Thanksgiving Basket Giveaway

Yesterday we were part of a longtime Denver tradition: the Thanksgiving Basket Giveaway, which this year set out to give Thanksgiving dinners (13 lb. turkey included!) to 9000 families in need in Denver. Early Saturday morning we, along with a few of our friends and students, headed down to the corner of Race and High St., to help box all the dinner ingredients and hand them out.

We joined a body of over 1000 volunteers who had started working at midnight the night before to assemble all the boxes, and worked all day to distribute them to those in need.

Though the Epworth United Methodist Church have organized this event for several years, the tradition was started decades ago by a local restaurant owner whom locals still refer to as "Daddy Bruce."

As I helped one longtime resident of the neighborhood take his box to his home, he told me how he had eaten at Daddy Bruce's restaurant years ago.

As the Thanksgiving festivities begin here this week, Saturday's event was a great reminder to me of how gratitude sets the stage for generosity. I was also challenged by the story of "Daddy Bruce", who will always be fondly remembered in this neighborhood for his generosity.

Though we left at the end of the day tired and sore (those boxes were heavy!) we all enjoyed being part of the incredible mosaic of people that converged here in the spirit of joy, generosity and thankfulness.

"You can't beat love. Nothing beats love. If you give just one thing, you get three things back. That's why I do it." - "Daddy" Bruce Randolph

Jesus Freaks

Several years ago a production company, a company started by former
YWAMers, began talking about creating a sort of reality TV show based
on one of our training programs, the Snowboarders Discipleship
Training School (BDTS), as a tool for reaching young people in
America. We've always joked about how a DTS - with it's bunch of
young people from every walk of live and from around the globe, forced
to live for 5 months in unusually close quarters, spending 2 of those
months in a cross-cultural environment, working through relational
issues, and not to mention all that God is doing in everyone's lives -
would make a more interesting reality show than anything else out
there! Now this company actually wanted to make this a reality!

This began the long journey to develop "Jesus Freaks." This hasn't
been a YWAM Denver production exactly, as this production company has
been funding and manning the making of this film, but of course we
have felt very involved throughout the entire process. And we have
seen God's hand guiding this production in incredible ways. This
project took on a whole new meaning after the deaths of Tiffany and
Phil in the shooting last December. In winter 2008, a film crew
followed our BDTS through the lecture phase and outreach. The
product, a full-length documentary, is currently going through final
screenings, and will premier in Denver on December 9, the anniversary
of the shooting. Check out the trailer at jesusfreaksmovie.com.

YWAM Denver has been called to be a "bridge to the nations", which has
usually meant nations other than the USA, but we also believe that God
wants to use us to reach the nation in which we find ourselves. Pray
that God would use this film to touch the lives of many of America's
youth.

the return of our outreach teams

This has been an exciting week for us at YWAM Denver, not just because
of the much-talked-about elections, but because of the return of our
DTS outreach teams! We had teams returning from Mexico and Ukraine.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to the group about options for
further training if they're thinking about further ministry. It's
always fun to hear about what God did during their outreach, and hear
about how much they have also changed individually.

This group graduates on Friday. Pray for them as they continue on to
the next step in their lives.