He is mighty to save

I want to start by saying that Lindy and I really enjoy the priveledge of being a part of the Josiah venture team this summer. We love the community and the support that we have experienced among these believers who are all united towards a common goal of glorifying God and inviting students to seek Him in Slovenia. At our last meeting we discussed the role of community in moving someone along in the process of knowing God. We also discussed the importance of having an anchor point to look back on symbolizing the commitment made to God.

I am not gifted with the ability to sum things up, but I will try to give you a picture of our discussion without writing a novel :)

Joel Woodard wrote a very good paper that summarizes the way that students seem to be responding to the ministry method of inviting them into a community of believers and allowing them to be a part of "the church" even before they have decided to follow God. Students are invited to be involved and live their lives alongside Christians no matter where they are in their journey towards God. They are invited to be involved in bible study, attend and help out at worship nights and help out at camp. Many students have come to know Jesus by experiencing his love radiating from Christians and by seeing them experience God's presence. In this context they are not pressured to "pray the prayer" to seal the deal, but rather are shepherded towards making transforming steps toward the Father as they come to know Him more. They are allowed to do this in the safety of this community that has accepted them.

As a result of this many believers from this culture cannot identify a day that they gave their life to God and crossed the line from unbelief to belief, from being lost to being saved. Rather, when asked they usually identify one year that they made the most significant decisions (not one but a series of decisions) that drew them closer to the point of realizing their need for God and entering into His family.

Some of us may struggle with the greyness of this reality. Most of us grew up in a youth group culture with altercalls or prayed the prayer in VBS. We were challenged during this meeting too to notice some of the downsides of each of these situations. The one time decision/altercall situation, we'll call modern and the gradual/journey we'll call post-modern. While the modern situation can push people to a concrete crossing line. Many cross the line before they even understand what it means to be a child of God. Many people stop there and label themselves saved/Christian after the prayer even if they never experience transformation or a growing actual relationship with the Lord. In short this has the potential of leaning too heavily on religion not relationship and could have a false sense of security in salvation when they have never actually stepped into a relationship with Christ.

The other grayer post-modern side has the downside of not providing a concrete line of commitment to look back upon. It also can lead to a loss in the sense of urgency as it is very patient and non-forceful. People could also believe that being a part of a Christian community is what saves them rather than having a living relationship with God. We must seek out the "tender balance" as Erin Thomas put it.

Terry Jackson offered a familiar analogy that helped to illustrate both of these. This process of coming to know God, realize your need for God and commit to live for/with God is like the development of a dating relationship which ulitimately ends in marriage. The first months of dating are spent getting to know the other person. This is often through other people (community). During this time you are finding out what defines them and if you can trust them. As the dating relationship deepens you begin moving towards a direction of greater commitment and you begin to see this relationship as unlike any other you have had before. You begin to realize the depth of your care for the other and realize that you need the other. Notice all this comes before the time of commitment.

Then comes the engagement, the time when you say to each other, "Out of everyone else I could have, I choose you. I want to commit myself to you alone. I want to live life with you. I want you to be a part fo who I am." This is a clear, life altering decision, but it was made over time. It is a culmination of a series of decisions throughout the whole process leading up to that time. There is always a story leading up to this point it is not a stand-alone decision. Then comes the ceremony that declares before God and people what your decision is. Christina Stanton recognized that for many, this point of standing up before witnesses and declaring your decision in marriage is a lot like baptism. It is an act of identifying oneself with the other and a symbol (ring or water) that illustrates the decision. This point of commitment is important as an anchor point. A place that can be looked back upon in times of hardship.

At looking at our own lives we can see the reflection of this annology. Our relationship with God really is a process.

-Mary for the MaryLindy team

I (Lindy) am gonna end with some final thoughts:

God is SO timely. These concepts were great to rethink and ponder upon. However, we are both aware that God saves people, not humans or methods. What an encouragement for Josh Patty (JV Missionary) to bring this up as a closing statement and as a word of benediction. What an amazing team.

Also, this time was full of encouragement. This summer is unlike ANY other summer in Slovenia. God has already answered numerous prayers. In Slovenia alone there will be 7 camps. 3 of the seven camps are first time camps and are busting at the seams with anxious kids. The registration for Castle camp, by far the most popular camp, usually fills up last second. This year we have enough students signed up to have 2 camps... and we still have a week left to sign up- GOD IS GOOD! What's even more exciting is that JV has had some doors open up to work with the younger generation. 3 camps will be with Jr. High students. God is at work in Slovenia and we're excited to be apart of it.

We are looking forward to life changing experiences.

on the front lines in battle
-Lindy for the MaryLindy team

Welcome to our apartment

We want to start out by very clearly saying that we are SO grateful to have this place to call our own this summer. That said, there are a couple funny quirks to our place that we want to point out the first being the tiny bathroom. It's incredible how small it is.

And it all fits behind a door which is about 2 ft across:




Here's our kitchen, full stocked with food we bought ourselves :) and with our one pot that doubles as a salad bowl, serving bowl etc.:



Our cool beds, you can see the castle from the top bed :):



Our Couch:



Desks and Windows:



Another angle of the couch and kitchen:



Another angle of our desks:




There's the tour... hope you enjoyed it. We do :)

Mary for the MaryLindy team

picture time!

