New Beginnings

Well this is my first post state side, and to those of you who kept me in there thoughts and prayers while I was on adventure in Australia, I thank you greatly. I am excited to start the next leg of my life and I hope that you will continue praying for me as I venture into what God has for me next. There are a few things that have changed since my last post that must be addressed before I can tell you the areas I will be requesting prayer. The first, and most major news, is that I have moved back to Zionsville from Brisbane after five and a half months. I am living with my parents back home and I am commuting to Ivy Tech college. I have begun studying Psychology just this past week. I am now into my second week of classes and so far I am enjoying being in the city a few times a week. This is a massive step for me, seeing as it was just a few months ago I wasn't sure what God would have me do. It is crazy how God waits until the last minute to tell you what he has for you. It is simply amazing to see God work and how He does it. I still don't know what the outcome of me starting school will be but I am trusting God to lead me where ever it is that He wants me to go. The next area that I am going to be taking part in is one that is exciting for me even more that school. I will be helping with the beginnings of what I believe will be an amazing ministry. I will be helping start a young adults ministry at Eagle Center. This is an area that I have always seen a need for, but now that I have been away and I am back I feel the need for it. See, I came home after being away for over five months. Now I am back. I am not a high school student. I am not married. I am not a career man. I don't really have any place that I feel like I can connect, and now what. Well this ministry will give people like me the chance to be able to connect, as well as begin to build a bond with the rest of the adults in the church. It will give us a place to connect and grow into mature believers. So that is a bit of the vision. There are several people discussing, praying and discerning where God wants to take this ministry. These are exciting times and I am stoked to see what God will do.

PRAYER

• Pray that God will give me the confidence, strength, and ability to endure through the school work that is to come.
• Pray that God would clearly give direction to this new ministry that God has begun to open up.
• Pray that God will, even now, be going before us in this ministry and that He will be preparing the hearts of the lost we will be seeking to reach.

Nearly Month Three. WHAT!

Well I are quickly coming up on month three and time is flying. I can't even believe looking back now all that has been done and all the fun I have had. I will pick up where I last finished. Since I last wrote I have met the first American since I have been here. His name is David. He is from Spring Lake Wesleyan in Michigan and he has been to ignite camp. Small world right. We have been hanging out quite a bit. One Monday we decided we would go for an adventure into the city. So we hoped onto the train for our 45 minute train ride and it ended up taking us and hour and 45 minutes, because we caught the train when it was on its way out of the city. So once we made our way into the city we decided it would be the appropriate American thing to do to grab some McDonalds. Once we obliterated our double quarter pounders(half pounders?) we left the train station and went over to the Queensland Art Museum. There were several cool exhibits there. The building also was very cool in structure, with it's water pools and large open areas. Then the next week we had a birthday party for David at the beach. That was fun several people showed up for the extravaganza. We played Frisbee on the beach, then we had a skim boarding competition in a dirty pool of salt water. Then Mitch and I swam out to a sand bar that we thought would be an easy swim to get to. Turns out it wasn't. After we got half way we realized how far it actually was, so naturally we kept swimming. It made touching our feet on the sand bar, that we were speculating existed, that much sweeter. Then one Sunday night I went with several of my friends into the city to a restaurant called the pancake manner. It was this super sweet restaurant in the city that, as the name suggests, specializes in pancakes. It was extremely good. Then Clint arrived just this past Wednesday. It has been good to catch up with him. We went out on the boat on Saturday. I finally was able to get some small jumps that were shortly dwarfed by Jeff and Clint's jumps. Never the less I was landing. Needless to say I woke up a very sore man the next day. So naturally Clint, Jeff and I decided to go and climb Mt Tibrogargan. So we take off to climb it, in the rain. It was about half rock climbing and half hiking. It was a really good climb. It ended up sprinkling lightly for parts of the climb, but the trail brought us to an amazing view of the Glass house mountains, and the Queensland coastline, with Brisbane off in the distance. We then down climbed the rock parts and ran down the foot of the mountain. That pretty much brings me to the end of my more major recreational events. For work I have been up to several things. I am doing admin stuff for children's ministry. I am also still working on our children's VBS camp. I have been in charge of planning that. It is coming up quickly. It's only a month away now. I also have still been leading worship at youth. This past Friday I spoke on healthy friendships. It went well. There is a lot coming up to be excited for, so stay tuned for my next blog with the updates from all of these things.

