Resolutions

Has it been a week already! Not possible, seems like I just sat down yesterday and typed this note. Hope everybody had a great Christmas time with your family and friends and ready to celebrate the New Year together.

We will start off our week by our visits Saturday, Christmas Eve. Through the generosity of Grace and Christ Methodist congregations, we had Christmas packages for our outdoor friends. We did not have enough goodies for everybody, so we asked our friends if we could meet them at their camps. So after our regular stops, we ended up at Smokey and Dale's camps. For most of us, I am sad to say, was our first visit to Smokey's camp. He showed us around, taking us to various parts of his home, just like we do when people come to our homes for the first time. He has benches to sit on. A rug of Jesus strung out over branches for his meditation room while reading his bible. A place where he feeds his birds. A place where he sits and watches the trains go by. All very nice and he was so proud to show off his home. We also got to meet one of his roommates Leroy. A very nice young man, who is picking up the talents of making crosses and dream catchers from Smokey. We then made our way over to Dale's camp where they had just built a fire in honor of me, because I like camp fires so much and we stood around the burn barrel and talked about life. As we left the camps everybody commented this is good. Dawn expressed she was warm on the outside from the fire and also warm on the inside from our camp visits. So I think, we decided walking back to the van, this is where we need to be, not in parking lots handing out stuff to folks we do not know. We have been blessed by people who want to give items to our friends who do not live inside walls, so that is where we need to be.

Not sure why this time of year, we try to cram so much into such a short amount of time, but we do. Family comes in from out of town, so we try to get everybody together which is almost impossible to do, I know it is for our family. But we still try and stress runs high. I will say as Christmas Eve began to get late in the day and we made our way back home at a late hour, a warm bed and a good night sleep sounded good. The cold temperatures set in, the rain got harder, not a night to be out but it was Christmas Eve and time for Ms Sarah and Mr Scott's service at the community chapel. I was tired, cold and sleepy but made my way to the chapel and as I walked up, David McCormick met me with his umbrella and we heard voices singing Christmas carols coming from inside the chapel. Immediately, my disposition changed and I thanked God for these crazy people. I opened the door, to candle lights, the smell of homemade cookies, hugs from friends, music being played by talented young people, words being shown on the wall with beautiful backgrounds glowing, what a spectacle. I sat there, mesmerized what these folks had created, I was blown away by what God has done through us. A year ago, this building set dark, smelled of mildew, worn out paint,  and tonight we sat, celebrating the birth of our Jesus, wow, doesn't get any better than that. Words of thank you does not seem good enough, but thank you all for painting, scraping, decorating, heating, baking, singing, praying. A job well done.

I hope you all saw Krysten's note about Christmas morning. What a blessing to go around to our community delivering packages of joy. Hearing from Momma T, Goergette and Krysten, blesses me and encourages me to continue to work towards the time when we can go out into the community on a regular basis and meet our neighbors. As those of us who have been able to do at some point in time, we always have stories that blesses us with our experiences.

We continue to meet on Tuesday evenings for our community mens bible study. What a blessing it is for men who never would have come together, meet in a chapel where we can talk about how God is working in our lives. Matt has been awesome in leading our group and he continues to encourage other men from his church to join us. I continue to invite our men from the community and they come. We are learning, we are more alike than we are different and together with the help of the Holy Spirit we can make a difference in each other lives and help our community. Hopefully this is the start of something big God has in store for our community.

With school still out, we took the week off for children activities. I was there one afternoon, Tuesday I think and I look around and there are the Mitchell girls walking up asking, mr brian, are we having church today? Krysten had told them not to come, they knew that, but they have nothing else to do and knew someone would be around to lvoe on them at the center. I know at times, we want to close up the doors when the kids get crazy, but folks you all are making a difference in their little lives. They know in their small worlds where to come for snacks, activities and most importantly lvoe. Thank you for your hearts.

We had a big crowd Thursday evening. We had some new folks come and bring dessert. Yummy cakes. Ran out of food at the end. Ms Lisa was there with her lawyer. We also had our first turkey come on down game! Someone had donated over 30 turkeys to us. We had them last week but decided to wait until this week because of all the activities going on last week. I was hoping for a small crowd and we could have given everybody a turkey, but that didn't happen, so we tore up tickets and had our first turkey calling contest. Our friend Noel and Momma T called out the numbers and Georgette passed out the turkeys. Everybody seem to be ok with the process and we handed out all the turkeys. It was fun.

