So yeah.

I thought I'd share a bit of what John Paul Jackson shared with us yesterday, so here it is, "10 things I wish I'd have known in my 20's" in point form...

1.There will be highs and lows in life, don't exaggerate either one.
-When we exaggerate the grandness of the moment, it gives us unrealisitic expectations for the future.

2. My irritations with others reveal weaknesses in me that will keep me from my destiny.
-The surface of issues is inconsequential, it's the root that has eternal consequences.

3. Methodology is not nearly as important as getting it done.

4. Very few things are as important as I want to make them, very few things are as inconsequential as I think.

5. Never worry over something no one will remember in a year from now.

6. Say I'm sorry 3 times more than you think you should.
-The length of time it takes you to apologize is exponential to how long it takes that person to forgive you.

7. Chaos is the best thing that can happen to you.
-Nothing goes according to plan, it becomes chaos which is constructive. I.e. only 5% of 2 year business plans actually happen the way it's written. But Failure to plan leads to anarchy which is destructive.

8. No plan is perfect, but 80% of the things I don't plan for, end up detrimental to my ends.
-If you don't plan the Holy Spirit doesn't have anything to work with, he can't change your plans. I.e. If you are cooking something and you get out all the spices to make indian food, the Holy Spirit might direct you to make Mexican food, but if you hadn't planned, you'd have never gotten the spices out.

9. The depth of my pain reveals the strength of my coming annointing.

10. Accumalation Effect
-If you have a history of private defeats, it'll add to the weight of your decision making. At decision time, it's easier to make a poor choice because you have a history of it. It works the other way as well.
-Great choices today mean better choices in the future.



So there you have it, that's basically what John Paul talked about yesterday, it was really good, so I thought I'd give you taste of what we've been learning. And now, here a few more pictures...


Left to Right: Nicole (San Diego), Sharayah (New York), Matt (Roommate, New Jersey), Jodi (Michigan), Abigail (Detroit)




The Girls house!

Oh, Africa.

So what's new you're probably asking, well, let's see. Today was Monday, we had some school in the morning, and then did some interning in the afternoon.

It was shorter day in the office though, because, we had a few people come from Mozambique. They, Felito and Jose, were coming to see John Paul and they stopped by our house for dinner and for a quick impartation thing before they left. They are with Iris Ministries (With Heidi and Roland Baker)

and they shared for a while, they really only had 30-45 minutes after we had dinner to talk before they had to go. It was amazing though, they talked a bit about their testamonies and what God was doing in Africa. It was pretty powerful. Not only that, they carried such an incredible presence of God with them, before they left, they quickly prayed for us, it sure didn't take them long to get everyone wrecked.

It was a really amazing evening, we had such a good worship time after they left, just nice and good!
Anyways, I'm out of here, but I attatched a few more pictures for ya'll. <---Even I can speak american.

Oh, and I do have a prayer request, it looks like I'm going to have to contend for the healing of my back, because last night I hurt it, who knows how, but today it was really giving me grief, I've already got lots of prayer, but every little bit helps!

It's Luke! (Alberta)

Luke (Alberta), Rebecca (Sweden) and Jamie (Alberta)

Sharayah(New York) and Rebecca (Sweden)

Uhh yeah I saw a moose...

I don't really know what to write so here are a few random snippets...

My weekend started with friday as usual, and today about a third of the school was off on a ministry trip, the rest of us will be doing one at the end of this term, but there's just too many of us to do it at one time. I'm really looking forward to when I'm going to go. The other ministry trip will be in October when we go to "Haunted Happenings" in Salem Massachusets.
http://www.hauntedhappenings.org/index.html

I'm really looking forward to that trip, we will be doing a lot of dream interpretations and stuff there, so it should be pretty awesome.

Tonight about 6 of us went "Moose Hunting" with one of the caretakers of Pinnacle Mountain (www.pinnacleprayer.com), Ron, so we ended up driving around for almost an hour in high traffic moose areas, and eventually after much deep intercession, we did find one standing just off the road, most of the people who came had never seen a moose before so it was pretty neat that it was a pretty big one with a big set of antlers.

