Greetings to you all!
The Family
Naíme is still hanging in there with her pregnancy. She is about 3 weeks shy of her due date and doing as well as can be expected given her circumstances. Her fibroids give her quite a bit of pain at times, but she is thankfully she is hanging in there. Needless to say she is ready to welcome Sofía into this world. We appreciate your continued prayers for mama and baby. I should add that many friends have offered us things like strollers and baby clothing that is just slightly used. This has been a tremendous blessing!
The children are back in school. Naíme is in the equivalent of kindergarten. Stephen is in 2nd and Sebastian in 3rd. Once again we are happy with all or their teachers. So far our public school has been a good experience and we have been impressed with the teachers. Just recently we read an article in a local paper about the state of public education in Catalonia that was not very encouraging. According to this article, schools in Catalonia and especially public schools are fairing very poorly compared to the rest of Europe and compared to local private schools. Reading this article made me think that we have not only a spiritual responsibility to work with our children at home, but also an academic one.
Outreach
Although it has been a while, I wanted to share a bit about our evangelism week back in July. As some of might remember, we had a special week of evangelism both here in Vilassar as well as in Sant Andreu. What we did was to schedule 2 conferences (the same in both venues) about topics we thought would be of interest to folks here. The first conference was about how a good God can allow suffering and the second was rebuttal of some of the popular versions of Jesus (like the DaVinci Code). In Vilassar we also set up a book table and lent books & CDs to people as well as passed out a bunch of invitations to the conferences. The great thing is that there were new people in all of these conferences. And here in Vilassar there is a couple that has started attending church regularly as a result of the conferences. I should say that they are not only attending church but any and all activities that have. I laugh as I write this because the wife comes to my English class and last Wednesday the husband came with her (without any prompting) to fix some of our wooden chairs that needed repair.
Our outreach through English classes is up and running again. When we sent back to the U.S. last December I was able to share with some of you our vision for doing outreach inspired in part by a verse in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 29:7 says, “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” It was with this vision that we started offering free English classes last year. I should add that while the classes are free we do encourage students to give donations in order to help us cover our costs. Our first year was a bit of a rough ride in some ways, but it was a great learning experience. We offered 2 classes last year and finished with approximately 8 students between the two classes.
This year it looks like we might have more like 22 students plus a small waiting list of people who would like to study with us but who cannot come to the classes we currently offer. Just about all of our students live here in town and are Catalonians. We are thankful for this opportunity to build relationships with new people. I am also creating a blog called “The English Project” to help get the word out (http://vilassarenglishproject.blogspot.com/). Please pray with us that these classes would lead to friendships and opportunities to share the Gospel with our students.
Thanks again for your prayers and support!
Steve & Naíme Phillips
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
July Update
Family News
We are doing well as a family. I have finished a rather busy season and now look forward to being able to spend a bit more time with Naíme and the children. Sebastian, Stephen and Naimita all finished the school year well. So far we are pleased with the local public school where they attend. They have all had very good and caring teachers so far. Summer is challenging as we have to find ways to keep them all busy throughout the long summer days. We attempt to do something like a summer homeschool program with them. I participate in this and very much enjoy it. One of the benefits of this is to try to help them with their English which is hard for them to maintain when they have to study two other languages as well (Catalan and Spanish).
Naíme (my wife) is now about six months pregnant. It looks like we will be having another girl! The name we have chosen is Sofía (Sophia in Spanish) which means wisdom in Greek. Our children are excited that we will now be like the family from the Chronicles of Narnia with two boys and two girls. We appreciate your prayers for Naíme’s pregnancy.
Spanish Summers
We really like summers here. It does get hot and very humid, but the days are typically sunny and very long. Here in Spain many things really slow down in summer. People take their summer vacation at different times throughout the summer months. Our worship services start thinning out toward the end of July until mid September. Also some of our mid week activities adjourn until the start of the school year. All this means that my work load goes down a bit in summer. It is a great time to spend more time with the family, do some good reading, and work on projects in preparation for the coming year.
Evangelism Week
Last week we celebrated an “evangelism week” as some of you know. We would like to express our heart-felt thank to those of you who prayed for us. We are very pleased with how things went. Perhaps it would be good to describe what this week looked like. Basically we arranged to have two conference speakers come and address topics that we thought would be of interest to folks here in Vilassar as well as in Barcelona where David Barceló leads our church plant. Each speaker spoke twice, once in our church plant and once here in Vilassar. The first topic was why God allows pain and suffering and the second was a talk debunking different versions of Jesus out there such as the Da Vinci Code, Gospel According to Judas, etc. I am happy to be able to say that both talks were superb and very well received by those who came.
Having said that I should clarify that in Spain it is not enough to simply organize good talks if you expect people to come. People still have an aversion to stepping foot in an Evangelical church. As on other ocassions, we ran adds in a local magazine, distributed flyers and put up posters around town. We also arranged an interview with our local radio station to promote the event. We had done all this before, but the novelty was our book table in town. From Monday to Friday we set up a book table with books, DVDs and CDs that people could borrow. This table gave a good “presence” in town and apart from loaning out quite a few books we were able to hand out quite a few flyers to our talks.
