Disciples Making Disciples Part 2: Living Life Together

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 conspired together to prepare a baby shower for that same evening so Pastora wouldn't be alone on their special day. 

Sometimes church family just becomes family. The Barreras have all but signed the paperwork to adopt Ashley as their fifth child. She took a vacation day so she could celebrate her dad's big 5-0 with her family. 

Ashley, Emilse, and I made a hundred crepe paper flowers for her wedding decorations. When the big day came, we didn't know what to do with them, so the flower girls threw them on the floor because life just isn't fair. 

Mother's Day is in October in Argentina. Each mother received a handmade nest necklace with an egg bead for each of her children. We prayed for their lives and their families in both services.

Sometimes a life event is learning how to use a laptop. Adela paid us for our services with her brother's leftover birthday cake. In our church it is always someone's birthday and there is always cake.

We also have cake for other reasons like Yolanda teaching her first house of prayer. She did such an excellent job that others have been inspired to follow her example!

Emilse and Marcelo had a beautiful wedding. It is very rare for Argentines to get married because the government recognizes couples as legally married after living together for a short amount of time. This was our first wedding, but we will probably have several more in the next couple years. We had to use the Methodist church because ours isn't big enough...yet.

So my point is, if you want to be closer to God, help someone else grow closer to God. Make disciples and teach them to make disciples. The act of encouraging them and keeping them accountable will encourage you and hold you accountable to God. It’s not easy. In fact, if your experience is like mine, it is possible that when your disciple has matured and is passionate for Christ and making disciples, something will happen. They will get arrested, or pregnant out of marriage, or fall back into addiction, or declare God doesn’t exist, or just disappear. And it will destroy you. For a moment. And then you will think of Jesus on the cross. For them. For you. And you will continue making disciples because after He resurrected from the dead, that’s what Jesus commanded us to do.