This Friday Night

A couple of weeks ago we had a meeting with the elders from our church, which is now a larger group since the group now consists of the elders from both churches that fused last month. We really appreciated the words of encouragement and advice, but the part that really stood out to me was their concern and love for our youth. Some of the elders have been concerned with a recent trend with some of our youth which is to go the “Las Llanas”, the place where youth go to party on the weekends. It's not that they think going there is all together bad, but what they don't like is how some of the youth, especially some of the High Schoolers, look forward to going there every week. For some it has become the highlight of their week. So after much discussion we came to the conclusion that we need to offer an alternative for our youth on the weekends. Up to this point the vision of our youth center has not taken flight and suddenly we felt like this might be our opportunity to start doing something, even though we don't have our own place yet. So the last Friday of this month we are going to start opening the church up on Friday nights after our normal youth meetings so the youth can hang out , play games and for the first night we will have pizza!. We would like to do this a couple times a month hoping this will keep our youth at church rather than at the parties and that also it will encourage the youth to invite their friends and other youth from our neighborhood to come and hang out with us. Please pray for us as we prepare this time and that the youth would be encouraged to come and hang out. Also pray that God would give us creativity in the types of activities we plan. They are very excited about the possibilities and the plans we have to come!

Our little dancer!

This is Elisa dancing, I don't know where she gets her moves from, I know it wasn't from me!

Jr. High Retreat

This last month we had our Jr. High retreat. I was a bit nervous about this time because they are Jr. Highers, and well let's be honest, they can be weird. But I had nothing to worry about, in the end it was great time. They were a great group and behaved quite well, they actually behaved better that our older youth. The part that really excited me was to see how open and willing they were to receive from God during the times of teaching and worship. God did something very special in this group and it was neat to see youth sponsors praying with them, but then to also see them praying for each other. Please pray for our Jr. Highers that God would continue to work in their lives and give them hearts that are open and willing to receive from Him.

Fun and Games!

Times of Teaching

Brian teaching on the humanity of Christ

Back in Spain

We are now back safe and sound in Spain. We had a pretty good trip travelling with the girls. Since our longest flight was a night flight we they slept the entire time, which was really nice. When we arrived in Madrid though we discovered that none of our luggage made it with us. We have everything now thankfully and Noelia has been busy getting things organized around the house.
Mikaela was very excited to see her old room and her toys. She was also excited to see her "Abus" or "abuelos", which is spanish for grandparents. She seems to be adjusting well to life here, it's her sister Elisa that seems to be having a harder time. The first few nights we were up til 2 or 3 in the morning because Elisa didn't want to go to sleep. She is doing much better now, but she still wakes up a lot during the night, which is unusual for her. We are hoping that soon she will be back to sleeping through the whole night.

It's been a while

Sorry we have not been updating our blog over the last couple of months. We have been here in the States for the past two months for North American Ministry and have still one month to go.

We have had a good time here catching up with friends and family. Mikaela and Elisa are enjoying spending time with there 8 cousins they have here in the States.

The primary purpose of our time here is to share with congregations what we are doing in Spain and how God is working there. It is also a time for us to reflect on the past three years of our ministry in Spain and a time to prepare for what is next.

As we begin to get prepared to return we are eager to see the youth from our church and to hear what has been happening in their lives, but we are also excited about moving forward with our vision for a youth center, which now feels like it is on the horizon.

Please pray for us as we begin to pack and get things ready. For safety as we travel to the remaining churches we will be speaking at and also that God would give us the words to say as we speak.

Thanks again to all of you who are supporting us and lifting us up in your prayers!

The last few weeks or so!

Just wanted to update you all on what has been happening over the last few weeks and also let you know what is coming up. The biggest and most exciting event that is coming up is that we will be flying to the States a week from tomorrow. We will be there for three months, speaking at different churches, attending retreats and seminars, and also catching up with family and friends. We hope to see many of you while we are there. It is bound to be an adventure flying there with two little girls. We aren't so worried about flying with Elisa. We flew a lot with Mikaela when she was around 6 months old and it wasn't really that difficult. It is Mikaela who we are worried about. Flying with a two year old she give us plenty of stories to tell later. Please pray for our trip, that everything will go smoothly.

