A few things going on

It is so unbelievable how quickly the time goes by. We had our retreat and it was a great success. The two main things I want to tell you are as follows:

1) Ten of the students in this picture are not believers but they participated throughout the weekend in games and devos and worship and talks. We weren't sure how they were going to react, but all of them have come back to En Vivo since the retreat and all of them feel like a part of our community now.

2) Our leadership group took care of all the games and it was incredible to watch them work together to make sure everyone felt included.

It was an interesting retreat because there were so many non-believers, but we believe that God took care of that and made them feel comfortable and they were able to hear the gospel in so many different ways. Now we must pray that they continue seeing it in all of us.

Since the retreat, we've had another weekend in which we helped with a worship conference at a local church and this past weekend we participated in the Mark Drama which is an outreach event in which participants memorize the structure of the gospel of Mark, the present it in the form of a play. Check it out: http://themarkdrama.com/, but of course, in Spanish.

It's been busy, but great to see so many things going on not only in En Vivo but also in the local church. Please keep us in your prayers and please let me know how I can pray for you also. As always, thank you thank you thank you!

Not too late.

There's still one more day for people to sign up for the Spring Retreat.

Tonight we're having a concert at En Vivo and we'll see who decides to sign up at the last minute.

So far, we have about 30 people signed up to come. Probably about 10 of them are not believers...

Our leadership group has taken initiative and will be leading all of the games and fun times throughout the weekend. The talks will be given by one of the elders from our local church. I, personally, will be having lots of fun hanging out with all these wonderful people who are coming... especially one of the girls from the dorms that decided to come (thanks for your prayers!!!).

Please be in prayer for this entire weekend. For the Christians who are coming to be filled up and energized to continue spreading the gospel to their classmates and roommates and professors and everyone they meet. Pray for those who aren't believers, that they would have a wonderful experience amongst our Christian community, and that they would experience the love of Christ for the first time.

These retreats can be life changing, so pray pray pray! From about noon (your time) on Friday until noon on Sunday, a lot could happen.

Also, I know it's last minute but if you'd like to provide one of these kids with a free weekend by giving a scholarship of $75, please let me know and we will work it out ASAP!

Ok, I'm off! Thanks for reading and you'll be hearing again from me soon!

oops

Oh I almost forgot to put this video in here... and I don't know how to put in links. Sorry! Just need a little cut and paste and you will have it.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150101244214236

From the concert we had about 2 weeks ago. Yay for songs by Adele.

The reason

A few weeks ago, I was having one of those days when I was wondering what the heck I am doing here? I sat down and talked to one of my teammates about it, and then had to quickly prepare myself to go on to the next event... Café Inglés, that particular day.

As soon as I walked out the door to greet the students that were already at the campus house, I saw a group of girls that I had met before, but they had brought new friends. Three new friends to be exact. I ended up sitting with these 5 girls for the rest of the evening, and by the time dinner came around, they asked me if I would show them a new place to eat, because they always eat in the dining hall.

That was the beginning of a new friendship with this group of 6 (in total) Spanish freshman girls. They invited me to breakfast with them later that week and we went and sat and had crepes and coffee while they took turns playing the piano that the restaurant lets its customers play. After playing and singing a few songs, I told them about the concert I would be playing soon after, and they were all in.

If there was a way for me to be reminded as to why I am here, that was it. And it's still going. I went and had coffee with one of the girls this past week and asked her about her family and her time here and Salamanca, and what she thought of En Vivo. She told me, "It's different, because none of us believe in God. No one believes in the church anymore, so it's strange for us to go to a place where they talk about God."

But they keep coming back. They are the sweetest group of girls. One of the girls is in a wheelchair and they take such good care of her, never hesitating to help her with anything she needs, and they all take turns.

I would love for you to be in prayer for these girls. They are heavy on my heart, and the great thing is that they will be around for the next 3 or 4 years in Salamanca, so I want them to feel incredibly comfortable at En Vivo so that maybe we can reestablish their faith in God and the church.

Here are some photos of these ladies, and the concert that was a smashing success!







Also, I've started a new small group with two lovely girls, who are both very quiet and sweet and have just recently gotten involved at En Vivo. Ely is from Galicia, Spain and Sara is from Columbia. Ely told me that a few years ago she came to Salamanca to visit the university and she happened upon En Vivo during that trip, and now that she is involved, she can't believe it. I've asked her to sing in the band the past few weeks and she is so thankful and excited to help.



