September 7th was a fun day!
Monday, September 16, 2013
Dan's Birthday
I have been meaning to post some pictures of Dan's 11th birthday. We went to the zoo in Brownsville, had take out from a really yummy taco place here in Los Fresnos, and had pie and ice cream for dessert.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
First Trip to Mexico- *updated
Tomorrow afternoon the five teams of trainees and some of their family members will leave for a three day trip to Mexico. They will be continuing the ongoing church planting work in five different villages in North Eastern Mexico. Josh's team will be going to village "ML". It usually takes 3-4 hours to drive to village ML but is less than 100 miles from the border of Mexico... but as you may know, there could be significant rain along the way. All of the villages are quite a bit north of where the storm is predicted to make landfall.
Hurricane Ingrid
Please pray that:
•the teams are able to share the gospel in a real and life changing way
•God would be glorified
• all of the teams will be able to make it to their villages, and home again, safely
Update-
Ingrid has now been downgraded to a tropical storm. However, it is effecting all of the villages that the teams were planning to go to today. The decision was made this morning to delay going until tomorrow, later this week or possibly even next week.
Thank you so much for your prayers! Please continue to pray for wisdom for when to go and for the people of Mexico who are receiving 25 inches of rain, strong winds, and flooding.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Orientation and first week!
Well the first two weeks of school are over! What a whirlwind of information and activity! It was so great to have Brita and the other wives there for the morning sessions the first week of school. I wanted to highlight a few of the things we will be learning here at the Center for Pioneer Church Planting(CPCP).
Probably one of the biggest truths that was covered numerous times was the fact that the GREATEST mission field we have is our own heart! We need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day. This is so true! If we want to reach people next door or plant churches in a village with no opportunity to hear the gospel, we need to let God, through the gospel of Jesus, change our hearts. The gospel, and Jesus Himself, is the aim of our worship, the object of our affections and the source of anything good that can flow out of my heart and life.
I wanted to give you a flavor of what we will be doing here and how the first week went. I was going to post the training outcomes for our time here, (and in fact I will at the end of the blog for those who care to read about it. It's a tall order and packs a lot into two years of training) but instead I will share this past week of school.
It was a week called Exposition in Missions and was a study of expository preaching through inductive bible study. It was also a survey of the book of Matthew at the same time. I was very nervous for the start of this class since;
There is so much more we have been learning about studying the scriptures but I won't bore you with all my notes. All I can say is 8 hours of class time five days a week on challenging subjects makes me so exhausted at the end of the day. But this isn't academic! This has made me see how incredible God is to give us His words! There are no accidents in the bible and He has orchestrated it all to point to Jesus and declare Him as the One who redeems and saves those who believe in Him. There is so much gold in the bible and it makes my heart leap and worship Him!
It's so humbling to go from a job you loved and was good at, to something that is so unfamiliar and hard to get at first. But this is part of what has been burning on our hearts for the last few years. We GET TO study and learn and glean how to be missionaries and we get to do missions work in Mexico! I will post more about that later but our first trip will be September 16th.
Brita will be posting on our family life too but it has been awesome to be here and a challenge to figure out our new surrounding and a new way of life. So here are a few pictures from orientation. We love you all and are so thankful for your partnership in the mission to the nations!
