Some promised pics

I'll do a little explaining for each one...

First, this is Allister, Claire's new BFF (best friend forever).

This is a Horse nativity scene that the girls worked on one night. Take note of the winged horse angel,  and the robes on the shepherd horses and wool on the sheep horses... They had so much fun quietly together while the boys tore the house up down stairs!

 This is the team after our last game (including Coach C). We lost but it was a good season.

These are the pics that Lynn did for the church. Each week we unveiled a new one until the scene was set. Aren't they incredible?

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Hello Friends! I'm sorry it's been a month since I posted anything, I don't really understand how time gets away from me. Okay thats not true, I know where all my time goes. Let's get right to some updates.

Blackfoot Christian Fellowship - things are going very well. We continue to have steady attendance around the mid 80's and it seems like there are always new people in attendance. I'd like to say we've settled into a sort of rhythm at church on Sundays that seems to be working pretty well.

Since my last post we've completed our Christmas series and are awaiting Christmas Eve with great anticipation. I'm not sure if I mentioned that there is a woman at church who is an incredible artist. I asked her to paint some pictures for our Christmas series and they came out incredible. I'll post some picture tomorrow b/c I'm at home tonight and I haven't taken pictures of them yet. There are a total of 8 canvases, 4 on each wall, like a mirror image. Each week unveiled two more canvases and by the end they show a beautiful midnight scene looking towards Bethlehem. They are incredible!

BIG NEWS - The Southern Baptist Church building sold to another local church! We were able to make them a screaming deal and to keep the building in Christian ministry. Next we nee dot unload the parsonage and we'll really be in business. Of course it's a little more complicated than that, but things are moving forward as we officially and legally bring these two congregations together. Part of the monies will help us to do a few more of the things that we believe are necessary to finish updating the building and the rest will help us to do ministry.

Answered Prayer - We have some people from the church who have taken over the music leading and now FBC Pocatello doesn't have to send musicians to us every week. It's a bittersweet situation because the people that they have sent to us have become good friends to the church and will be missed, but it's awesome to have people step up and lead in ministry.

On the Homefront - Kate and the kids have finished up the first semester of homeschooling and I'm happy to say that everyone not only survived, but they learned a lot too. Daniel is beginning to read really well on his own. Of course Claire goes through books like nobodies business, but whats new there. Jolee loves to color, paint, and annoy her brother and sister. She is a really good three year old, and when I say that I mean a two year old with a year of practice. If you don't get what I'm saying, she has definitely come into her own and lets her little opinion be known, man can she be stubborn, I think she gets that from her mothers side of the family : ). It's good thing she's cute.

We finished basketball last Saturday and for that I'm thankful. Now that it's over, I can say it was a good thing. Daniel made a couple of friends, I got to know some non-churched and Mormon families, and we'll keep in touch with some of them for sure. I may have mentioned this before, but Daniel is a natural athlete (I know I'm his dad and his coach and yes I am biased). He had so much fun and he's really good. Unfortunately we ended our season 2-3-1, blame it all on the coach.

BIG NEWS - Claire has asked to be baptized! Kate and I are really excited about this step for her because she hasn't wanted to be baptized because she doesn't want to be in front of everyone, but we've talked about it and she's ready. We're gonna wait until Kate's parents come in January so that they can be here for the big event. I can't wait to baptize my baby girl, who's getting so big and really doing so much on her own these days.

Answered Prayer - God gave us some Christian friends who are pretty new to the area, who homeschool, and whose kids are about the same ages as our kids. It's pretty uncanny the similarities that our families have. I can't tell you how huge this is for our family, specifically for Claire. Their daughter, Allister, is the same age as Claire and they are cut out of the same cloth. It's so good for her to have a friend her own age.

I'm sure there is so much more I could tell y'all but I'm running out of steam. I think my bed, Kate, and a Christmas movie are calling me. I promise to be better at posting updates. I will also try post some Christmas pics too.

Until next time, May you be filled with the HOPE of God in Jesus Christ, which gives you PEACE that passes understanding, JOY despite sorrows, and the ability to LOVE all people, even the Grinches.

Merry Christmas and as always we miss you all!

Happy Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving week -- hard to believe I know. Where to start?

It was so good to see as many of you as we did last week on our trip to Anacortes. It was a great time for us to take a break from the craziness that has been our lives for the past 3-1/2 months. We've definitely missed being with y'all, but we've been blessed by God's goodness and what he's allowing us to be part of here. So on to our trip experience...

We set off for Anacortes a 1/2 day earlier than we expected to because of the super cold weather. School was canceled here so our evening activities were canceled at church and we (five Team O members and our dog/mascot Hunter) set out to beat the snow, which we did. The trip was as smooth as can be except for a couple of traffic delays and one car sickness incident.

While in Anacortes I (Kevin) got to take part in Eyran Richards "Change of Command" ceremony. It was an incredible honor and a great experience. If you've never been to one of these ceremonies, its quite an event, the Navy is so full of tradition and cool ceremony. My job was to offer the opening invocation and the closing benediction. I got to sit on the stage and look out at all the people there to send off the old Skipper, Eyran, and welcome the new Skipper, Dan Johnson. The cast on stage was impressive, Commanders, Captains, an Admiral, and a Master Chief. These guys were in their dress uniforms complete with medals, ribbons, and swords! I felt really out of place, but it was awesome. I only messed up once in my prayer for the soldier. Did you catch that? In the Navy they are sailors, not soldiers. I corrected myself in the prayer and I know that God heard and knew who I was talking about. Thanks again Eyran for the honor.

Another highlight of the trip was attending church with y'all on on Sunday. The chance to hug people,  see smiling faces, and of course to hear a great message preached by Todd was wonderful. BTW, Todd is going to be a great Associate Pastor! Especially after listening to him, I know that he will do a great job of connecting with teenagers and young families and because I know that he loves God, he will serve all the people of FBC, young and old alike. I'm super excited for this new chapter for FBC! Do me a favor and love on Todd and his family as they come in to serve.

Here are the few final things about the trip... My beautiful bride was diagnosed with Strep Throat while we were in Anacortes, thankfully, none of the Pruiett's got it! Daniel got to celebrate his 7th birthday with many good friends, oh and he got initiated into the boy world of stitches! Our final day in town, Kate was resting because of the Strep, so I took Daniel, Claire, and Cassidy P. out for a hike to Flagstaff Island. It was great, the day was beautiful, the skies were clear, we took some great pictures and were enjoying God's beautiful creation until... We were headed out and took one last side trip to the beach to climb on stumps and throw rock into the water. I took pics of each kid on a stump when the girls decided to go somewhere else so I left Daniel to climb down by himself. This was not a big stump, Daniel climbs things like this in his sleep, but that day he slipped and fell backwards! When I heard his scream -- parents, you know the "I'm not hurt but I want your attention" scream, this was NOT that. I knew immediately that he was hurt. I ran back and saw him on a rock crying/screaming and a little bit of blood on the ground. I freaked out and broke all the hurt person protocols, I immediately picked him up, check to see where he was bleeding from. I expected to see a busted mouth, but then I noticed the stream coming from the back of his head. Sorry if I'm giving too much detail. I yelled to the girls to get up the trail, wrapped Daniels head in my jacket, picked him up and began to run back to the car with him. Claire was crying because she was scared for him and poor Cassidy was probably just freaked out and shell shocked by everything. Long story short, poor Daniel had to get two small stitches above and behind his right ear, and a couple of hours later you wouldn't have known that anything was wrong! I totally over reacted, but hey thats the way it goes.

