Last update from the US (for now).

Hello friends,

We are into our final week of school!! It’s so hard to believe we are on the final stretch, it feels like its gone so fast but at the same time it feels like we’ve been here forever and it’s truly become home. We are sad to be leaving this amazing place and especially leaving all the people we’ve become so close to over the last 9 months but at the same time we are so looking forward to seeing you all at home and sharing all we’ve experienced and seen this year.

This year has truly been life changing in so many ways. We came here primarily to get more activated in the supernatural, to grow in our gifts and get more prepared for ministry but God’s vision for this year was so much bigger than ours. We did get all we came for but we also got a lot, lot more. I think one of the biggest things that has happened this year is the transformation of how we see ourselves. We have both grown in our identity as a son/daughter of God and what that actually means. We have had new revelation of the father’s love for us and our identity as children, that he loves and accepts us 100% all the time and we never have to strive, perform or try to earn his love and acceptance. There is so much freedom in truly, truly knowing that and that’s what we have and still are experiencing. We’ve come to see ourselves as heirs of God which means we are royalty, not merely sinners saved by Grace as so much of the church have called themselves for years. God has a much higher opinion of us than that and it’s time to start seeing ourselves as He does and living from that place of royalty and sonship- it’s a lot more fun and a lot easier.

Another major thing that has happened in us this year and that Bethel is so good at is that we’ve really learnt how to do life well. By this I mean we’ve learnt how to live in a healthy way with healthy relationships with each other and with others, where we get our needs met. This is so important and not many churches teach on it or even acknowledge it. God has given us emotional and relational needs, not only spiritual needs and its so important we get healthy in these areas in order to live well. We’ve learnt a lot of tools in this area to do with communication, having healthy boundaries, doing healthy confrontation and more, that are all vital for successful living and to have a successful ministry.

These are just some of the things that God has done in us this year, there is too much to write it all down but to me they are probably some of the most important. We need to know who we are and how to do life well in order to be able to minister effectively to people. We need to know that we have the kingdom of God living inside of us so we can release it to others and see them saved, healed delivered. So thank you for supporting us both financially and prayerfully this year, it has been so beneficial and such an incredible experience.

So what’s next for us?

As some of you know, we have been praying about going to Brazil after the school. We have been in touch with churches and different people about that and everyone is really excited about us moving over, it’s pretty set that we will be going and working with my parent’s church.

There we’ll be leading the youth and getting involved in different social and evangelistic projects (such as outreaches to homeless, street kids, poor neighborhoods and working and ministering to prostitutes and transvestites). Another big thing in our hearts that we will be doing there is to start classes to teach and activate people into the prophetic, healing, evangelism and into this culture of  Love and Honor that we have been learning here at Bethel Church, and eventually develop and plant a school of ministry over there, which takes us to my next point.

Bethel School of Ministry’s 2^nd year is a lot more focused on leadership; the program is designed for us to keep growing and learning but also to equip us to take this culture outside Redding as leaders. During second year we get to lead 1^st year students at different outreaches and mission trips, and get to be a lot more involved with the church. We also get to travel more with Bethel Church leaders (like Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton and others) in ministries trips around the US and the world, which is such a blessing and honour.

Also, in 2^nd year we get more specific teachings in the areas that we feel called to, such as, Christine and I get to take a class on school planting with the person who oversees all BSSM around the world, which is pretty amazing, We get to see how they do things on day to day bases, how they deal with everything and also get to receive a lot of their wisdom just by being with them.

We feel that personally and ministry-wise that 2^nd year would be really beneficial for us, not only for everything that we could get out of it, but also to go deeper in relationships we've made here and for building life long partnership in this place, which we think will be essential for us in the future. We also feel that there’s still so much we could and want to get from doing life in this environment and culture.

Partnering with us.

So there’s a few ways you can partner with us for the next part of our journey:

One of the ways is prayer.You could keep us in prayer. Pray that God would continue to open doors for us to walk in the fullness of our destiny, for Him to keep bringing people that will pour into our lives as well as people that we would be pouring into, for relationship and partnership that will bless and help us to keep growing, for our families and more, whatever you feel like God is saying over us, declare it and pray. We highly appreciate your prayers.

