Chave the Chair Salesman...Day 3

Happy 4th of July to our friends and family back home! Today we started (as we do everyday) with our morning meeting, where the ¨leader of the day¨ goes over plans for the day and gives a small devotion of some sort. Today was my day for that (carolyn) so I focused on the word ¨freedom¨ and had everyone start to think what that means to us as Americans and being ¨free in Christ¨. Then we headed to the church in 2 separate cars...and the van with most of us in it had a ¨European Vacation¨ moment where we went around the ¨roundabouts¨ too many times (ending up in FRONT of the car we were supposed to be following) and ended up getting lost on the way to Sitges. However, with Dave´s good driving skills and landmarks from the day before, we miraculously found our way. Some were saying on our team that (getting lost)was the first of several spiritual attacks today. Later in the morning, we realized we had oil based paint that we couldn´t use on the walls for primer, so as we were going to return it, we spilled it all over the sidewalks on the outside of the church. Scott, Julie, and David took a bath in turpentine trying to clean it up. Some of us have also had trouble using our credit cards over here, and it took a long time to get all paint and supplies that we needed. BUT, God is good, and by the end of the day, we had the entire church painted from top to bottom! Another great part of the day was when Alvaro came to help us, and he and I sat down and planned songs for the service on Sunday. I typed English words and he translated in Spanish. It is so amazing to see how music transcends culture. They love the same songs we do and listen to the same ones we listen to back home. It was a moment we won´t soon forget.

Another amazing thing that has happened on this trip is that we have met a chair salesman named Chave(pronounced Cha-Vee, who we affectionately call the ¨chair guy¨ and looks like Ray Romano). He has been coming to the church several times and showing us chair samples(bc- we decided that buying new chairs for their church was going to be one of our main projects) and each time he has been asking about this ¨church¨ that we are renovating. Julie has done an amazing job translating with him (and everyone else here who speaks little English). Basically he told us how people in Spain don´t go to church bc- only older people go and it means nothing to their life (no relevance). He was fascinated by the concept of ¨having a relationship with God¨and that younger people his age go to this church. By the end of the first day, he told us we were ¨fun¨ and today when he walked in, we all yelled his name and he had the biggest smile on his face! If nothing else happened this week, bringing Chave in contact with this church might be reason enough for us to be here.

We got back to the hotel late and showered and went to Ava and Isma´s house for dinner. THAT was the best part of the day to many of us. We sat on the floor with Isma and David (his brother) for hours talking about the future of their church and encouraging them to not give up. There are only 30 people that go to this church, and a majority of them have personally invested a lot of their own money to help build this church, even taking mortgages on their own homes in some cases. Scott made a good point of saying that ïf there is no struggle, it might not be worth doing¨ and that the enemy would want nothing more than to see this church fail. SO TRUE! So by the end of our talk with them, we felt that they were more encouraged and we all left feeling like God really IS showing up BIG this week just like we prayed.

Sorry this is so long but there is so much to say! On behalf of our entire team, we LOVE our support letters from all of you back home, and we love the comments you have put on our blog. We are praying for all of you too! Lots of love from our team.

Day 2 Recap

We got so much work done today! It´s 1:30 in the morning now, and we are about to turn in after a fun (and exhausting) day working on the current church facility in Sitges(about 15 miles away from Vilanova)! While the new church in Vilanova is in early construction, and likely won´t be completed for at least a year, the current facility in Sitges still needs to be "fixed up" during the transition. This is something we really prayed about in the months before the trip, as we really wanted the church leaders and the congregation to have a meeting place that they could be proud of as they invited others to come and worship.

We saw the church for the first time today, and immediately got to work on the walls in the sanctuary, the windows and walls in the foyer, and expecially the storage room. The plaster walls were originally covered with large sheets of burlap to cover large holes and cracks, but after we removed the coverings we got to work on the repair. It was wonderful to see the team work together in this capacity... whatever needed to be done, our team members would just shift jobs to complete the task. Jim and Frank moved heavy office equipment upstairs, Cara and Carolyn organized the cleaning of the storage room, Jen Tanksley spearheaded store trips to get supplies and the right paint colors for the building... I was amazed at how members of our team worked selflessly to complete even the smallest tasks. Although the walls have spackle all over them now, we are so excited to see what the place will look like tomorrow when we start applying the first coats of paint on!!!! Some of the church leaders like Isma, Eva and Alvaro plan on coming in tomorrow night to help out with the work! It´s so exciting to finally get to work on the project that we have been praying about the last several months.

