7/15/2007

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

It started out Sunday morning waiting in line at our neighborhood Staples store. They were having their $.01 sale on school supplies so I wanted to have a package ready to show people at the church how much they could get for the kids in the neighborhood. During the announcements I showed the supplies and encouraged those present to go over to the store and help the church stock up on supplies for our annual school supplies distribution..

During Morning Worship we reviewed Matthew 4:1-11. We made snow globes in July at Kids' Church. With the extreme heat outside people were glad to linger at Evening Worship to keep cool.

Afterward we had our monthly Priesthood Meeting. The bulk of the meeting was focused on work assignments for people during my upcoming vacation.

On Monday morning someone dumped an old couch in the church parking lot. We called the city to get it removed. It was there until Saturday afternoon.

There was a death in the family of one of our kids last week. They were having a gathering in the park after the funeral on Monday. They were able to borrow tables and chairs from the church to use that day.

That night we were scheduled to take a kid out for ice cream at Friendlys. I talked with him earlier in the day and he had planned to be there but he never showed up.

Susanne Carver and I sent a lot of email back and forth on Monday. She's bringing a group of older youth and young adults to Pigtown to staff our Bible School in August. We were able to hammer out most of the responsibility details for the week. We're all excited about their coming for that week.

When we turned on the news on Tuesday we saw that a girl who used to be active in Pizza Church and SonRisers had been found stabbed to death in her own bed. Her mother used to come to Pizza Church church with her. The next day they made some arrests in the case. You can see the news clip at http://www.wbaltv.com/news/13651522/detail.html .

On Tuesday night Jenn, Rachel, and I went to tour Washington, DC. Rachel had never been to DC so we wanted to make sure she got down there while she was in the area.

On Wednesday we dropped off the information for travel to Spectacular at John's house. He doesn't have email access right now so he wasn't otherwise able to get the materials. We also went to the copy center to pick up our Bible School fliers but they had not been run properly so they had to rerun them.

That night when we greeted Maurice, the leader of Wednesday's NA meeting, he told us that his church was the one we saw on the news that was struck by lightning. The massive 140 year old building was a total loss. He was obviously upset and had to leave the meeting a few minutes early to get to a congregational gathering to discuss the situation.

The Adult Disciples group continued with its "Summer of Love" curriculum. Toward the end of class a man came by. He was a recent immigrant from Vietnam whose ride had dropped him off in Baltimore instead of Annapolis as he had hoped. He joined us for the rest of class and prayer time then we were able to get him set up with some transportation to Annapolis.

On Thursday Rachel and Gloria filled the planters in the park with flowers. Danny set up the font that morning and Rachel and I filled it that afternoon. That night we took the kid that had earned a trip to Camden yards to see the Orioles lose to the White Sox. After the game I plugged in the heater for the font as it usually takes about a day to warm the water.

I stopped by the church on Friday afternoon to check the temperature of the water in the font. It was too hot to get in. We let it cool down as much as we could naturally then added a bag of ice to it about 30 minutes before the service was scheduled to start. It was still a little warm but still OK.

That night all three Pizza Church groups met at the same time for a baptism service. Katilyn and Davon were baptized and confirmed. Jenn confirmed Katilyn and Danny confirmed Davon. Even before the service started Juwan came by to say that his mother was OK with him getting baptized but that his dad wanted to talk to me first. I walked Juwan home and visited with his dad. Juwan will be baptized on Sunday during Kids' Church.

Tamara was back in the neighborhood to celebrate the baptisms at Pizza Church. She continues to make progress in her healing.

Aries showed up for Pizza Church at 8:00, the normal time for his group. He's in the process of moving to North Carolina so he didn't get the message that church was early this week. He and I sat down, had a good conversation, read through and discussed a passage in Luke, then ate together. He said that he'd gotten several messages through his MySpace page from people who had hoped to see him and had missed him at this year's camp.

On Saturday I visited with a couple more people who had talked with me about baptism. One man is going to see if he can come on Sunday night and I'm still trying to connect with one boy's mother to get consent. At this point we have 3 baptisms scheduled for Sunday with a real possibility of two more.

Rachel and I drove down to Mission Center Reunion in Springfield, Virginia, on Saturday afternoon. We met up with Tamara and Jenn there. We also participated in the Mission Center Leadership Council meeting.

While there we received several cases of school supplies provided by the Waltons from the Washington, DC, congregation. Florence, the pastor of that congregation, will be sending more supplies up this way on Sunday with Ron and Carol Gillilan. Earlier in the week the Towson congregation sent us some funds to help purchase supplies as well.

That night we had our monthly Solid Rock Cafe. We had a good group of kids who got along well together. This was also the first time a few of the kids were allowed to come as they have now passed fifth grade and are therefore old enough to come.

Looking ahead to next week we'll have our regular schedule of activities. In addition, we have baptisms scheduled throughout the day on Sunday. Vonceil will be going to Target before Morning Worship using funds provided by the Towson congregation for neighborhood school supplies to stock up on the markers they have on sale this week. After Evening Worship we'll be celebrating Joshua's completion of his studies at TESST College of Technology and his start of a career as an electrician. Rachel will be working on creating a new display board and preparing Bible School fliers. Danny will be emptying the font later this week. By week's end Shawna and John will be on their way to Spectacular at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa.

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

Jason
Michelle
Angel
Kevin
Leah
Patricia
Danny
David
Charles

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