Back to School...

After a wonderful 2 week break for Christmas with family and friends we are back at school. It's great to be home! A few highlights since being back:

Outreach- we are in an outreach group called "adopt a block" where we go and visit a neighborhood every Thursday afternoon. We've been developing relationships with the people in that community over the past months. At first it was a little weird knocking on doors and starting up conversation with strangers but we are at the place now where we can say that quite a few of them are friends. There are a few families that are really receptive to hanging out with us and some of them are quite open to God. One lady, Kerri, said to us when we walked up to her house yesterday, "I was hoping you wouldn't pass by without stopping in and praying for me." She has been to church before but doesn't seem to be walking very closely to the Lord right now. She is so open though! The first time we met her we knew it was a total "God encounter" as we prayed with her and through tears she told us she knew God sent us to her. Pray for Christina and Magdaleno (a really cool Mexican family and their kids). They're religious background is catholic but we're not sure how much of an understanding of "relationship with God" they have. They have been SO sweet to us and even had us into their house the other day for burritos! Lastly, please pray for Colby, his girlfriend Kristen and her daughter Celeste. Colby has recently left the "party scene", drinking, etc. and is in the place where he's wondering what to replace it with. He doesn't have many friends that are a positive influence and he's been really warm towards us - so we are trying to hang out with him more. We really just want the whole neighborhood to be blessed and that the people we've been getting to know would enter into a relationship with Jesus... that their lives and families would be transformed!

Class has been amazing this week. The past two days we've had a special speaker called "Steve Backlund". His teaching has been rocking our worlds... he's taught on the renewing of our mind and the importance of having an accurate, God centered view of ourselves... A lot of his teaching comes from the verse that says that "as a man thinks, so he is!". God's been challenging us both to speak God's truth and his promises over our lives and laugh at the lies that the enemy constantly throws in our direction.

We also started a new "elective" this week (churchplanting). Paul Manwarring, our teacher, is AMAZING! God has used him in powerful ways in the prison system in England (where he's from) and we are so excited to get to know him better and glean from his wisdom and life experience. We are constantly blown away by the quality of leaders here... we are so blessed!