Unkown boredom?

Do you ever start a conversation with someone and there’s so much to talk about yet you’ve no idea what to say?

Well, that’s where I am at right now. I even thought that writing out these sentences would help me figure out where I could start but that’s not even helping.

Perhaps I’ll mention cultural acclimatization - I am getting very used to being here in Switzerland, so much so that even the European style computer keyboards have become second nature and now the North American one is difficult to use. I’m comfortable with the shops in town, the buses, the train. I feel like I know this place. For me, that’s a double edged sword. Yes it’s good that I’m comfy here and at ease which means I am not distracted from the school and ministry. On the other hand I’m a stir crazy person and can feel myself growing in “boredom.”

I put the quotes around boredom because I’m not getting bored. I have heaps to do and I’m being challenged , but part of the challenge is perseverance. Being able to continue within a busy schedule, constantly adding new things to it and serving at a level worthy of the king. It’s tiring for me and would be much easier if I was in a new environment with all this new and crazy stuff coming at me.

You might say that the honeymoon stage is over for me and Switzerland. Been here, done that, what’s next? But there’s something to be said for really knowing a place. It would take me AGES to totally know this country and even then I wouldn’t know it as well as someone who was born and raised here.

So perhaps bored is the incorrect work, excited for what lies ahead…yeah, more adventure, steeper peaks to climb greater obstacles to overcome. Yeah, I ain’t bored, I’m ready to up the ante….Anyone else with me?

Snowboarding and Love

Well I'm in the apls, and the swiss alps none the less and God has once again provided for not just my needs, but my wants. This time it's my desire to go snowboarding that He has helped me to accomplish by providing a seasons lift pass. Go God.

Not only that but a friend of mine will not be around much this season due to money mooning and military service so he's letting me use his board. That might not seem like much seeing as I have my own board, but when you start looking at things like type of board, how their built and what style they are good for riding, then it defenitly becomes noteworthy. On my friend's board I can set my bindings to a stance that is wide and comfortable for me which I would not do on my other boards.

I am so blessed to be in the mountains where it barely stops snowing for almost two weeks, and then clears up into a beautiful bluesky powder day. Even if that blue bird day is cold beyond reckoning, the fluffy untraked powder makes it worth while. And when that blue bird day happens on one of the two days that you get a chance to ride in the morning...words can not describe.

Then what happens next on that day is the free screening of a brand new snowboard movie. And not just any snowboard movie, but the one that really reaches my heart, a movie that is all about back counrty riding and splitboarding; taking big mountain riding to the next level. Now one of the sweet parts about this movie is that I read about it in a magazine, and then got some friends excited about it and we started talking about how we could buy it online and before we got a chance we discovered the free screening. And it was just in time for my birthday, and they gave out free popcorn and it was amazing.

Why am I writting about all this fun stuff I'm doing while living as a missionary? Well it because I've been asking God to teach me more about His love. How does He love me, how do others show love for me that I don't notice. How I am to love myself and others and most importantly how I am to love the Lord my God. This fun stuff is stuff that I really appreciate, and draw energy from, it's lovely.

No Title?

Intense week this week. The official name is called Father Heart of God, but that's just the general theme. It took an entire week of lectures to unpack a little bit about what that means, so I'm not going to try to do so here.

What I will let you know is that I had some cool times. I was managing the comings and going of this week making sure everyone knew what was happening from day to day, arranging for this to happen and that to happen. Sorry, I should say I was responsible for making sure someone was doing that stuff, I didn't have to do it all myself, nor did I do it alone.
Amongst all of the organizing the content of the lectures was really speaking to my heart. So not only was I being emotionally, spiritually and intellectually stirred up, but I also had to be able to coordinate people and help others to process themselves. Fun, well challenging is more accurate but I do enjoy a good challenge.

So, Matt, you got a lot out of this past week personally? Aren't you in Davos to help equip others?

Yes, and yes. And here's where my being open and broken in front of those I am leading has been a blessing. One of the first feed back and pieces of encouragement that came to me from a student of the current DTS has been thanking me for being a leader who is willing to be open and broken. Often leaders are viewed as people who have things together, well I don't. I have some experiences that help me, but I don't have it all together and apparently living that out is helping me to lead. Never would have thought of that on my own.

Well, I've written a short story about my experiences this week and posted each chapter. Enjoy...

Tale of Two Walls

Chapter 3
Filled with contempt I gazed up at the wall, studying it, searching it. I wanted to know everything about it so that I would make sure not to place it in my own wall. The small clefts where the birds could make their nests, The Wall cared for it's inhabitants, but it never cared for me. The rough places that could be climbed by people looking for fun had hurt my hands. The shade that animals took refuge in blocked out the light of the sun. I wanted none of those.

