God is Good!

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been witness to the abundant goodness of Yahweh. So today I wanted to share with you a little bit about how good my God is...

As most of you know, I have been struggling with money over the past couple of months. Because of that, debts have stacked up and any and all money that comes in goes into that to be able to pay them off as well as maintain my monthly rent and food and every other cost. I thought I would be smart and plan a bit of a budget and I figured it'd be good to have a some money on the side for entertainment. Thinking along those lines, I had found a cheap airline ticket to go out to the Netherlands and visit my girlfriend, Maartje, for awhile. I reveled in this thought! But I know that it would be a smart thing to consult with my leader at the YWAM base that I am staying in and see what he thought of me going out to the Netherlands to spend some time with Maartje. And he suggested what I already knew deep down, "All of the money that God gives you should go into paying off your debts and keeping up on the monthly rent." So I was kind of down in the dumps...

Bruno, one of my very close friends/leader at the base, came up to me and spent some time talking and praying with me. That helped, but I was still sad and moping around a bit. So I decided to take what Bruno had said to me to heart and apply it to my life: "If you honour God, He will honour you." God had placed Junior, the base leader, over my life for a reason and I should listen to his council. So I did. I told Yahweh, "Okay, I will listen to you and your guidance. I want what you want for my life, not my own desires." So I gave it over to Him. What happened next it actually caught me off guard...

Maartje had spent a night with a couple of her good friends from her university and they were talking about having a triple date with all of their boyfriends. Well Maartje brought up how I was in Spain and we didn't have any money to bring me over to the Netherlands. You know what her friends said? "We'd love to pay for his ticket to come out here!" Wow! I really didn't expect that. It caught me completely off guard.

So here I am, in the Netherlands, typing this up, telling you all of this. Now you might be telling yourself, "That wasn't God, that was just Maartje's friends being nice." And you are right, it is her friends being nice. But I give all the credit to Yahweh. For I believe that He is the writer of all that is good in this world and that the devil is the father of all lies. These are my beliefs and you don't have to agree with me, but if you want to explore a life with your Creator who loves you and all He wants is to know you and draw you in close and embrace you, seek and you will find. Taste and see, for the Lord is good.

I also want to apologize on behalf of the church and any other Christian or follower of Yahweh that has hurt anyone reading this. Whoever you may be, God is not defined by His people. Come and know Him personally and you shall find that He is good and He loves you and no matter how far you run, He will be chasing after you.

Thank you for reading and know that I love you!

Jack

Faithfulness

Hello beloved family!

So it has been another two weeks and here comes another blog post. Are you ready for it? Got your popcorn, drink to accompany that white puffy stuff, your favourite seat? Good. Here we go then...

God is very good and I want to share with how He is a good God.

I had wanted to go to Madrid and visit my friend Johnny who lives out there. I was praying about it, asking God if I could go, and someone from the YWAM base out in Madrid comes to our base for a couple of days. I ask him if I could catch a ride to Madrid with him and he said sure. (That was an adventure in itself because his car ended up breaking down, fuel pump was leaking fuel like mad. So we got a tow truck and he took a bus because there wasn't enough seats in the tow truck. The bus he was on broke down and it was just an adventure!) So making it to Johnny's house was such a huge blessing. He is a musician and has his own basement studio at his parents house and is a very good producer/mixer. So I asked him if we couldn't record my vocals for the cover that I am doing with my friend back in Canada and he said sure. And it was very fun! I love singing (but not in the conventional way, for I was screaming, you see) and it was just very fun to record my vocals for this cover. The song is "Isaiah (The Willing)," by For Today, if you want to check it out (WARNING: It is metal, so listen if you like heavy guitar, drums, bass and vocals). And then things just started to explode after that...

It went good: one of his friends who is a very good guitarist, commented on a video that Johnny posted on Facebook and wanted me in his band! So I am in contact with him and we shall see if this is a door that God has opened for me. God then provided a number of people saying that they wanted to support me financially and invest in God's work here in Spain. Johnny's family also blessed me with €60 and I was able to buy my train ticket back to Cáceres with that money. And then it went bad...

I got on the train going back to Cáceres and I turned on my computer to watch a movie on the ride home and this folder with a question mark popped up and nothing happened... I searched up what was happening on my iPhone and I had to wait till I got back home to fix it. When I got back home, I tried to fix it and couldn't. So I took it into a Mac store to get it fixed and they said that the hard drive was broken and couldn't be fixed. Shoot... Luckily I didn't have anything on there that I was really mad that I lost, maybe just the photos from Africa, but nothing else. So I needed to buy a new hard drive but didn't have any money to do so. So I just prayed and put it in the Lord's hand. Then what happened next is a huge blessing.

