Shannon enlightened me yesterday to the fact that my macbook, which I have had for over two years, is capable of doing stop-motion videos. Being the geek that I am, I had to try it out as soon as possible, so I recorded various periods of time hanging out with our new friends Jacob and Catie last night, and posted them on youtube.

This particular video has no real usefulness, but I can see where we can do some really slick stuff with this. My next experiment will be the Foyer at our church for all of Sunday morning.

Any other ideas?

There’s big news coming to this blog next week.

I want to have a little fun and get you guys and gals to guess what it is.

Did I get a new job?

Did we get a puppy?

Did we sell our house?

Is my sister having a baby?

Am I the antichrist?

You have ’till Monday at lunch to leave your guess (and it need not be limited to these options)

Have fun!

So, I’m on number three from the ‘10 Questions To Ask Yourself At New Years’, and I’m kind of stumped:

Question: What is one thing you can do this year that will significantly improve the quality of your family life?

Answer: ????

I think I need some help on this one. I’m going to keep praying on it, but in the meantime, what are your suggestions?

A lot of folks don’t realize that I actually have two sisters. One is a little younger than me and lives nearby, but the other is 5 years older than me, and lives in Apple Valley, California. And she has one heck of a story.

I won’t put the whole thing here, because you’ll never get around to the end, and there’s a point to this post… the gist of it is a classic story of redemption. My dad divorced her mom when she was very young, and her mom raised her foolishly… and before it was said and done, she spent YEARS on the streets, addicted to drugs, in and out of jail, and finally hit rock bottom.

And when she did, she looked up and called out to God, and He reached down and rescued her…

Today, she is happily married, clean from drugs for over two years, and her and her husband live kind of like the brady bunch… they have 6 kids between them, but 3 are from other men, and three are from other women, in their previous lives.

The big difference between them and the brady bunch, is that the 8 of them live in a 2-bedroom apartment, and work really hard to make the ends meet.

This is where you come in. Recently, they got hit hard when Moses, Jennifer’s husband, was laid off. At the same time, they were given a really neat opportunity to rent a 3-bedroom house on a small farm for less rent than what they’re paying at their apartment.

So what are they doing now? They’re praying, and waiting.

Would like to be an answer to their prayers? There are lots of way that you could help.

You could help pay some of their bills, help them pay the moving expenses to get into this new house, or send christmas toys for any of the 6 kids who range in age from 5-15.

Please prayerfully consider this, and if you’re interested, shoot me a message at ‘zack.riesland at gmail dot com’

Update: I created a facebook group related to this post. Pass it on!

We took a lot of photos over the past week. Hopefully Stephanie will tell you what’s up with all of them, but you can take a look here.

About 16 months ago, I began my relationship with Abundant Life Fellowship.
Though some would say that it was luck or chance that I even heard of the church, I know that it was God’s providence, and looking back to June of 2006, I see His fingerprints all over the time since then.

When I found out about Abundant Life and started spending time with Pastor Ted and hearing him talk about his heart and vision for the fellowship, I got really excited. Having been overseas for the previous year, I had a lot of new thoughts about what ‘church’ should be like. The thought of coming back to the tradition heavy, religious ‘south’, and leaving the small, Acts 2-esque experience of a third world was discouraging to me. After spending some time with the folks from Abundant Life, I was truly blown away by the uniqueness and effectiveness of the whole experience. This is a fellowship that is personal, committed, involved, vulnerable, and free in many ways that other groups are not.

After enduring four years of high school in Oxford without a good church home, and praying the whole time that God would raise up a good church where I could grow and see lives changed, it was amazing to have the opportunity to be involved with the very answer to that prayer.

I dove in head-first. I had lists of all the stuff I wanted to do and to plan. I started listening to a lot of teaching about church planting and youth ministry. I began spending my Tuesday nights getting ready to teach the youth on Wednesday. I got to church an hour early on Wednesday nights so that some of the youth could come learn how to play instruments, and even though it was off in the distance, I saw the possibility to have an awesome worship team of teenagers who could bless people all over Granville county. It was a really fun and exciting kick-start back into ministry after being overseas and away from everything for a year.

So of course the question is, “What changed?”

The answer is, “Everything.”

Though I didn’t know it from the beginning, this season of time with Abundant Life was only a temporary learning experience for me. From the very beginning, God has lead me away from settling in at this stage of life. Once I began serving the church, I prayed and prayed for a job that would be compatible — something near the church that was only part-time. Weeks went by and I got deeper in debt, and the only opportunities were full-time positions far away. So I bit the bullet and took a job in Durham — 50 hours less to work with.

My family situation got more intense. I came home to a world of changes in my family, and lots of opportunity to serve them, given that I make time for it.

Then God gave me Stephanie, and soon I had very little time to invest in the church.
Even with all the commitments and changes, I tried to force the time to do everything I wanted with the church. Even while courting my wife 200 miles away, I planned events and used our ‘date time’ to do ‘church stuff’.

Even after she had moved to Creedmoor and was living alone in an apartment, and trying to cooperate with her mom and plan a huge wedding, I was still busy and asked her to be busy with me.

Even after we were married and bought a house with grass that needed cutting and boxes that needed to be un-packed, I asked her to wait for me while I took the youth to camp.
‘Righteousness’ is the act of valuing1 rightly. My pride has led me to treat my church responsibilities unrighteously. I communicated to everyone around me that ‘my ministry’ is more important than anything else. I taught my wife that I love her and appreciate her, but she’ll have to take my word for it because I have these other important obligations. I watched my sister get married to someone who I couldn’t make the time to disciple.

On top of all this, we have really suffered for lack of fellowship our age. We rarely get to spend time with other young married couples, and it has really made our adjustment to married life stressful. Even when Stephanie asked me if we could start going to events at other churches to meet people, I asked her to ‘grin and bear it’ a little longer. I asked her to sacrifice her own walk with the Lord so that I could feel like something special.

So our decision to move on has been a long time coming, and it has nothing to do with Abundant Life. Really, more than anything, we need to be free from responsibility for a season so that we can give unlimited attention to our marriage — to each other.

Through hard times of prayer together and apart, and even weeping at the high cost of this decision, we have learned a lot. In fact, I am certain that God planned this season in our life to teach us. In the past year and half I have become almost certain that I want to devote my life to building the Church — in America and abroad, and I have also become confident that I’m not ready to that. I have a lot to learn. We have a lot to learn. And thanks to our time here at Abundant Life, we have a better understanding of what we have to learn.

They say that 80% of pastors don’t make it. I believe that God, in His grace, is forcing the brakes in our lives so that we will make it, in His time.

So we’re going to take a break. Take some trips. Get some rest. And then, prayerfully, we’re going to look at the possibility of me going to school for an extended season of learning.

We love the youth here. It has been a heart-breaking decision to step back from teaching them, and learning from them. And we hope that God will give us creative ways to stay involved in your lives…

I listened to a fantastic message yesterday about mommies (iTunes podcast URL here). It was the mother’s day message from Mars Hill church in Seattle, by pastor Mark Driscoll, who I’ve been learning a lot from. It made me thankful for my mom, and excited about the future and seeing my wife become a mommy too.

Here are some photos from when we gave my mom her birthday present, Gracie.

Mom, you’re awesome :0)

I finally got my hands on some of the photos from Katie’s wedding besides the ones that I took.

More to come…