Back in Blackfoot... We arrived home super late on Tuesday night to a cool house and a lot of snow on the ground. Everything and everyone survived the early season "ice age" and in just the last couple of days things have thawed out and the snow is disappearing.

While we were away, the chairs we ordered came in were set up for church. It was a beautiful sight to see when I came in on Wednesday. They are comfy, I'm going to have to work really hard to keep people awake on Sundays : )

Another crazy thing happened while we were gone. We got parking lot lights. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal but the way it happened is another one of those "God" happenings. The short story is that our parking lot was really dark and one night after Awana was over we noticed that kids and parents were trying to navigate the dark parking lot and it seems really unsafe. One of our people stopped by an electrical company that he had done work with in the past to check on something and he mentioned the situation. The owner GAVE us four lights and we just happened to have men in the church who did all the work of trenching, running the cable, pouring the concrete footers, and installing the lights. Did I mention that they did all the work in below freezing temperatures? Pretty awesome huh?

While we haven't had over 100 people in a couple of weeks, we still had a really good crowd including more new faces. In fact today was really awesome because we had seven people raise hands to receive Christ and to rededicate their lives to him. The message was out of Acts 9, the story of Paul's conversion, the Damascus Road experience. The big idea is that we are never to far gone for God's grace to reach us and our past doesn't disqualify us from serving God in the future. In fact God is in the business of transforming monsters like Paul, like you and me, into children of God who are his chosen instruments to...bless all people. You and God get to figure out how specifically you'll do that. Four of the people who prayed this morning were high school boys, it was pretty cool to have them here. I'm praying for more baptisms in the near future!

Next week we step out of Acts and into our Christmas series called Christmas Presence: Hope - Peace - Love - Joy. I love Christmas and I can't wait to decorate my house and the church. But before that I can't wait to eat some yummy Thanksgiving turkey.

Here's what we need prayer for:
Family - Patience as we continue to learn how to homeschool our kids.
Balance - we've been doing too many things and we need to be still and know that God is God.
Wisdom - for leading our family and the church.
To find godly leaders who can run with ministries.
Health.

As always, we love y'all and wish we could have spent more time with you. May God give you the realization that you have an overabundance of things to be thankful for and may you love and serve the people he puts in your sphere of influence.

Two Consecutive Weeks

Well as the title suggests something happened two weeks in a row. Just so you know, it wasn't that my football team won again, in fact, they barely held on to win and break a three game loosing streak. No, today we had over 100 people in church again and there were a ton of faces that were new! It was truly incredible.

Last week I got to write an article for the local newspaper, its something that the newspaper recently started doing for whatever reason. What it allowed me to do was to share what we believe as a church, in fact, I shared something similar to Anacortes FBC a couple of years ago. As the kids and I went trick or treating on Friday, a couple of my Mormon neighbors commented on my article and all throughout the day I got texts and messages about the article from people at church. I also think it's why we had some more new faces at church today. I've been here three months and I've had my picture in the paper three times now. Here's what I wrote:

Did you know that God wants you to have an out of the box, over the top, are you kidding me kind of confidence in Him? At times in my life I feel like I have lived that way, I’ve jumped when it didn’t make sense, I’ve moved when I didn’t want to, I’ve talked to someone because I felt God asked me to, and amazing things happened. Then there are the other and probably more frequent times when I didn’t jump, move, or talk. These are the times when I feel like I’ve fallen way short of the kind of life that God wants for me. How did I go from walking with confidence to a life of worry and fear? 

Jesus tells us in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” When I no longer walked with confidence it was because I allowed the thief to steal my perspective, destroy my hope, and kill my purpose. I was no longer living by faith. I was living in fear; but fear of what? Fear that I’ll look stupid, fear that I’ll get hurt, fear that I’ll be laughed at, and the list goes on… You know what the common denominator in all of those statements is, I (me). As long as I put me as the center of my world I will always slip back into a life that is less than what God has planned for me. 

It is not until I remember that there was one who whose perspective was not stolen, whose hope was realized, and whose purpose was to give his life as a ransom for many. Only when we see what Jesus did for us will our hearts be melted and freed from the paralyzing fear that keeps us from experiencing an out of the box, over the top, are you kidding me kind of confidence in God. Only when you receive and embrace his life, death, and resurrection will you be freed to pursue the abundant life; the life that you’ve always wanted. 

Pastor Kevin Olivarez

Blackfoot Christian Fellowship

I got paid a really great compliment today, by a lady who has been coming to church and whose son is the starting QB for the Blackfoot Broncos, who are undefeated and who are the favorite to win state in their division this year. Her son has been to church for several weeks now and she told me that he really likes me and in fact, he invited two of his football buddies to church this morning. It was pretty cool to see four HS boys all well over six feet tall in church and engaged in the service. After church I told the boys that Daniel and I will head out to their territory this Friday to watch them play. 

As for our family, things are going pretty well, just really busy. A couple of weeks ago I started coaching 1st and 2nd grade basketball for Daniel. Just so we're clear, I know nothing about basketball, but as I learned on Saturday, our first game, I don't have to know anything about it. It mainly running down the court hollering at kids to dribble, pass, shoot, and rebound. It was pretty crazy! As you can imagine, Daniel is a natural; what else would I say? It seems like anything with a ball this kids excels at. He played hard, scored couple of goals, and came home really sweaty. Did I mention that Claire is my self proclaimed assistant coach? She blows the whistle for me at practice and is mostly helpful. It's fun to have her around and involved in it. It funny to hear the kids that are younger than her, but taller than her, call her Coach C. 

There are many more things I"m sure I could tell you, but I think I'm just going to post a few pics and call it a night. Oh yeah, I should mention this... We're headed back to Anacortes for a few days to participate in Eyran Richards "Change of Command" ceremony. I was honored to be asked to offer the Opening prayer and closing Benediction for the ceremony. We're planning on being at church on Sunday, Nov 16. 

As always thanks for the prayers and support. We love and miss y'all, and see you soon! 

Enjoy the pics:

Growing Pains

A long time ago in a church far away, I was blessed to be part of a church where the Senior Pastor led us through a series called the Five Things God Uses To Grow Your Faith. Those Five things are: Practical Teaching, Providential Relationships, Private Disciplines, Personal Ministry, Pivotal Circumstances. Today I want to focus on the providential relationships and pivotal circumstances.

Just about four and a half years ago God moved our family of four to a small community called Anacortes, WA. It was exciting, an adventure if you will. Now this move was not without it's challenges. If we are being honest, and I hope we are, it took our family a couple of years to really feel like Anacortes was home. God provided some really incredible friends for our family (providential relationships). These friends helped us grow in our faith, loved us, challenged us, and made realize how good God is. In the second two years in Anacortes, God provided me (Kevin) with some real pivotal circumstances in ministry, in which, I was able to learn and grow. I experienced good and hard things that would shape me as a pastor and follower of Christ.

Fast forward to this weekend. Yesterday we had a harvest party that I challenged the church to put together just two weeks ago. They rallied together and last night was amazing. People stepped up and ran carnival games, took family pictures, painted faces, told Bible stories, and made everyone who walked through our doors feel like they belonged there. This morning several families who came to the Harvest party showed up at church!

But that wasn't the coolest part. We got here almost three months ago and went from a small congregation of 30ish, with only three kids, all three came with me when we move here, to this morning when we had over 100 grown up types and somewhere between 15-20 kiddos!

