As I Sit in the Denver Ramada Inn

I am getting ready to go to bed after having visited with my buddy Joel this evening. Joel and his family took us to The Cheese Cake Factory. We had a awesome visit. What a beautiful family. It was so great to see him. We've been friends for about 20 years. (No way!) We love you Kneedlers. Thanks for letting us living in your house for the last few days.

This morning we were introduced and shared briefly about Portugal with Foot Hills Community Church, one of our supporting churches. Very cool church. Very cool people. We really felt at home with them.

Ok you want to know about the picture. Well first let me say thanks Beth and Nathan. We had a blast. This picture was taken yesterday on the Royal Gorge River. We were treated to a wonderful white water rafting trip. If I could share with you the joy we felt doing this I would, but I can't put it in words.

It was an hour of bumpy, splashing, stick your head down into the on coming wave and paddle, whoa are we going under, WHOAAAAA YEAHHH!!!, kind of fun.

Before they let you go, there is all this scary "you could get hurt doing this" paper work to fill out and an unsettling "here's what to do if you end up under the boat" speech, plus there was the flipped over boat that we saw come rolling down the river before we launched. But none of that would deter the fearless crew.

We bounced down the river for an hour and in the end arrived safe, wet and happy at our destination. Memories never to be forgotten. Tomorrow we get up at the crack of dawn and head to California. And to think were all ready 1/3 of the way done with our trip. WHAT?

Be Blessed

As We Journey

As we journey through our native home land I am struck by the feeling of being a stranger in a very familiar place. Nothing is really strange, but it all feels so unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Things like driving feel a little awkward. I have to remember to stop at the stop signs. Stop signs in Portugal are a mere suggestion. And who ever thought that toilet paper could feel so soft? Or how about all the air conditioning; do I even like air conditioning? Not to mention 'Starbucks', one of the primary stops in every city we have visited. Oh the joys of a society that is geared around the desires and convenience of the consumer.

Our first 10 days were spent in Texas where the temperature was hoovering around 95 to a 100 each day, (That around 34 c for your Europeans),with heavy humidity. We visited many people from Paula's past (family and friends) and enjoyed the great hospitality of the South. The last day we were privileged to hang out with Nathan, Beth and Jack. We meet some great people there and were blessed to pray with Beth before her surgery the next day. Nathan shared the story of his journey to Jesus. It one of those wow stories. Nathan is Jewish and is a great story teller. (I think Beth should blog about it. Hint, hint.) We love you Nathan, Beth and Jack. Thanks for blessing us.

From there we headed out to Colorado. One of my best friend in the world, Joel, picked us up and brought us out to his house in Colorado Springs. Paula says this is the cleanest house she has ever been in in her life. (There is no way for us to leave this place as clean as when we showed up.) Joel and I would have liked to have spent some time together but, bummer, his whole family was heading out to take a family vacation the next day, so Joel and I didn't really get a lot of opportunity to hang out except for a few hours. But I am standing here in his kitchen blogging and house sitting while they are gone. It was nice to get to visit 'Garden of the Gods' today, which is just around the corner from their house. We do come from a beautiful country don't we. Sunday we will be speaking at "Foothills Community Church' in Arvada Colorado and then Monday morning we jet off to California. We will be there for the last leg of our journey.

Well that's a little up date on our trip. Looking forward to seeing you soon. No matter what ocean you live near. Be Blessed and leave a light on for us.

The Eye of the Storm

Thank you friend for coming and reading this. If you are here reading this blog then you must be a friend indeed because I have had no margin this last month the blog. I didn't even get our story up for Ms. Wittney. (Sorry Wit)

Check out those people in the picture to the right. We took that picture not so long after arriving here in Portugal 2 years ago. (Sept of 2006) Wow have we changed. The kids are bigger. Our vision of church planting is bigger. The world seems smaller. And time seems to be flying by. Two years is a long time and no time at all. Who were we two years ago? Who are we now? Noah keeps wondering what his friends will say when they see him. I am wondering the same.

Four days from now we will be flying to the States for a 6 week home assignment; 10 days in Texas, 5 days in Colorado and about 4 weeks in California. I feel like there is no way to get everything done here that needs to get done, but I suppose we'll do it some how. Our summer intern, who was going to stay in our house and watch Bingo (our dog), is not going to be able to come. That has put a kink in things. What do you do with a big black Lab for 6 weeks? (Prayer request) We have people visiting Lisbon right now and we have school finishing. We are trying to get the place cleaned-up for some families that are going to stay in the house for a week. We have all the normal get ready to go way for 6 weeks things to do. Plus birthday party's, regular life stuff, emergency pay the car tax stuff because they changed the law and the tax was due in February but who knew that? Blah, blah, blah...This is the whirl wind we are in.

