Well, the goal was to write a post every evening after the day’s events were over, but by the time we got back to the hotel room and regained some form of a functioning brain, we were too tired to try to recap. So, for the sake of tiredness and not wanting to bore you with unnecessary detail, I will just mention some of the highlights of the remainder of our time in TX.
1- Met Al Weiss, current president of Walt Disney Parks (including those in other countries). What’s the connection to Al Weiss? He works with Vision 360 on the financial and development side of things. His father was a pastor/church planter and because of that he has two passions in life 1- Disney and 2- Church Planting. This guy is crazy busy and crazy smart, but he took several minutes to talk with each of us church planting couples.
2- Heard from Prince Turki, the youngest son of the deceased King Faisel of Saudi Arabia. He has become a personal friend of Pastor Bob Roberts and he too has a desire to see people of different faiths come together for the common good of humanity. He also extended an invitation to the congregation and us as church planters to visit Saudi Arabia to continue a cooperative movement among different faiths.
3- Heard from Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S. To be honest, I couldn’t understand much of what he said, but he was there with several other Vietnamese dignitaries also promoting religious cooperation. He too is personal friends with Pastor Bob Roberts. The Northwood Church has been working with the Vietnamese government for 14 years now helping them with any and all areas of need and also hosting kids of Vietnamese dignitaries as exchange students.
4- Ate dinner and had a great discussion with Ray Bakke- Without knowing exactly what he was doing, David somehow got himself into a situation where he and I were eating dinner with Ray Bakke and had him all to ourselves. Ray is a well-known missiologist in the Christian community and has pioneered something called Theology of the City. When he was young, he and his wife moved to a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Chicago for the purpose of reaching the community. I could go into a lot more detail, but just know that this guy has done and helps others do exactly what David and I hope to do- not so much about moving into the poverty-stricken neighborhood. I haven’t felt that call yet, although I don’t put anything past God. But he referred us to an organization called Christian Community Development Association. This is going to be a huge resource for us as we move forward.
5- David’s parents decided to fly in on Saturday to be able to attend the Sunday service at Northwood in which we were commissioned as church planters in front of the Prince of Saudi Arabia and the Vietnamese Ambassador. Pretty cool, huh?
All in all it was a great week and we are so thankful to have had this experience.
Lindsey