This evening, we went to dinner with Tomas and his wife Pudi, as well as his son Alvero and his family. Even with a bit of a language barrier, it is such a joy to be with these people who in touch with what God is doing for their church, and they are so thankful to have us here helping them.

We can´t wait to see what happens tomorrow! Happy 4th of July from Spain!!!!

We´ve Arrived!

We arrived safely in Vilanova! Our flight was on time and very uneventful. Our hotel is directly across the street from the beach and the weather is beautiful! Everything went great!

After checking into the hotel, had a wonderful outdoor lunch and then had some down time to get adjusted to the time change (the new Delta planes have inflight entertainment and not many people actually slept...too busy watching movies, listening to muscic and playing games). Some team members are meeting with the leaders to map out our plan for tomorrow and the rest of the week.

Please continue to pray for Eugenio. He was in the hospital in Barcelona, but was moved today to the hospital here in Vilanova. Please pray for his continued healing and that we (especially Bob) have some great time visiting with him. We are praying for very intentional conversations that encourage he and his volunteers.

Also, please pray for Mary Ann. We were so disappointed to have to leave her in Atlanta! Pray that we are able to communicate clearly and accomplish much as we help the church create relevant environments in Vilanova. We will be meeting with volunteers as well as doing some ¨church¨ makeover work....without Ty Pennington or his megaphone!

Thanks again for all of your love, support and encouragment. We are expecting God to do great things this week!

Just 4 more days and counting!

Last night we finished our FINAL Spain meeting as a team before heading over there. We leave this Sunday night from Atlanta. We realized in our meeting last night that God put our team together for a reason. All of us agree that we have never "bonded" with a group like we have with each other, so we believe God will use that to build relationships with the Spain leaders we come in contact with over there, and hopefully it will also help them build a strong team with each other.

We talked about NPCC's three "core beliefs" in building relationships: "Intimacy with God" (how can we be used by God as a blessing to others?), "Community with Insiders" (encouraging and strengthening our own team and finding ways to best use our spiritual gifts) and "Influence with Outsiders" (building on a foundation that others will continue, and doing it with a servant's heart). In other words, we aren't going there to try to take "buckhead church" to Spain and show them how it's done. We hope that by simply supporting them and being "relational" with them, they will develop their new church in their own way that is relevant to their culture, and in turn, it will grow and prosper because of the solid foundation that God has built there and because of the way they express Christ's love. My favorite part in our mission journals (that we are using to prepare for this trip), is where it says "Yielding to His agenda, we become less so that Christ becomes known." HOW TRUE! As Michael Frank on our team says, "We need to just pray that God will show himself in a BIG way over there!" ... and we all know he will. (:

So as we prepare to leave for our trip, we want to thank all of our supporters (family and friends) for your prayers and financial contributions to our team. We ask for continued prayers for the health and safety of our team; that God will use us to bless the people of Vilanova, Spain; for resources and abled bodies to renovate the new church in Vilanova; and for the leaders of this new church (La Iglesia de Vilanova)... that they will continue to grow and connect as a team, find time for "intimacy with God" and be a light to those who don't know what it means to have a relationship with God. We also ask for prayers for Mary Ann Cox, our team member who has been very sick. She and her husband, Bob, were going with us up until a few days ago, when the doctors decided she needs to stay home and get better. We're still waiting to see what Bob will do, but we pray he'll be with us because we can't imagine this trip without either of them! ):

Thanks again! Hasta Luego!
(Spain Team 2)

Two weeks and Counting!

Hola amigos! We have two weeks until we are Barcelona Bound! It looks like we will be spending most of our time in Villanova (a town outside of Barcelona on the beautiful coast!)We will be working with La Iglesia de Villanova Protestante and it looks like we have narrowed down our focus: Intimacy with God. Please be in prayer on how we can best communicate with their church regarding this intense and powerful message. More details to come on that! Anyway, thank you to all of our supporters and family's....your prayers are felt and appreciated as we prepare to be used by His hand!

Ciao amigos!

As we prepare our hearts.....

