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!

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation

In the book of Revelation, God reveals to us a glimpse of the future: people from every tribe, tongue, and nation will worship Him together before the throne, singing and praising the one who took away their sin.  Here at our training, we have been able to experience a little taste of that future promise.  Every Sunday night, we worship God in the style of a different region of the world in many different languages.  Our first week, we praised God in Spanish like you would find in South and Central America.  It was really fun.  The second and third weeks, we honored the God who is drawing Southeast Asians and Southern Africans to Himself.  A really fun thing was dressing up for the African worship service:

 



Please pray for us this Sunday as we celebrate what God is doing in Europe, because Cameron will be reading a passage of Scripture in Romanian and Jessica will be singing a Romanian song.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.  And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

 - Revelation 7:9-10

On the Frontlines

Hi everyone!  We wanted to share with you how we are doing and what we are learning at our training.  Our days are filled with lots of sessions that deal with both spiritual health topics (cultivating a deep thirst for God, maintaining a consistent time in God’s Word, etc.) and practical company issues (setting up email accounts, healthy living practices overseas, etc.) One topic that is highly significant for both us and our prayer supporters (you guys) is the stark reality of Spiritual Warfare. When we go out as ambassadors for Jesus Christ, we must boldly proclaim the gospel in ways that are true to Scripture and culturally-appropriate. Here is a short video we made about this topic:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places…To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.

 - Ephesians 6:12, 18-19

Training Time/End of Summer Update

Hello all! Since our last post we have traveled to Michigan, Tennessee, North Carolina, and unloaded all of our belongings in Jessica's parent's basement in Charleston, West Virginia. Thanks Mom & Dad!  This past Tuesday, we arrived at our 2-month missionary training and have been overwhelmed with new faces, information, and assignments. But God is good and we feel greatly privileged to be around so many wonderful people going out to spread the glorious gospel all over the globe! Here are a few photographic highlights from the last few weeks:

This picture was taken in Muskegon, MI (at Wendy's, actually), near Cameron's grandparent's home. It was really great seeing everyone!

 While in Tennessee, we were able to visit Cameron's parents, sister, brother and sister-in-law, and our little nephew Hank. The first picture was taken at the Dixie Stampede dinner show in Pigeon Forge and the second is on a walking bridge in downtown Chattanooga.

On July 15, our home church in Wake Forest, NC (North Wake) held a commissioning service for us. It was very encouraging!

The next Sunday, Jessica's home church in WV (FBC Nitro) commissioned us, as well. Here we are with the Pastor David and his wife Jeannie. 

Thank you so much for your prayers during our whirlwind summer. We are so excited to be a part of God's mission to redeem the nations, and for the next couple of months we will get to learn more about what it means to be Christ's ambassadors in Bucharest, Romania. For the most part, the next two months will be filled with classes about living on the mission field, staying near to God through cultural transitions, spiritual warfare, etc. We will also be doing worldview studies on the Romanian people and culture and begin thinking about what sort of tools we will need to bring the light of the gospel to the spiritual darkness of Bucharest.

We will be typing out our prayer email update list soon, so if you do not receive an email in the next few weeks or you want to be added to our list, please let us know through facebook or email Cameron at cameron_armstrong@ymail.com.

In Deuteronomy 31, Moses encouraged Joshua by reminding him the Lord would be with him as he went out into a new land with new responsibilities. As we begin these next two months of rigorous study prior to our departure, we are encouraged to remember the same.

Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you;   he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” -Deuteronomy 31:7-8 

A Midsummer Day's Update

Hello faithful readers! Our apologies for not updating for a while. As promised, we have been traveling almost nonstop since our previous post, as evidenced by the pictures below. So here is how our summer has looked so far:

The service at the Romanian Baptist Church of Charlotte went very well! Jessica sang two songs that went along with Cameron's message about churches partnering with missionaries, and everyone seemed encouraged. At the close of the service, the pastor (pictured with his wife) said emphatically, "We accept your challenge." Slava Domnului! ("Praise the Lord!" in Romanian.)

We spent one week in West Virginia with Jessica's family, and while we were there we were able to help out with VBS at FBC Nitro (Jessica's home church) and visit Camp Cowen (the Baptist summer camp Jessica grew up in as a camper and later as a counselor). After our time in WV, we went down to Florida for our cruise!

Our cruise in the Bahamas left out of Port Canaveral, so we were able to visit Cameron's grandma who lives in the Orlando area. Also pictured is all of us who went on the cruise in the Bahamas (Jessica's dad, mom, brother, and sister).

We got back to Florida this past Thursday and have since made our way back to NC with short stops at Charleston and Myrtle Beach, SC. So now we are back in our little apartment for our one-year anniversary until we head up to Michigan on Tuesday for a few days, spend a week with Cameron's family in Tennessee, and then make it back to Wake Forest, NC for a frantic week of packing.

God has been so incredibly kind to us these last several weeks, and we really do appreciate all your prayers as we travel so much! Please let us know how we can pray for you, as well. 

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.    -Ephesians 1:15-23