Begun in Faith

 There have been three moments in my life when God clearly spoke and changed the direction of my career. The first was when I was fourteen. I already knew I wanted to be a teacher. I loved school and loved explaining new ideas to people. One day, as I was daydreaming about my future, I had a vision of myself teaching school-aged children in Africa. It wasn’t like a normal daydream. It was burned into my mind. It was important. I felt God was telling me to prepare myself to be a missionary. I waited six months before telling my parents what I had been thinking about. They were passively supportive, genuinely wanting my life to be used by God and hoping missions was a phase I would grow out of. The second was when I was 20. I was in a class in college listening to a lecture on cross-cultural tensions in the Boise area. It was my junior year. I was majoring in Elementary Education and minoring in Christian Missions. As the presenter spoke about gang activity and high risk Hispani...

Within a ten day span this month, we had a 50 th birthday celebration, visited a newborn baby, had a baby shower, prepared for a wedding, and one of our disciples signed the papers to rent her new apartment. Living life together is more than just Bible studies and prayer meetings. It’s actually living life together, and it’s awesome. Here are some of the life events we’ve been a part of this month. In this picture, poor Yesica still doesn't know why she's been called to the front of the church.  Her boyfriend, Marcos, had worked with Juan, one of my teammates, to prepare a marriage proposal  video. She said yes and we are very excited for both of them.  Soccer is life and life is soccer. What more can I say? The day that Pastora Jaci had her ultrasound to find out the gender of their baby, Pastor Junior was preaching at a convention in Brazil. We found out at 11:00 in the morning that Agatha is Agatha and not Caleb. Several women from the church cons...

Our main goal in Cordoba is to make disciples that make disciples. This is part one of a series on just that theme. I'm starting with an example: my dear friend Sol Barrera.  About a year ago, Sol, like so many, had gotten stuck in her relationship with God. She had an idea of what God wanted to give her (hope and strength) and an idea of what He expected from her (moral living, church attendance) but never grew past her initial commitment to God. She was raised in a Christian household, but her family were serial church hoppers, never staying anywhere long enough to get involved. Until God brought them to us. We were ecstatic to have the Barrera family as a part of our church. We got them in an Encounter and leadership classes as quickly as possible. Sol’s parents and younger siblings were just as excited as we were, but Sol seemed to hang back. We didn’t realize that she was savvier than we. She knew it was only a matter of time before something would happen and they w...