Share from your week; where have you seen God at work?:
Bonnie – Saturday night was our last night of the season for the migrant camp. Ed & Susan and Randy Loayza & I took dinner out and we had a good time. It was the last time for this year but we’re all looking forward to doing this again next year. They all probably will be back next year. I believe that every time we go out there that God is there with us; we continue to have relationships with these people and they know God too. We pray with them every night and it’s all good.
Pastor Brett – Awesome, thank you, Bonnie. Thank you for that testimony and witness; thank you for participating, everyone.
Wendy F. – We are fresh back from The Dominican Republic, 1 am this morning is when we got into our house. I could talk for hours which I won’t. In a short snippet, many of you prayed for us and we very much appreciated it. It was just a wonderful time of fellowship with a village that we now have seen 4 times and we just consider them family. So, just a quick snippet of what we’ve done as a community for those of us who have gone out. I see that Michele Milantoni is online… Globally, the first year we went out as a small group, they built their main school. The second year several of us went down, we built a basketball court in and painted their new dining hall. The third year, which was 2 years ago, we went out, we built a storage shed so, that they could increase their classroom size by moving storage items from the classroom to the storage shed. This year we had the pleasure of working on building an additional building. Michele, I will show you pictures; it will blow your mind. We did additions on a new building that will be an infirmary, a computer room and a library. So, more to come, particularly around computer needs. We have lots of good skill sets in our Westside Community and so I will be reaching out to folks; I’ll just make the needs known in general. I would love in a future week to do a bit of a slide show just so you can see the opportunities there.
Pastor Brett – Absolutely, thank you Wendy. So glad you guys got back safe and the trip was awesome.
Paige – On Friday we picked up Gwen, Finley, and Aurelia from camp. You know the two younger started the week on Sunday a little bit weepy with the idea of leaving moms for a whole week. Then they found Aurelia running into the field and she bear-hugged them like she had been waiting for them forever. So, that was the beginning of their week. And then there were also tears at the end of the week because they did not want to leave. It was just great and Gwen started talking the whole way home and then just literally passed out in the back seat because she was so exhausted. Just the joy on those kiddos faces, there’s going to be lots of conversations to be had for a long time. And I don’t know when we will ever get all the details out, but there’s no lack of talking between the three of them to share. Oh yeah, Neil reminded me that Gwen broke her voice because she was singing so much that her voice is a couple of octaves lower than when she started.
Pastor Brett – Awesome, thank you, Paige. She broke her voice…. Well, welcome back to some of our youngsters who went to camp.
Martha – I’m just going to warn Paige, Kat and Krista and all the parents of those children that when Sarah first went to Camp Magruder, that’s what started her on her path. So, we might have a whole hoard of Presbyterian Ministers coming up.
Pastor Brett – That’s awesome. Thank you Martha.
Krista – Yesterday morning, I got a phone call from one of my friends who went down to the river to kill himself. I had gone over on Friday to just kind of hang with him; I knew he wasn't feeling all that great and left at 2:00 in the morning to come home just to make sure everything was okay. I got a text that he was missing at 8 o’clock yesterday morning and finally heard back from them at 10:00, 10:30 and I texted him and said - Call me when you can. I don't want to push you to talk but, when you're ready call me. He called me and we talked and he said that he went down to the river and was just sitting there. And two little boys rode up on their bikes and started talking to him about his Jeep which is very much off-road with accessory Ducks stuff all over it. The two boys started talking to him about how cool the Jeep looks and stuff like that. They talked to him for about 10 minutes or so then took their bikes and went down to the dock with their fishing poles and sat in the exact spot that he was going to go down and kill himself in. And it was then that he realized that something, he doesn't really believe in organized religion and that's fine, but he said some higher power stopped him from doing it and he realized that what he was going through has no power over him. So, that was kind of… I was like – Okay, thanks God! I know you don't go for that, but thanks God! Higher power, whatever you want to believe at that point…
Pastor Brett - The Highest Power! Thank you Krista. Lots of God sightings this week. Awesome!