Sleepy in the States

We'll post more of an update later. Suffice it to say that after we got up at 6:30 a.m. Monday in Madrid, we travelled approximately 5000 miles due to the circuitous route through Amsterdam and Detroit, then returned to the Charleston airport on time, with an arrival a bit after 10:30 p.m., which would be 4:30 a.m. in Spain. Mil gracias a Pete y Brad for the rides home.
We are tenatively scheduled to lead the adult CE period on December 9, giving more details about our trip and the ways you were able to minister through us in Spain as the Lord enabled us.
Dave for the team

(Time) Traveling

Yesterday was a great day of getting a feel for the history of this area as we went to Seville and saw Roman Ruins in Italica that dated back 200 years before Christ. It was sobering to stand on the very same ¨playing field¨ of a coliseum in which Christians lost their lives. John informed us that ¨arena¨ is the Spanish word for ¨sand¨ which is what was used on the ground of the coliseum to soak up their blood. How different it is to follow Christ in America! But how thankful we should be that He shed His blood for our sins.

After spending some time in a 900 year old Catholic Cathedral - quite a sight! - we enjoyed some Thanksgiving Day fellowship with other TEAM missionaries in Seville before returning to Osuna through La Puebla, the location of the Niemeyers church.

The day concluded with a great visit at dinner and afterward with special friends of John and Sandy. (I´ll try to add pictures below.) Please pray that they will encounter Christ through our presence and service here, and pray that they will hear the simple, life-changing Gospel message that remains the same through all ages and nations.

Missionary Housing

Wanted to show you our housing here in Osuna. Not much time will be spent there, but boy is it helpful to get a bit of rest! Neat to wake up to roosters on the other side of a grove of olive trees out back. You can also see a bit of the range of foothhills in distance. It´s beautiful all around.

Around Town in Osuna

After getting acclimated to "Spain Time" with a good night´s rest, we´ve been around town all morning meeting friends of the Niemeyers, inviting them to "Thanksgiving with Friends" and seeing some of the history of the town as we go. It´s a joy to walk through the thin cobblestone streets and see buildings that go back centuries, but it´s sad to hear that the established church is largely associated with hypocrisy and power over the people. What we pray for this community of people is that they will see and hear the Gospel in our witness - humility, service, love, forgiveness, holiness. Why do we want this? So that through our testimony and prayers, Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith. We believe that Christ shed His precious blood for people in 21st century Osuna, so they need to know. Pray for us that God would work through us.

On the Ground in Spain

Tapping into coffee, seeing the old world, bringing rain to Spain (mainly on the plain) - we´ve arrived. Dave is finding that 28 hours of sleeplessness coupled with a Spanish keyboard makes for difficult typing. Kenny and Jesse had a little excitement in customs, but they did manage to get through intact. Due to a delayed plane in Amsterdam, we were on the edge of timing our connection to a train from Madrid to Cordoba, but thankfully traffic cooperated and we made our train with no problem. Of course, we have run into a few language barrier issues, but God has provided for us to have everything we need.

Please pray that we can continue to minister to the Niemeyer family, who have been ministering to us since our arrival. Please pray that there will continue to be showers both of rain in this drought-stricken area and of the Lord´s blessing as we try to serve as ambassadors of GFC and Christ to this community.

In Matthew 28, Jesus continues to prove his resurrection to onlookers - apostles, women, and even Jewish leaders. This ongoing living proof of the resurrection shows Christ in his power convicting people and changing the world, giving purpose, lending wings to the Gospel. Pray that we will go in the grace of God and carry this precious Gospel with us wherever we go.

Forsaken by God

In Matthew 27.43, Jesus cries out to the Father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (ESV). As Jesus is dying on the cross, smitten for us and our sins, being mocked by onlookers, he takes on our sins, bearing the curse of separation from the Father on our behalf.

This morning we heard an exhortation from Rod Conner of To Every Tribe Mission (http://www.toeverytribe.com/) to seek earnestly to bring the Gospel of Christ to all people we can, personally or through other messengers. Tomorrow, our team leaves for Spain to do just that. While the people TETM goes to in remote areas of Mexico and New Guinea are quite different culturally and historically from the people we will be ministering to in Spain or that others in our church body will be ministering to in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, we see a striking similarity.

Wherever we go, to whomever we minister, everyone who is not believing in Christ is under the curse, forsaken by God the Father. Everyone who is believing in Christ is a recipient of the blessing of God, taking on the life of fellowship with the Father Christ purchased in taking our sin on himself on the cross. This distinctive of Christianity transcends cultural barriers, language barriers, and generational barriers. The message of Jesus crucified, dead, buried, and risen again for our justirication is the message we were given by the apostles and prophets and is the message we will continue to proclaim until Christ's coming to bring his own to their heavenly home.

Let us be diligent in proclaiming to people under the curse the Christ who bore the curse for them.

The Spain team is departing in the morning, expecting to arrive in Osuna on Tuesday afternoon, local time. We'll update you via e-mail and this blog as soon as we are able after we arrive.

Grace and Peace!

A Real Post - Not on a Blog

Kenny, good to see you post. Yes, it's been Dave posting all along. But I knew someone else in GFC leadership would become brave enough to try sometime. After all, everyone writes blogs and nobody ever reads them.

Jeremiah 31.31-34 talks about a real post, not one that's out there somewhere in cyber-space. God declares in verses 33-34 (ESV), "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

I've heard sermons about this passage, mostly bad sermons, destructive ones, because they didn't understand a very simple grammatical construction God uses with his people. I'd like to observe something about the concept of "mood" in language. The mood shows the type of action in a sentence. The most common moods we see in languages are the indicative, which describes action, and the imperative, which commands action. Armed with that simple concept, look over Jeremiah 31.33-34 again. What mood is it? It's indicative.

God is describing the life of the believer. He is describing what our life is like when he has changed us and called us to himself. We don't wrestle to put God's law within us. He puts his law within us. We don't make ourselves God's people, we are God's people because he has done it. And ultimately, in eternity, there comes a time when we don't remind one another to love, trust, and serve God, because it is built into the new nature God has given us. It will be the very most natural thing for us once this mortal life has passed away. God summarizes his point at the end of the quotation. "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
We see that forgiveness fulfilled in the resurrected Lord. As a partaker of the resurrection, the believer is a partaker of the new nature. It's something God has done. He has posted his law in our life.

In all our activities over the next few days, may we remember that in our new nature, given by God in Christ, we carry his presence and his true law into every situation we find ourselves in. Pray the Lord will shine through you and other believers, bringing this message of true forgiveness, resurrection life, to our lost and dying world.