talking to. Thank you so much for your support!

Last Night in Manti

Today was my last day in Ephraim/Manti. Although Im stoked to experience what God has for me over the rest of the summer, I was pretty bummed to leave. Getting to know and minister with each individual on the team was a unique blessing. Its bitter-sweet I guess would be the best way to put it.

The day was crazy. This morning God blessed me so incredibly, I went to our morning training and learned some useful stuff, but the blessing came in the form of prayer. The man speaking asked for people who felt led to ministry in Utah to come up so he could pray for us. His prayer for me was absolutely what I needed to hear! He voiced prayer over concerns that I had only ever spoken to the Lord, it was crazy, God was like "here Matt, happy birthday, I love you and Im in control". Totally nuts.

Then tonight at Manti God brought me to a totally amazing conversation! It started by somebody mistaking me for a Mormon yet again and handing me a tract. Being the jerk that I am I played along and asked the particular girl that wanted to convert me to explain the paperwork she had handed me. At that point one of this girl's previous paper victims walked up and asked her what the purpose was for her being there and what she was trying to get at with the tract. She explained a little bit and was done with the conversation. With the end of her explanation, he and I started talking about what the tract said and if we felt the gospel offered in Mormon doctrine was in fact hopeless. It was so cool because the conversation opened up into him asking questions on nearly every salvation-essential point of doctrine imaginable.

Long story short, be praying for this young man. He and I are going to continue meeting/talking over the summer and he truly wants to seek/find the truth. He admitted that he doesn't believe in the majority of LDS doctrine and wants to understand exactly who Jesus was and who God is. I told him that was a perfect place to start because our salvation hinges on the doctrine of God (if God doesn't exist and Jesus was simply a good person, then everything I am in Utah for is pointless).

Where is Boasting Then?

Tonight was an amazing night in Manti! I had a fantastic conversation with an LDS guy around my age, we talked about grace (obviously hugely important, not to mention one of my favorite topics to talk about) and salvation. The good stuff! He told me he doesn't believe most of what the church teaches and only believes for sure in God and Jesus... after asking him why he was LDS he explained it was because of family. We exchanged contact info and he wants to go through the book of Romans with me via Facebook messaging. Im super excited to see where God takes him!

Random fun tid-bit of comparison to consider:

Romans 3:27-28 (Paul has argued that the law exists to show man's absolute need for God)

"Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

Ephesians 2:8-9

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; Not of works, lest any man should boast."

Contrast that with the words of Joseph Smith:

"I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet . . . " (History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 408-409)

Please be praying for God to work in Brian, Bob and Bob as well as continued blessing for Tri-Grace Ministries and Ephraim Church of the Bible! Also for safe travels for me, tomorrow I will be driving up to Springville and Sunday I will continue up to Preston, ID. Thank you so much for your faithful support!!!

The Last Two Days

Over the last two days God has opened some pretty cool doors!

On Tuesday I met another one of the original Biola Utah Missions guys, he is legit and currently at Talbot and wants to help out with prep for our next trip however he can. Ok God.

Then later that night, my buddy Joe ran over and grabbed me saying something about lacrosse. Turns out there was a high school kid who played and wanted to talk with me about the sport. I laughed because 1) Im terrible at lacrosse and 2) I only played for a few months... but ok God, sure open door, go through? We ended up talking/hanging out with this young man for about four hours, we hung out again Wednesday night, we are hanging out Thursday night, and Friday... oh and he wants to come hang out at Biola when he goes to Disneyland with his family next year... Ok God.

Additionally, Joe and I drove up to Salt Lake on Wednesday to spend time with our Conference Center friend (tour guide). We met up in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and found a place to sit and talk (this was at 11:00am). He started right off by asking us what Bible verse was most important to each of us... no small question. I started to freak out, in the midst of my freaking out God, as He always does, pulled through. As my dear Mormon friend handed me his quad, I turned to Romans 3 and read to him from the King James text these lines:

¹⁹Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.²⁰Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.²¹But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;²²Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:²³For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;²⁴Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:²⁵Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;²⁶To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.²⁷Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.²⁸Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

He then went on to ask about the nature of the Trinity, the place of works in our faith, how we show love to Christ, and honestly nearly every other doctrinal/theological topic you could imagine. It was great. Joe and I were totally blown away by his openness and genuine desire to share and learn.

After lunch we figured it would be time for us to go... but he wanted to keep talking with us! We went for a drive out of the city up a beautiful canyon on the Eastern side of the Salt Lake valley. By the time we were done talking and had made it back to my car it was 6:00pm! The day was absolutely crazy awesome.

