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