WHAT GOD IS DOING

God has been so amazing. Several of my prayers have been answered. It has been awesome to see Gods comforting hand on my life. As I was getting more home sick God remained faithful and sent me several comforting people and events. It is simply amazing to see God's faithfulness. God is teaching me stacks on being content with where He has me and that His will is higher than any home sickness, or frustrations that I could have. Though I am missing Bram and Eli a whole heap, I am at peace with what God is doing.

WHAT TO PRAY FOR

• Next week we have the Gathering event, which is meant to be a renewal event amongst our district of Wesleyan churches. We are expecting God to show up
• We have the Kids games at the end of the month that I am in charge of. We still ideally would want more volunteers, and we are still trusting God for a good turn out of kids
• Also keep praying that God would clearly show me my next steps. I have several big decisions coming up that I will need to make.

Pray:Love:Worship

Garrett Langebartels

Into week 9 of 26

Hey Hey all. Welcome to the third entry of your blogging experience with Garrett Langebartels. It is now a week off from being in the beautiful Queensland Australia for two months I just got back from an early morning surf so I decided now would be a good time to write a new blog. I can't believe I have been here that long. Life is so fast right now. It is so mad to look at what I have already done and to imagine what God has in store for me to do next. I will pick up where I left off. I have now had a few weeks of seemingly regular work in our office. It is good to finally start getting some routine into my life, though I call it routine loosely. I have have started work now on our Vacation Bible School(Kids Games). I am in charge of making it happen. It has been so crazy, and such a good learning experience so far. That has been taking up a majority of my work time. I have also been doing things for our youth group here. We just launched last week at our new facility that is located right in the heart of the aria we are trying to reach. We had a good launch. I lead worship and a game at it. I have also started leading worship in church. I lead for the first time Sunday night two weeks ago and it went well. I am leading again this coming Sunday night. Thats what I have been up to at work. My times of recreation have been awesome lately. Three weeks ago I went into Brisbane City. It was so cool. The city here is like no other city I have been to. I went to some of the shops there and walked around to several different plazas and things. There is a river that runs through Brisbane and there are board walks all the way up and down the river, so I walked on that and got a coffee. Then I went to one of the three art museums in the area and didn't get past the first room. So needless to say I will be taking the train into the city a few more times in the near future. Then last week on Monday I went wake boarding again. This time was much more successful than my first attempt. I am now able to go outside the wake and glide across the water like a wave glides across the ocean floor. I started trying to jump, but that made me go from gliding across the water like a wave on the ocean floor to skipping across the water like a stone tossed from the hand of a clumsy 10 year old. But by next time I am confident I will perfect the art. We also did some wake surfing which was pretty sweet. (For those that don't know what wake surfing is, it is when you load up the back corner of the boat with weight and you create your own never ending surf able wave). It was real cool. Then this morning I went for a surf at Alexander headlands. The waves were massive we are talking 20 or 30 foot waves, and by that I mean 6 to 8 foot and by that I mean 3 foot waves. It was my first go on a short board so it took me about an hour before I could catch a wave. I got dumped about 3 times, AKA my feet went over my head trying to drop in on a wave. But after that I got it and it was funky fresh. I wish I could just live in the water and surf all the time.

WHAT GOD IS DOING

It is like I am learning something new every day here. It is so crazy how much my reliance on God has grow to an insane level. It seems like every day I find myself in a spot where the only answer thing I want to do is pack up and go home, or just go to the beach and live there for ever. Every day I find myself in a place where I literally don't have the training, knowledge or resources to accomplish the task placed in front of me. All I can do is draw strength from God. I find myself wondering whats next and I have to look to God because without him I can't sleep, I can't think I can't move in the right direction. He also has been showing me heaps about patience. I am just living in a mode of waiting and again without trusting Him I would just fall apart.

