Dinner with Friends

I totally forgot to take pictures on Tuesday evening, but we had a great dinner with friends here at the apartment.  My two co-leaders from Hilo, Aguja y Biblia, Maria Elena and Isabel, and their husbands, Mauricio and Luis, joined us for dinner.  

The menu was Italian all the way, including Artichoke Salsa (recipe) as the appetizer, Baked Chicken Kiev, whole wheat pasta and spaghetti sauce, green salad with poppy seed dressing (recipe) and garlic bread.  Dessert was a peach pie cookie (recipe) with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce (recipe.)  The dinner was as healthy as I could make it.  As far as the loaf of garlic bread and vanilla ice cream, they are part of the "all things in moderation" category, right?.  Thankfully, everything turned out delicious.

However, the company was even better than the food.  Besides being good friends, Maria Elena and Isabel are sisters-in-law.  Isabel is married to Maria Elena's brother.  It was nice to spend time with their husbands.  Mauricio is an artist--one of the well-known painters in El Salvador.  Some of his paintings hang in the national art museum.  Here are some examples of his beautiful work.

Isabel's husband, Luis, graduated from Texas A&M, is an engineer who works with installations of water wells and facilities to bring clean water to the people of El Salvador.  

It's wonderful to see how God brings people together . . . we were honored to have these wonderful men/women of God in our home.  I've loved getting to know Maria Elena and Isabel and we are looking forward to spending more time with both of these great couples.  

IBVN Discipleship Retreat

Vida Nueva held its very first discipleship retreat and it was amazing.  About 300 leaders from Vida Nueva (across each of the four Vida Nueva campuses) were invited to attend the retreat to hear Pastors Julio and Steve share their vision for changing the way IBVN handles discipleship.  

Currently, new Christians and new members to IBVN are encouraged to attend a four-week new members class, after which they are encouraged to begin discipleship.  Like many churches, IBVN paired a discipler(s) with a disciple(s) and the two of them worked through the 12 discipleship lessons.  Rather than moving rapidly through the lessons, disciplers were encouraged to spend whatever time was necessary so that when they finished, the disciple would successfully meet the four discipleship goals:

• be established in the Word of God
• be established in the local church
• be established in a group of believers
• be established in the work of the ministry

Both Steve and Julio indicated that the new vision for discipleship included revising the above goals by broadening their scope.  I think you'll see what they meant as you read the new goals.  By the end of discipleship, disciples will:

1. Character--take on the character of Jesus and seek to be more like Him each day
2. Know--go deeper in his/her understanding of the Bible and spend daily time in God's word
3. Conviction--have the personal conviction that Jesus is God and his/her Lord by submitting to his Lordship 
4. Communion--make spending time with other believers a priority through friendships and ministry.

From this point forward, new believers and new members who complete the new members class will be encouraged to become a part of one of the small groups in the church.  They will not be encouraged (forced) into the discipleship program in an effort to check it off their list so they can begin working in a ministry.  In the small group, leaders will take care of the believers and provide a sense of family, teach the Bible from a practical standpoint with application for their lives, introduce new believers to the discipleship process and connect new believers to the life of the church.  Small group leaders will "pastor" them and when the new believers are ready (seeking more Bible knowledge, ready to make a commitment to the program) they can request to begin discipleship.  There is no set timeline for this process; for some people it could be 2-3 months, for others 2-3 years.

As Julio and Steve shared discipling isn't the same thing as evangelism.  It is, rather, the second step which teaches new believers to know Jesus and surrender to his Lordship.  The problems with the current discipleship program include:

• Lack of interest--some entered the program because they felt pressured, even though they had little interest
• Lack of commitment--some started the program, but after several lessons or several months, stop or gave up for a variety of different reasons
• Challenges were too great--many found that they weren't ready to make the necessary changes in their lives

After presenting these issues, Pastor Julio and Steve issued an apology for "doing discipleship wrong."  Here are their thoughts:

We were wrong about who should be discipled--we were wrong in thinking "everyone" should get discipled.  If the person doesn't want it, we shouldn't force it.  We must stop discipling for the wrong reasons.  We were wrong in thinking that "one size" discipleship fits all.

We were wrong in choosing our disciplers--we've allowed disciplers who are not as mature as they should be (this can't be measured by years in the church), we've asked people who are overloaded and who don't have the time to give and we have used people who are only focused on completing the checklist of lessons and moving on to the next person.

From this point forward, 2 Timothy 3:10-11 . . . . we will be choosing faithful men/women who have the capability to teach others.  We know this means that there will be less people in discipleship and this is okay with us.  We want disciples with a strong desire to learn and disciplers who have the time and who are able to teach.

