Chinese Church Retreat

This last weekend I traveled about an hour and a half north & gave four talks for a Chinese Church retreat of 70+ college students and a few post grads. It was such an honor to be able to speak into these people's lives and impart what the Lord has given me over the years.

The Lord was faithful to sustain me as I fought off sickness all weekend; however, it gave me a new appreciation of 2 Corinthians 12:9 when Paul says that God's grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in weakness. It was amazing, as each time I went to speak, the power of God filled me and removed the sickness for the 30 to 40 minutes I talked...praise the Lord! The topic of the retreat was "Freedom in Christ" and the title of the four talks were:

Session # 1: The truth: you are free in Christ
Session # 2: The battle is won & lost in the mind
Session # 3: Do you know who you are?
Session # 4: The kingdom of God is offensive, not defensive

24-7 Prayer

One of the things I (Holly) am the most passionate about is prayer... and for so many different reasons...
1. I love that prayer is simply coming before our Lord and communing with the heart of God
2. I love that prayer changes things & God hears our prayers & moves on behalf of them
3. I believe that prayer is the key to seeing Isla Vista reached and redeemed for the King
4. I love that prayer changes US, and gets us stirred up more about God & who He is, and how He wants to move in people's lives

So, for these reasons as well as several others, I am so stoked that 24-7 prayer is happening this week in IV in the prayer shed behind the Del Playa houses!

I got to have the blessing of helping my dear friend, Annalisa, who is in charge of the prayer ministry for Real Life (Campus Crusade), set up the prayer shed for this "event", and I even got to go spend an hour or so in prayer there last night. It is so awesome that day and night prayers are being lifted up to the Father on behalf of this city right now! Praise the Lord for the gift that prayer is -- that we get to participate with God in bringing about change on the earth!

Article on Jesus Burgers

A UCSB newspaper, The Bottom Line, interviewed our good friend Derika and I for a feature article on Jesus Burgers:

http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2009/10/saturday-night-d-p-sustenance-jesus-burgers

The House of the Lord

"God, let Your Presence be made manifest here in this home in such a real and tangible way." This is one of my frequent prayers recently as the Lord has been speaking to me so much lately about our home and the various purposes He wants to use it for. There is of course the obvious role this home plays in being a place of dwelling for our family, but there is also the role of it being a sanctuary for us, especially for Jason, to come in from the busyness of work and life and find rest and peace here. But beyond these things, our home has become a sanctuary in an even broader sense now that we are having our Sunday gathering for IVC here!

It has been a blessing for me to have my world becoming more cohesive, that as I focus on helping our family life and home life run well, Isla Vista and the students that come in here will be blessed.

We have been in "operation simplification" for awhile now, working towards getting things in order in several difference senses of the word -- having our physical surroundings simple and in order (getting rid of excess, having places for everything and keeping those things in their place!), having our schedules simple and in order, getting organized and simple with meals and food, cleaning, and many of the other things that come into running a home well.

God has been speaking to me every since we started praying about having the Sunday gatherings in our home about the house and the tent of the Lord. So I have been growing in my understanding of what being a homemaker is, with the added blessing of getting to steward a house used for God's Kingdom to be advanced in this city, and in which we can invite others into!

This last Sunday a guy my good friend Lindsay whom I disciple had met at Jesus Burgers last year came, and he was overwhelmed by what he called a "really big energy" and the love in the place! I laughed, thinking, yeah, the Holy Spirit is in fact quite a really big energy! Praise God that this guy was able to sense God's presence in our home and to be touched by Him!

I would love prayer to continue to be able to simplify and bring things into order in our home life, with the vision of being a blessing in this community!

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free - Jesus

Jesus makes this profound statement in John 8:32, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

This last weekend Neil Anderson, my favorite author on the subject of spiritual warfare, was in town doing a seminar. The only problem was I was out of town. However, a few of my friends attended the 2-day seminar through the IVSOD and reported back excellent things to me!
http://www.ivsod.com/discipleship_counseling.html

Neil Anderson has a gift in teaching people how to walk in freedom by knowing the truth of who you are in Christ. Throughout my years following the Lord, especially my early years in the faith, I experienced radical freedom/deliverance from understanding my identity in Him. The book "Victory Over the Darkness" written by Neil Anderson has helped me more than any other book I have ever read in understanding who God says I am. Over the years now I have given out countless copies and have seen similar results.

People sometimes forget that when the devil came to Christ in the wilderness, the first thing he said to Him before any temptation was, "if you're the Son of God..." We must not be foolish and think if the enemy tried to get Christ to question His identity that he will not try to get us to question our own.

