Here's all the stuff i got today to plant! Tomatoes, Green Peppers and some flowers.

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Evening service notes; Pastor Johnston

Matthew 28:16-20, 2 Corinthians 13:11-14

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ….be with you all. Amen.”

There’s so much in these verses, we can’t really even begin to scratch the surface of the meaning of it

Verse 11 – the first big idea in this passage - The benediction shows up all through the whole New Testament and is a thing that was always an important part of the worship of God.

Even Moses was commanded to issue benedictions

At the conclusion of a letter to the church in the NT there’s always a blessing.

Verse 14 – the second big idea in this text – the Trinity.

The OT constantly insists that there is only one God. But in the NT there’s 3 distinct entities that are specifically named or shown to us.

Perhaps the most graphic example of this happening is in the Gospel of John.

John 14 is probably the best example of Jesus explaining the coming of the Holy Spirit.

How do we explain that there is only one God but in 3 persons?

The thought of the Trinity is perhaps the most difficult thing a human mind has to try to comprehend

There are 3 people that are co-existent, but only 1 God.

In the Works of Jesus and the reality in the New Testament is summed up in the existence of, and the attempt to understand, the Trinity

Verse 14 - The third big idea – The grace of God

Grace: we must be saved by grace, live by grace, labor by grace

The human heart wants, yearns, tries…to come up with a good reason for why God would save each of us….beyond the grace of God, but that’s the only way of salvation.

Grace is unmerited – there’s nothing I can do to earn it.

Ponder the grace of God in calling me to faith in Jesus Christ

But didn’t I do something in my childhood that makes me eligible to receive the salvation of Jesus?

No, in each of us it was His grace, and only that.

2 Cor 6:1 - not receiving the Grace in vain – Am I living for myself or by the Grace of God?

Am I living trusting God’s grace? Or is it just my human will?

Philippians 1:6 – God will bring the work in you to completion

Our culture encourages us, even in the Christian church, to live by our determination, our human drive. But we don’t hear about walking in Grace.

You can’t serve without God’s grace working in your heart.

2 Corinthians 12:?, 1 Corinthians 15:? – our labor must be by the grace of God, and then you’ll see marvelous results.

Have you ever taken your “to do list” and made it into your prayer list?

What God will ask me to do is way beyond what I am able to do.

Am I saved by my works? Or have I been saved by God’s grace?

Slave of besetting sins? Or trusting in God’s grace to overcome?

Laboring by the grace of God? Or exhausted by sheer self effort?

Don’t live in pride, self will, rebellion….submit to God’s grace.

And another one (I won't bore you with posting 10 very similiar pictures, so these are only the best few)

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I took a couple really cool cloud pictures: This one Kevin helpfully placed himself in, but its the best one and its messed up now...

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And a couple more Iris flowers. Oh if anyone reading this wants some...I have hundreds (well it seems like it anyway) too many so you can have all you want for FREE!

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If you've never seen an Iris flower....here's what they look like.

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Here's the whole tree, it's getting kinda scrawny looking though

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Many years our/my Magnolia tree has a hard time blooming well, this year was the exception.

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A few pics:

These are a couple pictures showing the "huge" pile of mulch and the progress of the project of spreading it all out.
*I took the pictures a couple days ago so they are slightly out-dated* :-)

Anyhow, I'm off to get some sleep, even though I'm not super tired, but if I don't go to bed, I will never want to get up tomorrow!

The blocks I put in front of the barn

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a daffodil

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This area is now mulched

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Where I put some of the mulch on Thursday

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everything in the driveway

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2 cubic yards of soil

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5 cubic yards of mulch

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Updates...

I hate to break the horrible news.....I think I'm on the verge of being converted to Xanga!

So for a while, my main site will be Xanga. Check it out at:www.xanga.com/bearer_of_christ

But as for the update part - things are going great right now. Everything's pretty much just like normal, working about 30 hours a week and the rest of the time is at home working on different stuff.

