Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Retreat!!!!!

One of the things we're going to do as a team when we get to Ecuador in a couple weeks is take the church leaders from the churches in El Recreo (near Guayaquil, where DFCC has primarily worked in the past), Samborondon and Baba (the two other churches near Guayaquil that Marcelo Puentes oversees) on a leadership retreat. We're going away for a weekend to a camp about an hour drive outside Guayaquil to spend some in-depth time teaching on the transformation that God desires for us, for the church, for the world.

The retreat will open Friday night with a drama presented by our team, intended to show the hopelessness and deadness of life when we choose to hold on to the things that keep us from the freedom we would find in Christ if we chose him instead. That will be followed by a message that that's not the end of the story, and we can choose to participate in the transformation God has for us, but that it does require us to make that choice and play an active role in it. Then we'll have a time of worship led by the group from Newbury Park First Christian Church and call it a night. The next day will be full of sessions talking about specific spiritual disciplines we can practice which will put us in a more accessible place for transformation (reading the Word, prayer, solitude, fasting, etc.) and time set aside for actual guided practice of some of these. Then we'll close the day with a message that as leaders it's important for them not only to be consistent in these things, but also to help the other members in their churches to see the importance of transformation.

Then sunday will be spent thinking of ways in which we can support them in presenting these things to their church (we'll be bringing lessons they can teach to children with materials for crafts, we'll help them learn the drama or write a different one if they want, we'll make the messages we've taught available if they want us to teach them again, etc.) the point being that they as the leaders should be the ones to present this to their church with our support...not the other way around.

We've been busy coming up with ideas, practicing a drama to present, making examples of crafts, writing lessons and messages and praying over every detail. Pray for us as we go to Ecuador next Thursday. And pray for the retreat, that it will be a blessing.

Here's a rough idea of what the drama will look like. Only there won't be words floating in the air when we perform it. The words will be written on our shirts. And they'll be written in Spanish.




On a side note...if anyone is familiar with Vegas, I had some trouble with the audio when I captured this video to my computer. In the preview everything is fine, and as soon as I drag the clip onto the timeline the audio is gone. There's still an audio track that drags up there with the video, it's just blank. I have no idea why the audio track won't work on the video clips. It has only happened with my new camera. The audio worked fine with a clip captured off my mom's camera. I had to drag the actual mp3 file of the song we're using onto the timeline to get some sound for this video. Any ideas on how I can fix this problem before I leave?

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Doober

I would just like to take this opportunity to point out the new addition to my list of blogging friends...

This new blog comes complete with graphs and charts!

Check it out!