Carried to Completion (January 2012): "I am about to do something new ..."

2012 is here and we can't be more excited.  The verse that God has put on our hearts that we claim not only for ourselves but for you as well is from Isaiah 43:19:

"See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland."

We brought in the new year in Jacksonville, Florida with my family.  My parents drove down from Nebraska, and then we drove to Jacksonville to see my sister and her family.  It couldn't have gone better.

How did you bring in the new year?

We are so thrilled of what God is going to do here in Nashville this year.  As much as God did last year, I feel that it was all preparation for this year. 

Here is a recap of what took place in January 2012.

Albuquerque, NM
We were able to go to the beautiful city of Albuquerque to witness and be a part of beautiful wedding.  Mark and Shirlena are like family to us and I was honored to be asked to be one of his groomsmen.

Samantha looked absolutely stunning at the wedding, I don't know why God blessed me with such a beautiful wife... but I sure am not complaining:-)

RUSH Franklin
I invited Pastor Greg Wark to share and kick off our year.  Pastor Greg is the founder of Stop Child Trafficking Now.  He is also the president of Force Ministries, which is a ministry that works closely with the military, primary with special forces and Navy Seals.

We felt inspired and challenged.  It was a great night.

Pastor Greg launched our Breaking Good sermon series and that has been amazing.

Annual Prayer and Fasting

We started the year off with a week-long prayer and fasting.  We had prayer meetings every night at the church.It was amazing seeing the breakthrough in many peoples lives.  Especially among the youth.

It was so inspiring to see the students wanting to participate. Some fasting food and meals, others fasting television, social media, and video games.  It was so great seeing their hunger for God.  One Wednesday night in particular, there was a lot of personal breakthrough.  It brought tears to my eyes seeing God restoring relationships in families, especially among siblings.  It was powerful!

D3 Groups
We launched our D3 groups which is our small groups.  We truly believe with all our hearts, that one of the best ways to develop spiritual growth is in a small group setting.

The students have been extremely responsive.  We already have 6 high school groups and 2 middle school groups that are meeting weekly.

Sports Ministry
God has opened up doors for me to do more coaching and personal training.  Last year I helped coach an AAU team and worked with many others student-athletes.
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God has put it on my heart to continue to use the gift of basketball, to be able to help teach, coach, and mentor the next generation.  We are currently holding a free basketball clinic, on Monday afternoons for elementary age children.  We also have devotionals before every practice.

We will slowly add middle and high school student-athletes. We are now having talks of having an Every Nation Sports Camp this summer.

On a personal note:
During our January fast, I asked God to search my heart to see if there was anything there that would not be honoring to Him. He did. One of the areas has to do with confidence in raising financial support.

We must strengthen our team, and we do need your help. Our biggest need at the moment is monthly partners. God has put it on our hearts to invite people to join our team at $10 a month.  We have set a goal to have 100 new people by April.

Will you join our team?


Thank you for all your love and support. This year is going to be amazing!

Please let us know how we can be praying for you specifically.

We love you so much,

Rob and Samantha




If you would like to know how to join our team, please click here.

Carried to Completion (December 2011): A Memorable Holiday Season

Hope that you all had a merry Christmas and enjoyed welcoming the new year. 

We know that the holidays can bring about mixed memories and emotions. As for us here in Nashville we had a great holiday season. 

 Thanksgiving was amazing and Christmas was just as special despite gaining a few extra holiday pounds. The highlight of Christmas was that my parents drove down from Nebraska to spend it with us.

I would also be lying if I said we weren’t a little homesick. We sure do miss the Philippines this time of the year. 

However, we had a traditional Filipino Christmas Eve dinner ("Noche Buena") hosted by our friends Eben and Malou Tabelisma. It was such a joy-filled night and it sure helped our homesickness.

 Our hope and prayer is that we can spend Christmas in the Philippines next year. We miss our friends and family there dearly. 

 This year has been extra tough not being able to be there. Samantha lost both of her grandparents in less than a month. 

 I really think Samantha’s grandmother died of sadness if that’s even possible. The past twenty plus years her grandmother has been taking care of her grandfather due a stroke that led him to be partially paralyzed. However, our hearts rejoice that they are together in heaven with our Heavenly Father!

 Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. Here is a recap that we did this past month in Nashville. 

RUSH Franklin

 We had a short giving series entitled 'Live 2 Give.'   We said that if we wanted to learn how to live, we must develop a lifestyle of giving.