A few days ago I was asking a girl at the offices to check my account so I could figure out some finance stuff, so she needed my last name to put it in the computer. So I spelled it for her, "Z-u-p..." and she typed "Zedup..." So I kept correcting her, "No, it's Z! u-p..." And no matter how I said it, she kept retyping it the same way, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Finally, I figured it out, down here, they say "Zee" not "Zed" and she had never even heard of someone saying "Zed" before, I guess I always assumed that even though they say "Zee" here, they'd know what "Zed" was...Apparently not.

Anyways, God is good, isn't He? He constantly reminds me of it, and I just love Him all the more for it.

Dustin

Miracles, Sign and Wonders...

I just got back from my wednsday night impartation class thing. Every wednsday night we have a different speaker come and do an impartation. Usually it's some one or a couple that work at Streams. Tonight it was Dan and Ruth, Dan works in production and shipping at Streams.

They talked to us tonight about us being a generation of miracles, signs and wonders. They gave us their testamonies and a lot of stories about healings and stuff happening when he was learning about his gifting. Dan has a really strong gifting in healing, so after he spoke and prayed, we started praying for healings.

He demonstrated how he learned to pray for peoples backs and necks, by measuring how long peoples legs and arms were, to see if any were shorter than the other. The first person who had back problems, their one leg was almost an inch shorter than the other. He prayed and it grew to match the other leg in about 15 seconds. It was so crazy, you could watch it get longer! By this time everyone's faith level was through the roof. About four of us got our legs grown longer. Including myself. I got prayer for my back problems and one of the other interns, Jacob, prayed for my legs and first my right one, which was shorter, grew longer than my left one, then that one grew to match. It was really crazy, other people got their arms to match as well.

It was really faith building and went really well with his impartation about this stuff should be normal. What can I say, it's pretty hard to deny this stuff when you see right in front of you other people limbs growing more than 1/2 and inch you know?

It tends to be pretty dang faith building.

Themes

Well, lessee here. I thought I'd share a cool few days that God themed for me.

It started on Wednsday night, which is when people from Streams come over to impart. That night it was Craig and Sue, Craig does all the computer stuff there. They talked for a bit and then they prayed and prophesied for each one of us.

When Sue prayed for me, she got some stuff about me being an encouragement to others and also an encouragement to God. Which was really cool because I had been praying that I could be an encouragement to others, and I wanted it to be a significant encouragement. Not just always, hey you look good. I know one of my gifts is exhortation, like encouraging to change (one of the definitions is "A speech or discourse that encourages, incites, or earnestly advises"), so I had been praying for significant words for others.

So that was really neat and very encouraging for me, then thursday night, I went to bed at 12 because friday is a day off, but I couldn't get to sleep so I got up and prayed for a while, and I was praying for things having to do with encouragement again. Then that night, I woke up at 2:34 am, and was wide awake, I asked God why 2:34 and he said, 2-3-4 it's a prgression, we're progressing here! Then when I finally got to sleep again, I had a really weird dream, maybe I'll write it out sometime. But the interpretation of it basically, is that the words I speak have effect on people and it provides an increase of favor in their lives. I think I'll try to write it out sometime because it's cool to see how they interpreted it...

And on sunday after church, I was home, there wasn't too many people home, and God gave me the chance to give a significant encouragement to one of the guys. It was really cool, he gave me a word of knowledge that was right on, so it's been a really cool past few days for me. I love it how the Lord does stuff like this, where he themes your week to what you are learning you know? Like first he brought the desire to increase in that, then he validated it through Sue and Craig, then he gave me the push with the dream, and finally, he gave me the opportunity to act. Oh that Lord of mine, he sure knows what he's doing.

You can pray for me to continue growing in exhortation and also that I'll be able to grow in my inner solitude, it can be very difficult to get away, there is just so many people all the time, so it's pretty stretching for me. Anyways, I gotta go to school now, so, until later.

Aerial View

Thought I'd post some pictures from Google Earth to give you an idea of where it is that I am. So here are some sattelite pictures.

(Click on the pictures to get a larger view)

This is the guys house...



From higher up...

And this is my running route, I get to run past a lake and marsh and stuff, it's really beautiful especially because all the colours are changing...

Hiking it up.

Thought I'd throw up a few pictures of the hike we had on saturday, it was only a
1/2 mile hike, so it really didn't take to long, but it was a pretty cool view, so for 30 minutes of effort, pretty good pay-off. I don't remember what else I did Saturday, it was too long ago, so I think I'll just skip to today.

