Vizcaino, Mexico – Annual Leadership Conference

1st Video – made this year by Pastor Sam Scotti who interviewed several Calvary Chapel pastors who team together each year to reach out to the locals in Baja Sur, Mexico by providing a 3-day annual Leadership Conference in Vizcaino, completely free to the nationals who live there. Teams of people of all ages from several different churches with the same vision to encourage serve together to build up the pastors and leadership  by teaching them through the Bible and giving them study materials and resources to take back to their own fellowships.

 

Relationships are being built and people are being strengthened in their faith and love for God and with each other across different denominational lines.  

 

A missions base is currently under construction in Vizcaino – a step of faith   by Cornerstone Ministries Napa Valley, CA’s  pastor Bill Walden for the vision of God to reach out to these people and those in surrounding areas with the love of Jesus.   He remembers a conversation with a local who said they felt like ‘the forgotten people’ – 

 

Keri and Gary Goo, a  couple from Cornerstone Ministries in Napa have moved to Mexico to serve as full-time missionaries and live on the property in Vizcaino where the missions base is currently being built.

 

A church has been planted and Tacho Montellano serves the people as pastor of Calvary Chapel, Vizcaino.  They have already out-grown the Montellano family home which is currently being used as their meeting place.  The church will be able to use the missions base when it’s completed.   

 

Laura Vitale, a Napa photographer and member of Cornerstone Ministries Fellowship, visits the poor families in the work camps to support them by bringing disposable cameras for the children. They take photos of their own families and homes, give them back to her, she gets them developed back to Napa, puts the images onto greeting cards to sell.  She then buys the basics of rice and beans for the poor families in the work camps.  She also brings copies of the children’s photos back to them.  In this way the children are helping their families through their photos and are learning about the art of photography as well.

 

Several times a year short-termed missions trips with teams of people of all ages come from different churches all over the United States to help work on the missions base and to put on outreaches to share the love of Jesus and help build relationships with the people in Vizcaino and the surrounding areas.

 

 

If you’d like to  serve and support this ministry in any way you’re welcome to contact Pastor Bill @ PastorBillWalden@Gmail.com  

 

 

2nd video – “Thank you for Giving to the Lord”  by Ray Boltz,  

 

 

Writing Inspired Worship Songs

• Chris Tomlin –  ‘Amazing Grace, My Chains Are Gone’ & ‘How Great is Our God’
• Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio – ‘Enough’
• Phil Wickham – ‘True Love’ & ‘Grace’
• Chris Blasius teaches how to play Phil Wickham’s songs
• Chris Tomlin and Steven Curtis Chapman – ‘We Fall Down’
• Casting Crowns – ‘Who Am I’
• Marc Byrd and Steve Hindalong – ‘God of Wonders’

Local Prop 8 Rally – Newspaper Article

A youth missionary group from Hillside Christian Church form a prayer circle as Ally Rogers, 18, rallies on the corner of Jefferson and Lincoln streets for Proposition 8, a measure to ban gay marriage

Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008 – Napa Valley Register Local News

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/10/19/news/local/doc48fabf72721a7667463313.txt

By KERANA TODOROV – Register Staff Writer

 

With the November elections around the corner, activist on both sides of the same-sex marriage issue rallied in Napa Saturday.

 

Supporters and opponents of Prop. 8 — a measure that would prohibit same-sex couples to marry — stopped by the Lincoln Avenue and Jefferson Street intersection Saturday to weigh on the statewide measure. Prop. 8 supporters received permission from the Napa Valley Unified School District to have the rally on a grassy corner on district property, walking distance from NVUSD’s administration offices.

 

Organizers estimated between 150 and 200 people came throughout the afternoon to lend support to Prop. 8 and Prop. 4 — a law that would require doctors to notify a parent of a minor who wants an abortion.

 

Carol Whichard, who organized the “No on Prop 8” rally, said about 100 Napans came to the counter protest held on the sidewalk — off district property.

 

While Prop. 8 proponents said they only want to make sure that marriage is a legal union between a man and a woman, opponents at the rally said Prop. 8 is discriminatory, unconstitutional and the arguments misleading.

 

Debbie Dornaus, who organized the pro Prop. 8 rally with members from a dozen Napa churches, said church members need to take a stand for what they believe in.

 

“It’s time for us not to be afraid anymore,” the businesswoman said.

Monica Sanchez, a pastor at the Church of the Nazarene, said she supports Prop. 4 because of her faith and because she wants to remain involved in her daughters’ lives. 

As he held a pro-Prop. 8 sign, Bill Johnson, a Mormon church member, said that he feels like “marriage should stay between a man and a woman.” 

But after the rally, Josie Jenkins of Napa, said domestic partnership simply does not grant the same equal rights as legal marriage. 

And people agree with us,” she said. 

“We need to have equality,” said counter-protester Elizabeth Campbell-Wright, as she helped carry a “Vote ‘No’ on Prop. 8” sign.  

Saturday’s pro Prop. 8 and Prop. 4 speakers included Eduardo Verastegui, the Los Angeles-based Mexican movie star of “Bella,” an award-winning 2007 film that tells the story of a young woman facing a pregnancy crisis. 

