theords.org

Snow- Yes, it finally snowed in Washington! January  is one of the coldest and wettest months in the Pacific Northwest and oh boy …we got some snow last week!!  About 10 inches, it stayed around a couple days just long enough to get some sledding in and a few walks in the winter wonderland. It was beautiful!

Winter Wonderland Walk!

School- As of the first of the year Grace and Ethan are now enrolled in Voyager Elementary and Eli is going to preschool 2 mornings a week at Stepping Stone. They are loving it!

Sport- More Than Sport! MTS is a non profit that our friend and fellow YWAM’r started. Chris Lieto is a professional triathlete who has been racing for several years. A few years ago his eyes were opened to the practical and humanitarian needs in the cities he was racing in. Chris and his wife Karis decided they could do something. We are excited to be partnering with More Than Sport. MTS which gives athletes the opportunity to race for a  cause. The goal is to impact and to serve communities by raising money for local charities, to get out there and do something with our hands and to raise awareness to the needs of the people.

For more information on MTS and future and past events see attached link:       www.morethansport.org

Picture from a neighboring village in the Darien Gap

Our first event we are organizing is in just 2 short weeks. MTS is partnering with YWAM Panama and Homes of Hope. The Ironman Panama 70.3 race is on the 11th of February. After the race we will be taking a team of 30+ volunteers into the Darien Gap 4 hours outside of Panama City.  The team consists of pro athletes as well as Ironman Staff and other race competitors. The funds MTS raises at the Panama Race event go directly to building houses for the village of Embera.

In November of 2010 a series of devastating floods swept through the Darien Gap, destroying homes for more than 300 people. To date, 48 homes are in dire need of being rebuilt.

We are still needing to raise a wopping $750 in the next week for our part of the Panama Project.  For Online donations please click the attached link or see our donation page.

please click here to help us with this super cool project! -  Ord\’s Panama Project!

Thank you for being a part of this Homes of Hope Panama Build!

OC Crew! We are missing you all!

We are back in the Northwest for the Holidays! After an incredible outreach in Orange County we made the long drive back from California late November. We were blessed to arrive in Gig Harbor right before Thanksgiving and now we are looking forward to a wonderful Christmas with friends and family.

"Oh, Christmas tree..."

Mr and Mrs Claus! Ethan was a little nervous.

We have a couple short trips planned over the next couple months that will be amazing. We also feel blessed for the opportunity to take some time to rest and recharge for a busy upcoming spring and summer.

Thank you to all of you that have faithfully prayed for our family, spoke words of life over us and encouraged us this year. Thank you for those of you that have opened your homes to us or supported us financially this year. We are very grateful!

Please let us know if you are in the Northwest or are travelling through the Northwest in the next month or so! We would love to see you!

Love and Blessings to you are your family!

Merry Christmas!

The Ords

October! 2011

I just have to say for the record, ” I love Southern California! ” It is October and the weather is so encouraging! Shorts and hoodies! The kids are able to run and play outside and it’s not raining.

I just wanted to send out a quick update. We are still on an extended outreach with Circuit Riders School here in Orange County. We have been staying in beautiful Newport Beach in a home with another family (The Boleys) their two kids ages 4 and 18 months and our dear friend Holly Mossman. Check out Danielle Boley’s blog (Raising Royalty) link to the right as it has fun photos of all the kids together and paints a picture as to the crazy fun we have. Newport is pretty centrally located between Huntington Beach and Irvine, Santa Ana and Costa Mesa. Our crew has been working with several ministries but the majority of focus has been with UCI college and a few local churches New Song Irvine and SaRang. We are so excited at all the connections being made. Our crew will be heading down to Tiajana to take part in a YWAM Acts 1 prayer gathering later this week. We hope this will be a time of refreshment and revelation as well as give global perspective to what is happening across America and with our international neighbors.

Saturday night training, worship and prayer. Starting this Saturday night New Song will host a training and worship service that we are so blessed to be a part of. The Circuit Riders will be serving on Saturday nights and are expecting God to move! Our motto! Save the lost, revive the saved and train them all!

