7/9/2006

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

It started out Sunday with Morning Worship. Darlene and Ed were up from Florida for a visit so they joined us in worship. The focus of the service was on the sacrament of communion.

Immediately after the service Ed drove Vonceil and me to the airport where she and I each rented a van. Those two vans, in conjunction with our van (which Ed drove) and Darlene's van provided enough space to transport our kids and all there stuff to camp. We ended up with 15 campers and one staff member from the neighborhood in addition to Tamara and Jenn who were Junior High Camp Directors. One kid who recently moved from the neighborhood but has kept in touch with friends from previous years' camps came with one of those friends.

Because of the camp travel situation we canceled Kids' Church for the day. Later, Danny presided over Evening Worship. Even with many people in the midst of transporting kids to camp we had a reasonable sized group for the service. The light bulb in the overhead projector burned out during the service and the replacement bulb was defective and popped the first time it was turned on. I'm not sure what they did to have the lyrics to the songs.

On Wednesday the Adult Disciples group began their study of the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The group was very excited about the chapters they'd read and we had a lively discussion. In fact, pretty much everyone there read beyond the assigned chapters. One group member was especially excited because this is the first novel she's ever read.

I got a phone call from camp on Wednesday evening. David, one of our kids, wanted to be baptized. I got permission from his dad on Thursday morning then drove down to celebrate with him that evening. When I got there the directors asked me to preside over the service and bring the message. There were three baptism total that evening.

After the service was the camp talent show. Nearly all the acts in the show had kids from our congregation in them. The show started out with Theresa and LB in a dance routine. Later, Durrell, Forrest, and Troy performed a lengthy Christian rap that they had been working on for quite some time. Many of us were holding back the tears as they testified before the group through this medium.

The start of camp brought the end of our student attendance year so we have some statistics. In the last 12 months 628 different kids participated in at least one scheduled activity at the Power House. This does not include the kids who participated only in the Peacemobile activities. Of those kids, 52 came on average of at least once a month and 23 came at least twice each month.

We had a small Pizza Church on Friday. This was expected because of camp. We also started our summer format with having all three groups meet at 7:00 p.m. rather than meeting separately between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m.

While I was out for a walk after Pizza Church I ran into Violet and Joshua. They were walking home from Camden Yards where the Billy Graham Crusade was having festivities this weekend. They had both had a wonderful experience there and were looking forward to attending again on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

We've had some graffiti on our murals lately. I took a little time on Friday evening to do some touch-up work on one of them. While I was out there some neighbors were complaining that people would do things to deface a mural, especially one with a religious theme. As we talked, though, we recognized that there hasn't been any graffiti on Jesus in the nearly 2 years the mural has been up and so we celebrated that fact.

Overnight we had a fight break out on the street in front of our house. It took the police 30 minutes to arrive.

I got a call early Saturday morning from one of the drivers scheduled to help transport kids home from camp that day. He was very sick and couldn't do it. We did some quick rearranging of plans and figured we could just barely fit everyone into the two rental vans and our own van to make the trip home.

Just before Gloria, Vonceil, Onalee, and I arrived at camp in our minivan caravan my cell phone rang. We learned that one of our kids had cut himself while cleaning up the camp and was going to need stitches. Since one of us would have to stay at the hospital with him that threw a real wrench in our already transportation situation. Patty Ballinger from the Dundalk Congregation saved the day by being able to transport a couple of kids for us. The hospital did a good job of getting him through quickly and we got home only about 90 minutes after the rest of the group.

Looking ahead to next week we will have our regular schedule of activities. In addition we have our monthly priesthood meeting on Tuesday evening. We'll be working on Bible School planning and attending an Orioles baseball game (weather permitting). Some people will be participating in our Mission Center Reunion in Springfield, Virginia, next weekend.

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

James
Jimmy
Matthew
Mary
Jenny
Bobby
Erin
Paul

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