Sleeping on Gym Floors

Filming at Fisterra, Spain, which during the Roman Erawas known as the end of the earth

The training time on the "Camino de Santiago de Compostela" in Spain was excellent. This year we did training with the 21 participant during the daily 15 to 20 mile hikes as well as afterwards. Walking, talking, carrying a big backpack and sleeping on gymnasium floors is fun but exhausting. We walked 6 days for a total of 140 kms/86 miles.

A matt on a gym floor... this is how we slept most nights

celebration dinner at Santiago de Compostela
after finishing the 140 km walk

The 21 participants of the discipleship training gave us great feedback and we felt it was a worthwhile investement of time, energy and funds. These photos plus the ones you can see on our "Spain 2012" album on Facebook will give you a sense of our experience walking, training and eating in and around the city of Santiago de Compostela and Spain in general. As you will see in the pics, we were also filming a series of 8 videos during and after the training event. It was something new for us and we got to enjoy lots of beautiful scenery and great fellowship.

Part of the training was something called "Life Maps"
that we did individually with all 21 participants

Filming a video about the effects of the Fall
on our relationship with God

there were blackberries all over Galicia, but
not so much now that I ate most of them

In 24 hours we leave Spain, where we are currently with our team director and his wife, and fly to Buenos Aires for the month of September where we will be helping the Argentine film maker, Sebastian Pasquet, do post-production work on the videos. Annette will also be doing some writing, and we hope to finish the latest version of the ParaLideres.org website that a team of us has been working on for over 2 years. 

Staff, trainees and pilgrims at the "Fuente del Peregrino"
hostel which is run by Agapé-Spain

In October we go to California for our twice annual team retreat plus the 60th anniversary celebration of our organization, OC International. Then we're in Orlando, Florida for the Internationl Youth Ministry Convention where we will be teaching and working as chaplains for the 1500 youth leaders who will be participate. We will also be launching the video series we just filmed during the convention as well as the book Annette, Felix Ortiz and I wrote
.

Thank you for your prayers, love and encouragement.