Chapter 11
09.24.06 01:45 AM | Ministry
Aloha to all my friends and family back home.

God is active and moving in ways I have never experienced here in Hawaii. Everyday I am reminded about how Holy He is and how much I am not. He is also continuing to show me what a dark place Hawaii is. People here need the Lord and are desperite for Him, though they may not be aware of it. Just last night I was at Dinney's in Waikiki with a group of students. The street was being paced up and down with prostitutes. You know they are because they wear clear heels. I am beginning to see things with spiritual eyes as I walk around campus daily. I have gone from what seemed like an impossible task of reaching a campus for Christ last semester to a broken heart for lost students, and the saved ones who so need discipleship. We are currenty involved in a week long 24 hour prayer vigil for our campus. It is called "Light Up UH." We have met with the leaders of all the Christian organizations on campus (BCM, Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, the Catholic church, the Episcopal church, Fe! llowship of Christian faculty and staff, Chai Alpha Assemblies of God, and Every Nation) every week since we all got back to the island to plan this prayer vigil. We started Monday night with a worship ralley. Our worship team was privilaged to lead the music for the night with about 110-150 students at the student campus center. What an awesome night of worship and prayer for the campus. After some worship music and an inspiring message, the students divided into groups and prayer-walked the entire campus! Every building was prayed for specifically. Even those buildings that are a few miles away from the main part of campus. Following has been the 24 hour prayer vigil. Students have been filling 2 hour time slots to pray on campus in the Catholic church's prayer room. BCM prayed last night from 1am til 3am. Can I just say that God clearly speaks when you are focused completely on Him for hours at a time? Sin in my life was revealed to me, along with the rest of us that prayed la! st night. We sought God's movement on campus and asked Him to speak clearly to us last night. We are continually seeking fruit from ours and other prayers that have been going on this week. Please pray for the University of Hawaii, that God will open doors to share the gospel with non believers. Pray that we will not be timid or afraid in building relationships and speaking truth in love. Because God has given us a spirit of power, love, and discipline.

We have a busy semester ahead still. We kicked our small groups off with a special luau last tuesday. I'm partnering and co-leading three of them. One is with the worship team, which is a continuation of last semester. I also support Jim and Karen Jolly (a couple at my church) in their small group. We are praying for accountability in that group through scripture reading and memorization. Then I am co-leading a group with another student, going through Revelation. I've been studing pretty heavily with this book. I am so excited about where God will lead this group. Please for me in these groups. I don't want to stretch myself thin with the small groups, church, and discipling relationships with students.

Worship team continues to go well. We have been pretty active and busy since we've gotten back together. Along with the Light Up UH night, we have been asked to start leading a worship service every Sunday night a Waikiki Baptist Church. The church has no college or young anything ministry. They have asked us to help them in that area. Pastor Andrew Large is very passiontate about reaching one of the most lost and saddest parts of the island, Waikiki. I've started playing the congas with the band. One of the students that moved to the mainland donated them to us. It's been a lot of fun getting to do bible study with them, as well as being an actual presence in their ministry on stage and all. I'm continuing to meet weekly with the Worship leader, Anson, in a discipling relationship. We meet every Thursday night for coffee and end up sitting and talking for 2-3 hours. It's probably one of the top things I look forward to during the week. He's one of my best friends and I look ! forward to seeing him grow in his faith and relationship with God every week. I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family on the island of Kauai. Pray for this discipleship relationship I have with him. Just that I won't cause him to stumble in anything or lead him in the wrong direction with mis-quotation or interperetation of scripture.

I've also been meeting with Lyle informally this semester. He was student that I also had a discipleship relationship with last semester. We've been meeting almost every day last week on campus just to pray for a half hour or so.

Church at University Avenue Baptist has also been such a blessing this semester. Pastor Jack Duffer has been such an encouragement to me and the other college students there. Along with Jim and Karen Jolly, our Sunday school teachers. We still do our Systematic theology bible study-lunch every tuesday. Yesterday we talked about the final judgement and hell. Next week, we're talking about sanctification. Pray that God will arise from the scriptures and texts that we study, and that we may not become arrogant in the things we are learning and seeing in scripture. Jared Lawrence is the semester missionary that works at UABC. We've become really good friends here this semester. He is a great contact and friend to have outside of the BCM ministry. Sometimes it's just good to get away from you ministry. Last week, we hung out at Pastor Jacks house for about 3 hours. We were supposed to practice music for that friday night's youth worship service, but we ended up eating pizza, playi! ng with Jack's kids, and goofing off with Jack and Shelley. Did you know Pastor Jack can do the rubic's cube in 4 minutes?
Well, this is so long and and I could go on forever. I love you all and thanks for taking the time to read this. Pleae pray for me here. It is only by God that I am sustained and am able to do anything here. Emails are good contact. Please pass this on to others also who may not be on this list (ie. Sherry York and the rest of the college ss class at PBC).

Much love and aloha!!!
James Curry
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Chapter 10: 6 weeks remaining...
04.22.06 12:45 AM | Ministry
Aloha...

A month and a half left! I think most everybody here is about ready to go home and take a break for a while. Visit with family and friends, and rejuvinate (sp?).

April has been a really good month so far. I'm starting to become mentally drained, though.

