Work!

I wanted to give a quick update. God finally provided a job for me! I am working for Cornerstone Custom Framing. The owner goes to my church, and when I ran out of options for work, he hooked me up. It's been three days, and not too hard yet, but tomorrow we start a new job. Me being the new guy means that I get to tote lots of heavy wood all day (part sarcasm, part glad I get a mandatory workout)! well, I will post a more detailed update soon, but for now this will have to do, gotta get some rest for work...

Venezuela part Dos!

Ok, finally here's the rest of my photo-diary of the trip to venezuela. In the last Vene. post, I showed you some of the construction work and the party at the nursing home. Now I want to show you the carnivals we did in the street. We concentrated on loving on the children, we played music, games, painted faces, made balloon animals and hats, etc. It was a ton of fun, and a ton of pictures. Here are some of my favorites:


This is the Basurero (in english, the dump). 3 million people's trash living in and around Maracaibo go to this dump.

There are communities of people who are so destitute, that this dump is their livelihood. They find their food, things to sell, clothing, anything that can be used to sustain life in this dump. They have set up their communities as close to this dump as possible to ensure that they get in first each day to get first dibs on the trash. These are some of the communities that we ministered to.

Up next: The ninos!

Don't you wanna love on 'em?! We did too, here it is

And the staff:

McKenzie (a.k.a. Big Mac)

Alfredo and his wife Audia

Josue (a.k.a. El Juahito de Fuego) and his wife Dayana (a.k.a. Cabezona)

Kenny (a.k.a. El Negro de Muerte) and Adriana





Laurie the water nazi

Chris (a.k.a. El Gringo de Magico) and Isai and Sandra (whom I regret to not have a photo of)


Oh, yeah, and me (a.k.a. El Mexicano de Futbol)



The two weeks we spent in Venezuela were awesome. We had a ton of fun, enjoyed each others fellowship and hanging with our Venezuelan homies! It really was like coming home, and it was incredibly hard to leave...


It's impossible to summarize the trip in a blog, it helps to have pictures, but nothing replaces the experience, the relationships, the stretching of faith of actually going. Those of you who came know, and those of you who didn't, I pray that you take an opportunity to serve with our brothers and sisters overseas.

The Dark Knight!

Ok, I'm also taking a posting break to go see The Dark Night! I feel like a nerd for being this giddy, but I am. Christian Bale is one of my favorite actors, and Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker is hyped up to be incredible. I can't wait!

Venezuela 2008: Paradigm Shift

So it's been a hot minute since I've been able to blog, two weeks in fact. Venezuela was awesome! God really did some awesome things in and through our team there. The video will give you a pretty good audio/visual experience to get you acquainted with what we experienced and did there [to see it, click here]. There were three churches that came: Allen Baptist, New Hope, and Beech Park.

I have a ton of pictures, and I know that I can ramble when telling stories, so I will attempt [emphasis on ATTEMPT] to give a brief/accurate representation of the week by way of photos and captions.

When the staff team arrived, we helped the Venezeulans finish the missionary rooms on the house we built last year.

This sunset is from the night that we went to pick up the 36 member mission team from Allen Baptist, Beech Park and New Hope

These are the four pastors that are partnering together in ministry in Cabimas, Venezuela. From right to left: Pastor Robert Melton (New Hope), Pastor Darwin Fuenmayor(I hope I spelled that right!), Chris Bumbalough - Pastor of Youth and Missions (Allen Baptist), and Pastor Robbie (Beech Park).

Part of the team did construction everyday, and it's not the same as in the states. here's a few pics of us making cement for a kitchen floor at the church.







Here the boys take a little break...

Here we leveled the cement:



We also went to a couple of nursing homes and held a big party where we loved on some "abuelitos" -- literally "little grandparents," it's just a nice way to refer to elderly people. I didn't get to go, because i was with the construction team, but it looks like it was pretty sweet.







Ok, kids, that's all for right now, coming very soon, visual proof that we loved on some Venezuelan ninos at a street carnival, and the Basurero, and Venezuelan friends. I have decided to do this half post because there is an error and it won't save my progress! so here you go and stay tuned!

I'm Back!

I just got back from Venezuela last night, much to blog about soon, but I must take care of some things first...I'll be bloggin soon!