Slide Show of the Church Plant - Transforma

Report from Spring Retreat

Some of our preschool kids showing the poster board from their lesson on Sunday. The poster says in Croatian, "Jesus loves..." then they wrote names of their friends who need to know Jesus on the poster as a prayer. From left to right: Ian, Nia, Ema, Kaleb, Sara, and Ivan.

After each sermon we broke up into small groups for practical application and to pray for each other. A lot of great ministry happened in these groups!

Damir (one of the leaders of the church) with his friend/former employee/former drug addict Robi. Robi has recently starting attending church again and we praise God for that!

This is Dzevad (pronounced "Jay-vad") who is Nerka's brother. Nerka is one of our leaders - cell group intern and member of worship team. Dzevad has recently had a total life change thanks to Jesus. He and his girlfriend, Goga, came. It was a huge deal that they decided to come to the retreat!

Here's some of the group worshipping before hearing from Goran.

This year's retreat was a highlight for all of us! The theme was Freedom in Christ and we believe some people really began to find some new freedom which they haven't experienced before. We were actually over capacity at the house we rented. We had something like 35 people there total. We were really excited that 7 guests plus their children joined us this year. These were all people we've prayed for and are continuing to pray for as they're on their own journey towards Jesus. So, we'd say that overall the retreat was a HUGE success. We're looking forward to hearing more testimonies this week as to some specific things that went on in people's lives.

Thanks to all of you who prayed! I'll report more on this in an upcoming newsletter.

Spring Retreat

Please pray with us for our spring retreat. We're taking off today and returning Sunday. The theme is Freedom in Christ. Thanks!

CD Recommendation

I wanted to recommend to everyone my friend, Todd Warren's, new CD. He's recently produced a new one called "Breakthrough" and it has some great new grooves. What I enjoy most about Todd's music is his fresh lyrics and ways of expressing his deep relationship with Jesus. Click on the link below to purchase his album. It's well worth it!

http://cdbaby.com/found?allsearch=Todd+Warren&submit=

Easter Sunday at Transforma

Normally we meet in the city in a gray, blah building back behind a few night clubs and gambling facilities near the center of Zagreb. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for our building and all that it offers for us. Today, however, we planned a special service at 11am (in place of 5pm) for Easter out at Roger and Erin Massey's place in the village. The weather was 75 F and sunny...the grass was hyper-green, the flowers were in full bloom, the birds sang a prettier song, and the wind was blowing the other way (so that we didn't smell the chicken poop at the chicken farm next door :-). It was a gorgeous day! To top it off, the Lord gave me a new song yesterday in celebration of Easter and we all really enjoyed worshiping with it today. After our service at 11am, we had a big Easter feast complete with ham, chicken, green onions and radishes (Croatian tradition), and tons of salads to choose from. Then came the deserts...oh the deserts. Lots of guests came today as well...people with broken lives looking for freedom and healing. We think they found good company with us as we shared our stories with them and they saw that God can take a broken life and restore it. Overall, it was an excellent day and we thank God!

Leading worship (left to right: Maja, Juliana, James, Ivan)

Uncle Roger showing the girls his new spring chicks.

This morning the girls woke up to Easter baskets on the table. Happiness abounded.

West Zagreb Cell Group

I thought it'd be interesting for you to see a picture of our cell group. We took this picture 2 weeks ago and have a number of people missing from this. Here's the group from left to right: James, Laura, Ivan, Sanja (Ivan's mom), Addie, Roger, Lizzie, Ian, Erin, Bekah, Nerka, and Juliana. Roger and Erin are our cell leaders. Nerka is our intern (meaning she will take the next cell when one multiplies off of this one). Her husband is an awesome man, full of God, but is not able to come very often due to work and masters studies. There are missing from this picture Dalia, Robi, Danko (Sanja's husband), Jaksa (Nerka's husband), and Dzevad (Nerka's brother). Praise God for our little group! We are getting stronger and more mature. We're learning how to love one another and how to be community for one another. We have intimate times of worship together and we have a genuine desire for our friends to know Jesus. It has all the makings for a great group. Please continue to pray for this group. Specifically, you can pray for:

• Nerka, our intern, to learn how to be a successful cell group leader.
  
• For the friends that we're reaching out to to come to know Jesus.
• For deeper community and love for one another.
  

Thanks! We cherish your prayers.

Berlin Trip - Cell Church Conference

Our group standing with our speaker Joel Comiskey at the end of the conference. We really bonded with him and appreciate all he did to help us. (Left to right: Roger, Joel, James, Damir, Andrej, Goran)

Joel speaking to us. Our group is seen up in the front couple of rows.

Here we are in our modest little apartment we rented in Berlin enjoying our muesli and coffee breakfast.

Here we are processing some of the things Joel had just finished speaking about and discovering how we can apply this in our church.

Andrej standing in front of one of the only pieces of the Berlin Wall left

Self portrait in front of Brandenburg Gate - this was the old Prussian entrance to the city.

Andrej and Roger in front of Brandenburg Gate

Self portrait of Andrej and Roger on the bus on our one sight-seeing day

Andrej in the U-bahn station. We took Berlin's extensive public transport system everywhere.

Update:

So, I wanted to give you all an update from our 5 days in Berlin for the cell church conference. I want to thank many of you for praying for us! The weekend was a total success. In every way our goals were met. We thank God for this.

I'll start with how Laura and the girls did while we were gone. They were...alright. Not great. But alright. They had a bout with head lice (kids share everything...another kid came over and played...that child happen to have lice...and the madness began). This caused a good bit of extra work (laundry, hair combing, etc.) that made things difficult. Other than that, my wife is an incredible trooper and continued to keep the vision in front of her of what this trip meant to the church.

As for the trip, we had a few hiccups, but in the end everything turned out just fine. For example, Tuesday night at our worship practice (the night before we were leaving) Damir happened to look at his passport and he discovered it had expired a week before. The next morning he went straight down to the downtown police station to get an expedited passport. He actually did receive his passport in record time...but it was still too late. He was about 10 minutes too late to the airport. We were so sad to not have him with us, but he did reschedule his flight (for a small fee of 180 euros...if anyone wants to give to that cause) to Friday. In this way he and Goran (our pastor) could travel together.

The first day we met with a missionary from Antioch Community Church who has successfully planted a youth church in Berlin and is now on another team from Antioch reaching out to students and young professionals. We really reaped from his experience. This was especially helpful to Andrej who is planning to plant a youth church in Maribor, Slovenia. Their connect will be priceless in the future as Andrej and Nina have more questions.

The second day, Andrej, Roger, and I were able to look around the city a bit. In just one day we were able to see the majority of this huge city. We were fascinated with the history of this town. We're thankful for a restful day of sight-seeing.

The third through fifth day we spent in the cell conference. We had a beautiful connect with Joel Comiskey as well as the host church Berlin International Church and their pastor Steve Mack. This on top of great teaching made the conference a real joy. Our primary goal was to see Goran, Damir, and Andrej receive a huge download of vision and encouragement about what the future could hold. This goal was met with full success! At the end of the seminar and in the days following we were able to immediately apply some of the things we heard as well as ask some great questions about the future.

Again, I want to thank those of you who prayed for our trip and for the girls back in Zagreb. We were so thrilled at how well the trip went and look forward to seeing more good results from this time.