'I know' I thought, 'I will have this wall torn down, and then no one will be able to liken The Wall to mine. But when I asked the authority to tear it down He said

“Why? Why should I destroy The Wall that has sheltered you from the heat of the sun, that has brought you food and provided for your needs? The Wall has even taught you, challenged you and inspired you to build your own wall. This is a good wall, you do not have to like everything about this wall, but choose what you like and leave the rest.“

'I never thought of that.' I recoil as a new revelation of what The Wall means hits me. With these new idea running laps through my head I turn around and my gaze falls upon one like a Son of Man who appears transfixed with something up in the sky. Following his gaze I see only The Wall, but I know that is not what He is looking at. What He sees is above The Wall, but I have not seen it because I have been to busy looking at the wall.

Curious to know what it is, I begin walking towards the Man for a better view. It is only when I reach Him that I see that the ground he is standing on is perfect ground for building my own wall. Not only that, but from here The Wall that I hated doesn't seem so bad. In fact there are some things that I like about it, somethings that I want to use from it and incorporate into my own wall. This time, I won't be tearing anything down, I will only build upa wall that will draw people so that from my wall, they can see the beautiful sight that the Man is staring at.

Tale of Two Walls

Chapter 2
One day I began to build my new wall. As I was building some people walked by and said “What a nice wall, it looks very much like The Wall over there.“

In a furious rage I tore down the beginning of my wall. The ferocity with which I went about taking the wall to pieces scared the passers by and they ran from my prescience.

Again and again this would happen. Sometimes I would only just be starting, and other times my new wall was well on it's way, but each time it was liken to The Wall I would destroy it and start again.

Tale of Two Walls

Chapter 1
I am as I have been for ages past, gazing up upon The Wall. As a tower it rises up and up higher and higher. Forever have I dwelt in the shadow of this wall. I have looked up at it, thought about it, climbed upon it and studied it.

I hate The Wall.

Though it has always been there protecting me from the the whether, the storms as they pass, cast shade for me in the hot, hot heat, lured in food and provision for me, drawn travelers to keep me company and taken care of me, I hate The Wall.

Someday, I will build a wall. It will be a wonderful wall, a magnificent wall, a spectacular wall. People will travel from all around to see the wall that I have built. My wall will be nothing like The Wall. My wall will be smooth where is should be and stick out at an angle just where it aught to. There will me room on my wall for every one to take shelter in the storm, or find food for themselves to eat, and enjoyment in how it is formed.
When those who come to see my wall look and see The Wall in the distance they will say, “My, what a sad looking wall that is. I am glad that this new wall is nothing like that Wall.“

Best Foot Forward

WOW! It's only been like two and a half weeks since I arrived in Switzerland, but everything that we've gotten done it might as well have been a month. The country even welcomed me with a nice snowfall for the fist week, which has since all but melted now...but it was there.

By now I am over the jet lag, the students have arrived, and the 10/11 school for snowboarders has begun. I am really excited for what this season has in store for me. I have taken on some different responsibilities and this time around will be overseeing the hospitality here on base.

Hey Matt, what does that mean? Hospitality stuff?

Well I'll be welcoming guests to the base, making sure that their rooms are clean and ready for them, that our speakers have the resources that they need to teach in the mornings, which could be something as simple as a cup of coffee, or perhaps it's copying some handouts. It's not something that comes naturally to me, but that just means I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into it to make sure that it's done well. Perhaps I'll let you know how good I get at it by the end, and perhaps you'll even get to experience it, but no promises.

This weekend, before most of the students arrived, I was given a chance to take some Matt time and I did just that, on top of a mountain. Of course the only adventurous way to get there is to hike up it, and who needs a trail when there's an incredibly steep slope to scale? not I. Up I went and it was stellar, complete view of the valley of Davos, snow, slippery, windy, bight blue sky, but no camera with which to take pictures so I'll try to use words...

I approached the small plateau covered in a small but dense layer of snow along a path marked out by a single set of footprints in the white frozen water, only the largest rocks were visible beneath their cold blanket. From the plateau I could finally see the summit with it's pile of stones brought up from the bottom by all those who'd conquered the mountain before me. Several times on the hike I thought I'd reached the top only to have another ridge ride up in front of me. This time however was different, the feeling of accomplishment was rising up from my feet spreading through my body. I still had to be careful, I'd not arrived yet and the uncertain and slippery footing was worthy of my attention. Despite the footprints continuing all the way to the peak I decided to strike out on my own adventure of finding my way through the snow.
Behind me stretching out into the valley sat the city of Davos quietly awaiting the winter's arrival. From this vantage point I removed my shoes for the ground belongs to God, and soaked in all that He had for me.
Alas the cold grabbed a hold of me and I donned my shoes and prepared to descend down an unknown path along the backside of the hill. Another height reached, another sight seen.

Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!

to deck or not to deck

Righteousness and stewardship are two words that pop into my mind as I go through the process of applying for a building permit. I want to do things the proper way. I want to make sure things are squared off. Building permits are a part of the governmental system that we live in, yet, most people don’t get them. Why? It’s simpler, it’s easier and it’s less expensive.
That’s the system isn’t it? Don’t rat out your neighbor and he won’t rat you out, and as long as that happens you can pretty much do whatever you want?

Today I was called “one of the few people who would actually get a permit for [building a deck]” and that seemed strange to me. But when I look at the mounting costs of simply the permit process, I can understand why people don’t do it, I’m even temped to just put it up and build it to code and make it safe. And I’ll save a whole heap of money, isn’t that being a good steward of what God’s given me?

Righteousness has a cost too, sometimes it’s monetary, and sometimes it comes in the form of not doing what you feel like doing. In this case I really and truly believe that Jesus calls us to honor our governments. So as a Christian I am going to stand in that, I am called to honor the Township of Langley and the BC Legislature and get the permit or not build.

In this I will stand firm, I’m not going to compromise what I’ve been called to be, that is to become more like Christ, and the cost is going to be felt financially, and immediately.

A Story to Tell

Now here’s a story worth telling. I tell you what, what and adventure. Check this...
So in November, I know that’s going back a ways, but here’s what we did; we met as a team to decide where we would be going in South Africa and asked God to show us the locations. We left the north east, mid west and south west of the country. Now on the leadership side of things we spent time trying to make contacts in regards to these locations can found this place called Upington. Furthermore we were told that there were a number of groups that we could hook up with. Now, unfortunately that is literally the last thing that we heard in regards to this portion of the outreach. That last word came in around early December.

Now let us fast forward to the end of our time in White river which brings us to the end of February. Well we still have no contacts or idea of what we’ll be doing or even where we will be sleeping. And yet, each member of the team still had peace about going, so we bought the tickets. Of course through this time we were not just sitting around waiting for contacts to drop into our laps, but talking to people we were with, making phone calls which would gives us another phone number so on and so forth until the newest phone number didn’t exist.
We tried traveler’s guides and internet to find accommodation and guests houses but to no avail; nothing that would fit our budget.

So, as I said we bought our bus tickets and climbed on the bus not knowing what was waiting for us. When we arrived it was about an hour before sunset, and had to find a place to stay for the night. Now we split into group and went around to see what we could find. Myself, I stayed with the bags to keep them safe. The team came back forty-five minutes later having found a receptionist at a guest house who called around to people that she knew and found us a place to stay at a different guest house for way under our budget. Not only did we find the place, but the owners even came to pick us up. WOW.

That’s not even the end of the story. A couple of days later we’ve got new friends from a church nearby who want us to hang out all the time, a school who would like us to come and present to the students, some social workers who were more than happy to have us come along and run some events in the townships with the kids. And by the end of the week we even had a place to stay totally free of charge, with food. What an awesome blessing eh?

This portion of the outreach was by far the favourite two weeks of the program. Probably in relation to that, this is where we saw the most growth in people and where members of the team were willing to step out and try new things, sharing with other people on the street, or in front of a large audience, or sharing on the fly without any sort of preparation.

We all really enjoyed it and I even got to play rugby while I was there...good times.

Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!

Whiteriver, or wit river, both are on the signs

Well I said that I’d let you know about my outreach, and up till now I haven’t done such a good job, but here goes.
So after we travelled through what looked so much like southern California, in a nice coach bus, we arrived in a town called Nelspruit. It sounds a whole heap different when the South Africans say it, comes out something like Nielsberry. From the bus drop off, we were picked up by a couple of guys from Krueger Park base and driven 30 minutes to the base. For some, this was the first experience of ridding in the back of a pick-up truck (or bakkie [pronounced bucky]).

For me it was a really cool ride because in talking to our driver, I disocered that his daughter and son in law were doing the DTS program at the place I had done my DTS. Not only that, but their outreach leader was a good friend of mine and to top it off, I had met both of them. Now if that doesn’t sound cool enough, well I also used his surf board and wet suit and even put a hole in the wet suit. Fun story eh? Small world in this work eh?

