Viral Brooms

In case you haven't seen the viral photos of standing brooms, they are everywhere.  Here's how we do it in the Cirlot home.

Introducing, Mr. Peeperz, the ultimate broom master... take that broomers.

February Already?!!

Time is going by so fast!  I can't believe it has already been a month since we launched Church@The Square.  This new season of life is so different than the other ones we have experienced before.  Diving full-time into church planting on a part-time salary, we have had to rearrange schedules and rework how to make life happen right now.  Lots of change.  Lots of pressure.  Lots of prayers.  Lots of growth.

Here's what is happening.  We are still running Peripety Designs, our web design business, as part-time "tentmakers" to supplement Bryan's pastoral salary, until the church is able to support us all the way.  God has brought Scott Capers onto our church leadership team to head up leading worship.  We are still praying that God would provide the right people to lead our children's ministry and youth ministry.

As for our launch in January, it was what we would consider a "soft" launch, because we didn't do any advertising to let people know where we were and when we were starting.  We wanted to have the opportunity to work out any kinks in our service before we started letting people know we were meeting.  Even still, God has been bringing new families to join the mission since our first week.  In attendance, we average about 40... sometimes having more and sometimes having less.  The energy and excitement of being part of the Body on mission in your city and area is a beautiful thing.

We are very aware that when people attend a church plant that they are willingly giving up other conveniences that larger churches have to offer.  They are coming because they want to be part of something new and make a difference for Jesus with something simple.  Seeing so many families give their time to make this happen is incredible.  Seeing these same serving families meet throughout the week in our community groups to flesh out each week's sermons in their personal lives is refreshing.  Instead of warming pews (which we don't have to begin with), we are seeing believers rediscover God's purpose for their lives and become excited about about the mission of Jesus all over again.

I love being part of Church@The Square.  I love how God is working through it and in it.  I am praying big prayers for our future, because God is a really big God.

Here are five ways you can pray with us for Church@The Square:

1) Pray that our church would grow where Bryan could receive a full-time salary soon.  It's a huge balancing act to manage a new church and a home business at the same time.  While we are thankful for God's provision through Peripety, we would love to see Bryan be able to fully devote his attention and energy into our church.  After all, his life's calling is to be a pastor, not a web developer (even if he is really good at that too!).

2) Pray that God would bring the right people into our leadership team to serve Jesus in our church and community.  Pray that God would provide for their needs so they would be financially able to serve in a new church where all of the staff is bivocational.

3) Pray that God would continue to bring solid families into our church to strengthen our core group, so we will have the volunteer base we need to minister to our families and the unchurched families that are coming in.

4) Pray that God would be gracious and allow us to reach out to people who don't know Jesus and bring them into our church family.  Our goal is to be a multiracial, multigenerational church that loves Jesus faithfully in diversity.  We don't want to replicate cookie cutter images of ourselves.  We want to see the Gospel impact people where they are and change them into the image of Jesus in their own context.

5) Pray that our upcoming outreach events would be fruitful in our community.  Pray that God would open doors for us to connect to hurting people that need Jesus and that their hearts would be primed for the Gospel.  I can think of nothing more exciting than seeing Jesus move in Gautier in the areas that have been unpenetrated by the Word.

Thanks in advance for your prayers.  Our God hears them and answers them.  Our church wouldn't exist now if not for them.  In the end, it's all about Jesus!  Check out our new church website if you'd like to learn more about us at http://www.churchatthesquare.com.

Praying for the Bridge Believers

This morning, I woke up and began to pray about everything going on in our lives right now.  Nothing is easy about this season of life, but a lot of it is so good.  When I checked my email, I received an update from a missionary family in Indonesia that I like to keep up with.  I wanted to share it with you.  It really makes every single struggle I have seem so minimal.  

(I'm going to include their contact information in case God leads you to contact them or support them financially.)  

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Indo Window —The Pearl of Great Price

Stephanie and I are getting ready to go lead our English club on a Monday afternoon when Andi calls and asks if he can drop by.  He’s one of our national partners and wants to give me the latest on what is happening on “Bridge Island” and to process some decisions we need to make as a team as to how to respond to some persecution that has broken out there.

