pictures from the engagement

So nervous before

Completely surprised Allie

I asked her!!!!

She said yes

This is what it really looked like that night!


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My engagement

I am sure 99% of people that are reading this know that I got engaged! I am so excited, I honest can't believe I am actually engaged I never thought I would actually get married. Allie (My Fiance) wrote a blog about her side of the engagement on her blog (Allies blog ). I also want to share about my side of the engagement.

 I knew I wanted to marry Allie with in the first month of us dating. I can't explain it I just knew it, I love being around her, I always want her attention, and she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen (seriously) . My friends on the YWAM base thought I was crazy all I did was spend time with her. Problem was she decided to a School of Biblical Studies which was 9 months. So any thoughts of us getting engaged in that time was suspended. I had to be patient. God taught me so much about patience during that time. Looking back on that whole process I am glad Allie and I had that time because It grounded her more in the word and helped us grow in patients and love for one another especially when we were busy.

During that time Allie had told me I could ask her to marry her anytime after her SBS. I had no intention of waiting a second longer than I had to. So about a month before she graduated I started planning. She picked out a ring and I threw her off saying that I would ask her sometime in the summer, also she really missed her mother alot and I used all of my miles to fly her in because she also told me that she really wanted her mom to be there for the engagement. (I had just about enough miles).

I planned it for the day before she graduated from SBS so she would have no idea that it was coming because she was expecting me to ask her after that and I wanted to surprise because she wanted a complete surprise.

Everything was in place I planned it a week before I bought all the stuff and my greats friends and community here at YWAM honolulu helped me with all the details! (Thanks guys you are the best)

The biggest thing I needed to do was ask her father. It took me about 10 days to get the courage to call him I would get on my phone and go to call him but I would get too nervous. This was Allies biggest requirement for us getting enagaged she is very close to her family and I wanted to honor her and her family. When I called her father my heart was beating out of my chest, problem was he didn't answer and I had to leave the most nervous message ever. I am not sure I made sense. Anyways, her father called me back and I was just as nervous and I asked him. The conversation was awesome and I am so honored and privileged to be apart of her family. They are so fun,loving and welcoming. I am excited for the future!

So the night came and I told Allie that I had to do something with a friend and the girls told her they were going take her out for a drink, so me and few guys went up early and set up. I was a nervous wreck every doubt and fear was running through my mind. All the guys up there were so encouraging. It was a simple set up but it was beautiful.

Everything went according to plan, the girls got her up there. Music was playing. I was so nervous I could barely talk, there she was as beautiful as ever. I asked her to marry me and she said yes!

Then everyone that was there came and celebrated with us. The people that helped us seriously made the night amazing! I am so glad they were apart of it! We had such an amazing time afterward they made me and Allie feel so special!  Seriously the best night of my life!

I can't wait to get married!

If you want to know more about it all I would love to tell you more about it danielwhitson@gmail.com

 

March update!

Hey everyone! I love updating you guys it has been awesome being this consistent with it. I hope you enjoy my updates. Here is an update on what has happened over the last few months!

Home

Last month I was in Maryland for a couple weeks to see family and friends! I really enjoyed seeing all of you! Every time I go home my heart really is refreshed. The unconditional love that comes from family and friends is just so amazing. There were friends at home I never talk but when I hung out with them it was like I never left! I really enjoy those relationships I know that no matter how much time passes by I know I have friends a family that will be there for me no matter what. Thank you all for showing such amazing love and encouragement to me. When I went home I was in a tough spot, but when I left. I left encouraged and ready for the next thing that God had for me. Thank you! You guys are the best! I love you!

Speaking at launch

A few months ago a friend at the YWAM base that I work at here in Honolulu challenged me to speak at an event we have here every Thursday called launch. It is a meeting where we invite people from the community to come to hear and learn about missions all over the world.

