T(r)oy's Marbles

photos | 3. simplicity saturday: i am but a servant

This is part of a series of pictures that were taken in late July 2008 when our family took a holiday in Salzburg. Each photo, in its own way, reminds me of the beauty of simplicity. I post one here every Saturday. To view in a larger format, click on the image. --Troy

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Start the series at the beginning.

photos | 2. simplicity saturday: time and light are relative

This is part of a series of pictures that were taken in late July 2008 when our family took a holiday in Salzburg. Each photo, in its own way, reminds me of the beauty of simplicity. I post one here every Saturday. To view in a larger format, click on the image. --Troy

Follow these links to...
Start the series at the beginning.
View the next image in the series.

photos | 1. simplicity saturday: waiting

I took these pictures in late July 2008 when our family took a holiday in Salzburg. During that holiday, we visited an outdoor museum. Each photo, in its own way, reminds me of the beauty of simplicity. Each Saturday, I'll post one here. To see the photo in a larger format, click on the image. --Troy

Follow this link to...
View the next image in the series.

photos | team building photos

Last week at this time, the Oasis Madrid team was in the middle of a team building event facilitated by Scott and Terri Last. Here are some pics Scott sent me a few days ago. Thanks, Scott!

First of all, as you can see, we were in a beautiful place!

We spent some time in worship together.

We shared meals together.

We made hats together. This exercise was our way of understanding what each person contributes to the team in a unique way. It was fun seeing what everyone came up with!

Here we are making the hats:

Each of us then showed theirs, explaining what it said about them.

Here's Amy's:

April's:

Heather's:

Kelly Wills':

Kelly Crulls':

Shani's:

And mine. A word of explanation: I love sticky notes, so that's what I made mine out of. I explained that sticky notes say participation and collaboration. They can be rearranged. I attached them together to draw out the idea that things have many layers and there are even things hidden under other layers, waiting to be discovered. Anyway, here it is:

A shot of the group with our hats on:

Then, we placed our hats under the communion table, as a sign of giving our gifts back to Christ, laying our crowns at the feet of Jesus.

At the end, we signed a team covenant, which is a kind of summary of all the work we did over the weekend, specifying our commitment to follow through on what we discussed/agreed upon.

Here are a couple of us, signing the covenant:

Here's the signed covenant, in summary form. The points on the page expand to include several other big pieces of flip chart paper, so, though it doesn't look like much here, there is actually a lot contained in the covenant.

Afterwards, we enjoyed a celebration dinner, at an Ecuadorian restaurant. Heather was happy!

Thanks, Scott!

And Terri (in the foreground)!

photos | communion and the sovereignty of God

On Saturday, we had communion at our Oasis Madrid service. I prepared the following short "video" to help folks prepare their hearts. Specifically, we used this as an aid to help people think about Christ's sacrifice in the context of God's sovereignty through the use of short pieces of Scripture. I hope you enjoy it.

--Troy