 The objective was 3-fold.

1. Awareness. 

 That we would be more aware of the countless opportunities that God puts in our lives daily.

2. Compassion. 

 That Awareness would then lead to Compassion. That our hearts would not be hardened and we would feel.

3. Action. 

 That our compassion would lead to action. That we would actually do something about it. 

Project Luke 21

 Our friend Trisha Ingram helped us come up with a project to encourage the students to develop a lifestyle of giving and being intentional about looking for opportunities to bless others. We took the story of the old widow who gave her last 2 coins and gave it to God as a model.

This birthed Project Luke 21.

 So what we did was give out 2 $1 coins to each of the students. They were tasked to use the coins to be a blessing to someone.

 It could be a stranger, friend, family member, or anyone. The goal was to look for opportunities to be intentional about being a blessing. 

Testimonies

 We had some great testimonies. Some who gave it to siblings; to a young man who bought candy and gave it to a random person in school; to giving to a homeless person. 

 There were some great ones, but one of my favorites was from a young lady named Allie. Allie went to a mall and prayed that God would lead her to someone.

 She saw a lady who looked like she wasn’t having the best of days. Allie passed her a couple of times and knew that God wanted Ali to give the coins to her.

 As akward as it seemed, and as nervous as Allie was, she boldly walked up to the lady, introduced herself, and gave the lady her coins. She told her that God wanted her to give the coins her and to have a great day.

 The lady's countenance changed immediately. As a bonus to everyone who completed the task, names were put in a hat and there was a drawing at our Christmas party for a pair of TOMS shoes.

 If you are not familiar with TOMS, here is a link to their website. The idea behind TOMS was that for every TOMS shoe that is purchased, TOMS will give a brand new pair of shoes to a kid in need of a pair.

Allie ended up winning the drawing.


Christmas Party
 The last thing we did this amazing year was we had an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party. We had a blast!

It was great reflecting and seeing all the students having so much fun and enjoying one another.

 God is so faithful. We sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your partnership.

 2011 has been wonderful, and we are so excited about what God is going to do 2012. Praying that you are having a fantastic new year so far.

For anything that you are believing for in 2012, please send us an e-mail and let us know what they are. It is our joy to stand with you in prayer and believe for God's faithfulness.

We love you with all of our hearts.


Robert and Samantha


We are currently building our partnership team for 2012. If you would like to know more about being a part of ministry, please click on this link for more information.

Carried to Completion (November 2011): Give Thanks!

Happy Holidays to you and your family!

We pray that your holiday season was filled with so much love, joy, and laughter. This month has been absolutely incredible for us and it went by in a blur.

The weather was suprisingly great over here in "The Ville." I feel as this has been the most fulfilling month for us in terms of ministry. 

We have been going at it for the last 9 months and it's been one of the best years of our lives. Samantha and I are learning so much and we are starting to gain some traction.

 Nashville is finally beginning to feel like home. We are so grateful to be here and we thank you from the bottom of hearts to help make this possible.

 We constantly face challenges and God constantly comes through for us.

He is always faithful ... always!

                                 

                              

 Our theme this month was serving. We entitled our series You Got Served.

 Week 1: Serving Others
 Week 2: Serving our Family
 Week 3: Serving God.

 The main thing we wanted to accomplish this month was to serve and get involved in our communities. Here is a recap of what we did together.

  Service Project:
 Franklin, Tennessee is one of wealthiest cities in all of the south. But despite being very wealthy, there are parts of Franklin that have low income housing and have poverty.

 We have partnered with the Boys and Girls Club in the past but this is the first time we did it together with RUSH Franklin.  The facility provides a safe and caring place for inner city kids of Franklin.

We visited the center one weekend and got involved in feeding the kids, spending time with them, and remodeling the library. The turnout was great and it was good to see the students find joy and getting involved in their community.

  Operation Christmas Child

Samantha and I have been involved with Operation Christmas Child in the past and we wanted introduce it to our youth. Our goal was to pack 10 shoe boxes and we were able to achieve our goal.

We were so encouraged to see how passionate the students were able to give less fortunate kids gifts. We asked that the kids just bring one or two small gifts so that we could combine all of our gifts together.

 I guess that didn't work very well. The kids were so generous, some of the students even came with multiply shoe boxes filled with toys.

 This is a tradition we want to continue and we are looking forward to more shoeboxes to give away next holiday season.