Verastegui was in Napa for a book signing of “Behind Bella: The Amazing Stories of ‘Bella’ and the Lives it’s Changed,” a book on the real-life experiences of the people involved in the film. 

Whichard organized the counter-rally after she learned that the Prop. 8 supporters had received permission to rally on district property. 

That angered her, she said.

Having the rally on district property will increase the likelihood of accepting the view from the “Yes on 8” campaign that schools will promote gay marriage, the counter-rally flyer said. 

NVUSD Superintendent John Glaser wrote Friday in a letter to the Register that the district did approve the use of the front lawn under the State Education Code. 

“It is the District’s practice to allow such groups the same after-school access to school facilities as is given to other community organizations for similar purposes,” Glaser wrote. 

“By providing access to the facilities for these purposes, the District does not express support or opposition to the views of the groups using the facilities.  The District remains neutral on Proposition 8 and on all other ballot initiatives during this election season,” Glaser wrote.

The Book of Acts – Visual Bible

Celebration of Life – Eduardo Verastegui (Bella)

 

 

“End of the Spear” ~ “Beyond the Gates of Splendor”

Quotes by Jim Elliot –

“Live to the hilt of every situation you believe to be the will of God”  

“He is no fool, to lose what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose”

“BEYOND THE GATES OF SPLENDOR”  True story behind the movie

In the Ecuadorian jungles of the Amazon, the Waodani people, one of the most violent societies on the planet, live totally cut off from civilization. Their homicide rate has brought them to the brink of extinction. One of their tribal leaders is Mincayani. Somewhere not far away along the Amazon, five young North American missionaries and their families have set out to find the Waodani. Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully and Roger Youderian eventually locate the Waodani village and find a sandbar on which to land their small plane. When one of the tribesmen lies that the foreigners on the sandbar have abducted and killed a tribeswoman, Mincayani and his fellow warriors find their site and spear the five Americans. The missing missionaries make headlines in the world’s media and a search ensues. When the Waodani see the helicopter and the size of the search party they think the foreigners will take their revenge, so they burn their huts and flee deeper into the jungle. Within months of the killings, a Waodani woman who had fled the tribe, helps gain entry into the tribe for the wife of one missionary and the sister of another, as well as Nate’s son, Steve. In time, they come to live with the Waodani and through a series of events the spearing that was destroying the tribe comes to an end. Steve wants to learn which warrior killed his father. He leaves the tribe as a boy with this question unanswered. Steve returns as an adult when his aunt, Rachel Saint, who had spent the rest of her life with the Waodani, dies from cancer. The Waodani want Steve to live with them the way Rachel did, but Steve’s unanswered questions keep him from agreeing. Mincayani takes Steve to the river where his father was killed and confesses to spearing him. At that moment, Steve and Mincayani are forced to confront the true meaning of the life and death of Steve’s father and the other men who were killed.

 

Mincayani confessed to Steve Saint that he had speared his father. He tossed a spear to him while contorting his face, spreading his arms out, and bearing his chest, he cried.  “I killed your father, now you kill me.”  Steve caught the spear, grasped it tightly in his shaking hands and held it to Mincayani’s chest. With tears in his eyes he cried, “You didn’t take my father’s life, he gave it.”

 Beyond the Gates of Splendor, a true story of the ultimate sacrifice.

Set in the Basin of Ecuador, the docu-drama tells the story of the Waodani, one of the most violent tribes the world has ever known. The primitive customs of this isolated tribe demanded that the Waodani kill not only their enemies and outsiders, but also their fellow tribes-people. Fueled by fearful superstition, they sometimes even buried their own children alive. The Waodani were the most violent society ever documented. Six of every ten deaths of Waodani adults were homicides. In 1956, following a promising initial exchange, five young missionaries further attempted to make peaceful contact with the notorious tribe, but were brutally speared to death. However, the violent end of the missionaries’ lives was only the beginning of the Waodani story. Shortly after the killings, the wife of one of the fallen men and the sister of another went into the jungle to live with the Waodani. Two years later their message of peace and forgiveness had transformed the tribe. The homicide rate fell by 90%. Nearly forty years after the death of his father, Steve Saint returned to the jungle to live with the killers of his father. His new life with the tribesmen answered many childhood questions about his father’s death. The irony of the story is revealed as the very same Waodani, who killed the five missionaries in 1956, now share in their incredible story of how their lives–and those of their people–have been changed forever.

 

 

 

 

“Knowing God’s Perfect Will” by Pastor Chuck Smith

Romans 12: 1-2

I beseech you therefore, brethren,

by the mercies of God,

that you present your bodies a living sacrifice,

holy, acceptable to God,

which is your reasonable service.

And do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

that you may prove

what is that good and acceptable

and perfect will of God.

SHARING OUR FAITH IN CHRIST

                     Brian Brodersen

                  Scott Cunningham

                     Karl Corcoran

Grace Alone

” For it is by grace you have been saved,

through faith –

and this not from yourselves,

it is the gift of God –

not by works,

so that no one can boast.

For we are God’s workmanship,

created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Ephesians 2:8-10