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April 17 Coffee Church Highlights

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April 20, 2016
Ministry
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It was another great Sunday at North Creek!  We are still rolling right along with a bit of less stuff as we are trying to sort through the trailer fiasco we’ve been dealing with!

I had a friend from High School send money to help.  It was AWESOME to hear from someone after 20 years and have them be so encouraging.  This has been an expensive bump in the road, so we really appreciate the extra help.  Thank you so much, Kristin!

We had a phenomenal worship time on Sunday followed by a great message in our series “Dangerous Prayers”.  If you have missed any of these messages you can find them online at www.coffeechurch.com.  I’m actually preaching this week, so that will be fun!  You should come and join us because I am preaching on the MOST Dangerous Prayer.  Such a tease! 🙂

We also started North Creek U.  This first session is called Reading Your Bible for Understanding.  It was a great start to our new Sunday morning learning environments.  We will be having many of these opportunities scattered over the year on a variety of topics.  Some will be a one-week class and some will be multiple weeks to cover a bigger topic. You can jot down May 15 as a DON’T MISS Sunday.  Cheryl Bledsoe will be teaching a class on internet safety for your kids.  I am very excited to be a part of learning how to keep my kids safer in this digital age.  Feel free to invite anyone to this.  They don’t need to be a part of North Creek to register!  Sign ups will be out soon.

Apparently we were on KGW again on Monday night regarding North Creek getting the trailer back.  Also, the Battle Ground police department is doing an AMAZING job!  They think they have our thief in custody for another crime and are gathering evidence to make an arrest.  Our thieve’s quick departure to jail may be why our stuff didn’t get sold piece by piece.  We will keep you posted as our story unfolds!

We have good news to share about the Battle Ground campus on Sunday as well.  This journey of merging our two campuses has been one touch of God after the other.  He has been faithful at every turn, although our human hearts sure wanted to panic a few times!  We look forward to moving toward a permanent facility as the Lord enables and finding our home.

How can you help get us to where we need to go?  Easy answer!  Consistent monthly giving.  As we approach the possibility of buying a new building, our lending agency will look at our monthly capacity to pay our bills.  The more capacity, the better the step we can take.  I am happy to say that we have made budget so far this year, while also giving substantially more to missions, as well as nearly $7000 to Charity Water.  That being said, our budget is down to it’s bare bones, so getting our giving up will speak volumes to our future.  See www.coffeechurch.com for easy, online giving.

So, onward we go!  So much to dream about, so much to do!  Thanks for going on this journey with us!

 

 

 

The Lost Shall Be Found!

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April 15, 2016
Ministry
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2016-04-14 10.48.28Our mobile trailer was FOUND yesterday!!!  It was parked nicely in a neighborhood in Salmon Creek in plain site from a main roadway.

The good news is that nearly all of our stuff was in it or recovered at the initial scene.  The bad news is that something clearly happened to the trailer and lots of our sound equipment.

We can’t really figure out what exactly took place in this whole story, but here’s the details we do have:

Our hitch lock was demolished, while our back door locks are still on it…they got in by destroying the door with a crow bar, so you can imagine how lovely that looks!

The trailer has front end damage, damage to the wheel well and a metal brace in the front is cracked  Our guess is that the trailer hit something pretty hard.  We had to put it on a truck to get it safely home as towing it isn’t a good plan.  The adjuster comes on Monday and we expect they will total the trailer at this point.

2016-04-14 12.23.26Inside of the box we had five massive rolling storage boxes that contained all of our stuff.  The thieves unloaded two boxes in Battle Ground, emptied the contents back into the trailer and left the boxes.  Unfortunately it was the sound box and the foyer box.  Our sound equipment and a large flat panel television was thrown into the trailer, while the cords and snake were sliced to remove them from the box.  Not only that, but the pile was directly under a part of the roof that was leaking, so it was wet or damp when we found it.  It also looked like it may have taken another hit when the trailer was in an accident and jossled everything around again.  We will need to talk to the insurance about the next step for our equipment.

The KidCity box seems like it was untouched through the whole ordeal.  It was wedged in pretty tight and difficult to get to.

The Tiny Town box clearly toppled over.  It is a very heavy box with a TV mounted inside.  The TV took a hard blow on the way down, and while it still works, I think it audibly moaned at me when I booted it up. 🙂  The box is strong as an ox, but it looks like it fought a tough battle!

Another sound box was partially dissembled as well.  It looks like they were planning on dismantling and selling our stuff, but gave up in the middle.  We aren’t sure why, but we do serve a convicting God who is on our side!  Not to mention that unloading our trailer appropriately takes precise knowledge and three men, so if they didn’t know what they were doing, they had a disaster on their hands!

The thieves also left two fishing poles…

For this Sunday, we will be without our stuff again.  We have rented sound equipment, so we are OK.  We are grateful to have so much left to rebuild from and will be back to “normal” very soon!

2016-04-14 13.52.48Also, KATU, KGW, and FOX news really did all stop by the Battle Ground building on Wednesday…all within an hour of each other.  Chris got to very unexpectedly give 3 interviews.  From now on, we’ll all be storing a nice shirt in our cars with us! 😉  He did a great job and the best part was that they did not cut out the message of Jesus in those interviews.  We appreciate those news stations for telling our story of Jesus because the trailer is just a byline!

We have very much appreciated the Battle Ground police department, Vancouver police department, and the fire department in this situation.  What an impressive group of people who have been on top of this and very helpful!

I also want to take a moment and do a shout out for our pastoral team.  They are unwaivering, faith-filled, talented, and unstoppable people.  I can’t even begin to tell you about the strength it has taken them to lead through the last year of transition and tragedy, but they haven’t flinched in the face of challenge.  Mark and I are honored and humbled to lead this group of people who are full of integrity and loyal to the cause of Christ.  North Creek is built first on the love of Jesus and second on the backs of the toughest people I know.

And now to close out this story…God is good!  He was good when the trailer was gone and He is good when the trailer came home.  The story was always about His goodness.  Our mission is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus.  And we go forward to do just that!

If you don’t have a church, would you consider visiting us this Sunday?  Perhaps all of this happened so that you might hear about an unstoppable church in Vancouver, Washington that wants you to be a part.  www.coffeechurch.com