Lesson 8 YOUR PURPOSE

Rom. 8:28 - called according to his purpose - we hear this verse alot.  Usually after a tragedy, or misfortune.  But what is his purpose for your life?  We ask ourselves this alot.  God what am I here to do, what do you want me to do, you called me to such and such, now what (my personal favorite).  But if we look at this verse in context and look at the next verse the answer is right there? 8:29 He also predestined to become CONFORMED to the IMAGE of HIS SON!  That's right God's purpose for us is to be like Jesus and by this He is glorified.  It's not the what, it's the who where we find purpose.  So how great is this, you can be in God's movie and your role is to grow more and more like Jesus.  How freeing is that.  Tomorrow we will look at how much God loves us.

Mexican Food in Serbia???? Say What?

Last Saturday the Stevens family had their first family dinner out at a real restaraunt.  We got crazy and went to Burrito - the Mexican restraunt in Belgrade.  Walking in it was pretty authentic, sombreros on the wall, little woven blankets, pictures of wolves and cacti. They even advertised Corona, although i don't think they sold it.  The menu was in Serbian, but my awesome wife figured everything out and we were able to order.  Jen and I split fajitas and the kids split a quesadilla.  We also had chips and Guac.  When the food arrived Miki said "I'm not hungry anymore",  it did not look like a quesadilla from OTB.  But we assured her it would be ok and she bravely tried some.  Both kids ended up enjoying  their dinner and our fajitas were great with a little expectation adjustment. 

                                                           Ready for Mexican Food!!!!

 

That white stuff is Guacamole - go figure

Left is Quesadillas, Right is Fajitas

Lesson 7 What Movie Do You Want To Be In?

This was the first take home from Passion 2010
You have a choice, What movie do you want to be in.  You can choose to star in your own movie, you get the lead but it will be a short and insignificant film.  Even great people who are remembered had a short time on earth. Or you can trade in the role in your own movie to be in God's movie.  He wants you in the movie, he has a role for you all picked out and ready.  That role could be anything, teacher, investment banker, athlete, mom.  It could be one filled with suffering and heartache, but if your in God's movie, your role will be for His Glory. 
He tells us he wants us in the movie!  His word is full of examples of him inviting us to play our role.  Rom. 8:31 - GOD is for YOU.  Think about that - there is power in that.  The creator of the universe is for you, he is in your corner!!!!!  He just wants you to be in the movie. 


Tomorrow, his role for you - your purpose!

Lesson 6 Passion Conference

As many of you know the real reason I went to London was to attend the Passion Conference.  Passion is an Atlanta based ministry that is geared towards college students.  Every two years they go on a world tour and this year they were in London.  It was tow nights (about 4.5 hours each night) of great teaching from Francis Chan and Louis Gigglio as well as worship from Chris Tomlin (love him), Matt Redman (love him),  Kristian Stanfill, Christy Nokels, and THE DAVID CROWDER BAND (really love them!).  For me it was just a time to worship with the Body.  That has been the thing I really have missed, big crowds and big worship with the music I love. It was so recharging to be in that atmosphere.  As I have written before music really moves me and this was truly the best music.  The teaching was great.  It allowed me to really look at some verses i knew in a new light and in context of my present situation.  I gained a whole new appreciation for some old truth.  I am going to take  few blogs later in the week and disect and share what I learned and how it impacted me.  A huge thanks goes out to the Burge Lifegroup at LPC for helping me make this trip possible.  I hope you will join me in the coming days as I share what God laid on my heart.

                                                   DCB from the front row.

Stayin in a Hostel!!!!

To save money on my London trip, I got crazy and stayed at two Hostels.  The first on was in a great location, about 5 minute walk to Big Ben.  We stayed in a room with 15 bunk beds.  Over all it was pretty quiet and I did sleep great.  We were able to stand outside and meet some interesting folks.  We started by talking to Ayush, who was in London taking tests for his Masters.  While we were visiting our new friend Shon wondered by and joined us on the steps.  Shon had obviously been at the Pub and had a ton of wisdom to share with us.  What was great was the fact that he opened the door on where we all came from, what we were doing on earth (little specks is what he refered to man as) and that gave us a great opportunity to share some truth and begin a spiritual conversation.  During that time another guy (Richard) walked up.  He is  street performer and was headed home so he joined our conversation.  So now infront of the Hostel are 2 guys from texas, one guy from India, and irishman, and a black guy(They do say London is the most diverse city in the world) all talking about GOD.  It was amazing and a great reminder to me of God always being at work.  My friend Trey did a great job of steraing the conversation and sharing truth.  After that I felt real comfortable with my decision to stay in Hostels rather then hotels.  It was cheap, clean, comfy and most of all a chance to see God working. 

