Willow Creek Conference

Last Thursday afternoon our church staff (all 8 of us!) headed out to Cheltenham (Southwest England) for a leadership conference. The conference was Friday and Saturday, and was put on by the Willow Creek Association -UK and Ireland. Willow Creek Community Church is a church in Chicago that was started 30 years ago by 4 couples, one of which is Billy Hybels. Bill Hybels is the pastor of the church and was the main speaker at the conference. Anyway, the church began in a rented out movie theatre and has grown and grown, and now has about 20,000 members!! Bill Hybels knows leadership. How amazing is that! This church has so so many ministries, one of which is the car ministry. The way the car ministry works is when someone is about to get a new car, if they don't really need the trade in $$ from their current car, they can donate it to the church. The church then gives it to a single mother. There are some quite wealthy people in the church, and Bill shared of one story about a family who gave the car ministry their minivan that was valued at about $25,000. The van was given to a single mother of something like 8 kids I think. He shared what an emotional experience it was for all involved. What an incredible ministry! Another speaker was Erwin McManus, the pastor of Mosaic church in Los Angeles. This church sounds pretty spectacular. Their average attender is 25 and single and they have over 60 different cultures gathered together. They meet in various places, one of which is a night club in L.A. It's very artsy and creative. Sounds awesome. This guy is a super dynamic speaker, really funny and enjoyable to listen. But even better, he really makes you think. He makes you question things. And He is absolutely on fire for God. He knows his purpose in life and he is living it. So, the conference was fantastic and we came back renewed, refreshed, and refocused!

No shame

Okay, my friend Torie just made my day! What in the world! She said I should look at this site and be prepared to laugh, so I did. Copy and paste this into your address line.
http://www.michounet.com/fatman/
That is the funniest thing ever! I laughed for so long! Thank you Torie!

Aloha

Last night at Ignite (our high school youth night) we had a bit of a Luau. Megen decided to do a Hawaiian theme night because it's been snowing for 2 or 3 days!! So it is bitter, but pretty. The snow isn't really sticking though, so that is unfortunate. Anyway, we had Hawaiian pizza and pineapple chunks to snack on. Everyone got to wear a lei. She spoke about surfing in the Bible. I said I didn't know there was surfing in the Bible, but in fact there may be. In Acts 27 Paul is involved in a shipwreck and Acts 27:44 says that the men were to get to the land on planks or on pieces of the ship, and in this way everyone reached the land in safety. So you see, there maybe have been some surfing in the Bible. (Random-I am sitting here at work and talking with Travis, and he just said to me that this music he has on (titled lonely night) is the music he listens to when he sits at home alone drinking a glass of red wine and watching chick flicks. So that's Travis. He's a funny kid.) Anyway, Megen talked about the 5 things she would teach someone that was learning to surf-and then she applied scripture to each one to make it relevant to us in our daily lives. It was awesome! Howcreative is she!! So we really had a fun time at our little luau, in the midst of a snowy night.

Barcelona

So I went to Barcelona 2 weeks ago with my friend Erin, who lives in London. Sadly I am just now writing about this!! But I just made this blog site so I guess that's okay. We went to Barcelona for super cheap! Only about £90 for the return flight and 2 nights at a nice little hotel!! We flew in Tuesday night and settled into our hotel. We decided to go on a bike tour the next day and see the cathedral and some Gaudi architecture. However, the bike tours weren't running yet, so we ended up buying a double decker bus pass for 2 days. We rode the bus around (on the open top) and saw a bit of Barcelona. We hopped off at the cathedral, but unfortunately it was under some renovation/construction and the whole front of the building was covered. :-( Outside of the cathedral was a neat little market, so we walked around a bit and then headed up the road. We actually just walked straight up from where we were and ended up right outside of Casa Batllo, one of Gaudi's major works. This place was incredible. We opted for the expensive 16 Euro tour, which included the whole main house and the attics and rooftop. It also had an audio tour thing included, which was great. Wow!! The place is incredible. Gaudi uses a lot of mosaic and just weird, unique designs. Everything sort of flows, no sharp edges, just soft, wave-like corners and pieces. Hard to explain, but incredibly beautiful. The rooftop is amazing. Random, but amazing. Very close to that place was another Gaudi work, which is now an apartment building. Anyway, we did a bit more sightseeing and then headed back to the hotel. That night, we ended up going for Spanish tapas and paella for dinner. Very traditional of us. Then headed to a flamenco dance show!! Awesome. Those are some talented folks, and they can seriously move like none other. Erin and I are pretty sure that we could also be flamenco dancers, and as soon as we got back to the hotel that night we practiced a bit on our own. We're considering moving to Barcelona to pursue flamenco dancing as a full time career. We are that good. Anyway, the next day we hopped on the bus and headed up to Park Guell, another Gaudi work of course. I guess that's what you do in Barcelona, see Gaudi's incredible architecture. Or so we did. This place was fantastic. Very colorful and bright and fun. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we spent a while there walking around. It is a park, so there's a lot of open space, but also some areas where Gaudi had done a lot of detailed work. You'll just have to see the pictures, I can't explain what this stuff looks like. Then we went to Montjuic, which is where the Olympic Stadium is. But, we did not see the Olympic stadium. We actually went to this other place at Montjuic called Pablo Espanyol. Pablo Espanyol has well over 100 different buildings that are set up like a miniature city. Many of the buildings are connected and there are little pathways between rows of buildings and such. It reminded me of Universal Studios, when you're on the tram and you go through the fake little Mexican city. Anyhow, each of the buildings are different and represent a different area in Spain, which was really quite interesting. There are stores and restaurants in many of the buildings as well. It was an awesome place. We had dinner there and then headed out to the aeropuerto. It was a quick trip, only 2 days, but enough time to really see a lot of the city and the culture there. We really enjoyed Barcelona. You should go!!