TPR Staff Retreat 2017!

The annual The Prayer Room staff retreat is our highlight of the year. We rent a huge house on a beautiful property about an hour away in Rainbow, TX, and we spend the weekend playing games, vision casting/discussing, and generally enjoying each other’s company. One of the beautiful strengths of TPR is the close-knit family feel of the community, and the annual staff retreat is a big part of fostering that. This was my third staff retreat in a row! (Check out 2015 and 2016.)

During our living room sessions, we discussed taking ourselves seriously as a house of prayer before the Lord and how rare and precious it is that He has given us the grace to sustain daily prayer for 12 years! As of last month, we passed 45,000 hours total of live prayer since our inception in 2005! That’s a culmination of five years of incense arising from our prayer room!

One discussion that really provoked and excited me was our Saturday night talk about what we could each do to make The Prayer Room better 1% at a time. We dreamed together and then made action plans to establish those plans. “What can we do to get the cords behind the sound booth more out of the way?” “I know a way to do that. Done.” “What else could we do to recruit worship leaders?” “We could make small flyers to put on our welcome desk directing people to our website.” “I can design and print some up. Done.” We talked about stepping it up, individually and as a staff, to be more proactive about our responsibilities and “raise the water level” of prayer and worship engagement in our prayer room. At the end of the day, all the clever admin solutions we come up with are about strengthening the atmosphere of prayer and worship that happens 18 hours a day in our prayer room.

I love this staff so much and am so grateful that I get to build the house of prayer with such a family!

Livermore Update

On October 31, we finally finished selling the house on Livermore Dr. that has served as our dorm for the past several years! Originally, this house was purchased to be the prayer room when the meetings outgrew Brad’s living room. When we moved into a storefront space on Pioneer Pkwy., Livermore became remodeled as a guys’ side/girls’ side dorm building. This is where I lived in 2015 on my externship. The house has some significant structural issues and we were losing money on it for months, and we’re so glad to turn the keys over to someone who can turn it into something useful to them so we can move on to a better dorm situation.

Now, we’re looking for one or more duplexes (or even a fourplex, if we can find one) where we can house externs, interns, staff, and guest speakers as needed. I was asked to move in as house manager, and after weeks of prayer and consideration, I said yes. It will be much cheaper rent and it will be an opportunity to live with and serve other staff (my current roommates both left staff to go back to school earlier this year). I’m praying that the dorm would be a consecrated place where we can provoke each other in love and pursue Jesus together. It’s going to be an exciting transition!

TPR Staff Retreat 2016

Guess what – I spent last week in Texas! I flew out to be part of The Prayer Room’s annual staff retreat, and it was a very welcome time of refreshing and re-envisioning.

On Friday we drove out to a huge retreat house on a farm. We spent the weekend playing games (Farkle, Pit, and Silent Football are always huge hits!), eating food, and generally enjoying each other’s company as a family. We also did some teambuilding games (which may or may not have drawn out the spirit of competition moreso than cooperation!), toasted marshmallows around a bonfire while retelling funny stories from the early days of the ministry that have become community classics, and met in the living room every morning and evening for prayer, discussion, vision casting, and individual encouragement.

14900370_10105090428936640_5067834837550986851_n
Teambuilding. We were connected in a long line with our ankles tied together.
14962592_10105090428442630_4816515315211210604_n
Twinning with my dear friend and fellow IHOPU grad Rhoda!
2016-11-09-15-54-44
The dice game Farkle was a favourite pastime. I’m in the plaid on the right behind Brad. In my first game I didn’t get ANY points, and in my second game I got over 8000.
The cavalry is here!
While we were gone, IHOPU sent one of its best student worship teams to run our prayer room and our Saturday night service. God bless these guys for keeping the fire on the altar and serving with such joy and faithfulness!

I am so, so blessed to be a part of this family. I love that God has allowed me to visit five times since I finished my externship there last year. Next time I’m back in January, it will be to STAY!! God has entrusted The Prayer Room with a powerful mandate to build night and day prayer and worship until His return, and I’m so excited and honoured that He has invited me to join them.

This is a crew of people who passionately and sacrificially follow the call of God and pour out everything for His glory. They honour Him and each other so well, even in the midst of deep struggles that would tear many other ministries apart. The humility and zeal for truth I’ve seen in this community provoke me frequently to step up my game and lean on Jesus more and let Him transform me into His likeness. I’m eternally grateful that in calling me to leave all I have known in California, my Father has given me these people as family.

2016-11-07-12-02-22
My beloved TPR staff family!