Saturday, February 27, 2010

2/28/2010

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

It started out Sunday with morning worship. For the first time since the series of storms, many people were able to get out of the house. Further, some people were able to drive in and find parking spaces. Therefore, we had a more normal sized group for the first time in February. People were genuinely happy and upbeat to be out of the house and at church on this sunny day. Some folks, though, were still basically homebound, especially those who depend on electric scooters to get around.

After the service Rose let us know that her son Chris had just been deployed to Iraq. Chris was one of the first people in his family to participate in the activities at church and attended camp several years.

Bill, Wendy, and Karin were down in Pigtown for the day as well. After Morning Worship and a quick lunch, we did a short walking tour of some places in the neighborhood. Then we set up for Kids’ Church.

We got back on track with our now revised curriculum for Kids’ Church. We finished our review of the book of Judges by learning about Sampson. Along with our regular staff and Bill & Wendy, Sarah was able to swing through for Kids’ Church, too. We were glad to have additional adults there to help as the craft involved braiding. It was a little more complex than most of our crafts but the kids really got into it.

Sunday night brought our monthly Celebration Service. Some of our newer teenaged boys joined the group and brought siblings with them. After the service we ate “Football Food” ---- items like hot dogs, nachos, chili, and the like that were to be used at the “Big Game” party. Tamara and Gloria made some items at home to go along with it. People stayed and visited for quite a long time.

With an improvement in the weather came an improvement in attendance at SonRisers. About 60 people participated in the activities Sunday Morning. Later that morning, Sarah and I met together to discuss a grant opportunity for camp this summer.

As we’ve been trying to update our address lists I’ve been searching for people we’ve lost contact with through Facebook. I was able to connect this week with a few more young adults who we haven’t seen since they were in middle school. It’s been a great tool for us to reestablish relationships with people.

That night after the NA Meeting was our Mid-Week Service. We had a more lively discussion than we sometimes do. We then spent quite a bit of time in prayer together.

By Thursday we were able to finalize the plans for the upcoming visit from student ministries at Michigan State University. Though there are some details still undone, the plans are now in place and we’ll be ready to have them working in the neighborhood for the week.

The plans for Michigan State overlap with the plans for the Health Fair on March 7. The crew from Michigan will be hosting some of the kids’ activities during the fair. I received the marketing materials from Marjorie this week and began that portion of our work.

This was especially timely as we were putting together the March edition of “Kids’ Church News” this week. Therefore, we were able to include Health Fair fliers in each of the envelopes.

Friday night brought Pizza Church. The elementary group is almost finished with its video curriculum while the middle school group returned this week to the Bible readings starting in the book of Ruth. The growing high school group continued with its study of the Gospel of Matthew.

We had our monthly Sundae Church on Saturday evening. It was a different mix of kids than usual so it took a bit to get the conversation rolling. Once it did it was quite a good time. We went over by about 20 minutes and didn’t even notice.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, Americorps is using the building on Thursday evening to meet with community leaders to discuss plans they have in the neighborhood. Some of our youth will be attending the annual Hunger Challenge next weekend in Springfield, Virginia. The crew from Michigan State is scheduled to arrive sometime next Saturday evening.

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

The Gray Family
The Erbe Family
The Bryant Family
The Brown Family
The Caldwell Family
The Miller Family
The Bunner Family
The Roussey Family

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
http://thisweekatthepowerhouse.blogspot.com/

Saturday, February 20, 2010

2/14/2010

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

It started out Sunday when I got a call from Danny a couple hours before church started. He had slipped on the ice and hurt himself so he was not able to get the church ready in the morning. When Bryce, Gary, and I arrived at the church to get things set up we were greeted with the knowledge that a mouse had died somewhere near the entrance to the building. When we got to setting up the projector it refused to remain on for more than two minutes. Our backup projector worked, but with the glare off the snow it was too dim to see everything clearly.

Despite all those things the service was OK. 15 people braved the ice and snow to be there. We spent a part of the service in prayers for the situation regarding the ramifications of the snowstorm.

Afterward, Gloria, Tamara, Vonceil, and I met for just a couple of minutes to touch base on some of the planning for when the Michigan State students would be in town. We had planned to cover it and several other topics during the priesthood meeting that night, but we had to cancel the meeting due to the snow and ice.

Our curriculum at Kids’ Church was already off schedule a bit due to the series of blizzards. With this and the fact that the snow and ice had kept kids at home much of the week, we changed thing around and did a craft that took a lot of glue. That seemed to meet their need to break the monotony.

Kids returned to school on Wednesday with a two hour delay. With them being off school for so long, a two hour delay, and the alley between the school and the church being filled with snow, we had fewer than 10 kids participate in Wednesday’s SonRisers activities.

The nursing students parked at the old Safeway parking lot then came down to the church for their class. I spent a couple of hours with them sharing some thoughts and perspectives on the neighborhood and the impact of community nursing.