This morning we had church, they have really great worship here, it's a really nice little church. Then I went out for lunch with a few guys to Pizza Chef, it's alright, but I guess it doesn't really matter how good it is when you have the market cornered like they do here...

This evening we had intern impartation and it was a couple from Texas, Michael and Amanda, they shared tonight and it was really powerfull. All in all we had a good weekend...Can't complain...




One of my roommates Chad (left)
The Girls (right)
More of us...(bottom)

Further healing...

I thought I'd share this working of the Lord in me...

I know that I have a prophetic gifting, I also know that I haven't used it a whole lot in the past. The Lord's been showing me that I've kind of shut that side of me off because of experiences I've had with people who are "Super Spiritual", you know the kind, all gifting not much character. Well that drives me crazy! So to keep myself from being anything like them, I've thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

On Wednsday night, that's a night when some leader or person in the church does impartation for us interns, Eric and Joni Cooper (fellow canadians from Victoria who will be running the canadian school), prayed for us and after they prayed for me (I was one of the first...), I was praying for God to open my eyes and with my eyes closed I started to see really bright flashes of light, I felt the Lord was saying to me that he was bringing healing and re-opening/restoring what I shut-off. It was cool, never have I seen such a physical example of the spiritual. I'm expecting much more soon to come.

It's crazy, I've learned so much and I feel like I know all these people so well, and it's only been a week, the Lord does such amazing things and I can't imagine what's going to come...

It's begun!

I haven't written in a few days so hopefully this will make up for it.

It's been a great week so far. Almost too much to recap, but I'll try. I'll start off with letting you know what I did for my devotion last sunday. I only had a few days to prepare, but it was totally God who picked the topic. I ended up sharing about my fear of letting others know what my problems are. I shared how I dislike trusting other people to help me through my problems, how I'd rather just do it on my own instead of getting help. God showed me how much power there is in community and He showed me that if I want to break through this, this is how I would do it. By sharing this to all the group, which automatically makes me accountable to all of them. I challenged people to not suffer through their problems for an extended period of time alone, but to tell others so that you can have quick victory. Because "Where two or more are gathered..." and "A cord of three strands is not quickly broken..." and "One will put 1000 to flight, and two, 10,000..." All are good reasons to not go through it alone. It was a pretty big revelation for me and I'm still working through it, but that has been a big breakthrough with me.

Classes have been really good, we generally have two classes in the morning, one of them is usually one of the Institute for Spiritual Developement (ISD) courses, we are going through the Art of Hearing God 101 right now. It's been really good, we've only had two classes dealing with that though so far. We also have various classes like on tuesdays, John Paul Jackson, schedule permitting, teaches us in the morning, and thursdays are on the tabernacle taught by various people. I'll give you more details as we settle into a normal schedule.

In the afternoons we do our various internship duties. My internship duty is working with the Pinaccle Prayer department. I am basically the head intercessors assistant, and I am going to be VERY busy. We spent the first two days kind of going over projects and stuff and my main two projects are going to be familiarising myself with John Paul Jacksons teaching, "Unlocking the Mysteries of the Lord's Prayer" in order that I can help make a workbook.

My other main project will be helping to start up and maintaining a website for intercessors. It's basically to provide a place to field prayer requests, to train and equip others, to practice and discuss. Besides those things I'll also be doing alot of the writing and e-mail out of prayer requests to the various groups that suscribe to the Streams stuff. So between all that I'll be pretty busy in my afternoons. But it's good, I couldn't have picked a better internship. It's going to be cool to work under someone who has such a great gifting in intercession, that kind of thing tends to rub off, so I'm going to be ready...lol.

I guess that kind of brings me to today. Today, friday, is our day off, so in the morning, I biked to town and bought a paint brush (I couldn't handle having a "budget-brush") and a pair of jogging shoes, something I've thought about getting for a little while, but getting a big blister on my last run pushed me over the edge. There's a bunch of guys here that go for runs every morning and I'm going to try to drag myself out of bed early every morning to join them. Aren't those wicked shoes? lol

This afternoon I went with a van load of us to Concord to make a Walmart run, it's about a 45 min. drive there, we ended up stopping there and Target, I got some clotheshangers and forgot to buy socks. So I just have to wash them a little more frequently than I want...

