5/11/2008

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



It started out Sunday with a large family we hadn’t seen in over two years come in to participate in Morning Worship. The topic for the sermon was John 21:15-19. We shared in communion together. We also had repeated troubles with the MP3 player as it kept shutting itself off mid-song.



After Kids’ Church Jenn and I took M’Rhaiyah and Jhaiyah to Burger King for milkshakes which they had earned through church participation. Though they’ve been regular participants in church this year they’re usually with a larger group so this gave us a chance to get to know each other a little better.



Due to the technical difficulties at Morning Worship, we changed formats and plans a bit for Evening Worship. Afterward, Ron and I had dinner together and caught up on what was been happening.



Bill Brian stopped by our house for about an hour on Monday afternoon. He was on his way home from work meetings in the Washington, DC, suburbs so we were able to catch up a bit.



Gloria headed the Friends of Carroll Park meeting on Tuesday. Patricia was responsible for exercise group since Gloria was gone.



102 kids participated in Wednesday morning’s SonRisers activities. We also had a couple of young adults who we hadn’t seen for quite a long time stop by to visit and have breakfast.



Later that morning Gloria and I both participated in the H3 meetings at Paul’s Place. This is a group of community service organizations coordinated by the University of Maryland School of Nursing. In just the two meetings we’ve had we’ve already made some significant progress in coordinating efforts in community service.



On Wednesday afternoon Marjorie and I went on a home visit together. Marjorie is the Director of Community Nursing at the University of Maryland and we went to visit a church member who is pregnant. Marjorie was able to help get some critical temporal needs addressed and helped me prioritize some of our ministerial support for when the baby comes. (It’s due any moment.)



That evening a man was stabbed to death within sight of the church. We were just learning of these events as the Adult Disciples class gathered to continue its reading of the book Prince Caspian together.



This week we added our 600th kid to our attendance list for the year (July – June). A few dozen of the kids are hoping to go to camp this summer but our fundraising efforts thus far have not yielded the resources to make it happen.



Danny and I were the only ones at Men’s Group this Thursday. That was OK as we were able to catch up on some issues we hadn’t addressed together in a while. When Gloria was getting ready to leave from Exercise Group we had her come in with us for a couple of minutes so we could all touch base on some items.



We were fortunate to receive a sizable rewards check from Staples. It was able to cover the purchase of a new MP3 player and a few other items as well.



Friday night brought Pizza Church. The first two groups learned the story of Pentecost. The senior high group continued its study of the book of Acts. This week’s lessons talked about Paul in Ephesus. Since Tamara had visited Ephesus while in the Navy, she brought in pictures & maps and told the kids about her experiences there.



We had a good sized group participate in this month’s Solid Rock Café on Saturday evening. Toward the end a few of the middle school boys became especially squirrelly. They needed to be reminded that we’re still making decisions about who can go to camp and who can’t.



Looking ahead to next week we’ll have our regular schedule of activities. In addition, we have our monthly priesthood meeting on Tuesday evening. We’ll also be working on collecting data from kids to prepare camp forms. There may be some young adults from here attending the Mission Center Young Adult retreat next weekend.



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



Mark

Bradley

Stacey

Heather

PJ

Josh

John

Melissa



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