apartment ministry

This past Thursday night Erica and I had the opportunity to go to a local apartment complex and help host a barbeque for the residents. The basic thought is that by going into a poor apartment complex where there is not much hope, we can simply give them that hope by loving on them for an hour or so. We do this not through the church, but through Americore because apartment managers are often more likely to let us in if we are "developing community". Joel and Erica and I were in charge of the games, and we played a version of soccer for about an hour and then of course some football. A good time was had by all, especially Erica who got to play "cheerleader" with Heaven, a little girl who didn't want to play soccer, but loves cheerleading. As the great husband that I am, I told her to go to Erica who I claimed knew how to cheerlead. Needless to say, Heaven and Erica had a great time, but I did get a bit of a look when she went over to Erica and said that Brandon had said she knew how to cheerlead... =)
Aside from playing with the kids, the highlight of the night was that the hispanic pastor with us was able to lead someone to Christ! God works in mysterious ways and often a BBQ and some kids games are all He needs to open a door that can forever change a life.

Here are some pictures from when my mom was here.

She came to Visalia with Donna and spent a few days at Donna's sister's house.

It was so good to be able to spend some time with her!

But if from there you seek the Lord you God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath. --Deut. 4:29-31

Circumstances in life often throw us for a huge loop. We feel as though we are going right along just fine, just getting comfortable it seems. Then something happens that completely throws us off track. It is here, in these times and in these places that we need to seek the Lord with all our heart and soul. For we have this awesome promise that we do have a merciful God who will not forget us, but will allow us to find him in the midst of what seems to be the most difficult times. He will be there. He will hold us up. And he wants us, his helpless, weak children, to fall into his arms of hope and love and rest in the assurance of his grace and his peace.

weekend, etc.

We had a great time seeing Mom Groeneweg on Wed/Thursday. She was up with Donna visiting Donna's sister in Visalia. Erica went with them Thursday for a well deserved ladies day out for facials...not my idea of an exciting day out, but they seemed to have an awesome time. This week I stayed busy again with different activies with the youth group, some meetings, kids camp, and working out. I met with Zeke who is planting a church in nearby Delhi, and I am planning on getting up there Tuesday. Overall the internship is going well, but I continue to look to see where God really wants to use me and where my passions meet up with the needs of those around me.

This weekend we took off to the beach. We were able to see the beauty of creation at its fullest. It's pretty crazy to look at the ocean and think that it just goes on forever... We stayed in Monterey and then drove up to Santa Cruz today. Here are the pictures from our trip. They were all so awesome so we thought we would share them all with you...enjoy!

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands of them and sent them off. -Acts 13:2-3

Right now Gateway is reading through the book of Acts as a church and going through a series of messages on it. These two verses really struck me today. "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Wow. It is so easy to get caught up in that word "called." Am I really called to this or that, or do I just think that it fits my skillset well? How do we know when we are truly called to something?

I think this passage is awesome because their calling comes directly from the holy spirit. They receive this calling and then they move right away. They go out and simply tell their story and the story of the people of God. How often don't I (possibly we), think that in order for God to use us we have to be some sort of spiritual giants who have all the right answers before we can take a step to telling others anything about the gospel. The beauty in all of this is that Christ wants to use me--he wants to use us-- where we are right now. In our weakness we are made strong.
2 Cor. 9-10 says "My gace is sufficient for you , for my POWER is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I a stong.

We don't need to be perfect people that are able to say the perfect things at the perfect time. If that were the case, we would have no need for Christ's sacrifice and the power of the spirit. As it is, Christ works through our weakness because our weaknesses force us to be dependent on him through the power of the spirit. We need to rejoice in our weaknesses as Paul says, for it is there that we meet God. We don't need to have it all together to be used by him, but we do need to be willing to be used. I pray that we are all able to accept the gift of grace that God has given us. However, after realizing the power of His grace, I pray that we would embrace our weaknesses and share openly and boldly with the hurting world around us.

Yosemite

On Saturday we went to Yosemite with Aaron and Ashley. It was SO beautiful! Here are just a few of the pictures that we took...it's kind of hard to capture the true beauty of the mountains and waterfalls but we tried our best :) We had an awesome time! Hopefully you will enjoy our pictures!

Pictures

Check out the slide show Erica made-- She is much more skilled in these areas than I:) There are pics of our trip, first house, anniversary, and apartment. Enjoy!

 

Pictures!!

Have I told you how much I love my wife?

Have I told you how much I love my wife? As of yesterday Erica and I have officially been married for 1 year! It was an incredible year spent together, and if the first is any implication for the next 60-70, I'm going to be very blessed. We celebrated the big milestone on Saturday by heading off to Fresno for a day of exploration, shopping, coldstone, and a fine dining experience at the Macaroni Grill.

We also got to go to church yesterday. We were both very excited for our first day at Gateway. It is one thing to work at a church, but it is another to worship with a church. Uncle Al preached in the morning service and Joel (our cousin) gave the message at the 604. We were introduced to the congregation and got to share a bit of our story within God's story with them. Once again, we are very thankful for you prayers, thoughts, and letters of encouragement. Let us know if there is any way we can uphold you in prayer.

Prayer Request

Bob and Anna are the wonderful people that donated housing to us for the summer. Bob built up the Malibu Boat company from scratch and then sold the company a few years back, but remained in charge of the operations. Well, today Bob is resigning from the company. The board believes that they need to go in another direction in this tough financial time even though Malibu is doing much better than other boat companies under his guidance. As it is please pray for Bob and Anna as they have poured years of their lives and passion into this company, and are now forced to step out and simply watch what happens.
The flip side of this is that Malibu owns the house that we are living in, so we are going to have to move to an apartment. Bob and Anna have said that they will continue to provide housing for us, which is very humbling considering their condition and we are extremely grateful. Praise God for the people that they are, but ask him to continue to give them strength in this difficult time in their lives.

Well, we are officially moved in. Sorry it took so long for us to post, but we don't have regular internet access at our house yet. By the way, the house we are staying at is quite the place. I told Erica when we moved in that she should NOT expect this for our next house:) It is quite large, so if any of you get the hankering for a road trip, we have a place for you to stay. Yesterday was my first official day of interning and we felt I should start it off as any good CRC church would--in a 3 hour meeting. We are still working on the definite terms of the internship, but right now are getting situated and introduced to a lot of the happenings around Gateway Community CRC. If you would like to check out the church, feel free to visit the website at www.gatewaychurchmerced.org. We are still looking for a job for Erica, so please pray for that. She had an interview at the church and was offered to basically be the homeroom teacher for 15-20 kindergarden through first graders from 8-5, but we felt that was a bit overwhelming and might not be the best fit for her. We feel a bit more training might be needed for a position such as that, right mom?
Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers, we look forward to hearing from all of you. Feel free to call, email, or post on the blog!