Have developed an understanding and strategy of church planting, based on the seven-stage model:
1. Before You Go: forming, preparing and launching the team
2. Language and Culture Acquisition: Reach a level of proficiency in the
3. Evangelism: Preaching the Gospel to groups and individuals
4. Discipleship: Discipling believers while working toward gathering those believers into a body
5. Gather Believers: Developing the body of believers
6. Leadership Development: Empowering and Installing leaders in reproduction who are themselves beginning the early stages of their own reproduction
7. Reproduction and Movement: Continue to lead and guide the church in reproducing itself and planting other churches
Know, value, and demonstrate expositional preaching/teaching (getting it right), redemptive historical hermeneutics Be able to communicate and apply the Bible and its One Story of Jesus expositionally in a cross-cultural way via:
Biblical theology, Genesis-to-Revelation, the One Story of the Bible in Jesus
Oral Bible-storying and story-crafting Have developed an understanding of: The Bible, history, mission, discipleship, church, and worldview as Christocentric and eschatological in orientation
The Bible as Biblical theological in its progressive revelation of redemption
The Bible as missional
Christ and the Incarnation as "on mission"
God as a missional God
The Church as a missionary people
Life as a mission activity
The world as a mission field
Be able to demonstrate, articulate, and communicate a clear biblical missiology, ecclesiology, ethnography, church-planting methodology, and philosophy driven by an observable desire and vision for Christ’s name globally
Be able to demonstrate a skill set for pioneer missionary work through:
Preaching and teaching skills aimed at church planting in remote areas of the world with limited technology
An initiative and entrepreneurial spirit by:
o being creative in hard-to-get-to places
o being adaptive in an extreme cultural context
o being proficient in persevering and enduring
o being willing to get dirty and get wet and eat anything (except humans)
Survival skills for living in remote areas of the world
Diplomacy skills in lands and people groups cross-cultural
Survival skills for staying alive in hostile areas of the world, especially under intense spiritual opposition
Perception cross-culture among unreached people groups for redemptive analogies
Linguistic ability in order to communicate the gospel and to be incarnational cross-culturally
An ability for survival under intense spiritual opposition
An ability for living long periods of time with a TEAM community in remote isolation within extreme cultural contexts
An ability to work toward long-term career-like vocational pioneer church planting in extreme cross-cultural contexts.
This ability is characterized by:
o tough flexibility with team members aimed at team duplication
o the cultivation of a reproducible church planting ministry
with exit plans
o the development of reproducible mentoring and cross-training
in the lives of younger missionaries
o exploratory and reconnaissance skills for next church planting effort
A proficiency in incarnational ministry.
Incarnational ministry means:
o leaving home culture and comfort zone and attempting to live in the culture of those they want to reach
o carefully observing and seeking to understand the native culture in which they minister and, as much as is humanly and biblically possible, conforming themselves to that culture
o humbling ourselves and living as servants of others in their host culture
o seeking to enter personally into the lives of people and establishing meaningful personal relationships that become the basis of evangelism and disciple-making
o seeking to live out and embody the essence of the gospel among those to whom they minister Living out the motto of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:
"For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them…I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings."
A willingness and ability to live with a warfare mentality, doing whatever it takes and making the necessary sacrifices for the sake of the gospel.
An ability to work together as a Team in remote areas of the world.
The CPCP graduate will be able to:
o Engage in evangelistic and discipleship ministry as a team
o Work proficiently in collaboration
o Develop team leaders
o Communicate cross-culturally in working with a translator.
This skill set includes:
· Preaching
· Teaching
· Story-telling
· Conversation
· Diplomacy
o Recognize each team member’s spiritual gifting
o Aim at the completeness and maturity of the team
o Utilize in ways that best match the particular gifts
o Communicate, clarify, and carry out functions and roles within the team with a view toward the success as a team and valuing team members:
· Love for one another
· Mutual submission
· Esteeming others better than oneself
· Putting another’s interest ahead of oneself
· Always ready to serve one another
Display, cultivate, and consistently articulate an attitude of submission toward ministry leaders through obedience-oriented training
Demonstrate administration abilities:
o Crafting a memorandum of understanding for the team
o Vision and Strategy development and articulation by the team
o Perpetual evaluation and assessment of team ministry, strategy and vision
Organize and lead team gatherings and meetings:
o Worship
o Devotions
o Regular team meetings
o Regular prayer meetings
Demonstrate an ability to deal with team conflicts through biblical and spiritual conflict resolution
Utilize various team member’s gifts to effectively carry out the team’s vision and each team will conduct weekly team worship meetings on Thursday mornings
Christ-like character, characterized by biblical leadership (deacon/elder-like) qualifications, apply the Bible to all of life, and able to shepherd, mentor, and model for others (the heart is the biggest mission)
A love for the local church
A love for the Rio Grande Valley and its communities
The demonstration of an ability to put together a strategic plan and organizational development for pioneer church planting ministry
The demonstration of a clear understanding of and commitment to unreached and unengaged people groups
A strong relationship with the sending church, and be able to articulate the role of the sending church in mission
A support structure for families working and living in teams
Cross-cultural disciplines such as ethnography and linguistics
Probably one of the biggest truths that was covered numerous times was the fact that the GREATEST mission field we have is our own heart! We need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day. This is so true! If we want to reach people next door or plant churches in a village with no opportunity to hear the gospel, we need to let God, through the gospel of Jesus, change our hearts. The gospel, and Jesus Himself, is the aim of our worship, the object of our affections and the source of anything good that can flow out of my heart and life.
