Last week we hit the 6 month mark of our relocation.
Honestly I haven’t posted nearly as much as I meant, although if you’ve kept up with Bec’s daily posts, many of you probably feel like you know more about our lives than your average tabloid regular.
But as we hit the 6 month point I wanted to share a little of what we have been part of over the last little while and a brief bit of what we have seen and see God up to.
We long to see God’s unwinding story transforming the narrative of our culture and it has been exciting to be part of moments when He so gently and so faithfully has breathed life into new friends and our wider community.
A little before Christmas, for a number of reasons (to long and uninteresting to explain here) we merged the Pais USA teams with our global team. Practically this means that part of my responsibility now extends to developing and training the teams here in USA as well as developing resources, strategy and coaching the leaders who train our teams around the world. Next week we are excited to regroup and gather our teams for a mid-year training conference, SWAP. This will be an opportunity to inspire new ideas and re-energise the teams for the adventure ahead. The program is shaping up well for the conference and I am really enthused for what’s in store, both at SWAP and the shift I expect as teams return to their placements with our partnering churches. I anticipate an acceleration in community engagement, salvation and freedom from sickness, anxiety and fear as we move forward into the next half of the year.
Just before Christmas we moved into our new home. It was so good to be in for Christmas. Instead of squeezing into a 500 square foot apartment we now have plenty of space for the boys to play outside, they have their own space and we even had enough room to welcome our best friends for New Year.
New House (Disclaimer * Not our Car) Last night in the old apartment
After the move we had a refreshing rest over Christmas with some precious time as a family and friends who have become family.
Some of you may also remember Ryan who spent several years with us in NI. He is now serving as the youth director with Saints Church Viridian. Over the last 4 months Ryan has started our youth department at Saints from Scratch. With now 15 in regular attendance we have already seen a number of incredible ways God has been moving in their lives. Some finding freedom, some making the best decision of their lives to follow Jesus and many finding a welcoming place to explore their faith.
We are excited to be launching a prayer initiative soon as well. Recently we gathered many of our church community and unpacked some of the model we learned and explored during our time with Causeway Coast Vineyard and Pais in Northern Ireland. No surprise, God did what he does best and several of the group experienced his healing power, the continuous pain of a historic neck injury, historic sinus pain, and the pain caused by an erosion of bones in the feet were all healed to name a few. As glorious as it is to see a room like that come alive as we encounter Jesus a fresh, we were most encouraged to hear that it didn’t stop in the room and many took the opportunity to pray for friends, colleges and family in the days that followed and saw significant shifts in the situations they carried His life into. One of the most remarkable being the all clear from an aggressive form of cancer.
I love that God’s goodness and love is not restricted to geographic favourites or denominational favourites. But is available for anyone, anywhere, wherever carriers of His Kingdom set foot.
Long may our world come alive as we courageously carry His Kingdom into our neighbourhoods, workplaces, gyms, barbers, salons or clubs. May we find the extraordinary in the everyday!