Girls' Baking Day
The girls had a baking day at Brad and Tracy Edmonson's home.  Their daughter Jessica, who is one of our leaders, organized the event.

One of the things that we are seeing more of and that we are encouraging are meetings like this outside of Sunday night RUSH.  So grateful for our leaders who constantly give their time and service in making things like this happen.

You can see the bond between the girls grow stronger and stronger.  We absolutely love it!

Thanksgiving/Communion Service

It has been on our heart for a while to do communion and we felt there wasn't a better time to do it. We asked the students to dress up in their "Sunday Best" as we took communion for the first time together.

 The parents got involved and provided delicious soup and chili. We were expecting about 40 kids because I knew many were out of town on vacation.

 To our surprise, there were almost eighty (80) students who came out that night. We almost ran out of food, but it ended up being the exact amount that was made.

A Note of Thank You to the Following People:

Chris Stovenour - For helping supervise the remodeling of the library at the Boys and Girls Club.

Brad & Tracy Edmonson, Patrick & Cindy Konyn, Marty & Holly Euverard, John & Maria McKamey and Shunil & Robin Joseph - For providing food on our Thanksgiving Dinner and Communion.

Jennifer Pamilar - For helping set-up and decorate the Thanksgiving event.

And to all our selfless, committed volunteers of RUSH Franklin!


We are grateful for all the families who invited us for Thanksgiving Dinner.  We decided to go to New Albany, Indiana right outside of Louisville, Kentucky and spend it with our good friends Noy and Lynn Castillo.

We had a great time and ate one of our favorite meals ever!

Prayer Requests:

1) For students to continue to mature in their love for God and a complete understanding of who they are in Jesus Christ -- especially this Christmas season. We also pray that they will find true joy in spending time with their family during the holidays.

2) For God's presence to continue to be evident during our new series on giving.

3) RUSH Franklin's Ugly Sweater Christmas Party.  That it will be fun, fruitful, and most of all Christ-centered and glorifying.  This will be the final time we will meet until next year.

4) We are seeking monthly financial partners as we prepare for our second year of youth ministry in Nashville. New partnerships will greatly help us recover from recent decreases, more ways to effectively reach high schools, secure health care coverage, and continue to be able to live in the city that God has called us to serve in. To know more about being our ministry partner, please click here. All gifts are tax-deductible.


Thank you that you are a part of this journey. Your prayers, encouragement, and support that you have shown to us all these years continues to empower us to fulfill God's calling of making disciples in the next generation. We are so blessed that you are allowing yourselves to be used by God to share His love to the young people of Nashville.


We give you thanks,
Robert and Samantha

Carried to Completion (October 2011): Enjoying Autumn in Nashville

Dear Family, Faithful Partners, and Friends:

Don't you just love autumn? We hope that you are enjoying this season as much as we do.

Time sure does fly by when you are having fun.  The month of October went by in a blur.

  

We continue to pray God's blessing on you and your family.  With holidays coming up at the end of the month I know things get a hectic in most homes.  

Please know that you truly are in our prayers and we hope you can feel them.

The scripture that I have been meditating on this month is found in Mark 3:25 (NASB) and it says,

"If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand."  

I see this happening so much right now in all different areas of life.  From sports teams to families.  

I humbly plead with all of you, we must be united.  In this day and age it is so easy to get distracted and become consumed with our own personal matters.  

It's so hard to find 2 or more people who are on the same page working toward one common goal.  Let's all be reminded of what the Word says in Matthew 18:20 (NIV),

"For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them."

Our prayer is that you and your family would be united as ever.  We must continue to pray for our families that there would be no division amongst us.  


It is difficult to do, but it is possible.  It takes a lot of humility, forgiveness, and most of all prayer.  


We cover you with our prayers and we thank you for covering us.

October has been filled with so many life-changing events.  Here is a recap on what took place.

Catalyst Conference

This Conference was absolutely amazing.  Samantha and I went last year and we decided that every year we were going to do our best to make it.  

It is truly a world-class christian leaders' conference.  The speakers were amazing.  

We learned so much.  The theme of the conference was Be Present.  

It means that it is easy to be distracted in the grind of everyday life and technology.  How we should always be present in the way that we engage and and interact with others.  

There was also an strong focus on "being present" in our communities. We left the conference so encouraged and excited to be more present and involved in our community. Samantha will blog a detailed recap soon.

