Previous Update 1

As promised, here's the 3 of 3 updates.

However, I currently have not packet and am supposed to be leaving for the week in about 20min. So this will be a quick bullet point of what we're doing for spring break and how you can pray:

house where Tina Wilson and 3 of her 4 daughters live.

Mission: show love to a navajo family of 5 living in a 11x11 house (no electric or water), by turning this existing house into a kitchen and building for them a 22x22ft house with electricity and an outhouse. We have 6 half days to work on the house and though I think we'll finish, it'll definitely be close.

Pray:

• For safety. Last night the generous people at Home Depot filled a 24ft Truck with enough cement and stucco and dry wall, etc. Enough to load down the truck to a level where the mudflaps dragged on the road by a good 3-4". So after all the materials were spread around to the other cars things seem to be working a bit better. Also, one car got in a minor accident while leaving town. Thankfully no one was hurt.
• For Fellowship: It would be really neat to see God give us a sweet family spirit this trip. There's been a lot of hard work put into this trip from the staff and from many students. It would be great to see their work and prayers rewarded.
• That'd we'd be a blessing to the reservation: I think of 1 Cor 3 (i believe...?) where it talks about us giving off the aroma of Christ. We'd love to bless them any way we can. It's already been cool to see several students give extra money to help the family, or even sell some of their things in order to have money to give.

Thanks again!

Ryan

Previous Update 2

Hey again,

I mentioned in the last email I'd send two more updates before we leave for spring break to make up for the lack of updates these last few weeks...  Here's #2.

A friend I'll call "M" was introduced to me by one of the student leaders in Navs. For the last few weeks "M" and I have regularly been rock climbing at the rec center together and have gotten to know each other. "M" has been very hesitant to come out to any Nav events or Bible Studies, but said when he came to college he began to seek out a church because he felt like "there was a hole in his heart he couldn't fill." I don't think "M" is a Christian, based on our interactions, but he is interested and seemingly close. He was planning on coming to our Spring Break trip but had to cancel last minute. I just found this out tonight and am still a bit bummed actually. Praise God for how the body has accepted and loved him. But also pray "M" would come to know the Lord for himself.

Update (3/23/10) – unfortunately a few days before we left for the Spring Break trip “M” canceled. The trip would have been great for him, but I still look forward to what God can do the rest of the semester.

Previous Update 3

Ross, me, and Mike (left to right) at the Truth conference, Pine Vally, CA

Hey everyone!

Sorry I haven't sent an update in a while, things have been crazy as we've returned from our annual regional conference and immediately transitioned into "go-mode" for Spring Break.

Conference was incredible. Thanks for your prayers! In the picture above is Ross and Mike. Ross is a senior entertaining the idea to work with Navs in the future, and Mike is a freshman (junior by standing) whose been a true joy having around. I was able to get to know both men much better over the weekend--we spent time together during free time taking a joy ride to the beach, met together with the director of Long Beach to talk about practical evangelism, and attended many of the workshops together.

Over the weekend it was exciting to see God work in both men's lives. Specifically for Ross, the conference came at a time of figuring out what he should be doing over the summer. He's been to Japan two years ago on a mission trip and has been seriously considering going back, and ultimately considering if God is calling him to Japan as a full time missionary after graduation. Though Japan has been on his mind these last few years, for whatever reason he's never really considered going again this summer.

Ross is not one to make rash decision by any means. His mood and character are both very steady. However through the course of this weekend God seemed to be asking Ross pretty pointedly whether he would consider again giving up his summer to go to Japan. Last venture he took there he made life-long friends and helped bring one of the more senior Japanese students to faith in Jesus. This summer Ross felt God asking him to consider "is ministering in Japan something I should be doing with the rest of my life?" There are a lot of practical reasons why this summer would not be good to spend in Japan--fund raising during a recession, giving up the opportunity to have an internship in his major, and of course, the personal comfort that accompanies staying home. Yet still, Ross felt God pointedly asking him to go.

The last day of the conference Ross asked the Japan team leaders to reserve a spot on the team for him. One week after returning home he's applied, been accepted, and sitting through orientation!!!

God seemed to give all of us a sweet taste of his Spirit this weekend, and this is one of many stories about what He did in their lives.  Thanks again for your prayers!