As I wrote in our last update, this unreached and Gospel-resistant island has recently experienced a breakthrough.  At our count 25 families in the last few months have become followers of Jesus, totaling over 200 people with 94 of them baptized so far and growing.  There have been miracles and healings and it’s something totally unprecedented that I know of among this particular people group.

Recently a fanatical sect of Shia Islam (most Muslims in Indonesia are Sunni) burned down a Muslim boarding house in one of the villages there that they thought was deviant to true Islam.  While on their rampage, this mob heard some rumors of a group of followers of Jesus living there.  In this village were indeed seven families totaling 42 people in this growing movement, all believers for just a few weeks.  These families were tipped off to the approaching mob and fled, just having with them the clothes on their backs.  The mob arrived and broke into their homes, found New Testaments, and in a rage burned down each of their seven houses. 

One of the new believers named Mr. J, against the urging of his friends, went back to his house to defend it.  The mob arrived to burn down his house and he fought back by slashing one of the assailants with a sword and injuring him.  The police later arrested Mr. J and are holding him in prison right now, they say for his own safety even though he had a legal right to defend his home.  He has heard that as soon as he gets out there are people in this sect waiting to get revenge on him.

The seven families, many of them fisherman who have their own small boats, fled to a different island about a half hour away that is known as a hiding spot for people fleeing the law, in debt or on the run from someone out to get them (revenge is a very common cultural trait of these Bridge people).   Over the next few days they set up makeshift tents out of tarps and were helped out by other followers in the movement.  Since most of the men work as fisherman, they are able to catch fish for their families to eat every day, selling some to be able to buy rice which is the main staple in their diet.

As you read this these 42 people are still living on this rugged island which has no electricity or any infrastructure of any kind.  Andi tells me one of their biggest complications is there is no electricity so they can’t keep their cell phones charged and have to severely limit use, a challenge when they need to communicate with one another.  They turn their phones on just to text each other and then turn them right off again.  Andi and I kick around an idea to buy and bring them a generator when he goes to visit them this week.  Poro, whom I also wrote about in our last update, is with them now providing spiritual leadership for them in their ordeal.  Andi will join Poro there and see firsthand what is going on and how to help.

Andi also tells me that this experience has not intimidated these new believers but they have been sharing the Gospel with other inhabitants of this “city of refuge” island.  All of them want to go back to their homes, their land, their way of life.  But in the meantime they are being bold fishers of men.

I remember when Andi  and our other national partner led a CPM (Church Planting Movement) training for four leaders of these Bridge believers.  They warned them that there could be a steep price for following Jesus, and they answered that they understood the cost and were willing to die for Jesus.   We were touched by their sincere response and it reminded me of the pearl merchant Jesus talked about in Matthew 13:45-46: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”  That training was just a couple of weeks ago.  None of us imagined that the persecution would start so soon.  But they still say the kingdom of heaven has been worth the high cost.

I’m so riveted by Andi’s latest report and humbled to know of these saints who have paid a dear price of following Jesus even in their first few weeks of becoming believers.  My life is so comfortable—even as Andi tells me these stories we are sitting on my front porch enjoying a nice breeze together.  Soon Stephanie and I will be greeted by friendly children eager to learn English.  I’ll go to bed later tonight in my cozy home while these fellow believers will be sleeping under trees and tarps.

Though they have paid so much and I have paid so little for the Pearl of Great Price, I can join them in prayer.  You can too and we ask for your prayers for them.  Pray for the other 20 families to be hidden and protected from this mob.  Pray for justice.  Pray for Mr. J now in prison.  Pray that the seven families could return to their homes without fear.  Pray for the four main leaders of their movement and for Andi and Poro visiting them this week.  Pray that all of them will continue to be a light in a very dark place.  Pray for our small team to know the wisest way to respond.

Thanks so much,

Mike O’Quin

P.S. My latest blog post, marveling at the rich soil of Java and how our hearts can be the same: http://www.faithactivators.com/soil-on-steroids/

Support Information

Thanks so much to those of you who gave extra in November and December…that really helped us out!  We couldn’t do this ministry at all without the support of friends and churches, as we live 100% off your generosity. All gifts are tax deductible and much appreciated.  You can give on-line by visiting: http://www.hopeinthecity.org/give/. 

