Month: September 2019

The last 2 1/2 weeks have been so FULL! We’ve celebrated 3 birthdays — Neil (40-something), Lucie (11) & Titus (2) — and Savana will celebrate her 14th in Brazil! Neil’s parents also celebrate birthdays in September — it’s one big party month! 🙂

Neil’s sister Lisa, and her husband Dan visited us! All in one day, we checked out a cattle auction (amazing!), visited a splash pad because it’s still hot, hot, HOT here, and shared our favorite Texas BBQ with them (Rudy’s) — where Neil’s parents shocked us with a surprise visit on their way to Houston-area! We topped the evening off with frozen custard — it was kind of a dream day 🙂 The next day we went to a horse jumping competition (there are so many worlds I don’t know anything about)… Like the cattle auction, this is a world I know NOTHING about — I’m fascinated!

Neil’s parents made their way back this past weekend — we celebrated those birthdays I talked about, chased down some homemade fried pies from the Mercantile in Mineola, and spent quite a bit of time in their hotel pool. They also were able to attend class with us on Friday morning.

Our last couple of weeks of class focused on Evangelism — from some of the basics like listening, and living out our faith, to using worship to encourage (aka, evangelize), to understanding apologetics as a way to evangelize.

Onto OUTREACH… I would be lying if I told you packing up our dorm-home of the last 3 months, and packing to leave the country for a month is easy. It’s totally not!! (insert sobbing crying emoji!) BUT, our school leaders have been gracious & kind — they gave us time to pack while our kiddos are in classes, brought in a packing expert to demo packing minimally for outreach, and helping us know where in the world to start. We’re also so thankful for our mobile storage unit (aka our trailer) — it’s allowed us to bring the extra things (like bikes & strollers & books & a few toys & lots of bedding) that have been lifegiving and made this place home for us for the last 3 months.

So tomorrow, we spend the first half of the day cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Neil will be in the cafeteria kitchen, I’ll be working in the dorm, and our older kids also have cleaning assignments around base. After lunch, we clean up and pack up into a bus and a couple of vans, and make our way to Dallas. We’re spending the night there, as our flight leaves EARLY (6 am) on Friday. We fly from Dallas to Miami, then from Miami to Recife, Brazil. We arrive in Brazil at 9 pm, and from there take a 6 hour bus ride to Canapi. It’s kind of a daunting 24 hours of travel, but God is faithful! We’re praying peace over the littles, peace over the details of travel & customs, peace and purpose even in flight… We’re trusting Him for safe travels & divine appointments all along the way.

I don’t know much yet about the details of our schedule once in Canapi. I do know that our first day is a rest day — Hallelujah! Beyond that, we’re prepared with skits, testimonies, short messages, intercessory prayer, magic tricks, and cute babies to lead us into conversation with people who need to know Jesus. Brazil, there’s a little army a’comin’…so get ready! We’ll update here as often as we can… We love you all, and thank you so much for praying for us and we jump into the outreach phase of our YWAM adventure!

Greetings again from YWAM Tyler! 

In case you didn’t know, the Bible is an amazing book.  For real.  You may come across some who try to deny its historical accuracy and reliability in an effort to discredit it, so do the research.  I’m not going to go into lots of detail here, but no ancient texts that we generally consider accurate even come close to the Bible in terms of number of early manuscripts that not only exist but also corroborate each other.  Not to mention the Old Testament’s remarkably precise prophetic/predictive nature (i.e. Isaiah 7, Isaiah 53, Zachariah 9, Daniel 7).

All issues of historical significance aside, let’s face it, we’ve all at one time or another thought of the Bible in one of two ways:

-A devotional book by which we study a particular scripture, section of scripture, or book of the Bible to learn more about God through principles we find there.

– A book of rules that instructs us in the way we should live our lives.

I’m not saying the Bible isn’t useful for either of these purposes, because it is.  But if these are the only ways we view the Bible we’re missing a larger point:

-The WHOLE Bible is a cohesive, longitudinal story that tells the story of a personal God and his never-stopping, never-giving up, unbreaking, always-and-forever love (thank you Jesus Storybook Bible). 

Think about it, the entire Old Testament illustrates this and the New Testament is the ultimate fulfillment of it.  God makes a covenant with His people.  His people keep covenant for a while (usually a short while).  His people mess things up (break His laws).  After suffering consequences of their decisions, they come back to Him.  In His ultimate grace, love, and mercy He takes His people back and relationship is restored. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat again.  Look for it, over and over again.  Exodus.  II Samuel. Jonah. On and on it goes.

By the way, His people doesn’t just mean Israel…it’s you and me.  We are little Israels.  Disobey…return…accepted back.  But there’s great news.  The Gospel.  Jesus followed the rules the way Israel (or all of us little Israels) never could.  Then he died a rule-breaker’s death so we could be forever pardoned and forever clean.  Not only His people, but His forever children.  And Him our forever Father.

So that is a (brief) summary of some of what we learned in week 7.  The week ended with what we thought was going to be fun family outing to a peach orchard.  We had heard about Ham’s Orchard (about an hour away, toward Dallas) from someone on our DTS staff shortly after arriving.  Peach pulled pork.  Award winning barbeque. Peach soft serve ice cream.  All eagerly anticipated.  Well, it turns out they don’t know in Texas that orchard season is just getting started in August.  Well, at least in Michigan it is.  We were greeted by an almost empty parking lot because Ham’s had essentially shut down the previous weekend and was only selling peaches from this year’s bumper crop.  So we were presented with a great opportunity to prepare for outreach and be FLEXIBLE!  Everyone handled the unexpected turn of events and we made an on-the-fly plan to have lunch and a pop (or “a Coke” as they would say in Texas) at the legendary and unparalleled Buc-ee’s.  It’s definitely a phenomenon down here.  Check it out online, but you can’t even imagine it until you’ve been there.

The same evening we got the opportunity to experience our first YWAM Tyler Love Feast…essentially a banquet to honor the previous school session graduates and hear amazing stories about their outreaches to places like France, Greece, Romania, and domestic outreach in Atlanta.  As we watched the graduates on stage at Love Feast, it was hard not to imagine ourselves on stage, graduating after outreach in just three months!  We’re so excited for what God will do in our last few weeks of class and how He will work through us in Brazil and Houston.  God is moving in the Greb family, y’all (did I just say “y’all?)  So please pray.  Then pray some more!  We love you all…

Oh, and by the way…the peaches were delicious!