You can also partner with us financially. Having shared the great stuff about second year, we still have one challenge, it costs just as much as the 1^st year of school, $4200 each.

During the summer Christine and I will be working to save up for the year ahead, and if you would like to partner with us financially, you could donate online on www.ibssm.org, by clicking on the ‘Give Online’ and then ‘Give to Tuition - Make a donation to a student's tuition.’ Then just put one of our names in and donate.

Also feel free to contact us for any information on other ways you could support us.

We 100% believe in what God has been giving us, and in what He’s gonna do in and through us in Brazil and other places where we’re getting involved, and for that I believe that your partnership with us, whether through prayer, financial or in any other way is reaching and affecting more than just our lives, but it is an investment in the expanse of His Kingdom. We have had so much favour and grace during this season here at Bethel, we think this has created momentum for so much more, which makes us excited about all that God will do next year.

So this is it for now, can’t wait to see some of you guys in Ireland soon, and please get in touch if you want to spend some time together, we’re looking forward to it.

Love and Blessings

Daniel and Christine Oliveira

 

Mission Trip stories...

Hello everybody,

Well, we’ve been back from our mission trip a few weeks now so, think it’s about time we updated you all on how it went. It was an amazing trip, so much happened in and through us (too much to write it all down here) so I’ll just give you some of the highlights for now and pretty soon we will try to give more details on everything that God did during those days.

More than anything else, this mission trip was a time to step into a supernaturally natural lifestyle for us. Through healings, miracles and through seeing people being loved by God and accepting Jesus into their life, both Christine and I were activated into this mindset and a deeper realization that wherever we go and whatever we do, we carry the kingdom of God with us -the fullness of it. God was showing us in so many ways what it looks like when we walk consciously that Jesus, the Hope of glory, lives inside of us.

I hope you enjoy reading the stories and that somehow, our week would encourage and bless you guys.  

So it all started on a beautiful Monday morning, we left Redding at 5.30am and didn’t get to LA till 6pm or so. Once in LA we decided that go out and eat would be a good idea, the plan was to walk to a Mcdonalds (located only a few blocks away from where we were staying) eat and walk back to unpack and get things ready for the week ahead, normally, it shouldn’t take us a lot of time to do that, the thing was, God had other plans for the night.

On our way to Mcdonalds we were overwhelmed by the amount of homeless people we met. We decided to stop and talk to some of these guys, soon enough we were sharing about God with pretty much everyone we met or walked passed us on the street. On that ‘walk’ to Mcdonalds we saw God stepping in and people getting healed, saved and delivered. It was so much fun to just love people and see God showing Himself to people. The short walk had turned into a long spontaneous outreach. And yes, it set the standard for the rest of the trip.

In LA we were mainly working with an organization called Hope for the Homeless. It was great just to serve them and help them out with their weekly outreaches. They were a team of about 5 guys who faithfully serve the homeless of L.A week in, week out so we got to encourage them, prophecy over them and teach them more about the prophetic and supernatural, which they loved. Two main outreaches we did with them were at Venice Beach and Skid Row. These two places were full of homeless people, the need was quite overwhelming and we quickly ran out of food and other supplies we were giving out, but we never ran out of love J. Everyone we encountered was hungry for prayer, hope and encouragement and we got to give out lots of that.

We met a lovely woman at Venice Beach called Victoria who was in her forties and was living on the streets with her partner. We talked with her a while and heard a bit of her story and then found out she had back pain so we prayed for her back and the pain eased and she felt the presence of God. We also encouraged her with some prophetic words we got for her and just loved her the best we could in that short encounter. We could see how impacted she was by God’s love for her, it was beautiful.

We also set up a ‘Destiny Reading’ table at Venice Beach, which was a lot of fun. There’s quite a lot of mystical stuff going on in that area, and our Destiny Reading table team was pretty amazing. People were coming over for us to read their destiny and we got to prophesy and speak true destiny over their lives, some people were rocked by what God was saying to them and kept asking how did our guys knew so much haha, it was amazing to share God’s heart with them through all that. Our God is so creative. 

