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: