Our First Study

Our First Study

Last Tuesday, we had our first Bible study in our home. It was so crazy to think that Trevor and I have been praying and preparing for that study for so many years. As I explained in our very first post, we have both had a calling and longing to church plant since age 16/17. It was very surreal to be in Portland at our first Bible study. We know we have a long road ahead, which will by no means be easy. But we know we are where we are supposed to be. God has been reminding me daily to depend on Him and His direction. I like to make to do lists and check things off- part of my type A personality. I wish there was some check list of "how to start a church" that I could go off of every day. But there isn't. There is no "right" way or "blue print" for starting the perfect church. Ultimately, it can only happen by God's grace and direction. It has been impressed so much on my heart lately how important it is to be people of prayer - to pray for the city, to pray for the people, to pray for my husband. We need to be people of prayer. Prayer gives us clarity and direction. Prayer changes US. It conforms our wills to God's will. That is our true desire. It is only by God's provision and planning that we are here in Portland. We are excited for what is in store and know we will only see lives changed by Christ if we continue in prayer and continue in relationship with Him. Daily I am reminded that it is not in our strength that lives will be changed or people will be saved. We are completely dependent on Him and what He is doing. It is exciting to be a part of His work.

We had our Easter egg hunt for our complex on Easter Sunday. We had a great turn out! We got to meet some people in our apartment complex and saw the need to have more events for the kids in our community. We have a lot of open space and common rooms for activities and we are going to continue to plan events to reach out to the families here. It was a great opportunity to "test the waters" so to speak. Our complex was so supportive of us doing something for the kids here that they are going to write an article on the Easter Egg hunt in their next newsletter! We are so excited! God is doing great things already. We didn't know if we would face resistance from the apartment managers but they were so supportive and gave us more ideas for reaching the kids here. We are excited to plan more events.

Please pray that God would continue to direct our paths and give us hearts for the people here. Pray for ways to serve and love people in our community. Praise for all He is doing here already and for his constant provision and presence.

Thanks for reading!!!

Julie

Easter is coming

Hello hello!

I can't believe we have been in Portland almost a month! It's pretty crazy how quickly this month has flown by. For me, it's been a month of exhaustion and sickness in my first trimester of pregnancy. I have felt so tired that it has been difficult to get anything done, let alone just get out of the house! I am so grateful for my job and being able to work from home because I just can't imagine having to leave the house some days. I didn't know pregnancy would be this tiring! Hopefully it will change soon as I am 12 weeks today and almost to the second trimester where they say your energy picks up and the nausea stops...I can only hope! While I have felt helpless and useless at times, God has been teaching me to support the ministry in other ways including prayer and simply supporting my husband. If you know me at all you know I'm a "do-er." I get things done. I pack my schedule to the max. I am busy all the time and I like it that way. So for me to be stuck on the couch with zero energy to do anything has been challenging to say the least! But God is faithful and has been using this season to increase my dependence on Him. It has been a constant reminder that everything I have is through Him and not myself and that without Him we can do nothing...literally...I feel like I can't do anything at times. It has been a good season of rest and relaxation and constant reminders to wait on the Lord and allow Him to do the work.

Trevor has been meeting people everyday. We are beginning our Bible study next week on Tuesday. We are SO excited. Art will be moved up here this weekend and our entire core team will be here! We are excited to have people here to support what God is doing. This Sunday we have our first outreach. We are putting on an Easter egg hunt in the complex. We are hoping to attract families and have the opportunity to meet people and invite them to our Bible study. Please pray for good opportunity to serve the people in our complex. Please pray God continues to orchestrate the people we come in contact with and that we can share Jesus with them.

Thanks for reading!

Julie

Trying to be an introvert in downtown Portland

For those of you who know me, I really like to read books and have 'just me and the Lord' time. The last couple of weeks have been exceedingly busy and hectic, to say the least!  I spent most of the morning working at Peet's on the various church plant things that have to be done.  After doing that for some hours, I wanted to explore downtown a bit more.  There is a beautiful park type of area that runs along the Columbia River with great views and peaceful benches.  The weather was beautiful out today!  No rain, not to cold, and a comfortable breeze; seemed like a great chance to take a book, pen, and my journal and spend some time reading and reflecting next to the river.

