Our time in Europe doing our scouting trip was super fruitful and now we know what our next step is!
Can't believe that our 5 months is almost over but we got the answers we were looking for!
Just to recap....Over the past five months God has done so much. We had an awesome time in Rhode Island visiting my (Luke’s) family. We were so pumped to meet Violet, my brother Andrew and his wife Caroline’s new baby! She was born 3 months after Josiah and they are the first 2 babies of the new generation of our family! A ton of my extended family traveled from Florida, New York, Colorado, and even Kansas to come join the party! We were calling it Baby-palooza 2016! Yeeew!
Here's a few people from the Roque family ...hanging with the 2 new babes :-)
Then we headed to Santa Barbara (California) where we’ve been based for most of the trip. It is always so great to come back and re-connect with our friends and our church family here!
We’ve been staying with our 2nd parents, the Dellars who have all but legally adopted us as their kids :). (Love you guys!) From here we have traveled back and forth visiting friends and supporters in San Diego, Los Angeles, and many places in between, going to weddings in Canada, Chicago, and Santa Cruz…and a trip to Las Vegas to see our first Cirque du Soleil Show! Haha! There is too much to recount here so I’ll just give a few photo highlights:
Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara
Everywhere we go, the Lord is constantly encouraging us saying "you're on the right track". Thankful for all the little "signs" :-)
When in California...Red or White?
Speaking of "signs", we were at a wine festival and the first people we meet are from Europe! We asked them, "What do you do for work?" "Oh we are church planters". Come on!!
Up in Canada eh? Near Squamish BC with Bethany's mom and her extended family. Oh yeah and I lost my mohawk...sniff. Nah, that thing was too high maintenance :-)
Bethany's 91 year old grandma! We got to visit her in Surry BC and aslo go to our friend's wedding!
We had the privilege of marrying our friends Rylee and Kelly in Chicago...and re-uniting with our YWAM global family haha! Everyone in this photo is a YWAMer!
Visiting Sean Bolz's church in Hollywood, Expression 58. They are really making an impact in the entertainment industry for the Kingdom of God! We made a connection with a woman who has a heart to reach people through the arts like us!
Interesting...when visiting Expression 58 we had to park down the street and happened to park across from this sign. Hmmm. This will make sense in a minute (keep reading).
Little man's first trip to Las Vegas!
We got to see our first Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas! It was insane!!
We drag this little guy everywhere! So he's gotten good at passing out anywhere haha!
We then headed to Bethel Church up in Redding California where God showed us OUR NEXT STEP!
But before that we want to share what God did in Spain because that is where we feel the show will start from.
When we arrived in Barcelona we didn't have much from God as far as connections for our show but we knew we were suposed to go so we went anyway.
We did know some YWAMers there so we decided to meet up with them. We "happened" to arrive the same week that their first DTS was starting and they invited us to their welcome night. When we arrived we sat in the back far corner as we didn't know very many people. And we "happened" to sit next to this guy who was the speaker for the week and his topic was Creating with God haha! We were asked to gather in groups at the end of the night and pray for whoever was around you. So this guy turns around and introduces himself to us. All of a sudden Luke recognizes him and realized that he spoke on Luke's DTS years ago in 2009! We then go to share our vision for the show and his face lights up and he says that he now lives in Berlin, Germany which he said is a hot spot for the creative arts and that he knows a TON of artists and connections for our show AND said we should come and visit him in Berlin next time we are in Europe! Go God!
We also got connected with this other guy named Lance who lives in Madrid, Spain who has a team of 80 people who go around Spain and do evangelistic shows in a lot of the small towns. Our good friend and supporter gave us his contact while we were in Barcelona. We skyped with him and when we started sharing our idea his face lit up! He and his whole team have been talking about needing a show to the caliber of a Cirque Du Soleil show to get into the big cities. So when he met us he felt like we were a prophetic sign to what they've been feeling! He then went on to say we should come and visit Madrid and see all that they are doing. One cool thing is he has an entire legal team who works with the Spanish government on getting evangelistic shows into towns and cities and said he can help us with whatever we need! Go God!
(So needless to say, next time we head to Europe we are going to Berlin and Madrid to connect with these guys and meet all these artists and connections!)
Ok there was so much more but we'll stop it there and finally tell you OUR NEXT STEP!
WE ARE MOVING!
The most revealing part of this faith/scouting trip was our time up at Bethel church in Redding (Northern California). We were both excited to go there for the first time because like many others we have been really impacted and encouraged by their worship, teaching, culture etc. But we weren’t prepared for what God had in store for us.
We met up with a couple that our friends from Australia had suggested we link up with. They are currently working in the realm of the arts (drama, music, dance etc) at Bethel and they have a desire to bring the Kingdom of God into that sphere with excellence and anointing! Sounds like the kind of people we need to meet…well we TOTALLY hit it off with them! They told us that there are several people they know who have similar ideas as us…doing cirque du soleil type stuff! Haha! We’re not the only crazy ones!
Anyways, to make a long story short – after a lot of prophetic signs and cool divine appointments that all happened over one weekend up there - we felt like God was saying that he wanted us to move to Redding to work on our show, connect with these artists and be a part of Bethel Church! We feel that Bethel is a place where we will make connections with people for our show…and a place where we'll build community with people who love God and that will encourage us to dream big and risk big for Him!
We will go to and from Europe from Redding until our show is developed to the point where we will launch it out of Barcelona, Spain. (Lord willing)
So there you have it! We are moving to Redding!
Our plans for the next few months!
We are heading back to Australia for the month of November to sell all our stuff, share with the YWAM base, and say good bye to all our friends. =(
The YWAM base is completely behind us in our idea and still considers us part of them. So we are still with YWAM but instead of doing DTS we are joining an evangelistic ministry that targets different parts of the world - and Europe will be our target!
We have a lot to do so pray we pace ourselves and that we wrap up our time well in the Sunny Coast with close friends, all our ywam family and with our base leaders.
Thank you so much for loving on and believing in us in this time!! God is moving!!! Please keep us in your prayers! We love you all so much!
Luke , Bethany and Josiah!
P.S. Here are some fun pics of our time at Bethel! So fun!
Bethel worship
Hanging with our YWAM friends who are doing the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Thanks for the love and hospitality Rylee, Kelly and Daggi!
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