Now for what has happened. Over the last few weeks as we have been trying to get thing ready for our trip to the States we have had several other events going on. The first one is one the I (Brian) have been doing for the past month. There is a group of volunteers from our church who will be going to Africa this summer to do service work. I have been meeting with them on Sunday afternoons to explain to them some things about culture and how they should act while there. I really have enjoyed preparing for these times as it has helped me in becoming more and more familiar with the Spanish culture.

Another thing that happened just last weekend is that we had a business meeting with our church. This was a very important one for us because we had a large proposal to make to the church. Our church is going through a merger right now with another congregation from our city. The other congregation is building a new church facility that will be big enough to host both our congregations once they combine. So our current facility will be available hopefully by the ends of this year. We made a proposal to the church to allow to use it as a youth center. The response we received was positive, but we won't have a final decision for a few more weeks. The location would be great and we wouldn't have to do much work, everything is ready to be used. Everything else we have seen was more expensive and needed a lot of work. Please keep this in your prayers that if this is the place God has for us that he would open doors.

Elisa's First time in the ocean

At the Beach

Special time with our youth

This last weekend we invited a young man name Itiel to come and speak to our youth group. He spoke Friday and Saturday to the youth and then on Sunday he preached during our time of worship with the rest of the church. While the topic for the weekend was Evangelism he spent most of the time talking about the Love of God. He explained that it doesn't make much sense to go and witness to others if we as a group aren't passionately in love with God. He went on to say that if we are in love with God it will show to others. That His love will flow through us to others and this is the foundation of evangelism.

We had several times of prayer for the youth and God really began to work in several of their hearts. We really feel that this was a really important time for our group and we are praying that greater things will come from this time we had together. That God would fill each of us with His love and His Spirit and that He would work through us to begin reaching out to those around us.

Video of Elisa!

Testimony!

As many of you know part of my time I spend helping other guys through an internet ministry called SettingCaptivesFree.com. At the end of their 60 day course they will give a short testimony and I wanted to share this one with you. I won't say his name, but I really was excited and blessed to see what God was doing in his life!

Here is his testimony:
Early in my life (around 5th grade) and on through high school my life was dominated by a preoccupation and an expectation for sexual activity. As a late bloomer in regards to puberty I struggled with expectations from brothers and friends that I be involved sexually with the girls my age that were willing. A lot frustration resulted as many unfulfilled desires were only started and not followed through on. Pornography and sexual fantasies began to fill that frustration throughout high school. I became a believer in college and eventually transferred to a Bible College for 4 years. During that time lust was still a temptation but I thought it had been conquered for the most part. Slowly over time my fantasy life would reawaken at times periodically. I assumed getting married would cure this, and it did help a lot to have healthy sexual relations. Over time, especially during the most stressful times of life, I began to return to sexual fantasies. During 18 years of marriage we have always been involved in a good church. The last 4 years I began to live more of a hypocritical life was becoming more miserable. I got to the point last year that I nearly lost my job and my marriage (along with 4 kids). I have taken this course over a 4 month period and have enjoyed more freedom than ever in my life. (It is an excellent course) It has been good to build consistency and relearn how to walk in freedom. God has led me to a Biblical counseling group in my church that has helped me to work on related issues such as pride, contentment and pre-occupation with myself. I am extremely thankful that God pursued me and loved me even though He had every right to allow me to continue to walk away in my disobedience. I feel as though I have over used His mercy and grace, but he continued to be like the Prodigal father looking for my return. In Luke ch 4 Jesus said that he has come - "TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD."

Highlights of the last week or so!

Life here in Spain is flying by so fast, it is hard to keep up. Yesterday I had an exam for my spanish classes. I feel it went well, but I can never really tell. The last time I thought I did really good on a mid-term exam I failed it. I think our professor likes to be tough on us now and then he lightens up on the final exam. I will find out tomorrow how I did.

Also last friday we made a trip to the airport in Biblao (the nothern coast of Spain). We went to pick up a Leonie. A girl from Germany who will be staying with us for the next three weeks. Her parents are friends of Noelia. Actually about 10 years ago Noelia lived with them for 6 months as a nanny and she took care of Leonie. So it is a little weird for her to see her now all grown up. She is here to study English. I know what you are thinking, "Study English in Spain?" It sounds funny, but since her parents know that we as a family speak English they felt she would have plenty of opportuinities to practice with us. She has been a lot of fun to have around and the girls love her.

On Friday after youth group we will be going to a concert. One of the guys in our youth group, Dani, is a drummer in a local band. They are becoming more and more popular in our area and have actually just finished with their first music video. You can actually see it on youtube if you like. Here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFjTlRGE_1s It's obviously in Spanish, but they sound good.