We believe God is on the move in America. We absolutely have a heart for the nations! We long to see revival across the world, but God has given us a heart to see his spirit spread across America. Our kids are the next generation. What is waiting for them in America in the school system, the health system and in the work place is not encouraging. The youth of America are dying. Dying to lust, addiction, financial burden and struggleing to find their own identity. We can give them hope, a life saver, identity in a man. A man named Jesus!

Please join with us in prayer for our nation!

Thank you and blessing!
The Ords

8/23/11

Home is where the heart is. Currently home is a hotel! We are now on our two week outreach staying in a one room hotel room! I am always so surprised at our kids adaptability. They move right into where ever we go. The boys have their cars and Grace has her baby dolls and books and they just move in. By the end of the day as we were driving and as bedtime approached one evening Ethan said “I want to go home now” (they say this quite frequently when they are tierd and while travelling and I have to catch myself).  I think oh no, they miss home (wherever that may be)  maybe  Tacoma or Kona or maybe Nanas and Papas house. So I ask them “where do you want to go? ” again he says “home” like I should know what he’s talking about. He answered me you “you know mom, the place where the couch turns into a bed” and the place where the cushions get fought over and its decided who gets the privilege of sleeping on the floor.

Life is good, home is where the heart is and it is where we sleep.

9/9/11

We are just rapping a trip back to the Pacific Northwest! Wow it couldn’t have been a more beautiful trip. The weather was in the 80′s our whole trip (which is you know anything of the PNW is not too common) Josh was able to go Salmon fishing and we visited “The Lake” but our reason for the trip back this week was to move out of our old house in Titlow. We sold a ton of stuff and packed away a few things. We are going to spending some time down in Southern California  in the Irvine/Huntington Beach area on an extended outreach with some Circuit Riders from our school. We are renting a house that is furnished so we don’t need to haul anything down with us. I looked at the storage shed after we packed it up and just laughed. We truly live out of suit cases. It is a funny place to be and there is so much peace and joy travelling light. It is definitely an adventure!

So much fun seeing family! Cousins!

Gracie and Granda Ord! Such a special time!

11/11

We are here in Newport. Yeah! Our kids room is a closet! Yes, they love it! It’s HOME The kids loving having so many Aunties and Uncles to play with and read books with and there is a play area in our front yard which is a moms answer to prayer. We just had a great night fellowshiping and ministering to a local family (husband and wife with their teenage kids) so fun to minister as a team! It’s been a fun first full day! More to come.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support. We are so blessed by the family and friends that we have.

Please continue to pray for our team here. For community housing and transportation needs as well as individual finances for our family and for the others that are with us here.

Stay tuned, more this week!

Circuit Rider Outreach in Orange County

8/27/11

What a ride! We have been in Orange County now 2 weeks. We are here for our schools 2 week evangelistic outreach but our family as well as about 30 other Circuit Riders will be staying for an extended outreach.

Today we met as OC team and talked vision and spoke words of faith and a good friend put it best. He said ” the time is now!”  We are always going to need more training, more money and always more revelation of who God is and His love for us, but we need to go now! We live when we step out in faith and God meets our step.

We had an incredible outreach. I have attached a few of the videos of some of the testimonies that came from out outreach.  I had the amazing privilege to hear Josh speak one night at the tent gathering. The Lord moved so radically through Josh.  I told him I even wanted to rededicate my life to the Lord that night!  It was awesome! Many came to the Lord and were set free from addiction and hearts were healed.