Things are really going well around here. Our core group of students recently went on a retreat to get to know each other a little better and they did a lot of team building exercises as pictured here:



Now their new jobs to help around En Vivo are "Toallas" (towels, or the cleaning crew), "Etiquetas" (nametags and welcome) y el Grupo de Acogida (Welcome team, they make sure people feel at home when they are at En Vivo). It's been quite incredible to see them really take their jobs seriously and sit with students that they see who may not know anyone else, something they would've never done before. But they know the importance of making people feel welcome, because that's what happened when they first started coming around.

The fact that it's already March has taken me by surprise... but writing out all of these stories helps me realize how much has been going on here. We are meeting so many new students with outreach concerts, activities in dorms and meeting individually with students. It's been a great semester so far, and so much more is to come. Today we're starting our sign ups for the Spring retreat, so be praying for those students who will becoming and let me know if you would like to give any scholarships for someone to be able to go for free!!

Now I will attach some more random pictures and a link to one of the songs we sang at our concert last week... enjoy!







These are the reasons for why I'm here. Thanks for your support in helping me be here!

Before and After Today

Happy Monday Everybody!

For this post the theme is "Before and After" because there's lots that's going to happen in the semester that's ahead of us, but we've also had quite a lot happen in December.

We had our big Christmas dinner in which we played Secret Santa and had 45 people sign up to participate! This is a great way to get people involved in the community because we made them investigate who their person was in order to buy them the perfect 5 euro gift ($6.50, so it's kinda limiting... oh well, they're college students). Students like these 4 (pictured below: Anushka, Alberto, Cristina, Naomi), who just started coming around this semester participated and it was great to see them get really excited about it!




We also had our famous International Dinner, where people we have never even seen before show up to share a dish from their country. It's an unbelievable amount of food and a crazy number of people, but it's just another way for our students to get to know each other and bring their friends to En Vivo!


But the stand out moment of December was definitely when we all trekked down to the local river to see our new friend, Samantha, be baptized. What we didn't know before we went on our retreat was that Sam, an American girl who randomly came, had never really had anything to do with God or religion her entire life before coming on our Fall Retreat. In the few weeks after that weekend, she expressed a desire to start reading the Bible which she had never read before, and within a very very short span of time, she realized God had been pursuing her for a while. She wanted to get baptized in Spain, where she started her relationship with Jesus!




It was incredible to have all these students (pictured above) come out to celebrate Sam's baptism, because they all felt like they were part of this journey with her. And guess what, you guys are part of Sam's journey too!

---------------

So fast forward to the "After" part of this update.

In January, students tend to disappear because they are studying for their one exam of the semester. So what we've done is set up a few different ways to try to get them to come out of hiding every once in a while.

These ways consist of free snacks and coffee, free pancakes at night, AND a prayer room! Yes, not all of these things are very similar... but they all appeal to different groups of people. The prayer room is something we did last January also, and we saw that the students really did enjoy having a place to go to pray, and to see that others had been praying there as well.


I believe that it's the best way to start off this semester. With a place where the students, and us as the team, can come and ask God to do his work through us this semester. To ask him to bring his Kingdom down to earth this semester in Salamanca. That's our prayer.

What does the rest of the semester hold?
-Spring Retreat
-Habitat for Humanity trip to Portugal
-Benefit Concerts
-11 Thursday night Bible studies
-12 Devotional lunches
-lots of small groups

Just a few things going on!

Thank you all once again for being faithful supporters and being the people who help make all of this possible. You are the ones that enable us to be able to have a beautiful campus house, to be able to give away free food, to be able to give away Bibles to people like Sam who have never had one, and print out small group materials. There is so much that you are helping with just by being faithful with your money.

As you read through this post, you probably saw some things highlighted, and those are the things that I would love for you to be in prayer for!

Here are a few more photos for your viewing pleasure!

Retreat!

We did it!!! We had our Fall Retreat and we had 45 people attend! After only week, we doubled our number of people signed up, so thank you for your prayers, and thank you especially to those who gave money to sponsor a student. We were able to give 6 scholarships!! And now I will tell you some of the stories that came from this weekend!



Three of these four girls gave their testimonies this weekend. Vanessa, in the blue sweater, gave an especially powerful testimony, sharing of her struggles with the church while growing up. One thing that really impressed me about Vanesa's testimony is the fact that she is a very private person in general, very warm and very nice, but private. So when she stood in front of her peers and some people she didn't even know, it was hard for her. But when she cried while telling us about her first Bible Study she came at En Vivo, the whole room was in tears. She said that Jeremy Lawler stood up in front of everyone that night and spoke about the hypocrisy that is real among the church, but he said it in a way that spoke directly to her. She said "I felt like he had written that talk for me, and I left immediately after without talking to anyone and I cried all the way home."
From this moment, she said, the Bible that she had had stashed away, was pulled out and she began to discover her faith again.

