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!