That afternoon the NA group celebrated an anniversary of one of its members. Many people came to the meeting which caused a problem with the continued parking situation. The streets are still a mess and parking is a very real issue.

That night a couple people came to Mid-Week Service. Again, snow, ice, and restricted participation.

We had a broader variety of odds and ends that took up much of our time and energy this week. We visited the middle school to coordinate plans with the principal, explored some grant opportunities, played telephone tag with the Census Bureau and with Paul’s Place Outreach, we worked on curriculum development, and a long list of other things. By the end of the week, we had done a lot of things but seemed to accomplish nothing.

Friday night brought Pizza Church. We had above average attendance throughout the evening.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, Sunday night is our monthly Celebration Service. Afterward, we’ll be having a “Football Food” Dinner to eat up the items that we had planned to sell at the “Big Game” Party that was cancelled due to the weather. We’ll also be finalizing plans for the upcoming Health Fair and the visit from the Michigan State Campus Ministries group. This is the week we put together the next edition of “Kids’ Church News” so it can go in the mail March 1.

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

The Griffin Family
The Latham Family
The Smallwood Family
The Ayers Family
The Doggett Family
The Breyer Family
The Tucker Family
The Epps Family

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
http://thisweekatthepowerhouse.blogspot.com/

Saturday, February 13, 2010

2/14/2010

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

It started out Sunday with Morning Worship. With the storm the night before, we anticipated a small gathering. Not wanting to rattle around in the main room and being interested in saving on the heating bill, we met in a circle in the front room. I was surprised that 10 people made their way though the snow to participate in the communion service.

Just 2 kids came to Kids’ Church that afternoon. We watched a Veggie Tale video and saved our regularly planned craft and lesson for another week.

That afternoon we sent in the funds we’d received at the church to help the relief efforts in Haiti. Since the earthquake, we received over $700 toward the efforts there.

We decided to cancel our “Big Game” party scheduled for Sunday night. We knew that a few people would probably come but didn’t want to waste food by cooking everything up and not have it eaten. We’ll use the food in a couple of weeks at after our February Celebration Service.

This cancellation will impact us for a while. Selling snacks at this event was the primary way of raising camp funds from within the neighborhood.

Another cancellation from the storm was my flight to California for training at Saddleback Church. They couldn’t rebook me until it was too late to make the trip worthwhile.

I got a call on Monday from the folks at Amricorps. They’ve finished their research and are ready to present their project to community leaders. They wanted to use the building to present their work to neighborhood organizations and get feedback and/or buy-in and we were able to accommodate their needs.

I also got a call that evening about the death of the grandfather of a person who was active in church until they moved away several years ago. They needed someone to officiate at the funeral on Saturday and asked me to do so.

I had left messages with some church leaders in the Los Angeles area about the conference at Saddleback. My ticket was non-refundable but fully transferable so I thought perhaps someone out there might be able to benefit from the program. I got a call about someone wanting to go on Tuesday. I don’t know if they were successful at making it happen or not.

The next major storm hit on Tuesday evening. The memorial service for Elizabeth, which had originally been scheduled for the previous Saturday but had been postponed due to the weather, was scheduled for that evening. Despite the storm, a couple of people came. Tamara and I shared in the readings and Vonceil ran the AV equipment.

The storm continued throughout the day on Wednesday. With school closed we automatically canceled SonRisers. We also canceled Mid-Week service that night. I went to contact the Narcotics Anonymous group leaders about their plans for the evening and realized that I hadn’t updated the number since Maurice died. I went over to the church (a task in itself), did some shoveling, and got the building ready in case anyone came. No one did.

Thursday was dedicated to paperwork, reading, and shoveling. As the day progressed we shifted our concerns away from keeping the electricity on and the roof from collapsing. The new concern is for flooding in basements. This was exacerbated be a water main break on my street. They were able to get it fixed but we were without water for a while and some neighbors did get water in their basements.

We were glad to know that Ultimate Pizza was delivering on Friday. We had an unusually small first session, a normal sized middle school session, and a surprisingly large third session. In fact, we had a couple of new kids and some others we hadn’t seen in several years. This included another student of Vonceil’s who was active in church when he was in elementary school.

I sent out emails and made a few calls at the end of the week to the handful of people who drive to church rather than walk. Though we are planning on services on Sunday, no parking is yet available. The church’s parking lot was used to pile snow off the street. What parking is on the street is the result of people shoveling out their own cars. Parking in someone else’s space under these conditions is not cool. Tensions about parking are running really high right now.

Tamara and I went to the funeral home on Saturday morning. It was the first time I’d driven since 2/5. Driving conditions in the city were still amazingly bad. We had a slight delay in starting the funeral waiting for people to get through the snow-filled streets and the procession to the cemetery took a different route than originally planned after we learned that some of the streets were not yet fully passable.