What an incredible testimony of how the church, how honesty, how the Bible, and how your friends can all play parts in your walk with God. I'm not even sure who those girls are that brought Vanesa to En Vivo, but I am so thankful that they did and that since then she has become part of our leadership group, she won the 'Annual Service Award' last year, and she has become a dear friend to all of us at En Vivo.



And this leads me to my next story. This young man in this weird outfit (I can't think of any way to describe it in words...) was particularly touched by Vanesa's story. Maybe I should've put a more serious picture of him here, but it's ok, he was just participating in our ridiculous Olympic games by being extra festive. Anyhoo, his name is Miguel Angel (yes, Michaelangelo), and he's been in and out of our ministry for several years. But during the very last session of the weekend, he stood up and shared something with the entire group that none of us expected.

Miguel Angel stood up and with tears in his eyes said he felt like this weekend God had been crying out to him, that God was calling him back. While he heard Vanesa's story, he felt like he was a Christian living a hypocritical life and he had to change that immediately. He did not want to hinder anyone from coming to know Christ because of his behavior. He stood up to share that so that we could hold him accountable to becoming the Christian man that God was calling him to be.

We were completely surprised and very proud of him for asking for this accountability and we are now praying for him as he goes back to his day to day life where he will be challenged to follow through on what God made so clear to him this weekend.



This lovely little lady is named Sam. Sam had no idea what a retreat with En Vivo would consist of, because she came to her first Bible Study the day before we left for the retreat. With her adventurous spirit, she said yes when her friend asked her to come.

The weekend was beyond anything she could've imagined. She shared with us that before this retreat, she had never even considered a relationship with God. Not that he didn't exist, but why would he want a relationship with her? She had never had any Christian influences in her life that made her think twice about him. But this weekend, through the testimonies, the devotions in groups and individually, and the worship, she experienced something completely new to her. A God that wants to know her and loves her.

She got a Bible from En Vivo on the Monday after the retreat, and has already started meeting with another one of my teammates to read through Matthew. She's never had a Bible before. She went home and downloaded some of the Hillsong worship songs we sang over the weekend, cause she had never heard any of those songs before. She is EXCITED. She is reading the Bible FOR THE FIRST TIME! Can you even imagine??! It's incredible.

Incredible things happened this weekend. We felt the presence of God, He was working on all of our hearts, He was answering our prayers.

Thank you for your prayers and know that these stories don't just end on the retreat, this is just the beginning. Sam is now reading her very own Bible, Vanesa has shared her life in a way that touched other people like Miguel Angel who will now be needing our support and prayers to live out this Christian life. It's not always easy, but it's good.

And thank you for reading to this last line. There are other stories but I will just have to share those next time....
Love you all mucho!!

Under Construction

We've spent the past few weeks just planning for the semester, coming up with ideas for talks, for retreats, for small groups, for outreach. You name it, we probably have talked about it. So then started the renovation of the house. Usually we just paint the walls with new pretty paint, but this year we decided to put in a full new serving bar in the kitchen and get our bottom floor completely fixed... and fixed it will be... eventually. Here are some pictures of our works in progress:




In the meantime, we went to the beginning of the school year "Welcome Fair" where we proceeded to hand out 500 BAGS with our En Vivo logo and website on it, and pens and magnets and flyers and the works!! We could've used another 200 bags (I think?) because we started to run out! Tonight is the test of whether or not our "Welcome bags" worked! Of course, we also talked with every single person we gave a bag to, and everyone seemed really interested in what En Vivo is. Pray that they will come!! Pray that they will end up at our door tonight! Here are pictures of the fair:





Chris and I were even asked during the fair to play a few songs... let me tell you, "Wonderwall" by Oasis is always a good choice. You can't go wrong with that song.



A lot has been happening! And there is even more to come!
Please if you would, be in prayer for our first few events, that the students we met at the fair would somehow remember and want to come to En Vivo to see what it's all about, and pray that we might be able to love them like Jesus would! We're excited to get started with this new school year!!

Thank you for your prayers and support! I'll send pretty pictures of the finished house... when it's finished... (soon hopefully!)

Besos!