A little time

Well the summer is almost over and I'm about ready to get back to Salamanca. Now I just need some toiletries, a box of grits, some maple syrup and a keyboard. If you have an old musical keyboard, not a computer keyboard:), and you'd like to donate, let me know... It has to be pretty light and portable so I can take it to leave forever at En Vivo!

This one is the dream keyboard right now, but I'll take what I can get...

Hopefully I'll be back in Salamanca around mid-August, along with the rest of the team, but it all depends on support raising for most of us, so please say a prayer that everyone on the team can get the support they need for the next year to be able to come back quickly and get the semester started. We'll be taking a quick trip to Tübingen, Germany to visit our friends at the Globalscope location there, and to do some brainstorming for the semester.

Doesn't it look nice and colorful? I'm excited. Here's their website... http://imkeller.net/

Remember, you are always welcome to come visit...

There will be more to report once we get the ball rolling over in Salamanca, but for now, I hope this will suffice! It's been great to able to see a lot of you this summer, and thank you once again for supporting En Vivo! Happy end of Summer!

Best video of the year!

Our lovely intern, Ms. Laura Bowers, worked long and hard to put together this lovely video that sums up this great year we just finished up. Way to go, Laura!

A Marvelous Adventure

We have reached the end of the school year!! This picture was taken at our “End of the Year” banquet, when we put out all the fancy plates and glasses, tell our students to wear their fanciest attire, and make something different than chicken and rice (a staple meal at our ministry... it’s cheap and good, what can I say?) for over 60 students.

We were able to thank them for a fantastic year, review the year in videos and pictures and even say good-bye to a few of them. One of the girls, in her farewell speech to En Vivo described what she had learned at our ministry as a “marvelous adventure.” I would have to agree.

I don't know if you have Facebook or not (it's ok if you don't...), but if you can watch this video of the year, it's great!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1471426787708&oid=2273334329

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Retreat!

Here we all are, standing on the famous rock we always take the final retreat picture on. This year we had a smaller group of students on the retreat, but in spite of smaller numbers, the quality of the retreat was fantastic.

We had one Portuguese girl tells us that after years of not wanting to have anything to do with God, she was ready to pursue a relationship with him again. Another one of our girls, (who I will talk about later) said that the talks for the weekend felt like they were especially for her, and that she knew that God might be trying to speak to her... for the very first time. Another one of our students came to the realization on this retreat that for a long time he didn't think his faith could be taken outside of the church, but now he was ready to take it to his classmates and family and friends.

There were many more stories, but these are just a few of the highlights.

Thank you for your prayers for that weekend, because they were definitely answered in huge ways during that weekend and are continuing to be answered.

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I’ve probably told you countless times that we have weekly small groups, with believers and unbelievers alike, that have been going on for the past two years. In this small group (pictured here), we have Carmen(on left), who has told us consistently over the 2 years that she thinks she’s incapable of believing.

Well a few weeks ago, just after our retreat, she told us she’s ready to try being a Christian. This might sound a little strange to “try,” but for someone who has never believed in Jesus and the Bible and God, it’s a HUGE deal.

In her efforts to try, she’s started praying, reading Romans, Ephesians, James, Mark and Matthew, and you can just see it in her eyes.

So in case you are needing a motivation to start reading your Bible more, there is a girl here in Spain who still isn’t sure she can believe all of this, but she is reading 5 different books of the Bible right now, and she’s praying. How's that for motivation?

I would love to be able to share even more stories with you all this summer, so when I'm in town, I want to see you!! It really has been a marvelous adventure this year.

Thank you for making it all happen through your prayers, your support and encouragement. It's worth it.

Hasta pronto.

next week

There are 2 big things coming up this week.

1. I give my devo lunch talk for the semester.

Talks in general make me nervous, talks in Spanish make me more nervous. But they're a great learning experience, so I'm ready to learn. My talk is part of a series of talks about the life of Joseph, and how God was with him through all of his trials. If you wouldn't mind saying a little prayer for me as I prepare this talk, and then give this talk this coming Tuesday, that would be great!