But wait there's more, today we had our first baptism! Today Melody went public with her commitment to the Lord. She is a picture of a transformed life. Before Christ her life that was shrouded in darkness because she was living to please people and often using alcohol to cope with bad decisions and social anxiety. These days Melody is an Awana helper and so much more at Blackfoot Christian Fellowship.

I stand amazed at what God is doing here and what he has allowed us to be a part of.

If you're wondering why I titled this growing pains, well it's because before this incredible weekend, we had a really rough week. I won't go into detail, but as a family let's just say that we miss our providential relationships from Anacortes and we're wondering how long it'll be before we experience some of that here. They say that the darkest hour is before the dawn and that proved to be true last week and hopefully we're coming out on the other side. I know it'll be a long while before we have deep friends like we did in Anacortes, but we trust that God is moving here and in us.

Thanks for reading and for praying for us. Keep Kate in your hearts and minds as she is working so hard to educate our kids and dealing with me, a full-time job on it's own.

I would write more, but its late and I'm bushed, so I try to do better next time to tell you about the family, what the kids are up to and I'll even post pics of them playing in a mountain of leaves.

We love an miss y'all!

Things don't seem to be slowing down

Well as the title says, things don't seem to be slowing down a bit. Since I last posted a lot has happened, I'll start with the church building: We've ordered all the chairs (they're supposed to arrive in early November), our new lighting is in, but not installed, new big screen TV monitors for the front of the sanctuary are ordered (and arrive tomorrow)!

 We've got a Harvest Party scheduled for next Saturday! I gave the church just under two weeks notice to pull if and they are responding with great excitement and are jumping in with both feet. We'll have carnival games, a picture taking area, a Bible Story tour, a cupcake walk, and no Harvest Party would be complete without a bouncy jungle :). It's crazy some churches don't have inflatables on hand. I'm hoping to have t-shirts printed for all our workers the church name and logo on them, maroon of course :)

My (Kevin) parents came and visited for a long weekend. It was a really nice visit. We had a good time with them and they got to see all that's going on around here. They watched the kids ride the horse, my dad helped me with some projects around "the farm," and we celebrated Jolee's 3rd birthday; I can't believe my baby is 3! It seemed like Christmas as my parents went crazy and bought all of us a bunch of stuff (clothes, books, tools, food and more), they are really generous that way. We are a blessed family.

As a church we are continuing to go through the book of Acts. It's been really good for me and I hope the church too. This morning we examined Acts 4:32-5:11, it's the story of Ananias and Sapphira who  drop dead at Peter's feet after they lied about the amount of money they gave to the church from the sale of their property. It's tough when the Bible exposes our heart's deceit. Read it and see what you think and if you want to know more, then you can go to www.blackfootfellowship.org and learn more. Did I mention that our website is live? It has been for just over a week. I've got to add more info, but our tech guy (Jon Swain) has done an incredible job of making it look awesome.

Tomorrow I'm headed to another pastors conference for the day. This one is for the the Southern Baptist Church (SBC). If you recall, our church is a dually aligned church with both the SBC and the American Baptist Church (ABC). I'm going to introduce myself to the that group and get to know some of them. It should be a good thing and I'm looking forward to it.

This week I begin coaching 1st and 2nd grade basketball! I'm not sure what I was thinking when I signed up to do this. That's not true, I know exactly what the rationale behind the decision was, but holy smokes, it s gonna be crazy. Can I just say that the Parks and Rec Department in Anacortes is top notch! Here's a big shout out to Dustin South. Things aren't quite as organized here, but it'll be fun none the less, but let me assure you that I'll be glad when the season is done and hasn't even started yet.

We (I) launched an all church initiative a couple of weeks ago called "Dinner with my Neighbor." On Saturday, November 1, everyone from BCF is supposed to invite a neighbor over for dinner just to get to know them, no other agenda. I can't wait for Sunday, Nov 2, to hear how it went for everyone. It's gonna be very cool.

We're also about to launch something called Simple: A Large Small Group Experience. In order to get peoples minds wrapped around the idea of small groups, we're bringing everyone to the church for three Mondays in November to introduce them to the concept. We'll show the video teaching by none other than Andy Stanley and then we'll have small group discussion around tables. At the end of the three weeks, I'll say something along the lines of, "Wow, wasn't that easy and great! Now who can do this in their own house?" I know it'll be good or at least I'm hoping and trusting God to bring people to it.

We've continued to have between 80-90 on Sunday mornings and several new faces each week, many who are return visitors. It's great to see people from both congregations getting to know one another and the new folks too. Our offering have been up substantially too! Thats a relief because for a while I felt like we were bleeding. There is sill so much for me to wrap my mind around and get a handle on in terms of the business side of the church. Oh for the good old days when I didn't have to worry or think about such things, just kidding, I love the challenge.

What else can I tell you? Oh yeah, next week is our first baptism!!! I met with Melody on Friday and she's ready to publicly declare that Jesus is her Lord and Savior. She's got quite a story and God is doing a great work in her heart. It's so fun to see people trusting and growing. It reminds me of you, my friends in Anacortes who God was and is doing a great work in. I want to say again thank you for allowing me the chance to be there and learn, to struggle and grow with y'all, to mourn and to rejoice too. I will always count Anacortes, as four of the best (sometimes toughest) years of my ministry.

Kate and the kids are doing well. I'd love to say we've settled into a routine, but that's not exactly true. Kate is an incredible trooper and has been wonderful for our kids. She is with them all the time, teaching, loving, training, feeding, answering questions, and generally being an all around incredible mother, wife, and woman. I'd love to send her on a vacation but unfortunately I can't.

It's now 9 PM here and I'm just about to eat some yummy baked apple stuff that I made. Yes you read that correctly, I baked a cinnamon, brown sugar, oatmeal apple something. We picked the apples off the tree in our back yard. To be more accurate, I used a football to knock most of them down. I'll sign off for now, but once again thanks for all the prayers, for taking the time to read my random ramblings.

We love and miss you all and you are always in our thoughts and prayers. See you soon!

Lots Going On

It's been a couple of weeks and I apologize for not posting sooner. I'll keep it short tonight and promise to post something later this week, so here goes. As Joe Friday says, "Just the facts, ma'am." Well its been a couple of weeks since we merged together and things are going well. I'm so excited to announce that I've got a baptism coming up! Melody has recently returned to church and in one of our services she committed her life to Christ and is ready to take the plunge (literally). I was out of town for half the week last week at a pastors conference in Post Falls. I was able to take one guy from our leadership team and I met a bunch of other pastors from the PacNW. There were three other guys doing "restart" churches like we are here in Blackfoot, and I'm glad to say that God is doing some really good stuff in all the locations. Yesterday, Saturday, was a big day at Blackfoot Christian Fellowship. We painted the Sanctuary and we were able to bless a Guatemalan congregation from Utah with our old pews. They were so excited and so were we. This morning you should have seen the faces as people came into the church, saw the color on the walls, and sat in folding chairs, it was awesome! We showed the church a video of the group that came to pick up the chairs; there was clapping and shout of joy from our people. Right after that I told them that we were having our first capital campaign called buy a chair for you and the friend that you're going to invite. Kate and I wrote the first check and dropped it into our offering box. This week we'll be ordering chairs and light fixtures to replace the old behemoths that are in the room now. It was a drastic difference today, but things felt real good. I'm not sure if I mentioned to y'all that with the merger, I have an Associate Pastor on staff. Dave is 65 and is a Cowboy Church Planter and today he preached at BCF for the first time. It was good to have a break and he did a great job. Many of our folks know him from the Blackfoot Cowboy Church and I think he set me up real well for next week. I'm excited for a few of the things that we're about to do. 1. A Harvest Festival 2. Operation Christmas Child 3. A neighborhood initiative, to get to know our neighbors better. Other things that have kept us busy are the home school group, Kate is still trying to get a good rhythm for the week, and lots of projects around here to get us ready for winter. This weekend's project: I started building a winter stall for our horse. It's almost done and if I say so myself, it doesn't look too bad. Our nights have been dropping down into the mid to high thirties and the days have been awesome sunny and mid-sixties to low seventies. Finally for today, we're getting ready for my parents to make their first visit to Idaho. They arrive on Thursday and will be with us for four days or so. It'll be a good time for the kids to visit with Grammy and Mumps and to show them around the "farm," and for us to catch up with them. Thanks for praying and caring for us and we still have room on the farm for guests (hint hint). We love and miss y'all and wish we could visit with you soon. Congrats to Mike Wenger and Sherry Love on your engagement, we're really excited for y'all. Grace and Peace, Kevin, Kate, Claire, Daniel & Jolee

