January 21′ Family Update

Ministry 

Anja

Livestream

Last time, I was sharing how I struggled a bit in the new camera booth because of the height of the camera and the light that was right above me, blinding my eyes. The next time we had service, I was setting the camera up myself and I noticed that I could put it a lot lower than it was before and still get a great shot. That means that I can now film without even having to use a stool. The light that was right above the camera booth got disconnected (it was not a light bulb), which has made it a delight to film. I have gotten used to the angle now and apparently, people (and my team leader) are very pleased with what I am doing.

One day, when I came into the studio, the team leader of the livestream surprised me by telling me that he wanted me to teach a new guy how to film, which I did, but only two times. I showed him how to set up the camera, how to handle it, what shots we want and how to take them. After he was watching one service, we let him film one song and I could see how he was struggling to keep everything in mind. It reminded me of when I started to film and how I was struggling with the camera. However, I got better with each time and so will he.

There were two other things, the team leader surprised me with. He asked me, if I wanted to take pictures, as in photography, and he wanted to know how my English grammar was and when I said that it was quite okay, he asked, if I wanted to help him to moderate the livestream, at least the English part. He is taking care of the Spanish part, but his English is not good enough to take care of the English part as well. Since I am only busy with filming during the worship time, I do have time to help him with that during the sermon. That’s usually the time when I am available to fill in for the switcher or the person who is doing the slides, in case one of them needs to leave the studio for whatever reason.

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Escuela de Alabanza (School of Worship)

The guy that I have been training on the camera invited me to come to the school of worship. It’s Spanish only and designed to improve the skills of people who want to be or already are part of the worship team. I have been asked a couple of times now why I am not singing in the band, so I thought, I would go and join the school of worship and see how it goes. It is a six week course that consists of three live sessions and three online sessions. When we meet live, the leader of the worship ministry gives a short input on a specific subject that has to do with worship and then we split up in groups, singers and musicians, for individual practice and inputs. We, as singers, always do breathing exercises, scales and then practice songs with two different harmonies – the same thing is also homework, which is a lot. Next time we meet, we are going to have a casting and they will put together “teams” that consist of someone singing the lead voice, someone singing alto and someone tenor. I am not sure where I will end up, but it’s a lot easier for me to sing low than high.

However, it seems that our singing instructor thinks that I sing well. Chris and I are attending a weekly marriage bible study and she sings in the band there. So one day, we just came in, she waved me over to the stage, where she was, and asked me if I wanted to sing with them. I was surprised, but gladly accepted. She even told all the guys who were on stage with her, that I could sing very well. I was surprised, but hey, who doesn’t like to hear that?

Biblical Counseling Conference

Last year, one of the pastors asked me if I wanted to help him with counseling. So far, I haven’t heard anything, but that might have to do with a recent announcement. Senior Pastor Mike and Executive Pastor Jesus are going to host a mini conference about biblical counseling and whoever attends basically agrees to do counseling. I am not sure, but I could imagine that they want to make sure that people who are new to counseling at Calvary Chapel Rosarito, have a good foundation before they start to counsel people. The conference is scheduled for March and I am looking forward to that!

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Chris

Everyone who knows me, knows that every now and then, I have a crazy idea. Since last year, I have been thinking about creating a light controller for our church plants. Ok? Why not just buy one? First off, the ones that are good are very expensive. The controller circuit we use for our lighting costs $700 and then you still need a PC, screen mouse, etc…

If you have a church that has been running for a while you might be able to afford it, but not as a new church plant. So I came up with a plan that involves a small computer board (Raspberry PI4), a usb dongle and a whole lot of work. The end version should cost around $200 and up, depending on how much the church plant is able to spend. But the main benefit will be that it does what is needed and that it doesn’t have a lot of unnecessary functions.

The exciting part hereby is that the Lord already prepared me for this project over the last years and so I could just start to work without having to learn a lot. I could just connect the pieces. There’s still a lot of work needed, but the first prototype is ready and will soon be used in our newly redecorated youth room.

Did I say youth room? Yes, that’s just another project I was working on lately. First, I had to remove the old and dusty dimmers and lights and put in some newer LED lights.

