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.