We are so proud to be part of church that seeks to apply the Bible in all areas and is not afraid or embarrassed to make changes to a program that's "always been done that way."  Praise God for pastors and faithful leaders who are open to hear and then do what God tells them.

 

Back on the Wagon

I've been trying to do a better job about getting back in the swing of healthy eating.  For  me, this requires menu planning each week.  If I don't plan the menu, then we eat whatever's easy which is not usually the healthiest thing.  

The thing about my menu planning is that it takes a long time!  I love to change things up so I'm always looking for new recipes to try.  I also try to vary the menu and serve beef and fish at least once a week.  I use Feedly to follow lots of "healthy" food bloogers so I get plenty of ideas.  Nevertheless, sitting down to do the menu and grocery list and then going to the grocery store takes a lot of time, especially down here.  I quite often have to adjust the recipes to fit the ingredients that are available here.

Here's a list of a few of my favorite "healthy" food bloggers.  Click on the blog time to go to their sites.

Nicole at PreventionRD
Gina at Skinny Taste
Lauren at Oatmeal with a Fork
Megan at Detoxinista

I just recently found this site Amy's Healthy Baking, which looks promising!

Here's a few of this week's recipes.  Clicking on the name will take you to the recipe.

BBQ Chicken Quinoa Bowl (had this yesterday and we both thought it was fantastic)

Turkey burgers with zucchini (made a very juicy burger)

Watermelon Caprese Salad (I stacked spinach, mozzarella and watermelon, but it didn't look like this.  It was tasty, though.)

Apple Juice Chicken (trying this later in the week)

Remar Orphanage--CCBC

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we spent a second day at the Remar Orphanage in La Libertad.  This time we brought the inflatable and lunch!  

The CCBC kids also lead a praise and preaching service for the older kids. The Salvadorans presented a drama and one of the CCBC leaders gave the gospel.  It was amazing to see them all worship together.

Lunch was the next challenge . . . we cooked 500 hotdogs!  The littlest kids were the first to eat.  Guillermo is leading them in the prayer.

Remar and Day 3 VBS--CCBC

On Wednesday morning we went to the Remar Orphanage in La Libertad, about an hour south of El Salvador.  They have a school on site, so seven of our classroom teams shared in the 4th through 9th grade classrooms.  

The rest of the students "played" with the younger kids.  Don't know who enjoyed it more  .. . the little ones or the big ones.

We spent less than two hours there because we were going to go back on Thursday and spend most of the day with them.

After a trip back to Lourdes and a quick lunch, we set up for the last day of VBS.  We had thirty women in our class (just not the same thirty.)  The kids enjoyed their final day of singing, dancing, crafting, playing and learning.

Day 2--Apopa Schools and VBS in Lourdes

Tuesday morning we went to two schools in the Apopa area that are right next to each other.  One was for grades 1 through 9 and the other was the high school.  Stephen and I were with the group at the high school.  We had teams sharing in ten classrooms; there were several hundred professions of faith--praise God.  

VBS in Lourdes continued in the afternoon.  It was raining so instead of being outside like on Monday, we worked with the ladies in a small room at the community center.  Wow, was it hot!  There were thirty women on Tuesday (23 on Monday), so we were quite busy giving directions and passing out supplies to the newcomers.  I shared my testimony and the gospel about half-way and although there weren't any professions of faith, we did have the opportunity to have some good conversations . . . and some seeds were planted.  So glad to have lots of help from Maria Elena, Isabel, Carolina and Zuley.  

 The kids got their "Real Heroes" VBS shirts and made gospel bracelets for their craft.  The CCBC youth worked each of the five rotations, especially the games group who had to improvise because of the rain.

The other half of the CCBC group held a kid club/family festival at another location in the neighborhood and a basketball camp at a third location.  These kids were busy all the time!

Giant Team

Our largest team of the year arrived Saturday night--almost 100 people from Christ's Chapel Bible Church high school ministry!  If you've ever worked with high school kids, you know there's a great deal of energy involved.  

Sunday morning they went to the second service at our church in Lourdes, as it was the only service that would accommodate 100 extra people.  Sunday afternoon, we had a futsal tournament, also in Lourdes.  It was quite a site to see 200+ people (gringos and Salvadorans) descend on the soccer fields.

Yesterday morning was our first day sharing in the schools.  The group is large, we have twenty classroom teams, so we sent half to one school and half to another.  In the afternoon, we also have two simultaneous activities.  One group is holding a three-day VBS while the other group is having kid's club in three different locations.  As you can imagine, it takes a lot of manpower to make everything happen.  

Several of the Hilo, Aguja ladies and I are working with the moms who come to VBS with their children.  We are teaching them to cross stitch while taking the opportunity to share the love of Jesus.  

More to come as the week progresses.