Or you can make out a check to "Hope for the Nations" with a note attached saying the support is for us.  Then send to:

Hope for the Nations

4407 Monterey Oaks Blvd.

Building 1, Suite 120

Austin, TX 78749

Phone: 512-892-4673

http://www.hopeintheciety.org/nations/

Signing up for monthly automatic debit: accounting@hopeinthecity.org

Our Contact Info:

Indonesian Address

Jl. Tidar Utara #23

Malang, JATIM 65146

INDONESIA

Phone: +62-341-581-900

Cell: +62-81-334-967-714

U.S. Address

6414 Wareham Lane

Austin, TX 78739

Skype: mikeandstepho

Secure email: mikeo@gomail.asia

Business Projects: www.PresentationElevation.com and www.ClarionCreative.org

Blog: www.FaithActivators.com

Carrying the Roberts' Genes Along

My dad's mom, whom I lovingly knew as Meme, passed away this past August at the age of 92.  At her funeral, relatives passed around a photo of her and kept saying how much I looked like her.  I never really thought I resembled her too much, but I think I have to agree with them now.  Check out this old photo of her when she was younger, and the photo I snapped of myself today when I was playing around with my camera phone.  Now I know where I got my skinny lips from!

Less is More

28 weeks pregnant... I survived the second trimester.  Just one more to go!

I haven't blogged about the launch of Church@The Square yet, because quite honestly, I haven't felt much like writing or doing anything else lately.  The birth of the new church is so exciting and there is so much to tell.  However, having a sick gallbladder takes a lot out of me, and I've been carefully rationing out my spurts of energy to take care of Bryan, Abby, and our home.  


Lately, I have really been struggling with the constant physical down days where I can't accomplish much more than being pregnant.  I mean, technically, even at rest, I'm doing a lot- I'm nurturing our son and giving him a chance to develop well before he meets the outside world.  If you know me, I am so task and goal oriented that I don't like to slow down... I have to right now.


Today is one of those days where I woke up sluggish and the funk hasn't went away.  I sat in my recliner this morning and was praying.  I was thinking about how frustrating it is not to be able to pull as much of the weight with the church plant or with our business as I would like to do right now and was feeling pretty helpless.  That's when this verse came to mind.


Matthew 5:3 (The MSG) "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule."


I'm definitely there.  I don't have anything more of me to give right now.  I have a willing heart but an unwilling body.  God knows.  God cares.  If He has chosen not to heal me right now, it's so I can learn a greater lesson.  Maybe, I need to be reminded right now in this huge life transition that it doesn't take more of me to accomplish something great.  It takes less of me and more of Him.


I can't run around wide open as I'm used to doing pulling all of the little details together, but I can be still and pray and watch God work everything out in His way.  I don't think I will ever like being sick.  It stinks.  I need to remember that God is accomplishing His purpose in me, through me, and around me- not because I have so much to offer- but because He does.  God is good like that.  He shocks the world by using the weakest, most useless vessels to show how amazing and capable He is.


"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." 1 Corinthians 1:27 (ESV)

If you are feeling pretty useless or helpless today, thank Him.  You might be exactly where you need to be to finally be useful in His Kingdom.


It's not about us... it is about Jesus.


"In Him we live and move and have our being..." Acts 17:28 (NIV)


"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20 (ESV)

Final Decision: Today's Update from My Appointment with the Surgeon

So, the last few days have not been too fun.  Wednesday, I met with the surgeon to discuss whether or not my gallbladder needs come out now or after Pax is born.  He decided to order more tests.  Thursday morning, I had more ultrasounds of my gallbladder and a fatty meal test.  The ultrasounds showed nothing unusual, but the fatty meal test sent my gallbladder into painful spasms within minutes.  As a result, I was miserable for the rest of the day and had a rough night.

This morning, we met with Dr. Bailey, the surgeon, again for follow-up.  He consulted with Dr. Sams, my obgyn, to get his feedback.  Though Dr. Bailey's diagnosis is that I have a dysfunctional gallbladder that needs to come out, both Dr. Sams and he agree that the gallbladder surgery's risks outweigh the benefits at this point.  Even though I am in pain all of the time, especially at night, it is safest for Pax if we can postpone surgery until after delivery.  I understand, because Pax kept kicking the ultrasound probe out of the way yesterday when they were trying to take photos of my gallbladder.  It's scary to think about him doing that with a scalpel.  As soon as Pax is delivered, my gallbladder needs to come out. Obviously, it is in not working if a fatty meal of any sort sends me into a gallbladder attack.