For the Kingdom,

Ryan and Ariel Mullarkey

P.S. I'll send out an email everyday for the next three days with updates, because there has definitely been enough happening in the ministry that I would like to catch you up on!

Wow it’s been a while…

Hey all! Sorry it’s been so long… Here’s a shotgun entry filling you in on what’s been happening.

North Korea:

Robert Park is back in the U.S. Most sites claim he said some pretty stupid stuff (like: “they treated me very nice and I was allowed to pray freely and go to church.”). Basically all N. Korea propaganda. His friend said he was beat near death a couple of times and finally released because they didn’t know what else to do with him. He’s now recovering in the states, but the effect of the torture still lingers.

2 Weeks ago was unofficially N. Korea awareness week where some friends from Robert’s church marched into the  UofA mall to stage a demonstration raising awareness for the humanitarian issues in n. korea. I attended some of it and it seemed to be one of the more successful demonstrations I’ve ever seen at the UofA.

A refuge named “Tom” spoke at our NavNite to conclude the week. It was fascinating as he told of his story of how he escaped to China, found Christ, went back to N. Korea because of his family, was captured a couple of times, escaped again and fled through China, Mongolia and Laos before making it to S. Korea, totally over 10,000 kilometers traveled. All while he was 24. My age. Wow.

Conference:

We attended our annual regional conference and it was great! Here’s an email I sent out about it.

Spring Break:

We’re leaving tomorrow for Chinle, AZ to build a house on the Navajo Reservation. 70+ students are coming and it’s one of our biggest trips (both in prep and attendance) that we’ve ever done. Several non-believers are coming. We’ll spend half the day studying the book of Hosea, and the other half building a 22x22’ house. It’ll be awesome. Picture to follow :)

Thanks for all your prayers!!!

Thank God for the Body

Last night we headed to ASU for the first bi-annual joint NavNight, involving both UofA and ASU. We figured if there was peace between the two colleges, world peace couldn 't be that far off.

Skip Gray shared from the Word and mentioned a golden nugget, "We need 4 things to make it in the Kingdom for the Long Run: 1. correct view of the sovereignty of God, 2. correct view of the Scriptures, 3. Become a Servant, and 4. authentic fellowship.

Throughout the book of Acts, fellowship is anything but Christians gathing into a holy huddle. It says through their fellowship, many came to know the Lord. How could that be possible?

This last week 2 friends of mine went to spend their Friday night with "T," playing video games in his apartment, watching movies, talking about baseball and sports. These guys have been more of a friend to "T" than I ever have. God thank you so much for the body of Christ, for fellowship with other believers, and for how we much we need each other in living out the Great Commission.

Student Prayer Request

Thanks for your prayer support!  I am continually reminded how, if the Lord’s not working than nothing I can do will change a life.

This last week me and an older student met to share the Bridge with a sophomore named “T.” T has popped up several times in the last year (usually at the most random times…) and even came on the CA Camping trip with the Nav Group. He’s had a tough background and openly describes God as “the chick from the bachelorette. Where she’ll give all these guys tests to weed out which ones she wants to keep.”

T shared with me that he thinks it’s more than coincidence that he keeps running into Christians around campus, and is generally confused about who God is.

As the older student and I had lunch with T and shared a Gospel illustration with him, you could tell gears were clicking in T’s head. He put together the dots that God isn’t malicious or spiteful, and does in fact love everyone; sin is the problem. He understood Romans 3:23, 6:23, and Ephesians 2:8-9 to mean that we can never do enough good things to get right with God, because He’s Holy and we’re not. And that that’s why we need Jesus. T also admitted that he felt like he had one foot in the boat of believing in Jesus, and one foot still on land. We concluded the time by me asking whether he wanted to spend time next week reading the Bible some more, to which he replied “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

Please pray for T. I feel confident that a good seed has been sown in his heart. Pray that God would protect that seed and continue working in T until he can say with confidence “I’m putting both of my feet in the boat and not looking back.”

On Haiti

The catastrophe in Haiti is horrible. However, I am not praying it would be rebuilt exactly like it was. Over half of the people there practiced Voodoo in some form, while roughly 80% is some distorted form of Roman Catholicism. I pray aid comes quickly and in abundance, but also that somehow God would use this situation to cause the Gospel to spread in a society which is very far from knowing Him.

