We planted most of the garden in March and did the heat-loving veggies just over a month later. We harvested so many veg-gies all spring, summer and fall which provided some free food for many of our staff. We enjoyed things like sugar peas, beans, carrots, artichokes, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, corn, a variety of mel-ons, sunflower seeds, peppers, lettuce and spinach. Some of these things were added to the salad bar for our community lunches and others were just left for staff to take home. Some even went to areas that we do ministry in like the House of Hope and the families in Hamilton City. As we keep learning more about growing food or-ganically we can teach our fellow staff, our students before they go on outreach , the friends we’ve made in our areas of local ministry and we can take teams on international outreaches to teach the na-tions.

Our Aquaponics system is running full time now using solar power. We’re still working out the kinks and continue to make improvements. With winter’s short, rainy days we realize that we need more solar panels to run our pumps more efficiently and keep our fish happy. We currently have blue gill and large mouth bass in the system and are growing a variety of lettuces, spinach, herbs, peas, beets, radishes, and onions. The fresh, tender lettuce is beauti-ful and delicious! We’ve been invited to India to build an aquapon-ics system and garden for an orphanage. Initially we planned to go in January but the trip has been postponed due to a visa issue. We’re so excited to put our feet on the ground and our knowledge to use in the nations. When we’re not harvesting, weeding, watering or feeding we run the grounds department for the base. This means a lot of grass mowing, tree trimming, log splitting and flower bed tending. We are also pruning and fertilizing the fruit trees on base and seeing beau-tiful and exciting results.

Oosterhouse

Adventures Youth With A Mission - Chico, California Winter 2015

2015 has been an exciting year in agriculture! In February and March we had the opportunity to attend a 4 week seminar about organic agriculture called OATS (Organic Agri-nutritional Trainers School). It was a dream come true and really changed the direction of our ministry here. We were blown away with how much we learned even though Robin grew up on a farm and we have both gardened for years. What impacted us the most was how we need to challenge the worldview of those we’re teach-ing before we can teach them new agriculture methods.

Part of our OATS school was starting a large garden on base near our aquaponics system. The ground there was very hard, full of weeds and baked in the sun every summer. I was skeptical! Our teachers taught us how to use a weed eater to “scalp” the ground by beating the weeds right down to the bare soil. Then we made planting beds, on top of the dirt, from our huge leaf pile on base. We put down cardboard covered with wood chips to form the paths. No digging, no tilling, so easy. I was skeptical! We planted seeds right in the leaf pile mulch with some handfuls of compost that we started collecting the year before. Some tiny lettuce seeds fell a few inches down in the leaf mulch. I was very skeptical! Our leader kept stressing that we are planting like God plants. Some seeds fall, some leaves fall on top, some rain falls. God really knows what he’s doing

because this garden did AMAZ-ING for it’s first year!

“And [she] laid Him in a manger, because there was no

room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7 Do your holidays ever feel so busy with shopping, baking and parties that there’s no room for Jesus? He is the hope of the nations, the rest for the weary and the light in the darkness. He’s the one gift we can’t live without and he’s the answer the world is looking for. Invite him into your busyness so you can spread his joy to everyone you meet this season. Merry Christmas!

Our classroom with some of our teachers. Tomatoes grown from seed.

First fish Solar panels and battery bank

Lots of lettuce

Look who came to visit! In November we hosted a YWAM gathering for all the bases in central and northern California. We have these every fall, it’s a time to worship together, seek the Lord together, and just fellowship with our YWAM family. This year we were blessed to have the founder of YWAM, Loren Cun-ningham, come to speak at one of our ses-sions. He’s over 80 but still travels all over the world and does book signings. Listen-ing to his stories and his passion for the nations made me want to become a missionary all over again! :)

Dan is one of the few guys on base that gets to “play” with the tractor. Here he is working with a couple of other guys to remove a large tree branch that fell on an empty staff house. It’s com-mon for our valley oak trees to drop large branches when the temps skyrocket. Looks like he’s having all the fun!

In May, Robin and the boys visited Michigan for Robin’s parent’s 60th wedding anniversary. It was only a 5 day trip since it was dur-ing the school year but it was another opportunity to see our beloved

parents and grandparents and to see Oma (Dan’s grandma) one last time. We knew her time was short so we gave her lots of hugs and said “see ya later”. She joined Opa in heaven in July.

Local Ministry… We are part of a group of staff that does ministry in a town near Chico called Hamilton City. It has a population of about 2,000 and is around 95% Hispanic. We sup-port the guys that lead a small group for some middle and high school boys. Robin just loves these boys and shows it by making them cookies and giving them “mama hugs”. Some live with their grandmas because their mom has moved away and their dad is in prison.

In May our staff put on a Life Festival in the beautiful park in the center of town. Locals could sit in their lawn chairs and listen to tes-timonies and a variety of musical perform-ances. There was dancing, soccer, face paint-ing, fellowship and best of all, free food! We’re trying to get everything in order to replace this unbelievably bad roof for a sweet lady named Gloria. She has two broth-ers and a niece liv-ing with her and

they all have some sort of health problem or mental disability. We’ve had shingles donated but still need approximately $2,500 for supplies and dumpster rental. Please let us know if you’d like to contrib-ute to this project.

In June almost all of our staff par-ticipated in a week of King’s Kids training. The parents learned many techniques for doing ministry as a whole family and the kids had their own fun times of learning and grow-ing. Our teens were really chal-lenged to grow in leadership. We had many worship times together

and had a variety of group games to compete in. On the last day we led a kids event at a park in Sacramento and spent some time in prayer in the beautiful capital building. This was a very exciting summer for Caleb. He was part of our 180 Youth Summer program for the first time. He had some great YWAM-style teaching and outreach opportuni-ties. He also did a lot of housekeeping and dishes during the sum-mer camps. He loved it and wants to do it again next summer.

2015 has been our best year yet in missions. God has used our past experiences and pas-sions for building (Dan) and

plants (Robin) and combined them in a ministry that we LOVE! God is moving us towards short term aquaponics trips to India, Uganda and China. While this sometimes feels overwhelming and scary, it forces us to seek God’s heart and guidance for tim-ing and problem solving. He’s a good father that we can trust! Thank you so much to everyone that prays for us and financially supports our ministry. Have a blessed New Year!

Stay in Touch Dan and Robin Oosterhouse 15850 Richardson Springs Rd

Chico, Ca 95973 (530)342-3713 H

Robin - oostfam@gmail.com Dan - drcj13@gmail.com On facebook, find our

“Oosterhouse Adventures” page. oosterhouseadventures.blogspot.com

Join our Ministry We are currently not fully funded so if God is nudging you to partner with us please send a check to us or to YWAM Chico at the address to the left. Please attach a note speci-fying that it’s for us. You can also go to ywamchico.com and choose the “Donate-support a missionary” button.