February 7, 2012

Newsletter, Jan 2012

With the New Year comes a new team (the addition of Dan Keele) and new strides we are able to make within the church. Our attendance has been high through the month of January, averaging 50 every week. Many visitors continue to attend and ask questions. Speaking of which, we had an opportunity to study privately with one of the visiting families. When I say one family, I mean 15 of them! They always have a lot of questions and they are truly seeking the word. I laid a good foundation for the Bible as our only authority, and then fielded a host of questions ranging from gambling to what happens after we die. It was an intense study but very rewarding. This family continues to attend faithfully and gets involved in the fellowship and work of the church as well. I have also studied a few times privately with a teenager, Justin, who is very eager to learn the word.

We had the privilege of hosting the monthly reservation- wide Bible study in January, concluding our study of Hebrews with professor, Wayne Burger, from the Bear Valley School of Preaching (pictured above). Not including ourselves, we had 12 members of our congregation in attendance. This is always a huge deal, because it means our members giving up their Friday evening and Saturday morning to study the word, something you don’t see very often.

In our first attempts to get the new trailer into livable condition, we held
a workday to get all the trash, debris, floors, and unwanted cabinets out and into the dump. It was a huge success with 13 people showing up to work. The trailer is structurally sound, but in need of some pretty serious renovations. The last occupants of this trailer burned coal in the wood stove while the roof pipe was disconnected. Nearly every surface is covered in ash and dust. We plan to hold another workday in February to wipe down the walls and start priming for paint. (Priming for paint gives the impression that it’s further along than it truly is) We’re hoping to get it in livable condition by June and completed by later this fall.

Now that Dan is a part of our team, we have weekly meetings to plan upcoming events and solidify teaching and preaching schedules. We also take a look at all of our members and visitors and decide who might need visited and/or studied with. Lastly, we talk about overall goals in the church and ways to get there. One goal is to get the men in a better position of leadership. We are slowly getting them involved in co- teaching and leading devotionals. We love having a team-mate again. Especially while I have been sick this past week, it’s been nice to have someone available to cover for me.

We are blessed to have a lot of groups interested in coming out this spring and summer to work on projects and help with evangelism in the community. Last summer we had some groups interested in coming, but then they all fell through for financial or travel reasons. It seems as though our luck is going to be different this summer. I have spent a lot of time in January communicating with various leaders in different
congregations to work out the details of their trips. We are thrilled that other people are so excited about the church here on the reservation. It’s really great to see so many people want to come and be a part of the work here.

Every month we really have plenty of positive things to look at to be thankful for, but maybe more than any month since we’ve moved here I feel like the work here is really growing and succeeding and moving in the right direction. Truthfully, I have never felt better about the work than I do right now. There are so many exciting things going on in Kayenta right now, and a big part of that is the planning we’ve done for the summer and future of the church.

The last week of June, we have our Reservation church camp. This year, I am the camp’s director. As far as I know, I am the only person at our entire camp who has been to another church camp (including Heidi and Dan). We had a long team meeting yesterday afternoon to try and plan out some new activities and develop some ideas to improve camp. We have a plot of land that is completely undeveloped in every single way. There are no cabins, no buildings, no restrooms, no shelter houses, no
utilities or running water. It is the definition of the term “roughing it”. We plan to start some rustic and simple improvements to the campgrounds. We are really excited to get to camp this year.

This summer we are going to make an effort to bring 5 interns out across the entire Reservation. This effort is going to take a lot of preparation. A lot of preparation. We need to find the right guys, put together a plan to work with them, interview, check references, schedule their travel, work out the finances, etc. It’s a mess of organization to get an intern to the Reservation, but it’s a great experience for the students and a pretty nicehelp for the mission works. The hope is that if we can create a good relationship with a large number of interns then we can begin down the road to recruit a new wave of fresh blood to this work and strengthen the whole through better missionary efforts.