Catching Up

Hello Friends! I'm sorry it's been a while since I posted anything, but it's for good reason. Perhaps the biggest was due to the crud running through our house. My wonderful mother-in-law, and I truly mean wonderful, was here visiting and brought a little bug with her that liked it here so much that it jumped on Daniel, then me, and Jolee. So far, Kate and Claire are unaffected, but on;y time will tell. The bug took a lot of energy out of me. There is soooo much to update you on. First, Robert Turner went home to be with the Lord last Thursday. When I first met him he was still very coherent and was given about a month to live, but from there he went down quick. I visited with him most days between when I met him including the day he passed. Up until he lost consciousness, he had quite a sense of humor. One day while I was visiting, his dad stopped at his bed and said to him, " You know son, last night when I couldn't sleep, I came out here and sat with you for a while," to which Robert replied (mumbled out), "Oh, that's what that smell was." I hope and pray that when my time comes, I have a sense of humor like that. May we all take things a little lighter and laugh more! Second, the SBC church officially voted to join with Blackfoot Christian Fellowship! Times are crazy when churches are merging not splitting! What does this mean? There are all kinds of logistical things that we have to figure out, but we're trying to keep things simple. For now, we will simply give a 5% tithe to the SBC and a 5% tithe to the ABCNW and use the rest to cover salaries, maintenance, ministry, and all the other stuff. The SBC has a building that they are looking to sell to a Calvary Chapel that meets here in town, and a parsonage, that they may just gift over to the Four Square church here in town (currently the Four Square church's pastor lives there). Yet another sign of crazy times. Our tow churches will combine assets and function as one body for God's glory in Blackfoot and the world. We have been telling our people that we want to be a sending church, one that send missionaries and plants churches. I already have my eyes on a young couple that I think might be able to move to another community with a core team to plant a church in a couple of years. Have I mentioned that I like God's math? He took two groups, both somewhere between 25 & 30, mixed them together and last Sunday, we had nearly 90 people in our Sunday service. There are new faces coming each week including some young families!!! God's math 30+30=90ish, makes no sense to me, but it sure does feel good. The other day in our leadership team meeting, our custodians were asking when was a good time to clean the church and how to keep up with the trash that is being generated by all the activity. I simply said, "What a great problem. Praise God and we need to buy bigger trash cans." There are now bigger trash cans in strategic locations! We went from a church with Sunday services to a home school group of 30-35 people using pretty much the whole church on Tuesdays from 9-noon, Wednesday nights Awanas (a whole lots of people all over the building including outside), an older ladies Bibles Study on Tuesday afternoon, a possible girl scout troop on Fridays, and it looks like finally the Spanish church will join us this coming Sunday evening. Awesome!!! Last Thursday night our family went to a group that does local outreach to lower income folks here in town. I may have mentioned them before. At times I felt like they were interviewing me to see if they felt like we could work together, which they kind of were. We knew one family from both Awana, and the home school group, and we spent Labor Day at the park with them. We really like them and they've been to church couple of times. The group is very eclectic when it comes to their church affiliations, from charismatic to Cowboy church. Ultimately their goal is to walk out their faith in everyday life. After all was said and done, they asked if perhaps they could come under the banner of Blackfoot Christian Fellowship for a bunch of reasons, one being financial. Since they are not officially a 501c3 they can't receive funds to do the ministry. I know some folks are thinking that they are just using us to get money, well, yes they are and I'm totally okay with that. Here's what I told them they had to do for us in order for this to work. Tell us where our people can get plugged in serving right now, and second tell us about awesome stuff happening so we can celebrate what God is doing. I went on to tell then that I hope and pray that one day the ministry that they do will become part of the church's DNA and budget! One last thing before I sign off for the night. This Sunday after church, I'm headed to Post Falls with a couple of other people for a Pastor's conference put on by the ABCNW. This will be my first official ABC and Senior Pastor thing. I'm excited except that I'll be leaving Kate and the kids here for three days. Pray for Kate's sanity. I just thought of one more thing... Last Saturday, the two older kids and I got to go glean potatoes. Even though I was under the weather, Claire, Daniel, and I loaded onto our four-wheeler, hooked on our little ATV wagon, and road over to a nearby potato farm. The potato harvest has just ended up around here, and one local farmer, I'm sure there were more, allowed people to come and gather potatoes. We had a good time and filled our wagon up part way with potatoes and partly with trash. I told the kids that since they were kind enough to let us pick the potatoes, we needed to help them by picking up the trash where we were. The potatoes came in so many shapes and sizes. Of course all the super big ones were gone, but every now and then we got a good sized potato. The coolest shaped potatoes were shaped like hearts, we found two like that. Here's what need prayers for: Perseverance in homeschool Finding time to exercise, both Kevin and Kate Health Making good friends that we can do life with Balance between ministry and family, we'd like to go camping before it turn too cold. For the church: That we would stay on track, put people in the right places, and continue to honor God To identify a couple of major needs that the community needs addressed that we can immediately address That our merger would continue to go smooth and that our blended families would love each other and the community well. As always thanks for your prayers and don't forget: "3 We thank our God every time we remember you. 4 In all our prayers for all of you, we always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 It is right for us to feel this way about all of you, since we have you in our hearts and, whether we are in BLACKFOOT or SOMEWHERE ELSE, all of you share in God’s grace with us. 8 God can testify how we long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is our prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God." Phil 1:3-11

