About a month before we went to the states last year I asked Ansley if she would make a DVD for us to take with us to give to people who support our ministry and to show to different groups when we felt like it would be a good thing. I told her I would get some pictures together for her DVD and she could video as many people as she wanted and just splice the two together. She said she would do it and I asked if she could have it done by the end of September as we were leaving the middle of October (and she stayed here in POA for a few more weeks for those that remember).
Anyway, the first of October rolled around and the video wasn't done. Our first stop in the states was at a missions conference in Dallas. We were invited to be a part of the conference to look for a new sponsoring church as well as more financial support. We thought it would be a great opportunity to meet people and, if the Spirit led, give them information about who we are and what we do. My girlfriend, on the advice of MRN, made up a little one page, folded twice, brochure about everything in POA (who we are, about our church family and where we feel the Spirit leading our church family) and we thought a DVD could also be a good thing to put in peoples hands.
We also wanted to have it when we visited new church families as well as show to our closest friends and supporters.
The hard thing about furloughs is knowing when and how much to share about what we do. We realize not everyone wants to know that much about what we do and that's okay. We also realize that it's hard to show pictures of people here to people in the states and there be a "real" connection to what is going on here. We realize that the best way to really get involved here is to come here and work with us for a few days but we also realize that not everyone can do that. So we try to share only when the Spirit tells us to share and to zip it when He tells us to zip it. We, mainly me, don't always listen correctly but we try.
All of that to say we usually try to take something back (pictures and/or videos of our ministry, our brothers and sisters, our lives here) to show those that are interested.
So we are getting closer to the date to leave and I ask Ansley why the DVD isn't done. My tone set the tone and this leads to a lovely dad-daughter discussion (sorry Ans!). I'll be honest, she hadn't even started yet and I'm starting to get a little anxious. My 18 year old daughter, as is so often the case, showed more maturity than I did during the discussion. She calmly assured me that it would be done.
The next night her video was done and, I thought, it was incredible. Ansley has a gift for stuff like this but I admit it freaked me out how quickly she put together an awesome video.
The video was perfect and it's a true representation of what our life is like. Yes it mainly shows the warm fuzzy, good times we have but I'll admit that we have more good times than bad in our church family. And when we have bad times we are learning to deal with them head on. To have those tough conversations when we need to. We are trying to learn to not "play" church but to "be" church.
I could not have asked for a better video to show to people. The first 10 times that Benay and I showed it to people/groups/church families we cried. For me it was always at the scene of our sister Marcia's baptism as she calls out to Jesus. Gives me chills every time. You'll see what I'm talking about as you watch it.
Enough sharing. I need to show Ansley's video and let you see what God is doing here in our city. I apologize that some of the video gets a little messed up. I uploaded this thing a couple of times and it keeps having the same problem. It's not enough to keep you from seeing and hearing everything.
Enjoy and thanks again Ansley. It's so very cool and I know many people have been blessed by watching it!
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