I am astounded at the fruitfulness, goodness and faithfulness of the last 2 weeks!  Honestly, we went into this school with great expectation of the Lord moving in our hearts and among the students.  However, I am absolutely blown out of the water at the testimonies coming out of this time.  The students are learning basic biblical truths on Salvation, Prayer, Worship, Sanctification, Discipleship, Evangelism and many more.  We are instantly applying all that is learned throughout the week during the local outreaches.  Sports camps, VBS, basketball court and skate park outreach, door to door knocking as well as cleaning up a community and building a aquaponic farm for a community in need.  The school is sharing that salvation is a man and his name is Jesus! The “Good News!” They are filled with great faith and joy!!  In the last 2 weeks we have seen over 30 salvations within the community and in our prayer and ministry times on campus, physical healing and healing of the heart and emotions. Over 30 salvations!!! Praise the Lord!!! As we are  finishing up week 2, the teams were able to return to the homes that accepted Christ last week and share with them the basic teachings of Jesus and work on getting them plugged into a local church! …We will share the highlights next week!

3 weeks to go and then what?…

We are leading a team to Orange County for an amazing 2 week outreach in the Huntington Beach area. We have joined with 5 local churches in area as well as the Denver YWAM Base and are so excited to see Revival in the LA/Orange County area.  There will be over 300 people hitting the streets in Orange County. We are sending  90+ students and 15 staff from Circuit Riders flying from Kona to LA,  80+  from the Colorado YWAM base as well as dozens of volunteers from the local churches in Orange County. We are expecting to see a  massive culture shift on the streets, in homes, in the church and throughout the Orange County area!  We will also be visiting local collage campuses and praying for the students to rise up in holiness and break the mold of the classes before them. Inviting the collage students to worship and joy filled prayer at beach bonfire pits in the evenings and praying for the sick and needy late into the night on the streets is just a small part of what we will be doing….Can’t wait! Stayed tuned for more details!

Blessings, The Ords

Josh and Taylor giving gifts from the students as a show of respect, honor and thankgiving for the Hawaiian people who have welcomed and blessed YWAM and our schools.

Circuit Riders!

They have arrived… here in Kona that is! The 7th was arrival day and we accepted over 260 students. We are a group of over 300 now with staff, a pretty stacked team. Arrival day was great and orientation day Friday was even better! Today was the first real day of class and the Lord is already touching and healing hearts.  We have an pretty amazing group of students who want Jesus to be known in their generation. We have 18 different nations represented in our school and ages ranging from 17 to 63 years old. Today they learned about the life and values of the Circuit Rider. The lives of men like Francis Asbury (1745-1816), the founding bishop of American Methodism and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism who rode thousands and thousands of miles by horse back to bring the gospel to the people. They traveled through wilderness and villages, they preached every day at any place available (peoples’ cabins, courthouses, fields, meeting houses, later even basements and street corners.) The vehicle has changed but the message is the same. We are not on horse back but this generation is a generation of sold out radical followers of Jesus who are ready and willing to take the gospel to the hardest and darkest places. ” No family too poor… no house too filthy…no town too remote!”

1st Monday Morning Campus Wide Worship!

Please join us in prayer over the next several weeks for our family,  the rest of the staff and for our students. Pray for protection, that we would see personal breakthrough and pray the Lord would use all of us to bring hope, salvation and revival to this Island as we are going out into the community to serve several days a week.

This is just day one. I will update later this week as well as the weeks following as I am sure there will be testimony after testimony to share!

Love and Blessings,

Josh and Jess

Water day for the Circuit Rider school! A wave slide! Check out Eli with one of the students on the water slide! His smile is HUGE!

Ethan giving the horseback riding a try! 4th of July Rodeo! With all the talk of the Circuit Riders he had to give it a try!

Eli with Tyler! Such a fun day!

Eli and Hero trying to decide what to play next! We love the nations! Such a joy to have friends living on campus with us from all around the world!

Grace's first race! She sprinted an entire mile and placed 4th in the kids race!

June was an incredible month! We had an amazing time catching up with friends and family! We celebrated Grace’s birthday and we are just two week shy of the start of the school we are leading this summer. So many things to be thankful for!

The kids with Nana on Papas last day!

Our time home was super fun! We felt like we were on vacation at home! Thanks to all our friends and family for making our time home so special. Thanks for all those that helped make my dad’s retirement celebrations so honoring, thanks mom and dad for letting us stay at your house , the Baltazars for letting us borrow a car and to the Thomas’s for hosting a desert social at your home.

