Well summer is officially here!!  We've celebrated our little Alex's preschool graduation and 5th birthday, Courtney's passing of EOGs and 7th grade, and Dean and I have also had our 2nd anniversary - all within the last month! 

But more importantly in the last month, God has renewed something in us as a couple and a team.  I know I'm excited about where it's going.  Bible studies/discussions between a husband and wife sound like a harmless and fruitful thing, but from this Baptist-raised, strong-willed, mom's-only-child, super defensive, scared-of-being-wrong "Princess" who has had a problem with past relationships....having a Bible study with my Pentecostal-raised husband (with baggage of his own) was not always an easy feat.  I've been known to fight to the death for my viewpoint on stuff.....

As I've grown over the past two years in my relationship with the Lord and walk with His Spirit - I've come to learn a few things.....Imagine that :)  I think Dean would agree that so has he.  We both have strengths that the other one can benefit from.  And our renewed studies and discussions together are turning out to be the highlights of my evening!

God is definitely working on us and I know that I'm excited to see where He'll decide to use and place us in the future.

We have started going out every other Saturday night with Pastor Terry and his lovely new bridge, Angie, of Bull City Outreach Ministries.  It's been way too long since we've done regular street ministry with them, and this was just what we needed to light our fire!  Dean has been able to talk to and pray with a friend that he met a few years ago at an outreach.  The man is currently separated from his wife and they are having problems....so we are hoping that Dean will be able to come alongside him and pray for him more and encourage him to do the right thing.  (Both the man and his wife are profession Christians.)  I love being able to talk to the kids that we meet in the Durham neighborhoods - just telling them about Jesus and encouraging the ones that already seem to have some sort of Christian base.  If you would like to join us one Saturday evening - please give us a call or shoot us an email!  We'd love to have you!

As far as our mobile vacation Bible school goes - it's still on!  We're still ready to go....we've just had a setback.  Dean's brother, who has been paralyzed from the waist down since his 20s, has been in the hospital for 3 weeks now.  He was on a ventilator for over 2 weeks but has since come off and is doing better.  This set us back a bit because Dean's mom, Marcia, who is a vital role in our VBS, has had to spend most of her time at the hospital.  But we have rescheduled our first mobile VBS for July 7th and 8th.  We could use your help just doing normal VBS stuff - crafts, snacks, supervising kids, and talking about Jesus to anyone that will listen.  So if you'd like to help, let us know!

We have had a couple of recent requests from people contacting our ministry.....a window A/C unit (reposting this from Bull City Outreach), boys clothes (used are ok!), shoes for a younger boy, and undergarments for 2 boys and a girl.  I have more details on sizes if you'd like to help.

Loving Radically Through Christ,

Melissa

Believing God

I've been reading quite a few books lately....The Hunger Games series, Made to Crave by Lysa TerKeurst, the Book of Romans in the Message translation, and Believing God by Beth Moore.  (And yes I already have 2 Joyce Meyer books lined up for when I'm done.)

I just felt like God wanted me to share something with you that Beth Moore has been sharing with me.  I adapted it just a little but it's still the same message.

I.  God is who He says He is.
II.  God can do what He says He can do.
III.  I am who God says I am.
IV.  I can do all things through Christ.
V.  God's Spirit is alive and active in me.

I have posted this on various mirrors throughout my house and on my refrigerator.

Why?

Because they are Truths that I need to remember.  When I'm having a "moment" I can boldly call out these Truths.  Yes, in an audible, and sometimes annoyingly loud voice.

Freedom from my past and my flesh will only come through salvation in Christ and walking daily in His Spirit.  And these Truths have been recently helping me to deal with some tough moments and issues.

I hope you can enjoy them and begin to use them also!

Loving Radically Through Christ,

Melissa

Just wanted to touch base on the family I had posted about on facebook who lost everything to a house fire in Durham....

They are moving into an apartment in another part of Durham this weekend.  Their older daughter Frances has graciously allowed them to stay with her and her two teenage children for the past couple of weeks.

I'm sure they are very excited about moving back into their own place though.

I just want to thank everyone that read my post and stepped up to help this family in need....Lesley Chaffin for lots of brand new toys for the little girl, Kim McNeilly for clothing donations, Erin Emory for a gift card donation, Tresa Lee for clothing donations, Cindy Brantley for various item donations, and any others if I missed you - please forgive me!!

The family is still in need of basic household items like queen and twin bed sets, new pillows, dressers for their clothes, and gift cards to local retail shops to get other needed items.

If you have anything you would like to donate, please just get in touch with me and I can put you directly in touch with the family.

Loving Radically Through Christ,

Melissa

We get to meet lots of people in this life....crazy people, wild people, smart people, sweet people, quiet people, leader people, follower people, needy people, hurting people, etc. etc.  You get the point!

But my point is that they are all God's people....He created each and every person that we come into contact with.  And they were all created for His purpose and for a relationship with Him!  And they all are entitled to receive His love - because that's the way He wants it.

We don't know who we'll meet on a daily basis, but we can be thankful and grateful for each encounter.  We can be on the lookout for Divine appointments - and we can be ready in and out of season to share His love.

I must admit that there have been a few times that I have gotten a little weary with certain types of people that we encounter....the overly needy people, the victims who don't want to help themselves.  The people who always seem to need more than I have to give - the people who always have one thing after another going on.  Sometimes I get tired, worn out, burnt out....but it is in those moments that God is finally able to work through me and shine, because I have come to the end of myself.  And when we come to end the ourselves and He is all we have left to work with, it's when we're able to really get meaningful work done!

