Have you reached your Potential?

Yesterday was an interesting day; I expended few hours at Universal Studios at Orlando, FL. I was with Kevin, Troy’s college roommate giving Troy some space to prepare for this loooong weekend teachings. I’m been at Florida for almost 8 years and I have been at Orlando several times with my family, just leaving my older daughters at the parks and taking the little ones to Magic Kingdom or somewhere else. This time I was able to have fun with Kevin. We took almost all the rides at the studios, because this time of the year there is no long waiting lanes, plus we got a “Fast Pass” we had fun from Shreck to E.T. (We almost ride Barney attraction too ☺ ), then we went to Adventure Islands and had few rides, I’m not really a great fan of the high adrenaline rides, neither Kevin, so wisely we just observed those. We become old when we stop laughing, and it was a great reminder for me to have fun at the park. I laugh, I scream, and I enjoyed as much as many others on the park. God, please don

Finally, blogging again. The latests days have been a little busy, but here I'm sharing some thoughts: On the las few days, I learned that a little smile doesn't hurt. I'm been in front of the camera more than I wanted, but also I had the opportunity to look at my "I'm busy, don't disturb face". I got few comments on my expression, that today I made a decision: I will put a little smile, even when I'm in front of the computer, starting from the outside until I reach the reason deep inside me, because, some one can be watching, so smile :)

Some weekends I expended with my grandma Martha, she told me few of the Aesop's Fables, and I particularly remember a short one; The Ants and the Grasshopper. The ants were spending a fine winter's day drying grain collected in the summertime. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, "Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?' He replied, "I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing." They then said in derision: "If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter." I always thought: “Those are mean ants”, but the true is that we have to be awake in order to reach our God’s potential. The entire series of Antology where based on a Bible Verse: Proverbs 6: 9-11 ESV 9 How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? 10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to

Today, Sol was jumping on her sister’s bed and she was hurt with a small cut on the leg. She didn’t wanted anyone to touch the cut, but I explained about the cuts, the infections and how the bacteria can causes more pain, and after the long explanation, she agreed to allow me help her to clean herself and to put a band aid to protect the cut. Some times we are also hurt by some situation in our life and we don’t want to be toched by anybody, even when we need assistance, because the pain is so big that we believe than there is nothing to release the pain, and we keep it on that way… We need to clean our wounds to start the healing process, and the one who can clean us and heal us is Jesus. Today is a good day to recall anything that can be causing pain in your live and allow our savior to clean and heal you.

We finished preparing the pre-launch website for MyNakedPastor.com and everyone is exited about this new series. It has a spot to submit your video to enter the contest to go to the “Naked Party” (I just made my own video and submitted). I’m learning about the RSS, XML & Twitter feeds on the link we added there, because, believe it or not, I didn’t know what it was a feed (Yes an outdated nerd… that stinks) and it is very cool, so, now I don’t need to visit all my friend’s blog, just get the feed and I can read all the updates all at once, great. Another interesting thing is the naked tools, that allow every one to include the code piece required to invite some one or just to share the fun of MyNakedPastor.com on the Naked Tools section. Well and what is this, all about this series? There is the explanation also: “The lead pastor, Troy Gramling, at Flamingo Road Church is getting naked! No...not that kind of naked, a new kind of naked. A nakedness that isn’t embarrassing; a nakedn

Today I start reading the Book "Peppermint-filled piñatas" by Eric Michael Bryant, and as soon as i start reading, I was unable to stop reading it... it make me think about how can we move our ministry to become relevant, responsive, and reflective of the global community. He approaches the subject on a very funny way, starting with "The art of woo", I laugh from the beginning, I think I'll be blogging about the book on my next few posts... MyNakedPastor.com series will be relevant, and I believe that will change the mind of many as we approach the different subjects that will be covered by this series. Now, I’ll continue reading…

Here is another picture with our characters of the “Mystery Picture”. A great president for US, Ronald Reagan. Today, while I was driving back from Tampa, I tried to discuss with Dora about the John Maxwell book “Today Matters” so we start listening the audio book, before the first chapter ended, Dora, was snoring… (Look at the picture taken with the Streaming Camera), and I was by myself with my thoughts as companion. Then I remember how on every staff meeting we have at the office, Troy always prepares a Q&A trivia contest to encourage the team work and to have a little fun. The questions are always related to TV, or Music or something and every time, when the contest starts I always thing… I’ll be prepared for next meeting… and I’m feel frustrated about not knowing about the culture and history where I live, then I just listen to Maxwell to said “When opportunity presents is too late to prepare for it” and that’s true, now for me is to late to gain years and years of culture,

I was able to chat with Steve and here is an update: Total chaos south of Lima, 510 dead, 1500 injured, 80,000 homeless. We're filling up a minivan with supplies tomorrow, bound for Pisco, the hardest hit area, and we're also putting together an FRC Lima relief plan for the area hit by the earthquake. We may go to Pisco next week for 1-2 days to deliver relief supplies in person with FRC Lima people. I'm going to do another blog in the morning with an update. I'm also going to be teaching live this weekend at FRC Lima on "When Disaster Strikes." The highway to Pisco is heavily damaged, that is the problem in getting supplies in. They're using the Plaza de Armas as an open-air morgue right now. An FRC Lima member has family in Pisco. They are homeless now, so we're sending them tents, blankets, water, etc