I must say that there was quite a bit of work involved. But it was great to see how many people from our church and churchplant that got behind this event and helped in many different ways. One of the greatest benefits of doing something like this is for the local church itself. But we also praise the Lord that the talks were very well attended in both venues. There were new people in each of the talks and there was opportunity for some good conversations afterwards. One of the new couples actually came to church the next Sunday and the husband came to a small group Bible study I do on Wednesday mornings.
Prayer Requests & Praises
(1) Thanks to God for His help this past week and for the new people that came.
(2) Pray for Naíme’s pregnancy.
(3) Pray that the local government would grant us permission to set up our library in town on a regular basis. We have requested permission to set it up every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month which is open market day here in town.
(4) Pray for a productive summer for us as a family with Steve’s projects and our homeshooling attempts.
Thank you all for your prayers and support!
Steve and Naíme Phillips
Naíme (my wife) is now about six months pregnant. It looks like we will be having another girl! The name we have chosen is Sofía (Sophia in Spanish) which means wisdom in Greek. Our children are excited that we will now be like the family from the Chronicles of Narnia with two boys and two girls. We appreciate your prayers for Naíme’s pregnancy.
Spanish Summers
We really like summers here. It does get hot and very humid, but the days are typically sunny and very long. Here in Spain many things really slow down in summer. People take their summer vacation at different times throughout the summer months. Our worship services start thinning out toward the end of July until mid September. Also some of our mid week activities adjourn until the start of the school year. All this means that my work load goes down a bit in summer. It is a great time to spend more time with the family, do some good reading, and work on projects in preparation for the coming year.
Evangelism Week
Last week we celebrated an “evangelism week” as some of you know. We would like to express our heart-felt thank to those of you who prayed for us. We are very pleased with how things went. Perhaps it would be good to describe what this week looked like. Basically we arranged to have two conference speakers come and address topics that we thought would be of interest to folks here in Vilassar as well as in Barcelona where David Barceló leads our church plant. Each speaker spoke twice, once in our church plant and once here in Vilassar. The first topic was why God allows pain and suffering and the second was a talk debunking different versions of Jesus out there such as the Da Vinci Code, Gospel According to Judas, etc. I am happy to be able to say that both talks were superb and very well received by those who came.
Having said that I should clarify that in Spain it is not enough to simply organize good talks if you expect people to come. People still have an aversion to stepping foot in an Evangelical church. As on other ocassions, we ran adds in a local magazine, distributed flyers and put up posters around town. We also arranged an interview with our local radio station to promote the event. We had done all this before, but the novelty was our book table in town. From Monday to Friday we set up a book table with books, DVDs and CDs that people could borrow. This table gave a good “presence” in town and apart from loaning out quite a few books we were able to hand out quite a few flyers to our talks.
I must say that there was quite a bit of work involved. But it was great to see how many people from our church and churchplant that got behind this event and helped in many different ways. One of the greatest benefits of doing something like this is for the local church itself. But we also praise the Lord that the talks were very well attended in both venues. There were new people in each of the talks and there was opportunity for some good conversations afterwards. One of the new couples actually came to church the next Sunday and the husband came to a small group Bible study I do on Wednesday mornings.
Prayer Requests & Praises
(1) Thanks to God for His help this past week and for the new people that came.
(2) Pray for Naíme’s pregnancy.
(3) Pray that the local government would grant us permission to set up our library in town on a regular basis. We have requested permission to set it up every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month which is open market day here in town.
(4) Pray for a productive summer for us as a family with Steve’s projects and our homeshooling attempts.
Thank you all for your prayers and support!
Steve and Naíme Phillips
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
March 2008
Church Retreat This past weekend we spent our Easter holiday with the Memba's at a church retreat. The church where Xavi pastors along with another church held a retreat near Tarragona. We spent 3 1/2 days together and I believe the Lord blessed our time.
I brought 4 messages on Christ in the Old Testament and they were well received. The first talk set the stage for approaching the first part of the Bible in a Christ-centered way and the 3 talks that followed illustrated this approach by looking at key events in the lives of Abraham, Moses and David. It was neat to see some lights going on.
Family
We continue to enjoy this stage of parenting! We almost wish we could freeze this stage of life and stay put for awhile. Sebastian and Stephen are playing football as an extra-curricular activity. Some of you will remember that this was papa's big sport growing up :). All three children seem to be doing well in school. Sebastian (7) and Stephen (6) are starting to read quite proficiently. Sebastian has always loved stories and right now he is reading through a children's version of Don Quijote and really enjoying it.
Our daughter Naíme (4) really enjoys school as well. Even though she has two older brothers she is quite feminine in terms in the way she plays. No guns or swashbuckling for her. She loves playing with dolls and taking care of babies. At four she is quite the little mother. In fact, I should relate an anecdote that ties in with this. I like to call her my "princesa" or princess. But one day she took her maternal instinct a bit too far and answered me quite seriously, "I am not your princess. I am your mother!"
Church
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