Moving on the WWW.

 Happy 2014!

I will be consolidating and moving over to our ministry page. I will be posting about real life missionary moments, updates and devotionals.

Read more over at Be Strong Evangelism Ministries.  Please, be sure to subscribe so you don´t miss any updates or real life missionary episodes.

My Time in His Presence

"Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight show me now Your way...,"

 This is what the great leader Moses prayed in Exodus 33:13, after God had said He would destroy the people of Israel for their disobedience of worshiping the golden calf, and had spoken directly with Moses face to face in the tabernacle. 

Moses wanted to know God more! He saw God face to face and begged to find grace in His sight. 

God´s response,

"My presence shall go with you and I will give you rest." Exodus 33:14

If Moses, who had seen God, still wanted to know Him more, how much more should I desire to spend time with my Heavenly Father. 

I am His special creation, His workmanship as Ephesians 2:10 says. 

"Created in Christ Jesus unto good works... walk in them."

Walk in good works. 

For me this means, get organized, but don´t stress over your schedule. Write down a plan to spend time with God first.  Pray over that plan. Then do your best to see it completed. 

When I make a schedule, I know I will break it. I tend to stress over keeping the times strictly, then I become a slave to the schedule and I stress. This is not what God means by walking in good works. 

I believe that I can set a flexible schedule, but make spending time with my Lord and Savior a priority. 

I live in a three bedroom apartment with three teenage boys, my hubby of 16 years, and a one year old puppy named Toro! (Bull) It is so difficult to find alone time. 

When I was in college I would get up at 5:30 every morning to have my time with God. It was our special moment. I knew He would speak to me. He would wrap His loving arms around me through His Words in scripture. 

Through the years, I have grasped at the strings of having these moments again. They are only ever within my reach when I make God my first priority everyday. 

Psalm 37: 3-5 says:

" Trust in the Lord and do good"

 - then you will dwell (rest) and be fed (satisfied) 

"Delight yourself in the LORD"

 - Make Him your joy, your everything and He will give you the desires of your heart.

"Commit your way unto the LORD, trust also in Him and He will bring it to pass."  

My question is always, "How do I do this?"  How do I apply these verses to my life. This one seems so obvious and simple, but so often eludes me. 

All I need to do is read the Bible and set time apart to savor God´s every word to me.

Here is a song from my past. It always spoke to my heart, drawing me back to my quiet time with my Father. 



Resting in Him today,

 

Surrounded and Joining the Ranks

I am surrounded by footballs, football equipment, and football players.

I guess, if you can´t beat ´em, join ´em.

 My boys start practicing with their daddy´s team, the Gijón Mariners full tackle American Football team.  They are a little young for the team yet, but the coach wants our boys practicing with them to help build a junior team. We are so excited for them!

Go Mariners!

Traveling- Fun or Folly

Well, normally, traveling for me , would rank up there with a great banana split or a soft chewy brownie, but this past week traveling from California to Florida was a not all fun and games. It wasn't totally folly, but it was long, trecherous and very necessary.

We spent two months with my husband's family, and visiting churches in California. We sang, showed our presentation about the mission work in Gijon,Spain, my husband preached, and we would stay in a hotel or travel back to my father in laws place. Our time with family was so cherished, but, we had one more stop to make before going back to Spain, my family's place in Florida!

We started out Sunday morning for our first leg of the trip up to the central part of California, then the next 6 days were spent in the car except for one. We sure learned a lot about our dear sweet loving family in those close quarters.

It was worth every back-aching minute though, the moment I was able to hug my mom and dad! After 11 years we are finally spending Christmas together. We pray to hang on to every single moment.

Traveling can be very fun or it can, for many a traveling missionaries, be a necessary unavoidable folly.

From my furlough dairy,

Dani Joy

Ps. Sorry I have not posted while on our whirlwind traveling.

Final Flashback

For a little while anyway.

Yeah, *sigh* ... I just don´t have much time to blog these days. Didn´t think I would say it but, blogging has become last on my "to do" list.

Not only has summer started and I want to be out more, I am taking care of a 5 month old baby every day too. She is precious, don´t get me wrong. I just forgot how much time one little baby can take up. I know I already blogged about this, so I will just go on and on about how sweet and bubbly she is. She is growing and has adjusted to being with our family. Oh, and she loves her feet!

In retrospect of camp coming up,  here is a Photo flashback picture of one of our first camps together in Spain. Our boys were ages 6, 5, and 4. We finally got to enjoy and work at the camps as a family!

