Pets from the road :)

There have been a few comments about the "pets" we have as we travel along. Yes, we have found quite a number of "friends" along the way! Unfortunately, we cannot keep them. So here is a collection of pictures of our animal friends from the tour.

lizards

Squeaks the mouse

peacocks strolling through the parking lot

teeny tiny lizard

the puppies, William & Kate

Umm...the unwanted stinkbugs

First Semester Memory Pictures

I was finally able to pull out some of the great memory pictures from traveling with the WAR of Special Forces! However, there are so many great memories that not all could be in a picture...or fit on one page! So, here is just the 1st semester. The plan is to post the 2nd semester within a couple of days! I hope you enjoy looking at some of our memories of places we've been or things that we've done!

Beaver, WV

stepping back into the past, Fredericksburg, VA

Washington DC

burning a couch for testimony service...never done that before!!

Camp Anchorage, Lake Waccamaw, NC

Street Hockey Team Anchorage, NC

climbing wall at Camp Anchorage, Lake Waccamaw, NC

Are we about to take a break from school or
did we just take a break from roller blading?

cotton field, Clinton, NC

Physics Lab

Miami, FL

rolling tape for the WAR room posters

piano lessons

counseling

Josh trying to be a "homeschooler"...nice try, Josh!

Don't worry, she only practiced for 1/2 a minute this way!!

Chocolate cake!!!

Doesn't it look like Josh is in a cage?!

Downtown Disney

Philip, the Ranger Leader

Thank You for Your Support!

What a blessing it has been to travel with the Van Gelderen’s this school year! I have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it! The last few weeks were quite busy as we were trying to finish the school year a bit early. The girls did a wonderful job and finished everything by the end of April!! It took a great deal of effort...making for no free time!

Leanna Jaeger, Janna, me, Stephanie, Annaleese
Mrs. Van & Dr. Jim

We all made a bunch of memories that will not soon be forgotten. I have included some last pictures here and might post some more later.

Aaron & Paul getting ready for the skit -April 10th

Thank you to all of you who have supported me in one way or another! The Lord really did provide for all of my needs through the money sent and the Lord truly worked through the many prayers that were said! More than 150 souls were saved this year and many, many more decisions were made to get rid of bitterness, disrespect, and hidden sin! Praise the Lord that He can change hearts and what a humbling privilege to have been used to help some of these teens! God is so great and I am thankful that you were a part of the blessing!

Paul, Nathan, & Philip -April 16th

Everyone is back at home now - even the Van Gelderen’s are able to enjoy their house in Wisconsin for the summer. 

As for the future...I will not be traveling with the Van Gelderen’s. Instead, the Lord has led me to teach at a Christian school in Wisconsin. Stephanie Van Gelderen, the oldest daughter, has now finished high school and will be attending college at this same location in Wisconsin!! Janna and Annaleese will go back on the road to continue with Dr. Jim and Mrs. Van. It will be a difficult day for their family to say “good-bye” to their daughter,...but they have asked that I stay with Stephanie for her freshman year of college!! So, I will be living at the Van Gelderen’s house with Stephanie this next school year while I am teaching at the Christian school there!

I am thankful for the unique opportunity I have had to be even a small part of the Minutemen Ministires. To God be the glory! Great things He has done!

Mr. Charles Hagar, Faithful Supporter

In loving memory of one of my faithful supporters, Mr. Charles Hagar, who went to Heaven the last day of my travels, April 27.

Florida & North Carolina

March 10-15
Deltona, FL

Counseling even in the hallway!!

The 1st night of the WAR only 2 girls responded to the invitation. While others counseled those girls, I went outside to talk with the teens before they left for the evening. There was 1 girl that decided to just sit inside the WAR room and wait for her brother and friend to be ready to go. After a while I noticed she was still inside just sitting by herself. Her brother and friend were being counseled! After talking with her for just a little bit, it came right to her eternal security. I explained what the guys were talking about in the hallway and she started tearing up and said, “I should have gone back!” Just at that moment the guys came around the corner glowing!! She decided not to wait a minute - she prayed right there in the WAR room for salvation!! Still crying she hugged me and said she was SO thankful that she had made the decision to be saved that night! Isn’t the Lord gracious?!

Minutemen bought an Excursion! The big white van has just been on its last...tire?? It has been through a lot. Dr. Jim has been looking for a vehicle to take its place for a few months. Now we are driving around in the blue Excursion. So, our memories in the white van are over. Tim & Christy Roberts have joined up with us these 2 weeks and they are going to drive the van back to WI and then we’ll see if there is any more ministry left for the white van. 

March 17-22
Greenville, NC

This week was a surprisingly cold week!! It was about 40 degrees for the WAR nights, but yet the Lord still drew the teens!! We still held all the activities outdoors and even the Friday night testimony service was outside...with no campfire!!! There were more than 120 teens that came and 42 were saved!! Praise the Lord for His working in hearts!!

