5/15/2011

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

It started out Sunday just after midnight with a baby born to a member of our congregation. This was a fitting way to start out Mothers Day.

At Morning Worship we continued our series on our purpose in life. Tamara provided roses for each woman in attendance as a Mothers Day gift.

We talked about Mothers Day at Kids' Church. Each of the kids then made and decorated pinwheels as gifts for their mothers.

On her way over to the Priesthood Meeting that evening, Vonceil discovered some of the neighbor kids using the Peacemobile trailer as a jungle gym. They were quite happy standing on top of it until she arrived.

At the Priesthood Meeting we had a long agenda of seemingly random items that needed to be addressed. Of course, we added a "what to do about the kids on the trailer" item to the agenda upon Vonceil's arrival.

After each of the scheduled activities on Sunday we went out hunting for signatures on camp forms. We ended up with a surprisingly successful day registering 8 kids for camp. One woman who was reluctant to send her daughter last year said, "She can definitely go to camp. It was such a positive experience for her last year and ever since she's been better at getting things together in her life."

We spent some time early in the week in email conversation with the folks at the Laurel Congregation. They have a little bit of land with their building and we worked out a plan for us to park the Peacemobile trailer there for the time being.

When I got up Wednesday morning to go get the donuts I ran into trouble in the church parking lot. Though I wasn't completely blocked in, the way people had parked made it nearly impossible for me to get my van out. After about 15 minutes of inching back and forth, a neighbor who was parked across the street came out and moved his van. I was now able to back straight out and across the street then have room to turn to go down the block.

110 kids participated in Wednesday's SonRisers activities. Once we closed up shop Tamara helped me get the trailer hooked up to the fan. I hauled it out to the Laurel church and parked in by their garage.

While entering the attendance data later that morning I glanced up at the television and saw on of our kids on the broadcast. "Live with Regis and Kelly" was honoring a teacher from Baltimore that day and one of our kids was pictured in a clip from his classroom.

In the afternoon we worked on setting up a means of donating to the congregation through our web site and blogs. Though still working on the details, we now have a "donate" button set up on most of our sites.

After opening up for the NA meeting that afternoon we were able to catch some parents at home to get camp form signatures. After the NA meeting one of its participants stayed and joined us for our Mid-Week service.

Once everyone left, Joshua came by. We had canceled the cable service at the church and needed to run wires from the antenna to the television. Since he trained in electronics he had all the tools and skills to do it right. Meanwhile, the kids who would have been climbing on the trailer chose to spend their time throwing rocks at the building instead.

On Thursday we spent some time in the morning painting new lines on the parking lot. While outside we had some time to visit with the neighbors who were out and about that morning.

We learned earlier in the week about who our new Mission Center President would be. On Thursday we were surprised to learn of a change in the assigned Apostle, too. That makes the second time in less than two years that we've had a complete change in the administrative supervision of our congregation.

We were able to catch up with the assistant principal at School 34 on Friday. We were able to set tentative dates for their kids to come to "Peace for the Planet" at the Peace Pavilion.

There was a mix-up with one of the plane tickets we'd purchased for getting a kid home from Spectacular. The airlines acknowledge their error but it took several phone calls throughout the week to straighten things out. At this point we have a new ticket but are still waiting for funds credited back to us.

We've experienced a change in demographics of the kids participating in church this year. With that, we're trying to get ahead of the curve by adjusting some of our marketing for Bible School and other summer activities. We spent some time updating and printing our summer flier so that we can start getting them in the hands of kids coming to SonRisers beginning next Wednesday.

Friday night brought Pizza Church. We had more normal sized groups this week in all three sessions. Afterward, Tamara bounced some camp programming ideas off of me.

Tamara met up with the other camp leadership on Saturday to spend time on the new campground. They were to plan out logistics and get a better feel for the facilities available.

Saturday night was our monthly Solid Rock Cafe. The kids seemed to relax and enjoy themselves and some even tried to teach me a game of cards.

Afterward I made a trip to the train station. I was there to pick up Quentin who was arriving back in town now that the semester at Lancaster Bible College was over.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, we have our monthly Celebration Service on Sunday evening. This will include a potluck dinner. The after school group from Paul's Place will come through "Peace for Everyone" in the Peace Pavilion on Wednesday afternoon. Throughout the week we'll be working on completing our camp registration forms.

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

The Riddick Family
The Bagley Family
The Whitley Family
The Bonnett Family
The Spence Family
The Johnson Family
The Bryant Family
The Jackson 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/