Sunflowers

I'll leave you guessing why I titled this post Sunflowers while I fill you in on other stuff. Where to start??? How about a non-ministry related topic, the Eastern Idaho State Fair! Last Friday we braved it and went to the fair and I remembered why it's good that things that that only come once a year. I'm not sure I could handle the crowds and I definitely couldn't afford going more often than that. It was a pretty cool to show the kids around and try out some of the Fair fare (ha ha). I'd have to say the highlight of the fair was watching my kids big smiles as they got to experience a couple of carnival rides. Daniel rode his first roller coaster and Jolee and Claire had a great time on the Carousel. I'm attaching a few pics from the Fair for your enjoyment: 1. Awana began last night. It was a great time by all, I know my kids loved it, and we had an abundance of volunteers as well. Nice problem to have. Currently we have 53 kids registered and 45 kids showed up last night. We know that more will come and we're excited for that. Games went mostly well (that's my job). We had a little communications issue and not all groups got to do the games, but it was still a lot of fun. Pray that God will bring more kids and families and that we'll place the right volunteers int he right places. There is also one significant volunteer issue that I was made aware of this morning and i will unfortunately have to fire a volunteer, so if you'd pray for me on that I'd appreciate it. 2. Yesterday I spent some time with a young lady who is taking online classes from Liberty University, where Eric got his Master's Degree, to talk about a paper she is writing for class on Signs and Miracles. This led to a deeper discussion about her past growing up in Blackfoot and then leaving to live and work in California where she work in a large youth ministry. Unfortunately something didn't work out and she left California to come home to "heal," and discern God's call on her life. In the time that she has been back nothing good has happened at the church that she grew up in (this church). There was at least one split and many other issues which led her to be angry, bitter, and jealous for others opportunities. As I listened to her story I was saddened by how common her story is. The church will chew people up and spit them out when the focus isn't on the gospel and reaching people for Jesus. Churches that put something other than "Making disciples/followers of Jesus" as their primary purpose end up making more people frustrated and disillusioned with Christianity. At one point she said I'm against organized religion but I love Jesus to which I said, "people can't love Jesus and hate his Bride the Church." Maybe it's semantics, but she said "religion," not Christianity. I personally think this is one of those idealistic young people arguments as they are trying to work out real life and relationships. As I thought more about it last night, what came to my mind was that the church is and has to be organized whether you like it or not. If you look at the Bible, you'll see that God brings order from chaos, the Church is organized like a body, and we know that when body parts in the wrong place (I know you can work out what I mean) things don't work too well. At the end of our time, we prayed for healing and a season of rest and renewal for the Holy Spirit to show when, how, and where to serve. FYI, we were in my office with both doors open and lots of people around. 3. Last week (Thursday) I met a guy named Robert in the ICU because he was very sick. He was told it was some sort of cancer that was making him ill, but they weren't sure what kind or how far advanced. On Tuesday the doctors came in to tell him that he has about a month left, he has stage 4 Pancreatic cancer. I've visited with him each day since and will be going by again today; He has taken the news remarkably well. Robert is 44 and he looks like he's 90+ years old. He's a good and simple guy who has lived a pretty simple life. He got married two years ago and has no kids, but he has a lot of family around including a bunch of nephews and nieces. Yesterday he went home on hospice care and is now in his parents breakfast nook. We've had a few good talks including about what he'd like at his funeral service. He has trusted in Christ, so he'll be okay. I was hoping to do some baptisms and dedications before a funeral, but it looks like that won't be the case. Would you pray for Robert's family, his mom & dad, and especially his wife Laura (I'm sure she's in denial). FYI, we did and still will pray for a miraculous healing from God. 4. For those of you who have asked, we've almost got the online giving set up. The website is coming along and will hopefully be up next week. I'll let you know when it's ready. 5. Sunflowers. Kate and I went for a morning jog a couple of days ago with Jolee in the stroller and our dog Hunter (the big kids stayed at home with Papa and Gram, Kate's parents). While out on our run, which is on a nice paved trail (think Tommy Thompson) that runs along the Snake River, there were lots of Sunflowers growing. Jolee asked for a Sunflower, so of course I stopped and picked one for her. She was so cute sitting there waving it like a flag and singing her sunflower song. At one point she sniffed it and turned to tell me it smelled like chocolate. I personally didn't smell the chocolate smell, but Jolee had Sunflower pollen all over her nose, I had to take a mental picture because I couldn't take an actual picture at the time; she looked so cute! Finally, things are progressing with the possible merger. The SBC church will vote this week on whether to join us or not. All indications are that they will. I had one couple tell me last week that no matter what the vote is they are on board with our mission and vision for Blackfoot. Please pray that the Spirit would give us divine appointments and opportunities to connect with people and in turn for us to connect them to the gospel. I look forward to the day when we celebrate how God is transforming hearts and minds and making his family bigger. As always, thanks for reading, for all your prayers and support. We miss y'all and pray for God's continued blessing on Anacortes FBC!

The Fair, Dust, and Busted Lips

I always try to think of eye catching titles to draw you in. I imagine that you read the title and think what's happening there now? Well I'll get to the subject of the title in a bit, but for now, here's what I'd love for you to pray for us about. Sunday was a great day at church, we had full house and there were 9 kids in Children's Church as well as several teenagers in the crowd too! I continue to meet people that I haven't met before and it's exciting and confusing. I still don't have a great grasp of who's from the SBC congregation and who's from here, and who's a visitor. The SBC congregation met after church last Sunday to vote on what to do next. The original agreement was that they would be with us through August. Well, the vote was for them to continue to stick around. This is exciting because, as I'm sure you know, when the church is full it feels better than when there's fewer. This now really also adds some complexity to my situation. I went home to take a nap on Sunday afternoon and my subconscious woke me up earlier than I wanted to because I began to think about how to move forward not really knowing who's who. Well, yesterday I met with the pastor of the SBC church for two and a half hours to determine if there really could be a merger. We agreed that there is a lot of complexity, but it's only trouble if we let it be trouble. Tomorrow morning we'll meet to put a plan on paper so that both of us can present it to our leadership teams and begin to move forward. I should tell you about this other pastor. His name is David Kite, he's a former Sr. Pastor and he and his wife, Ms. Sue, moved out here two years to ago to plant Cowboy Churches. Picture a wrangler jean wearing with a shiny belt buckle, starched western shirt, and cowboy hat, now imagine the deepest southern drawl and you've got the Kite's. They have hearts of gold and are doing amazing work here in eastern Idaho. He has told me in no uncertain terms, "I don't want your pastorate, I'm here to do the Cowboy church thing," that made me like him immediately. As we have talked about the future, he has always said, you're the Senior Pastor, I could do missions and discipleship or something lie that. Did I mention that I like this guy. Anyway, please pray for our time tomorrow, that God would make us wise in blending two families for God's glory. The Eastern Idaho State Fair is this week and so Blackfoot is a very popular place. Our population doubled this weekend and traffic was terrible. Okay not really, and I'm not even sure I noticed bad traffic, we stayed away from the heavy areas. We're headed to the Fair this Friday, it should be fun, I haven't done anything like that for years! All the smells, the good (funnel cakes) and the bad (pig, horse, cow, lamb, goat, rabbit, chicken, etc...) will flood my mind with memories of my childhood. I can't wait to share this with my family. Speaking of family, did I mention that we're having our first visit from family this week? Tonight my in-laws arrive for a coupe of weeks. It'll be a good time and Kate and I will even get to go on a date or two, yay! Another God thing happening is the time that we got to spend with the Joyner family on Saturday at the park. The Joyner's (Jason, Becky, Nathan(14), Matthew(12), Caleb(10), and Makaya(5)) are from here and currently run a ministry to an area of town called Camas Street. This is a very poor area in need of a lot of help. For the past two years, this family along with some others have spent Sunday afternoons out doing ministry, loving on people, and serving this area. This family is also really involved in Awana and the homeschool group that we'll be a part of. Daniel and their youngest son Caleb were immediate BFF's, both the boys love sports and we almost couldn't get them to stop playing so we could eat lunch. Claire and Makaya seemed to get along real well too. Jolee just loves to swing, so find a swing and push her on it and she'll be happy for hours! As we got to know this family, it was really nice to hear their heart for outreach and my hope and prayer is that we as a family and as a church can begin to work together to turn our eyes outward. It'll be good for all involved. You can also pray for God's direction, that we, our family and our church, would resist the temptation to be inward focused and comfortable. Here's another prayer request: as we implement changes, pray that God would give me the grace and compassion to hear those who struggle with change, and the strength to continue to do what we came here to do, create a new kind of church that is a blessing to the community and the advances the kingdom of God in Blackfoot. I could keep on going, but I figured that I should get to the dust and busted lips. First the dust. Imagine, like Washington, a house that does not have AC, so the windows are always open to keep things cool, add to that a desert climate where there is a lot of farming, there are fields all around our home, dust is an issue. Now that we've got pretty laminate floors done in a darker wood color, we remembered a friend of our years ago told us that it's better to have light wood colored floors because it doesn't show dust and dirt as much, oh well, they still look nice. Finally busted lips. Poor Claire was in the wrong place at the wrong time when her wonderful younger brother angrily slammed a door, literally, in her face. I had just arrived at the office when Kate called to tell me what happened. To make a long story short, we opted not to get stitches, and Daniel got in major trouble because I had just told him the day before not to slam doors because someone could get hurt, err! I know, I know, I get what I deserve. I can hear my parents saying, he's just like his daddy, to which, I have to smile and agree, and then ask God for the grace to parent myself. Kids are gift from God to sanctify us and to show us how much we must frustrate him. Oh, one more thing... Did anyone catch the Aggie Football game on Thursday? I think I'm in for a good football year : ) As always we love and miss y'all, and are now taking reservations for the Team Overalls guest suite (a small dusty farm experience) in Blackfoot, ID. Until next time, may God grow in your heart so much that you can't contain it and Jesus spills out in your love and words to everyone around you.