I was talking with Natio (one of my leaders) and telling him about how I was searching for hard drives but that I didn't have any money to buy one or anything. And he said, "Here, lets go right now to go buy you a new one." Wow! Okay, so we went and bought a new 1TB (that is 1000GB) hard drive for my Macbook. Amazing! Such a huge blessing! Went home to install it and it wasn't showing up on my Macbook as connected. Weird... So I took it in the next day, and the guy said that it was the hard drive cable that connects the hard drive to the logic board. He said that it would cost €30 to fix and I didn't have that much... Couldn't buy an external case because they didn't support 1TB hard drives. He then proceeded to say that he might have a cable at the store and that he would try to find one and install it. I asked how much: €15! Well I had that much money! So he told me to come back later that day and when I did it was fixed! Oh yeah baby! God is good! So now I have a new, 1TB hard drive in my computer, God is very good! But not only that, but the guy formatted the hard drive, so I didn't need to do that when I got back home. And! He also put three new pads on the bottom of my Macbook because three of mine were missing. All for €15! Wow, I am flabbergasted by God's goodness...

But through it all, I learned to take better care of my stuff. Because I know that I wasn't doing a very good job of caring for it as I could have been. I also made a commitment to stop torrenting music and movies, because I used to do it like it was nothing. But it is illegal, for one, and I am also a musician and am in the entertainment business and if I am wanting other people to purchase any music I would produce, but I don't purchase other artists' music, I am just a hypocrite. So I have stopped that with this new hard drive.

But I just want to finish on the note that if you are faithful and honour God and you give things up to Him, He will reward you with things even greater than what you had before. For He is a good God and a good Father!

I am still in need of more financial support to be able to stay here in Spain. I am in a lot of debt with the base here in Cáceres and need to pay it off and I need your help to be able to do so. But you won't be investing in me, for I am man and that would not be a very wise idea. No, you'll be investing your money in the kingdom of God and it will be used to work out the great commission, to reach the gospel the Spanish people. And that can only happen with your help! So if you want to support me financially, you can do it through PayPal (address: jack. reggin@gmail.com) or contact me for more details as to how you can do so. But I also need prayer support. Prayer points:
- doors to be opened over the coming months to go to a whole bunch of conferences that are happening and are quite important for what I want to be doing here in Spain. I need money that I don't have.
- our outreach team that is making their way now from Portugal in the central Spain and then going to other places in Spain. Just for protection on their travels and that they can grow with one another and with the churches that they are helping out.
- I am working on getting a new visa and I need a miracle to come about in the coming months. I have papers that will expire eventually and it is a very complicated situation. Pray that it all gets sorted out and that whatever God's will is, that it happens.

Thank you so much for your support and look forward to updating you as to how it is going on in another two weeks!!

Love you guys!

Trials, Tribulation and Learning

Hello beloved family!

I just want to start this post off by saying that I am sorry! Oh so sorry for not updating you for over a whole month already! This is my fault for not keeping to my schedule that I posted and it is something that God is working on in my life: discipline. So I humbly ask for your forgiveness and I will be posting bi-weekly from here on out! Without further adieu, my last month's story...

As the title says, I have gone through some very hard times in my life. I am in a place of debt right now, owing money to the YWAM base here in Cáceres as well as owing money to MasterCard and it doesn't seem to be going away... Because of this, it has put me into a very interesting place in my life. For I have never been here (I am sure that all of you can agree, being in debt is NOT somewhere we like to be nor want to be!) and I hope that I am not here for long. But with not being here, in a place of debt or not being able to pay my own ways and am living off of financial support that others give me, He has been able to teach me things that I never would've learned otherwise. The most important of them is to praise Him in all times, good and bad.

To tell a quick story, I went back to Canada for Christmas! Hooray! My wonderful parents purchased a ticket for me to come and visit for a couple of weeks and it was a wonderful time! I got to see lots of family, visit some church friends and started writing a song with one of my friends who is an amazing drummer. It was a wonderful time there being able to see snow again and freeze my butt off in -30°C  weather. I had a return ticket, and it came to the date that I would be leaving for Spain once more. Now this flight wouldn't just be get on a plane and hooray! I'm in Spain! No. This was sleeping in the Toronto airport, staying in the New York airport for 9 hours and then being in Madrid, where I then had to take a train to Cáceres to back to my home. What a trek. Especially in the Toronto airport.