HOW TO PRAY

• The first way you can be praying is that God would continue to give me the strength to press on. It has been two months now and though it has gone fast, I am experiencing home sickness from time to time.
• Pray that God would give me the team I need for Kids Games. Pray that He sends passionate, loving, fun, hardworking people that want to see the lives of the kids they will be coming in contact with flipped head over heals.
• Pray for peace in this waiting stage to see what God wants my next move to be.
• Pray for more workers here. The harvest is truly plentiful and the workers are most defiantly weak.

Pray:Love:Worship

Garrett Langebartels

End of Month One(crazy right)

Well here we are a month in to this life experience of mine and I am already skimping on keeping my mates(friends) back home up to date. My apologies. Now that I got that off my chest I have so much to fill all of you in on. I will start where we left off last in the Garrett Langebartels saga. We here at Riverside Community Church have been in the middle of a big move to North Lakes, the area where the planters of Riverside originally wanted to have the church. We are finally finished until the building we are about to start building is finished. It is super exciting to see God fulfilling this vision that was laid on a few people's hearts several years back. I also have begun to play guitar on the worship team(acoustic and electric). That was my work life up until the Thursday of Good Friday. On that day I began my intern work by making packets for a church planting even that is going on this week. More about that later. As for my recreation, it has been truly amazing. Three weeks ago, I believe it was, I went wake boarding for the first time. I stood up first try and I must say I was pretty impressed with myself until Winston, Jim's brother, told me to straighten out my arms. This is what you are supposed to do once you get a hang of the whole ordeal. So as I did this I took an humbling fall into the shark infested river(not infested). I then stood up three more times, though I did spend much of my time being dragged behind the boat , but we won't talk about that now. So that was my awesome wake boarding experience and I am planning to get out again either this week or next. I also have been going on runs every few days. It is mad the variety of wild life you see running through suburbia. Quick side note, at the new offices I often see kangaroos. Thats when you really know you are in Australia. I don't really watch TV at all but I do catch the occasional rugby match(there are three kinds: Union, Rugby league, and AFL(Aussie rules)) and don't follow it hardly at all. It's much like hockey. You watch it to see if people will get hurt or in fights. I also went to my friends Dan and Kerry's for a passover meal one night and it was very cool. It was good to spend time just remembering what Christ has done that we might have life. So that brings us up to Good Friday. We had a really good service in the morning and from there I took off to a place called Dicky's beach. Dicky's beach is about a 45 minute drive north of where I live on a good day. I went up with my friends the Linley's. We took up there caravan(camper trailer) to a caravan park where our spot was just a hundred meters or so from the ocean. You could see it from where we were set up. We stayed for 9 days. The first day I spent some time getting to know how the ocean works and just playing around in it. It's one of the most amazing things, the ocean. It was my first time spending any extended time on a sandy beach or in the ocean, so I felt like a little kid the first day. The second day I got beat down by the raging Queensland sun. I was red as a tomato, though it did turn into a really good looking T shirt tan. We just spent the week relaxing on a level I don't know that I have ever experienced. So good. On day three we busted out Stu Linley's surf board and me and my friend Riley went at it. I stood up pretty easily in the white wash off of the waves. I stayed there pretty much for my whole surfing experience on that day. We spent the next two days walked around, swam, body boarded, body surfed and played beach footy(casual form of rugby). Then one day we went up to this beach called rainbow beach. On this beach you can drive up the coast if you have a 4x4. We met up with some friends and swam in this secluded beach area with no one else even close to us in the water. The waves were so clean and good. We then hiked up this red valley. It was just a big red soft sand stone rock in the valley and then you keep climbing up this sandy surface and you can get to the peak. It took about an hour to get to the top(barefooted) and about 20 minutes to get down. The view from the top was amazing. You could see miles and miles of coastline. I forgot my camera there so you will just have to imagine that view. So we went back to the caravan park after that. I then spent three of the last four days surfing for about 3 to five hours each day. I can now catch a real big kid wave. I also can get owned by big kid waves. I never wanted to leave Dicky's beach but I had to. So we got back at about 6 on Sunday night. Then this morning we had our first church planting training day. It was so amazing to meet all of these pastors here that just want to serve and spread the gospel by way of church planting. We had a really good session with tag team teachings from Hendrik and John Bond(pastor from Perth). We have that the rest of this week. I will let you know about that in my next blog in a few weeks or sooner. Life is good. Blessings to you all

