Back

Just a short note to say that we are back from our Mexico Building adventure and everything went really well.
We were able to do everything that I had hoped and more!
I'll say more later but now I need sleepy!
We drove straight through. It took 33.5 hours to drive the 1840 miles. Wew!

Prayer Report

I am compelled to write again today because a move of God has been demonstrated in the people of The Cornerstone Church. We have a team going to Mexico to partner with the church Verdad Y Vida in Anapra, Mexico. We will be beginning to build a bunk house that will house teams from all over the U.S. and Canada to come in and build homes for the poorest of the poor. We needed $6,000.00 to begin Phase One of the project. About $900.00 was donatd on February 6th, which left us $5,100.00 short with one week left.
I prayed and prayed and had many others praying as well. My parents church, my brothers church, small groups all over our church prayed. I asked many other’s to pray as well.
God Answered:
Yesterday the people of The Cornerstone gave over $7,200.00!
I am blown away! Thank you Jesus!
Thank You awesome people for hearing the heart of God and responding!
Last week we asked for you to pray about our van situation. Well the red van that you were praying about still awaits it’s miracle. Earlier in the year Pastor Tim Wright has a friend who gave us a van. Well the free van had cost us about $2,500.00 to make it dependable. But it still needed a trailer hitch and four tires. Last week before the van went to camp, we spent $810.00 for those items not knowing where the money would come from. So now we will drive down this van to Mexico beginning on Thursday night! Thank God.
One last prayer request was with our silent supplier: well keep praying, he has answered an email but hasn’t called me like he said that he would. I have called and left him a message. So pray for this one last thing before we go: Mr. Hernan Gueverra.

Lov'in You

I am at heart a romantic. I like the romance part of life and to be honest, all the marital benefits of it as well. =] What kinda cheeses me is that the whole Valentines thing has gotten out of hand. It is so commercial, like everything, I guess. I really think that if we have to be reminded to show love toward our spouses on one particular day of the year over the 364 other days then we are living on the perverbial thin ice in our marital relationship already and one box of chocolates isn’t going to rescue anything.

The whole hallmark holiday thing makes me sick and angry to the point of rebelling against it. But if I did I would be stuck looking like the lone goofball who cares more about twenty bucks than I care about my wife. So I can’t stop.
Unless:
Unless we all stopped at the same time, then it could work and all of the evil money hungry businesses would fail because we didn’t cave in and buy their chocolate and flowers and cards on February 14th anymore! Hahaha! We would triumph! We would laugh and dance and celebrate our victory with a long conga line.
Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, ba!
Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, ba!
All the way to the store on the 15th anyway!
So go and buy your bride/hubby something and celebrate this crazy little thing called love on Valentines Day too!

Clarity

Hey, my head no thinketh so good right now OK?
I though that by now I'd be feeling better and working toward forgetting the last few days of illness, buuuuut this thing isn't letting up. yuk!

In my last post the trip that i meant to ask prayer for, is the trip that leaves NEXT WEEK! We leave out late next Thursday night on a great adventure:
We drive straight through then rest,
pick up folks from the airport and our food from sams Club and cross into Mexico.
the next day we start building.
a few obstacles need to be moved by God himself:
#1 our van sits in the trans shop, we have no money to repair it (the last time it was fixed - it was never 100% right)
#2 we need about $6,000 to pay for supplies to build the first phase.
#3 my supplier, Hernan, i first contacted month's ago has become silent, I emailed him today and will call him Thursday.

I figured the last thing I needed was to be sick for 4+ days.
God is large, and so in control.
I am not worried, but i ask that you would pray hard!
thanks!

Sick and Tired!

I hate getting sick.
It's a part of life that I haven't had to experience very often in a long time. Laying on the couch curled up into a little shivering and sweating ball yesterday made me really thankful for all of the days that I am well.
I am feeling somewhat better today.

I need you guys to be praying for our Mexico trip:

• we need $6,000 by next week,
• the van and it's transmission problems
• Hernan our supplier is being really quiet.

please pray.
there are 15 people going on the trip. Nine of us are driving straight through and six lucky dogs are flying in! We start building a bunk house by laying the block and pouring the floor and the summer team will put the second floor up in July.

please pray.

Community?

Real Community.
What does it mean to have it?
How do you know that you’ve got it when everything else in our experience isn’t it?
Is it like someone wanting the familiarity of weightlessness yet never being outside the bonds of gravity?
Or the rush of a freefall from 12,000 feet before the parachute opens with a snap, without boarding the plane.

I really think that community has escaped from the complex church that we now live in on Sunday mornings for an hour and seventeen minutes.

“Hey how are you doing?” they ask.
“Good!” we respond, lying all the way to our comfy, isolated, blue seat in the darkness.

We gather for that 1:17 on Sundays, realizing that we hardly know anyone that comes to The Cornerstone anymore. The people that we know must be going to the other service now, we rationalize.
If we had real community wouldn’t we know? Wouldn’t we care? Wouldn’t there be somebody close to us, who knows us and chooses to love us anyway?

I challenge you to look at the church in Acts and find any semblance to the one we experience today in North America.
Cuss me out and throw stuff at the monitor and then prove me wrong.

What about that First Church do you find in today’s Church?
What is missing?
What has been totally neglected/forgotten?
What has been added along the way?
What are you longing for in your life?
Could it be,
Community?

Thanks for letting me rant a bit, and talk to me will ya?