Ben’s Blog

Everyone has returned from the Canada Mission Trip.  It was an awesome week.  We had a chance to be a good encouragement to the young church in Calgary.  You could tell the families and leaders/staff were touched that we would take time out to help them.  We poured our lives into the 90+ kids that were part of the camp.  Forrest had a great story of one mom that told him, her kid just kept talking about Jesus at his doctors appointment, to which she said something along the lines of, whatever you are doing keep it up!  Ben survived leading recreation, Janet helped in preschool and the rest of the team did an awesome job as crew leaders guiding the kids around.  All of our kids that went got much out of the week too.  On an upcoming Sunday we should have a video to share with all sorts of pictures.  In the meantime I would encourage you to talk with the Harshbargers, Collins or Mattie families and find out more.  Thanks to all that helped to send us!

The first day of day camp went great.  I have the fun of leading recreation.  Janet is helping with the preschoolers and the rest of the team is crew leaders.  The kids are enjoying their time as participants in camp.  In the afternoon we took everyone down to the local science center.

Yesterday we all had an enjoyable worship service followed by the fun of setting up for camp.  I’m sure Forrest, Matt and I will not being going into the tent set-up business anytime soon…

We’ll aim to get some pictures up here soon!

It’s hard to believe but it’s only 2 months to the Canada Mission Trip!!

4 families from MCC will be traveling to Calgary Canada this July to help with a daycamp at a church that is less than 3 year’s old – Journey Church.  We’ll be posting more about the trip as we get closer.  You can assist these families in their trips or any MCC mission trip by participating in the Kroger Card Program (4% goes back to mission trips), the sub sale on May 31, the golf outing on June 27 or simply by making a donation.  See myself or Rich or Scott for more information!

Mike will be updating you in mid-May on the “state of the church” as we begin celebrating our 55th anniversary as a church.

In the meantime we wanted to communicate how the 13-week 90 day challenge finished.  In those 13 weeks total offerings of $227,397 were given.  That is an average of $17,492 per week, up 29.5% over the 2008 average for those same 13 weeks of $13,510.

Since we automatically contribute 10% of offerings to missions this means a significant impact on available funds for upcoming missions projects.  Also we have been able to finish projects like the window replacement from last year’s wind storm and in the coming weeks updating our children’s check-in to be modern day and more secure.  In addition our cash reserves have recovered and we have been able to speed up our debt paydown on Lawrence Ave.  We’ll continue to share more as we invest in projects that will help us take the next step in multiplying our impact in all areas – Plug In to Worship, Charge Up in Groups and Live Out in Ministry and Missions.

It’s great to see the results of your faithfulness making a broad impact here and around the world!

We recently received our statement for the third month of the Kroger Card program.  To date $39,447 has been charged on the Kroger Cards resulting in $1,577.88 for Mission Trips in the first 3 months of the program.  If you have yet to get a rechargeable Kroger gift card they will be available this Sunday for $5 each at both Info Desks.  The card you purchase for $5 has $5 of value on it.  You can then recharge the same gift card over and over as you do your Kroger shopping.