Tim, Paul, & Nathan

Praise the Lord that He is faithful!

Well, another month has gone by. These have been unusual weeks. I have not been good about getting update material. Despite my unfaithfulness, God is always faithful and has continued to work mightily through the Minutemen Team! Praise the Lord that He is faithful!!

February 17-22
Greer, SC

This week was really special because it was the 1st time the WAR had ever been to this church and school!! The teens all seemed to thoroughly enjoy it and are looking forward to Minutemen returning in the near future!!

It was also this week that the Lord was stretching us as a team - Glenn, our Recon Team Leader, had finger surgery as scheduled. Tim Roberts came in this week to be the Recon Leader. Glenn’s surgery went well, but the doctor told him that he is not to use his hand for 12 weeks. It looks like we will have to find a replacement Recon Leader for the rest of the tour. God’s Will is not always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but this is what He has for us right now. Please continue to pray for all of us as we try to be flexible from week to week.

February 23-March 8
Menomonee Falls, WI & Home! :)

Special Forces Fall 2012-Spring 2013 Teams

We all flew to WI for the Victory Conference! What a huge blessing that quick week was!  The theme of the Conference was the Glorious Church. Going into the week I was not sure how I was going to be able to apply such sermons to my life since I am not a pastor - or ever plan to be ;). The Lord still spoke to my heart in amazing ways realizing that I am part of that “glorious church”. He knew exactly what I needed that exact week and I am so thankful that I have such a wonderful God!

Many people made decisions during the Conference.

While we were all at the Conference, the team from last semester and our current team were able to meet together for a meal! It was great to just talk about some memories and see what the other 2 guys were up to for this semester.
We all went to our homes for the week after the Conference - so I got a couple more doses of snow before returning to FL!

Tampa, FL (Feb 3-8)

Before going across the state from Ft. Pierce to Tampa, we stopped at the Atlantic Ocean.

The teens at Tampa were so much fun to be with! By Wednesday all the teens from the Christian school had bought their team t-shirt and they were really into the competition! We had a great turn out of 90 teens the first night with more than half being from the community! And we had a huge blessing of seeing 25 people get saved all in Wednesday night! It was an amazing first night of rallies!

By the end of the week there were 49 salvations consisting of teens and even a few adults! Praise the Lord for the work He has done!!

Taylors, SC (Feb 9-16)

Well, this was a bit of a different week for us. First of all, this week we did not have a Christian school scheduled so it was a week “off” for us. However :) a week “off” does not mean that we do nothing. We still had plenty of things to do.

Glenn had hurt one of his fingers back in November and it actually got worse as the weeks went on. So, he took this week to go back home and see the doctor about doing corrective surgery. And yes, he needs surgery. He is scheduled to have surgery Monday, February 18. This means he will need to stay home for a few weeks of recovery and a post-op doctor visit in March. We are all looking forward to being back together for the conference in Menomonee Falls, WI February 25-28, though! It will be nice to see Philip and Josh again as well!

Annaleese holding William and Janna holding Kate

So back to this past week...on Monday Paul brought into our classroom a little lost puppy!! We loved her right away and were thrilled with our distraction from school work! :) And then, Paul brought in a second puppy!! We were elated!! School almost went completely out the window!! We named the girl Kate and the boy William. We LOVED them!! The Van Gelderen girls took them everywhere throughout the day (and tried to do school work at the same time!) and Paul and Nathan even took them outside to “help” them wash the trailer!! Let’s face it :) we all loved these little puppies!! They were such good puppies, too! William could already sit on command (he did it several times) and Kate was “paper trained” in a day! We tried not to get our hopes up and figured that they had owners...somewhere. We called the humane society, the pound, and the police office to see if anyone was missing 2 puppies, but nobody seemed to be missing them. That night at Fellowship Baptist (the church we were staying at) there was a Bible Club. We tried to find a new owner for the puppies, but nobody could take them. So, we gave the puppies a bath and put them back in a rubbermaid for the night. They were so good all night long!!

William...isn't he adorable?!?

On Tuesday we called to have the humane society/pound come pick them up around 1:30. We played with lil Kate and William throughout the morning and took about a hundred pictures!! We found out by Friday that both puppies had been adopted, but the puppies were separated. We had hoped that they could have stayed together...well...we were hoping that we could have kept them...but that didn't happen, either.

Finally! An update!

I am so sorry for the long reprieve! Things have been so busy that I have not had time to update the last few weeks! The Lord has done so much for...ALL of us! I will quickly touch a little bit on each week that I have missed, but will try not to make this too long.

