Iceland CR Team Visits the US

It's really inspiring when an Celebrate Recovery team from another country comes and visit the US for encouragement! For the past year a team from Iceland has been working on implementing a Celebrate Recovery in their church. After attending a conference in 2008 in Atlanta, this team returned home and began praying about bringing the ministry to their country. After much prayer and planning, the team started their program in January of 2009. The team has not only taken on a new recovery ministry, but has also been working on translating the CR materials into Icelandic. The team has spent time over several months emailing the CR International Team for prayer, encouragement and for help as they prepared to kickoff. In June, the team from Iceland travelled to the US, arriving in New York and travelled down the east-coast. The team stopped in Maryland and spent time visiting with a CR team there. The CR team from Maryland was encouraged by the testimony of one of the leaders of their CR team and it was great to build relationships that will last a lifetime.

Norway and Finland Host 1st Celebrate Recovery Conferences

The first ever Celebrate Recovery conferences in Norway and in Finland were recently held.

On May 1st and 2nd, a team from the US and the UK travelled to Kristiansand, Norway where they conducted a 'live' CR meeting on Friday and an all day conference on Saturday. The team demonstrated what a Large group and what Open Share groups look like to a crowd of about 50 and then taught the basic instructions on how to begin and grow your CR. In Norway, there is an existing CR group which has been operating now for just under 2 years. This team has travelled to the annual CR Summit over the past few years as well as attended a CR conference in the UK and in Ireland in preparating for their launch. This same team is spearheading the initiative to translate the materials into Norwegian and are just a few months away from completing that exhaustive effort. The contact for this team is Karl Inge Thomassen karlit@c-r.no.

On May 4th, the team travelled to Helsinki, Finland where they conducted 2 different conferences. The first training took place on May 6th in Tampere, Finland at the home office of Operation Mobilization (http://www.fin.om.org/). Here the team spent all day sharing the details of what CR is and how to start the ministry. On Friday May 8th and on Saturday May 9th, the team repeated the same meeting demonstration and training that was conducted in Norway. A local church in Finland is currently taking a group of potential leaders through the Kickoff Strategy and working through the Participants Guides in preparation for a fall 09' kickoff. Since this church will be using the english version of the materials, no work is currently being done on translating into Finnish.

Celebrate Recovery Festival in Tokyo, Japan 2009

Today was day one of the CR Festa (Festival) in Tokyo www.celebraterecovery.jp. A CR Mission team from Central Christian in Las Vegas are here to share what God has done in our lives through CR. It was so great to hear the testimonies of those that have been through CR here in Japan.

Tonight, we went to the Large Group that was done in Japanese and a couple from our team shared their testimony. It was great! One of the highlights was hearing the 12 Steps and Biblical Comparisons read in Japanese and the Serenity Prayer at the end.

Celebrate Recovery Philippines Summit 2009

What an amazing two days in Manila!!! We had over 200 people come to the 2009 CR Summit in the Philippines. It was awesome to work together with the Philippines National TEAM and our team from Central Christian. This year we spent the first day going through the 8 Principles and Open Share Groups. It was great to see so many people with changed helping others begin the journey of recovery. The second day was split into three different tracks for churches interested in starting CR, those that have established ministries, and those wanting to start Life Hurts God Heals for students. It was great to see God move in so many different ways and help people go to the next level in their recovery and ministry. God is definitely expanding CR in the Philippines and lives are changing!!!

Celebrate Recovery Continues to Grow in the Philippines

A team from Celebrate Recovery at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas just arrived in the Philippines for the 2009 Summit here in South Metro Manila. Last year we had over 400 people in attendance and saw the growth of previous years of training. The ongoing ministries continue to grow and get stronger. Since last year, a National TEAM has been formed and are providing leadership to the ongoing work being done here. We look forward to what God will do over the next few days. The conference will be held at GCF South Metro on March 13th and 14th. From here we will leave for Japan for a two day conference there on March 21st and 22nd.