London - The Sites

I had so much fun and experienced so much in London that I am going to break this down in several blogs. Today's blog will be about my sight seeing and a seperat blog about my Hostel ecperience.  Tomorrow will be about the PASSION conference.  If you know me, you know I have dreamed about going to London since high school.  All the history there, all the people, all the great ideas that have impacted the world, I just wanted to see it and feel it.  Before I left I made a list of must sees, some friends in London said it was ambitious, but I did complete it.  I met a friend in London and to save money we got crazy and stayed in a hostel - it was crazy we met some characters - that may need to be a whole nother blog come to think of it.   The first thing and most important for me to see was the Westminster area.  This includes Big Ben, Palace of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey.  I got up early Friday and headed out.  The day was beautiful, crisp and clear blue skys (rare for London).  As I came around the corner there was Big Ben.  It was magnificent!  I just had to stop, I could not believe I was there.  To see Parliament, such an important part of our history was amazing.  After crossing the bridge and walking around Parliament I came to the highlight of my trip  Westminster Abbey.  Unfortunately it was not open yet (I was there pretty early) so I took some outside pictures and headed out to Buckingham Palace.  I mean if you are in London you have to see the Queens crib right.  From Buckingham Palace i headed to Trafalgar Square and the monument of Admiral Lord Nelson.  If your unfamiliar with this spot it is dedicated to the famous naval battle when the British defeated the French in 1805.  From Trafalgar I headed down to 10 Downing Street (home of the prime minister).  By now it was close to 9:30 and time to head back to Westminster.  Worship has been taking place at the Westminster site since 960.  It has been the place of corination since 1066 when William the Conqueror was crowned king.  The present abbey has been used for worship since 1245.  17 Monarchs as well as numerous hero's, writters, poets and many more are buried at this site.  For me it was undescribeable.  I spent about 2 hours wondering around trying not to look to crazy with my mouth wide open.  I could have stopped my sight seeing right there and for day 1 that was enough. I had to change locations and get ready for PASSION in the evening.  Saturday I had one thing left on my to do list - The Tower Of London.  England's oldest

castle and the Henry VIII's favorite prison for his wives.  It was amazing, very touristy.  Way different from Westminster.  Westminster was solemn, a house of worship and the Tower was a castle with great stories to be told.  William originally started on the Tower of London in 1070.  It was added to for many years and the London living quarters of many monarchs starting with Edward I (the king in Braveheart).  70 prisoners were held there including Anne Bolyn, Lady Jane Gray, Sir Francis Raleigh, Mary and many more.  Like Friday I was very early and one of the first people there.  The guard at the gate said I needed to see the crown jewels first.  These are the actual crown jewels used by British Royals.  The crown dates to 1612.  The diamond in the queen's scepter is the largest cut diamond in the world and was about 530 karats.  It was bigger then a golfball.  Truly one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen.  After that I toured the armory in the castle.  This was amazing, they had the actual Knights armor from Henry VIII and several other kings on display.  That's one great thing about the English, they are super organized and have all that history catalouged and well taken care of.  The highlight of the Tower was the Yeoman Warder tour.  The YW's are the kings special guard and have been living at the castle since around 1400.  Today they give great one hour tours.  They told all the stories of mystery and intrigue, why people were held prisoner and executed.  It was one of those little known fact tours and I loved it.  From the Tower you can see Tower Bridge, so I was able to wonder over there and get some pics.  I finished my afternoon by meeting some great friends for Lunch who live in London.  It was good to see like minded people and share our experiences.  London is a beautiful city, with a multicultural sense and energy that I can not describe.  There are lots of things still left to see on my London list and i hope to be able to see it all again. Check out my facebook page for lots of pictures. 

