Hello, Partners in the Gospel of Jesus Christ!Catching Up:I try to do a blog update once every 2 months, but March and April were so jam-packed with teaching that it was hard to find time to sit down, process the season, and give you an update on it all! In the span of 7 weeks, I taught 5 books for our SBS, 3 different seminars and was a guest speaker for my own church. Needless to say, it was probably the busiest I’ve ever been. I wish that I could share everything about these lectures. Each lecture had a different impact on me as I prepared, and I pray a lasting impact on those who attended my classes, lectures, and sermons. In this update I will be sharing some of the highlights, telling you about what God is doing in my heart, then talk about what we are currently working on here at Emmaus. Teaching Books of the Bible: In the last few months, I taught 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude for our students in our 10-month school. All of these books have heavily impacted me as a teacher and leader. Corinthians taught me to lead out of my weaknesses and humility, and to seek my neighbors needs instead of my own. 1 Peter taught me that I am a priest both in word and action, because of this I’m called to a holy life. 2 Peter and Jude showed me that it's easy to be a false teacher, say what’s popular, and stay comfortable. These books challenged me to contend for the faith and stand up for the truth.Teaching Seminars:Many of you know that we offer several different seminars. This spring I was able to teach a few. The first was a seminar that we call Bible Overview. We break up the Bible into different “acts” and teach people the overarching story of Scripture. My Lecture covered Acts to Revelation!The second seminar was a historical background lecture to the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark is my favorite book to teach, so to be able to help a church better understand this amazing book was so awesome! I also taught one of our Biblical Narrative Series. I had the pleasure of talking about Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude and James in a 2-hour seminar. This was honestly one of my favorite lectures. The seminar is part of a series where we teach each book of the Bible and how they fit into God's bigger story!Lastly, I had the distinct pleasure of teaching Sunday morning for my church, Grace Oviedo. This was my first time teaching on a Sunday morning at a church ever! I have never been so nervous and so excited to teach. I was asked to teach in the middle of our series on marriage, where we were going through the book Song of Songs. My sermon was on chapter 7! I taught on Nakedness and Vulnerability in marriage. If we want true intimacy we must first be vulnerable and open. You can listen to my sermon here!  https://discovergrace.com/media/?sapurl=Lys0ODk0L2xiL21pLytrczVnajZjP2F1dG9wbGF5PXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZQ==Current work:We are in our last few weeks of school so we are shifting our attention to the Fall. There are a few big things that we are focusing on.

Here are a few of our favorite pictures from the big day. Don't worry, more will be coming soon!Pictures by Old Pine Pictorial. 

It’s finally here! This last week we kicked off our first full year with our revamped School of Biblical Studies. We have been waiting and praying for this day for months and it’s crazy to think that it’s finally here. As always, I want to give you an inside look at what is going on here at the school, give you a picture of what is to come, and then a quick prayer request. This fall we have welcomed 6 new students into the school and 4 students from the spring semester are continuing their journey. We are always excited to help students begin their Emmaus journey, this year we have been blessed to have the nations come to us. When we changed the school to be part-time, we thought that was the end of seeing students come from all over the world and United States but were surprisingly and thankfully wrong!! This year we have a couple from the Netherlands and a student from Germany and Pennsylvania. This has filled our classroom with a diversity of backgrounds and cultures, this helps all of us to learn more about God, life in community and ourselves.Within our student body, 6 students are living on campus here at Canterbury. One thing that we strive for at Emmaus is to establish genuine relationships and community life. So when we welcome new students I am always a little nervous. Will the students like living on campus? will they enjoy each other? how can we facilitate good community? A lot of my worries about our on-campus community were answered before the school even started. Several of our students showed up a few days early, before classes or our scheduled community times. However, our new students instantly started to cook food together and have game nights. The community on campus has already been a wonderful surprise. The students have started to grow closer together. Below you can see a picture of us sharing some Dutch pancakes for dinner. Afterword we played ping pong. I can already tell that this season is going to be very life-giving. [gallery ids="253,252" type="rectangular"] We have started to walk the students through the way that they are going to study Scripture this year through the Inductive Bible Study Method. I had the pleasure of teaching 4 times in the first week. On the first day, we talked about what inductive Bible study is, digging into what it looks like to lay aside our preconceived notions and let the text speak for itself. On our second and third days, we talked about methods of Observation. I was able to teach the students how to see and study the structure of each book and how to create and utilize their own color code. Thursday I walked the students through Interpretation, which is considering what the book would have meant to the original readers or hearers. On this day I had two lectures, one where I introduced the idea of what good interpretation looks like. Each year when we teach the students the Inductive method, we have them “practice” on a book of the Bible. This year we chose the book of Jonah to help them learn the method. Thursday morning I had the pleasure of walking them through the relevant historical background of Jonah. The difficult part of teaching this for many Old Testament books is that we aren't sure for a lot of it. This is part of why we wanted to start with Jonah. Right off the bat, our students have to wrestle with difficult questions like who wrote Jonah, when was it written, is it history or allegory? [gallery ids="263,261,258" type="rectangular"]This semester we are so excited to see these students journey through the Old Testament. I know that when I began my Emmaus journey through the Old Testament it was exciting, scary and awesome all at the same time. Please pray that God will work through us and help us to encourage these students as they begin their journey here at Emmaus. Lastly, we have started up our Biblical Narrative Series. This is our Monday night class open to the public. Our narrative series is designed to run in tandem with our school. At each lecture, we spend some time talking about the relevant historical information that all the books share and we give tips on how to study every book within that unit of Scripture. This last week we started out in the Pentateuch! One of our teaching staff, Sarah Wise, did an amazing job in leading this first session of the fall! Our next narrative series will be September 17th covering Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuels, and Kings! If you are local please join us!  

Prayer Requests:

This season is admittedly the busiest I have ever been. I am teaching full time for Emmaus, leading the new high school ministry at my church, speaking once a month at the assisted living home, and planning a wedding. I feel tired already, and have a long way to go. The wedding is closing in!!! With marriage just around the corner, I feel the pressure to get fully funded. Pray that God will help me find divine appointments and stir in the hearts of future partners to give. I am so thankful for your continual prayer and support! Thank you for partnering with me in the Gospel here at Emmaus!