I've never slept in an airport before, so I figured that it would be a good idea to find a locker to be able to put my stuff in for the night so that I would be able to get some sleep before I had to wake up to get in a lineup for my connecting flight. Good idea, no? Well I didn't have enough money to be able to pay for the locker... So that sucked. But amongst it all, being in debt, not having enough support coming in monthly, being alone in an airport close to midnight, all of it just came crumbling down and I felt abandoned. Knew I wasn't, but that didn't matter, all that I knew was emotions. And I cried, didn't care who saw me, I felt alone, very alone. Miraculously, I messaged my girlfriend, Maartje, and she woke up from her sleep (which doesn't ever happen if I were to message her in the middle of the night), so that was God right there, but I was too blind at the time to see the help He gave me. And what did He tell me when I was crying out to Him? "You have to praise me, Jack, all the time; right now, when you are in a desert place, or later, when you are on a mountain top." So that's what I did, I started worshipping Him. And guess what? Peace. Peace came over me and nothing changed except for my heart, which is quite a lot! For God wasn't/isn't after my situation, but after my heart. And it was a really good lesson! Learning how to praise Him in trials and tribulation. So I am thankful for the lesson, as well as much more!

So I have gone through some interesting times, and now I am here alone in the YWAM base in Cáceres. We just sent out an outreach team from the DTS and I was not able to be on it. Not going to say that that is unfortunate, because I know that there are awesome things awaiting me in these coming months and I am already seeing it. This gives me a great opportunity to make my music a lot more seriously. So I am practicing guitar a lot and I am going to be practicing bass a lot more as well and my singing and everything! As well, I am going to be taking it upon myself to learn Dutch so I can speak with Maartje and her family in their native tongue. I am excited for these coming months! I hope that more opportunities come up for adventure.

As I mentioned in this post, I am in dire need of support financially. I do not get paid by YWAM on any basis, it is volunteer work, I am a missionary and I am in need of your help. Whatever you can do, even though monthly payments are the best way (I have a special set up that you can do for monthly payments that makes it that you are able to get a tax receipt for donating to me and makes it easy for you and for me! So message me if you are interested in going that direction), but one time donations are just as good, for like I said, I am in a lot of debt and need to get out of it and I can only do that with your help. Here is my PayPal address if you want to wire me money over the internet: jack.reggin@gmail.com (you can also email me with that same address if you have any questions or anything). And send any cash or cheque donations to this address:
Project Funding Office
PO Box 57100 RPO East Hastings
Vancouver, BC V5K 5G6

Thank you for sticking with me through all of this, in my failings and my successes! I love being able to share my life with you guys!

Blessings and love to you my family!

DTS Life and Healings

Hello family!

It sure has been a long time since I posted on this blog! Oh wait… So every other Saturday will be when I will be updating this blog. Make sure to keep your eyes open! And I will be doing my best to keep the writing to a minimum. Although I love it, so that may be a bit harder than it actually sounds…

Where do I begin! I guess I can begin from the point that the Discipleship Training School (DTS) started in September.

God really spoke to me about this DTS and challenged me to be very connected with it, becoming as close as I possibly can with the students and the staff/leaders of the school. Why? Well as I mentioned in my last post, I will be leading a DTS in about a years time. So I took this challenge quite seriously and decided put all that I had into it! Invest everything that I could: time, money, resources, whatever! And what a turn out…

This DTS we (staff) had been praying for girls to come out. Why is that? Well you see, on our base and in our other two DTS’s, we had a majority of guys. So this one we were really praying for girls to come out (especially the 2 single guys that are on the base). And God gave one of the base leaders, Rosana, a word that 7 girls would be coming out to do the school. And what do you know, God’s word is always right and true! We have 7 wonderful girls that came out to be discipled and trained in hearing God’s voice and taking Him to the whole world! Out of the 7, we actually cover 9 nationalities: England, Argentina, Brazil, China, Spain, Peru, Honduras, Netherlands, Germany. We’ve got quite the group this time around! And boy oh boy has it been an adventure!

Speaking on my behalf, God has really been touching the girls and showing off His muscles as a healer. He has been showing off His muscles in a lot of different ways, through each one of the staff/teachers, but like I said, from my point of view. I have been walking very closely and have become very interested in the area of the spiritual gifts, but in particular, healings. I’ve always been interested in this area, but now it is becoming a reality in my life. I’ve never been so exhilarated as when I see a person who had to use crutches to walk and has been doing so for a couple of weeks, be able to walk without the help of anyone or anything! The fire just keeps on growing and I just keep learning more and more about all of this. And like I said, God is really touching the girls in this area as well.