Samantha's Grandparents  
'Abuelita' is an affectionate name for grandmother in spanish. That is what we call Samantha's grandmother.

  
While we were in Atlanta we got the opportunity to see Samantha's grandmother who has Alzheimer's disease.

It was also great catching up with the rest of the family who live there. We always enjoy our time with them.


In related news, we are deeply saddened by the recent demise of Samantha's grandfather (we fondly call him 'Tata') who lives in the Philippines. It was very difficult for Samantha not to be with her family at a time like this. She has never felt so far from the place she called home for so many years. 


We privately mourned but found comfort in our Father who reassured us that Tata is now in His arms. Thank you to everyone who sent kind messages and sweet prayers.

Boys and Girls Club of Williamson County
God has opened up an a huge door for RUSH with the Boys and Girls Club of Franklin in Williamson County.  Our church has done outreaches and have been involved in the past.  

But we really wanted to partner with them on a regular basis.  I took a few students and volunteers one friday while some schools were on fall break, and we we served them pizza and hung out with the kids.  

We had such a great time.

Michael Chapman
Mike has had such a great impact on the lives of the youth. He played a big role in developing RUSH as a youth group in the Brentwood congregation.  

He is a worship leader and just a very gifted young man.  He took a job in Canada where he will be working in church leadership there.  

We sent him off on a night of honoring him.  I got the idea when I was in the Philippines.

  
Whenever it was someone's birthday or a special occasion, there was always a moment of honoring that person.  Each person around the room would say something how that person has made an impact on their life.  

In this culture, it is not as common. And I felt moved to give Michael that moment. 

The night was full of tears and God's presence.  It was powerful! If you would like to follow Mike's journey in his new role, visit his blog.

RUSH Middle School
Absolutely love these kids.  This month was great because we got the chance to share different Bible stories.  

Bible stories are so effective at this age.  Their response was so heartwarming.

We also decided that we were going to get involved with Samaritan's Purse (Operation Christmas Child) and Compassion International.  


Together we are going to sponsor 2 children from OCC and 1 child from Compassion International.  So excited about this.

Costume Party
We had a costume party the Sunday before Halloween.  No we are not promoting Halloween.  

But we did have a fall festival for the younger children, so we decided to have a costume party for the high school students and promote it as an outreach event.

We had a great turn out of about 100 students.  The night was full laughter and life.

  
We were all so blessed.  

Candyland
For our fall festival the theme was Candyland. We had it on Halloween day itself.  

It was great seeing all the families and the kids in their costumes.  Samantha and I, along with many of our RUSH volunteers helped out.  

We are so proud of the RUSH students who selflessly stood outside in the cold evening weather to bring joy to all the children who came.

Pastor Rafe and Liz Young 
This couple is absolutely amazing.  Pastor Rafe and Liz were the senior pastors at Bethel Franklin prior to when we arrived.  

They are moving to Lexington to help with an Every Nation church plant there.  There will definitely be a huge void left behind with them being gone; they truly are irreplaceable.  

But with that said we know God has called them to Lexington, so we sent them off as a church.  They will be missed along with their 3 beautiful girls.

Montgomery Bell Academy  
Coach Marty Euverard is the head coach of the football team of this school.  He was one of the most sought after coaches for this prestigious all-boys private school and took this job earlier this year.  

He asked me come share during one of their devotions.  I felt I had a word from the Lord to their football team.  I know it help bring their team to a new level. 

I have now been their the last 3 weeks speaking in their devotions, in the locker rooms, on the bus, and traveling with the team.  God is doing some amazing things on this football team and am really humbled and honored by the opportunity to serve them.  

They are now in the playoffs with 3 straight great wins.  




Personal Discipleship

Samantha started meeting with one of our middle-schoolers for personal discipleship.  Gabrielle has such a deep love for Jesus and is hungry to know more about His Word.  

She is so mature beyond her years and really amazed by her desire to know her Creator.  They will continue to meet on a regular basis and Samantha hopes slowly bring other girls in.  


I'm so proud of my amazing wife for her commitment to make disciples.

This month has been amazing and we truly couldn't do this without you.  God is so faithful.  


We are falling more and more in love with Jesus everyday and pray that you are too.  I hope this blesses you as you have been such an incredible blessing to us.

We love you,

Robert and Samantha


We could not have done all of this without the faithful partnership of family and friends. Your support through prayers and finances go a long way. We are grateful beyond words. If you are interested in ways to partner with what God is doing in Nashville, please click here.