LEC Finally Rolling

Here's some pics of the beginning of site prep work for our church's new Life Enrichment Center.

These signs were sitting on the lot where the building will be built.














Here's a before shot that I took back in January. This building, which was sitting on the lot where the LEC will be built, was torn down earlier this spring.














Here's the current view (7.25.07) after a couple of days worth of dirt work. They've still got to build the lot up a bit b/c it has a lot of slope in it.

Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints

That's the theme of the Desiring God 2007 National Conference. I really want to go to this conference. It's going to be incredible. But considering that I'll have a 2 week old baby at the time, I feel that the best choice is definitely to stay home and listen to the podcasts as they come out. :)

The theme, as you can tell by the post title, is endurance in the Christian life. The goal is a life devoted to testifying to the greatness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the reward is Christ himself as he says to the faithful, "Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master."

The speaker lineup includes:

• Randy Alcorn of Eternal Perspectives Ministries
• John McArthur of Grace to You. He's also the pastor of Grace Community Church and president of Master's College and Seminary. He also squeaked in a little time to write over 100 books.
• Jerry Bridges
• Helen Roseveare
• and of course...John Piper

Here's a video about the need for endurance in the Christian life...





Here's a video of John Piper answering the question, "Why did you choose these speakers for the conference on endurance?".

6 Years

Yesterday (July 14th) Emily and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. Yesterday was also my parents' 34th wedding anniversary. (When Emily and I chose our wedding date I didn't even know it was my parents anniversary.)

We went to Ristorante Volares in the Opryland Hotel last night. Nice place. The Opryland Hotel is really awesome. I'd love to stay there, but rooms are about $400 per night.

Today is day number one of our 7th year of marriage, we've got a 21 month old son and we've got a daughter who is due to be with us in 2 months and 1 day. God has blessed Emily and I much.

Like Father, Like Son (100th Post)

I'm celebrating my 100th post with a couple of pictures from a swim party earlier this summer. Can you see the resemblance? Who looks like who?

Arizona/Mexico Report

Here's the entrance to the community where we served all week. The community is called Cuauhtemoc. There's about 400-500 people who live there. There's only one Christian church in this community. We helped to work on the building that the church is using. The only other church there is a Catholic one. They only have services about once per quarter. The catholicism is very cultic in Mexico. They have a lot of mini-shrines with statues in them on the sides of the road where they go and pray to different people.















These are some of the kids who came to our VBS. We had about 50 kids each day.




























This is our team with the pastor (Roberto) of the church in Cuauhtemoc and his wife (Chayito).















This is Tim, Jennifer, and Christian Scarbrough. They are the founders of Living Water Ministry, based in Naco, AZ. Naco is a border town between Arizona and Mexico. Cuauhtemoc is about a 20 minute drive into Mexico from Naco. They have restarted the only church in Naco, AZ that had previously been closed down for the last few years. The Scarbroughs hosted us for the week and allowed us to stay in their church in Naco.

Home

We made it back from Arizona/Mexico last night. The internet was down for the whole week after my first post so I didn't get to put any pics up. We had a major lightning storm that knocked it out. I'll get some pics up tonight.