I just finished one of my last semesters of school at FIU and I have to say its been one of the most painful academic semesters I’ve ever had to endure. The road to my degree is so close and I can’t wait to finish it this summer (God willing). In the midst of it I believe God is really growing my character and working in my heart.

Yesterday after taking my last final I spoke to one of my classmates who came out of the room right after I did and we began to talk about the exam, and how we answered the test questions, and how it was unfair to write 4 essays but how basically that worked to our advantage in the end, etc.
I introduced myself and we kept on talking about school for a bit and as we were walking toward the parking lot, she said “Good luck, much success, and I wish you find something that you love doing.” – for a second I was going to respond with a polite “You too”, but instead, I thought about what she had said and with a smile on my face I turned around and yelled “I’ve already found it! I hope you find it too. Later”
Then she came back and I shared the gospel with her and she got saved… I’m kidding, that didn’t happen although I thought about it when I got in the car. Anyways, the point is that God showed me how valuable and how precious it is to have Him and His purpose in my heart. People like my classmate will go their entire lives looking for something to die for, to give their lives to, to spend themselves on, and the sad part is if they don’t find the only one who can satisfy, the one who gave His life for us, Jesus, then they’ll always be on a quest for a next, for a new, for something that will wither away as time passes by.
Let us be a generation who shows the World the love of Christ. Let us care for strangers. Let our hearts break for those that walk aimlessly in the search for meaning, but more importantly, let us love them and show the everyone what Jesus did on the Cross for all of us.

Dimelo! its been a while since I wrote a thought on the web. And I concluded that God is doing too many awesome things for me not to write about them so … I’m back baby CHEA!
Our church just a series called “Bootcamp” – that challenges all of our members to allow God to take them to another level by joining in 4 things.
1) Spend time with God every day
2) Attend all services of the series
3) Pray and fast with the church on May 7th.
4) Reach beyond to the community with their small group 1 time.

The reason I mention this to you is twofold.
a. I’m curious and excited about all of us growing spiritually and what that means for the city of Miami. Imagine… reminds me of 2 Chronicles 7:14

b. I will be taking the bootcamp 2.0 challenge. This means that I will be blogging at least 4 times a week for the next six weeks – I will start twittering at least during 3 weeks of the series and perhaps using other tools to make His name famous.

By the way, the Bootcamp 2.0 challenge was born in Jeff Reed’s car. I mentioned it on the way to Flanigan’s and with his 2.0 expertise he put the idea into action. In other words, he’s the mother of the challenge, and I’m its father. If you’ve been wanting to blog or twitter – join us for this series!

I leave you with this great Colbert twitter “The world is a dirty place, and I am America’s lemon-scented wetnap.”

See you soon.

What an awesome, off the hook, straight up sick weekend. I felt compelled to write a snippet about it even though I haven’t written anything for weeks now.

I had one of the best birthdays ever thanks to my INCREDIBLE wife. She organized this party even though she had to plan for one of the biggest weekends at the West Kendall campus. She had a theme for the party – Lovers in Japan (one of the songs that we love). She and some of our friends who helped put it together decorated the house with Japanese accents – it was great. By the way I apologize if you were supposed to be invited – it was a crazy busy weekend and we just didn’t get a chance to call everyone.

At the West Kendall campus Family Day was awesome. We had 362 people – the most people we’ve ever had besides Easter. People got to see their kids sing and dance to Christmas Carols with the band and got to hear an amazing message from Pastor Rick. Also, Johanna Viscaino led a team of artists to make these FANTASTIC vignettes for the campus.(pics coming soon). The energy level was high -  a lot of guests heard the gospel – it was awesome.

Bull worship? Idol worship? These pics made me think that most definitely, humans were created to worship something…they just don’t know what to worship. These are all taken in India.

Lastly, a raided church in India…

… we are so lucky to share the gospel in this nation. Are we taking advantage our freedom?

I’m absolutely psyched about what God is doing in our church through the media ministry. This past Wednesday I had a meeting with some folks that I thought had a passion to serve and an inclination to production. I spoke to them about video editing, filming, production, etc. and how it can have a really big impact in our ministry.
Their response was great, they are pumped about learning and about creating videos to serve God.
The incredible thing about creating videos is that there are almost no limits, the challenge is virtually endless. I think this gives people a certain creative freedom that excites them.
Isn’t there something about creating that just motivates us?

Anyways, if you are interested in learning about video production, editing, using programs like “Final Cut, Premiere Pro, Photoshop”, then guess what… we want to invest in you and we want to train you. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about it, because the training ranges from the most beginner to the most advanced of users. If you are interested shoot me an e-mail to clollett@cfmiami.org and I’ll give you more info!

Behold, a pic of our brave new Video Production Team hopefuls!

From left to right. Jaime, myself, my beautiful wife, Mike, Vivian, Darren, Julian, Alexa and Armand!

Let’s go!

Alright team, make sure you listen closely and check planning center and hit all the links so you can be ready for the weekend!

This past week could be aptly characterized as awesome. It was a packed and hectic week but I saw God do some awesome things… Monday night the CFWK staff went out to dinner and basically had a great creative meeting. Tuesday night my wife and I hosted our College group and we had 11 people come, plus we talked about the Satanic Trinity (which is insane), and celebrated Johanna’s bday! Wednesday night I had a chance to lead @ CFStudents in worship and I had a blast! Friday I spent all day with my wife and we had a great time! (She’s awesome, like amazing) Saturday morning I led worship @ a funeral (that was a first) and then on Sunday… Sunday… I saw about 350 people come to the West Kendall campus! That is the most attendance we’ve had (excluding Easter) ever. That same day I saw the faces of people that had accepted Christ in our campus get baptized at Bill Baggs state park and it was so special -

I’ve witnessed change,
I’ve seen God at work and its straight up awesome.

It gave me fuel. You see I’m pumped to be part of a team that is fierce to get the message of Jesus Christ out into the city. Keep praying that God would keep leading us and that he would be glorified in this city.

Overall awesomeness.

Two weeks ago Cassie and I started a college small group at West Kendall. Thanks to Brad and Michelle Essary of Campus Crusade, we got a chance to host one because they opened up their joint!

In any case, God has worked out something amazing: I wanted to get involved in the FIU community and Campus Crusade needed a worship leader so, I’m leading worship at campus crusade at FIU! We meet every thursday at 3:15 in the Graham Center in room 316 .

This past thursday I got the opportunity to lead worship amidst a crowd of 40-50 passionate college students. I didn’t know what to expect, I had no microphone and an acoustic guitar. Turns out I didn’t even have to sing that much, they were loud and they knew all the songs!

I am so psyched about what God is doing in FIU and CF West Kendall. Lets pray that God will use campus crusade and CFWK to make a dent in that campus!

I recently had a chance to read Pastor Eric’s new book “Identity: who you are in Christ” and I thought it was awesome.

We live in a period in time where people are flooded with tons of information. This is the information age after all, and as Christians, we need to look through the fog of opinions and and hang on to the truth of God’s word. I think Geiger’s book exposes fundamental truths about who God says that we are, and how we should live out our life because of that.

We are His children, His bride, His priests, His servants, His ambassadors, His friends, and we are aliens in this world (as in foreigners).

As a Venezuelan man, raised in Venezuela for 13 years, then coming to the states to learn the language and the culture, and then later on marrying an incredible American woman… I’ve had to deal with the questions of who I am as a Christian…

Besides being a good book for anybody, “Identity” is going to come in handy for those Christians that live in the melting pot, or salad bowl, or omelet that we call Miami.

You need to get it. Buy it here.