Due to the wonderful weather recently I've been doing a bit of stuff in the yard cleaning it up etc. Today I went and got 2 cu. yds. of dirt and 3 cu. yds. of mulch and I'm going to get 2 more cu. yds. of mulch tomorrow morning. Thankfully I had some help, Jaci volunteered to come along and was a great help, even if she could barely move the dirt or mulch! :-) Thanks again! Now I have my work cut out for me for about the next month - spreading around all the dirt and mulch! Oh well.

I'm off to bed...Catch you all later.

Men's Retreat

I'm not even going to try to tell all about it because I should be in bed right now....anyway....
Me and my dad and brother went to a conference that was from 7pm Friday the 18th to about 3pm Saturday the 19th. It was a time of great fellowship, some basketball, volleyball and plenty of snacks. Andrew Quigley from Scotland gave 3 wonderful talks about disciple making. It's our responsibility as Christians to be fruitful, but we have no way to be fruitful if we're not abiding in Christ. The most practical application he suggested is to grow in our relationship with God by Reading the word, Praying, Loving God and others, and Obeying God. I was very deeply challenged by each of the talks to live much more of a solid Christan walk, basing all my strength in the foundation of Jesus Christ, My Savior.
If you are bored and want to read all 2,500 words worth of notes I too, I posted them on my xanga site.
Well, I'm off to bed.

Good grief, time goes way too fast!

I've been home already almost 2 weeks! I can't believe it. And yet, I still haven't written any more about my awesome trip. What is up with that anyway? Sure I have a decent excuse - I've been very busy - but who cares right?
So anyway, I'll give a little more detail right now. Eventually, I hope to be able to post all the journals I wrote while I was there, but that means that I have to type them all in first!

Saturday February 26, I left for the airport at about 5:45 am. The flight was scheduled to leave at about 7:45 but did not actually leave until about 9:15, but that didn't matter to me since we had about 9 hours worth of layover in Miami before the next flight. Finally it was time to get on the plane to Managua, Nicaragua. We arrived there at about 9 pm local time, only one hour before what it is here. We collected all the bags and loaded on the bus, going to our home for the week - La Quinta. After a few announcements and the like, we went to find our bed for the night.

Sunday February 27^th we unpacked our group bags and sorted out all the clothes we had brought down to donate. Next we went to see a few things in Managua. We went to a really high hill from which we were able to look over almost all of Managua. That was really neat! Then we drove around a little bit and stopped by a really old cathedral built in the early 1700s. Last, we went to Oscar’s church and had a tour of the place by Cecil. I can’t believe how much it’s changed since the last time I was here! WOW! Eventually it was time to go to church there. It was good, but as always, I can’t understand Spanish so it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I am going to learn Spanish and be fluent someday!

Monday, February 28^th, and Tuesday, March 1, were both work days. We went to Belcezar’s church which is about 20 minutes away. The first day we cleaned up the whole area where the first floor would be. We also poured some concrete guidelines so that we would be able to pour all the rest of the concrete on Tuesday, which we did. So the first floor was done and the second was not ready for us to pour just yet. One of these 2 days, I met a couple girls (Luisa 11, and Marie 8) who attend school there at Belcezar’s and yet they live about 30 minutes away. They were so much fun to play with and they have the cutest smiles! Maria is sponsored to attend school already, but Luisa was not, so I decided to start sponsoring her. Every day after that, they were eagerly awaiting our lunch break so we could play and try to converse in my pathetic Spanish. I had everyone on the group making fun of me because I was taking hour or two lunch breaks because of playing with the girls, but it was worth every bit of it!

Wednesday, March 2^nd, we took off from work! The morning we spent at Los Bracilles, a city about 45 minutes away, where there is another church and school which NRN (Nicaragua Resource Network) supports. What we did was to take each of the 6 grades from the school individually and have them rotate through a series of about 3 games and then gave them a prize at the end. That was a lot of fun! Following lunch most of the group, plus some Nicaraguans supported by members of the group, went to a mountain. We rode a series of about 17 sections of “Zip-Line” all the way down the mountain. The views were spectacular, especially at the top of the mountain where we could see for miles!