However, God had a different plan…  After spending some time chatting with someone from home, I began walking back to my car.  While I was walking I saw a great look out spot to take a picture of one of the many bridges in Portland.  During my walk over to the spot, I saw a young gal who was dressed in a sort of 'grunge' type of outfit, and she had green hair.  Sensing the Spirit tugging on my heart to talk to her, I walked over and introduced myself.  Came to find out that, she, for a lack of better terms is a Buddhist.  We had a great conversation about the realities of God and the absolute truth of the scriptures, as well as God's passionate love for us!  So much so that He sent His son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins to provide forgiveness and guarantee of eternal life with Him!  To be sure, this was the first time she had ever heard the gospel clearly presented to her!  The conversation ended with me telling her that i'd be praying for her, and that I was sure God wanted to save her and be in relationship her with!  She was gracious and said thank you!  Seemed like the Spirit was moving in her.

As I was walking back to my car, I was praying and thanking God for bringing me there and giving me the opportunity to witness to her.  

Then, as i was 20 feet from my car, I heard a commotion!  Two middle aged guys, yelling, cussing, and getting ready to get into a UFC fist fight.  No body seemed to really care what was going on; must be common in downtown Portland.  I walked across the street and began walking towards them.  After watching this unfold for a few seconds, I saw a women trying to get in between them to break it up.  I walked over to help and break up the fight.  Turned out the women was 8 months pregnant and the wife of one of the men who was in the altercation.  The wife, myself, and the other guy walked down the street together.  I had the opportunity to talk with both of them, sharing that I am a pastor and wanted to help.  After everyone calmed down, we prayed, the man left, and I spent some time speaking with gal.  

Her and her husband had just moved to Portland.  Life had unfortunately hit them very hard. Since they've been in Portland, they have been living on the streets.  As she spoke about being 8 months pregnant and homeless, my heart broke for them!  We spoke for a bit longer and i did my best to encourage her and tell her that I would do whatever I could to help. 

All that to say, my 'plan' was to be alone and spend time reading and writing.  However, none of that happened!  Portland is a spiritually dark city and in desperate need of the gospel!  In hindsight, i'm so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to be the church to the several people in Portland today.  I strongly believe that God is and will continue do a work here to draw people to Himself; for His glory!!

Trevor

Home, sweet home

Well we are here! I apologize that it has been a month since our previous post - obviously we have been very busy saying goodbye to friends and family, moving our lives up north, and moving into our new home! The last month has been a whirlwind. God has done so much in the past few weeks.

We are so grateful to our friends and family who put together some amazing goodbye get togethers and helped us pack our home. We couldn't have made it through the last month without you! I truly mean that. My mom helped me pack our home- nothing would have gotten done without her. Thank you to all our friends who blessed us with their amazing gifts and with the time we were able to spend with them. Needless to say, we were completely blown away - I am tearing up just thinking about how much we are blessed with you all.

In my last post, I shared that we had found an apartment. We were so thankful to have found it and we love living here. It is just blocks from a mall, coffee shops, and tons of other great stores. We only have one car so it works out well that we can walk pretty much anywhere we would need to go. Everyone walks everywhere so it's a fun new experience to have since in Camarillo we didn't walk anywhere!

Trevor was able to transfer to Peets coffee up here which is a HUGE blessing since we have our health benefits through them - especially now that we are expecting our first child in OCTOBER!! We couldn't be more excited. God's timing is truly amazing.

I began working from home for two companies and it has been a blessing to have flexible hours since my "morning sickness" has been "all the time sickness" and I have been completely exhausted everyday. I hope this goes away soon as I enter my second trimester. It has been hard to unpack and decorate our new home being tired all the time but it has also been fun to get furniture and find creative ways to save space as we don't have a ton of storage here. Trevor has been so considerate of my exhaustion and sickness- I couldn't ask for a better husband.

Our dear, dear friends Adam and Jen made the trip up with us to help us move in and they were a huge blessing. Jen and I drove our car while Trevor and Adam drove the moving truck. We were able to stop and see my family in San Jose on our way up which was a huge blessing as well. It was a longggggg drive! I am so thankful to have had wonderful friends to enjoy it with, laugh with, and have twinkie fights with on the freeway while we were stopped in traffic (oops.). Once we arrived in Portland, the boys unloaded the truck in a mere 30 minutes! It was unbelievable! Jen is an expert organizer which helped a clutterer like me a ton! Within a day, we had new furniture set up and the basics all put away. Jacklyn, Travis and Lucy happened to be in Portland for a few days as well so we spent some time shopping while the boys got some golf time in. It is so beautiful up here. We have been here over a week and it has only rained one day! Come on Portland!