First of all, I need to say that we have said good-bye to some team members from last semester. Philip and Josh have gone back to college. This semester Leanna, the music teacher, has stayed to continue working with the Van Gelderen girls on their violin and piano. Glenn has also stayed for this new semester. And now we have Paul (Philip’s twin) and Nathan (Josh’s brother) on our team. So, it is a very unique situation where all of the last names are the same for 2 semesters! Usually, all 3 guys and the music teacher change...but not completely so this time!

We made a Pecan Pie and even put pecans in the crust for Glenn's b-day!

Jacksonville, FL (Jan. 16-19)
This was the week that I flew in from Kenya to meet back up with the Minutemen Team. I arrived on Wednesday. I was thankful that I did not suffer too much from jet-lag and was able to be a part of the ministry for the short time I was there.

Yes, we drink a lot of water. :)

Land O’ Lakes, FL (Jan. 20-26)
This was a bit of a difficult week for me. Over the weekend I came down with that horrible “bug” that was going around. On Sunday it peeked with a fever that gave me severe hot and cold flashes and my muscles were aching so much that it hurt to walk. The Lord really did answer prayer, though, and gave me great grace to be able to still go to both Sunday morning services (with my fever :/) to sing in the Minutemen quartet! For the last half of the second service I just went back to the place where we were staying on the property and crashed for the rest of the afternoon. Slowly throughout the week I was recovering and was still able to go recruiting.

Leanna's b-day!!! :)

Enjoying a smoothie near palm trees...in January!!

Ft. Pierce, FL (Jan. 27-Feb. 2)
This is a bit longer because I wanted to share this testimony with you! It is amazing!

WAR room in Ft. Pierce, FL

Hi, my name's Jordan. So lately I’ve been going through a really hard time. I’ve been kicked out of my house because my attitude been towards my parents, towards God. And I’m like, “Ok, I’m getting kicked out of the house. I’m going to go do my own thing, live my own life.” That’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be kicked out of my house. I wanted to do my own thing. Well, it turns out, when you’re on your own and you got to buy your own food, gotta pay your own gas, gotta do your own thing, it ain’t easy. It’s hard. It’s real hard. And I came to the Minutemen thing the 1st night. I came really just for a place to hang out. I didn’t really come because I wanted to hear anything. But I walked outside and Glenn stopped me. He started talking to me and he got me thinking about, “If you died right now, where would you go?” I was like, “I really don’t know. I don’t know.” But I didn’t really want to talk. I thought about it. It got me thinking so I came back the next night. I come back the next night and Nathan started talking to me about it and I really started thinking about it because if I die, where would I go, Heaven or Hell, you know what I mean? But I was at a point where I didn’t care. He was talking to me about my salvation, things like that and I did realize, I mean I have been saved, it’s just I got far away from God. I actually had hatred toward God and religion, and that’s why I’m goin’ through a hard time because all my anger and everything else towards...I hold onto a lot of things from the past. I have a real hard time forgiving people. And there’s stuff that happened to me in the past with certain pastors and things like that that got me kind of messed up and hated toward religion. It’s like, “I can’t trust you.” Well ok, you can’t trust them, but you can trust God. And I just have somethin’ real quick to say, Nathan told me to come in today this morning for the chapel service and he’s like, “Oh, watch out. You might get a flat tire or something like that. Satan’s gonna try to stop you.” I laughed. Well, my alarm didn’t go off, but finally I got up and I went to look for my keys. I couldn’t find my keys. I was like, “OK.” Whatever. I found my keys. I went to go start my car. My car wouldn’t start. I was like, “OK!” So I jumped my car, got it started. I came down here. I ran out of gas on the side of the road down here. I’m like, “Ok, something’s trying to stop me from being here. I know there’s a reason I’m supposed to be here.” I got out of my car, walked down here, and I sat through the chapel service. We talked for a good, I don’t know, 2 hours...way more than that probably. Tonight the reason I’m up here talking right now is because tonight I was supposed to be goin’ out with my friends to a club. I was supposed to be riding with them, but I just got a call from them that they got into a car accident on the way there. And I called them earlier. I’m like, “OK, I’m going to go to Minutemen. This happens only every 2 years. I can go to the club whenever.” But they just called my phone and said that they got in a car accident and 1 of my friends is in the hospital right now. But I was supposed to be in that car. If I made the wrong decision and I actually got into the car with them, I don’t know where I would be right now. Well, I know I would be in Heaven, but I mean, but I could be dead all because of a stupid decision. So basically what I’m sayin’ is just make sure like, I have a real hard time trusting people like I said, but you just got to go out there and trust God. That’s more than you can do. Just make sure you’ve got trust in Him. If you can’t trust, pray for trust. Pray that you can get some faith because I mean, that was my problem. I’m still battling, but it’s going to get better.