Lakeside

So here I am, I have made it to Lakeside Montana and it is the third day of our Discipleship Training School... I cant say enough, how AWESOME it is here!  God is moving in amazing ways here, that is for sure.  I feel so incredibly blessed for the opportunity to be part of this group and place here, and I am excited for what God has next for us during outreach.

Today I got to hear the story of how YWAM Lakeside started and all the miracles God pulled off just so the base could keep running and it is absolutly mind blowing with how God worked to get this base to where it is.  I will try to share a little of what the base directors told us today so that you can get an idea of how this base started and how it led to today.  So, heres a little history, sorry if its boring and it is definitely missing things, im just trying to remember what our leader said this morning.

In the 1800's the whole area here around Lakeside and Kalispell Montana was all Native American owned and they followed traditional Native American religion.  Well the chief of the tribe in this area named Chief Shining Shirt, received a vision from some spirit who told him He was the creator and He had a message for him.  In this vision the creator spirit told him that in the near future there would be a group of fair skinned people dressed in black and white and that they would come, and with them they would bring a special book and they should follow the teachings of this book and what the men had to say.  In the vision to Chief Shining Shirt the creator also gave them visions of the cross even though he did not recognize this symbol, as well as told them about an evil spirit in which they should fear and avoid.  Well Chief Shining Shirt told his entire tribe about this vision and they started to wait patiently on these fair skinned men dressed in black and white who had a special book to show up.  After waiting patiently for months upon months, no one showed up.  So the chief organized a group to travel the distance from here to St Louis, which was about a months journey by foot.  The first time they went the men they found, which turned out to be catholic priests, rejected them saying it was far to dangerous to make the trek out to this remote location.  So the group went back to their tribe and told them what happened.  However Chief Shining Shirt did not give up so easily and sent out the group three more times in which finally they found a man who would come back with them to share the good news about the bible.  <-- Awesome.

Continuing on now into 1985.  The United States Airforce had a base here in Lakeside that they no longer were going to use and decided to auction it off.  At the same time out in China or somewhere southeast Asia, a group of men who were talking about wanting to set up a YWAM base, just finished a missions trip and were heading back home to United States.  As one of the two guys was driving home down the I-93, he noticed something sparkling in the sun (which turned out to be the army bases water tower) and decided to check it out randomly.  He arrived at the Airforce base and found out that they were auctioning it off as a silent auction.  Well the gentlemen who found the base immeadiatly called his buddy and told him "I found our base".  So they quickly met together again and started praying over this idea and if it was what God wanted.  So after praying and fasting and wondering how this would ever work as they did not have nearly enough money to pay for this base as fundraising only brought in a little bit, the Air Force changed their mind and decided to have a public auction as all the offers they were getting were far to low.  So these guys managed to borrow money from a few guys for a down deposit of 50,000 dollars and joined in on the auction.  They had prayed much beforehand about how they were going to pay for this base and all God kept telling them was, "Whatever it takes".  So they got into this auction and they only had one other contender on the base, the Mormons.  Well the bidding commenced and the two guys were in a bidding war with the mormons and ended up beating the mormons out of the bidding at a grand total of 475,000 dollars.  These two guys who wanted to start a base managed to get a dingy run down army base for a fraction of what its worth to start their mission.  Only one problem, the Air Force said they needed the total amount in a matter of a month.  Well these gentlemen started praying and asking God how they were going to get the total amount of money for this, and after a couple weeks, only a small fraction of the money they needed rolled in.  Well God was definitely looking out for them because the Air Force all of a sudden called them up and decided that they needed to do some extra surveying of the land before they could hand it over so they asked if they could wait a year for the exchange.  Well the YWAM leaders were all for this so they continued to raise money throughout the year and through some amazing people, good status with some bank people, managed to raise and take out a loan for the rest of the amount to pay for the base.

Neat thing as well, and something that shows how amazing prayer is, the Commander of the base's wife, who was a christian, prayed specifically, and all the timem that the army base would be turned into a place of training missionaries...  Just awesome when I heard that.

Other neat little stories of how the base got transformed, because when they bought it from the army, the buildings were not insulated, had flat roofes, and were filled with an inch of dead flies.. Why you ask?  Well when the Air Force first built the base they shipped the building materials for the base in Montana to California and the California base materials to Montana, so it was built for heat all year round, not for cold and snow.  So one neat little story was about when the base was expanding and needing more room.  The base leaders were praying for an answer and God told them to use what they have.  Well the only building on the base that was no longer in use was the old boiler room, which was upgraded to have boilers for each building.  So the leaders and staff had no idea but knew they had to do something with this old boiler room.. so, they got all their students at the time, staff, leaders, families, to come together and pray about what they should do.  So everyone was talking about what they heard from God and one person felt led to say "Museum"... Well okay they thought, thats kinda weird but they wrote it down anywas.  Another person felt led to say "Ebay".  Another strange thing but they wrote it down anywas as well.  So the staff took everything that was prayed about including this weird stuff and just started talking about it.  Well one of the staff perked up and said, Hey, I know a lot about ebay what if we try to sell the colossal boilers on ebay.  Well alright they thought, and they listed the boilers starting at 0 dollars but the person had to pay for shipping.  Well the boiler ended up selling for 1 dollar on ebay, which is hardly enough to pay for the demolition of the building they had to do just to get it out of there but oh well they thought, at least the guy is coming to pick them up and we can be rid of them and have more class space.  So the guy showed up, and they punched a massive hole in the wall just to get these boilers outside where the guy could load them up with a crane onto his flatbed.  As everything was finishing up the leader of the base asked the guy... So.. what are you needing the massive old run down boilers for... And the gentlemen responded, I own a steam museum on the east coast and these are exactly the pieces I needed.

Yea Awesome again, God just worked in crazy ways to get this base started and there is so many more stories that I am not telling you.  And just for me to think, that God had a plan for all of this, for so long, and that I was a part of this plan, figured out in God's head from so long ago, is just awesome.  So again, I feel so blessed being here, and getting to be a part of it.  So far I am learning about intercessory prayer, getting into that, reading some books, doing a lot of breaking down walls and just realizing the kind of person God has shaped me to be.  Which is different and amazing than anything I could have fathomed.  And that God has a plan for me, I just gotta respond, and react to Him and that plan.

I just wish you all could experience this as well, DTS.. is awesome!

Good night