We set up in the friendship room for our bible study Thursday night and had to go find more chairs. An over flowing crowd, great to see so many friends join us for our discussions. Joey led us in the reading of Acts 27. This chapter is telling of Paul's adventures in a boat as they travel to Rome. In the beginning of the chapter, Paul tells them not to set sail, because of rough seas ahead. The pilot does not listen and they leave and run into the storms. Then Paul says, if you stay the course, ride out the storm, the boat will crash but it will be ok, because God will protect us all. Some believed Paul at this point others did not, but in the end all were spared, just as Paul had said. God told Paul there would be storms in his future but God would be there to protect him. There will be storms in our lives, but God will be by our sides to walk with us. Sometimes we cause our storms but other times, life is just messy and there will be trials, but we do not have to go through them alone. We have each other, and more importantly we have God. Just as Paul experienced the grace of God as He protected all the men on the ship, God will protect us.

Prayers were lifted up for Joe G (Icee Joe) as he recovers from knee surgery. Continue healing for Joe Barefield as he recovers from pneumonia. It was great to have Joe join us for supper and he also helped Ms Abbie pass out the grocery bags. Prayers for Gus as he is combating a cold and as he concludes his month long journey living under the bridge. Catfish's sister as she recovers from an illness. Hat's sister as she continues to recovery from her surgery. Wes as he continues to teach the children in China. Also, they are looking for more English teachers in China. Contact Beth if you are interested. New friends, Tony and Chico as they begin their new lives living outside, trying to find work to make their way to Montana.

Thinking back over the week, the thing that sticks out the most for me, was family. We have been blessed to have the children of our folks be a part of our community and it is so special for the young people to come around the center and help out during their Christmas breaks from school or work. What a joy it was to see Georgette, Momma T's little girl, join us for two weeks. She does not get to come home as much as we would like, so for her to be around for this long of time was a real joy. Georgette is always helping out, wonder where she gets that from? Allison, Zig Zag is a joy to have around, helping with the children, suppers and participating in our Bible studies. Lauren, joined us Thursday evening for her first visit since coming home. Her smile, her lvoe of our children is amazing to see. One afternoon as I was passing by Dr Phil's house, there were two of his children, Phillip and Merrill sitting on the front porch. I got to spend a few minutes with them catching up on their lives. It warms my heart to think God has created a place where our young people come back to when they come home, like family. To our young adults, thank you all for being who you are and continuing to support our community, you all are truly blessings to us all.

When I was in a customers house the other day, on the refrigerator was a list of New Year resolutions. The usual resolutions were listed, loose weight, eat right, go to church more, read more books. Got to thinking about that list as the day wore on, all good ideas, but I thought there was item missing, develop a better relationship with Jesus. How often do we make list about what I need to do, or what I need to accomplish or what I need to work on, but really doesn't it all start with our relationship with God? If our relationship with Jesus is not one we can go to in a moment of frustration, or anger, or joy, nothing else matters. We have talked about all year long about relationships. Our community is based on relationships with each other, but that is based on nothing if our own relationships with Jesus is not strong. Relationships with others comes and go as people move through our lives, but the one relationship that never moves away is our relationship with God. We can't loose weight, eat the right food, read the right books, attend church on our own, our spirits are weak and at some point we will fall away. But if we strive to be like Jesus, if we continue to seek His will in our lives, if like Paul, we loose ourselves and become anew in the Spirit of Christ, then all things are possible.

My new year resolution for us all, is that we seek out the Holy Spirit daily, allow Him to move us, to shape us in everything we do. We strive to strengthen our relationship with Jesus, so we can go to Him with any challenge we meet in the coming year. That Christ becomes our closet friend. As we move out and seek others, they will look at us and say, there is something different about them. May the Light of Christ shine so bright in us all in the coming months, nothing will be impossible to accomplish.

May this New Year bring joy, peace and many blessings to you all and your families. Amen.