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/