Sunday night we had the opportunity to give our presentation at the Ocean View Church of Christ. We really appreciated their generosity and support and are looking forward to seeing the great partnerships and relationships that will develop between us! It was a great night.

During the beginning of the service (songs, communion, etc…) everyone was sitting all the way in the back, which is apparently the normal custom there. The first 10 or so rows on both sides of the auditorium were completely empty! I was just going to take my microphone and head towards the back of the auditorium when it was time for me to speak, but thankfully, just before that time the song leader explained to everyone that we inteded to use our own projection screen, which is small, and that they would need to move up so that they could see it.

Apparently this was a good motivation, because the entire group moved all the way to the front and completely filled those 10 empy rows! This lent itself to the intimate and personal atmospere that I feel more comfortable with, so I definitely appreaciated it. I later found out that this was a very special treat, and that they never are able to get everyone to come the front.

Thank you OVCC for giving us the opportunity to express to you our passion for the bibleless people of the world, and thank you for moving to the front of the auditorium!

Our first set of informational brochures arrived from the printer this week! I really enjoyed designing it and am glad to see the finished product. We will be sending these to the churches we’ve been to already and will be bringing them with us to our future speaking engagements as well. The information contained in them is basically the same as what’s on this site in the Ministry Info and Partnership sections.

The graphic here is a preview of the inside of the brochure. It folds in half from top to bottom and has a picture of us on the outside cover. It was designed in Pages and printed by U Printing. I’m definitely happy with the result and hopefully will be using this workflow for several more flyers and brochures.

We spoke at DCSC Monday for campfire. The campfire was rained out so we had to make do with candles. It’s Senior High week this week, and although attendance is down this year, they are a great group. Rather than our normal PD presentation, I took the opportunity to challenge them to give up everything to Christ, who will use it all in a much bigger way than we could ever imagine.

We’re now back home and mostly unpacked from our trip to Dallas for PMI2. We had an awesome time meeting up with friends and learning more about the organization. The classes were just what we needed, preparing us for life as full-time missionaries.

The praise and worship times were amazing. I haven’t heard that many people singing that loud in a long time. It’s great to be in room full of people who are singing there hearts out for God.

All day Friday was a Partnership Development workshop. This came at just the right time for us as we are just starting our PD efforts. We heard some great stories and picked up a lot of tips that we will be using over the next few weeks.

Our trip back home went well (although we had to get up at 5AM to catch our flight!) This morning we did a presentation at Discovery Christian Church, which went really well. Tomorrow night we’re off to camp to speak at the Senior High week campfire (should be a good story-telling opportunity).

You can view photos from our trip to PMI2 here.

Today we arrived in Dallas, TX (at the PBT headquarters) for Pioneer Mission Instute (PMI). It’s a week long intensive training that PBT puts on every year. There are two main sets of classes that happen during the day – PMI 1 and PMI 2. PMI 1 is for discovering what PBT is about and how you can be involved. PMI 2 is for preparation for people who are definitely interested in joining PBT or, as in our case, are already recruits.

In addition to the classes, there are main sessions every evening where everyone gets together for a time of praise and worship and for a presentation from each branch of PBT. There are many PBT missionaries who come to Dallas for this week to teach classes, so it’s also a great opportunity to meet people and build relationships. Actually, that’s pretty much what it’s all about.

We went to PMI 1 last year (on our honeymoon, actually), and are back this year for PMI 2. The classes we’ll be taking this week are:

• Translation & the Great Comission
• Transitions: What to do with them?
• Learning to live as good, rich neighbors
• Spiritual Disciplines
• Worldview & dealing with the unseen
• Intro to PBT’s System of Financial Accountability
• Physical Preparation for the Field
• PBT Computer Resources
• Sexuality & God’s Gifts: Celibacy, Marriage, & Family
• Mental Preparation for the Field
• Intro to PBT’s Missionary Care Program
• Translation, Literacy, & Scripture in Use Strategy in Ministry
• Partnership Development (3 parts taking and entire day)

If that seems like a lot, it is! We’ll be in classes five hours a day for the next five days, not including the main sessions and the other extra meetings that we are involved in. We’ll start posting photos soon, but in the meantime, here’s PBT’s PMI promo video:

If you can read this, the web site is online and mostly functioning. Right now we just have the basic info, but we will be keeping this up to date with the latest travels and happenings, plus we will be posting lots of photos, so stay tuned!

Sunday night we had the opportunity to do our PD presentation at the Milford Church of Christ. We are very appreciative of them for hosting us. We feel like we established some new relationships as well as strengthened some already existing ones.

This was the first time we used our own screen. It’s a really old Da-Lite screen that my mom bought at a thrift store like 15 years ago. I have no idea why she bought it, but Da-Lite is a great brand, and the screen seemed to work really well for us!

Speaking of old equipment, we also brought along my 10 year old Ghetto Blasterâ„¢ for sound for the DVD clip. It’s an old Magnavox CD player – the first one I ever owned and the only one we have. I remember saving up for months to buy it ($98.99!!) If you ignored the hissing and the sharp tone, I guess you could say it worked OK, but it’s definitely not going to cut it for larger venues, so I’m keeping my eye out for some kind of portable speaker/amplifier to connect to the computer for audio.