Thursday, June 25, 2009

Each One, Doing Their Part

Before I tell this story, let me update you on our Father's Day service. We were extremely blessed to have Steven and Lori Dougherty lead worship for us. Sometimes you don't realize the hole of not having live worship leaves in your heart. You could say, "Well you can worship God anytime!" Yep, but there is something about corporate worship and live leading, that makes it so three-dimensional.

We handed out a cup of beer nuts (in church!) to every dad and gave them a book as they left. Our daughter put together a beautiful video called Daddy's Hands and we had a clip from Wild at Heart, a men's study we're starting. The sermon was brief but to the point about Peter's encounter with Jesus, and coffee and lemonade topped off the fellowship time afterwards. It was nice to be in a building. It felt 'official' in a good way.



Here is most of our team after praying for the service. Josh was inside working out the sound with Steven and Lori.

Now for the story: Last night was our final night of Greg's series on community, sharing our vision with our small group. We focused on the P of EQUIP (Everyone Qualified, Unified, Ignited in Purpose). Purpose has to do with God's story. We focused on reaching out to others far away (missions). Greg told a story that was told to us Tuesday as we had lunch with one of our board members who was visiting from Arizona.

Bruce is on the Barnabas team at Frontiers, a missions agency that is in every Muslim country. Bruce's job is to send his team members anywhere in the world where one of their missionaries is in crisis. This story has to do with a couple in Pakistan who's marriage was in crisis and they called Bruce for help, saying they wanted to go back to the states. As Bruce prayed about who to send, he realized he was going to be near Pakistan shortly and decided to go himself.

The couple that was there had been brought by God to replace a couple who had been there for 15 years. This couple went to vising the existing couple to see if they wanted to be missionaries in the area. While there, the husband who had been there died suddenly. The wife decided it wasn't a safe place for her and her children without a husband and decided to come back to the states. The visiting couple felt God's calling to take over the group this couple had worked with for 15 years. They spent the next year preparing to go and went.

Now Bruce is there counseling the couple. The couple decided after a few days of reconciling to stay in the country and continue ministering to their group of young men. The group had become bold in their outreach to the Muslims in the area. One of the men decided to go into Taliban camps and share the gospel. The cook for the Taliban camp accepted Jesus. The cook realized it may not be safe for him to be following Jesus amongst these extremists and secretly snuck out of the camp. The Taliban group searched for him and found him and begged him to come back. "But I'm following Jesus now, and you're not." The Taliban replied, "That's okay, you're a really good cook and we need a cook, please come back." So he did.

The cook continued to witness to the Taliban and some also became Christ followers. One day as the gentleman who led the cook to Christ was entering the camp, he was met by one of the new Taliban members. As the Taliban member reached out his hand to greet the bold witnesser, he set off a bomb and they were both killed.

The moral of the story is, that was we support Frontiers and Bruce, he does his part by saving marriages on the mission field. The missionaries do their part by discipling a group of men. One of the men did his part and witnessed in a Taliban camp, converting the cook. The cook did his part by witnessing to the Taliban, many of whom have accepted Christ. Little by little, if we all do our part, souls are saved from an eternity in hell. God loves every Taliban member. Wouldn't it be awesome to see all the Taliban come to Christ?

Have a blessed sunny Thursday.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Good News of Great Joy!

Last week Greg and I took Steven (our Teen Challenge grad) to Old Tyme Pastries to offer him an intern position for one year with our church. Though he wanted to say yes at the time, Greg asked him to pray about it for a week, which he did. He announced to us last night that God said, yes, he should take the position. We are so excited about what God is going to do through this young man.

We handed out invitations to every person last night for our Father's Day service. Greg decided to hand the invitations out so that Steven would get all the leftover invitations after everyone took 5. He got a pile and told Greg after the meeting, that he didn't have enough! Greg will start meeting with him each week to disciple him.

We gave Steven a ride home last night and he told us that they took a picture of many of the Teen Challenge folks from the area. Steven held a 300lb. man on his shoulders for the picture. Yes, Steven is quite a strong young man.

Blessings, on this clear blue sunny Thursday!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Long Time No See!

Okay, two people have hit me up to blog, so here I am.

First, an update on EQUIP. Today we rented the Rube Boesch building for our Father's Day Celebration June 21st. We plan to start weekly services August 2nd. We also got our liability insurance, required to rent from the City.

The last two weeks we had Jason Hicks come and teach our team about Crown Financial Ministries principles. He gave us amazing tools and did an excellent job teaching. It's a bummer, he was only here for two weeks!

As for us, it seems spiritual warfare has heated up recently. Jason experienced some, including becoming very ill a few days before he was scheduled to come teach. We had our large mower's accelerator cable break when training our daughter to ride it, then the axle on the trail slipped out of place the same day, then the next day we had a flat on the trailer before we pulled out to pick up the mower from repair. Our small group, the same week and week before, went through several difficulties as well. Greg has also battled bronchitis the last couple of weeks, but is doing better with antibiotics, though the cough is still there. But, on the bright side, I've had two people tell me they know God is going to do great things through EQUIP. That makes all the irritation well worth it.

I think I mentioned previously we got tile in our master bath and bedroom. I'm now painting the bathroom and caulking and painting the base boards in the bedroom. Can't wait until the bedroom is back in the bedroom, instead of the dining room!

The treadmill of our life is still on warp speed. If it hits the speed of light, I'm jumping off!

Mark is being a big help around the house, making dinner 4 times this week and doing odd jobs. Kristen just finished her Typhoid medication and will start her Malaria pills in a week or two. She goes to the Dominican Republic in a couple of weeks.

That's a quick update for now. Have a blessed windy Tuesday evening.