Tomorrow we are climbing Mt. Kearsarge (I think that's how you spell it...), well, it's not really a mountain, but that's what they call large hills here, go figure. I guess it's better than looking at a totally flat landscape, but I do miss real mountains. Real mountains should have snow on them year round, you should be able to navigate by them, and should never be climbed for fear of sure-death.

If you have any questions or whatever, you can e-mail me at dustinzupancic [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment...

About to begin...

Today was Labour day, so we didn't start classes or anything today, instead I slept in till 9, then I went for a leisurely run and got to see some more of the country, there is alot of trees around here and it's hard to tell what's around. So it always surprises me when I see house after house where you thought it was just a country road and trees. It really is beautiful here and it's starting to turn to fall colours so pretty soon, it's going to be really nice.

When I got home, one of the second year interns, Dan, asked if I wanted to help him and another guy, Josiah, do some painting. So I ended up spending a few hours doing some exterior painting, just when I thought I was getting away from it!

Later on this evening we went over to the girls house for dinner and John Harding, one of the staff, taught us some more salsa dancing, I know I wasn't sure what to expect when I came to school, but I didn't think I was going to be so amazing at dancing, lol!

It was a pretty relaxing evening, but tomorrow we are starting our classes and our work/intern stuff in the afternoons, my duty is going to be working with the head intercessor doing whatever she needs done with the Pinnacle Prayer stuff, I'll give you more details when I know more, it'll likely be alot of admin. kinda things, but I guess I'll find out soon.

I posted a few pictures from our tour a few days ago, I just got around to putting them on the computer, so it's just some pictures of a few of the people.

Until Later...

Just in case you want to write...

Just in case you have anything you want to send me, I don't know, like cookies...
Here is my mailing address.

Dustin Zupancic
206 Old Main St.
New London, NH
03257-6053

I made it!

Well I've been here in New Hampshire a few days now, it's been pretty busy, getting settled in and going through Orientation but I did find some time here to post.
The first day, thursday, after an early morning and some bus rides, I got to New London by around 3:30 pm so I spent the rest of the afternoon setting up my room and haning out with the interns who were there. I have a pretty nice room, I'll have to throw up some pictures later, I'm sharing it with 3 other guys, from, North Carolina, Michigan and Calgary, so we have a good mix here. Thankfully, it's a big room with plenty of closet space.
There are about 25 interns here from all over the US, 5 from Canada (Two from Calgary and two from Airdrie AB, and myself), two from England and one from scotland. 12 guys and 13 girls, so a pretty even mix.
The second day we had orientation, so we spent pretty much the whole day learning about what we were going to be learning during this trimester. I'm really excited to see how it's all going to turn out, it sounds like it's going to be an amazing first 3 months. That evening we ended it off with some worship and alot of the staff prayed for us and most of us including myself received some amazing words from staff. I received a few good words and now I feel much more free to receive whatever it is that God has for me. Some fears were identified that I hadn't put my finger on yet so it was a really good time for me.
The next day, we slept in and around lunch time went on a tour with Ken Nelson, who I believe will be doing alot of teaching with us, he took us around the New London area to a few small towns and different historic sites to help give us a feel for the area. It was a really good tour, he sure knew alot about the area considering he is originally from Seattle area.
Today we are going to church, leaving in 20ish minutes, so I'm not sure what their church is like, I believe it's called The New London Bridge, I think there's a few hundred people who go there, I guess I'll find out...
After that we have a bunch of free time to do our own thing and then this evening, and like every sunday evening we will be having Internship impartation/devotional where two interns are scheduled to share/impart whatever it is they feel the Lord has shown them and they want to share, so Myself and another guy, Noah, were lucky enough to get this sunday. We haven't had as much time to prepare for it as the rest of the interns will have, but I'm really looking forward to it, I'll share with you after the fact what I will be talking about tonight.
You can pray for me that God will continue moving in me to free me to receive all that he has for me and also for my cough, it is getting better, but it is still there and I think it's about time it's gone.
Thanks for your prayers, they mean alot to me and I'll try to keep updating this and adding photos on a regular basis.