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Joes Journal

The Newsletter of Joe and Carolina Gisbey January, February, March 2012

Hey Everyone,
hope you are all well and especially for my friends in the UK, that it is now starting to warm up! Sorry for the slight delay but with Holy week falling so early in April we have been very busy! A quarter of 2012 has already shot by with lightning velocity. Lots of goals made on the dawn of the New Year seem to be marching ahead. One of Carolinas goals, which she has already achieved, was to nish the exams that are the equivalent of GCSEs here in Colombia. As many know Carolina was able to take further study and education during our time living in the UK, however due to various circumstances she never nished her initial exams here in the land of her birth and as a result has always had a nagging sense of inadequacy amongst her peers and elders alike, which as you can imagine, the enemy oftentimes has used to make her doubt her ability to lead. Her parents had not nished their education and for various reasons, neither had her siblings. This year she decided it was time to break that cycle. She enrolled for classes and online teaching and

completed a years study before the end of March with honours. I am both very proud of her and.... a little intimidated! This Sunday just passed 15th April she sat the test, which anyone wishing to go into further University education has to take. These exams take 9 hours! She is now recovering from the ordeal which she feels went very well! For me one of my major goals for this year is to nish the book I have been working on and one of the rst steps was to complete the rst draft and send it to friends and family to begin the editing phase before the end of March. By the grace of God and many hours in front of my trusty MacBook, I completed the rst draft and sent it to some very wise and helpful friends and family members who have already given me great feedback, constructive criticism and very kind encouragement. I am immensely grateful to them! The book is a call to re-imagine the Christian faith, to hear the Gospel in its original context, as Jesus rst hearers would have understood his message and teaching. It investigates the world of Jesus the Rabbi, the religious groups of his day and how all these groups are mirrored in the church today. It is

a call to rise up, to become true disciples of the Rabbi and to not only believe him and his message but to be overwhelmed with the revolutionary, world shaking truth that he believes that we can be just like him too. I have really enjoyed the process, so much so that I have already started work on another.

PRAYER

Family
Zion is one! That sounds like a great prophetic statement, however I am of course referring to my little bouncing boy, who is all smiles and since 11 months has been walking all over the place, bumping into things and loving wrestling with his big brother. It is hard to believe that he has already been with us for a year. It has simply own by. Though so young his character is so prominent. He is so very loving and gives people cuddles from his heart and smiles that seem to light up the darkest of days! We have just nished decorating Luca and Elyanas rooms. Elyanas is now pink with a big purple princess castle and Luca and Zions has a big dinosaur roaring at any who dare enter! The things parents will do for their children! We are looking forward to, and praying and believing for, the tickets to travel to England this summer for my sister Miriams wedding and we can hardly wait to be there, to see friends and family and our wonderful Arun Community Church tribe! We cant tell you how much we miss you all!

- Please pray for continued guidance. that we would know the voice of God and his leading - For openings and progress on the books I am working on - For development in our projects and ministries - Continued growth and discipleship in Mosaic - Please pray for ongoing leadership development - Real encounters with Jesus for the people in our Alpha groups - Provision as our family and ock grows. We would love to hear from you all. Please follow us on Twitter @JoeGisbey and likewise on facebook.
E:joegisbey@comunidadmosaic.com T: 0057 1 4790994 Skype: joseph.gisbey

Comunidad Mosaic
It has been a great start to the year at Mosaic, with new people joining us and new leaders stepping up to the plate. As many of you know at the end of 2011 Mosaic moved out of the community hall we

had been using and into our new building. This had both pros and cons in that the meeting hall is smaller, we only just t in at the moment, but we now have full use of the facilities throughout the week. This means that we have rooms for ofces, for childrens church, and a kitchen. The building faces onto a large park, great for the kids and after service BBQs and we have already seen a number of local neighbours start to attend the meetings and getting powerfully touched by God. We started a number of Alpha courses at the beginning of the year too and it has been really great to see God meeting with our neighbours, people asking us to get baptised and generally getting more and more involved in the life of the church. We have just graduated a group of people from the theory phase of our school of leadership and recently included a further four people into our core leadership team. At the beginning of the year we felt an even heavier burden for prayer and seeking Gods face and as a result, every other week, we have been alternating between holding all night prayer meetings on the Friday and on the following week, meeting together as a church to fast and pray together on Saturdays. We have had some beautiful and powerful times together of people having simultaneous visions, deliverances and meeting afresh with God and being renewed. In February Martin Smith was over, together with three of Martin and Annas wonderful children, for the G12 convention. The convention, as always, was a great time of refreshing, to be able to go and receive and to worship God in English was just what I needed! Although it was a short and

very busy few days, I am very grateful for the moments we were able to sit down together with our friends from the south coast and to talk, joke and laugh together, but also to receive great counsel and wisdom. We are so grateful to know that we are not alone in this venture but that we have such faithful prayers and people who stand with us. All the fruit that we see, is as much your fruit. Every person who we see come to Christ, receive healing or deliverance, fall more in love with Jesus and every charity and outreach that we are either directly or indirectly involved in, you too stand hand in hand with them, ordinary radicals, activists of love, touching the world one person at a time. Thank you. Thank you for your love, for your emails, Facebook messages, tweets, that mean more to us than you could ever know. Thank you for the times you reach into your pockets and invest nancially, you are changing lives and making eternal investments into the kingdom of God. Thank you for every prayer, every arrow you shoot against the enemy with us, every declaration that the angels take and go to work on our behalf. We could not do this without you all and thank you is not enough to express our gratitude. We love you all and pray Gods limitless love and blessings on you.

Joe, Carolina, Luca, Elyana and Zion xx

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