Aaron Anderson and Nate Hanson

Aaron Anderson & Nathan Hanson are going to serve the Lord in Malaysia.  They will be working in a youth camp, leading worship, speaking and working with young people. 

Below are the introductions they wrote to explain themselves to the missionaries who will be putting them to work:

Aaron Anderson
My name is Aaron Anderson, I’m from Portland, OR., and I have been very interested in missions my whole life.  Even at a very young age I thought I might want to be a missionary because of my taste for exotic food, love of different cultures, and heart for the lost.

As I grew older I began to love leading worship and teaching as well.  God has blessed me with the opportunity to use my gifts on missions trips twice before this: once on a trip to lead an English camp for junior high school students in the Czech Republic and once to reach out to the homesick American military in Japan with Cadence International.

This last year I grew quite significantly in my teaching ability by teaching the high school Sunday school class at my church.  Every week was a 20-30 minute lesson with 20-30 minutes of worship before for about 30 students a week.  God has also blessed me with relational skills used in mentoring new Christians and for building relationships that allow me to speak into others lives and to have friends that I am accountable to as well.

I want to honor God with everything I do and want to be a part of His work in the middle of the 10x40 window. I am so blessed to be able to see God in this part of the world and hope and pray that he would use me to my fullest extent here and that this ministry would have an eternal effect for the people at the camp and for the Kingdom of God.

Nate Hanson
My name is Nate Hanson and I live in Portland, OR. I am 18 years old and I’ve been extremely interested in missions for many years.  My desire has grown and I am now considering the possibility of being a full-time missionary one day.

For the past three years I have led worship weekly for thirty minutes for up to 50 students.  This job included planning and practicing as well as often speaking throughout the worship sessions.  I have also been able to lead for our main Sunday services multiple times.

To further enhance my skills in leading and speaking I joined a local speech club as well as a national speech league.  Through many rounds of competition I was awarded the opportunity to take my two speeches to the annual national tournament.  At that tournament I was bless with third place in the nation with one of my speeches.

I have been on a mission trip before—it was about three years ago when I ventured to Lomas, Mexico.  During this trip we built relationships with the students there by playing soccer and basketball with them. While building relationships we were also able to share our testimonies and saw two young people accept Christ. At the weekly services there I was able to lead worship multiple times.

I feel confident in my worship-leading skills and believe that I can lead most groups on any kind of notice.  I’m extremely excited to have the opportunity to travel all the way across the globe to use skills that I have been practicing for so many years.  This opportunity is a blessing from the Lord and I can’t wait to see how he will work in the lives of those I’m going to touch and in my own life.



 TRIP BLOG 
 
October 19, 2005

Welcome to Aaronate

Welcome to our trip blog.  We will hopefully be posting here about once a day before we leave for the camp.  Once at the camp we are unsure of the availability of internet connection.  However, we should be able to at least jump on and say we survived Air Asia.

We will post a picture or two right here on the site imbedded in our posts, but for more pictures you can click the link to on the right-hand side of this page.  Comments will be turned off for all of our posts, but you can send us emails by clicking the links on this page, or sending an email to aaronate@gmail.com.  We should have the chance to at least check those messages while we're away.  For security reasons we will be unable to post specific names, locations, or organizations in our blog posts.

However, we'll speak generally about these things without mentioning specific details.  Please be praying for us as we're in preparation now and while we're on the trip.  Also, to support us financially, please contact us at aaronate@gmail.com and we'll be happy to direct you to the address to send support to.

Thank you all so much.  Please check back often while we're away as we want this to be our way to take you on the trip with us.  God bless.


October 20, 2005

What We're Up To

Many of you may be wondering "what exactly is this trip all about anyway?" so we'd like to let everyone know all that we're doing on this trip (to the best of our knowledge. There are some things we still don't know).

We'll be heading out on the 4th for Asia!! We arrive to meet up with the man who led Scott Haugen to the Lord and will spend the next 5 days seeing his ministry and learning about the culture we'll be in for the duration of our trip.