I wanted to give you a flavor of what we will be doing here and how the first week went. I was going to post the training outcomes for our time here, (and in fact I will at the end of the blog for those who care to read about it. It's a tall order and packs a lot into two years of training) but instead I will share this past week of school.
It was a week called Exposition in Missions and was a study of expository preaching through inductive bible study. It was also a survey of the book of Matthew at the same time. I was very nervous for the start of this class since;
- I haven't been in school in 11 years
- I had no experience in exposition or really even knew what it meant,
- I received my first assignment a week before school started and had to present it the second day of class! I realized right then that I wasn't going to be living in my comfortable world of spreadsheets and numbers anymore!
There is so much more we have been learning about studying the scriptures but I won't bore you with all my notes. All I can say is 8 hours of class time five days a week on challenging subjects makes me so exhausted at the end of the day. But this isn't academic! This has made me see how incredible God is to give us His words! There are no accidents in the bible and He has orchestrated it all to point to Jesus and declare Him as the One who redeems and saves those who believe in Him. There is so much gold in the bible and it makes my heart leap and worship Him!
It's so humbling to go from a job you loved and was good at, to something that is so unfamiliar and hard to get at first. But this is part of what has been burning on our hearts for the last few years. We GET TO study and learn and glean how to be missionaries and we get to do missions work in Mexico! I will post more about that later but our first trip will be September 16th.
Brita will be posting on our family life too but it has been awesome to be here and a challenge to figure out our new surrounding and a new way of life. So here are a few pictures from orientation. We love you all and are so thankful for your partnership in the mission to the nations!
This is the first day of orientation.
Playing Frisbee golf blindfolded in tall Texas grass is "challenging"
Wondering what we have gotten into with a team building activity in the rain.
A team building day at the beach!
TRAINING OUTCOMES
Have developed an understanding and strategy of church planting, based on the seven-stage model:
1. Before You Go: forming, preparing and launching the team
2. Language and Culture Acquisition: Reach a level of proficiency in the
3. Evangelism: Preaching the Gospel to groups and individuals
4. Discipleship: Discipling believers while working toward gathering those believers into a body
5. Gather Believers: Developing the body of believers
6. Leadership Development: Empowering and Installing leaders in reproduction who are themselves beginning the early stages of their own reproduction
7. Reproduction and Movement: Continue to lead and guide the church in reproducing itself and planting other churches
Know, value, and demonstrate expositional preaching/teaching (getting it right), redemptive historical hermeneutics Be able to communicate and apply the Bible and its One Story of Jesus expositionally in a cross-cultural way via:
Biblical theology, Genesis-to-Revelation, the One Story of the Bible in Jesus
Oral Bible-storying and story-crafting Have developed an understanding of: The Bible, history, mission, discipleship, church, and worldview as Christocentric and eschatological in orientation
The Bible as Biblical theological in its progressive revelation of redemption
The Bible as missional
Christ and the Incarnation as "on mission"
God as a missional God
The Church as a missionary people
Life as a mission activity
The world as a mission field
Be able to demonstrate, articulate, and communicate a clear biblical missiology, ecclesiology, ethnography, church-planting methodology, and philosophy driven by an observable desire and vision for Christ’s name globally
Be able to demonstrate a skill set for pioneer missionary work through:
Preaching and teaching skills aimed at church planting in remote areas of the world with limited technology
An initiative and entrepreneurial spirit by:
o being creative in hard-to-get-to places
o being adaptive in an extreme cultural context
o being proficient in persevering and enduring
o being willing to get dirty and get wet and eat anything (except humans)
Survival skills for living in remote areas of the world
Diplomacy skills in lands and people groups cross-cultural
Survival skills for staying alive in hostile areas of the world, especially under intense spiritual opposition
Perception cross-culture among unreached people groups for redemptive analogies
Linguistic ability in order to communicate the gospel and to be incarnational cross-culturally
An ability for survival under intense spiritual opposition
An ability for living long periods of time with a TEAM community in remote isolation within extreme cultural contexts
An ability to work toward long-term career-like vocational pioneer church planting in extreme cross-cultural contexts.