Anyhow that's all for now, I hope you are all having a good week!

I feel like I have a lot of things to catch up on. A lot has happened since the last time I wrote something on our blog so I will try to fill you in on a little bit.

The biggest and most exciting event has been my parents coming to visit us. They have been with us for little over a week now and we have enjoyed having them around and I know it has been really good for the girls to get to know them. We have been blessed with some really nice weather lately and have been taking them out to see several different parts of Spain. This is there second visit to Spain so we had already shown them most of Burgos before, so this time we have been showing them places outside of Burgos.

Visiting a village called Potes

Mikaela and Elisa with all their grandparents!

Another big event that happened last weekend was we had a special dinner for our youth group. All we told them was that we were going to eat supper together, but we didn't tell them what or how we were going to eat. We had "World Awerness Meal" together. Each one was given a number and that detirmened their economic status in the world. Two of them were able to eat nice meal with meat, salad, bread dessert, etc. Others ate pasta with cookies and the majority of the youth ate rice. A few of those who had rice were able to eat a small portion of beans as well. Then there were a couple of the youth who were beggers.

Afterwards we had a time of reflection asked them what we can do to help others who are in need. As a group we decided our first step would be to collect food once a month and donate it to a local ministry that will then distribute it to families in need.

La Matanza

This last weekend we as a family had the opportunity to experience a very traditional Spanish event, La Matanza. Years ago in the villages of Spain, long before refrigeration and grocery stores, the families in the villages would kill their pigs in the winter time. They would use almost every part for food (and they still do). Many of the Spanish delicacies that we have today come from this old tradition. Many still practice this here in the villages and it ussually brings the whole family together for this special event. A family from our church here invited us to come and to experience their family's "matanza". While we didn't get to see the whole event, which usually lasts the whole weekend, we did get to take part in some of it. When we arrived the pig was already dead and before they could begin the butchering process they needed to remove the hairs on the pig. In the picture below you can see them burning the pig with some type of dry plant.

Next the took the pig inside to begin removing all the wonderful things inside of the pig. Almost all of it was used later.

Then later Noelia was able to help prepare a very traditional sausage from our area called "morcilla" They take the intestines from the pig and fill them with a mixture of cooked rice, onions, peppers, seasonings, and most importantly pig's blood (like I said they use almost everything) The morcilla is then cooked in large pots for several hours. Then whenever you want to serve it you bake it in the oven a while longer.

This is morcilla! It is actually quite good. It is one of the most typical things you can find from our area of Spain. The next time any of you come to Spain will be sure to let you try some.

Mikaela is Two Years Old!!!!

Today is Mikaela's second birthday. It is so much funner this year because she is much more aware of the fact. She is growing so fast and is learning so many new things. We are so thankful to have her in our lives and pray God's best for her. Last Saturday we had a party for her with some of her friends from church, it was a lot fun!

This last weekend

This last weekend there were several big events for us. The first one was on Friday night when we had a special time of worship and prayer with the young adult group and the high school youth group. We set up several worship stations around the church where the youth could worship God in various forms. One room had a cross where the youth could write down something they are struggling with in their lives and then take it and nail it to the cross. We had another room for praise and thanksgiving where the youth could write or draw their praise and thanks to God. There was another room with the Third Day video "Communion" that has clips fromt The Passion movie and there the youth could partake in communion. There were many other rooms, but these are a few of my favorites.

Here are a few pictures from the event.

The other big event that happened over the weekend happened on Sunday morning. As we have mentioned over the last month or so we have been working hard on the youth center project and this last Sunday we had an opportunity to present it to the church. Several of the ones who are apart of the board for the youth center helped to present this project. We shared with the church what exactly it is a youth center, why we want to do this, and for who do we want to do this. We also asked for their participation in the project through their prayers and financial contributions. Please pray that God will help us to raise the money we need to start this project. We have building we would like to rent, but obviously need the finances in order to do so.

Mikaela and Elisa

Here are a few pictures for you viewing pleasure. There is also a link to a photo album we have in the upper right hand corner of our blog you can click on.

Mikaela Dancing

Mikaela dancing to kids songs with motions.

Elisa's Dedication

This last sunday at church we dedicated Elisa. We thank God for the blessing of having another beautiful daughter. Here below is a picture of a prayer time the church had for us and for Elisa.