The Great Crate Adventure Part 2

If you have not read part 1 do that first:
To recap - we are waiting on Milos to call and tell us the crate has cleared customs.  I call him he says not yet but assures me today.  Around 12 he calls and says the crate has cleared customs and will be delivered around 2.  I come home and start trying to round up help.  At 3:30 the fun begins.  My phone rings and a man is speaking Serbian - no English.  I understand he wants to know how to get here but have no idea how to tell him  Jen try's he gets frustrated hangs up.  I go downstairs find a guy that speaks English and Serbian call the driver back try again, no luck he hangs up again.  I run back upstairs and ask Jen to try to talk to our neighbor, Rada, (she does not speak English either) and get her to call the guy and explain how to get where we live.  Rada comes through and about 5 minutes later the Crate is here - sort of: Jen took the above picture from our window - the gray truck has the crate and that is where he wanted to unload it.  Now this leads to a funny story.  On that truck is a two ton crate - The delivery guy thought I had a fork lift???? and was peeved when I did not.  He said if I could get about 20 guys we could just take it off the truck.  This little delimma leads to a call to Milos.  For some reason Milos thought I had a fork lift???? I explain I do not own a fork lift but do have some help coming and we will just empty the crate (granted the guy is parked like 100 yards away).  Milos tells the guy he has to stay here until we get the crated unloaded.  This spurs him to action and now he feel like he can get closer to our door.  As you can see it was tight squeeze.  So he

gets the truck much closer but the driver still thinks we are going to take the crate off the truck.  I have a friend explain what we are going to do and then we ask where his tools are to open the crate.  Of course my tools are in the crate and he does not have any.  Back to my neighbor Rada and we borrow a hammer and a screwdriver.  Using those we are able to pry the door open and finally start unloading.  Thanks to my friend Marko we had about 10 young guys helping us unload and were able to get everything out of the crate in about an hour.  The guys had a great system and were the best.  Jen had things unpacked and our flat organized by Friday evening.  Sidenote PLEASE READ:

Getting the crate was very exciting and I hope you enjoyed the fun we had getting it here but the crate and stuff in it was/is not important.  Having more clothes, or toys for the kids, or books to read is nice but we live in a place where the average person makes about $500 dollars a month.  Stuff does not matter what does is helping the people of Serbia know the truth.

The Great Crate Adventure Part 1

I'm gonna start this tale from the very beginning: A long time ago (September 2009) in a land far far away (Rockwall) the Stevens family packed a crate.  We were allowed 700 cubic feet, and we packed 200 cubic.  There was nothing important in the crate. We mostly packed kids toys, clothes, games - tons of books, and a very versital side table.  The crate was packed in Dallas and sat in a warehouse, moved to Houston and sat in a different warehouse, eventually was placed in a metal container with other crates coming to Europe and in March of 2010 placed on a boat.  The boat left Houston and traveled up the east coast adding cargo at several ports.  In mid-March it began its trek across the Atlantic (Jen found a website where you could track the boat using GPS).  The boat went to Antwerp and unloaded our crate.  From there the crate went to Hamburg Germany, where it was picked up by the Milsped company of Belgrade.  They brought the crate to Belgrade on April 11th - then the fun began.  I spent the next three weeks talking with Milos.  Milos was a very nice man but he was on a Balkan time table.  This simply means that things move at a much slower pace.  The first thing I had to do was prove I lived in Belgrade and get permission from the OOF (where I had so much fun in Visaland) for the crate to be cleared through customs.  This was a simple process of going to three different offices paying about $30 and getting a letter.  I could not fax the letter to Milos - he had to have the original- so I hand delivered to the Belgrade office of Milsped (Milos works at the warehouse about 20 miles out of Belgrade).  So I talked to a different Milos who told me to take the 44 bus to the super market and he would pick me up there.  This turned out to be a great idea since I never would have found there offices on my own.  The new Milos took me to there office where they made copies of my passport and told me the old Milos would contact me.  Ever the patient guy, I waited about two days and contacted old Milos.  Old Milos said they could not do anything with the crate until I paid my bill.  So he emailed me a bill and Jen paid it at the post office.  Now the crate was to go through Customs.  I have no idea what this entailed - did they xray it, did dogs sniff it, did anyone even look at it?  I got no idea but Milos said this would take about a day.  Well 7 days later Milos let me know the crate would clear customs "in the morning and we will deliver Thursday around 11:00".  Thursday morning I called - drum roll please- "oh it is still in customs, I will call you back"....... TO BE CONTINUED