Please continue to pray for the conversations that will be taking place at the Manti pageant over the next three days as well as for continued relationship building opportunities! Thank you so much for your support dear friends!

Our God is an Awesome God!!!

Today we went up to SLC again to hang out around temple square. On the way up I spent time talking with a couple of our ministry directors about opportunities here in Utah and God opened up some pretty cool ideas for both EMI as well as church planting! It was such a cool way to start the day.

When we arrived in SLC we got out and prayed as a group for divine appointments and spiritual guidance... God does not disappoint!

I headed into the church museum with a few other brothers who also were from California. After awhile of walking through the museum one of the guys we were with got into a great conversation with one of the curators about salvation. Because the secret service often like to come in and distract two of us not involved in the convo took up positions to intercept any would-be-conversation-breakers.

As I was standing there praying/pretending to look at some artwork I noticed two college kids walking towards me. I figured it was time to intercept. After talking for about thirty seconds I realized we were on the same page, it turns out they were both believers from Fresno and were here visiting SLC on their way to... (ok God) the Manti pageant.

I grabbed my buddy Joe and the four of us randomly brought together Californians headed over to talk with some sister missionaries. The sisters we were assigned werent really in the mood to talk. We had an ok discussion but it ended rather abruptly with them bearing their testimony and informing us they didnt have any more time for questions.

At that point we walked to the conference center. By God's timing we lost our original tour guide about five minutes into our tour and ended up spending the rest of our time with quite possibly the most wonderful elderly man I have ever met. We struck up a fantastic conversation with him, talking about everything from his childhood to present day. It was absolutely incredible. It was weird but for quite a long time I kept wanting to take the conversation to spiritual things but I felt the Holy Spirit keep telling me to wait, and strangely none of the other three took it there either.

Finally after a long time of simply listening to his life, sharing about singing (he was a high-school choir teacher), and enjoying his company he paused and commented on how he could visibly see how each of us were filled with the joy of Christ. Door: open.

From that point onward our conversation was completely focused on the God of the Bible, salvation through grace and faith alone, Christ's deity and His absolute personal love for each of us, the list honestly goes on and on and on! He shared with us his doubts about the book of Mormon, his sense of confusion and uncomfortability over temple work, and various other reservations. It was absolutely crazy how open and receptive he was!!! Each of us had individual points to contribute, God honestly perfectly orchestrated the entire thing, it was beautiful!

We finally came to the end of our tour, and it was only fitting to conclude our time in prayer. Our odd and obviously God ordained group stood to one side of the exit in the LDS general conference center and prayed over our wonderful tour guide. Through tears he thanked each of us individually and exchanged contact information with us all because he wants to make a conscious effort to stay in contact with us in order to continue our talks about spiritual things.

God is good all the time. All the time God is good.

Please pray for that continued relationship, for seeds to be watered in his life, and for God to redeem and adopt that sweet man before he stands in front of the throne of our Righteous Judge. Thank you all so so much for your continued spiritual support!

Happy Father's Day!

First off, happy father's day to all three of my fathers! (Heavenly, biological, and step for those of you who are trying to figure that one out) No offense to my earthly dads but today I am most thankful for my adoption into sonship with the Creator of the universe! Just know that in no way diminishes my love for you two down here.

I have some really fun stories about how personal our God is! He uses the most random personal experiences for His glory (like Boy Scouts)

The other night things weren't going well on the streets of Manti. All day stuff had been falling apart more or less. There was a youthgroup coming in from California, their van's transmission blew out about an hour away from town. Other little annoying distractions had been going on at the cafe (for instance the internet went out and that took multiple hours to fix). Basically our whole team was kind of annoyed/distracted by the time we made it out to Manti. As we were worshiping before we headed out God really burdened my heart to be praying for people's conversations rather than looking for people to talk to. So as the team took to the streets I just walked around and prayed for my brothers and sisters. I was standing near a large group of students that were listening to one of our guys answer questions that people had and I asked God to keep the kids focused and allow them to absorb His truth. Randomly this guy walked up and stood right next to me, he started to yell at the high-school kids standing there "why are you listening to this crap? This is so stupid!" etc etc etc. So naturally I was like "ok God, do your thing, show me how to talk to this guy". I turned to him and asked why they shouldnt be listening, he stopped yelling and rather sheepishly told me he had just been in a conversation that went nowhere and ended with his scout master pulling him away. Boom, scouts, we started talking about scouting, how soon he would finish his Eagle, how I had only finished a week before my 18th birthday and other random scout stuff. I didnt even get a chance to transition the conversation to eternal things before he abruptly said he had to go and literally ran off. I was a little disappointed in the whole interaction until I realized God had essentially used me as a buffer, that quick interaction had stopped him from distracting the crowd of high-schoolers from hearing God's truth being preached to them.

