10/29/2006

It's been a busy week at the Power House in Baltimore, Maryland.

It started out Sunday with Morning Worship. Along with our regular crowd for the past while we had a family visiting from another congregation and we had one returning family we hadn't seen for some time due to health reasons. In it we talked about the living as a child of God.

After lunch David and Gail dropped off bishop Paul Davis so he could spend Sunday afternoon and evening with the congregation. He had been in the area for our Mission Center Disciples Retreat and was able to work his schedule to be here with us. Gail hadn't been in Pigtown before so we went on the quick walking tour around a couple of blocks including the new building, the original building, the playground, and the murals.

Paul joined us for Kids' Church where we finished our lesson on Daniel and the Lion's Den. We had drawn out the story last week in our "Draw the Bible" curriculum. This week we reviewed the story and made a craft to go with it.

Steve Gillilan and company stopped by later that afternoon. He's filming some scenes to go with his documentary about Ron's healing workshop and was seeing how conducive the church was for what he was wanting to do. They decided not to use the church for auditions for the actors.

During Evening Worship Paul shared some stories from his most recent trip to Tahiti. It was enlightening to hear the similarities and differences in the ways the church functions in those communities when compared to ours.

Throughout the day on Sunday we distributed packets for our annual candle sale. We're only selling them for about two weeks this year.

On Monday morning we took Paul to the airport. Afterward I had parent/teacher conferences at my kids' school. While visiting with the 5th grade teacher, she said, "I hope you don't mind, but I had a parent in here earlier who was looking for a place for his son to get involved. I gave him your card and told him that your church had a lot of good things for kids his age."

We had our priesthood meeting on Tuesday. It had been a while since we'd met so we had quite a lot of updates, new information, and calendar adjustments to take care of.

Once again our grocery store didn't have any donuts for us on Wednesday morning. Danny went to the next closest location from that chain to see if they could help us. It took a while but they got the 14 dozen for us. The woman managing the bakery at that location is the one who ran the bakery at our old location before all the problems arose. We've now moved our standing order to this location.

The donuts arrived about 45 minutes later than usual. Even with that we had 120 kids participate in SonRisers. Afterward, Bruce and I moved our old desk outside. It was in good condition but has been a white elephant at the church for years and we'd finally arranged for the Salvation Army to get it.

That evening after the Narcotics Anonymous meeting the Adult Disciples group continued their study of the Gospel of Mark. The discussions we've had thus far in our study of this text have been outstanding.

David came up from Virginia on Thursday morning. We met for a couple of hours discussing issues and strategies for the congregation and the mission center. That evening we had Men's CORE Group.

Friday brought chilly rain along with Pizza Church. We had small groups all evening as a result.

Steve started auditions on Saturday morning. They went for about five hours and will have call-backs on Monday.

We had high winds on Friday night and Saturday. As expected, several tiles blew off the roof of the old part of the building. That roof was never installed correctly when the building was built six years ago and I cannot count the number of times we've had it repaired.

We had our monthly Sundae Church on Saturday evening. It was a good time of fellowship together and I got a better glimpse into what their lives are like outside of church.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, we'll be putting an additional coat of paint on the floor of the church Monday evening. The other part of the church will be used for call backs from Steve's auditions. We'll be handing out goodies during trick-or-treating on Tuesday. Bob Kyser will arrive from headquarters on Thursday to spend the weekend with us. We also have Mission Center Conference on Saturday in Springfield, Virginia.

Along with the individuals and activities mentioned, please keep the following individuals in the forefront of your prayers:

Angela
Troy
Damon
James
Cheryl
Jimmy
Dennis
Mike

Thank you for your continued prayer support.

Jeff and everyone at
The Power House
"Building the Kingdom of God Here and Now"
PowerHouseMD@Juno.com
www.pigtownchurch.org