God's Hands

I want to give you an encouraging update.

We are really close to declaring our official meeting sight for our October 11th launch. This Wednesday I will be able to officially make that location known. Please pray as we make this final decision.

This morning I met with a local business man and he knows of someone that may have a place that could work for an office space for us. It is not currently being used and would need some handy work done on it, but it would have three rooms and a conference room space. It would be an ideal location if it works out. Please join with us and pray that this would work out for us.

This is a portion of an e-mail sent out to our launch team from Kim Selis one of our launch team members and local outreach coordinator at Epic:

“We were able to deliver 24 packs of groceries to families in need. Each "pack" contained one bag of frozen food, one bag of non-perishable items, one bag of bread items and one gallon of milk! It was truly amazing to see!

Many opened their doors to us and shared prayer requests, some, while it seemed they had need, felt that their neighbors needed the food more and sent us there, some were just thankful for the food.

There were doors opened for us to return. We were able to take prayer requests from these homes and we prayed together as a team for those requests and will continue to pray and follow up with them.

The group also loaded up, after the delivery and went to one of the homes to help a woman, who had fire damage. The men worked to unhook her stove and get it out to the trash and the women (and children) wiped down walls and the bathroom.”

I drove away from this neighborhood overwhelmed with emotion as I was just so proud of our team and the way they are allowing God to use them to “get their hands dirty” and Live Out His love to this community.

From there I drove to one of our other outreaches that one of our launch team members was leading that afternoon. Peter Metzger who is a senior at Bethel College was hosting the Epic Skate Invitational at Bethel College. People from all over drove in and were able to take part in this event and then were made aware of a new church coming to South Mishawaka. They were given our information and it turned out to be a great day.

The details are coming together in God's timing and we are remaining dependent on His leading. Please continue to pray with us for the following:

• God would use us to meet needs in our community and develop ongoing relationships.
• God would give us discernment on a location for our stage 1 launch this Oct.
• God would would provide us with an office space and storage space for our trailer.
• God will protect our hearts and minds and that we will continue to abide in Him!

I remain humbled to reflect on God holding us in His hands, while inviting us to be His hands.

Abiding in Him!

After much prayer and counsel we have decided to go with a 2 stage launch. Our first launch will take place in a church and we are still targeting that to take place on Oct. 11th. However, this will be more of a word of mouth launch that will be intended to help us build up the launch team and save up finances for a few months (we are trying to save up close to $60,000 to purchase portable equipment). On March 7th we are planning to do our public launch which will take place at Meadow's Edge Elementary School.

Last night I met with our launch team and it seemed important for us to stop and use our meeting time for prayer. We took time to remind ourselves that it is God who must build His church and that all of our strategies and planning are meaningless without His empowerment. John 15:5 has been in my mind all week long. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." I challenged the team to double their prayer focus in the coming weeks prior to our launch. I shared with them that in order for us to be fruitful we have to be tapped in and know HIS power.

Despite the enemy's attempts to thwart us from the mission we continue to see God's Hand. Our team remains committed and we are continuing to grow. We now have 33 adults and 31 children on our launch team (and we are still seeking more)! We had $16,000 come in last month despite having several of our families struggling to find work. We are so grateful for our outside partnerships (churches and friends) that are faithfully giving towards this church plant. We can't thank you enough!

God is amazing and it is our deep desire to abide in Him and to walk in accordance to His leading. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Below are some ongoing prayer requests:

• God will protect our hearts and minds.
• We will remain steadfast on our mission of living in and living out God's love as we seek to reach people that are far from God.
• God will provide us with the right meeting space for our Oct. 11th launch.
• God will continue to meet our financial needs (both for Epic and our individual families).
• Physical and relational protection on our families.
• That we will abide in Him and as a result He will make us fruitful.
• That we will have victory over the ongoing attacks from the enemy.