Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Hi everyone I wanted to write a blog to give you an update of where I am and how I’m doing. We arrived in Malawi Africa last night at 430 am and spent the night in our tents. We had about a 20 hour bus ride on Thursday and then about a 12 hour bus ride yesterday. It’s been a long couple days of travel with not showering for about a week, I know Mom, not good hygiene, but hey I’m on the world race so I can get away with it. We are now at a hostel until Thursday camping out in our tents in Malawi which has access to internet, good food, and even a pool. So we will have a couple days of rest before our next month starts which will able us to get caught up on blogs, e-mails, and some good restful time with God!

This month most of our squad is actually traveling to live in Mozambique for the month, but my team and another team got chosen to do ministry in Malawi. This is a really exciting and a unique opportunity because instead of going to one ministry location and staying there the whole month like we normally do, we get to travel around the country of Malawi going to different ministry sites each week or so. We are supposed to be working with an organization where we will be planting churches throughout the country so I am very excited for this opportunity. We also will be living in our tents all month, which means more bucket showers and more washing laundry in buckets! I am actually really excited for this. We haven’t slept in our tents yet since we started the race and I am really excited to live this way for the next month. I am also real excited to sleep in a place by myself for once. Back home I never really liked being by myself and now I feel so blessed for the opportunities that I get to be by myself with God.

So as I start reading the book this month called “Radical” by David Platt, I am excited to start living a little bit more radically compared the normal American lifestyle that I am used to living!

I am excited for the adventure and so excited to be starting month 6 of the World Race! After this month I will be half way through this journey that I feel so blessed to be on!

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But before I adventure into month 6, I wanted to take some time to write about my experiences in Tanzania in month 5. Tanzania was truly a great time for me! It was honestly my favorite month of the race so far. I was blessed to make such great friendships and relationships with many people from the area. The month had a couple days that were hard, but in all real journey’s you are going to have those.

The most important thing is how you respond to them!
 

I really feel like the Lord has blessed me this month to get over being homesick. I really feel like the lifestyle of the world race is really starting to set in and I feel like I’m really starting to respond by embracing it and ENJOYING IT!

My three months in Europe were tough for me, but being in Kenya, and especially Tanzania have been reviving and life giving to me in such a true and special way! I feel even more blessed by this because some have struggled being in Africa, but I’m honestly loving it! There is something special about this continent that the Lord has given me a love for! I love the people that I have met and I most of all love their openness, desire, and want for the Lord and His Love!

It’s been refreshing and so life giving to me!
 

So we got to spend the month with another team this month which had many great friends on it. We stayed in a house and had the blessing of our food being made for us by our two African Mama’s. We got the experience of taking bucket showers and doing our laundry by hand in buckets as well. It was a very humbling but good experience for me. I actually enjoyed it, but will still be very thankful for washing machines when we get back to the states.

We worked with a Pentecostal Assembly of God’s church this month. We did a lot of evangelism throughout the town and the villages. Some of it was going to hut to hut talking to people, but a lot of it for me was meeting people just through normal day to day life. I got the awesome opportunity to speak at a secondary school at a chapel service to a bunch of students and also had the opportunity to speak at the church this month again as well. I most of all received the amazing blessing of meeting people and building relationships with them. I got the opportunity to share my story about how Christ has impacted and changed my life with people on drugs, people who were drunk, people of the Islamic faith, and people who didn’t know Jesus Christ. It was so life giving to get to share my story about who Jesus is to me and how he has changed and saved my life. It was mind blowing how many Muslims listened to my story and let me pray to Jesus for them!


It’s so awesome how God can speak to you and your own heart through your own story and remind you where he has brought you, how he has saved you, and where He is taking you!
 
Two of the Muslims even chose to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior!


 

One of the last days while we were at our host site, a Muslim who was drunk came to the church looking for hope. I got to talk with him and pray with him to accept Christ as His Lord and His Savior! I believe that God has impacted his life and the pastor of the church is going to start meeting with him and helping him know more about the true love and hope of Jesus Christ!
 
I also got to make a great relationship with three great friends! One of them is named Arnold. Arnold has just accepted Christ as His Lord and Savior about a month ago. Before this Arnold was addicted to drugs and didn’t have any hope for his future. It’s been so great to build a friendship with Arnold and share some of my past and current struggles with him. I shared how Christ as met and continues to meet me giving me HOPE in the midst of those struggles. I’ve been amazed at the concept of how Christ’s LIGHT just doesn’t shine in and through the darkness as described in John 1:4-5, but the light of Christ transforms darkness into Light! It was so refreshing to get to build a relationship with Arnold and encourage him with the hope that Christ has shown to me through his struggles and battles of ending his life in drugs and starting a new life in Christ!
 
"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as chilren of the Light!"
– Ephesians 5:8

 

 

Another friend that I was so blessed to have is a friend whose name is Ebenezer.  Ebenezer is a very special person with an amazingly big heart! Ebenezer grew up with no parents and was pretty much raised by his sister. Ebenezer grew up a Muslim, but 3 months ago gave his life to Christ when he was encountered with the true love, hope, and life, that Jesus brings (John 12:8, John 10:10)! Ebenezer now lives at the church, which is only a cement building with no windows or doors. He sleeps in the church floor on a mat. The Mama there takes care of Ebenezer by feeding him and helping him. Ebenezer I think is around 18 years old and is continuing to fight the fight of going after his dreams by completing school. See in Africa, people have to pay many large fee’s to be able to have education. So many children don’t have the fee’s to go to secondary school (middle and high school for us).Ebenezer just finished primary school and will start secondary school next year. Most students finish primary school around the age of 12, but since Ebenezer didn’t have any parents growing up he was never able to go to school. He is now with the help of his pastor, others from the church, and most of all God in striving to fight for the opportunity to receive an education that every child deserves to have.
 