2. CAMPAMENTO! a.k.a. Spring Retreat!!

We have one week left to get as many of our students as possible signed up and ready to go on our Spring Retreat! This retreat happens every year in the same place, Pinos Reales, and every year we have the epic battle of the sexes game of Flamingo Soccer. Oh, what is Flamingo Soccer, you ask? Well, the boys have to play soccer hopping around on one foot only. The girls play normally. Don't ask me how, but the boys usually win, but maybe us ladies can win it this year. It's a great time to get to know each other, worship together, listen to the wisdom of invited retreat speakers (this year, it is a friend from the local church). If you want to help out with some of the expenses of the retreat, by sponsoring one of our students, let me know and we can work something out!

After this week, we'll have about one full month left of the semester. We're going to have our End of the Year Banquet, a benefit concert for a service project, and then the actual service project with Habitat for Humanity in Portugal. It's a big month, with lots of events going on, so keep En Vivo in your prayers.

I know this is a short update, but I just wanted to let you know what's going on this next week!

Thanks for reading and another update is right around the corner...

Take care and God Bless!

--Lorena

Choose your own ending

I think I am overwhelmed by all the ways you can use technology... just in general. So the fact that I have a blog, a website, a myspace page, 2 email addresses, Facebook, and now a YouTube "channel," (whatever that even means) is ridiculous. But here is my shameless plug:

http://www.youtube.com/user/laurenmariethatsme

I need more views, that's the bottom line. And I need to know that I didn't post all these videos that took fooooreveerrrr to upload for nothing!

Maybe one day I'll learn how to use all of these gadgets. Wish me luck.

story time! part 1

Chapter 1

When we were dividing up our students into small groups in a planning meeting, the team said “She might not want to have anything to do with ‘small groups,’ but we at least should ask her.”

We did ask her, and a year and a half later, she’s only missed 3 small groups-- and we’ve met every week since August of ’08.

In December of this last semester, we gave her a journal that had a daily scripture, and we would meet every week to discuss verses we had questions about or verses we liked, or anything. Without fail, she always read her verses, and always had questions.

Now she is reading “A Case for Christ” because someone recommended it to her, and even though some of her questions are unbelievably hard (and creative), she keeps going. She continues to come to small group without fail. She’s on the student leadership team, so she helps cook and clean and write skits and translate talks.

But she isn’t a Christian. She doesn’t think she can believe. She believes that it’s the best way to live, but she can’t bring herself to believe in God or Jesus, even though she acts more Christ-like than a lot of us Christians do sometimes.

Praying is all we can do. We are reading the Word with her, we are challenging her, we are loving her. God is the one that has to capture her heart. Not En Vivo and not her friends in the ministry and not the lifestyle, but God.

(those are pancakes...)

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Chapter 2

We met this girl about a year and a half ago. She first came to En Vivo cause she wanted to learn English. But she quickly became friends with some of our exchange students, and began to come to all of our events and even came to our retreat.

On that retreat she expressed to us how much it meant to her that we respected her as a woman and accepted her unconditionally.

Since then, she’s begun to help us cook meals and dinners for events, help raise money for our fundraisers, organize group dinners, and so much more. She’s always willing to help, and...

Well, she’s Muslim. She makes it very clear to us that she is. But just in the past month, she decided that she wanted to read a Christian book, Blue Like Jazz with me and 2 other girls in the ministry, girls that are already Christians.

She wanted to read about Christianity without reading the Bible.

So imagine that, a Muslim girl, in a small group with 3 other Christian girls talking about God and faith and culture and forgiveness and love. It’s been amazing.

I want her to read the Bible next, to read the words of Jesus, but if Blue Like Jazz is a stepping stone to get her talking and more comfortable, we’ll take it! If you’ve read this book and have any extra insight on it, let me know. She’s really enjoying it, and we’re praying for her all the time.

To top it all off, we went to dinner on Friday, and she prayed for our meal.

God is good and God is cool.

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