1 Year and forward......

Here we are, 1 year later......there are times it feels like just a day.  We have been so blessed. 

On Feb. 5th we had a 1 year anniversary celebration with a special service.  There were many guests and we were once again reminded of how good our God is. 
We pray that He will continue to bless Charity Bible Church and all who cross the threshold of our building.  We want to share the love of Jesus with the Caledonia community. 

Things in the works:

• Ladies group - studying Proverbs on Monday nights
• Mens group - meets on Tuesday nights
• Kids' drop in - Monday afternoon - read the Bible with Pastor Curtis
• AWANA - Saturdays at 1:00 p.m. - led by Matt and Jen Brandes
• Regular services :  Sundays 9:30 a.m., 6:00 p.m. (studying Genesis) Thursday at 7:00 p.m. (studying Romans)
• Praying about
• Easter outreach
• Special event with the residents of Village Squire - springtime
• Our participation in Fireman's parade and event this year
• VBS

what a wonderful season

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas has simply flown by!  Wow - we had a busy month.  So many blessings, new people, lots of children......  Charity Bible has been an active place - we started out with Hometown Holidays - we made an awesome float that lifted Jesus high!  The greatest gift, no greater gift - we told the town.  We gave out ~500 boxes with tracts, candy canes and random gift certificates inside of them.  The reactions were so varied among the receipients on the parade route.  Most were truly surprised when we said "A gift for you"  - all the white boxes, wrapped in ribbons, and carried in bright red bags, yes we made a "scene"....Post-parade the church was "open for business" - with a clothes closet, christmas cookies to frost yourself, hot dogs on the grill, and a wrapping area for gifts, and boy did we serve up alot of hot chocolate.  It was truly a wonderful day.

On the second weekend, we took our p3 to the streets.....Christmas caroling thru the town with a special destination of the "Village Squire" apartments.  There we sang inside individual units - where folks came out and listened, some sang with us, some cried - our hearts and their's were truly touched by the special moments.  We also handed out homemade cookies and cards to all.  Sharing the love of Jesus in a different way.  We look forward to going back in January to visit with some of the people we met.  Our desire is to show them that Charity is year round - not just at Christmas time. 

Christmas approached quickly after that - we had a special kids' service on the Sunday evening before Christmas - "What does God want for Christmas?" was the title (hint: the answer is You!).....it was a fun time for all as Pastor Curtis got into the rhyming. 

Over the past month, many young people have crossed the threshold of our church - after school time has become the time and place to be at Charity.  Bible reading on Mondays for kids is the favorite event. 

Oh and we had AWANA training this month also.  We are so looking forward to this new program for children.  We hope to start up after the first of the year.  We are expecting a good turnout and praying about a large place to handle more children comfortably.  God knows what we need and we trust Him to provide.

It's not about religion, but about the relationship.  Ours with others and all with Jesus.
Loving God and Loving People - our mission.
Hearts are changing; Lives are changing......and people are hearing about Jesus, our Savior.  We praise God for that and are ever so grateful! 
The New Year is at our doorstep - we are seeking Him, excited, and reaching out....God is Good , All the Time, All the Time, God is Good!
Amen!

"'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."  Jeremiah 29:11

On this day......

           I have been praying for Caledonia, for the Hometown Holiday event, for our church, Charity Bible, this morning.  We will soon reach out to the community and tell them that there is No Greater Gift - Jesus is the Gift.  There is a harvest waiting in this community, I believe it with all my heart.  Can God awaken the people of this town?  The answer is yes, of course He can.  Our prayer is that we can be a tool He can use for it.  There is a Call, Jesus is calling.....get on your knees with us, pray for the Holy Spirit to move mightily in this town.

John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. "   

looking for revival

The last couple of weeks have been exciting and encouraging at Charity and in Caledonia. 

We have had several new visitors (please pray for a special young man that God has sent to us - we pray we are a blessing to him); hosted a  movie night "Fireproof"; studied together in groups; Mondays - women, Tuesdays - men; kids' bible reading with the Pastor - Monday afternoons!

Thanks to Pastor Curtis for his sermons, check out "A City on a Hill" -
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=1023111154123


Pastor Curtis has met with other pastors in the area for prayer.  We were also invited to a movie screening of a fantastic movie - we were unable to attend, but they gave us a copy of the movie. We will pass this around family by family so everyone can see it!
See this website for more info: http://glowtorch.com/PromoPageTest/tabid/2776/Default.aspx 
The movie name is Appalachian Dawn.  We watched it Saturday night.  What a great story about a community in Kentucky.  We were totally inspired and moved by how God worked in that area. 

We are also praying and asking the Lord to show us how to reach the ones He is calling to Him in Caledonia and the surrounding area.  We have begun plans for our participation in the Hometown Holidays in town on December 3rd.  Our theme is "No Greater Gift" - for truly Jesus is the Gift.  "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends."  John 15:13  We are planning a small float for the parade and then loving the people in crazy, random ways.....showing them the love of Jesus.
 
And Camp Ottie.....oh, what are the possibilities?  We don't know yet.  Praying and waiting on God....but stay tuned, maybe next summer, we'll have an old-fashioned revival meeting, right here in the middle of upstate N.Y. 

