Hey y'all. Sorry it's been quite a while since the last update. Well, winter tour is well on it's way... about 4 weeks in now. We started out with a pretty long drive from MN to Illinois, where we battled all sorts of issues from black ice, extreme temps, overturned cars and tractor trailers (14 cars and the tractor trailer in ditches in our short drive through Wisconsin), and having to shift weight from the back of the trailer to the front of it and the back of the van to get enough traction. We spend a few days in Illinois, drove over to Nashville and spent a few days there, then made our way to Columbus, GA. And then we were able to drive back to Florida we've been to multiple towns including Panama City, Ft. Myers, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, and West Palm Beach. God has definitely shown us heaps of things in our short time here in the sunshine state..

so we went from this...


to this.


One of the things that we had a chance to do was just sit on the beach and marvel at God's creation after having a blast with the SOY group from Hurlburt Field AFB's youth retreat. Not only did we get to see God's creation in full splendor, we got to see what it means to give everything you have to further the kingdom of God, no matter what circumstances life throws at you. So our hosts at Hurlburt Field AFB, Cope and Sue, literally gave everything they have in order to invest in the lives of their students and in our lives as well for the short time we were there... their time, finances, life stories and experiences. Nothing was too much for them and they always did it with a joyful heart. And their love for their students definitely poured out and overflowed and the culture of their YG became much the same as how they lived out their lives. They weren't shy about sharing their pains and hurts and asking their students to lift them up in prayer... and their students weren't worried about what others thought about them or anything like that if they were to share their struggles. Thanks guys!

The other thing I experienced was the surreal experience of having two worlds collide. This past Friday, we had the opportunity to play at my home church. And it was great!


People from both Harvest and Vision Church were led in worship by the team. And while the whole experience of being back home, looking out into the congregation and seeing familiar faces, and looking around and seeing team 14:22, was odd, it was good to have an opportunity to share the mission and goals of CTI with my home church and to tell them a little bit about what we've been up to. And it was great to see that it didn't matter how different everyone was... we got a little glimpse of heaven that night. It didn't matter what language we spoke, what stage of life we were in... we all worshipped the God who deserves all of our worship. And no language barrier, power outage, and awkward pauses between sentences in explanations of experiences had so far, kept us from worshipping God. And what brought us together wasn't the fact that I attend Harvest or the fact that we happened to have a venue there, but it was the love of Christ that brought us together. And it was good to see and be reminded of the fact that there are people back home rooting for us and praying for us.


So thanks for everything family at Harvest!

We'll be in Florida for a little while longer and then we'll be heading north in the next few days. Thank you so much for your prayers and support!! We really couldn’t be doing this without you lifting us up in prayer!! Here are a couple more prayer requests for the following weeks:

• Safety as we travel (we’ve got some gnarly drives coming up... and we'll be heading up towards the snowy bits of the country as well as back up to Ontario.)

• Servant hearts (that we would continue to want the Lord to work mightily in us and through us)

• The hearts of people that we meet (that the Lord would be working even now in their hearts... that they’ll be ready to hear the message that He has for them)

• Health. It seems like someone on the team has something that they're dealing with health-wise. Pray for strength and health as we travel.
  

• financial support. Thankfully, I'm almost halfway there! Praise God for that. I still need to raise a big bulk of the $12,000 though. If you feel led to support in this way, or have questions, feel free to contact me and I'll do my best to help ya out.
  
  Thank you again for all your support!!

btw... Photo props to Isaac Lee (jakleephotography.blogspot.com) and Sue Copeland. Thanks y'all. Until next time.

Cheers,
Jon