Blogust & Everything After

I'm back and I think I have a lot to write today. Starting with last weekend. Our church had a retreat down in Kenting which is southern Taiwan's famous beach town. There is a retreat center there called Oasis that is run by two missionaries from the States. It's a great secluded place that allows for quiet and relaxation and they have the best food. The theme was "Prayer". I have to admit that I'm not much of a prayer person. It's the part of my spiritual life that I willingly neglect the most. And as I found out this weekend it is probably the most important thing.Our speaker was our soon-to-be pastor Charles Bivens. Our church started a couple years ago and has been surviving as a member led fellowship but it's outgrown that format and it was the opinion of most that we needed to find a pastor to lead. After much searching we found Charles. He was teaching in Taiwan like the rest of us but relished the opportunity to pastor a church. Anyways he starts in June and it'll be awesome. Back to the retreat. He showed us a video sermon by Jim Cymbala (pastor of the famous Brooklyn Tabernacler) about prayer and it was very powerful. I learned that God wants his house to be a house of prayer. Thats it! The rest is all good, but above all else God wants his house to be a house of prayer. (Matthew 21:12-17) So this week I've been working on my prayer life, slowly but surely. The best part of my weekend came on Saturday night. The worship band I'm playing with had a practice to get ready for Sunday morning. It was a good practice, went quicka and seemed to be clicking. Near the end when we were just about to pack it in a couple guys walked in and asked if we would play one of the songs again. So we did. And something amazing started to happen. More and more people just floated in and joined in the worship. Before we could blink there were 15 people there worshipped and we're talking balls out. We just kept thinking of songs and going and going. I've never played so hard but the Holy Spirit was at work and it rocked my world. I was so moved, I'm sure I started to cry. So the weekend was a huge success and I enjoyed myself. However I did notice that I don't get along with a lot of the people from church which makes me feel really lonely. I miss my home church, my church family. Time to play basketball.....but I'll be back with more about this week. Peace Out!