We had Grace's birthday celebration at the Fire and Fragrance and Circuit Riders Staff BBQ.

Grace's 7th Birthday! Our princess!

Grace is 7!!! How time flies! She is growing into a little girl so fast! She got her ears pierced  for her birthday present and  she feels (and looks) so grown up! We are watching her love for Jesus and her compassionate heart and love of worship grow daily! She told me a couple weeks ago that she was saving her money for a sister. I told her we couldn’t just go buy her a sister and she said “I know but it costs money to adopt right?” She really has a mothers heart even at a young age and so much compassion.

We were so blessed to have my parents in town during Grace’s birthday. We celebrated with cake and icecream at our staff family BBQ!

The Circuit Riders School starts in a little over 2 weeks. Josh is in full swing with staff training. We are super excited for arrival day July 7th. We have over 250 students coming from all around the world. It’s going to be an incredible summer.

Check out the link to the right. The new Circuit Rider Promo Video! This is the school we are a part of this summer!  

We are back in Washington! We are so blessed to have been given the opportunity to visit for a couple of weeks. We are celebrating my dad’s retirement and also catching up with friends and family. Stay tuned for some fun picture of the kids with their cousin and Grandparents.

Josh just got back from a YWAM leadership and prayer gathering in Tijuana, Mexico. The time there was an incredible time of worship, prayer and a time of gaining strategy for the next wave of youth we believe are coming into missions. The attendees were some of the key leaders from the largest training bases in the US.

We are so excited to have a time of fellowship and sharing of our heart for missions at a Dessert Social Thursday June 2nd!! We want a time set aside to catch up with friends and share what we have been doing and what our next plans are in missions. We also want to give the opportunity for friends to hear they can partner with us and ways they can co-labor with us on the field. If you are in town and this is something you would like to attend or if you know anyone who would be interested in what we are doing, we would love to have you. Please send us an email and we will foward you the details.  If you are not local and want to hear more about the Circuit Riders School this summer or how you can be a part of raising up this next generation of radical leaders, please connect with us by phone or email.

We have Josh’s cell while we are in town.
253-222-7477
Joshnjessord@gmail.com

Love and blessings, from our home state!

Companion Fare- It’s true! We are headed back for a visit to Tacoma before our busy summer here in Kona. We were so blessed to have been given a companion fare and with a few miles and a travel voucher we now have tickets to Tacoma confirmed.  We arrive in plenty of time to attend and help with last minute planning for my dad’s retirement party. We are super excited!

It was all out war with the Roachs! We won!

Critters (a.k.a. cockroaches, termites and ants) - Ethan says “I hate cockroaches!” I tried to explain to him that God made cockroaches so we still need to love them. He then asks me why God made cockroaches because he thinks they are stupid. Oh my, do we have a critter problem. We moved into this amazing room with twice the square footage and 10 times the amount of bugs. When they sprayed the whole building for bugs a few weeks back, we think they forgot this room. So all the bugs that got evicted out of their cozy places came to our great room. Well 1/2 bottle of “Hot Shot” (bug spray) and a few days of cleaning up dead termites and cockroaches the problem is almost solved.

Joy!

I Corinthians 13: 4-8 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸ Love never fails.

Today throughout the busyness, the challenges and joys of raising our 3 amazing kidds I thought on these two verses.  They are both about “Love”.   One of the greatest gifts and assignments God has blessed us with is these kids. Grace is so smart and loves worship and loves to love people. Ethan’s is brilliant and so creative! He is always thinking and always wanting to bless and make people happy! Ethan loves to sing like his daddy and has an incredible voice!  Eli is a fireball, full of energy and always trying something new without any fear or hesitation. He is a stong leader and super funny!

Matthew 22:37-40 ³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^[c]38 This is the first and greatest commandment.³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Today I am reminded that I must love the Lord first and fully with all that I have, so that I can fully love those around me.  Loving is my full time job! And I love it!