Church Campout

So where were we this weekend?  We spent the whole weekend camping out with our church.  Some had a different idea of what camping looked like (tent vs. camper).  Which ever form chosen, it was a great time to spend strengthening and deepening our relationship with our sending church.  We are so blessed to be part of Living Stone Baptist Church.  As frail as Lorena and myself are, we need a body of believers to encourage us along our journey.  Tim, our pastor, has been wisely pushing me throughout the internship and refining my thinking along the way.  Living Stone has already begun to encourage us by praying that we would be able to make connections with churches to share our ministry.  

Well, their prayers are certainly effective.  If you take a look at our calendar you can count at least eleven different churches we will be at in the next five months.  Any open dates are filled with missionary training at BMM, a visit to family, back at our home church for a short rest, or simply waiting to be filled.  So the campout this past weekend seems to be the calm before the storm.  

Royal Treatment

One of the perks of being a missionary is that wherever you go, you get treated like royalty.  Well not quite like Prince William and Kate, but we get taken care of very well.  This week I drove back down to Salisbury, Maryland to speak at First Baptist School’s chapel.  I spent the night with Larry and Ammi Lembeck, and they were very kind to say the least.  Below is a picture of them.  Ammi is from Chile, so we naturally spoke much Spanish together.  She is due her first son in August.  Her husband, Larry, has even been down to Peru where I grew up.  

Then on Sunday we went to Norristown, PA to preach at Rise Up Church.  Here, too, we were taken very well care of.  We had lunch with Pastor Cameron and his family.  They are such an encouragement to us.  Pray for them as they get this small church on its feet.  Inner city ministry is not an easy task to say the least.  

And on a different note, if you would like to follow where we will be at next, you can find our schedule by clicking on this link or copying and pasting it into the browser. http://www.templetons2spain.com/news.html

Graduation

Saturday was graduation day for me from Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary.  Everything seemed to be going just fine except that I couldn’t keep my cap on.  It kept sliding further and further back on my head.  I have a small head and an odd shaped one on top of that.  The more the hat slid back the more my head had to tilt forward.  When I finally reached the platform the cap fell off.  Despite the nerves I at least had enough sense to catch it and make it look like I took it off.  
 
When I graduated from college in 2007 I jumped into seminary not knowing a quarter of what a Master of Divinity was.  I had originally planned to finish it in three years, but part way through I had to slow down the pace.  Four years later I have now completed a milestone in my life.  Not to mention I found my wife in the process!  Yet there is much, much more to come.  I have closed one chapter of life but on we move into our next chapter, which seems to have overlapped with seminary.  Deputation here we come!  Or rather, here we are!

Car Trouble

Ironically, I mentioned a few days ago that I needed to begin working on our car to prep it for our travels.  Well, Saturday our car decided to take a short break from driving.  On Saturday Lorena rolled into a parking lot and turned the car off.  When she tried to start it back up, nothing, nada, not even a click.  So as a former wanna-be-mechanic I pulled out the jumper cables and got it running again, only for it to die a second time while at the bank. 

This problem plus a rapid loss of oil pushed me over the edge to decide we weren’t going to take our car to visit Victory Baptist in Reading, PA.  Fortunately I had asked some friends of ours, Josh and Rachel Steinmetz, if they would like to come along with us to visit this church.  They had already agreed, so I called Josh up to ask if we could to take his car instead.  

To make a long story short we got to Victory Baptist and had a great time getting to know some of the believers there.  We especially got to know the teens since we stayed after the service to play a few games with them.   Yesterday, I stopped by the mechanics (Earlington Transmission where I used to work almost nine years ago) and picked up our car.  All the car needed was a new battery, and apparently my mechanic skills are not that great after all.  The last time I did the oil change, I left the drain plug a little loose.  So now that our car is fixed we can make it to our next church in Norristown, PA.  Fortunately it’s not too far away.

Victory Baptist Church in Reading, PA

This week I was reminded of the fact that though I graduate from seminary there is still more to be done.  In truth there is always more to be done and accomplished for the glory of God.  We glorify God by sharing the joy of the Gospel, which is God’s vision.  This we attempt to do at every church and with every person we meet.    

So tonight we get to visit a church a little closer to home this time.  We are visiting Victory Baptist Church in Reading, PA. Pastor Rochester invited me to preach in their evening service.  The following Sunday I get to preach in our home church, Living Stone Baptist Church.  Then Sunday the 22^nd we will be visiting Rise Up Church in Norristown, Pennsylvania.  Please pray for us as we begin to rack up a few miles of travel and as we share God’s vision for the Gospel in Spain. 

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Current Tasks

Hello friends,

You might be wondering what we are working on now.  Our first task is to line up meetings in churches.  This takes more time and effort than I had anticipated.  I spend a few hours every week (mostly Wednesdays) calling friends and pastors sharing our vision for ministry in Spain.  Then I try to meet with them to share our vision.  Because of this we have a few more meetings lined up.  Our next church visit is May 22, with a few scattered throughout the summer.  But the majority are in September and October.  Our goal is to have every weekend filled.

Our second task is to get all our missions “stuff” put together.  What is the “stuff?”  Well, the last time we visited a church (Faith Baptist in Salisbury Maryland), we had two weeks to finish prayer cards, brochures, and a short presentation on Spain.  Lorena was even able to finish our website before our visit.  Unfortunately our prayer cards didn’t get printed off in time to have them to give out at Faith.  There is still more stuff we need to purchase or work on:  Purchasing of an HD projector, creating our DVD presentation, readying our car for the many, many miles of travel ahead, and more.  

We are trying to get all this put together so that we can hit the road.  In many ways we are ahead of schedule, but we want to remain ahead.  Yet in all this “stuff” that we do, we are relying on God’s sovereignty to work in His timing.  We cannot do a single thing in life apart from our King permitting it.