Here is a list of a few 'Who I am in Christ' truths:

http://www.ficm.org/whoiam.htm

The Sueno Tabernacle

Yesterday was our 1st gathering in The Sueno Tabernacle located in our backyard...it was awesome! We had a great time of worshiping Jesus together, taking communion, sharing the word, eating dinner, and just being family. The Lord is so good to have given us a place to meet this year in Isla Vista...Holly and I are so honored to a be apart of all the Lord is doing in this city!

New IVC Website

After many years with the same website, we now have a new one! This time of year is like January 1st for us. It's our 8th year as a church, and we are excited about all of the new things that are happening:

- New IVSOD in Isla Vista
- New Sunday location
- New Upper Room gathering on Saturday nights
- New Home Fellowships
- New year of Jesus Burgers & a new night serving them
- New DP house people
- New students every year

Thank You, Jesus, for the fruit I am beginning to see of probably the busiest summer of my life!

http://www.islavistachurch.com

End of Summer / Beginning of the School Year

This summer is pretty much over for us now, UCSB starts this Thursday!

We had a wonderful summer as a church body, enjoying some sweet low-key fellowship, worship, and teaching in the park all summer. It was our last week meeting at the park by the ocean in IV, which had quite a wonderful view. Praise the Lord for summer days by the ocean, singing worship to our God!

Now it is time to move on over to the Lomelino household for the school year -- check out Jason's following post!

Please pray for us as the school year begins and as we host IVC at our home this year.

Sueno Tabernacle

Over the course of the last month the Lord had been speaking to me about building a "Tabernacle" like- structure in our backyard to meet at this next year...well by grace alone, some unexpected provision, willing servants, and surrendering our home afresh to Him, we have built the structure.

Our 1st gathering is this Sunday @ 4pm, dinner to follow...of course dinner to follow as it's IVC.

These are a few pictures of the work being done, we even had Hope working the garden. We will try to shoot more this Sunday as we begin our 8th year as a church in IV!

Samuel's 1st Game

Our little boy, becoming big boy, had his 1st game last Saturday! He did great running up and down the field, smiling, and not taking anything too serious. Dad, on the other hand, well, I get a little more passioante about kicking the ball and scoring...by God's grace, I will maintain my excitement this year.

Holly and I are looking forward to the season and time together as a family. It is great too b/c the games are walking distance from our house in Isla Vista.

Wedding in SB

This last weekend Holly coordinated a friend of ours wedding at the Natural History Museum in SB..it was an incredibly full weekend, as I had all 3 munchkins and no momma around some of Friday and all of Sunday. Overall, the weekend worked out great and the wedding was awesome... Paige looked beautiful and Holly did such a great job!

Samuel's 1st Soccer Practice

It felt like yesterday that I was taking my little man home from the hospital...now we are taking him to his 1st soccer practice, what the heck? I can't believe he is almost 5! It's been nothing but joy watching Samuel grow up, including watching him get so fired up and excited about his 1st soccer practice on Wednesday. We were about 20 minutes late as the directions were not the greatest; however, as a family we prayed and by the grace of God we located this remote hidden field in a residential neighborhood. Once we discovered that we had actually found the right team, after we had first approached a few other teams throughout Goleta, Samuel was nothing but smiles! The boy was worried so Holly and I were stoked that God got us to the right place...our God is a God of details, He definitely cares about what seems like little things in life. More pictures to come of his first game in a few weeks :-)

Church Camping Trip

There is something special about living life together with other people, not just doing church together. I think this is why I (Jason) absolutely love retreats! I even love the ones that when you show up at 3:30pm on Friday afternoon in your air-conditioned van and the temperature gage reads 107 degrees outside! About 20 of us headed up the 154 off of Paradise Rd, about 30 minutes or so from IV, to go camping this last weekend...like always, it was a great time together!

I dropped Holly off at the SB Airport early on Friday with baby J to fly out to Oklahoma to her grandpa’s 90th B-Day, which means I was in charge of Samuel and Hope. Let’s just say I am no momma; however, the kids had a blast and thought sleeping in a tent was awesome….not to mention going to bed a bit later, eating a few things mom is not a big fan of, and missing a few naps. The ship seems to drive a little differently when dad is steering it, not always intentionally, it just kind of happens.

On Saturday we took about a 15 minute drive to Solvang to a great park that had lots of grass and most importantly, lots of shade. One of the highlights from the weekend was this epic water war that broke out while we were at the park. The pictures give you a good idea of what happened, especially the one of Jose sneaking up on Robyn with a few gallons of water. Samuel was cracking me up during the war, as he was running around with his little gun shooting people with water, while others were pouring gallons on each other. Let’s just says that mercy triumphing over judgment got the boot during the water fight. Afterwards we got some ice cream together and headed back to our site for dinner and hanging out together.

The last picture was taken by Paul Carr in the dried out riverbed by our campsite of a battle between a deer and a crawdad…the winner is = the crawdad!