We simply want to serve our God and love His people.  How we carry it out is up to Him.......and He places the people in our lives exactly when and where He desires. Our purpose is to glorify Him in everything we do. Our goal is to stay attentive to Him and please Him in all we do. 

"That you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."  Romans 15:6

Dear Lord,
Order our steps; show us what we are to do; we love You!  We praise You!  We thank You! 

We were blessed this week!

Today is October 1 - my how time has gone so fast.  Just a week ago, we were preparing to celebrate the marriage of our son, Daniel.  It was a lovely day, everything was just perfect as it should be.  We are so grateful to the Lord for bringing Laura and Dan together.

So, the weekend was a whirlwind (and the week prior).  On Sunday, many of our extended family came to visit Charity Bible.  We had regular service on Sunday morning and then a lunch following.  We were blessed by all who came.  We were especially blessed to have our Atlanta family here for the whole weekend.  Sue, Kelly, Jamie and Molly were a special addition to all the festivities.  We don't see them enough and miss them already.  Molly sang a beautiful song at the morning service.  Thank you Molly!!  She lifted her voice in praise to our King. 

All of this was followed by the Open Door Baptist Church Missions Conference.  It was so good to visit there.  We had not really been back there since February and it was great to see old friends and meet new ones.  On Tuesday night, Curtis was the guest preacher and lots of our Charity family came out!!!  This really touched our hearts.  They were all decked out in our wine colored t-shirts!  Wednesday night was the closing ceremonies and God spoke to us there.  Two nights in a row we heard messages about showing the love of Jesus right where we are at.  How important it is to share His love and His message with those around us.  That is what He calls us to do.  The theme verse of the conference was Romans 10:14 "How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?"  We are all preachers in our daily lives; our words, our actions, our love can speak volumes.  I pray I will remember that daily and look for opportunities to live out His Word.
Throughout the week, we laughed and we cried, we were encouraged and we were convicted.  And the sum of it was a true blessing.  We pray we can reflect the love of Jesus like the members of Open Door do - they love and give like there is no tomorrow.  This is how we should live.

Thursday night we had regular service at Charity.  Can you say exhaustion?  I do want to say that I was ill during much of this week, but God......

And so....we go on.... as my friend Terese says.....never surprised, but always amazed.  God is so good.  Amen?  Amen.

Stay tuned....we will be busy at Charity over the next few months.....

It's September ?

So, time has literally flown by since April.  Our summer was quite a busy one.  We started with the Caledonia Fireman's Event in June - this required alot of planning and it was so worth it.  We walked in the parade on Friday night and we also opened our doors to the kids - we had lots of fun stuff to do.  On Saturday, Open Door teens came along side us and we had a great outreach.  We offered lots of stuff to do, basketball, pie eating, face painting....see pics on our FB page.  While we were busy at the event, Open Door was busy finishing Pastor Curtis' office - what a blessing!!!  They even bought us a computer and printer.  We are so grateful.....

July and August flew by......Curtis and I participated in the Caledonia VBS with some people from 3 other churches in Caledonia.  We were able to share our love and the gospel with some young folks and also met many new people!  Later in August, we had our first movie night - Soul Surfer - it was a great movie and good attendance. 

We have also had 4 missionary visits over the past few months!  We are so excited to know new people who are ministering to people in the Lord's name in Kenya, India and Poland.  Peter Nilson's visit was very special - we had a cookout on that Sunday and were moved by his sermon afterwards.  We were also excited to hear from Marie Saager about her experience in Poland and now her future plans to go there in a long-term position. 

September will be another busy month - Facing the Giants is our movie this month, Friday, 9/23.  And then we get to go back to Open Door Baptist Church for their Missions Conference 9/26-9/28.  We can't wait to see old friends and to see what God wants to show us.  We also started a Ladies Bible Study this month on Brokenness....and the men started studying Experiencing God.  

We are humbled by the opportunity to bring forth God's Word here in Caledonia.  We pray we are blessing every new person we meet.  We are anxious for new faces in church and grateful for the spiritual growth of our members.  We pray for them continually.

“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another” (John 13:35).

enjoying our first spring in Caledonia

Well, spring is finally here.....well at least we hope so :)  A week ago Saturday, we gave out food to 5 families in the area.  We pray they were blessed and touched by the love of Charity which is really the love of Jesus.  We are praying for these families. 

Last Sunday, we celebrated our first Resurrection Day at Charity.  We started off with a breakfast for all.  It was so neat to start the day with our new church family.  Each person is just so special to us.  We really love them.  We had worship and sermon following breakfast.  What a blessing!

We are anxious now that the good weather is here.  We hope to participate in the Caledonia Firemen's Carnival and Parade night.  The parade will go right by our church and the town will be filled with people.  Looking to spread a little more love......and hoping to introduce ourselves at the Carnival.  We'll have lots of fun stuff for the children to do; Open Door teens will be coming along side us.  We pray we get to meet lots of people and make a real connection to the community. 

Let all that you do be done with love.

1 Corinthians 16:14