November 2008 Church Planting Update

We are meeting with our established core group, encouraging one another, seeking God's leading, and submitting to His will as we replant this church. We will have a period of “dormancy” this winter while we worship together around God's word, and then watch with great anticipation what God will bring to new life in the spring! Though times have been challenging, God has given us relationship building opportunities.

• We will be serving water to runners at the YMCA wellness events this fall and we have a potential meeting place at the YMCA in the spring. In addition, Mark has been encouraged to volunteer time working with the youth there as a mentor and in a ministry capacity if he feels so led.



• A providential meeting with the president of an area bottling company this summer provided water bottles for us when we held our picnic in the park in September. This relationship continues to be a blessing in the forming of networks with Brethren churches in our area, and the church planting pastor affiliated with them.



• The Sovereign Grace Church of Altoona (http://www.sovgracepa.org/) and its Pastor Tom Kurtz have encouraged us with mentoring and leadership development for Mark and amazing worship music for ourselves and our church to enjoy.



• A playgroup of women from the Westminster Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Altoona has befriended Kendra and the kids, given insights into homeschooling, and provided friends our kids' age with whom to play and sometimes with whom to fight!



• We currently meet in one-on-one discipleship with persons younger in the faith than ourselves. Each of these individuals have a hunger to know and understand the Bible and its application to life.



• One-on-one discipleship between more mature church members and newer believers has yielded much fruit.

We desperately need your prayers for our continued ministry here in the Altoona area. We have been supported by prayers of close friends and fellow pastors during this last six months, and we know that the effort to replant a church in this area will take many more prayers on our behalf.

Here is how you can pray:

• God would give Mark just the right measure of humility and boldness as he leads our church.



• For healing and restoration to take place in the people of our church so they can embrace the vision and mission that God has for them.



• For open doors for the gospel in our neighborhood and larger community.
  

Kendra's ramblings about dating and courtship

I had the chance to look over some old journals the other night and think about how life had changed and how my relationship with God had developed over time. I thought a lot about purity during those days. These were my college days. I was on my own, away from home, living in the college dorm and then in an apartment with peers. I was searching for a husband sometimes self-consciously and other times not so aware. Books that influenced me then were Elisabeth Elliot Passion and Purity, Joshua Harris I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Debby Jones and Jackie Kendall Lady in Waiting.

I was sort of on this track already without realizing it. I only "dated" one guy until I went to college, long distance for a few months of sporadic visits and letters. If he is out there reading this, he may even deny that we were actually dating. Throughout high school, my way of getting to know guys was often meeting them at Christian youth camp, then writing letters until one or both of us stopped writing. Yep, I was always old-fashioned like that, but I did not think of myself as old-fashioned. I just communicate more comfortably writing, you can erase and reword things that way...okay, I was as insecure as every living teenager. So, needless to say, I was a romantic Victorian in the 90s. This is why normal guys thought I was not their type.

But that is quite alright, because I was figuring out what I wanted in a guy too, and my journals attest to the fact that I really loved Jesus. I honestly see now that God was protecting me from hurts and mistakes that many in my generation have experienced, sometimes making feel guilty that I did not have to endure such pain, yet often making me feel so grateful. I wish I could take away the pain of many of my close friends and even family, but I don't have to because I know Jesus Christ can. He died for this very reason.

Here is how God returned my love for Him, just as I decided courting was for me, even the single life if God should so choose it, I went to coffee with a group of friends during fall break. I sat next to a guy I had already seen and already admired. I knew he would be the safe one to sit next to, just by having watched him for awhile and talked to him on occasion in the cafeteria at school. I wasn't looking for a relationship, I was just bored on a weeknight after having worked on a paper in the library all day. This man became my best friend and my husband.

The craziest thing of all is that I thought all during my teen and college years that really loving someone enough to marry them would mean setting aside my love for Jesus, but it was this very thing in me that made Mark love me. In fact, it was loving Mark that took my love for God to a whole new depth--because he was a gift of God to me! How could I not be even more amazed by the steadfast love of the Lord which never ceases?

As to purity, well, every Christian wife should read Carolyn Mahaney's chapter on purity in her book Feminine Appeal. The truest purity is not holding back, or avoiding the crossing of some sacred line, it is the freedom and the joy within the boundaries of a life-long covenant to God and the husband he has given to me.