Then we take an infamous AirAsia flght to the location of our camp. We've pretty much decided that AirAsia is the coolest airline in the whole world.  We knew the flight is dirt cheep so we thought we'd look up some reviews on it.  I had not idea there were planes with general seating!  That sounds fun. We've also read reviews saying the airline plays trivia games during the flight where you use your call button as your buzzer!!  AWESOME.  We've decided we're requestiong that. ahem...

Once we get to the camp, we know that we'll be responsible for leading worship for the entire camp.  We're expecting around 100 students so we're both pretty excited to be a part of this.  We also know that we'll each be responsible for leading a small group and that we'll be doing some speaking for the group as a whole.

That's about all we know as far as teaching but I feel that teaching and music are two areas where God has gifted me and I'm excited to use those gifts on this trip.  I'm praying that God will be able to use me at this camp and that I'll be eternally affected by this trip as well.  After the camp, we head home.

Thanks for your prayer on this trip.  We know that God's hand with us is enough and that we'll do as God pleases on this trip but knowing that your hearts are with us is a serious comfort to us.  Thanks again.


October 29, 2005

Thirty-Seven Days

Here is a brief update on us.  Support letters are out, plane tickets are bought, shots (for me) are in a couple days.  We're getting very excited as each day goes by and December 4th approaches.

Great news!  We just got word from RD that there are likely to be 150 students at the camp.  There were 75 last year and we were preparing for 100 this year until we got this news.  Amazing!  Keep praying and thank you all!


November 3, 2005

Youth Groups

A few days ago RD called me to inform me that Nate and I have an opportunity to speak at the youth groups of two churches on the Sunday before we leave for the camp.  We are still unsure about our speaking content but both of us are very excited about this chance.  We are praying that God would use our words to help RD in his ministry to students there and that what we see in these people will be of benefit to us as well.  Thanks for your continued prayer and support.


November 3, 2005

Avian Flu

Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to get avian flu while I'm away.  I'm just saying that if I get it, I know I'm gonna be in the 50% who dies. (that one's for you mom)


November 28, 2005

Last Post

This may very well be the last post before we leave.  There are a few things that we could use some prayer for: First, we are both extremely busy this week before leave.  Please pray that we will get a bunch of the things we need to get done at home so that we can focus on the trip while we're there.  Second, please pray that God will be working in our lives now, and on this trip.  Thank you for all of your support.  Please keep checking back to our site while we're gone!


December 6, 2005

26 Hours of Doom

Hey everyone, this is Nate and Aaron writing from KL.  The flights were great, we didn't get lost in some massive airport, and we both have all of our luggage.

Everything's big. Where ever you look you see a 45+ story apartment complex... There are literally tons of these buildings here.  It's cool to hear the call to prayer five times a day.

We're so not doing pictures tonight.  Remember, we haven't seen any kind of a potential bed for 48 solid hours.  Forgive any spelling errors and sorry if the grammars bed.  We miss everyone and we'll tell you how it went later.

-The Both of Us


December 7, 2005

Pushing the 1.5m Line

Hey guys, we had our first full day here in KL and first things first: update on the food.

Last night we went to this place where they have dozens of little vendors selling all different kinds of food.  You go to a vendor and tell them which table to deliver the food.  Last night we had stingray, this fried chicken/peanut sauce ordeal, watermellon juice, green apple juice (where have these been all my life!!!), 3 different types of dumplings, an awesome noodle and pork bowl, and two things of steamed bread with BBQ in one and coconut sauce in another (the coconut actually set quite well for those of you who know of my allergy).  Now, for this entire feast we eached payed about $5.  I love malaysia so far. Boy howdy that's perfect, really cheap and awesome food.  ahem, sorry I'll get back to some other things.

One thing we've noticed with RD is that he has a way with people unlike that of any other person either of us have met before.  He could start a conversation with a rock.  People love him almost before they meet him.  I feel so blessed to be able to learn from such an effective misister while I'm here.  God has used this man so much and I am honored that he would chose me to even have a part in helping RD and his ministry.