A good sized group of kids gathered for our monthly Solid Rock Café on Saturday evening. Though having a dozen kids show up for this event isn’t a huge number, it’s the biggest group of people we had at a single activity all week.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. This is despite the fact that we cannot accommodate parking. A few people won’t be able to come Sunday morning because of it. I’m not sure if the nursing school will have to change meeting locations for the same reason as well. School is still iffy this week (it’s still quite a mess outside, mass transit is running on a limited schedule, and we have more snow and ice forecast) so we’ll be ready to roll with what to do about SonRisers on Wednesday. Sunday night is our monthly priesthood meeting.

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

The Bagley Family
The People Family
The Parents Family
The Covington Family
The Shorter Family
The Eisenhardt Family
The Purnell Family
The Conley Family

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
http://thisweekatthepowerhouse.blogspot.com/

Saturday, February 6, 2010

2/6/2010

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

Yet, despite the business, we may have broken the all-time low for participation in church activities.

This started out Sunday with Morning Worship. Because of the snow storm last Saturday (1/30) we had a small group of people who participated in the service. Our scripture for the morning was Matthew 9:9-17.

About half the normal number of kids participated in Kids’ Church that afternoon. We learned one of the stories of Gideon as we worked our way through the book of Judges.

After Kids’ Church we had a Personal Solid Rock Café for a couple of kids. They seemed to have a delightful time.

Once they went home we put together the February edition of Kids’ Church News. It was especially important to get it in the mail at the start of the week as we wanted to promote the upcoming “Big Game” Party.

I got an email on Monday from the company that is interested in donating its overstocked brick to the church. They said that they’d come out sometime this week to measure the building and compare those measurements to the stock they had on hand.

That evening Tamara came over. She needed several addresses updated for mailing the donation receipts for 2009 so we went through my data bases to find most of them.

Several people have been strongly suggesting over the years that I post this report on a blog as well as email it out. I’ve finally gotten to where I’m comfortable doing this. You can now also find and follow this report each week through http://thisweekatthepowerhouse.blogspot.com/ . I’ll add this link to the bottom of the weekly letter as well.

We woke Wednesday morning to several inches of snow and a 2-hour delay to the start of school. Because of this only a few kids participated in SonRisers. In fact, if we had given each kid a dozen donuts (which we didn’t) we would have still had 6 boxes of donuts left over. We were able to freeze or give away the nearly 12 boxes of donuts we actually had left over.

The delay threw off plans for much of the rest of the day, too. It interrupted the time I was to teach the nursing students who met at the church that morning so we rescheduled it for a couple of weeks from now.

A few people did come by a little later that morning for the Census Bureau testing. About half of the group were participants in the church.

That afternoon Onalee and I did the bulk of the shopping for Sunday’s “Big Game” party. I had a few more things to get for the game on Thursday as well.

We learned this week that Damon received an academic scholarship to Graceland University. With this scholarship and the one he received last summer at Spectacular, he’s got about 1/3 of his expenses covered.

I had my annual performance review on Thursday. It looks like I’ll be at this job another year.

Thursday evening I met with a couple for some counseling. Afterward, I did some cleaning in the front room of the church.

The third snow in a week started on Friday. Despite it we still had several kids come to Pizza Church. The snow did keep some kids away so we had lots of leftover pizza. We had one kid who we normally give a ride home but since the roads were already filling up with snow Tamara and I walked her home instead.

We woke Saturday morning with 20+ inches of snow on the ground and snow still falling. We had to postpone the memorial service scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, there were no other activities scheduled at the church the rest of the day.

I did field several phone calls throughout the day about Sunday’s services. Yes, we’re having Morning Worship. Yes, we’re having Kids’ Church. We’re still deciding about the “Big Game” party.

I went over to the church on Saturday evening to get things set up for morning. Norman was out front shoveling all the snow off the walkways into the alley. The building is about as accessible as it can be under the current conditions.

In anticipation of especially small groups on Sunday I set up the front room for the services. There’s no need for a couple of people to rattle around in the big room when the front room works just as well. Plus, we won’t need to heat all the space in the back, either.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. We may be about the only church on the East Coast having services this Sunday. You cannot drive or park here but if you can walk we’ll be there for Morning Worship and Kids’ Church. In addition we have the “Big Game” party scheduled for Sunday evening (We’ll decide in the morning if we’re going to do it or not). If I can get to the airport, I’m to be out of town for training much of the week. The memorial service for Elizabeth has been rescheduled for 6:00 p.m. Tuesday. Saturday is our monthly Solid Rock Café.

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

The Hull Family
The Sturgis Family
The Holquist Family
The Sigafoose Family
The Merson Family
The Lester Family
The Carson Family
The Holden Family

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
http://thisweekatthepowerhouse.blogspot.com/