June 12, 2007

Hola!
For those who don't know this... another team from our church just went to Spain (got back last night), so they set the way for us, and we are very excited to hear more about their trip. I've been reading their blog, and they too had an amazing time, but I can tell we have our work cut out for us. Evidently the leaders that we'll be working with in Spain, feel very discouraged at the slow "pace" in which they've been able to attract newcomers to church. Team 1 had to remind them that it's all on God's timing, and not our's and to be patient, but I know it must be so hard for them! Everything I was reading today reminds me of my mission trip to Romania 2 years ago. Their country is also very far from God as a whole, and those that do claim to be Christians seem to be ostracized from their family and friends. The enemy definately seems to have a strong hold on these countries, and MANY other people in the world, so they have their work cut out for them. Please continue to pray for our leaders in Spain (names to come) and their church communities. (:

Our Team (let's call us "Team 2") in the meantime, continues to bond and get ready for our trip. This past weekend we had "game night 2" at Dave Walker's house, where we cooked out and played games (mostly "Balderdash" and "Catch Phrase", which we've come to LOVE). Not everyone could come, but we took more pictures to show you how much fun we're having getting to know each other. We've realized we're going to have to take these games to Spain with us and teach our Spanish friends how to play some of them too. We will NOT have Michael Frank teach them though, as he likes to cheat when he's giving clues, especially on Catch Phrase. We have to watch out for him. (:

Another way I (Carolyn) have personally been preparing is by making crosses for our team and the leaders we'll see in Spain, as well as funny "t'shirt puppets" (for our team) with Spanish phrases on the front. This is how I've decided that we're going to learn Spanish before we go, and at least we can have fun with it while we do. (: Luckily, we also have Julie on our trip, who is a Spanish teacher! Anyway, one of my spiritual gifts is "encouragement", and I feel that it's so important to "spur each other on..." as Jesus calls us to do, so that's what we're doing, and what we'll do for the leaders that we meet over there. So, Cara Hain and I have volunteered to be the "encouragement leaders" for the trip, and another project we recently did was to chose a "secret amigo" from our team and make that person a "bag", decorating it with things that he/ she likes or that tells us about that person. It's been so amazing to see what each person has done! The bags are all incredible... especially the one that our "team artist" (Jen tanksley) did! Each person really used their creativity in various ways though, so that's been such a blessing to see. Our plan is to use these in Spain and put letters/emails in them each day from some of their supporters back home (that's many of YOU reading this now) to keep them going throughout the week, and we'll do something similar for our Spanish leaders too.

That's it for now! Hasta Luego!

Carolyn (for Team 2)

An introduction to our team

Let me introduce you to our wonderful team of 13! Our names are Betsy (our fearless leader), Bob and Mary Ann , Jennifer and Scott, Carolyn, Cara, David, Jim, Michael, Julie, Jennifer and Melanie. We are all followers of Christ who attend either Northpoint or Buckhead Church in Altanta, GA, and we are so excited to serve our Heavenly Father in Spain this July (1st -9th)! We will be helping two churches (one in Seville, and one in Villanova) get started by setting up their "small groups" programs and implementing other ideas that our church uses. This is the first year Buckhead and Northpoint Churches have worked with the churches we'll be visiting, so we're excited to be on the "ground level" of what we know will be an exciting journey for these wonderful people!

To give you some background on religion in Spain....and what our group will be doing:
La Iglesia Protestante de Vilanova (the church we'll be working with in Villanova, just south of Barcelona) started with only 15 members where they began meeting on the back porch of a home. There are now over 60 in attendance on a regular basis, which ranks the church as one of the largest Christian churches in Spain. With a highly talented and committed membership, the church recently moved into their new facility in May of 2007. The church has a thriving groups ministry but would like to be prepared to offer other programs such as Starting Point, KidStuf and UpStreet. Buckhead Church will assist La Iglesia Protestante de Vilanova in casting vision and importance of small groups. The team will lead them through Community Group Leader Orientation, and possibly transform some of their facility into Starting Point rooms.

Country Background: Spain has endured a long period of enforced Catholicism under the rule of General Franco. When Franco left power, faith had largely become a cultural issue for the population. The emergence of a strong post-Modernist culture in Western Europe did little to help the situation. Church attendance is virtually non-existent and Christians are estimated at less than 2% of the population. With the recent arrival of a large and thriving Muslim population in Spain, there is a strong sense of urgency for existing Christians to seize the opportunity to reach a very disenfranchised and passive culture.

We hope you'll log in and join us in prayer on our journey! Feel free to post comments too!