North Korea [Urgent]

On Christmas Day, Robert Park (28 years old), was arrested by the North Korean after crossing into their country with letters asking NK to close down their concentration camps bringing a message of “Christ’s love and forgiveness.”

Robert Park grew up in Tucson, AZ and grew up attending a church that one of our staff members go to.

His intent was to leverage his life to speed the fall of the unstable NK regime.  Currently 1000 people per day are dying from starvation in North Korea.  His hope was that because he was an American that his capture would serve as a catalyst for people around the world to demonstrate against the atrocities that are happening to a helpless people in North Korea.

Robert asks for these prayer requests during an interview he had on Dec. 22, 2009:

1. Declare God’s love for N. Korean and pray for their salvation. (John 3:16-17)
2. Open borders to bring food to areas that need it most (Matt. 25:35)
3. Close down concentration camps and free all political prisoners (
4. Unification for South and North Korea under a transformed leadership. (Daniel 5:18-21)
5. Freedom, salvation and new life for N. Korea…for God’s message to ring clearly through Robert’s love for the N. Koreans. (Amos 5:21-25)
6. The impact of Robert’s message to be widespread and that there will be a global outrage and outcry especially in the church over the human rights abuses in N. Korea.  Ask ourselves what can I do to help?  Robert’s actions have shown us that we cannot stand still and do nothing.  May Robert’s message unite us to take action.  (John 17:20-23, Isaiah 58:5-12)
7. Encouragement, continued spiritual strength, and protection over Robert.
8. Peace and comfort to Helen and Pyong Park, his parents.

 

Coverage on the Incident:

CNN

Fox News

AZ Star

Ariel’s job, take 2

So I just got a call from Ariel whose at work right now saying come March when the new medical center opens there’s a “very high possibility” she would be able to transfer to days on the pediatrics floor (where she currently works). This would be GREAT!!!  We are praying hard something would happen for her to get switched off nights, because it’s really been wearing on us the last several weeks.

It’s hard to not get our hopes up with this. We trust whatever God has in store for us is best. But we are definitely praying hard for this.

More MZMO

A few days ago Reed and I got the chance to share the gospel with someone from MZMO. We’ll call him “Jamie” (because the other guy who I know named Jamie reminds me a lot of him).

I’m not going to lie as I was making plans to get lunch with this guy I was really praying hard that God would give us a chance to share the bridge with him.  And God did!

He seemed pretty interested throughout.  Jamie’s grown up in the church but is really trying to figure out for himself what it looks like to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Pray hard that we would be able to get another opportunity to talk with him before the winter break.

Ariel’s (potential) new job update

Ariel still hasn't heard back from the manager as to whether or not she's been picked for the days position, but the more Ariel learned about it during the actual interview the more unattractive of a position it turned out to be.  The HUGE perk is that it's days.  However, the actual type of nursing it is is uninteresting to Ariel and would be pretty challenging. She's been working with children and the position is for adult women who've come out of surgeries, cancer, etc...  If she is offered the job we would need to pray more about whether it's really something she would want or whether we should stick it out a bit longer with her working nights on a floor she really enjoys with the possibility of moving to days on the same floor sometime in the future.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

MZMO

Here’s another dorm you can be praying over.

Turns out all of the freshman guys in the Bible Study I’m helping out with live either in this dorm or MZMO.  God’s given us 4 guys who live on the same floor here! Mike, his roommate Gary (both who came on the camping trip), Jake, and his roommate (I forgot his name).

Funny story: four years ago I was an RA on this exact same floor-4 MO.  Walking down it brings back some really good memories. Please pray for entrances to this hall.

National Staff Conference

In 3 hours me and Ariel are leaving to Phoenix to catch a plane to Florida for our national collegiate staff conference which happens every two years.  We’re pretty tired going into this, but excited nonetheless.  The last staff conference we went to with just our region was an extremely refreshing time filled with a ton of great training that left both Ariel and I super encouraged to return to campus.  We’re praying this will do the same.

