6/11/2006

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

It started out on Sunday with Morning Worship. We celebrated the Lord's Supper and Pentecost as a part of the service. At Kids' Church we moved to our summer format for the lessons and enjoyed the new rug that we got for us to sit on.

We learned on Sunday that Elizabeth's brother had died earlier in the week. She had gone to see him on vacation and he died while she was there. Shirley's brother had also died earlier in the week so there was a heaviness of spirit over some of our families.

We were scheduled to have a graduation celebration at Evening Worship. However, the graduation had to be postponed until after summer school. We had a cake ready to eat so at the service our job was to come up with reasons to celebrate. People raised their hands and called out big and small things that had happened this week that were worth celebrating and people clapped and laughed and seemed to have a real boost in spirits. We then ate cake and visited together for quite some time.

Darlene came up from Florida this week and was able to share in some of the activities with us. She'll be in and out for the next couple of weeks.

Tamara and Jenn had a camp planning and coordination meeting on Sunday afternoon. A month from now camp will be history so getting those last details together is crucial at this point.

As expected on Wednesday we had a small group (39 kids) at SonRisers. It was the last one for the school year. Once it was over a little boy who lives across the street stopped by with the last of the cards he'd collected over the year and turned them in for his t-shirt. That evening the Adult Disciples group began their study of the Sermon on the Mount.

We had some especially pleasant weather throughout the week so I was able to get a lot of time in walking around the neighborhood and visiting with people. I also spent some time running around the neighborhood getting signatures on camp forms.

Friday brought our three sessions of Pizza Church. All groups studied passages from the book of Acts. The kids seemed to have a fun time playing around a little afterward, too.

Saturday's Solid Rock was not quite as good. Though some of the kids did fine, we had one who stirred things up because he's not being allowed to go to camp this summer. He still seems to think that it's unfair for him to not be able to go just because he took a gun to school with him. He got several kids riled up about it which ruined the fun for some of the kids gathered there.

He didn't seem to phase one other boy, though. This kid was distracted from much of the arguing by the CD player he bought today while visiting Amish country. When some of the others tried to pull him into the protest by asking him "What would Jesus do?" he replied, "Jesus wouldn't have carried a gun with him to school." They left him alone after that.

Looking ahead to next week we have our regular schedule of activities. In addition we'll be making final preparations for camp and some of our other summer activities.

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

Laura
Chris
Pat
Roger
Ron
Tom
Bob
Charlene

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