For the most part I don’t like speaking in public. Even the very thought of it makes my hands sweaty. He asked me to speak last quarter and at first I said yes, but my insecurities got the best of me and later on I said no.  I was very disappointed with myself and sort of beat myself up for being so insecure about speaking at Launch, but my friend challenged me again. I was still scared, but this time I said yes and decided that it was good for me to step out. Leading up to the event I was terrified that I would just sound stupid up there, I was nervous up until they handed me the mic. Once they handed me the mic I felt this instant peace, it was the craziest feeling. I just knew what I had to say and how to say it. Speaking about missions was exactly what was on my heart and it just flowed naturally.

For I learned a two things from that experience

1.     That God is so faithful to give us the words that are on his heart at that right moment.

2.     That I am too comfortable.

I realized that day that I haven’t been pushing myself to do things that make me uncomfortable with for a while. I believe as Christians we should always be stepping out in faith. Not because we need to grow closer to God, but because God wants to show us just what we were created to do and show us how much he wants to use us to change the world. God doesn’t want fear or insecurity to rule us. A son or daughter of the king doesn’t live in fear, because we know that we belong to the one who gives all things.

School Of Missions and Evangelism

I was just recently handed the title “director” of the School Of Missions and Evangelism. Which is crazy! I am so happy to be in this position, but kind of scared because honestly I haven’t done anything like this before, but just like speaking at launch I know God will lead the way.

We are trying to run a school in April, but we need a lot more students! Pray that God will provide for us students! We have such a good school planned. It is going to be great. We are in a place where we are believing that we should run a school in April and We want to continues to believe that.

God is trying to get me out of my comfort zone and believe for the impossible for this school. My dream is to send out hundreds of missionaries from our base to the least reached places of the world and I am going to create with Gods help the best school to train missionaries I possibly can. I believe that God wants to call out young people from all over to go out and stay and change the environment around them with the love and power of Christ. We can reach the world with the gospel not because we are spreading another religion, but because Jesus is worthy of it, and it is the greatest injustice in the world that people don’t know Jesus.

Here is how to pray for me

Pray that I can get students for the April school

Pray that I continually step out of my comfort zone and be more bold.

Pray that God will use this ministry to send long term missionaries to the field to reach the places that have never heard about Jesus.

If you are wondering how you can join me in my quest to see young people go out and reached the unreached of the world here is how.

 You can partners with me by helping me find 10 people to support me 75 dollars a month for the next year.

You can partner with me by helping me raise 1000 dollars right now to pay for a few things here in Honolulu.

You can partner with me by helping me buy a car.

Moving Forward! January Update

My Christmas break was sort of hard. I really missed family and friends. The biggest thing that I learned was that I need to work on resting. Most of the time I had I had a hardtime understand how to relax and just be with God. I also realized that I have been doing a lot of striving and burning myself out. I have been neglecting spending time in prayer for doing missions, but I realize now that prayer is the fuel for all ministry without prayer I am not getting anywhere. We don’t have any power without the spirit of God. The more time I with spend with God in prayer the more his presence is going to be with me the more effective I am going to be and that is where the lasting fruit will come from. God has calls me to bear fruit that lasts not just do good works.  I believe that God gives us ministry for us to get to know him its not just about blessing other people its about God doing ministry with us. That more what I have been wrestling with lately. God gives us things to get to know him more whether its that he is faithful or trustworthy or the provider. God wants us to know him and wants to know our hearts. So in what ever I am doing in life I want to pray constantly because I am going to be more effective and last longer if I stay with him in his presence, but the greater things is knowing God, its all about knowing more of God. The more we know him in the intimate times the more its going to show on the outside and make real lasting fruit. That’s what I learned. Over the break . take it or leave it.

An update with our dts we have 17 students in the new DTS and they are going to the Philippines and Cambodia for outreach! Pray for the lecture phase of the DTS for them is always intense because the student are learning so many new things about God and being challenged in their faith and wrestle with God. IT is a very anointed program that wrecked my life for missions and falling in love with Jesus, but it is very challenging! We have students for many different nations New Zealand, Switzerland, Malaysia, Norway, and of course the USA. I know that the DTS is going to change their life forever during this time! Pray that God will call them into missions longterm!

