PIU Yap Ministry Team #6 – Jesse Hartt

I am resuming the interviews with our PIU students who were part of the Yap ministry trip earlier this summer. It has been getting a little harder to track down the last few interviewees as they are scattered out working and seeing their families. Today’s interview should have been easy to find, since he is living in my house for the summer, but Jesse has been very busy as part of the leadership team of the Ranch Christian Fellowship and working to make a little money for his Fall semester tuition. Jesse is a 3rd year Liberal studies major. Last year he was very involved in the campus as a Resident Assistant in the dorm, chapel worship band member, Voices of Micronesia singer and a tutor in the computer/English lab – all while taking 6 classes. He plans to cut back a little this coming year so that he can devote more time to being the one of the main preachers at RCF. Right now he is working at the Japanese School of Guam with Joyce.

This is Jesse’s 2nd time to be part of the Yap summer team. This year his main responsibilities were planning and performing the programs and music and “a lot of relational ministry.” He also “did a lot of preaching,” and “helped give (team leader) Josh moral support – prayer, encouragement and wisdom.” He was also in charge of the Colonia VBS. He describes the team, “We all kind of worked in every position – It was a pretty cool team because everyone could do just about anything.”

Jesse said that his biggest challenge was “my own heart.” He had an “inner struggle with my emotions the first two weeks.” He experienced the spiritual warfare the others talked about as he was “easily angered and jealous and down on myself.” He was “tempted to not trust my team members.” He knew “I had to pray and change my attitude.” But “I was trying to deal with it alone (reading Proverbs every day) and not beating it, so I told the whole team how I was feeling and had them pray for me and then, it was a like a heavy backpack was taken off of me and I mostly felt great the rest of the time.”

Jesse is “praising God for His faithfulness.” He usually does not have a hard time “getting messages to flow” when he prepares to preach but while in Yap he had a difficult time preparing anything. But when he got up to preach, “God would speak through me in a powerful way.” He is also thankful for the “deepened relationships” with the team and the Yapese youth. “We really got close to some people and saw evidence of continued change in people’s lives.” Days after “the emotional response during the retreat the young men were still talking about how to keep meeting together and stay strong in their struggles and asked for help with their temptations.” “Last year they never spoke up like that!”

The Yap trip last year was Jesse’s first ministry experience. “PIU jumped me into ministry last year in Yap and then dumped me face first this year … in a good way.” Classes gave Jesse the content needed for preaching and teaching but “I had to get dirty with how ministry works in RCF and as an RA in the dorms.” “I had never stood in front of a crowd, played music for people, or shared my testimony before. I can do all these things now I never thought I could do.”

Jesse encourages his classmates, “Nothing is more rewarding than seeing God’s kingdom spreading out into the world and in your own life. God grows you in cool ways when you jump into stuff like that.” He also asks that everyone “keep praying for the people in Yap – there are not too many workers, but there is a lot of work to do there.”