The best part about our neighborhood is everyone is very friendly and it is easy to meet people. We plan to start our home Bible study in the next 2 weeks once a few other people arrive up here to help us start the church. Lord willing it will be easy to meet and invite people and share Jesus with them.

Please pray for open hearts for the people of Portland and for God to continue to provide as he always has. Please pray for energy for me and health for baby Gavin.

Thanks for reading!

Here we are in front of the "welcome to Oregon" sign!

A home.

Hello hello!

I have been wanting to post this sooner but we have been so exhausted and have been recuperating from our trip. We got home late Sunday/early Monday morning. Overall, our trip was a huge blessing and very productive. God did and is continuing to do some amazing things which leaves us more in awe of Him.

We arrived to Portland Friday morning. It's a quick 2 hour flight and we headed straight to my first job interview. I had two that day and they both went well. Hoping something will work out soon! Please continue to pray for an opening. After my interviews we had dinner with Trevor's sister and her family- her husband and our 3 nephews and 1 niece. They live about 20-30 minutes from where we will be located. We have been praying about the NE area which is just NE of downtown. There is no church in that area and unanimously the pastors that Trevor met with last month said they need a church there. So this was the primary area we were looking at.

We had several houses lined up to see- none of which were in the exact area we were hoping. Ideally, we wanted to be 5-10 minutes from downtown and in the heart of NE Portland. We saw one house and realized it was just too far from where we wanted to be. I had been house hunting for over a month and it was SO difficult to find anything in the neighborhood we felt we needed to be in. I had seen an apartment complex online and thought if we had time we would check it out. Originally we were against an apartment because usually parking is bad and it can be hard for people to find and moving onto the 2nd or higher level is hard. So we had decided against it from the get go but thought we might just check out one complex. The complex I found online was the only place in the area we wanted to be. We actually stumbled upon a Peets coffee and the complex was right down the street. Trevor is working on transferring to Peets up there so please pray that works out! After stopping at Peets, we called the complex and immediately got in to see a unit. It was a bottom floor, 2 bedroom, 2 bath, newly remodeled unit. It was easy access to the street and there was street parking (ultimately parking is horrible almost everywhere in Portland anyways, so this parking wasn't great but it also wasn't horrible because people walk everywhere in this neighborhood). We also wanted at least a 2 bathroom so that when we host a bible study, people could use the extra bathroom. And lastly we wanted a big living room to seat a lot of people. Oh and a washer and dryer would be nice.

This apartment had it all. It had everything we were looking for and was in our price range. As soon as we saw it, Trevor and I had an immediate peace and knew it would be our home. We left and prayed about it and ended up putting a deposit down that day, cancelling our other appointments. One huge thing we had traveled to Portland for was already done! praise God! It was a huge relief.
After finding our apartment, we had dinner with a pastor from Calvary Vancouver and his wife. It was such a blessing to meet people our age and make friends. The next day we visited Calvary Chapel Portland which is about 15-20 minutes West of downtown. We met some more people who welcomed us to the area which again made it feel more like home. We visited downtown Portland after church and stopped at Voodoo Donuts which is AMAZING!! If you ever go to Portland you need to go there.

We brought the donuts over to our new friends house and hung out with them and grabbed dinner at a German pub before we headed to the airport.

We truly had a great trip and are so excited for the next few weeks. In less than 3 weeks we will be in Portland! That blows my mind. Please continue to pray for the people of Portland and the lost and pray God continues to open doors for us.

Pray for Portland

Here's a link to the acorn article if you missed it: http://www.thecamarilloacorn.com/news/2013-01-18/Faith/Couple_takes_a_journey_of_faith.html


Update from Trevor:

the time to leave and plant is rapidly approaching us. our plan is to move on march 1. however before we move, there are some things that we’re hoping to get lined up before we officially leave. thankfully Jesus has been so faithful to us and His church thus far, so we have no reason to worry or stress that He will not continue to provide for us now. 

with that said, i wanted to share a few prayer requests and updates as well as let you know about our prayer meeting that we are starting this upcoming sunday. 

I. prayer requests: 

julie and i are heading back to portland february 8-10 for Lord willing one final trip before we move in march. here are three of our prayer requests:

1. we are praying that God would lead us to the neighborhood He would have us start the church. our plan is to start the church in our house. we want to be intentional about reaching out into our community and neighborhood to serve and minister to the people. we are praying that God would provide us a house that would accommodate room for a bible study, room to grow, and parking. we want to be strategic re our location so that we can be most effective to the people God would have us serve.