I got to spend a lot of personal time with Ebenezer this month. He couldn’t communicate in much English with me, but we grew very close in our friendship and shared many great memories and laughs with one another. It’s amazing how God can connect people to be such great friends when you cannot even communicate through the same language.
 

Ebenezer is a true servant of God who has such a servant heart for the Lord and for people. God truly showed me the essence and importance of having a child like faith and love for God through Ebenezer this month.

It was refreshing and awakening Mark 10:15 style!

It reminded me of how I need to have the true love and faith to God as that of a child! It has brought me back to wanting and needing to have a relationship with God not just as my God, BUT AS MY FATHER!
 

Reading the book called “A Furious Longing of God” by Brennan Manning this month taught me so much about this as well. God spoke to me so much through this book and it is a book that I know I will come back to time and time again within my life. It taught me the essence of having God as my “Abba” Father and realizing, needing, and believing that I am loved by Him and that I belong to him.
 
Every day I would try to spend time praying with my eyes closed and palms opened, taking a deep breath in saying “Abba” (which means Father) then breathing out saying “I belong to you.”

* It has brought me a love and deepness with the Father that I need to continue to journey and experience…

 

The last friendship that I was so blessed to have was the friendship of a man named John. I was blessed to meet John when I met with him about going on a Safari. John is professional mountain and Safari guide. We were right by the highest mountain in the world called Mountain Kilimanjaro. Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, but Kilmanjaro is the highest below sea level. Many of my teammates went on the mountain and climbed it, while myself along with others were blessed to go on a two day safari at the Guro Guro Crater. John and I connected right away. He became way more than a Safari guide to me and the group. We spent many days talking to John about God, worshiping with John to God, and spending time sharing the love and gospel of God to people!
 
 

John and I share a very special vision given to us from God for starting an orphanage one day for children. I really feel like God has connected John and me for a bigger reason than a Safari could ever give and I have a strong feeling that I will be back to Moshi Kilmanjaro Tanzania again in my life!


 

* One of the greatest blessings happened to me while being on race so far. The last night we were in Tanzania, John took me to an orphanage that he helps out with. I was blown away at the love and peace of God that I felt at this place. As I stood in a kitchen with 30 children around me talk to them and having them all lay hands on me praying for me, I was completely amazed. Then worship started to happen where we were dancing, singing, and experiencing the goodness, joy, and love of the Lord in this small kitchen! It is a memory that I will always remember and honestly has been the high light of the World Race so far! I wish I had pictures and video’s to share it with you!

So in conclusion to this blog, I just wanted to share the joy that I had this month. It was honestly such a refreshing and blessed month. I met so many other great people who became great friends in Christ like our Mama at our house, the pastor of the church, and friends like Gasper and Charles. Again we had some hard times, but in any real journey you will. But God came through those hard times and is continuing to transform my darkness into HIS LIGHT!

* The best part of that is that God has called me to be a vessel of change and a light that reflects his light to help transform other lives!

Thank you for all of your comments to me, your messages to me, and your prayers for me! They mean more than you know! I hope you are blessed by this blog and that you know and experience the true love that the Father has for you! If you don’t – I dare you to read “A Furious Longing of God’ by Brennan Manning and I even double dog dare you to pray the prayer with your palms open each day,

“Abba, I belong to you”

Ask God to open your heart to his love and just wait and see what happens……
 
Also know that you are a light that has the true light of Christ shining and living with you! He can, will, and wants to LIVE THROUGH YOU to shine to others in a way that they know it is Him!
 
“YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD; A CITY ON A HILL CANNOT BE HIDDEN. NEITHER DO PEOPLE LIGHT A LAMP AND PUT IT UNDER A BOWL. INSTEAD THEY PUT IT ON ITS STAND, AND IT GIVES LIGHT TO EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE. IN THE SAME WAY, LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE BEFORE ALL PEOPLE, THAT THEY MAY SEE YOUR GOOD DEEDS AND PRAISE YOUR FAITHER IN HEAVEN.”
Matthew 5:14-16
 
Thanks for reading everyone and thanks to all the people who have been, who are, and who will be light of life in Christ to me in my life!
John 12:8 – John 10:10 style!
 
GOD LIVES IN YOU

 – If you let Him and accept him in your heat and life
 
YOU ARE HIS AND HE IS YOURS!

* A child cannot be separated from a part of their parents and you can never be separated from your true Heavenly Father who has saved you and created you to be alive in this day, this age, for a bigger reason and purpose than you know
 
HE LOVES YOU AND LIVES IN YOU
 
BECAUSE YOU ARE HIS CHILD AND HE IS YOUR FATHER

 

Here are some more pictures from the month and a song at the end! God Bless you all and thanks for being my friends and family in Christ and being lights in the world that reflects the light and love of Christ within you!


 

To look at more pictures, you can go on facebook and click on this link:

 http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100942523686980.2619347.20910567&type=1&l=c6c150cafd
 
Here are two songs below: The first song was a song that I listened to constantly during this month. I think I had it on repeat on my ipod at one point for 2 to 3 hours. It was the cry of my heart and is something that God did this month and is still doing in my heart, my journey, and my life!

The other song is a song that I love that I feel connects with the blog and God's light or radiance!

Thank you all again, and God Bless you all with His love!

Ryan