I have taken a couple of them under my wing. One of them came to me, asking me if I could help them and teach them in this area. The other one, God healed her of a headache and completely rocked her world! So I asked her if she wanted to grow in this herself and be my disciple (all of the students are my disciples, but some of them I like to push into areas like this a little bit more quickly). She agreed and so I have been calling them along and getting them to heal whenever possible! Other girls have seen miraculous things as well, from knees popping back into place, to feet growing, to sensitive teeth being healed, to eyesight getting better! God is just healing left, right and centre! The coolest thing of all though: love.

As I am growing more and more in this area, God is really showing me that it is all about love. Why do people get healed? So that people can know that God’s love is palpable and real, not something that is just in a building or just for a certain group of people. To show that His love is completely unconditional and depends on only the faith of a yes and someone willing to stand out. In Spain, I am noticing that that is something that is very strong.

I had asked this one girl if I could pray for her teeth because they were pointing out in all different directions. She said that she would be going to the dentist to get it all fixed and I just encouraged her that this would be something very quick and if nothing happened, what did she have to lose? She agreed, but after I prayed, she told me that she was muslim, not christian. I just told her, “I still love you, and so does Jesus.” Her mentality, and a lot of others, was that she had to do something, like being a christian, to be able to be healed. Just before I prayed for her, I had gone up to a lady whom God had told me that she had back pain. When I asked if I could pray for her, I encouraged her that she wouldn’t have to do anything, just simply receive. She then agreed, with a surprised look on her face and said, “Oh! I don’t have to do anything?” This concept of ‘unconditional’ is something that is not really understood, even amongst us as Christ’s family. The student who got healed of her headache said to me, “I didn’t think that I was worthy or that God even did things like this anymore.” She didn’t think she was worthy, which is very sad. And God really showed me that His love is what it is all about. Not the healings, not the prophecies, not the speaking in tongues, just loving people, unconditionally and compassionately, flowing right from His heart. And it is a truly beautiful thing!

Well I think I have written enough for this time around. God is moving in Spain and you can be a part of it! Spain is in desperate need of love just as much as Africa or India are. Please, take some time to pray and ask God how much to give to His vision and His mission, for although I am the one asking and the one receiving the money, you are not investing in me, you are investing in a treasure that is from Heaven. God will take your donation and multiply it! You will also be added to a mailing list of mine that will receive a monthly newsletter. And if you are wanting anymore information, please do not hesitate to ask! Here is my email: jack.reggin@gmail. And feel free to ask me what you would like to know! There is much more than what I have just written about happening in Cáceres, Spain! You can also send any and all PayPal donations to this address: jack.reggin@gmail.com. And any cash or cheque donations, please send here:

Youth With A Mission (BC) Society 

Project Funding Office
PO Box 57100 RPO East Hastings 

Vancouver, BC, V5K 5G6
CANADA

And include a note, stating that you this is a donation for Jack Reggin serving Cáceres, Spain. For any and all cheque donations, make the cheque out to “Youth With A Mission” and include the same note.

Thank you very much for reading! I hope that this was entertaining for you and I look forward to keeping you updated to everything that is happening in my life and in God’s plan for Cáceres!

Peace and blessings family! I love you!

General Information

Hello family!

Seeing as though this is my first post to this blog, I am going to explain who I am, what I do, what my vision is, etc. etc!

Firstly, my name is Jack Reggin.
Phew! Got that done and over with... Now onto cooler things!

20 years ago, I was born... Hooray! Fast forward 18 years to 2011 and I am doing my Discipleship Training School (DTS) here in Cáceres, Spain. This is with an organization called Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and there main focus is discipling and training missionaries. Jesus then proceeded to tell me, "Mate, I'd like it if you'd come back and stay awhile. Come, staff the school, and be discipled further." So I was like, "Cool bro." And so in September 2012, I come back and I start working on the DTS straight away. Now here is where things start to get interesting...