"Mom when I grow-up I want to be a church planter!" Have you ever heard that country western song, "Mama don't let your babies grow-up to be cowboys" ? There is a line in that song that goes, "They're never at home and they're always alone, even with some one they love" I'm not sure the original idea behind those lyrics is what I'm talking about, but as we journey through this missional church planting life, there is an aspect of never at home and always alone...even with those we love.

So USA here we come. Were leaving home for 6 weeks to go home for 6 weeks. We will not be the people who flew to Europe 2 years ago and yet we are still the Farmers. (Will you know us now?)We will be with those we love and far from those we love, knowing that in 6 weeks we will be leaving those we love to return to those we love. Following Jesus has all this contrast; die to live, be the last to be first, to lead you must serve, the least is the greatest, and so on. Lead on Jesus.

If you want to hear about the last two weekends and our prayer retreats, just read the next blog. We can't wait to see you all in the states. See you in a few day, more or less.

Blessings upon Blessings to you

Prayer Retreat x2

For the month of May our community, The Lisboa Matrix, focused on prayer and fasting. We had it on our hearts as we went into May to see spiritual break through for The Matrix, Lisbon, Portugal and the World. If I could share all the stories from this month I would. Let me try to give a brief over view.

We started with the National day of Prayer in the USA. We prayed for the states and the church there. Then we continued day to day with specific prayer for each day of the week, praying for our community. We prayed for things like the Gregg family and what had happened with them at the International school. We prayed for Morocco and the people there. We prayed for our children and their future. We prayed for the International Christian School of Cascias. We prayed for the prayer retreats coming at the end of the month. Every day there was something to pray for. There was also the Global Day of Prayer in there on the 11th of May.

From our prayers, we recieved many answers. For example; The Gregg's were offered many teaching opportunity's, even though it was very late to be job hunting for schools. (Check out their blog Gypsy Jesus on my blog links for more about this) We saw some Junior High students, kids P and I have had opportunity to work with, receive Jesus at the Christian School. (You can read about that on the Gregg's blog also) And we were blessed by God at both our prayer retreats. I can't really put into world how this month of prayer/fasting moved here, but it moved things.

Then there were the two prayer retreats at the end of the month. Before this becomes a book, let me share some about the prayer retreat at Casa de Uhler. (Up at our team mates house. Thank you sooooo much for those of you who covered us in prayer.) There were 20 people or so at the retreat. We ate, sang, cooked, cleaned, prayed, learned and lived together for the weekend. The weather was supposed to be rainy, but we ended up with tons of sun and a little light rain. There was a mixed bag of followers of the Way and seekers of the Truth. It was great. Community was built with the Lisbon people and the Porto people. Sunday morning we entered into a time of prayer for each other. We had walked through the weekend together, so if was natural for us to go to prayer together. Even those who were seeking entered in. If I were to say that the Spirit of God showed up in a powerful way, I think I would be understating it. For two and a half hours we prayed. We prayed for individuals one after the other. It was mind blowing. At one point during the prayer time, I was drained and thought, "I don't know if I can pray any more." But then refreshing came and I entered again. Someone else said we needed to get some water in us, because we were dehydrating from all the weeping and tears. At the end I think we all walked away from the weekend having encountered God in one of the most powerful times of our life. I am not over stating this either. Myself, Marty, Vitor (from Porto), we all felt it was one of the most powerful prayer times we had ever had. And I know that he is still working on the people who were there.

Ok long blog, but I wanted to share. If you want to look of picture of the Uhler weekend or of our prayer retreat in Tomar, (that I didn't even share about), you can click on the LisboaMatrix link to the right and go to gallery.The picture at the top is from the Tomar weekend, which was wild and crazy. I'll have to share about that too soon. Thanks for supporting us through prayer and giving.

Be Blessed; Life's Short-Pray Hard!

How Did I Get This Busy

I have been wanting to blog about all of the stuff that is going on here right now, but something had to give, and it was the blog. Forgive me for the long silence. I think the best way for me to catch you up is to do a speed list. Maybe i'll throw a story in, we'll see. So hang on here it comes...