WHAT GOD IS DOING IN ME

Since I have been here it feels as if God has completely changed me. It has been a gradual to me but as I look back now God has done so much so quickly. As I have written earlier we had been moving for the first two and a half weeks I was here. This was unexpected for me. I came to serve behind a desk in the air conditioning, but God had different plans for me. Through my first weeks serving as we moved God really showed me what service is. I never would have thought I would learn as much as I did through a long move in 85 to 90 degree weather. God really began to break down a part of my servant heart that I had largely neglected over the years. A friend of mine who I am serving alongside with really showed me what it was like to serve all out, and the whole time he just kept telling me to put a smile on, its not so bad. God used that little phrase in such a big way. Service is no matter what you are doing, truly doing it for the glory of God. God has also been teaching me to adapt. Riverside is a whole new style of church for me. They are running about 150 people a week I would say, and are in growing stages. The staff is me and Hendrik and Ursula Vorster. Coming from eagle to here was like going from my room clean to my room after I unpack from a long vacation. Everything has seemed to be on the fly. It has been good for me to just see what will happen next, and trust God will take control of what ever it is. Also one night while we were at the beach I was looking at the sky, and there were some clouds that had rolled in from the south in the evening and they had blanketed the sky. I was so taken back by the beauty and depth to the grays of clouds in the night sky. As I admired God He began to move. As I was looking there was a quick gap in the clouds. In this gap there was a single star. See up until this point I had been a little discouraged because I hadn't heard any profound words from God about my life calling so I was a little frustrated about that. But as I saw that break in the clouds God just said that beyond all of this gray area that you see in your life and beyond all of the questions I am still here and I have plans as big as the universe for you so just enjoy where I have put you for now. Then I had peace. As I walked on the beach the next few nights and I looked at the stars I just had this growing peace about my future and that God was in control of every piece of it, all I have to do is obey.

THINGS TO PRAY FOR

• Pray that God Speaks and continues to unveil what He has for me and in the waiting that I stay near and content with where ever He has me
• Pray that I can serve and be able to control how I try to influence things/that God would show me where to push for change.
• Pray for more workers here. The Christian population is only 8% or something like that.
• Pray that God raises up passionate leaders and that a revival would break out in this nation
• Pray that I would learn to love God more

Pray as I will be praying for you.

Pray:Love:Worship

Garrett

Post #1 whats up and whats been done

Whats up everyone? I am here in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and I am loving it. It has been a rad first week. First of all the weather has been so amazing. For those of you back home in Indiana, you should feel how good Australia is. It has been about 80 to 85 degrees all week, and at night it gets down into the high 60's and low 70's. Australia is a magical land where things like parrots and Koalas roam around as if they actually live here. I have seen both while walking/running. I have been told that kangaroos are all around as well. I just have not seen them yet. I am living with Lynn and Jim Ussher and I am working at riverside community church. I am working under Dr. Hendrik Vorster. He is a very determined person who wants so badly to see people one to Christ, and to see people live an all out life for Jesus. That being said, within a few hours of me being off the plain I was already off to work. I was drafted to do an outreach play about life without Jesus and the end results of living life without Jesus. This was my first time acting and I must say I nailed the three roles I got casted to play. In the play I was a crappy husband that went to hell, a drug lord that kills three people, and one of the guys that nailed Jesus to the cross. At first I was not so sure about this play, seeing as it was a bit out dated and cheesy, but in the end 20 people came to Jesus as a result! What an awesome way to start. It was a such a good way to get to know the people. Also since I have been here I have been having heaps of tea and coffee. They drink coffee at least twice if not three times a day. Its great. Lynn is a crazy good cook. My breaky(breakfast) consists of fresh fruit, toast, a super health kind of juice mix, and one other thing. Lunch is an awesome salad or sandwich. Afternoon tea/coffee comes with muffins or biscuts(cookies). Tea(dinner) is different every night but all good.

Pray for the church here, that they would continue to work and serve the community in love. Pray that I would continue to be able to hear Gods voice as I pray, read and serve.

Until next time, stay sweet

Garrett