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Todays Good News

Anja

Wohoo, my first Today’s Good News! It was a true blessing that I was able to write it without any difficulties. The other ladies that I met for mutual critique before the recording liked it and my team mates from the livestream team who recorded it, loved it. One of the guys even said it was his favorite one so far. It was even put on the Calvary Chapel Instagram page, where it now has 270 views…. that’s more than the other four videos that are up! The same video on Youtube has 71 views, which is less than average… Here it is:

I was originally only scheduled for one Today’s Good News, but then the leader of the women’s ministry asked me to fill in for her because she was not able to do it due to an issue with her voice. This time, the scripture was Esther 4:14. This time, it was very hard for me to write everything down in a flow. I had some kind of flow at first, but I wasn’t happy with the result and when I presented it, they asked me, what the promise was and I realized that I didn’t know. So I went and asked the Lord and rewrote everything. It was so hard to get it on paper. It was hard to memorize it and it was hard to record it. I had to do it three times until it was finally okay! I am not sure what the problem was, but here it is: https://youtu.be/8aIBnqjhme4

Chris

I’ve used the teleprompter since the first “Today’s Good News” because I was too nervous to just rely on my notes. The last two times, however, I only used my sermon notes, which meant less reading. I like the progress, but there is always room for improvement 🙂

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Family

Marriage Conference

On January 30, we attended a marriage conference at Calvary Chapel Rosarito lead by Jeff and Bonnie Jefferson. They gave a lot of new input and shared their experiences with us. Apart from that, they shared about the main principle of marriage, outlined in Ephesians 5:22-25, or even shorter: Wives submit to your husbands and husbands love your wives! Sounds quite simple, but it’s easily forgotten. It’s pretty safe to say that in most cases, when there are marital problems, this rule has been disregarded. What you need to do in such a case, is to apply it again.

That reminds me (Chris) of the ongoing battle we’re in when it comes to our relationship with God. We forget that all He wants is to be with us and try to please Him with our works, which is why we end up getting into trouble… if we just could get it, it would be so simple, wouldn’t it?

Finances

There we go again with the finances… January is usually tight and this year even more than others. The Lord keeps telling us that it’s gonna be enough, but the circumstances don’t line up sometimes. But then, just after you confront the Lord and He teaches you something new, finances start to come in and everything looks better. Lesson for this time: The Lord does not put you in such circumstances because you were naughty or because you missed something, but that you seek Him and get to know Him better.

Ziva

Ziva had a couple of nice surprises for us this months. After months of just destroying what we built, Ziva is now stacking blocks herself. She also put on her little facemark and left it on. We even entered a restaurant like that. Before, we would try to put it on her and she would try to get rid of it immediately. We all know that Ziva loves her books, but the other day, when she was at the welcome center at Calvary Chapel Rosarito, she grabbed a Bible and hugged it tightly. It was the cutest thing ever! Ziva has also grown again and her sweaters, those for 2 year olds, are getting short…

Our little sunshine is a frequent and appreciated guest in the church’s nursery. Everyone’s always happy to see her because she is so easy to take care of 😉 Our babysitter, who Ziva usually spends her Monday with, is also very fond of her and vice-versa. Ziva even goes looking for her before and after services because she knows she can usually find her at the welcome center. Unfortunately, the babysitter and her family are going to move to another state to plant a church in August, so we will have to look for a replacement… We might ask the babysitter we had before. She is Mexican as well, but has two daughters, a 10 year old and a 3 year old, that Ziva could play with.

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Ziva is now no longer sleeping in her baby bed, but on a mattress on the floor. This has helped us a lot to teach Ziva how to fall asleep on her own. Ziva had been back to nursing every three hours after she had been sick, so Anja decided to lead her back to bed and hold her until she would fall asleep. Anja would let her nurse before her nap during the day and also before putting her to bed in the evening. When Ziva would wake up around 1:30am, Anja would lead her back to bed and around 4:00am, she would let her nurse. Anja then decided to stop breastfeeding completely, which was not as big as a drama as it could have been. However, it sometimes took Ziva two hours to fall asleep! She has gotten the hang of it now and she falls asleep a lot faster and without fussing or crying – unless she is super tired.

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Weather

January was rather cool, that means less than 18 degrees during the day and less than 11 degrees at night. You might consider that warm, but when you are used to higher temperatures and you have no central heating, it is not. However, there were a few nice and warm days that we highly appreciated. We also got more rain, i.e. we had rain on a couple of days in a row, which meant that some of our friends were not able to return to their home because the road was so bad. Fortunately, they have friends they could stay with until the road was good again. However, it was not nearly as much rain as last year when it was pouring down all day long for a couple of days in a row.

We were very glad that we still had the dehumidifier that our friend lent us. Anja remembered though that he mentioned that he would like to have it back again when it rained. So when we saw him at church, we asked him when he wanted his dehumidifier back and he simply said, that we could keep it as a gift. Dehumidifiers are not cheap! So wow, another unexpected, but highly appreciated blessing! Thank you Lord!

After weeks of waiting, our other friend from church who said he would paint all of our moldy rooms for us, finally had time to come over. Well, he had to come over three times, but he did a really great job and everything looks amazing now. We are also very grateful that we have such an amazing landlord who really wants to make sure that his house it taken care of. He came from the US twice to bring us high quality color. Apparently, the color you can buy in Mexico is not as good and it starts to peel off rather fast…

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Prayer Requests

• A good start into the next semester of the Church Planting Class
• More people who are willing to support us financially
• Health and protection for our family

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