The Final Countdown...

It has been just over a week since our training ended.  Since that time, we have visited Cameron's family in Tennessee, spoken at 3 churches (in 24 hrs!), worked on getting our finances in order, and traveled to West Virginia to visit Jessica's family.  Here are some photos of our week:

Jessica's mom came up for our commissioning service.

 



 

We visited Cameron's sister Kendall in her classroom.

 

The first church we visited was Poplar Corner Baptist Church. 
It was an encouraging and missions-focused service.

Cameron preached the Sunday morning service at Madison Baptist Church.

 

 

Sunday afternoon, we were able to hang out with some of Cameron's college friends.

 

At Ararat Baptist Church, we spent time with the youth on Sunday evening.

 

 

Our sister-in-law Amy took some awesome family photos on Monday. 
It was great spending the day together.

 

Thank you so much for praying for us.  Our flight to Romania leaves next Wednesday, Oct. 3.

 

 

"And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

 - Hebrews 10:24-25

"If you want to multiply, you need to simplify."

These are the inspiring words of one of our leaders at our training.  The quote means that if you want to share your faith with other people who will share their faith with other people who will share their faith........you need to keep it simple and reproducible.  If you use a lot of big "seminary" words and the original Hebrew or Greek, etc, OR if you use a lot of technology that is not available everywhere, then your hearers will not be able to reproduce your message, and so the gospel will not go forth.  If you keep it simple, they will be able to share (and will want to share) with others.

Last week, we were able to go to Washington, D.C., and share the gospel with university students using a spiritual survey.  Basically, we asked them 5 questions about their spiritual beliefs and were able to share with them what we believe - the gospel.  What is the gospel?  Basically that God created the world perfect, and the first man and woman chose to disobey God's one command: not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When they made that choice, it broke their right relationship with God.  Since then, all people are born with that natural desire to sin/disobey.  But the GOOD NEWS is that God did not leave us to die in our sins - He sent his Son Jesus to rescue us from the punishment we deserve by living a perfect life, dying on the cross taking the punishment for our sins, and raising to life again on the 3rd day.  If you believe this message and choose to ask Jesus to be your Savior and Lord of your life, you will be saved.  For more information, we recommend: http://viewthestory.com/

If you would like to try reproducing the spiritual survey at your school or workplace, these are the 5 questions we used:

1.  On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank spirituality in your life?
2.  Which would most closely describe you spiritually?
     Examples could be: Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Christian-Catholic, Christian-Protestant, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, Sikh, or Wiccan
3.  Are you involved with any of the campus spiritual organizations? If so which one?
4.  What things lead you to think about spiritual things?
5.  Do you have any spiritual questions that you feel have never been answered?
OR  5.  Can I share with you about my spiritual journey?
OR  5.  If what you are believing was not true would you want to know?

 

Here are a few pictures from our D.C. trip and other friends who have come to visit us. Enjoy!

We ate lunch with Jessica's cousin Ann, who works in D.C.  It was great to see her!

Our Spiritual Survey team.

In the "Oval Office."

Megan came to visit us on Saturday!

Matt & Lindsey came on Sunday - here we are dressed up for cultural worship (Middle Eastern).

 

"The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses,

entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."

 - 2 Timothy 2:2

 

 

Fun with Friends

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been blessed to spend some time with some of our friends from North Carolina.  Our friend Tiffany stopped by to see us at Cookout (a great burger/milkshake place).

Last weekend (Labor Day weekend), we had the chance to visit Noelle and Jared in the mountains.  It was a sweet time in a beautiful place.



J.R. came to visit us on Labor Day.  He is a great friend with an amazing heart for the Lord.

 



Feliz cumpleanos, Tiffany!  We got to see Tiffany again and celebrate her birthday with her at a Mexican restaurant.

 



If you don't see your picture, you should come visit us!