Staffing on a DTS is like doing a DTS all over again. So I learned even more than I already had on my DTS from teachers that I had already listened to! As time continues to move forward (it has quite the tendency to do that...), I went to Africa and had a blast! (If you want to know more, feel free to email me at: jack.reggin@gmail.com). After Africa, I started figuring out my future and what it would look like. And this is where the patience of God really shines through, because I wasn't actually listening to His heart. I was listening to my own, making it seem like I was listening to His. I went on for about 5 months, thinking that I was listening to God, until the point that He came straight to me (I was planning on going to the Netherlands and study, just to give you an idea) and said, "Don't go to the Netherlands. I want you to disciple this nation through music." "Okay God," I replied, after having a huge civil war between my heart and my spirit.

Now, fast forward to September 2013, and I am once again staffing on a DTS! But this time, God is starting to speak very specifically to me. He is saying, "I want you to disciple those who will disciple this nation through music." So guess what?! I'm going to be pioneering a Music DTS here in Cáceres, Spain with my leader/friend, Natio! I am very excited and God is taking me all over the place to get me ready for this adventure. I've been to France twice now to learn about DTS and about Music DTS's in specific as well. And staffing another DTS is also helping me learn more about what it means to be staff/leader of youth who are thirsty for learning more about God and how to share about Him!

Hmm, now you may be wondering, "Why is this dude only sharing about the past two years of his life?" Well, I am only two years old, don't you know! But seriously, I consider myself born again in Christ ever since I went to go do my DTS. Sure, I was raised in a Christian home and my parents (I love you guys because I know that you are probably reading this!) did a very good job of showing me God. And I knew that He existed. But I never had a relationship with Him. He was always just this guy that was up in Heaven, never someone who was/is here amongst us. So once I started living like Christ, that is when I consider myself to be born, truthfully. Because I have never felt so alive ever since my DTS.

If you didn't pick up on it yet, I am working on as a staff member in YWAM Cáceres, Spain. I am focusing on staffing the DTS that is run here, which is currently just one and it is just a general DTS (again, if you want more info, email me at: jack.reggin@gmail.com). And I also mentioned the vision of what I will be doing in the future and what my vision is! But just for a better understanding, I shall explain a bit more.

In February 2015, Natio and I will be pioneering a Music DTS here in Cáceres, Spain. It will be having a more specific focus on music, but it will not draw away from what a DTS is for, which is to train and send missionaries out. So we will be having all the teachings that a general DTS would have (hearing the voice of God, spiritual warfare, etc.) but also incorporating music and how it can be used to spread the gospel. Now, Natio and I also have a specific vision of having this school be for training the students to disciple the nations through music. Because music has a very huge impact on society. Miley Cyrus is currently leading a lot of youth, specifically girls, into very sexual acts (just check out here song "We Can't Stop" on YouTube). You can also see it in older examples, like Elvis Presley. Wasn't he the one who taught everybody that dancing was a good thing? Or The Beatles, changing how music was played and how songs were formed forever. This is what we want to do. We want to send young people out with a passion for Christ and for music, penetrating into this sphere of society and disciple the nation, whichever nation they go in to. And Cáceres is the perfect working grounds for this vision.

Here in Cáceres, everybody loves music. They love it so much, that when we go out onto the street to play, the people come and dance with us and sing with us. Young or old, they love to dance and they love to sing! There is another very interesting point: Cáceres is considered an unreached area. In Cáceres (the city), we have about 100,000 inhabitants. Out of that, there are about 20 Spanish people who are Christians. In Extremadura (the community that Cáceres is in), there are about 400 cities and there are 16 evangelical churches that have been planted. There is a lot of work to be done in Extremadura alone, not counting the rest of Spain. There is a lot of treasure to be had here.

Since this post is turning out to be a bit longer than I had originally intended it to be, I will end it right about here. If you are interested in donating towards this mission of reaching the gospel to the people here in Cáceres, you can send money to my PayPal address: jack.reggin@gmail.com. For any and all cash/cheque donations, please send them to:
Project Funding Office
PO Box 57100 RPO East Hastings
Vancouver, BC V5K 5G6
CANADA
And include a separate note stating that this donation is for Jack Reggin serving in Cáceres, Spain and make cheques out to "Youth With A Mission". I have to pay for rent, food, electricity, gas, water, etc. There are also other fees that will come up with going to various places sharing the gospel. And anything helps, whether that be $5 a month for a year or $5 as a one time payment. It will help and that money will be going towards a vision to help reach the gospel amongst all the people of the world! If you are wanting any more information or have any questions or just want to talk, email me at: jack.reggin@gmail.com. Or shoot me a Facebook message! I love to talk about this and what God is doing in my life! If you'd also like to Skype, we can look into arranging a time to talk.

I love you all!
Peace and blessings to you!