12/5/2010

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

It started out Sunday with Morning Worship. Four new people from two different households joined us in worship that morning and all stayed after for visiting. The Livingstons were responsible for the Advent candle lighting portion of the service.

When I opened the box for crafts that afternoon I quickly realized that the manger scene sticker pages we'd planned to use were missing stickers of the baby Jesus. This would not do. With I quickly dug through some other projects in the boxes and turned a more general Christmas stocking project we had planned to use at a community event into "Happy Birthday Jesus" stockings by using some sticker lettering.

That evening Tamara and I took two teens out to Friendly's for ice cream sundaes. They had earned the trip through attending church more than 40 times since July.

The Christmas Eve postcards we'd ordered a few weeks ago arrived on Monday. This was just in time as some were to go in the envelopes with "Kids' Church News" and "Pizza Church Press" on Tuesday.

Crystal and Tamara decorated the church for Christmas on Tuesday evening. Tamara also started planning how to decorate for the Christmas Eve Service.

Pouring rain and strong winds greeted us on Wednesday morning. Even in those conditions we still had 96 kids participate in SonRisers that morning. About a dozen of them came for the first time.

On Wednesday afternoon we welcomed a first grade class to the Peace Pavilion. After the evening's NA meeting and Mid-Week Service, I switched out the welcome banner in the front of the church with our Christmas banner.

Two classes, one third grade class and one fifth grade class, came to the Peace Pavilion on Thursday. The third grade teacher's comment upon leaving was, "I wish I could bring them back here tomorrow." I took that as a sign that things went well.

While the kids were in the balcony Nick was in the front room. We were a little behind in getting our newsletters in the mail so he finished stuffing, sealing, and labeling the envelopes. He and I will be working on our upcoming mailings later this month.

The computer system at Staples had a glitch in it on Friday morning when I went there to run copies. It didn't recognize our copy card, then our tax exempt number, then our rewards number, then my own debit card. It took over an hour to get just a few copies made. However, during all the waiting I found some materials we can use for the Peace Pavilion and some stickers we can put with our teacher Christmas care packages. They were all on final clearance.

Though we had one last class scheduled for the Peace Pavilion on Friday, they didn't show up. With the very full schedule both at the church and the school between now and Christmas we may not get it rescheduled for some time.

Friday night brought Pizza Church. Numbers were down from our record-setting group last week. After the first session, both parents of one kid who started coming about a month ago came by to check us out. They were pleased and excited about what they saw and are interested in participating in other activities, especially some of our Christmas activities this month. At the start of the second session, one of the new families from Sunday morning came by to drop off their teenaged daughter. The senior high group brought some unique challenges as we discovered bottles of alcohol in some kids' pockets once the lesson was over.

In between the Pizza Church sessions Tamara started working with kids on making T-shirts. The "Make a Power House T-shirt" prize is awarded when kids have come to church 20+ times since July. We have over a dozen that are ready to make their shirts. Two made theirs on Friday and a few more made appointments to make them in the upcoming weeks.

Some students from Loyola came by on Saturday. They were working on a project in their sociology class comparing and contrasting two neighborhoods in Baltimore. Pigtown was one of their assignments so we spent about 90 minutes discussing issues in and dynamics in the neighborhood.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, we have our monthly Priesthood Meeting on Sunday afternoon and our annual business meeting on Sunday night. After the business meeting I'm meeting with our Mission Center President. On Monday I'm going to Charlotte's house to pick up the keyboard she's lending us for a few weeks. That evening I have a conference call about next summer's Mission Center Reunion. We'll be working throughout the week in marketing next Sunday evening's Arundel Singers concert and updating our mailing lists for the Christmas Eve Service postcards. The art teacher from school 34 is coming by on Wednesday to work on some Peace Pavilion projects. Saturday is our monthly Solid Rock Cafe.

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

The Hampton Family
The Eaddy Family
The Battle Family
The Munoz Family
The Ratcliffe Family
The Meyers Family
The Woodrow Family
The Covington 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/