What are we up to?

Well it has been a busy few weeks. P was in Holland for Amsterdam's Serve the City event, so she could she how STC worked up close and personal. She returned home inspired and very tired. They had over 200 volunteers and she said that it went well. She is in full swing trying to get things in order for our Serve the City Lisbon, in late July. At this point she is overwhelmed with the response. We have close to 400 at this point and we haven't even kicked off the volunteer part yet.

Our Matrix is growing here in Portugal. We been have seeing positive response to Jesus in our surf community. How could we not, with the wonderful surf families that we have on our team. Scott and Terri (Lastcalleurope.org), Zac and Hillary (see the Sawyer Family link), Marty and Carrie all have given so much to the surf community. We have just had John Carper, a well respected surf board shaper, with us recently. He spoke to our Christian Surfers community last Friday night. I was told that we had a good turn out and discussion of faith. Cool stuff.

Also there are many new families moving to Portugal in the near future. It feels like God is massing people here for something. People from America, Australia, and Italy. All of them with a heart to see Gods Kingdom spread. Wonder what the future holds?

Speaking of the Kingdom, some of our community rock the under ground scene in the name of God. Triplet, a Portuguese punk rock band, are kicking off their album release this Friday night, with a big concert. We are praying for a really big turn out. (Check out the Triplet link) There is great need in the youth community to see the Spirit of God move. So we are behind them 100%. They will be doing a tour of Europe this summer.

As for me I am in a time of pruning and seeking what it is God want from me. It is so easy to get wrapped up in all of the ideas that I have, but what is it that God is calling me to? What does it mean to disciple people? How much is to much? If we are going to give leadership away, and people have these busy lives, how do we do that? I have more ideas than answers at this point. For now we have moved out of my house and are meeting in Lisbon for our community time. I'm hopeing that this will allow for us to enter into relationship with people on the organic level. We will see.

I think that's about it. Be Blessed

Thoughts on being a disciple

So what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? That's the question that i'm asking myself lately. Of course there are all the pat answers. A disciple is a student of her teacher. A disciple follows the teacher. A disciple is dedicated to the teachers teaching.

All that is true. I feel it in my bones. But as a father of two. As a husband. What does it look like for me? How do I take this teaching of Jesus's and make it live and breath so that I am a disciple maker.

One of the things that has been bouncing around in my head is the idea that Jesus never calls us to an easy way. He does say that His yoke is light, but there are so many times when He expects His disciples to have this crazy faith in the power He offers and take these extreme steps of action.

Do I live like that? Am I to tired, to comfortable, to scared, to--- you fill in the blank. Do I take the calling of being a disciple to the point where I am willing to lay down my life. Am I a servent to those around me? Do I worry about what God will think of my actions first and what men will think of them secondly? Am I scared of looking crazy to the world?

I wonder if I have been polarized in my faith. On one hand wanting to be open to those I am bringing the Kingdom of God to. Wanting to not sound fanatical. Yet on the other hand wanting to see God work in radical ways, seeing people give up this world for the Kingdom of God.

As we expand the Kingdom of God here in Portugal, we must find the truth of this statement, "What does it look like in my life to be a disciple. And how do we make disciples." I wonder if we don't need to be strong with our statements of Love in Christs name and let God do the heart work.

Unexpected cool day

Yesterday was great. My friend Sophia took about 500 pics of me to send to this guy who has a t-shirt and jean ad he's scouting for. Anyhow, after driving all over the mountains and beaches taking pictures of me, the kids and I went to her house .We lunched with her and Nuno, her boyfriend.They have a lovely small, traditional style house out in one of the areas that really looks like Europe.
When I moved over here I expected all these small Europe Postcard streets. With little old ladies walking around with bundles of sticks on their backs, and little old men in wagons pulled by donkeys. (OK maybe that's an exaggeration). You probably can still find them somewhere in the country.But here, in Estoril, where we live,if you didn't see an Portugese, you'd think we lived near Carlsbad. It looks so similar to San Diego around here.
Out at Nuno and Sophias place it felt traditional. They live on the other side of Sintra mountain. There were small streets and older buildings. Very Old World. Very inconvenient. Very postcard Europe.We had a wonderful afternoon with them. They are great people. The kids got to go swimming in an old cement water storage thing that is right in front of their house. I think it's mountain spring water, because it was cold. They have a lot of little mountain springs around here.
So it was a great day. We were deepening our friendship with Nuno and Sophia. We skipped language school. We had a hot homemade lunch. And I got a whole bunch of pictures of ME:0

Blessings
Spence

Blessings or Karma ?

Sometimes you have those day's where nothing goes right. Other times you have a day like yesterday. Where to start?

Blessing #1My friend Rosario offered to come clean my house. Having P gone for the last nine days has caused a little mess. Rosario cleaned for four hours. And made us lunch from scratch.

Blessing #2 My team leaders Scott and Terri had the kids and I over for dinner.

Blessing #3 I can't pay my car insurance (My ATM isn't working) I'll have to wait till P gets home. Her card is working. But the insurance lady called and offered to extend it till I can take care of it. She offered. I didn't ask.

Blessing #4 A Portuguese friend called me to see if I would be interested in doing some clothing modeling and maybe shoot a short History film. Hello? Would I be interested?

God is so good. I was joking and I said to Scott "What did I do, or pray to get this? I need to do it more." I was joking, but sometime I wonder if I don't really think like that a little. Oh something good happened. I must have been good. Oh, something bad happened. I must have been bad."

It's kind of like Christian Karma, which I was very aware of back in the day. I wonder what my horoscope would have said about my day yesterday. I do know that I didn't forward something that said I would have horrible luck for 57 years, or something like that, if it wasn't forwarded. I don't think it's true, but the dog had taken a dump in the middle of my sons room when we got back from dinner.

Mothers Day w/out Mommy

Happy Mothers day to all you Moms. We're really missing all our Mom's. We hope that you have a blessed day.

The house is messy. The food is lousy. And everybody is watching to much TV. Other than that all is well.

Home Alone

Well this may not be the best way to start a blog, but this is where I'm at, and this is the when I finally found time to get one started. Paulas away and i'm Mr. Mom for two weeks. I'm sure she's worried that we will starve, but I've done a good job feeding us so far.
Life with the kids is 24/7 now that they are home schooling. And that makes for a messy house and when your having people over all the time for social events, people staying with you and other various and usundery things, that can be a pain.
Not a very exciting start, but getting started seems to be one of the harder things in life.
Blessings