Our Campus Pastor at Lima Wrote this update: Earthquake Update: 350 dead in Peru and 1,000 injured. Mass devastation south of Lima, in cities of Ica, Chincha, Pisco, 4-5 hours south of Lima. Houses, buildings, hospitals collapsed. We are trying to make contact with a pastor and with relatives of FRC Lima folks that live in the area. 60% of all houses collapsed in that area. Tsunami warnings all night in Lima, but may have passed. Many aftershocks all night as well. Damage in Lima less than in south, but still several deaths and much structural damage, particularly in center of Lima. Girls at orphanage are all OK physically, but very scared. Older girls were returning from school when earthquake hit, but made it back safely. They are all very scared today. We’ll probably go there later on today to be with them. We’re OK. Some structural damage to our building. Lots of things broken. Pictures fell off wall, broken glass, etc. Ran down 5 flights of stairs to escape from building with de

Last night I leave on my desk a cup of coffee, and today on the morning I found a large ant column from some hole on the wall to the desk, and to the cup… wow! After I cleaned my desk, I meditated on last night’s teaching on our current series, “Antology” about the Bread, When we enjoy a nice piece of bread, we never think how that bread reached our table… as the ants, they crop not for themselves, but for the next generation. I’m discovering why is it on the Bible one verse inviting us to observe… the ants!: Proverbs 6:6 6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! Just observing the ants, we have many lessons to get in order to reach our God's potential. If you where unable to watch the previous services (Last Week: Part one and this week, part two) you can get the teaching on the Archives Section for Flamingo Road Church. (By the way, now the teachings are avialble on English and spanish too)

It was a great start the first teaching of "Antology". We got a new and great look on the stage. The Internet Campus Attendance was above 600 people watching the service from all over the world, it was a great weekend. We all love comfort and easy. In fact there is some electronic "Easy" button, that you click and gives you some encouraging words, but in order to reach our God's potential, we have to walk away from our comfort zone and change from being an observer to become an actor, and when we start acting, we will face challenges, difficulties, situations. This weekend Troy talked about that topic and he give us 3 questions that we have to ask ourselves when we are facing a situation: 1. What2. Why3. What. Number one: What is happening? We must become an observer and slow down to think and observe the situation. Second: Why is that happening? Is there something we can do about it? Like Grandma said “if your problem has a solution why are you worried? If it h

I watched last night the Movie “The Astronaut Farmer”, and it was a good entertaining movie about a Man who wants to reach his dream: To be on the Outer Space for once. One good thing I got from the movie (Beside it was a sweet moment to share with Dora), it was the leadership of the Dad, he was able to lead all the family to dream together, sharing the same vision, and when he struggles with failure, his strength came back from his own family. Tuesday, Troy was talking about Perseverance, and about quitting. We all have a great potential. God created us for that. The problem is that some times we are unable to reach our potential because we quit. To quit is a state of mind, is resigning to our dreams, to quit is continue doing life without dreams, just letting the day go on without grabbing the opportunity every day has for us. Every day is a new opportunity to face a new challenge, observe it, defeat it and grow… or just quite. The choice is yours.

Finally, after several weeks of hard work, we have the new Beta site for FRC, on this new page will be easier to go and make changes, updates, colors. We have not the final graphic design yet, but the engine is running great! Aside the website, I was thinking on our life, how we need to be updated often, just as Paul said on Romans 12:2, “2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” When we don’t apply this in our life, we become rusty, and from time to time, we become obsolete, and what is harder, we will be apart from God’s will. Now I’m starting to build a new update engine for my personal life, not only to update (renew) my mind, but to do it often and fast. The Internet Campus is exposed to the most fast changing world, and in order to reach people all over the world we need to do it with a fresh and renewed mind, getti

Last Night, my pastor talked us about the way we often see the problems. We have two ways to see a situation in our life, as a big problem or as a great opportunity. Some times I’m waiting for the opportunity to appear, but he just reminded us that Opportunity is made, not born. Some times we dream “I will reach this…. When I get that”, but we cannot be seated waiting for “something” appears on our lifes, so we have to go and seek the opportunity and to get up and running 3 verbs related with opportunity: See Opportunity Sustain it Seize it. The FRC Internet Campus is a great opportunity to reach people all over the world and I have to take some time to relax, think and start looking for the opportunities that are to come J By the way… today we will have a new design for the Internet Campus… so be ready to have a great surprise!

I often receive the question of what we are using to deliver the Internet Campus to the world. I'll try to answer this nerd question on the next few postings: Computer: I built a rack mountable computer to handle the main stream with the following specs: Processor: Two Xeon Dual Processors @ 3Ghz Motherboard: Intel PCI-XRam: 4GB DDR Video: PCI-Xpress Card with 256Mb Ram Audio: SB Audigy Capture Card: Osprey 230 PCI-Xpress Storage: 500 GB Sata 300 Hard Drive Raid 1 Power Supply: 550Watts CD/DVD RW We have the computer getting the video signal from the Main Video switcher from live services At this point we are building a new control Room to have a separated Audio Mix specifically balanced for internet. We are using Windows Media encoder 9 to deliver the video trough a T1 dedicated lane with two streams: One at 350kbps and other at 115 kbps for mobile users.

I created my blog two years ago, then I lost it... I created it again on Jan 07, but I'm being so busy (At least is what I tell to myself) but now I'm decided to go for it... Being a Campus Pastor at Flamingoroad has been a really challenging experience. It was on the middle of the last year when Troy Gramling dreamed about the possibility to reach people outside the walls... It had opened a few off-site campuses but needed another way to reach the community – the question arose, “What if Flamingo Road Church was available to everyone worldwide? What if didn’t matter where people lived? What if God would allow us to be one church where they are on a global scale?” What started as a question became reality. Work began on a website that would allow people to experience church in every aspect. This wouldn’t just be a website on church; this would be a church IN a website. A real campus where people would hear the worship…take virtual notes…listen and watch Pastor Troy…turn in comm