Thursday, March 3^rd and Friday, March 4^th were our other main 2 work days. Between those two days, we poured all the rest of the concrete – both on the second floor and also the front entryway. That was a lot of hard work, praise the Lord we were able to accomplish all of it! Let me give you a reality check…we were mixing all the concrete in piles on the ground, by hand mind you. To lift it to the second floor – we had no crane or elevator or anything fancy like that. The method was, fill a 5 gallon bucked about 1/3 with concrete and then hand it to someone who would lift it up to someone on a table who would lift it to the person up top who would pull it up and then get ready for the next one. The buckets would then be dumped by several others who were also on top. Eventually the buckets would be tossed back down to begin their rotation all over again. This was not easy work! The floors both look absolutely wonderful and I can’t wait to go back again to see what the finished product will look like!

Saturday, March 5^th, we had no work to do since we had finished it all, so we took the day off! Many went to Hogar De Fe which is a children’s home out in Los Bracilles. I went with 4 others to see the volcanoes at Masaya. I had seen them before but never had I seen all that we got to explore. The craters are absolutely huge and none of the 50 or so pictures that I took even begins to show its size! Of course I didn’t expect to be there as long as we were, so I decided not to use sunscreen – very bad idea there! After looking around for about 2 hours, we headed back and decided to stop and get some lunch at Pizza Hut due to the time. When we got back to La Quinta everyone was just about ready to leave for the market. For the afternoon we were able to wonder the market and get whatever it was we wanted to bring home with us. I got some t-shirts, a couple hammocks, a machete and a few other things for my siblings. (I know, I’m a nice brother ) We had to be back to La Quinta and be ready to leave at 5:30 for church so our time was cut short but I got everything I needed. Tonight, the last night, we went to Belcezar’s church for the service (oh, I don’t think I mentioned it – they have a church service every night except Monday night and over the week we went to 3 different churches that are supported by NRN). After the service was over I couldn’t believe it, but Balbino, Javier and Belcer Jr. were all there! Those 3 are friends I made on my first and second trips. I was able to talk with them for a while trying to catch up with each other. Between my wimpy Spanish and their attempts at English we were actually able to understand each other pretty well! We exchanged our e-mail addresses so hopefully we’ll be able to keep up with each other. I really didn’t want to leave but I didn’t get the choice, so we were whisked away back to La Quinta. The night was spent with packing because we were leaving the next day and more fellowship like every night.

Sunday, March 6^th, at last the day had come to leave for home, but I couldn’t believe it was over already, I could have stayed for another week or two easily! I love it down there soo much and I know the more I go there, the more of my heart stays there when I leave. It’s hard being there for only a week at a time, but that is all that worked out this time. I’m very thankful that God worked it out so I could go and see everyone down there! We left on the plane and came back to Miami and eventually Indianapolis, arriving about 9:15 pm. So that’s the trip! It’s over.

Wow that was a lot longer than I had thought it would be! If you’ve gotten a chance to see my pictures already, you will by now have a pretty good idea of all that I did. If you haven’t seen them yet, make sure you do that. I know there are a lot of them, but that’s what the thumbnail view is for!
Ok, I’m headed to bed! Catch you all later!

Yes, as rumor has it...

I am home.
I got home about 10pm. The week went really well, and I'll be sure to post a little more about it at least. Going into the trip I knew it would be over too fast and now, I'd go back again in a heartbeat.
If you want, my pictures are posted and you can look at them by clicking here.
The ultra short version is that we did 2 floors of concrete that were each about 25 x 50 feet. Also I really enjoyed getting to know the other members of the group and some of the Nicaraguans.

Thanks soo much for your prayers (and comments too :-) )!
Buenos Noches!