This ability is characterized by:
o tough flexibility with team members aimed at team duplication
o the cultivation of a reproducible church planting ministry
with exit plans
o the development of reproducible mentoring and cross-training
in the lives of younger missionaries
o exploratory and reconnaissance skills for next church planting effort
A proficiency in incarnational ministry.
Incarnational ministry means:
o leaving home culture and comfort zone and attempting to live in the culture of those they want to reach
o carefully observing and seeking to understand the native culture in which they minister and, as much as is humanly and biblically possible, conforming themselves to that culture
o humbling ourselves and living as servants of others in their host culture
o seeking to enter personally into the lives of people and establishing meaningful personal relationships that become the basis of evangelism and disciple-making
o seeking to live out and embody the essence of the gospel among those to whom they minister Living out the motto of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:
"For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them…I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings."
A willingness and ability to live with a warfare mentality, doing whatever it takes and making the necessary sacrifices for the sake of the gospel.
An ability to work together as a Team in remote areas of the world.
The CPCP graduate will be able to:
o Engage in evangelistic and discipleship ministry as a team
o Work proficiently in collaboration
o Develop team leaders
o Communicate cross-culturally in working with a translator.
This skill set includes:
· Preaching
· Teaching
· Story-telling
· Conversation
· Diplomacy
o Recognize each team member’s spiritual gifting
o Aim at the completeness and maturity of the team
o Utilize in ways that best match the particular gifts
o Communicate, clarify, and carry out functions and roles within the team with a view toward the success as a team and valuing team members:
· Love for one another
· Mutual submission
· Esteeming others better than oneself
· Putting another’s interest ahead of oneself
· Always ready to serve one another
Display, cultivate, and consistently articulate an attitude of submission toward ministry leaders through obedience-oriented training
Demonstrate administration abilities:
o Crafting a memorandum of understanding for the team
o Vision and Strategy development and articulation by the team
o Perpetual evaluation and assessment of team ministry, strategy and vision
Organize and lead team gatherings and meetings:
o Worship
o Devotions
o Regular team meetings
o Regular prayer meetings
Demonstrate an ability to deal with team conflicts through biblical and spiritual conflict resolution
Utilize various team member’s gifts to effectively carry out the team’s vision and each team will conduct weekly team worship meetings on Thursday mornings
Christ-like character, characterized by biblical leadership (deacon/elder-like) qualifications, apply the Bible to all of life, and able to shepherd, mentor, and model for others (the heart is the biggest mission)
A love for the local church
A love for the Rio Grande Valley and its communities
The demonstration of an ability to put together a strategic plan and organizational development for pioneer church planting ministry
The demonstration of a clear understanding of and commitment to unreached and unengaged people groups
A strong relationship with the sending church, and be able to articulate the role of the sending church in mission
A support structure for families working and living in teams
Cross-cultural disciplines such as ethnography and linguistics
Sunday, August 25, 2013
We made it to Texas!
Yes that's right. We moved to Texas... in August... voluntarily.
It was a long 1,996 miles but we are so thankful to be here! Thank you for all the prayers and encouragement as we said goodbye to our family and friends and headed for training in Texas with To Every Tribe! Also thank you for the prayers for Dan and Clara! They got horrible food poisoning the night before we were to leave Montana from bad clam chowder. So we had an extra day in Montana while they and the clean up crew recovered. I will now follow the advise I received from some friends....... never eat clam chowder in Montana. After all it's almost 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean. Valuable advice :)
Orientation starts tomorrow and with unpacking, finding out where to buy groceries, completing a very thorough checklist of school paperwork, support letters, (please let us know if you don't get our mailing and would like to. We have new prayer magnets in the update we just sent out),meeting a lot of staff, second year students and first year students, and receiving our first assignment that is very daunting for someone who hasn't been in school for 11 years. On the other hand we have heard samples of how incredible thew training is here in the classroom and in Mexico and that is very exciting for us!
The kids are transitioning great with 30+ kids to play with. We will post more on that and the things they get to catch in another post!
