We have really enjoyed being back in town and reconnecting with everyone. it is nice to be home. I've also been really happy to see how things are going with the house churches. This past weekend, we celebrated a wedding in the Spanish house church. Ronnie did an awesome job of officiating and it was really cool to see all of the different people there enjoying the fellowship together.
There have been some great things happening at the English speaking house church as well. This past Sunday, after the bible study (which people are really beginning to participate in more and more) we talked about having a special time for baptism in a couple of weeks. One of the girls that has been coming faithfully for a while has been a Christian for a while but has never been baptized. When asked if she would like to be, she immediately answered, "Yes". The cool thing is that her little brother accepted Christ and was baptized in May of last year and now he is going to be involved and will help baptize his sister. During the course of the conversation, one of our next door neighbors spoke out and said that she had never been baptized either, even though she has been a Christian for years. She also said that she didn't think that her husband (one of my surfing buddies) had been baptized either. Immediately following house church, a couple of the guys came to me and we talked for a long time about their faith. Both of them had made decisions to follow Jesus earlier in their lives and as they shared those decisions with me, they told me that they would like to be baptized as well.
It is hard for me to convey what these things mean after the past couple of years of laying groundwork, hoping and praying. we have done a lot of talking about what it really means to follow Jesus and people are really, conciously wanting to do it...whatever that might mean for them. It is so exciting...they are even volunteering to pray before and after church. When most of them first started coming, they could hardly look each other in the eye and now they are beginning to pray for each other, ask for prayer about specific areas of their lives, read aloud and even sing in front of each other. These are huge steps down and exciting path and it makes me so happy to see them really wanting to know God in ways that are genuine. It is just so awesome to have the priviledge to be a part of it all.
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