7/16/2005

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

It started out with a full house on Sunday morning. We continued our series on
stewardship. This was the first week in a while that the church did not fill up with
sewer gas during the service. Everyone was happy about that. Unfortunately, during the
service one of our member's car was stolen from right in front of the building. She
doesn't usually drive to church but had picked up some friends who lived several blocks
away and had left the car at the church so she could drive them back home.

We had just one kid at Kids' Church. This is not unusual for the Sunday immediately
after camp. He and the staff skipped the lesson and instead visited about their
experiences at camp.

We continued in this vein at Evening Worship. Instead of the message, campers and staff
shared some of their camp experiences with the rest of the congregation.

I got an excited phone call on Monday from Violet. They had gotten the test results back
and had learned that her son Joshua is a match and will be able to donate bone marrow to
her other son, Jerry, who is suffering from Leukemia. We'll know time tables and
procedures sometime next week.

The builders continued making progress throughout the week. All of the gray cinderblock
areas appear to be complete and the crew has made headway on the brown split-faced
blocks.

We were able to run our final statistics on youth participation over the last 12 months.
730 kids participated in at least once activity at the church from July '04 through June
'05. That's up from 689 the previous year. Of those kids, approximately 70 participated
on at least a monthly basis.

Wednesday night's Adult Disciples group finished its study of Isaiah. When we began our
prayer time we realized that we have about a half-dozen members and friends of the
congregation currently undergoing treatment for cancer in its various forms.

Some people had spotted Shirley's stolen car at the neighborhood gas station. When they
flagged down a police officer they were told that this wasn't his district so he couldn't
help.

On Thursday Jenn and I took the three kids who had attended church at least 120 times
last year to Six Flags for the day. There was rain in the forecast so the crowds were
minimal and the lines short. The rain didn't come until about 1/2 hour before closing so
we were really able to maximize our time there.

Friday morning we headed back out to the MVA to get a state ID card for one of the kids
scheduled to fly to the International Youth Festival and Spectacular. After waiting
about 45 minutes in line they didn't accept his documentation and denied him an ID.

That night we started our new Pizza Church curriculum. This was the first night that
kids were in there new groupings based on what grade they would be going into this fall
rather than the grade they just completed.

Our Mission Center Reunion was held in Springfield, Virginia, this weekend. Tamara,
Jenn, Danny, and I each attended portions of the event.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, we have
our monthly priesthood meeting on Tuesday evening. I'll be taking kids to IYF on
Wednesday and will stay in Missouri to participate in that event myself. We'll also be
finalizing Bible School preparation assignments so that we'll be ready to start as soon
as Spectacular ends.

Along with those individuals and activities mentioned as well as continued progress on
our building project, please keep the following people in the forefront of your prayers:

Jackie
Karen
Theresa
Jimmy
Angelique
Michael
Tyler
Sarah

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