Camp Ebenezer in the Barcelona area

Family camp 2005

Monte Calvario Campamento Bautista

Family camp 2005

I was going to link up with the Completing Him Challenge with some wedding pictures too, but I have already posted some. If you would like to see them. Please go HERE. 

This week´s challenge is to pray for your man! Pray specifically. I pray for him but, the list Courtney had on there just blew me away. I realized how specifically I really should be praying for my dear husband.

I will be starting another challenge as well. This one is very very important to me. I don´t want anything getting in the way. This one must become a priority. Discipline has been an area that I have needed to work on. Discipline in fitness, healthy eating, in my house hold chores... well, and one other area.  I have wanted to make more time for is my daily Bible reading. I read, but I must admit, it´s been a long time since I have really delved in.  Here is what I am committing to.

Read through the Bible in 90 days!

Well, hope you all will miss me a little bit. I will miss you all.  Be back to post pictures when I can. Meanwhile, maybe you will join in on some of these challenges too.

Running The Race!!!

Yes, I know, it may seem a little different in the line of missions, but I am using it as a means to get to know more ladies in the community. I pray to use training for The Race for Women, every year to meet more and more ladies.

This year, I ran alone, got to know a few ladies, met my goal, got my prizes, and went to church. Next year however, I would love to have a group from our church sign up, and have a verse ironed on our shirts with the church´s name!

A little bit about The Race for Women. It´s a  5 kilometer (3.2 mile) race to promote breast cancer awareness and to raise money to help support research for the fight against it. There will be a total of 9 races throughout Spain this year. This has been the sixth year that the Race for Women has taken place. Gijón had a great turn out of about 3,000 women! It was amazing to participate in something so beneficial and widespread. It even was on the city news this afternoon. I actually saw my head pass by the camera.

Here I am before the start, bright eyed and bushy tailed! literally.

My cheering section! It was so great to see their faces when I crossed the finish line!

I am behind the that lady in front. hehe (my dh tried to get pictures, but someone always got in the way.)

Came in at 29 minutes flat! possibly in the top 200 or so!

Here´s some of the ladies that came in after me.

I finished! Praise the Lord!

The verses that have gotten me through many soccer practices, difficult situations and now my first race is,

Psalm 121: 1-2

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

Let´s keep running the race that is set before us. I am remembering that the spiritual race is far more important.

Keeping our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith,

I´m NOT Dating Anymore!

I am joining the Completing Him Challenge and posting for last week´s theme, telling how I met my husband and a little about our courtship. Also, seens how it´s Monday, I will link up with Making Your Home Sing Meme, because without my hubby this home would not be. He is wonderful. Even when I am aweful to him, he forgives and keeps on forgiving.

I title this chapter "I´m NOT Dating Anymore!"

"Well, I guess I will go to the Revival service alone tonight." I thought, as I was getting ready for the start of my second semester as a sophmore at Pensacola Christian College.

My best friend was singing in the choir that night, and I just hadn´t gotten with anyone else for the evening´s opener. That was fine with me. I would just sit down front in the "spit pit" as we called it and soak in the message.


I was really pretty excited about this semester of college. I thought I had it all figured out. The rules, classes, guys. You know, the typical sophmore know-it-all. I felt pretty confident about myself. (in the Lord of course)


Going to church by myself was not a big issue. I just sat myself down, started to look around, found my best friend in the choir, and relaxed for a great start to Bible Conference. Little did I know, it would be the start of even more, the start of my life with a great man of God.


He turned and asked me how I was going to like our missions class, or something like that. I looked at him and thought, "Do I know this guy?"  He was saying that we were in the same class and that his name was Joseph Contreras. Oh, I must have sat in front of him or something. We kept talking about everything from classes to missions to Classical guitar to Spain. To think back on it now, it is so amazing that in our first conversation together we talked about Spain, which would end up being our future field of service!


He was an incredible classical guitarist. He practiced in the Communicative Arts building 3 hours a day. Would you believe that that semester the Lord put me in the same building for my work assignment cleaning the radio station? I had to walk by Joseph´s practice room every day. Or at least, I made a point to walk by it, slowing down just so I could listen. He had such talent!


I started to wait for him after my cleaning job so that we could eat supper together. We would talk and talk. I remember he had such a heart for missions. He had recently been called to serve as a missionary wherever God would lead and was praying for the country of Spain. I started praying for him too. We became friends and prayer partners.

There were other dates with other guys, but everytime I would ask them if they ever thought about being a missionary they stalled, they changed the subject, or they flat out said no.

"How can pastoral majors not have a missions burden?" I would ask myself.