The BCM staff has been having our cast the vison, planning, what's the point of all this, are we a church, how do we help the church, etc, meetings. We started the meeting with ideas for change next year. Shane wants to focus more on small groups, where there is more likely to be spiritual growth. This lead to discussion that this may lead us to becomming churches, which is not good. Some students are saying that BCM is their church, which is dangerous. So this leads us to discussion of what is a church, and what consistutes a biblical, healthy church. This lead us to question are we really church. This lead us to realize that all 4 of us leaders have a different few of what BCM is supposed to be, which means that we are looking at things as if we're starting all over again. Whew! It was a healthy meeting though. There was a lot of disagreement and different viewpoints, but no one was getting angry or frustrated. It's good because if we are all going to be leading this organi! zation, we have to have the same understanding of what we're doing. So you can keep praying for us in that sense. I want everything we do to be backed up by scripture. I don't want us to just follow the latest trends that are being taught at the latest ministry conferences around the nation. I want us to follow God's leading in raising mature Christians. Personally if that means less of us, and more of the local church, that's fine with me.

Speaking of church, this Sunday was Easter as I'm sure you all know. I had the privilage of leading our praise and worship team for the service. Praise God! What a blessing it was. We had so maby people interested in being a part of it, so we included whoever wanted to do it. They're learning that worship is not contemporary or traditional. Their learning that worship is reflecting back to God the radience of His glory (as John Piper would say). The people were so great to work with. I beleive God was honored. We're going to try to lead every month. Next time we do something will be mother's day.

Not too much more going on. Just trying to finish out the semester, praying that whatever we do will honor God. You can pray for a hotdog cookout that we will be hosting at 2 of the dorms on Monday May 8th. Pray that we will have opportunities to share our faith with students as they come by. Also, please pray for our BCM staff as we plan for next semester. That we will function in the way God's will is.
I'll be beck home June 10th for about 2 months. Then I'm meeting some students in Glorietta, New Mexico for a conference before we all fly back to Hawaii together for the next semester.

Love you guys! See you soon.
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Chapter 9
04.09.06 02:35 AM | Ministry
Hello and Aloha!

The sunshine is back, Praise God! We have not see sunshine in over a month. The island of Oahu was flooded last week, due to storms and such. Plus, millions of gallons of raw sewage spilled into Waikiki and Ala Moana last week. Boy, we took a beating. I forget I'm in Hawaii sometimes.

Since it's been so long, a lot has been happening here over the past several weeks.

The HIM (Hawaiian Island Ministries) Conference was incredible! I got to hear Jim Cymbala, one of my heros of the faith, preach 3 times! He is the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, a chuch me and my friends went to in New York last year. It was just so awsome to be surrounded by so many Christians and worshiping the same true God. The conference was not denominational. As I looked around during the times of worship, I was so amazed at how diverse this place is. I'm so used to being at corporate Christian events where there is mostly white and a little black. There was so much diversity at HIM, that no one ethnicity dominated. And I'm so glad that God does not see us as our dnominations, but as His children. I beleive that God does not see me as a Baptist or my friend Josh as a Catholic, but He sees us as the body of Christ. Praise God!

We just returned from Spring Break. A much needed break. I was really beginning to feel burn-out. It is so had to minister to people when you LIVE with them 24-7. We (interns) are still trying to figure out what exactly we're doing here sometimes. I feel like we don't have much of a vision. I feel like our vision is..."reach out to campus." Ok, well, what do we do with that? And why do we have our tuesday night worship services if we're not supposed to be a chuch. Several students have told us that BCM is their church. That's a No No! We're supposed to connect them to church. But then churches don't want to invest too much in us because they're not seeing fruit from their own college ministry. Why would they want to send money and invest in ours? I think we just really have no direction or organization. Students aren't comming to The Vine (Tues night worship) anymore. It's dull to them. 2 different people told Sarah last week that they fell asleep. So....what are we doing her! e again?

Spring break gave me a good amount of time to rest and reflect on a lot. Brian Lambert came and we got to spend some really good time together. And I spent a few days on Maui with some friends. I feel God wants me to really invest more spiritual time in students. I feel like I've spent too much time trying to be cool with them, or being on their level that I'm not being a spiritual leader to them. I feel like God was telling me to stop being their peer and to start discipling them, intentionally.

Which has led me to be more intentional about spending more quite time in scripture and prayer. How can I pour into them if I'm not being filled? I'm trying to spend the late evenings before bed in the lounge on the couches with just books. So like during the day I'm doing paper work, planning, and hanging out with students. At night, I'm studying. God has also opened a cool door for me just today. I'm starting to be involved with Pastor Jack Duffer, Jim (my Sunday School teacher), and Sarah in thursday deep topical discussions. We meet at Jack in the Box (fast food restaraunt), and discuss a topic out of Grudem's Systematic Theology book. Wow! Can we say brain stretcher!? Today we talked about Election and Reprobation. We read the chapet beforehand, then meet and talk about if we really beleive this or why we beleive this, etc. And how can we live our lives to better serve God after we understand all this. Next week, we're talking about the sufficiency of scripture. It's aws! ome because it's with the 2 men in Hawaii that I learn more from than anyone. It's so fun getting my brain challenged to think about this kind of stuff.

Guys prayer meeting on Monday nights continues to go well. There's now 4 of us. There's starting to be more openess and sharing within the group now. If we want God to move on this campus and in our lives, it must start with prayer.

We have 1 month of school left. Time flies! I have to give it all I've got. I feel like after a restful spring break, that I am ready to take on the rest of this semester.

Please pray:

For vision within this ministry. We are loosing focus and a lot of understanding. Students aren't motivated when they don't understand their job or why we are doing this ministry.

For me, that God will bring a few more guys into my life that I can personally invest in and spend some good spiriual time with. These kids need encouragement. They're tired and stressed out like any college student is.

For the other 2 missionaries; Joe and Sarah. That we do not burn out or grow weary from doing work here, when seeing fruit is few and far between sometimes.

Thank you all of your prayers and love. I miss you all.

Love and blessings,
James

P.S. - New pics are up!!!
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