Well what’s next, ah yes we arrived and to fast forward a little bit, that first week we all got sick. Yes ten people with the runs. Yes that’s right, your mental image at this point is probably correct. Of course this sickness subsided a little bit but would remain on and off for the rest of our month. Not going to lie to you, it makes for a great story, and wasn’t bad enough to stop us from having fun or putting our entire heart into the ministry.
Oh the ministry, right. We spent our time digging out footers for the foundation of a care center. The ground was rock, and it was slow going with the pick axes, but luckily a pervious team had already done most of the work, so we were able to see that the foundations themselves got poured which was a great reward for our efforts. The care center will be used to help to provide a place where single and double orphans (Kids missing one or both parents) can come for food, clothing repair, help with homework or a loving friend. Now, the incredible part about this care center is that it’s already operating out of a woman’s house. She is from South Africa, saw the need that the children had, God totally gave her a burden for these people and there she is, day in and day out pouring herself into giving to them and giving what she can. AMAZING!

Our time in Whiteriver really gave us a chance to hang out with people and talk. Some were other YWAMers on DTS, some were serving the people in the community and others were local people who we got to chill with and chat about life stuff.
Church, WOW, church here was so cool. The pastor is a young man who started as the head pastor as an even younger man. He seems to have figured things out in how to run the church. Everyone seems to be involved in organising, sharing, singing worshiping, and preaching. I’m not going to lie to you, it was here that I was given my first opportunity to preach at a church. It’s was kind of exciting and kind of African, by that I mean it was last minute. I do not think I did it perfectly, but I do think that God spoke to some people in that room and that is truly awesome.

It was in this time that God asked me to let go control of the outreach, let other people get a chance to plan out how we’ll do ministry, let others lead out and let others be in charge. Well that wasn’t exactly easy for me, but as I look back now at the entire outreach, I can see so clearly how pivotal it was that God would have be do that. It simply created room for other people to grow, to experience new things and for that alone I thank God for His guidance.

We made some good friends in Whiteriver, I’m so glad we got to go there. How glad? SO Glad!

Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!

Southern California, I mean South Africa

Well, let me see. I suppose that I shall have to do a lot of updating in order to catch people up on stuff. But in all honesty there’s probably no way to get you up to date on anything. But here’s my plan. My time in South Africa was really cool and we did outreach in four different locations so I will split those up into four different blog updates beginning with the beginning of course.
Our first few weeks involved lots of hard work and long days of construction, well mostly demolition. We, our team of ten, spent 2 weeks working at an orphanage to renovate one of the homes. Because, well, you see this is not a classic orphanage. The organisation has felt that they are to create homes for the children complete with parents and not just a mass group of kids with care takers. This adds a lot more to what they have to do, including having parents. So for one of the parents and her daughters they’re planning a new house, as they are in the process of redoing all of the homes, and we were an answer to their prayers to have someone come and get it going.
It was strange to do so much practical work on the outreach as opposed to relationship building and conversation; instead we were just doing work. Although, when I look back on it now it was totally just preparing us as a team. We would during this time get used to many things South Africa and begin developing our hunger for getting to know people and tell them about who Jesus is in our lives.


For two weeks we tore down brick walls that were double brick thick, tore out tile floors and tried to keep the tiles, busted holes in the wall to make room for windows, tried to plan how to fit new doors in and new bathrooms. Luckily a few of us have construction experience, however, going from wood framed houses to brick buildings is aggravating to say the least. Things go slower, they’re more complicated and plumbing problems are ridiculous. But I won’t bore you with the details.

These two weeks were primarily filled with practical work but since we were the new people there, a good number of the kids would come around and hang out after school. We had brought some skateboards with us and they loved skating, but I think more than that they liked to borrow our iPods. And what stood out the most for me was how stinking tough they were. Man they loved to wrestle and fight. I can’t even call it play fighting, but it was funny to see them get knocked right down on their bum and jump back up ready to go again.

This time was the beginning of leading people on an outreach, and man I tell you what that ain’t easy. You have to do all the work that they’re doing and then more. Not to mention take into consideration who each individual is: their strengths, weaknesses, life experiences, and where they’re at. Now if you know me a little bit then you’ll know that I’ve got only a few modes of operation: off, slightly on and going BIG. Fortunately I had two other amazing leaders with me and we turned to God in prayer so much that I really felt that He was there with us and guiding us. Not only did He lead us through stuff but He never stopped teaching me. In this part of outreach I started learning about staying aware of what is going on with people around me. I’m not going to say that I learned this and am now a pro, but I feel like I have grown in it.
Well, I’m not going to lie, it was good times, breaking down walls, sleeping and experiencing my first African style church service. WOOT WOOT!

This little update so does not do this portion of outreach Justice, but I just do not know what to put in that would. It’s hard to explain, so this will have to do.
Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!