Hey there everyone! It was a great Resurrection Weekend for our family! Friday night we attended the "Passion of The Christ" and then took communion together as individual family units. It was one of the most powerful and moving communion events of my life...and I'm not just saying that. It was nice to take our time with the elements and pray together somewhere in the building with just our family. Too often we ritualize everything in our church services and it was nice to tear away the ritual and add in the REAL!
Saturday was the kickoff of our 2009 Mission Season. Back in January the Lord really began directing my attention to a homeless shelter in our town. Then they just "happened" to call me and we began to talk about some of their challenges. Finally it was obvious to me that God had crossed our paths on "purpose"...HIS!
So we began our first outreach at the Crossroads Shelter. Crossroads is the largest homeless shelter between Roanoke and Bristol. The house 24 people at once and often turns people away. The shelter has sort of been forgotten by our town and many of the churches. I'm not sure why but I don't care. We, PBC, will be working with what many people consider "the least of these" and begin building relationships with the residents. Let me start off this great praise with the news that one of the residents did recommit his life to the LORD! We are very excited about this news!
PBC had 42 of her members show up and participate in this event. At the end of the event we put in more than 310 man hours, donated 24 new pillows, and filled a freezer with more than $1500 in beef and fish products! We saw the shelter appearance transform in just a few short hours. We covered up the bright bright blue paint with "weeping willow" and completely renovated one of the resident's rooms with new flooring, quarter round, paint and curtains! We replaced the hot water heater elements, removed old food products from the food freezers and the basement, re tiled the laundry room floor, moved cabinets, and repainted the women's bathroom ceilings!
It was a great outreach event and I'm so proud of the response from our church body! I'm even more excited about the opportunity to serve our great God and get on His agenda for missions in our own "Jerusalem."
Please keep Lori, the shelter manager, in your prayers as she seeks to get this shelter back on its feet and make it more ministry-focused. She's been on the job since November and faces some big challenges, but I know that our God is bigger and that He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly all that we could ever hope or imagine!
Be blessed today!
Ron
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