At skid row we met and talked to a lot of broken hurting people but one that stands out is a woman called Shelia. We talked with her for a while and found out that she’d been baptized years ago, a few of us got to speak truth over her life and remind her that she was a princess in God’s eyes, that she was a daughter and that God was longing for a living relationship with her. She was so undone and overwhelmed by God’s love, it was beautiful to watch. Her sister came over to us while we were praying for her and started to pray with us, by the end of the prayer Sheila was trying to describe to us how she felt the Holy Spirit while we were speaking, there was such a purity in that moment, by then we were all feeling God’s love and presence around us, we would’ve stayed in that place with that woman all day if we could.

A lot of people got encouraged and saw hope in that place that day, which is incredible considering how ‘dark’ that area is.

Also during our week, we went to Disneyland. We thought it would be a good idea to have a day off to relax and ‘rest’ our minds from all the intensity of school. We got there, split people into teams of fours and went on to have fun.

A couple of hours later we came across our missions trip leader and she start to share how they had been praying for people and that someone got saved and a girl walked out of a wheelchair. Christine and I looked at each other and to the rest of our team, and we knew what we had to do. Here’s the story.

A couple of months ago Bill Johnson shared a message that really challenged me, long story short, he was talking about how God speaks through parables, how sometimes He hides things not from us, but for us, that in the process of searching and finding those things character and faith are built, and that builds the foundation for the revelation that was hidden in what he said. Why does He hide it? Because He wouldn’t give us something that we are not ready for, and also because if we could see it, we could have it, that’s how things works in the Kingdom.

So once we heard what God did through our leader, we knew we had to go after the same stuff. Christine, I and our two friends saw this girl on a wheelchair not long after that, we told the girl that God had just healed someone at Disney and asked if we could pray for her, she said yes. We pray, God shows up and heals her, she walks, haha, two years after a horse felt on her leg she feels pain free again, Come On!! Then her mum asks if we could do the same for her nerves problem, we then explained to the girl who got healed that the same God who healed through our prayer could use her, and we asked if she would like to pray for her mum, as she had just experienced the power of God, even though she was quite surprised and nervous, she says yes and prayed for her mum, God shows up again and her mum felt a lot better by the time we left her. How awesome is that?

After that we started to pray, prophecy and encourage other people around the park. Our day off  had turned into a fun God-filled day. On total 4 people got out of wheelchairs and some other people gave their life to Christ on that day. It was incredible. On that day God really spoke to us all about living a ‘supernatural’ natural lifestyle. That just like Jesus said in Mark16.17-18, signs and wonders would follow those who believe. We learned that there’s no ‘turn off’ ministry time and ‘turn on’ fun time, we carry the Kingdom of God with us wherever we go, that Jesus the hope of glory lives inside of us, therefore He’s with us anywhere, anytime, and that He’ll always back us up if we decide to step out and release his kingdom into places and people’s lives. It was a good day.

After that day there was a shift in our ministry times, we felt more confident that God is always good and that he had good plans for every single person we encountered on our way.  We got to minister more homeless, prostitutes and transvestites at the red light district on Friday and Saturday night, and on Sunday we got to speak at a meeting in the Angelus Temple building, which was a lot of fun, we saw more people getting healed and rocked by God’s love. On Monday morning we drove back to Redding and that was the end of our mission week.

We would like to thank everyone who supported us on this mission trip, as I said, not only did we get to love on people and see them getting saved, healed and delivered, but we were transformed by God’s love for us and revelation of His Kingdom. We were activated into this lifestyle of His goodness. This wouldn’t have been possible without your prayers and support.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading our mission trip ‘report’, and we pray that you would somehow be encouraged to seek more of God and His Kingdom, and that you would be more aware of what you already have available through Christ, the hope of glory who lives inside of you.

We will be updating this again pretty soon, as we only have less than 2 weeks left of school, stay tuned!!

Love and Blessings

Daniel Aloe-vera