Saturday, July 30, 2011

Our Church

The front room of Travis and Joy's house where Antioch Community Church will meet until we grow too big.

We can't wait for our first service August 7th at 5pm!
We had a vision rally last Sunday, July 24th, where we invited any believers we've met so far to hear about our vision for coming to Tempe and planting a church.  It was an open invitation for anyone who wants to be involved to jump on in.  We had over 40 people there!  God is doing something here...

USCP!



Hi, everyone!  Andy and I just got back from an amazing US church planting conference held in Asheville, North Carolina this week.  If you didn't know already, the church we are planting is a part of a greater organization, known as Antioch Ministries International.  Our home church, CFCF in Boston, is also a part of this movement--and that's what it is--a movement of churches across the country and the world.  AMI's slogan is "A Passion for Jesus and His Purposes on the Earth!" and that is a vision Andy and I have adopted as our own.  The sweet thing about the large movement is that although it is large and growing, at the core is a family-like network of people who's lives have been forever changed by the gospel of Jesus and who want to see the peoples of the earth be transformed by it, too.

Every other summer AMI holds a church planting conference, alternating between US church plants and international.  This year we got to go to USCP since we're technically the staff of Antioch Community Church, Tempe (I say technically because as our church grows, our roles will likely change, but at this point, we're all on staff).  What an honor and privilege it was to get to hear from key leaders in this movement.  There were four large sessions where there was dynamic worship, powerful intercession, and awesome teachings and two breakout sessions, where we had the opportunity to get into smaller, more intimate groups and talk about specific ministries we're apart of.  Andy and I went to the college breakouts because we'll be helping head up the college ministry here in Tempe.  We just felt so equipped and envisioned to see the gospel reach this city.  Our team is so thankful to God that we got all of this valuable teaching and information a week before we get things started!  Praise God.

Another fun part about these conferences is that everyone comes together--there are a lot of lifelong friends in this movement that no longer live near one another because God has scattered us across the country and world.  Although we just left Boston a couple months ago, it was SO GREAT to see our dear friends at the conference!  A lot (not all) of our close friends back in Boston are on staff at CFCF, so that's a plus :)  I didn't get many pictures, but here are the ones I got.

worship/ministry time at the conference

getting into the presence of God is so refreshing!

Finally!  A good picture of Amy and me.  I love this sweet friend of mine.

Great buds, Andy and Seth.  So excited for Seth to be a daddy in a few weeks!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

An Update in Pictures

Going for a swim at the Phillips' pool

Getting some sun!


4th of July sunset over Tempe Town Lake

That's Sun Devil Stadium in the background (ASU's football field)

Andy and me at the 4th of July festivities

Andy and John

Gracie, Travis, and Ellie celebrating Gracie's 2nd birthday

My favorite little goober


Love those shorts

Love that suit!

Birthday cake I made for her birthday.  Swimming pool theme.

Baby Emily aka "Emmy"

Me and the birthday girl

The beautiful Phillips family.  Our dear friends.

I love this girl!

New blog design!

What do you think?  I'm still playing around with it, so it might change again.  

And I promise a better update in the next couple of days!  

Love, Emily

Sunday, July 3, 2011

What we've been up to...

Hi, everyone!  Sorry I haven't blogged much since the apartment post.  There's nothing too exciting to report, but I'll write anyway :)  We've mostly been unpacking and setting the place up.  Getting settled.  I still haven't hung anything on the walls, though.  (That is my least favorite part.  I'm not a very confident decorator!)  Here are some pics of the place:
My favorite room! 

Still adding my little country touch :)

Lots of great cabinet space.

My goofball :)

The living room.  Large enough to host a large college faithgroup.

The guys.  (Our friend John lives with us.)

Front door!  Yay

The little community pool.  Andy and I just took a dip--it's nice!

Guest/John's bathroom.  I LOVE this print from Target.

Our room, undecorated.

Our little bathroom.
We also have a hallway, a guest room, and a back porch not pictured :)  I promise to post more pictures when we get the place decorated.  Our goal is to use these next two weeks to finish up the "settling in" process as much as we can.

On Sunday July 17th, our Antioch Tempe team is having our first real meeting.  We're having a Vision Rally at the Phillips' house, where we'll share the vision for our moving out here and what our church and movement is all about.  We'll be inviting any Christian believers we have met or already know out here and will invite anyone to be a part of what we're doing here in Tempe.  Then we'll have our first church service (again at the Phillips' home) at the beginning of August.  So, in other words, we're getting close to the starting line here, and I want to have the little details taken care of.  Andy's been taking care of the car stuff (changing our insurance, getting new registration, etc.), so I'll be the domestic one :)

Another thing we've been doing here at 2525 College Ave is job searching, resume sprucing, and praying!  I am still waiting on a nursing job--part time or full time--and Andy is applying to various part time jobs.  He has an interview at a tutoring center on wednesday.  He's been study up on Trigonometry and Calculus--so funny!  He has to take a literacy test in addition to the interview.  He'll do great, he's so smart.  You can pray that we continue to walk in faith and trust God in the waiting process.  We know He will provide.  We definitely do not want to be like the Israelites who were brought to the desert, but doubted God's goodness.  They ended up wandering in the wilderness for way longer than God had intended because they didn't trust Him.  Some ended up getting the blessing, but only after 40 years.  Lord, may we continue to be faithful and trust in your GOODNESS!  My resume is out at several different places. I'm praying for a specific job at a pediatrician's office.  We'll see.

Lastly, I drove to La Quinta, CA with my friend Kristen this weekend.  She was going home for several days to work on support raising and talk about our church plant at the church her family goes to.  The drive is only about 3-4 hrs (depending on how fast you drive... ), so it was fun to go to another beautiful locale so close by.  She grew up in the desert of California, so she is used to this Tempe climate.  We had grand plans to visit Disneyland or Universal Studios.  Naive us, we thought the tickets would be like $30-50.  Um try $80-150!!  No way.  We ended up sleeping in that day and driving up the mountain to Idyllwild, a cute little mountain town.  It was very quaint.  Here are some pictures from the weekend.

This is the view from her front yard!  Amazing!

Kristen's childhood home!

Idyllwild, CA




Gorgeous views from the drive down

Sweet friends

My "wish you were here" photo