2. while we are on our trip, we will be having interviews with prospective jobs. both julie and i plan on working jobs outside of starting the church. our prayer is that God would provide us with jobs that will be flexible enough for us to spend enough time investing in the church plant. 

3. portland is a great city, and is in desperate need for the gospel. currently, oregon is the least religious state in the country, with portland as the main collection of the diversity and differences in religion. we are praying and trusting that Jesus has called us to make a difference in the lives of people for His glory. we’re praying as well that God would help us to be faithful to what He’s called us to do despite it being hard. we have a huge burden for the people of portland, specifically those who are young and searching for something more then themselves. 

II. prayer meeting: 

we are convinced that the best thing we can do to affect change for Jesus is to pray. we are going to have a prayer meeting every sunday night during february. the prayer meeting will be at the lewis campus from 6pm-630 in the energy lounge. we welcome anyone to come out and plead to God on behalf of the people of portland to do a great work for His glory.  we will be transitioning to our nexus @ night service after the prayer meeting. the service is a bit different then a normal sunday am service. there is extended times of worship and prayer, along with studying the scriptures. 

Next Steps

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read our blog. We truly appreciate all of your love and support- it has been quite overwhelming. As you read in our last blog, Trevor had an amazing trip to Portland with Pastor Bruce and it was only confirmation of the plans we are beginning to walk through. Trevor and I have booked a trip back to Portland mid February. Our goal is to have some job interviews lined up and find a place to live. We are still planning to move to Portland March 1 and that date is coming soon! While we are so excited for this new season, the reality of leaving Camarillo is beginning to hit us. Thinking about things like leaving our friends and family, leaving our home group, not raising our kids with some of our best friends are all things that cross our minds daily.

Sometimes it's hard to trust that God is leading us when I know it will be hard to walk through the next few months. I know there will be days where I will be lonely and miss Camarillo like crazy. I KNOW I will miss In-N-Out and I'm praying there's at least a Chipotle up there. God has really been pressing on my heart to trust Him even when I can't see around the next corner. I am currently reading through C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series. In the 4th book called Prince Caspian, there's a scene that gave me a great example of how we are to follow Jesus. In the books, Aslan represents Jesus. Lucy, one of the main characters, and her brothers and few others are trying to find Prince Caspian to help him in battle. They have never made this journey before and don't know their way. They have choices to make about which roads to take. As they are deciding between two different roads, Lucy looks up and sees Aslan in the distance. But no one else saw Him. She insists she saw Him and that He wanted them to follow Him but no one believes her and they end up going the wrong way. After a long trek in the wrong direction, Aslan awakes Lucy alone in the middle of the night and asks her why she didn't follow Him. She says that no one believed her and she had tried her best to convince the others but she certainly was not going to follow Aslan alone for that would be too dangerous. As soon as the words leave her mouth, she realizes her mistake. Aslan had called her to follow Him and this was to be obeyed whether or not others followed. She goes to wake the others and convinces them to follow her as she follows Aslan even though the others cannot see Him. Lucy follows Aslan who is leading her from a distance. She asks Him to slow down and let her catch up and it seems that every time she gets close enough, He goes around another corner or down a hill to where she can't see. From the others perspective, it looks like a crazy chase in which Lucy has no idea where she is going. Aslan stays close enough that Lucy can follow, but distant enough that she has to trust Him. In the end, they reach their destination and realize how much quicker it would have been had they just believed Lucy and followed Aslan in the first place.

This has been somewhat how our journey has been. The past few months we have had no idea where we were going and what would happen. We knew we wanted to church plant in Portland, and knew this was what God was calling us to do. But the details have been unclear. Part of me wishes from the beginning there was a plan laid out perfectly so I would know how it would all happen. But God often leaves us somewhat in the dark, so to speak, so that we can trust Him. If we knew the way, it would be easier to trust in ourselves and we would have no fear. But with God leading us a distance, we must have faith. Our faith has been strengthened so much and I can honestly say God has been there every step of the way leading us and guiding us.

Keep your eyes out in the Camarillo and Thousand Oaks Acorn tomorrow! There will be an article about our journey.


Here's another picture from Trevor's trip.

Multnomah Falls

Thanks again for reading!