Panama Trip Update

Thanks for your prayers for my Extreme Panama Trip!  We will not be able to go in January because not enough signed up, but instead of canceling we are rescheduling for Feb 28 - Mar 7! These dates actually work better for the few we already have signed up and they think some of their friends might be able to join because of the new dates as well.  We need probably 5 more people to sign up, so please keep praying to the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into His harvest fields.

Our Panamanian workers are ready for us to come and partner with them, and are setting things up for us for the new dates.  Please be in prayer for Panama as they have been experiencing lots of rain which has led to flooding and mud slides.  This should not effect where we are going, but it is effecting other churches we have partnered with and could effect travel of some of our translators.

Trip coming up in January

I am getting ready for an Extreme trip coming up in January to Panama.  An extreme trip means that we will be hiking into the jungles of Panama, sleeping in tents, and filtering our own water so that the native tribes can hear the Good News.  In many of these areas it is the first time the name of Jesus has been spoken.  I would love it if you would pray for this trip.  I am trying to recruit a full team right now and would love you adventurers to join me.  If you are not an adventurer please point any adventurers you know my way.  The trip is January 10-17, you can get more information by clicking here.

Asia Travels - Video 3

Asia Travels - Video 2

For a higher quality and larger view of the same click here (you can actually see the water polo a lot better)

Asia Travels - Video 1

Safely Home

Thanks so much for being a great cloud of witness covering me and my teams while I was in East Asia! I arrived safely yesterday and was even able to keep myself awake most of the day and sleep through the night. My brain is still functioning so far today, but I will put off updating you too much today knowing that my brain is still not completely out of the jetlag fog.

It was a blessed trip and I felt like we were able to serve the Lord and His church well while we were there. It was a little bit different trip than I am used to but I was expecting that. We were able to tell the Gospel to people in one-on-one settings and during English classes and we saw a few pray with us to receive Christ! Praise the Lord! What I thought was probably the most impactful was being able to train up the Asian believers in the EvangeCube and other things and encourage them to reach out to their countrymen. They will be able to reach many more than we would ever be able to talk to and they do not have to worry about the language and cultural barriers that we would face.


Please continue to pray for East Asia, the people we met and the churches!  More to come including more pics and video.

Estes Park Video

Click Here

Off to Colorado

I wanted to update you all on what is going on with me. I was able to go to all the different leadership trainings that I wrote about a few posts ago. The two most impactful were: the class on Storying, learning to tell the Bible in story form, the form oral learners are used to learning from; and I went to Atlanta with some of my church's children's ministers and learned some great things for my kid's worship ministry. Even though they happened back in April I am still processing some of the material :-).

I head out late this Saturday to Estes Park, CO. My church is having a Family Camp, and I am helping lead worship for the kids and will have 12 Kindergardeners looking to my partner and me for guidance and direction during the week! I will be car-pooling up to CO from TX with 6 other people (one other car) and we will be driving through the night. Please pray for safe driving, great weather, and open hearts (both adult and kid) to what God wants to teach them during the week.

Both of my Romania trips are not going to happen in July unfortunately. We had different churches at various levels of commitment back out or never really connect with the mission. This will be the first year in a number of years that I will not be traveling to Romania. I will be looking into 'what went wrong' for these trips to try and learn for the future. I definitely feel (as I stated in a previous post) that I have let my learning grow stagnant, but have come back to the notion that learning is an ever on-going process. Thanks for supporting me through this process.

I will be starting and leading a Community Group through my church in mid to late June. The group I am currently in is moving on. It has been a great group of learning and growing and I hope to pass that on to some other men. Two of the guys from this group will be joining me and helping me as co-leaders especially when I will be on mission. Please pray for the right men to get connected with us and for the leadership and direction of the group.

I am still going to East Asia in August on two trips. Please pray for open doors and for the team as we are applying for Visas.

1 Corinthians 9:19, "For since I am free from all I can make myself a slave to all, in order to gain even more people."

Panama Video

Back from Panama

I'm home!  Because I was in the jungles of Panama during this trip I was not able to update you periodically on my trip like I try to do.  But now that I am back I will try to recap the trip for you and share a few stories, pics, and videos over the next few days.