Here's what I am asking our prayers warriors to pray for:

1) Pray that my gallbladder does not become infected.  If it does, we'll have to do a risky open surgery that is dangerous for Pax and me.

2) Pray that the gallbladder attacks will settle down and that I won't be in pain so often.

3) Pray that God gives me the grace and peace to endure the next 3 months.  My gallbladder has only been in crisis mode since Thanksgiving, but it feels like it has been an eternity already.  I am really ready to feel comfortable again.  Chronic pain is exhausting and frustrating (as many of you know that suffer with it from other issues).

Our doctors' final decision:

No surgery for now unless I begin running a fever.  Stay on a bland, gluten free diet for 3 more months and control the pain with medication as needed.  Expect to schedule surgery soon after Pax's delivery.

January Update

Since I know I have a lot of people following our pregnancy and praying for us, I wanted to give an update tonight.

Backtracking a bit, since the week of Thanksgiving, my gallbladder has been giving me some trouble.  The week after Thanksgiving, I had my first gallbladder attack, and it has gone downhill since.  I've been trying to manage the frequent gallbladder attacks with a strict gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, nut free, egg free, low fat diet, but my gallbladder has continually become more dysfunctional as time has went on.

Two Mondays ago, I ended up in the ER because the pain was so severe.  When they did an ultrasound, they were unable to find any gallstones or any evidence of infection, so they sent me home with a strong oral pain medicine.  Since then, my obgyn has been closely monitoring me, and the game plan was for me to just tough it out until Pax could be safely delivered in April.  Since I have been continuing to lose weight pregnant, not gain weight as expected, there has been some reason for concern.  So far, all of my labs and ultrasounds have indicated that Pax is healthy and is not being negatively affected by any of the health struggles I have had.  I believe it's because so many of you have been praying with us that God would keep him safe during this pregnancy.

This past Friday night, I had an extremely severe attack where the pain was no longer manageable with the strongest oral pain medicine I could take while pregnant.  Upon talking to my obgyn, I began an all liquid diet for Saturday and Sunday to try to avoid more gallbladder attacks.  Unfortunately, I've never completely recovered from the attack Friday, and I have been much sicker than I was before.  I still don't hurt as much during the day as I do at night, but my energy level is really lagging and I just don't feel good.

Today, my obgyn referred me to a local general surgeon, and he wants me to reconsider operating now- not later.  The plus side of me being so small this pregnancy is that they may be able to do a laparoscopy still even though I am crossing over into my third trimester.  Until today, I had understood that a laparoscopy was no longer possible.

Tomorrow morning, I am scheduled for another ultrasound with a fatty meal test.  The point of the test is to throw me into a gallbladder attack, so they can verify 100% that it is indeed my gallbladder causing the pain and sickness.  I am nervous about the test, because the attacks I have had lately have been worse than labor was with Abby.  Please pray that if it is my gallbladder (as symptoms seem to indicate) that the test would be 100% definitive and that God would give me the grace to get through the pain and discomfort of the test.  My worst fear tomorrow is that the test would be inconclusive.

Friday morning, I follow-up with my general surgeon to discuss surgery options and what is safest for Pax and me.

This is all moving fast, so I would appreciate prayers for clear direction, clear answers, and wisdom.  Please pray for Pax's safety and my safety.  Please pray that God would give us all peace during the next few days.  Abby has been really concerned lately that I am dying, and it breaks my heart to hear a 3 year old ask such tough questions.  Obviously, I feel concerned about the safety of Pax through all of this.  Bryan feels the weight of everything.  We did just launch a church two weeks ago!

I don't like what is happening.  It does make me uncomfortable.  It does make me feel anxious, but I do know that God is sovereign and in control.  As much as I wish and pray for instantaneous healing, at this point, that's not been His will.  For now, we'll just continue to trust Him one moment at a time.  God is good.  His plan for me is good.  It may be painful, uncomfortable, and not my will to go through this, but it's still ultimately for His good and my good.  I will choose to rest in Him.

Thanks for the prayers.