Thank you for faithfully praying! God brought a young woman to His saving grace and continues to draw souls to Himself through our interactions in Manti!

Manti

So the last two days have been pretty crazy! God has brought some awesome opportunities to me as far as conversations and resources go for EMI next year!!! Im totally stoked to see how He continues to unfold His ridiculously amazing Master plan in front of me.

The last two nights have been equally crazy. We have gone to Manti to talk with people who are hanging around for the pageant. God has opened up awesome conversations for people, bringing people together who have very specific similarities and using those for His truth to be heard! I love how He continually reminds me that NOTHING is wasted in His perfect plan!!! Its really late and I need to be up early, if you want details call me.

Thank you all so much for your continued prayer!

SLC Temple

Today we went to Temple Square in SLC. It is by no means my favorite place in the world and was actually quite draining being there. But the good news is God has overcome the world!

Our entire drive from Ephriam to SLC was pretty cool, it was spent in prayer and then about six of us in the van had the opportunity to talk about God's redeeming power in our lives individually. The drive was such a great time of preparation spiritually!

We spent pretty much the entire day taking tours to talk with sister missionaries. The conversations we had were great, God opened up huge opportunities to share His truth in love and bring about real deep spiritual issues that each of them were left to ponder after they left our group. To God alone be the glory!

The spiritual darkness is so heavy there. Please pray for the seeds that were planted today, that God would bring His increase in His perfect timing.

Divine Appointments

God is so Awesome!!!

So today we had Bible study in the morning, we talked about the Trinity. In the afternoon I had some free time between our study sessions so I decided to do a little reading on my own. I went up to my room and got out my Bible, a yellow legal pad (best paper for note taking EVER), and of course good ol' Grudem's Systematic Theology. For some reason I just couldn't get comfortable on my bed so I decided to go downstairs and do my reading/note-taking in the coffee shop (I sleep above Tri-Grace Ministries' cafe Solid Rock).

As Im sitting there in the completely empty coffee shop, randomly this guy walks in through the front door. He and I started talking, it turns out this guy was a student at the college across the street and had some questions about things "Christians believe" because of some YouTube videos he had seen (praise God for the interwebz).

It also turns out that those questions revolved largely around the topic of grace... which happens to be one of my favorite topics to talk about!!! So he and I sat for around two and a half hours talking about faith in Christ and much more before he finally had to go.

As he was leaving he told me he had some more questions he wanted to talk with me about, those questions just so happened to be about THE TRINITY (Ok God...) So all that being said he and I are hanging out again tomorrow (and how ever many more times he will put up with me/I can fit in the two weeks Im here).

So please be praying for Mike! That God will open his ears, soften his heart, and continue to penetrate his mind with Biblical Truth! We serve an amazing God who loves each of us uniquely and individually. He is advancing His Kingdom one life at a time!!!

Hello Ephriam!

I am officially in Utah! Truck unpacked, bed made, ready to start training tomorrow morning at 9:30! God is so so so good!!!

The drive out was such a fantastic blessing. God's sense of humor and love in His communication with me along the way was absolutely amazing, the ten hours in my truck honestly seemed to fly by.

Thank you so much for your prayers! Know that God is answering them already!!! I cant wait to see what God does over the next two weeks in Ephriam.

Almost Time to Head Out!

So I drive from La Mirada, California to Ephriam, Utah tomorrow morning! God has blessed me incredibly over the last week through a conference at my church down here (Urban Renewal). Its honestly been like charging my spiritual batteries and Im totally stoked for what God has ahead of me this summer!!!

If you could continue to pray for relationships to be built that would be huge, both with the churches/pastors I work with as well as the lost that God brings me into contact with.

Thank you all so much for your prayers, I cant wait to keep you updated on how God is advancing His kingdom in Utah!

Prayer Requests!

I leave for Utah in just under two weeks (12 days)! That fact is really exciting and slightly terrifying all in the same instance. If you guys could keep me in prayer over the course of the summer that would be completely amazing!!! I will continue to update my specific prayer requests over the course of the summer but for now here is a quick list of things I would love to be lifted up!

-For God to be glorified!!!

-For God to open doors and for me to obey in faith walking through them

-For relationships to be built

-For humility, patience and love

-For Christ to be exhibited in all of my actions/interactions

Ephesians 6:19-20

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.