Easter Action

With the Action week complete, John Bowar and I headed up to Tipton, IN to join Nick, David and Charles for the Indy/Muncie Men's Retreat Saturday morning.

The whole week John had been leading the Action folks through a week of training and team work.  We decided to ask, "what do you want to talk about?" on the first night of the trip, and we created talks and activities from the feed back.  Mental toughness was of particular interest so over lunch the next day we headed to the IUPUI campus for some mental toughness training; preaching.  

The guys all did great.  In 3 groups of 3-4, we fanned out over the student union grounds.  The first guy gave a 5 min talk on Jesus and/or began reading from the ressurection account in the Gospels.  The other two followed with further ampliphed readings.  My group posted up in from of the Starbucks Coffee, situated in one of the outside corners of the building.  We were able to stand out on the sidewalk and yell so everyone in the building could hear.  While most tried turned around or chuckled everyone heard the Gospel, and all the guys were stoked.

John gave two talks and the guys would come to him for advice throughout the week with questions that they'd been stirred by in the evening sessions.  John said, "I've never been totally responsible for that many guys for that long."  It was a good push. 

CRS

Decipher note: graffiti is rarely spelled correctly. CRS (think Hebrew)

Sin

After mission prayer we debrief together, sharing what the Lord revealed to us in prayer. Recently it's been sin, what it is, why it's killing us, and how the Lord is saving us from it.

In the neighborhood folks are hungry to learn about sin. "Sin is the reason your life is a living hell" comes as good news for many. Hell has become part of the wall paper; back stabbing and gossip, endless addiction and hopeless unemployment, unquenchable fears, surrounded by the lies of the Enemy. There is no way out. It is just the way life is. But we proclaim sin is killing us and God is here to save and folks repent and are glad. They hear and see God saving them changing their lives.

The only commandment folks seem to know is "thou shall not steal" and some know "thou shall not murder." We once told a guy, "look, when you sleep with your girlfriend before you are married to her, it causes all kinds of problems." He was astonished, "wow, you know you're right." He then immediately told his 4-5 friends with him and they all agreed, but as if struck for the first time by the revelation. Some replied "no one can actually do that though, right?" No one had ever told them it was wrong to commit adultery and no one had ever lived that way either. Many we meet have no men in their entire family, because of this. Kids without commitment.

"Look, God says that when we commit these things we deserve death," we point out, "and that isn't a statement of how terrible God is but how terrible sin is." In a world where Satan wants us blind to our sin that he may kill us, southsiders rejoice in the 10 Commandments and repent.

Humiliations

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As Mary and I approached Union and Palmer, where the Corner Store is, 6 guys came around the corner. It was Lenny (name changed) and his crew. We'd met Lenny the first summer with some similar folks. I think he said something like, "I'm Satan" "or "I follow Satan" after showing us the tattoo of our Enemy under his arm.

He'd been in and out of prison since and this last week he'd just been released again. "Man, every time I get out of prison Nick shows up. I wonder if it's some kind of sign?" he had said last week.

"Hey, Lenny. What's new," I shouted. The whole group slowly blows by some on the side walk others in the street. Lenny comes up to shake my hand. "Surviving," he says with a shrug. I tried engaging them on sin. It didn't seem to sink in, but they all stopped walking, turned around a listened for a bit. One guy also named Lenny, turned out to be Lenny's dad. Picked up on my religious talk. Thinner guy wearing sun glasses and walking a pit bull. "You got be like Jesus," he told me and explained.

After trying to get a few words in, I realized it didn't matter what I said. As we turned our way, my chest tightened and burned. Prayer had been hard that day, and nothing we said seemed to matter. Humiliating. It was a wonderful moment of friendship with the Lord.

Debris Castle

Every month, we spend a few days on retreat, it's a time for extended prayer, catching up on sleep, and a little relaxing.  John Bowar, David Zimmel, Nick Holovaty and I were at the Coleman's cabin in New Castle, IN.



David and I found this tree that fell on another tree, breaking it off at 9 ft or so, and resting on the still standing trunk. We gathered logs with John and Nick to create a skeleton for a debris fort.

New Year

Ah yes, another Company Convention. Complete with talks, PT and even Beastie Boys Bachelor Party (and Manchos); in short, delightful. The 26 guys spent Dec 31-Jan 3 together, one of our longest Conventions to date, we helped with the Bachelor Party, Rehearsal Dinner and Reception for one of the founding members of the Company, Sean Connelly.

JT shared about the early days in Campus Fellowship when Sean first brought the Revolution after reading Kerry Koller's Revolution Talk. He said it really hit himself and a few others still with us and even in the room. Sean's commitment to recruitment yielded much of the people leading citybuilding today, who in turn recruited most everyone else. It became clear to me Sean Connelly is to be held responsible for this Revolution, Praise GOD.

To all Company guys: our water heater exploded the day we got back to Indy and John and I were totally "on call" to get the job done. We rigged up a funnel and old piece of tubing I use for cars and tied with some yarn we borrowed to the pressure release valve seen above spewing water into a tupperware. Between hauling the tupperware out the basement as it filled up, John and I shoveled pooling water into cleaning buckets using dust pans. Total clean up time: 30 min.

Picture this

Johno was looking for some shot of life here in Indy, so I thought I'd start trying to capture it. These are some places and times of importance here in Indy and I hope to be grabbing more as we go.

The guys gather each morning to do morning prayer. We've been using a prayer book to guide us through the Psalms.

Each morning we have physical training too. This is a shot of the shoe rack and where the towels hang. It's kind of like 'our common life' in a snapshot.
Melissa and John begin grappling with the challenge of thinking about making breakfast. This happens late in the morning after personal admin so we can carry out our common work the rest of the day. Breakfast is where a lot of what happened yesterday is shared and today's plans are unveiled.

Here Brian works on some housing work. We're renting 2 places here on the Southside and just bought our first.
At this point prayer for missionary work begins. We don't have a script so each day the Lord gives us something in prayer to talk about. Atlas's and maps have become key to meditation and prayer research, good for background and piecing together what it was like 2000 years ago.

Here David and Ellen work on finances. Our finance guru Molly (code name Mary) Seale recently moved to South Bend so David and Ellen now watch the money.