  

  



Today was spent at a theme park.  Nate and I took plenty of pictures and he'll upload those pretty quick here.  I thought I'd mention one very very interesting thing we noticed today. The water parks here might as well not even make pools so deep you can't touch the bottom here because people won't go out there.  Well Nate, Bob (I'll tell you about him here in a sec), and I decided we would go out there and see how the wave pool was several yards beyond the point of no-touching (at least for chinese people) and after we'd been out there for a while we looked around and noticed that the chinese and malay had moved up to just before where we were.  We thought it was nothing at first but then when we went to another pool at the water park the exact same thing happened.  I believe we tried it one more time just to confirm the hypothesis and sure enough, we were able to push the 1.5m boarder (the point which no one will pass). Basically I've decided that in spite of all prior evidence, I've become a trend setter. Yeah, that looks good just reading it...awww I don't think it's true though.

Ok so there's this guy, Bob, with us right now.  He's a guy studying for school here in KL and he met RD through living near him.  He's a Christian because his grandfather converted many years ago when most of the Klabit (sp?) tribe converted to Christianity.  It's so great to actually see and be a part of stories of mass converstions told by missionaries and pastors all the time.  We see real evidence of God changing the world here and Bob is a part of that evidence.  He's half chinese, half Klabit and a great guy.  He showed around the water park today while RD picked up more people from the airport.

Well we're off to dinner now and will be having Indian food tonight!  Grace and peace to all reading this.  It is such a great opportunity to be able to represent Bethany and New Life in encouraging the saints here in KL and spreading the gospel.

Thank you everyone. -Aaron
(and Nate to an extent, namely looking over my shoulder and talking into my ear usually correcting things. So if you see spelling mistakes, blame him. If you see none, know that I didn't listen to a thing he said. Hehe)


December 8, 2005

Pastor Scott Was The Scariest Driver



Last night Rodger (a man from Mississippi helping with the other camp) flew in.  He is staying at RD's house as well.  We all went to dinner last night (RD, Rodger, Bob, Aaron, and I) to a country club.  We were invited by a couple from RD's church.  It took us quite a while to find the restaurant in downtown KL.  Tony was outside the country club to welcome us in.

When we got to the table RD's parents (who are staying with this couple this week) were there as well as Tony's wife.  We arrived late (about 8:30) and the food was almost all gone.  Tony is very hospitable so he ordered another plate of every dish.  It was amazing.  There was prawn, ostridge, venison, and many other things.  A very good meal.

Ok, I'm going to go off on a little bit of a sidetrack. (Take note of the title of this post.)  RD is the craziest driver I've every ridden with.  Or, as Aaron put it last night while riding back from the country club:

Aaron:  "RD, riding with you is way scarier that any rollercoaster I rode today."

RD: "Excuse me, I have trouble hearing... Did you just say that you wanted to walk the rest of the way home?"

Aaron: "No... I... I... I got nothing."

We've come to the conclusion that the white-dashed lines on the road are merely suggestions to RD.  The shoulder is also an acceptable lane.  There are just a lot of possible lanes.  It is quite fun to ride with him.  In all seriousness, we're having a wonderful time getting to know him, he is an awesome man.  We're learning a lot about relating to any kind of people from him.  God is so obviously using him over here.

As I'm typing this paragraph, two students just walked into RD's apartment and they are sitting around on the couches talking.

We could use some prayer for our night-session lessons that we're preparing for the camp.  Mine is coming together quite nicely--I worked on it a bunch this morning and I'm feeling much more comfortable with it.  We are also trying to prepare for the speaking we will be doing this Sunday at two different churches.  RD was telling us (on the car ride from the airport the other day) that the students feel they can't go in to missions or become a pastor because their parents won't let them. We're going to try to speak to encourage them otherwise. Our goal is to show that it is their honor to serve the Lord. Pray for that. I think we're going to see some really awesome things here over the next two weeks.

Apparently we will speak to 50 students at the first church and over a hundred at the second. That is a lot of people.  I am so excited.  This is a wonderful opportunity since we have come as far away from home as we possibly could and now we get to encourage the students here to spend their lives serving the Lord.  So, in a way, we can show them by an example.

Thank you for all of your prayers, we are both in very good health and feeling no jet-leg at all (the same can not be said for Rodger, who did the same flight we did one day later.)

Oh, and I typed this whole post by my self--Aaron did not look over my shoulder.  You can blame all typing errors on me trying to listen in on the conversation happening out in the living room.

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