Leader's Retreatngi

Every year we have a planning retreat with our leaders to look at our past goals, set new goals and plan out the coming year. We had originally planned it in December, but it didn't work out, so we finally did it last weekend. I have to tell you, this was a time where God really convicted me in my lack of faith. He just blew me away with what He did that weekend. After debating where to do the retreat, we just decided that the easiest would be to stay in town, so we had it at our house. Our "old" leaders were wavering for various reasons, so we weren't even sure if they would show up, and at one point I wondered if anyone would come! Much to my surprise, we have 15 leaders in our home. It was amazing!!! All of the "old" leaders came, but most were fairly new leaders. It was so exciting to see their excitement and their willingness to serve. We did things a little differently this year in that Sam had a couple of men (both fairly new leaders in this church) speak to the group. It was great to see people from here step up and challenge the rest, and everyone rose to the challenge.

Pepe Reyes speaks to the group

Pepe Reyes spoke on how we can each evangelize in a very real and practical way in order to have exponential growth in the church. None of his ideas were really new to us, but the way that he put them together and shared them with the group was inspirational. It gave each of us a measurable task on what we can do to share Jesus with others. The other person that spoke was Carlos Camacho. Carlos is a preacher and evangelist, and his family moved here from Venezuela a few months ago to work with Steve Austin and the Gulf Coast Biblical Institute (I think that's what it's called). We knew about each other, but didn't know that we were in the same city. Finally, we have connected and they have been a blessing to the church here.

It is time to have new faces in our leadership, and I praise God for that. I also ache for some of our long-time leaders, because they are really walking some tough roads right now. They are in the fire of the enemy and we pray that they will put on the full armor of God, fight and be victorious in Him.

We have a full year ahead of us, with several groups from the States planning to visit this summer. It should be exciting as usual!

A full house! (and yes, those are our Christmas lights in the background. One, we're not too motivated to take them down, and two they really look pretty still)

Everyone listens attentively