My SOME team is doing so well in Indo they are heavily involved with many different ministries including prison ministries, ministry to muslims, working with prosititutes and personal and street evangelism. Pray that God gives them the strength to finish strong and continue to work hard to see Indonesia reached! They are loving it. They are seeing amazing things happen! They are wonderful! The DTS teams that are seeing great things happen! They are in the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka.

The biggest things that I have been focused on is the The School Of  Missions and Evangelism that I am running in April! I am getting a lot of speakers and I am trying to think of greater strategies to recruit people into longterm missions and create mobilizers to send people into the least reached people in the world! Our goal as a school is to see the least reached places of the world have a gospel witness. We want to see the world know Jesus. We are sold out because we know Jesus is the greatest thing is this world and we need him more than anything, and that people not knowing him is the greatest injustice on the planet.  So pray for the school I have most of the teachers lined up for the school, but we need lots of students! Pray that God will send people to the school to get trained and sent out!

 I am leaving for home on the 24th! I cant wait to see everyone! If you want to meet up with everyone. I would love it to  meet up with you im there for just a short amount of time, but I would love to have coffee with you if you have time. I would love to share my story and what is going on in YWAM. My hope in being home is to encourage people there and be refreshed by my friends and family!

Pictures!

All these photos are of the SOME team in philippines, they helped with feeding rebuilding and handing out Operation Christmas Child presents to the children in Tacloban, Philippines the most affected area of the typhoon that devastated the area. Please continue to pray for the people in the Philippines as the clean up and rebuilding of this area will be years in the making. Also please continue to pray for our team as they are in Bali right now working in slums, and helping with sex trafficking. 

Merry Christmas!

“God is real, He is active, and is moving!”

     Recently, the School I am running went on an outreach! It has been an amazing ride, and in a lot of ways it was hard. There were some really fun times getting the students to get excited about missions. Just seeing their eyes open up to the need of missions in the world was just wonderful.

         Also, seeing their passion to tell the lost about Jesus was remarkable! However, we had to make some tough calls that people didn’t agree with, and me being me I really want everyone to like and love me, but the more I get to know God, the more I realize that he thinks nothing like me or the people that are living in the world. God always test our hearts to show us if we are going to listen to other people’s opinions. And God showed me this quarter that I have to work on not being such a people pleaser. The thing that I am living for is Jesus, he is what I need to keep my eyes on. People will always have their opinions on what I am doing or how I do things, but in leadership you are never going to make everyone happy so you always have go with what you feel like God is saying! Bill Cosby once said “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everybody.” This, I think, is the most important thing I have learned this quarter.  I need to let God be God and not worry so much about people’s opinions. I cannot please man and God, I have to choose one.  So I choose to listen to God and that’s the direction I plan to go in life.                                                                                                              

         God isn’t just amazing, he does cool things as well. Over the past couple of weeks he has provided so much it has been incredible!  Not only is people’s generosity and belief in our school in YWAM mind blowing, but so is what God has been doing for our organization. A couple weeks ago a guy in my school needed 1100 dollars or he couldn’t go. God provided the money within a few hours.

     I just picked up a DTS team from the airport in Kona.  They have just flown in from Nepal and they reported they saw hundreds of healings and salvations! That is amazing! God is doing so much in Nepal! They told me they prayed for a man’s leg to grow back and it did! There are only two options for what they told me, either they were lying to me, or God is a real active God. They also said that they prayed for a mute child to get healed and his first words were daddy in Nepal! Man, God is incredible. He is real, he is active, and is moving. I want more of that in my life.

How things are going…

    Anyway, the biggest news is that the team from my school left for outreach  a couple weeks ago! They went to help with the disaster clean up for the big typhoon that just devastated the country.  We received a few thousand dollars to help with the work there to rebuild and help clean up!  They did really well  and now they are in Bali doing so much more ministry! I am so proud of them. I can’t wait to see what God does through them, they are such a great group of students that love Jesus and want to see him move.  