We left Friday for the Darien region of Panama.  This trip was headed up by a couple other e3 staff members Todd and Sheila, but they asked me to join on late because they were going to split the team up into three teams staying in three villages.  Todd, Sheila, and our Panamanian Coordinators (the Vegas) had everything planned out but God had some other plans.  We thought we would be flying into Panama City and sending the night at a hotel before heading out to Darien on Saturday.  Moises Vega thought it would be better to head down the road some on Friday so that the bus and boat ride Saturday would be less.  He had set up a hotel for us down the road that we would arrive at around 1 am.  Well in route we found out that the hotel had given our rooms to others, but we were flexible for the Lord and pressed on driving through the night in our run down school bus and the Vega's van.  Trying to sleep while bumping down poor roads.  At about 4 am we came to a church that Moises Vega knew about and we stopped and slept for 3 hours (allowing our bus and van drivers to get a little bit of sleep).

At 7 am we were back on the road, we arrived at the end of the road at about 11:30, and ate some lunch.  We then loaded up our very large canoe with all our bags, and our whole team of 37!  We thought at first that our boat ride was going to take 3 hours but before we set out we found out the plans had changed and we were heading to a different village that would take 5 hours.  The 5 hrs actually turned into 6.5 hrs!  

Praise God that our team was very flexible.  The verse from James 1:2-4 exemplified our team, "My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything."

On Sunday we split into our three villages and started the ministry by prayer walking our village.  It was a good way to turn our focus on relying on God's power and not our own.  It was also a good time to get to meet the villagers and create a bond before coming back to share the Gospel with them.  The next few days were spent sharing the Gospel and discipling the villagers through one on one times, children's meetings and adult cell group meetings.  We also had some great times to sit down with the pastor and the church members and encourage them in the Lord.

More to come: Stats, Stories, Videos...

Prayer Calendar for Panama Trip

click to enlarge

Leadership thoughts, and what's ahead

God is cool!  I know most of you know that already :-), but I was reminded of this recently.  I am in a discipleship group with about 8 other men, and we are discussing leadership right now.  For part of our study we are reading the book "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" by John C. Maxwell.  His 3rd law is the Law of Process, where he talks about how it takes time and continual growth to become a great leader.  Then he goes on to ask, "what are you doing right now to better yourself as a leader?"  When I thought about this question I decided I really wasn't doing much.  I had become pretty complacent, but decided I needed to look for opportunities to grow.  No sooner had I decided this I got email after email, call after call from individuals inviting me to events designed for me to grow as a leader in many different facets of my life!  God is cool!

The first event will be a Business Luncheon put on by my church this Friday March 7.  Then in the end of April will be my 'Leadership: Drink from a Fire Hydrant Extravaganza'.  I will be attending (and volunteering at) the CMA (Christian Management Association) conference on April 21-23.  Then on April 24 and 25, one of our staff is doing a training on Chronological Bible Storying (this is great stuff to learn because most people in the world still are oral learners).  To finish out April, I will be flying to Atlanta, GA with Children's staff from my church, Watermark, to attend the Orange Conference on the 27 - 30 to grow in how I serve kids.  This will help me both in my ministry at Watermark and my trips overseas.  Thank you Lord for investing in me!  The 'Process' has been put back into Drive and out of Neutral.

Also I need to update you on my travel schedule, and prayer requests.  I recently added a trip to Panama that leaves the end of this month March 28 - April 5.  One of my fellow staff is heading up this trip and needed a few more warm and capable bodies to make the trip work, so I volunteered.  It is an extreme trip, meaning we will be camping and hiking in the jungles of Panama.  We will be working with churches from Darien, Panama which is near the border with Colombia.  Please keep this trip in your prayers.  I had a trip of my own planned to David, Panama for May but will have to cancel because my main source of recruiting fell through.  I have two trips planned to go to Romania (back-to-back) but they are also in need of more people in order for the trips to go.  Please pray to the Lord of the Harvest to raise up workers for His harvest field, specifically Romania.  And don't forget that might include you :-)!  God could be calling you to a 1 or 2 week commitment to Romania, are you willing to answer His call?  These trips are tentatively scheduled for July 10-20 and 17-27 (might shift a week earlier depending on the Romanians' schedules).  Right after I get back from that I am leaving for East Asia for two trips August 2-20 that Steve Cretin is leading.  I am going to learn how we do ministry there, so that next year I can lead a trip there.

In June I will be traveling to Estes Park, Colorado with my church for a Family Camp.  I will serve in the Children's area as worship leader and possibly a group leader.  So as you can see my schedule (and specifically [as usual] my summer) is quite full.  Please keep these trips in your prayers, and especially pray for more laborers for Romania.

If your still reading, thanks for letting me ramble on!  Your support is invaluable to me.  You get the benefit of seeing this great picture of me and my family celebrating my Grandmother's 90th birthday.