Game Day Is Finally Here!

Last night we had our Awana registration and game night. It is what I lovingly refer to as controlled chaos or herding cats! It was so loud and crazy and yours truly got to lead the games. I say got to because the guy who led games last year moved up to leading the 7-8 grade group for Awana, called Trek. So i took note of what our "greatest need" was, leading games, and I jumped in. You may be surprised to know this about me, but I really don't like game time. I like games of course, basketball, soccer, and of course football, but these crazy games and me... It's good that there are kids in jr. high that are a part of Awana, and I'm glad the John's heart is all for them, it's very exciting. But it also means we need more volunteers! Sound familiar? The church is always looking for people to love on kids and small Blackfoot Christian Fellowship is no different than big churches. To some degree Awana for us is like VBS in Anacortes. We have a really nice facility and families and churches from all over the community send their kids here. In fact, our three kids are the only kids from this church involved, for now. There are two other kids that are part of the church, but they are 4 and 18 months old respectively. I'm hoping to have a couple of child dedications soon! FYI, we've got 41 kids registered for Awana after last night's registration event, but there are more to come. You may be wondering how our concert of prayer went last Sunday night, well, it was really cool. Karl, the worship pastor from Pocatello FBC, came up to play the piano for us and lead our singing. We had between 15-18 people show up including some folks who were in real need of prayer. There were some folks who don't attend church regularly, but someone invited them to come and pray with us. We went through the ACTS format. Adoration: We adored God for who he is and what he has done. Confession: We confessed where we have fallen short in our lives. Thanksgiving: We thanked God for his blessings, including the trails that we are facing or have faced. Supplication: We asked God to give us our daily bread, to give us what we need to advance his kingdom here in Blackfoot, and for boldness. It was a good night. A funny thing happened when we got home. As we were trying to get the animals fed and the kids in bed, the doorbell rang and guess who was at the door... If you guessed it was the Publishers Clearing House folks to tell me that we are now millionaires, then you'd be wrong. Yup, it was the wonderful sisters front he LDS church. Two young ladies and a mama bear to guard them. There was a lot of small talk as I waited for them to get to the point. Right after I told them that I was the pastor of the Blackfoot Christian Fellowship, one of them asked me if I had ever met with Mormon missionaries before. I said yes and she asked how it went. I told them that we had to agree to disagree. She then asked me if I ever met with one again and believed their testimony, would I get baptized. I told her that my understanding of our beliefs were pretty far off from theirs and the likelihood of me doing that was nonexistent. I think she was a little taken back, but said, at least you're honest. I told here I didn't want to give her false hope and I really needed to get in for bedtime prayers. Hindsight is 20/20 and there are so many things I wish I would have said, but in the moment that's what came out. Next subject: The floors in our house should be finished today! That means that we can finally move our furniture to a set place and get set up for school and everyday life. I will need to put new baseboards on, but at least we'll have our furniture in place. The guys working on our floor are Mormons and today I plan to invite them to church this Sunday. Pray that the Holy Spirit would move them to come. Those of you who know me, know that I what I really really meant in today's title is that Aggie Football officially begins tonight! The first game of the season is on ESPN at 4 PM MST. We're having a football pizza party and we're dressed in our Aggie gear. The Ag's aren't picked to win, but that'll never change how we root for them. I pray that my heart and your will get as or more excited for church on Sunday and for the things that God is doing in our midst. That's a real prayer request for me. Well friends, this Sunday we complete our Strategy series with Serve - For the glory of God. The scripture passage is John 13:1-17 and the big idea is that hearts and lives are transformed when we humbly serve like Jesus. The Southern Baptist group is still with us and is still trying to figure out what they need/want to do. You can pray for them as well. In September we begin Spark: The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. In this series we'll take a look at the book of Acts and the way God via the Holy Spirit transformed a bunch of scared guys to fearless and bold leaders of a movement for Christ. Thanks for reading and praying for us. We love and miss y'all.

Fast and Furious

Fast and furious is what I tell anyone when they ask me how things are going. Where should I start??? How about at church… Our leadership team is moving forward in trying to breathe new life into our facility. Before I go any farther, I want everyone to know that even though we are spending a lot of time trying to give the facility a face lift, that is not the focus of the church. We view the building as a tool to help facilitate spiritual growth, and we want to put our best foot forward as we reach out to bring new folks in. On Monday night our leadership team met to prioritize the facility updates. Now that the list is in place, we are getting bids from people to do the things we don't have the expertise to address and soon we'll begin to make the changes!! Did I mention that we landed on a logo to go along with the name change? One of my former students who is also a pastor created a great logo for Blackfoot Christian Fellowship. Take a look -

Chris is an amazing young man who loves the Lord and is obviously very creative. Currently he is the Worship and Missions Pastor at Aspen Grove Community Church in Denver, CO, however, in March of next year he will launch Fathom Church in Littelton, CO. I"m so proud and excited for he and his wife on their adventure. Back to Blackfoot. We have had more rain here in Blackfoot than I ever imagined that we would, and while it is very different than the typical Washington rain, it's rain none the less. One good thing about it though is that our pasture has lots of grass for Blaze! Speaking of grass, on Monday, we bought, moved, and unloaded 4 tons of hay for the winter months. That day just happened to be in the 90's, but it was fun for the whole family. All three kids were out "working," to unload and stack the hay. They actually did a pretty good job of helping. We were making memories as a family, sweating together. This Sunday morning at church we'll be talking about how we need to grow to love like Jesus. He must increase in our lives and we must decrease. John 3:30 Sunday night we are going to have an "Hour of Prayer" at church. As I was reading in Acts 2 earlier this week I read this: "They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." (vs42) Right then I decided that we need to pray more as a church. I know we've only been here for three weeks, but I feel it's so important for us to pray together as a church, so we'll use the concert of prayer format, that will allow us to be very specific and directed in our prayers. I know it'll be a great time and I know God will hear and answer our prayers. Finally, on Monday, our house will be in disarray as our floors will be getting updated. On the upper level of our house, there are four different kinds of flooring and a couple of them have seen much better days, so we decided that we'd go ahead and make them all the same as del as make them dog friendly. Once the floors are finished, hopefully by Thursday, then we'll finally be able to unpack the rest of our stuff. I know Kate can't wait until we are put everything in it's place. I'll let you know how things go on Sunday morning and night and don't forget to pray for our church as the Southern Baptist congregation continues to meet with us. We love you and pray for you all.