April brought the rain, and it wants to stay. On the 12th we gathered as a community to huddle and get a vision for our mission as a church. At the same time we were trying to figure out what our choices were going to be for school for the kids next year. (I'll talk more about that later) Teaching kept us busy with a lot of heart ache about some of the kids from ICSC in the upper grades not passing. On the 25th of April our house church gathered as a small group and worked out our vision for our group. It was amazing!
May came roaring in and we kicked off our Month of Prayer. We prayed for the states on the 1st and also kicked off our first Thursday fast of the month. (we are fasting on Thursdays for spiritual breakthrough here) Friday the 2nd Paula and I had a lock-in with the high school class at ICSC. We stayed up all night, ate ice cream, watched movies and had a great time. (We were tired) Saturday was Marty's birthday so we went to the beach and played volleyball. Then house church at our place on Saturday. Also Friday Peter from Germany came for a visit. He headed to Porto on Monday. Monday we went to a teachers meeting for ICSC to support our friend Jason Gregg because the school...i'm not going to go into it, but we may not send our kids to the school, or teach there next year because of the way they have been treating people. Please pray with us about this. It is major. I have no idea what we did for the rest of the week, but my head was spinning. And then Sunday was house church again and the Global Day of Prayer. (We had a prayer meeting for our city at the cross in Cascais) Today we taught and sent out e-mails, prayer retreat flyer's, school prep and more. Now I have to finish this so I can head over to another prayer meeting and share with them tonight. Pray with us that we would see freedom and open doors here in Portugal.
OK, that's a mess and a whole lot of info. Hope you can follow it.
Blessings
PS We will head for the states June 9th. Texas, to Colorado, to San Diego and back to Lisbon on July 18th, I think.

Come Like Little Children

Carey invited us to go the the beach with some kids from Aldia SOS today. Aldia SOS is one of the 2 orphanages we did restoration on last summer. I picked the kids up from school, ran home, grabbed some beach wear and headed out. (It seems like it's been raining for the last 3 weeks. Quit rolling your eyes all you folks in Northern Europe.)

One of the funny things about going to the beach with Noah is that he puts his wetsuit on before we leave the house. Then he's ready to hit the water as soon as he gets there. (The water here is very cold. )One of the draw backs of the "wear your wetsuit to the beach system" is that you also have to wear the thing home. (But that's another story)

So we buzz over to Carcavelos Beach to meet up with the Uhlers. (At least three of the Uhlers) Noah immediately hits the water and i sit there watching him. As he splashed around in the rolling white wash, my mind drifted into thought. The sun warm on my face. The wind just cool enough. Then a gentle thought, a small voice maybe. This is how the Spirit spoke to my heart. "Look at your son body slamming the waves. He doesn't even care if he doing anything special. He just likes to be in the water, without needing to accomplish anything. He doesn't need to learn to surf, or body board, or anything. He's just there with out shame, or expectation, enjoying the power of the sea. Do that with me."

It was a very simple, but profound lesson. Here are the steps;

1. Before you leave prepare like you are going to get wet.

2. When you arrive, don't hesitate.

3. The joy is in the experience of the moment, not in a goal or project.

4. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks, just get in there and get wet.

Children really are the best way to understand God. Get wet and Be Blessed

(By the way Noah is enjoying doing art on windows paint. He did the heart.)

I Feel Like Cinderella

I am working on living a simpler way of life. Chuck Swindol put me up to it. He wrote this nice little book called... (what is the name of that book? I'll go look at it and find out...Got it!) It's called "Intimacy with the Almighty" Cool title! He talks about four things he did to find a greater Intimacy with God. They go in this order;

1. Simplify, 2. Silence, 3. Solitude, 4.Surrender. (I could go into all the details but I won't)

So I read the little book again, (it's like the third or fourth time I've read it) and I looked around the house and said to myself, "Self this place is a mess, because it to messy. It's to messy because it's cluttered with stuff! Self, we need to simplify." So that's what I've been doing. Getting simpler. It is bringing a lot more peace to my life. Simple peace.

That was right after Easter. Then this week I started running. Lately God has been encouraging me to get healthier. Now I have never been an exercise freak, but I knew I should be exercising more than I was. The thing was that I didn't do it. I kept ignoring the "Why don't you start getting healthier?" feeling I was getting. I would say to myself (and God in the process) I'm working up to it. I'll do it soon. (Wink) So what does God do? He ups me by one. He has Derek Dempsey buy some Nike shoes in the States. Derek loves the shoes and brings them home. When he gets them here they don't fit any more. (They fit perfect in the states he said) He tries to give them to a few people, but no luck. So what the heck, see if they fit me. (Derek is 6' 4" and wears a size 11 1/2) I figure no way they're going to fit. I put them on. Perfect fit. It's like being Cinderella except there isn't a Fairy Godmother, but there is a God Father. (I'll make you an offer you can't refuse) SO...I am now running 1.8 mile in the mornings. Who would have guessed.

Three things I must keep reminding myself as I do this...

1.I want a simpler life, I like a clean house, so I have to put the work into doing it til it is a habit.

2. I want to be healthier, I want to live, so I have to push through the pain til it gets easier.

3. I want to respond positively to God, because He loves me and it blesses me greatly.

Looking around I see that my kitchen needs to be cleaned and the laundry folded. My legs are sore and shaky. And God is a very patient Father. Be Blessed and push on with the hard stuff.