I am beginning to get very excited about our upcoming mobile VBS.  The smiles on the kids faces...them dropping everything and running up to greet and hug us.  It's priceless.  They don't really know us.  I mean - they've met us quite a few times.  But they don't have a day to day relationship with us.  They can't possibly love the real "us"....but they do love the Jesus that's in us.  When we go out there and visit with these kids, it's Him who shines....not us.

The past couple of weeks we have run into a few of our local families....ones we haven't seen in a while.  And they are all smiles and excited when we tell them that we'll be out there very soon with a little something new!  We're really more excited than they are though :)

This week we'll take two boxes of clothes to a family that has 4 boys and is constantly in need of clothes and shoes - as we all know how boys can tear through clothes.  And we love those boys...we've known them for a while now and no matter how little they have, they are always so joyful and eager to listen and spend time with us.

Last week we were able to put a few people in touch with a family and little girl that lost their home and all of their belongings to a house fire on Mother's Day.  This family is still very much in need of a place to live and furniture/household good donations. 

But to sit beside this little girl in church on Sunday, and to have her hold my hand and walk down the hall, and then have her ask her mom if she could please sit beside me....it just makes all we do worth it.  She has met me twice but is instantly comfortable and happy around me.  That's the Holy Spirit in me....it is surely not the grumpy, crabby person I am at 8:30 at night after a busy work day!!

I hope that everyone reading this will make it a point to reach out to someone else - to love on someone else - to get involved in someone's else's world besides our own....all in the name of love of Christ.

Loving Radically Through Christ,

Melissa

We had another mobile VBS meeting last week and things are moving forward very nicely.  We will meet again on Monday, May 28th and will tie up all of the loose ends and hopefully be ready to do a dry run.  We're already very anxious to get out into the community and share the message with the local kids.  If you don't mind, please go ahead and begin praying for seeds to be planted in the kids, and for a good harvest, whether it's reaped immediately or in the future with other Jesus-seed sowers.

We knew that the Lord had planted this alien theme in our hearts last year - but just in case we needed a little more confirmation that He wanted us to do this - He gave us a little supernatural provision last week.  Dean got a call from the local Super Dollar store and they provided boxes and boxes and boxes of 2 liter drinks, cookies, chips and other snacks.  We think it will almost be enough to make it through the entire summer's worth of VBS's that we're planning!  I'll buy some fresh fruit right before we start, and we should be good to go.

Isn't God good?  Here's to Him making another provision for cups and plates and napkins, right?  :)  We've got faith!

Right now we've got a little team going....but we'd love to have you help if you ever want to.

So far it's going to be me, Dean, Courtney, Alex, Marcia (Dean's mom), Carla (Dean's sister in law), Blake (Dean's nephew), Jean (Marcia's neighbor), and Kyle and Beverly Mulholland.  We have a variety of activities planned, like skits, lessons, games, face painting, puppets and snacks.

We will be going to hand out flyers in the Twin Circles mobile home park on Tuesday, June 19th and weather promitting, we'll be doing the first VBS on June 23rd and 24th.

If you feel led to donate to this ministry in ANY way, we would greatly appreciate it.  We like to order items from Oriental Trading to use for crafts and games and we always are in need of NIV or ESV Bibles, spanish or english.  We also greatly appreciate gift cards to WalMart for food and supplies, or gift cards for gas.

Thanks so much for supporting us.

Loving radically through Christ,

Melissa

Mobile VBS Meeting Tonight

We're going to have a quick little meeting at our house tonight at 7 to discuss more specifics of our mobile VBS.  I've worked up a lesson for the kids for the 2nd night (Not Of This World) - and I'm going to run it by everyone to see what they think.

We're going to be discussing games, snacks, locations, and needed supplies.

Feel free to come if you'd be intersted in helping out :)

We Are Still Here!!!

Yes I know I should probably be sent to "Time-Out" since I haven't posted in so long....but I promise we're still alive and still getting plenty done!  We took the opportunity with the winter down-time to get some organizing done and also some planning for the spring/summer season.  (We still did lots of food and clothing distributions during the winter, but didn't get to do our regular evening visitations in the trailer park as much.)

The winter clothes are all boxed up and on the shelf for next winter season....

The kids summer clothes are all sorted and folded by sizes and ready to be distributed to neighborhood kids during our summer outreach activities.....

We are working on getting the ministry supply shelf stocked back up.....

And we have our aliens ready to hit the neighborhoods.....

Wait.....aliens??  Ready to head out to the neighborhoods?? YEP!  We're getting our ducks in a row to start our alien-themed VBS.  This VBS will be MOBILE :)  We're hitting the streets with these lessons and planning to teach the local Granville County kids how they can be aliens in this world by living for Christ. 

We have a couple of folks already volunteering to help and we're getting excited!  We'll be going with the flow to start and seeing how God leads us to tweak areas, but we plan on having games, snacks, skits, music, lessons and lots of learning about Jesus.  We plan to go into a neighborhood for 2 nights in a row - about an hour and a half each night.  The first night's lesson will be "Take Me To Your Leader", where we'll take a common alien-themed saying and turn it into a lesson about who our leader in this world should be....JESUS.  We'll give the kids the basics of Jesus and how someone can "get to Him", through repentance and faith.

The next night will be "Out of This World" or "Not of This World" and it will be based on the verses in John and other places in the New Testament, that instruct us to live as if we're aliens in this world, because it is not our home.  This lesson will help teach the kids how living differently and changed is what happens when a life is given to Jesus.

Please join in and pray for us as we start out this new summer mission!  We will continue to distribute food as the Lord provides - but we really want to make sure that we take advantage of the opportunity to get out and share the Gospel this summer!

If you want to be a part of this in any way, just let us know!  We'd love to have you!


Loving Radically Through Christ,

Melissa