Disclaimer: I don't know how to rotate pictures with Mac computers.. You WILL see pictures sideways because of my lack of Mac skills.. if you have any helpful comments or suggestions I'll take them...

this picture is of our pizza excursion (notice TWO pizzas *cough cough* Mary :-P)



some of mary's many flower boxes:





eating mexican with Erin :-)



Then, on our train ride home we actually almost got in trouble with the Law!! Mary almost let me go to jail! Just kidding. We DID however get in trouble with the train guy who asked for our tickets... we had tickets but appearently we had the wrong ones or something.. We probably looked suspicious.. Mary and I ended up having to pay the train guy more money. He was VERY angry/ annoyed with us. OOPS!



we laughed about it later



Mary will update later... maybe... We're gonna try to get some pics of our luxurious apartment...

-Lindy for the MaryLindy team

Mexican food

okay, so I don't have a ton of time to update so this is going to be hurried a bit:

Monday started early with a prayer/ staff meeting. this meeting was an intense prayer time and I’m so relieved to know that we’re in good hands.

Afterwards Mary and I got all settled into our apartment (it’s small- we look forward to posting some pictures), bought groceries (you have to pay for bags here… we need to remember our own bags!), and did a load of wash :-) 3 cheers for clean clothes!

In the middle of us running around, we were asked to help a fellow JV intern to clean her house. That was awesome :-) Erin lives in a quaint little cottage style house in a tiny village near Kranj. Mary and I were set to work. As thanks, Erin decided to take us around Kranj and show us 'old town'. On our walk I enjoyed people watching and Mary enjoyed taking pictures of every flowerbox we walked by (we’ll probably upload some pictures when we have more time). She took us to a mexican place for food... I got a little excited about using my spanish skills but ot my dismay... the guy didn't know a lick of spanish.. not even gracias.. I think i cried a little... (not really)

After our trip, we caught a train and crashed at Christina and Anna’s apartment. Actually, we just spent a long time over there in hopes that our laundry was dry.. it wasn’t

Tuesday was a relaxing day. Mary and I headed out to a shop called ZEBRA to copy two packets and six teaching handbooks (80 pages EACH!)… that’s a lot of copying. We decided not to wait around for the job to be finished and made our way to the market to buy a flower to put in our apartment- This is probably Mary’s favorite purchase so far. We spent a while picking out just the right flower and then headed back to pick up our copied items. Mary and I then spent a good chunk of time organizing our class agendas/ curriculum. I’m pretty sure we lost our minds..

We had a ton of work and decided to buy some fruits at this vendor that Christina told us about. We got a cucumber and cauliflower for our salad that evening as well as some raspberries for dessert. Praise God we found SALAD Dressing which apparently they don’t really eat here. Mary almost cried when she found out it was ranch :-).. so did I :-)

After dinner it was back to work… We planned three classes and read a packet with good insight on how to do ministry.. we were burnt out on reading.

Do you understand what it is like to not have communication with the outside world? Have NO forms of media entertainment (TV, Movies, Music, Computer…). Mary and I broke down and listened to music (one at a time mind you since we’re listening from a portable CD player with headphones).

I think we both benefited from that.. then we sang together… that helped too.

This morning (Wednesday) both Mary and I had the privilege and the challenge of taking showers in our bathroom.. I wish I could give you the dimensions of this room… hopefully we’ll get a picture of it on here for you all to see… until then you can wait in suspense.

Then it was off to a prayer/ staff meeting (Mary will go into more depth about this later). There was good food and now we’re heading out to meet with Naja to shop and plan for a girls’ night.

-Lindy for the MaryLindy team

Apartment, Church and Pizza!

Today Lindy and I went out into downtown again to make cultural observations. We decided to sit down to eat at Lublijanski Dvor (a pizzeria) and I (Mary) somehow convinced Lindy that we could each eat our own whole pizza (against Lindy's better judgment). I remembered doing that before...but well maybe I have a bad memory. Um, so despite our hunger neither of us could eat much more than half, though we did try knowing 1) that most people just look at you funny when you ask for a take out box and 2)Wasting is way looked down upon. Oops! (I'm not quite so sure how I thought that we could eat it, seeing as I have NEVER ordered a whole medium pizza for MYSELF in the states before, I blame it on the sun).We were both sort of ill after that because of the pizza and the sun... a scorcher today, so we decided to come back and nap.

Instead of sleeping we really just talked and laughed (Lindy had a laugh attack... shhh don't tell, but I think the sun got to her). Shortly after that I went out with Anna to a french style cafe. When I got back we went directly to church (@5pm)it was POURING! (the weather is much like Oregon... can't make up its mind). We so enjoyed the worship, Lindy and I can both sing Slovene as long as the words are up there and we appreciated that several of the songs were translations of familiar ones. After talking and seeing our apartment (a small place in the attic of the church) we left (it was 9 o clock!!).

We move into our apartment tomorrow. We are very excited to be able to unpack :) and are looking forward to buying food and making some yummy lunch and dinner recipes in our kitchen :) Maybe one of us is more excited than the other :) We're planning on a girls' night soon.

We get to move after a prayer meeting tomorrow with all the staff. Lindy and I are so enjoying being included in all those things and we are continuing to get a clearer picture of what longterm ministry is like here. Please continue to pray for us as this coming week brings meetings and prep for camps! Thanks so Much!

Mary for the LindyMary team

P.S. FYI: We will not have phone or computer at our apartment so we can't be sure when our next post or e-mail will come.