   One more change of plans, which we decided as a base to run the School of Missions and Evangelism school in April 2014. That means we are running our school twice a year! It’s really cool because it seems that what I am doing is being blessed! It also means that I am now going to be twice as busy. It is amazing what God is doing here in Honolulu and in my life. I couldn’t be happier! I know this is where I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing with my life! In other news because of lack of finances I will not be able to come home for the holidays. I will be coming home in January though (that will be awesome). My heart really misses home. I can’t wait to get home and see everyone. I love all of you, and I am sorry I couldn’t come home for the holidays. Hopefully, at some point in my career in YWAM, I will have enough support to come home whenever I feel like it.  Anyway, I miss you and can’t wait to see you in January!

Please consider praying for the following:

-That God will speak students to come to our school in April

 -That God will provide more staff for our school

 -Pray that God would protect our students and staff on outreach in the Philippines and bless their ministry with healings and salvations and revelations.

-Pray that God will move in Indonesia

I hope that all of you have a great Christmas

Daniel

Christmas is coming! HOME!

Hey family! Just a short update on what has happened over the last month! Our school is going so much better than I ever thought it could! Our students are incredible they are falling more and more in love with Jesus! They are getting greater a heart for evangelism and mission. Our speakers this month spoke on contextualization, evangelism,  and missions! They were all amazing. We learned so much about how to bring the gospel into different cultures and making it something that they can understand, and not bringing our western ideas into the picture.  Relating culturally is so important because it makes people understand that Jesus is not some western God with western ideas, but he is a God of all peoples and he can relate to all of them and God is their God not ours.  I think as a church we need to update so much of how we do church so that we can reach the people around us and not make church so intimidating for people from the outside to go in. Anyways, It was very challenging for me I am learning so much!

Our School just  got back from a missions trip on Kauai! We had so much fun! The trip was great  preparation for our school . We got to work as a team for the first time in doing ministry. It was great preparation for the school going to Bali Indonesia. They leave on December 4^th to go for 3 months to bless the people of bali. Anyways, While we were in Kauai we got a chance to bless a Christian school by running their fall festival, and tearing down for it. Kauai is a very spiritual heavy place with lots of religions, heavy drug abuse, alcoholism and domestic violence. so we had the opportunity to minister to pastors and missionaries living there we had a night to pray and worship with them and encourage them. We also had the chance to go work at a festival with people from the Island of Ni’ihau, this was awesome because the island of Ni’ihau is illegal to go to for anyone else but the Hawaiians that live there. It is the last place for the Hawaiians to have their own land. This was really exciting to meet real Hawaiians who spoke Hawaiian we had a great chance to minister to them. It was also great to hear worship songs and the bible read in Hawaiian. We really just wanted to bless the YWAM contact Josh there who is trying to get YWAM Kauai established again. It was great to see him and minister to him and help get YWAM Kauai on the map! It was well worth the money spent on the trip.

Our school lecture phase ends in 4 weeks! They leave for outreach so soon. I cannot believe its almost coming to an end! I need prayer to finish well! I am really tired but I have the next couple days off so that is really good so I can get some rest to finish this thing out right. My hope and prayer for this school is to see the beginning of young people getting a heart to pioneer in the unreached places of the world to make Jesus known. The more I get to know him the more I want people to know him he is literally the greatest thing ever! I want people know the greatest thing ever. He is not just a religion but a real active God.  Just a testimony of that, we had a girl in our school that had a peanut allergy our speaker last week was speaking on super natural ministry and how God was real and active. Our speaker prayed for her and now she can eat peanuts! It was crazy. I was blown away. Jesus is amazing.

I have some prayer requests if you guys would like to pray for me.

1. I am speaking at our Thursday night meeting next month, I am really nervous so pray for me.

2. I want to buy my plane ticket to go home next month so pray that I can get enough money to pay for everything I need to here and then I need 900 dollars to fly home for the holidays. It has been over a year since I have seen my family and friends, I would really like to see them.

3. Pray that the students will finish well and seek Jesus even more that they will get a greater heart for missions and telling people about Jesus.

4. Pray that they get all of their money to go to Bali.

Have a great November!