Surrounded By Lights

25 February 2009

Tack! Hej Hej,

Well, I am on a train in Sweden, heading from my relatives house in Huskvarna to my friends house in Stockholm. It is a bit surreal updating my blog from a train in the middle of Sweden, go figure. This past week has been great. My time in the office was cut short by my trip to Sweden and by coaching in Amsterdam. Where to start?

I will begin by talking about coaching last week. I went up to Amsterdam early to see my Basketball boys perform in a play. It was big time, they were telling the story of some Greek Fables and did us all proud. Due to the play and the fact that I was alone this week, the guys were particularly wild. I tried to keep the day as fun as possible, but they were really out of control at times, so I had to enforce a little, mainly by making them do push-ups and running laps around the gym. They had had a good day being actors so I figured I would cut them some slack and let them be kids for a day. It was a fun, wild time. Needless to say we didn’t work on any new plays or any big life lessons, other than the lesson that sometime you just need to be a little wild.

After Basketball I had a good dinner with Kevin and Kathy Johnson, they made Chipolte Burrito’s and got them pretty close I might say. The next morning I went to Schiphol and then off to Sweden. The next three days were very intense. I along with 3 other Theologians was meeting with the CAI church plant located in Angered, Sweden. We were there to help this little church plant think through what they were doing in theological terms. It was a deep and powerful weekend. We asked a lot of hard questions and had some really good discussions as well.

For me, it forced me to ask deep questions about what I am doing. The point of this weekend was to help build up the work they were doing by connecting it to theological truths. I couldn’t help but ask these questions of my own work and goals and had some good time of reflection and development of questions. It was an enjoyable time, but also very draining, thinking is a lot of work, so I try not to do it too often…haha.

After the weekend I moved in with my relatives in Fiskeback, near Gothenburg and spent the next two days there with them. It was a good time to relax, catch up on reading and go for a nice walk. Today I left Gothenburg at 8am and then spent the day in Huskvarna with some more of our relatives. This trip has been great on many levels. First, working with the church plant in Angered gave me a first hand look at what it is too set up a church in a foreign context and, some would argue, a context that didn’t necessarily want them their. I say the hope in God and the belief that Christ will do a great work there; I shared this hope and prayer with these friends.

The other part that I always cherish is seeing my relatives, distant relatives (we are related through my grandmother’s cousin), but even though we are thousands of miles apart and language is a major issue, we still share a common faith. They are such a blessing to me whenever I visit and I know that we bless them just the same. It is amazing that I have relatives around the world that love Christ and that we truly, share fellowship with. I have a hard time expressing the gratitude I have for them and the thanks I would like to extent to them for the blessing they are to me and my family. It is so humbling to be associated with such great people.

That said, I am headed to Stockholm to share some time with another couple who are friends of mine. I am going there to help them move and spend a nice weekend together. Again, they are truly great friends of mine. I can’t wait to celebrate their new baby girl and help them move into a new home as well, it will be a great weekend.

If you could tell, I am overwhelmed with gratitude right now, and with good reason, I am in a foreign country and yet am still surrounded by friends and family that love and care for me. Really, it is so amazing to me to have such a network of people around the world, ok, you get the point.

This week hasn’t been a break from the hard questions looming in my near future, but it was reassurances that I am well supported by people that love me and are pray for the best to come about in my life.

Looking ahead in a week I will be headed to the CAI Leadership Summit, this will be a very important weekend for me in figuring out the next steps in my role with CAI and that leads to my prayer requests:

Pray for my future, where to go, what to do. God is nudging me, but it is not toward an answer it is more toward spending some significant time in prayer with him. This is one of those times where I need to seek God.
Pray for my relative in Huskvarna, I learned today that his cancer has returned, pray for his healing and peace in his life. I was very sad to hear this hard news.
Pray for the church in Angered (H2O that is the name), pray that God would lead them to serve the people in Angered in a way that makes them see Jesus. Pray also that I would see how I can best support the work they are doing.
Pray for Crossroads church that God would continue to work in the believers that. Pray that God would rise up leaders to go out and start new ministries in Den Haag and around Netherlands.

Thank you all again, for your prayers and support, I am hopeful and excited about the future. I am also learning that typing on a moving train makes me car sick, so I am going to stop typing before I throw up! Take care and many greetings to you all.

Jason Cutshall