Jerry Bridges and some other famous authors will be there giving us some talks.  I’m attending a workshop by him on how to be an effective teacher. Ariel is attending one on how to make the house a place of hospitality. In addition to a couple of other workshops we’ll get to see some of our close friends from around the US.  We’re stoked. We’ll be returning to campus Nov 3rd, where upon I’ll be furiously cramming to give me first NavNite talk (which is also my first time ever pubic speaking to a group of more than 10 people. It will be more like 120.) :/

Posada san Pedro

It seems God is not going to allow me into this residence hall unless I pray my way in.  One committed student in a freshman Bible Study lives there, and I’ve been on his floor once already this semester. Please pray he would adapt Acts 18:26-27 as his calling verse to his dorm, and that people there (despite it being a historically closed off dorm) would begin to be social and come to a knowledge of Jesus.

Camping!

Thanks for all your prayers!  Some highlights from the trip this past week are:

- TONS of new people came!  About 1/3 of the trip were freshman, and several people were non-believers

- Everyone really enjoyed themselves. We spent all day Saturday on the beach and the common feel throughout the day was that everyone was genuinely enjoying each other.  That’s I believe that’s a direct answer to praying Romans 15:5-7 for trip!

- Despite some set backs (involving a stingray, 2 blown tires, and a caravan getting lost) everyone arrived back home in Tucson safe and sound.

- There is a night/day difference in the freshman class after the trip. They know who each other are, enjoy each other, and feel like the have found a “family” they belong to.

Please continue to pray that the effects of unity would be that “with one heart and mouth we would glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Camping, 09 Trip

This Friday we’re taking almost 100 UofA students to camp in CA near the beach on our first Nav trip of the year. A lot of planning has gone into this trip and our prayer is that it God’s love will be shown to the several non-believers coming on the trip.  Pray also it would be a great time to bond the group, especially the freshman.

Romans 15:5-7

⁵May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, ⁶so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁷Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

Colossians 2:6-7

Japanese friend named “M." We spent the summer of '06 together in Tokyo, and he's flown out to Arizona to visit twice. This last week I traveled to Long Beach and Irvine to visit him. He's shown here with '09 setter Dan.

⁶So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

snakebite update

After seeing more doctors and giving more blood than I ever want to again, the verdict for now is that I can go to CA this weekend for our annual Navigators Regional Kickoff (yay!) and I don't need to get more antivenom.  So that's really good!  My blood is still screwy (read: really thin), but the doctor told me as long as I'm careful and avoid major activities for the next 2-3 weeks I'll be fine and it should thicken out eventually.

Thanks for your prayers!

Recovery

Keep praying I recover quickly from this dumb snake bite. I’ve been dizzy and way weaker than I though i would be. Today I had to cancel 2 out of my 3 meeting time with students. It’s even more frustrating because I’m heading out of town next week and don’t feel like I’ve had much time to “sow” during this extremely valuable sowing season.  Pray for energy and that God would lead clearly on who to be investing in during this precious time at the beginning of the semester.

And for your viewing pleasure, my best scar from this whole experience is in fact totally unrelated to the rattlesnake bite.  While in the ambulance the EMT tried putting in an IV right when we went over a bumpy bridge.  The result was an IV that slipped out, lots of blood, a ruined shirt, and a sweet bruise :)

Email Update

Thanks for your prayers these first two weeks of school. Things are still pretty crazy here, but as the dust settles it's looking like we'll have a great freshman class. A few days ago I ran into a guy named Tony who, though first seemed extremely antagonistic towards God, after talking was interested in getting together to read the Bible. Praise God!

I got bit by a rattlesnake two days ago. Just got out of the ICU about an hour ago. Thanks for your prayers; the nurses said it was one of the best cases they'd seen (as in, not blue and my blood returned to normal fairly quickly). However as a result I had to cancel my plane ticket to Hawaii that was supposed to leave this morning :(. Me, another staff, and our campus director were going to Hawaii on a training trip to encourage and see the ministry of two of my close friends. Pray they would have a good time and that I would heal quickly. It's pretty painful to walk on my foot. Right now I'm immobile nearly all the time, which is humbling and annoying.

Also, please be praying for Ariel's parents and cousins. 3 weeks ago they lost their grandma very sudden, and now just got word Ariel's cousin's grandma had a very serious stroke and probably won't make it much longer. Recently it's been a very difficult time for Ariel's family.