Family on Mission

Dashing home from church this afternoon to take our doggie for a walk before leaving for the rest of the day, I was treated to such a fantastically beautiful spring afternoon out in our farmlands.

I never get tired of this view!!

After my walk, Claire and I, along with Pavlina, Claire's apartment roommate, headed over to Poland.

Pavlina had her own meeting to go to, and Claire and I were there to meet up with Dave at the annual European Leadership Forum (known as ELF).

In their words, "This conference equips and resources evangelical leaders to renew the church and evangelize Europe. They provide a bridge between God’s global resources and local leaders from all over Europe, offering 27 different tracks that European leaders can choose from to be a part of."

Dave gets to lead the youth ministry track, along with some of our JV staff.

The great thing for me about coming over here each year is seeing so many people that we love.

Katerina is on our JV team in Slovakia, serving as the director for their annual leadership conference, KPM, that we were just at in April. She is here at ELF as part of the counseling track.

I'm so glad we also ran into our friend Jerry Twombly, who Dave met way back in the beginning of ELF when it was meeting in Sopron, Hungary in the early 2000's!

Jerry is a Patty family prayer warrior and keeps a chestnut from Czech in his pocket at all times to remind him to pray for us. "We are so thankful for you Jerry!"

This afternoon Dave had a seminar that we joined him for.

Wonder who those people are in the photo on the screen? That's Dave's parents, with he and his sister (before his brothers were born!) when they were missionaries in the Philippines!

And the reason he was talking about them?

Because this was actually a seminar that he and Claire were teaching together on what it means to be "Family on Mission"!

It was so precious to watch these two talk about increasing impact for the Kingdom of God by going from just parents in ministry to family on mission.

Dave taught the principles and they both gave life examples about how that fleshed out in our family, both the things that worked, and the places where we made mistakes.

Claire also shared some of the results from the Deep Dive study that she and some of our other JV teammates have been doing over the past year with our JV Kids, both current and alum, along with parents. The findings are so interesting!

The results of it will eventually be written up, but just one of the findings is that the more JV Kids are involved with their parents on mission (which is different than being involved in ministry activity), the more purpose they have in their own lives. That purpose gives identity that they take with them wherever they go.

And the mission? Being involved in God's redemptive plan and rescue mission of his people!

One of those dear ones on mission in our part of the world is Denisa, another one of our JV Slovak teammates. She is part of the teaching team for the youth track. I enjoy her so much, and love her heart for the Lord and people!

And I love these two so much...people I get to be "family on mission" with.

Dave will be here at ELF all week, so I'm glad we got to join him for a little part of it today.