Yesterday I bled for the church

Yesterday I bled for the church…okay, that's a little misleading, I actually bled at the church. We had a workday to spruce up the facilities and grounds, and to do some re-arranging around the church. We had a really good turn out, people mowed the grass, trimmed the bushes, primed and painted door frames, and the biggie, pulled out the 5 back pews in the sanctuary. That was a big step for many in the church, but on the whole it was very positive. Moving the pews accomplished two things: 1. It makes people sit closer to the front. 2. It's step one in removing the pews in favor of chairs!! It also gives us the opportunity to congregate at the back of our worship space before and after service. It's really cool. I mentioned in an earlier blog that the Southern Baptist Church was going to join us today because their facility flooded last week, well it was a really good morning. By joining together, we had both children's and adult Sunday school classes and after music in our service, we dismissed the kids to children's church. It was very lively as the folks from the SBC church talked back a lot during church (this is a good thing). If you're wondering, joining together brought our grand total attendance to 66 give or take one or two. At the end of service I took a picture, but due to back lighting it's hard to see. I'll upload it anyway.

Finally, tonight we had an event at church called "Shake it up with the new boss." It was for people from the Awana ministry to come and have milk shakes and meet me and he family. It was a great time with a lot of loud kids and Awana games. We got home late, but it was worth it. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I believe that something big is happening here in Blackfoot, God is moving. I know we've only been here for two and a held weeks, and I know there will be tough times ahead, but right now we feel very blessed to be part of what God is doing. Here's how you can pray for us: 1. That the church would continue to embrace the opportunity that God has put in front of us. 2. That our church leadership would listen to what God is saying to us and then have the courage to act. 3. That our family would continue to meet people and invite them to church. 4. That home school would start to come together for this fall. 5. That we would enjoy, love, serve, and play together as a family. It's so easy to get caught up in all the things that we still have to accomplish to make our house our home and of course there is a ton of pressure as the new pastor. Things are going fast and furious. Thanks to everyone for the kind words that you sent with us on our final Sunday as well as the financial gifts too. Moving can be real expensive and y'all helped to ease the transition. We miss y'all and today as I was praying to close the service, I said something about Anacortes when I meant Blackfoot, You guys are always in our hearts and minds. Until next time!

Ice Age

This has been an interesting week. I feel like I'm going to say that a lot in the upcoming weeks and months. It started with Kate going back to WA to pick up Blaze, our horse, and it is ending with family movie night around the coffee table. Most Friday nights we have pizza or some variety of Mexican food (tacos, chalupas, or nachos) and watch a movie together; tonight's movie is Ice Age. Often we have the chance to talk about the movies we watch and what we believe as Christians. Sometimes we (Kate and I) have the opportunity to breathe for the duration of the movie. Tonight I'm trying to update you, our family and friends. It was great to have Beth and her girls bring Kate and our horse to us. Their second day of travel was long and they had to go through some crazy rain storms, but by God's grace they made it safely. So far we've had more rain here than we did the last couple of months in Anacortes, crazy huh. The biggest difference is thunder and lightning! It was really fun to see Beth and the girls and the kids had a great time. If you don't know the Pruiett's they are amazing people and friends, and whenever our three kids and their three kids get together it's chaos! They left this morning and we prayed for them as they headed to visit some friends in Montana and then back home. There were so many things that happened at church this week too. I had the opportunity to spend some time with an older couple who left the LDS (Mormon) church and just a few weeks ago got baptized at our church, their story was very interesting. They were also having trouble with the idea of changing the name of the church, but as we talked, they warmed to the idea and before they left they were giving me all kinds of ideas about changing the sign in front of the church. In case you're wondering, our leadership team met last night for a couple of hours and we talked about all the things that we have going on from the name change, to giving the worship space a facelift, to a possible merger. Oh by the way, we have a new name: Blackfoot Christian Fellowship. Now we're in the process of getting a logo, and new website going. Our new web address will be www.blackfootfellowship.org and will hopefully be up in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow we have a work day at the church to do some of the things that we need to do for the facelift, and just help maintain our facility. I think (hope and pray) it will bring some good unity and fellowship to those who come. I know our people are excited for all that God is doing here! Here at home we're still unpacking, but we can't get totally situated until our floors get done, which will be in a couple of weeks. We finally decided on a specific type of laminate floor (something the dog can't scratch) from a local company here in town. It will be nice to have that done and then to get our home in order right before school starts! School, holy smokes, that's coming quickly and there is much to do to get ready for it. I'm so thankful for Kate and her energy and determination to home school our kids. She is a beast, in the most feminine way possible : ) It is pretty cool that there will be a home school group meeting at our church this year, the support will be nice. I could keep writing, but the movie is almost over and we need to get the kids ready for bed. Until next time, "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Eph 3:16-19

