Good Luck?

Throughout our many visits to churches, something striking has come to our attention; actually, it's a bit disturbing to us. Typically, we'll share our stories, our call to Spain, and the spiritual needs of Spain. Afterwards, we go to the door or our display table to greet people or to have further conversations with folks in the congregations. What has been so startling to us is the number of people in churches who have told us, "Good luck!"

At first, these words appear to be nice and friendly. Unfortunately, the phrase is not a Christian one; it's quite pagan, and it's easy for Christians rather thoughtlessly to slip into these non-Christian ideas and phrases. As followers of Christ, we don't rely on luck. As missionaries preparing to serve Christ and share His love in Spain, we don't need luck. What we truly need is people praying for us, because prayer to God makes a difference in our world. No, we don't completely understand how prayer works, but we know that it does. Jesus told us to pray to the Father; Paul continually asked for fellow Christians to pray for him; and we know that what we need is not luck (wherever luck comes from) but fellow followers of Jesus to pray for us.

1680 Miles Later...

Well, a full weekend it was! We left PA on Thursday evening and returned Monday afternoon, driving about 1680 miles in the meantime. It seemed that all we did was drive, eat, talk with people, eat, sleep, and eat. There was a little more to it than that.

We headed to Buffalo, IL, where I (B.J.) grew up to visit with old friends and to speak in couple of worship services. In some ways, the weekend was just weird. I'm from Buffalo, but at a crowded basketball game on Friday evening, I knew maybe a dozen people. So it was interesting to feel a bit like a fish out of water. I don't exactly belong there anymore.

At the same time, it was a great opportunity for catching up, though it seemed that our little time passed all too quickly. We counted it a great blessing to be able to share our heart for Spain with people who have known us for years and even decades now, and it's interesting to see how being from a particular town can foster a certain interest and solidarity, as people we'd never met (even in Buffalo) were deeply interested in our call to Spain. Here's a photo of lunch with some friends from Grace Community Fellowship there:

One personally valuable experience was to be with my oldest sister whom I hadn't seen in far too long. Here's a picture of us and then one of her extremely obese cat:

We're thankful now for a bit of a breather before getting back to speaking before and after Holy Week. We're even more thankful for the people God has woven into the patchwork of our lives.

Surgery & St. David's Youth Retreat

Well, let's start with the fun stuff. We got to spend last weekend at a youth retreat! I was the speaker for St. David's E.C. Church's youth retreat, and it was a great time! The youth were great--very interactive, very attentive, and several were really in tune with their own spiritual needs. So God met us there and is continuing to work in all of us. It's such a delight and a privilege to be a part of what He's doing, and it was fun to be back in youth ministry for a weekend!

Now, the not so fun stuff. Rachel had a somewhat minor surgery on Monday. I wanted the doctor to email me one of the pictures from the surgery so I could post it, but neither the doc nor Rachel thought that to be a great idea. Anyway, back to Rachel. She's doing well, resting here at home, but she's in a bit of pain from time to time with her healing incisions. She's not doing backflips yet, but she's definitely better than she was on Monday and Tuesday. Thanks for your prayers--God's at work!

Jim Thorpe!

Last weekend was spent in Jim Thorpe, PA, the namesake but not the birthplace of Jim Thorpe. Yes, it was cold there! We were able to spend Saturday evening with our friends, Jared and Kerry (below), who were just sent there by our denomination in June. Jared and I started seminary on the same day back in 2004, and, Lord willing, we will finish it together this May.
There was a sense of excitement among the people of the congregation, and they warmly welcomed us and were quite interested in us--a great encouragement all the way around. We're excited for Jared and Kerry, since their church is eager to do ministry, but we're even more excited for the church, since we know that they have a quality couple there. Two thumbs up for this weekend!