So here is a picture update of our road trip and a few shots of our new (and still unfamiliar) life in Los Fresnos.
We are so thankful for all of you! We feel like God has been so faithful and he is ready to fill us like psalm 81:10!
This coming week is orientation week. Check back for a recap!
It was a long 1,996 miles but we are so thankful to be here! Thank you for all the prayers and encouragement as we said goodbye to our family and friends and headed for training in Texas with To Every Tribe! Also thank you for the prayers for Dan and Clara! They got horrible food poisoning the night before we were to leave Montana from bad clam chowder. So we had an extra day in Montana while they and the clean up crew recovered. I will now follow the advise I received from some friends....... never eat clam chowder in Montana. After all it's almost 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean. Valuable advice :)
Orientation starts tomorrow and with unpacking, finding out where to buy groceries, completing a very thorough checklist of school paperwork, support letters, (please let us know if you don't get our mailing and would like to. We have new prayer magnets in the update we just sent out),meeting a lot of staff, second year students and first year students, and receiving our first assignment that is very daunting for someone who hasn't been in school for 11 years. On the other hand we have heard samples of how incredible thew training is here in the classroom and in Mexico and that is very exciting for us!
The kids are transitioning great with 30+ kids to play with. We will post more on that and the things they get to catch in another post!
So here is a picture update of our road trip and a few shots of our new (and still unfamiliar) life in Los Fresnos.
Got the uhaul the day before we leave
Mr. Litle decorating our suburban while we slept. Loved it!
2 hours into the 2,000 mile trip (notice the naive smiles)
3 hours into the trip (First "are we there yet happened at mile 72)
7 hours into the trip
7.5 hours into the trip
Coveted Subway (Great job mom and dad giving Evie soda...scary!)
A one day stop a Water World! All the anticipation was worth it!
Somewhere near Pueblo, Colorado- ARE WE THERE YET?!
Brothers.....
Sisters.....
Cool spider on our way.
Seriously, cotton. That is cool!
We're not in Montana anymore
Our apartment. We are upstairs on the left
Our living room
Clara and Evie's room
Working on sending updates
Relaxing on the porch with mama
View from our kitchen
A few hours at the beach!
We are so thankful for all of you! We feel like God has been so faithful and he is ready to fill us like psalm 81:10!
10 I am the Lord your God,
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
This coming week is orientation week. Check back for a recap!
Sunday, August 11, 2013
1 Month Whirlwind in Pictures
So the last month has been a crazy whirlwind of activity. More downsizing, packing up our apartment, meeting friends and family for the last time in a long while, and yes preparing to move 2,000 miles away to Texas... in August. One scripture has just been hitting me hard with the greatness of our God and what we are doing. Luke 5:2,3,5,6,10, and 11 says:
2 He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” 11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.
We do this because Jesus says Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel. How will they hear unless someone preaches and how will they preach unless they are sent?
So here we are going into deep waters with Jesus, preparing for what lies ahead because He called and that is enough. And the joy of being called and following Him is exceedingly great, for there is joy in His presence forever!
Taping out the uhaul trailer in our apartment
5'x8' or 6'x12'
Filling up the invisible uhaul
Some beloved shirts didn't make the cut
(not my decision)
Table gone and mess everywhere but the kids don't mind
Our bed is gone and the room is surprisingly spacious
Mama and Evie cleaning Grama and Grampa's garage for our stuff while we
are out of our apartment and before we leave.
The invisible uhaul transitions to the garage
Our stuff in the center (we aren't kidding ourselves
with the possibility of a 5x8 trailer anymore)
My new office in the way back
Evie and Brianna at the A.M. Welles going
away party. What a great company to work for!
Worshipping at New Hope for the last time, so bittersweet.
Evie with her great friend Samantha
Too much partying for some
Enjoying camping in the back yard
A rowdy game of broom ball with uncle Joe and cousins
Serious discussions with Brita
Craziness heading up to pick huckleberries
Evie hitting the jackpot
The cousins
Grampa and Grama enjoying a brat with the grandkids
Special swimming with Nana and Papa
And the cousins too
A special gift from our awesome New Hope church family!
On Tuesday August 13th at 5:00am we leave for Texas! We love you all and ask for prayer as we go and prepare to cast our nets!
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