So, I stopped dating. Dates at PCC really only consisted of going to church together or dinner, but I had had it.  I didn´t want to date anyone who didn´t share my burden for missions wherever that would take me.

"Dear God, I´m not dating anymore!" I remember praying about a month into that same semester.  "I will go singly to the mission field."  I had known from the age of 10 that I was called to be a missionary.

That´s when Joseph stepped up. He started writing me, and he sent me this sweet letter and this single rose. Of course, He knew nothing of my prayer then. It was all God.

We spent a lot of time together that semester. Praying and talking. Before I knew it, God was showing me, that Joseph was the one. God gave me a verse and I knew that I would go wherever God sent this man. I would serve by his side. We hadn´t even said "I love you" yet, but I knew.

The verse was 1 Corinthians 11: 9

Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man."

Here we are on a Fine Arts date. The year was 1995.  We were in love, but our love would be tested that following summer. Stay tune for the continuation.

We use to write to each other every day. Sending letters and notes through the college night- mail between dorms. I will try to write him more during this challenge and renew that part of our love life.

How did you meet your husband? What can you do to complete him more? Come and join in on this challenge. We can all work harder on our marriage. It always takes two!

Building Your Home

This past weekend we had the privalege to be part of a mini-ladies retreat. I must admit it was a huge effort for me to get there and to be apart of it, but after being there it was a huge blessing! I am so thankful that I made all the effort to reschedule my English classes,  the boys schedule and took the train to get to the nearby city where it was held.

The theme was "Building up or Tearing down". Centered around how we as wives, moms, and daughters can build our homes for God´s glory. Not just the physical things like cleaning up the house and keeping it in order, but the spiritual side of edifying - or building up each member of your family. This hit home so hard that it was very difficult for me to resist tears. By the end of the second session, I was in tears.

If you are anything like me, you want it all done right "yesterday". I want my home organized, pretty, and running smoothly, but this doesn´t happen very often. It´s only by the grace of God that our homes run smoothly and when we are not connected to His power and strength it doesn´t happen at all. By the time we find ourselves running on empty, we finally stop and ask why. Why isn´t it running as smoothy as it did once before? We know the basics, so what is failing?  I think, these kind of evaluations are so neccesary even if you have done them before and continue to struggle, we need to keep getting back to the Power Source.

Building up our children is an area that we need continual work on. I know I do at least. The last session delt mostly with getting our house in order in our relationship to God, and our Family. The second relationship in the family that is so difficult and that is changing all the time is our relationship with our children.

Here are just a few of the points -

Mothers to your children-

• 
  
  love them  and make them know you love them (Titus 2:4)
• 
  
  Teach them (Deut. 6:6-7)
• 
  
  Correct and train them  (Hebrews 12:11)
• 
  
  Take care of them
• 
  
  Don´t anger them, Don´t take away their hope (Ephesians 6:4, Col.3:21)

There is so much to share, but this last point is key. All the other points, are ruined if there is anger. If we make excuses for our wrong behavior, how can we expect our children to behave correctly. If we are nagging and nagging without giving them hope of doing it right, they will give up. They won´t try to please us anymore, instead they will rebel. Oh, that we leave our children with the hope that the Lord Jesus has given us. That we are His children and we are made perfect in Him if we have accepted Him as Savior.

I was overwhelmed at how far we really are from the "Biblical Ideal"  I thought there is no way we can attain this level of order, but that is exactly what Satan would have us to believe. That we have failed and it is impossible to be perfect. During that last session on Saturday, it dawned on me that having discipline and order in our spiritual life is just like fitness and getting in shape physically. It doesn´t happen over night, of course. It takes training. You can give up on it and go backwards (getting fat and out of shape) or you can keep exercising what you know from the Word of God and keep on. So, I drew up a plan, made a list of things I wanted to change, and started to pray. I need to see it in action. It has to be visual or it won´t work.

Let´s keep building our home and keeping it in order not only the physical, but also the relationships within our home.

***Linking up with Making Your Home Sing Monday***

Great Great Moments

It has been almost two years since the last time we saw my Grandma. This picture was taken on our last furlough.

I know it´s not pre-digital, but I was thinking about my family and the next time I will get to see my dear Grandma. Time sure is ticking. Praying to see her this coming Christmas.

July 2008

We love you, Gamma!

Linking up with Friday Photo Flashback.

The Good Ol´ Fashioned Sunday Tradition

OH, the memories!

Get a big bucket of fried chicken and potato wedges and you have an instant picnic. Add old fashioned clothes and a model T (or whatever type of car that is) and you have a Good ol´Fashioned Sunday Picnic!

Did you ever have one of these?