Bubbling Crude

Funny title I know. There has been sooooo much going here since I last posted and I know that I mentioned in that post that I would tell you more about our adventures to that point. So that I don't run the risk of writing a novel, I'll hit some of the highlights. 1. After church on our fist Sunday in town, we got home to find that our pasture was flooded with water. That sounds bad, but is not that is how people irrigate around here. The problem was that we weren't irrigating! Quickly, Claire, Daniel, and I went to investigate to find that a small part of the canal had been washed away in a couple of places. The three of us got to work patching the canal with giant dirt clods and mud. Did I mention that it was 90+ degrees! So far things have held up well. 2. Our first week here, including our move-in party, was well into the 90's, and then the skies opened up. We experienced a couple of days of thunder, lightening, and rain that I think would have been similar to what Noah experienced. One afternoon I was in my office at the church when the phone rang, it was a reverse 911 call telling people not to come into town because many of the streets were flooded. A bit later Kate called and was stir crazy at home with the kids, she was also worn out from unpacking boxes for the third or fourth straight day, so she asked if they could "come in to town" (that sounds funny to say). I figured that it was fine and when they arrived at the church and I went to open the door for them, I noticed that part of our church parking lot was now a lake! We were never in any danger of flooding at home or at church. Since I was in the big truck we decided to make a short trip to our new favorite store, C-A-L Ranch, to look for horse stuff. On our way to the store we got to see just how extensive some of the flooding was. There was water bubbling up from the ground just like the Beverly Hillbillies intro song. 3. We traded some of the most sophisticated and noisy airplanes in the world flying over our house in Anacortes for the simpler and much yellower crop-duster variety here in Blackfoot. Still, though, every time I see one, I'm in awe and dream about flying, swooping, diving and turning, and then climbing again. If I could any animal in the world, I'd be an Eagle. 4. Due to the rains I mentioned earlier, the Blackfoot Southern Baptist church's basement flooded and long story short, it looks like their building will probably be condemned. I met their Pastor, Brother Dave, on our second night in town as we were leaving a restaurant with some of our new church friends. They quickly introduced us and I told him that I knew he and I needed to have a conversation or two. Before we got here, the interim at our church told me that Brother Dave had mentioned to him that he thought it might be a good idea for our two churches to merge. Since our initial meeting a couple of weeks ago, Dave and I have spoken several times and perhaps this flooding might be a real first step towards something like that, in fact, once I heard that they had trouble, I called Dave and offered our help in any way we could. Here's what we're gonna do: for the next 3 to 4 weeks, they are gonna come our and we're gonna worship together!!! So exciting for everyone involved. They bring some young families and Sunday School, we offer a nice facility and a group of people whoa re ready to turn their eyes outward. Some of you may be wondering how a merger would affect me as the new pastor here, well as it turns out, Dave and his wife are actually SBC (Southern Baptist) missionaries. Dave pastors three Cowboy churches, and has been the interim at Blackfoot SBC for a couple of years. He told me as we spoke about a possible merger, that he had no interest in taking my pastorate. He's more interested in doing discipleship and outreach type ministry. He even said that since they are missionaries (they have raised their salary elsewhere), the only thing that the church has been doing for he and his wife financially, is covering their insurance. Sometimes I wonder what God is up to. Oh yeah, there was an Hispanic church meeting in their building too that is now displaced, so naturally I told them come along and meet at ours as well. I can't wait to see what happens here. 5. Last Sunday was my first Sunday in the pulpit, and it was an interesting morning to say the least. We had a bunch of visitors and a good offering! I preached from Luke 4:14-30. We focused in on verses 18-19 where Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The big idea is that by the power of the Spirit, Jesus came to do these incredible things and that we can join him here in Blackfoot doing these same things. The congregation was small but very excited. If you're wondering how many people were in attendance, I didn't count, but probably 40. They all agreed that they were ready to join in with Jesus to reach out to a lost, broken, and hurting world. It's exciting. The next three weeks we'll talk about our strategy, that I know our Anacortes friends will recognize. Connect-Grow-Serve. Here's how it plays out here in Blackfoot: Our mission is to make follower of Jesus Christ. We hope to do this by CONNECTing people to the gospel, GROWing to love like Jesus, and Serving in a ministry for the glory of God. After that, in September we're gonna jump into the book of Acts. For those of you who asked about financially supporting our church, we're still working on electronic giving, but will hopefully have something going soon. 6. The name change. Blackfoot FBC's name will change soon, and here are a couple of possibilities: Blackfoot Community Church and Blackfoot Christian Fellowship. Weigh in and let me know which one you'd choose if you were here. 7. Last Saturday, I spent the entire day driving a Bobcat Skidsteer, it's a favorite pastime in Blackfoot. Not really, it was just something that I rented to clean out our horse stalls, and to fix the pasture so that our backyard wouldn't get flooded again. It was fun and it actually made it into the sermon on Sunday. If you've never used one of these machines, you haven't lived until you do. It was a great time. 8. Finally, Kate left Monday morning to go back and get our horse and a few items that we left in Washington with some friends. That means I've been mom and dad, and pastor, and project manager here at our house. I have no idea how single moms do what they do. I'm in awe of them and will explore options to see how we can serve them as a church. So far so good, the kids have missed no meals, they've had baths, and lots of fun too. Yesterday, I set up a homemade slip and slide in the back yard for the big kids and they had a blast! The worst thing that has happened so far was that Daniel lost a tooth, but thats because it was time for it to come out. We have a tradition in our house that whoever looses a tooth gets to choose dinner that night, and it is usually pancakes, so tonight we had pancakes. Go dad! I can't wait for Kate to get home!!! I'm going to try to post a pic of Daniel and his missing tooth for all to see. We miss you all and I hope that you can discern a few ways to pray for us from all thats going on. Don't hesitate to send an email or even call, we'd love to here from you. THanks for all your love, prayers and support! May the grace of God drive us all to our knees in worship and praise!

Blackfoot, ID

Hello Friends! Sorry we haven't posted in over a week, but as you can imagine, packing a home, traveling 900+ miles with three kids and a dog, getting feet wet, closing on a new home, and then beginning the unpacking process here can be a daunting task. The other thing is that we haven't had internet access or computers available to us until today. Yes we have our phones, but trying to answer a bunch of emails or post a blog via "thumbs," doesn't work for us very well. All that to say, we're still limited because our home internet won't be installed until Aug 11! That also happens to be the day that Kate leaves me with our three wonderful kids to go back to Washington and pick up our horse and some of the other things we left there. Did I mention that we don't have great cell service at our home either? Just some of the fun things about living in a small rural community. Let me give you a few quick updates: 1. We closed on the house Friday as planned, but moving in didn't start until much later b/c the sellers were still moving out!! 2. New friends helped us move in on Saturday. 3. We attended church on Sunday (I didn't preach, but I did administer communion). 4. We started painting and are scheduled to get the floors updated in our house. BTW, we really do love the house, it's pretty cool. 5. We've already been invited to a neighborhood BBQ by a couple of neighbors. Of course it is not an LDS (Mormon Church) sponsored event; big smile, wink wink :) 6. I quickly learned about flood irrigation (I'll tell more about this later), due to a breach in the canal berm. 7. Today I started unpacking boxes and setting up my office at the church. Prayer Requests: For Kate - as I start coming to the office and she has three tired kids and a dog at home who are still trying to figure out this new place. For the kids, that they would have patience with mom and dad as we try to figure out a new routine. That we would meet some new friends. For Kevin, that I would seek the Lord and lead both my family and this church in a godly manner. Thanks for checking in and we/I will update you more later this week.

Packing Is Such Sweet Sorrows...

Packing up your house to move is a really revealing exercise. How many times in this past week have I said to myself or to Kate, "I wondered where item X was," or "I didn't know we still had that," or "What is that for and why do we have one?" About six weeks ago we had a garage sale and I thought then that we got rid of a bunch of stuff, but as we crammed, stuffed, and pried our possessions into the three "Relocubes," I realized just how much stuff we still have. In the past couple of months, we've sold or given away several big items and still we can't get everything into our containers! Recently at church we did a study by Andy Stanley called "Be Rich," and man, was it eye opening about American wealth, the rest of the world, and of course what the Bible has to say in regard to riches. The theme scripture passage was 1 Timothy 6:17-19, "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." Spend enough time meditating on this passage and the many others dealing with money in the scriptures and it will change your life and heart for the better. The reason I say packing is such sweet sorrow is because it is sweet to rid ourselves of a bunch of the stuff that weighs us down and sorrowful because I hate the hold that the stuff that we still have has on my heart. And yes of course we are sad to leave great friends and our church family, because as Paul says in Philippians 4, people are his joy and his crown. This post has taken me most of the day, between packing, cleaning, and final farewells with friends that I've lost my train of thought. It is now about an hour and a half before before our internet is shut off, the final boxes are packed, and someone else gets the keys to this house I love. If you're reading this and you have time to offer a short prayer for our family, here's what we need: Kate & Kevin - patience with our kids. Kids - peace of heart and mind as we leave what is familiar and head to the unknown. All of us - rest for our weary minds and bodies. Thanks for reading and may God give you the grace to Be Rich like the verse is talking about.

Team Overalls

Let me explain the name Team Overalls. We have some good friends where we live and they have three kids, lets call them Max, Allie, and Ryan. Our family name, Olivarez (Oh-Lee-Va-Dez), is of Hispanic origin and a lot of people look at it and wonder how to say it. I often get the question, how do you say your name...properly? Back to our friends, one day Allie asked her mom is they were going to the Overalls house to play and her mom didn't understand what she was asking until Allie asked if they were going to play with our kids specifically. That day the Overalls name came into being. Now as we go places as a family, we remind ourselves that we're Team Overalls, Team O for short, and that we need to take care of each other. Today begins a new chapter in our family's life, we're moving to Idaho to build church. Now people are asking us where are we going and what are we doing. This blog is an attempt to share some of our joys, struggles, prayer requests, and experiences with you. Verse of the morning: "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6