I have such sweet memories of these days. Yes, even the Watermelon-seed-spitting contest!

The year was probably 1986 or 1987. I think I was about 11 or 12 at the time. I remember because of the glasses and the pre- braces days. That man at my side, of course is my Dad. I love this picture because, it´s one of the few pictures I have with my Dad. He or I were usually the ones taking pictures.

What are your photo flashbacks? Come and join in with us on Fridays at More than Words.

I love Gijón!

It´s so great to love the city that God has called you to!

I could never have imagined myself as a city girl, but Gijón is a small enough city that I feel comfortable!

this is almost the view from our apt. (if you stick your head out of the window.)

I can walk everywhere. I don´t have to drive to do my shopping. I grab my shopping cart, ( a handy dandy bag type stroller with two wheels) and go to the near by grocery store. I can almost fit a whole week´s groceries into that shopping cart! Then I roll it home. It´s a great workout too!

(My cart isn´t this cute though.)

I have posted about where we live and minister on other occations, but I just felt like sharing more about this wonderful city.

(The beach only a 15 minute walk from our apartment)

 I always dreamed about living near the mountains and a large body of water. I love both! Can you believe it is a desire the Lord put on my heart as a child. He knew I would need to be in a place I loved, because I would be so far away from my dear family.

 the Peaks of Europe (only an hour away)

Even, though it rains a lot here in Gijón, Spain, the green, lush, mild summers make up for the long rainy winters. We grin and bare the rains, knowing that that is what makes our area beautiful! (some of us grin anyway.) Did I mention that the winter rains are long?

It´s worth everyday we are here. God has called us to this city. Time is short, so we need to live everyday for Him.

Making today count,

Linking up with Making Your Home Sing Monday.

*** Also posting over at the KJV blog about missions. ***

  

It´s a Doggy Dog World, but I am Thankful!

This is from an e mail that my mom sent me.

So, as I link up with Making Your Home Sing Monday,

may this brighten your day as it has mine.

Say a thank you ...

THANK - YOU!

I thank God for YOU!

10 Years of Flashbacks!

You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

We just finished printing and mailing out these letters. Wanted to share it with you all for Friday Photo Flashback.

10 years of flashbacks!

*** Don´t forget to check out Fitness Friday too!***

What are you Eating?

This week for Fitness Friday, I want to encourage everyone to make healthy food choices.

On our Spring into Shape challenge this week it´s Nix the Fix - Week 6!

It means we get a point for every good healthy food choice we eat and negative 2 points for every unhealthy, fatty, sugary food choice we eat.

It has been very eye opening. I think if we all stop to journal the food that goes into our mouths we would be surprised.

Here is a two day sample of my food journal.

Wed. am - 2 pieces of ww cereal bread w/ salt free butter and honey. 1/2 an apple. 2 pts

snack - 1 piece of sf chocolate w/ almonds coffee 1pt

Lunch- Chicken soup w/ veggies, 2 pieces of ww bread, sf yogurt(desert but counted as a snack)4pts

Dinner- Protein drink, 1/2 an apple, 2 pieces of cheese, 20 almonds 3 pts

neg. 2 points because my son gave me a gift licorice stick. Before I remembered it would be negative points, I broke off a piece to eat it. Then remembered too late. =( Gave it back to my dear sweet son so he could eat the rest.

I Jogged 30 min. and did the level 3 shred making a 1hr. workout.  I am shredding it with Nina at Portugal Bound! Even though we are in neighboring countries, we can exercise in spirit.

Thurs. am.  - oatmeal w/raisins and a little brown sugar and skim milk, coffee 3 pts

Snack- 1 apple , When we went visting I had a coffee. protien drink after workout 2pts

Did I mention I love coffee!! especially Spanish coffee! I either drink it black or with milk and very little sugar substitute.

Lunch- Potatoe and egg omelett, cheese, 1 tomatoe, veggie roll/sauce. 3pts

sf yogurt no ,had a couple of olives too.

Dinner- ww bread, light cheese squares, ham, green tea mix at night before bed. 2pts.

No negative points.

Did level 2 shred and walked to make up 40 min. I think level 2 is harder than level 3. At least I burned slightly more calories and felt it in more places. What´s up with that? Going to be doing level 2 and 3 now alternating.

Well, hope you all stay encouraged to do our food count and maybe do a food journal. Something I am noticing is that I am still eating a lot more than I think. I need to still cut back a little bit.

Let´s get on that Fitness Wagon! Your heart will thank you!   Let´s also remember that that our inner heart is more important, and that we need to feed our spiritual bodies as well.