November, 2013

How are my donations used in Christian Challenge?

- You are creating a position in ministry that would not be there without you. 

- You become part of a team that reaches students for Christ who are not being reached by a typical church. 

- You allow there to be light on five spiritually dark campuses of more than 70,000 students!  

What type of donations are the most helpful?

- A regular monthly donation helps provide a consistent salary for this huge ministry task.   

- One prompted by God. He is the Provider, and He does so through His people. 
         
- One which you want to see make a difference all over Arizona.

Easiest Way to Give…Online: Automatic giving through your bank's online bill-pay or through NAMB's giving site, Kintera (Link: Ministry Partner Page of C Bryan and Jamie Powers)

Making Strong Discipleship Stronger 

One of our students who is discipling another student. He just took his disciple to do ministry together for the weekend in Lake Havasu. He’s coming on staff with us soon

A large part of Christian Challenge’s success on multiple campuses has been following God’s call to disciple students. A large part of my time on campus has been meeting one on one with students giving advice and counseling where needed as well as encouragement and discipline. 

I am discipling more students than I usually take on, but the rewards of seeing past disciples investing spiritually in their students, becoming pastors and youth pastors and going on mission, has made it worth it. 

One student has been overcoming some issues of sin in his life and has been making huge strides this semester. Another is a future Christian Challenge missionary to a west valley campus. I have future ministers and husbands who God has given me to invest in. Some of them are at the level where they can invest in others as well. 

The new thing that we are doing on Wednesday nights is getting together as a group, and then breaking up into groups of 2 or 3 and having some of the stronger students join me in discipling other students. We have always hoped that this would happen and talked about it, and sometimes it did, but we are being deliberate about it now and we are seeing some real growth. So we have multiplied our efforts and the disciplers are still being watched over and cared for. 

This idea came to me driving home from a Bible study and God laid it on my heart that the Bible study we were doing was good, but we had others that were similar. It was so simple and Biblical that we had it implemented in two weeks time. It’s awesome that after seven years of collegiate ministry, God is still teaching me better ways to reach college students.       

Too Much to List!

God has been doing so much on our campuses this semester. He has provided a local mom of one of our students who is discipling the girls on Wednesday nights at GCU, a great need. As a result, we've had several new girls get plugged in. 

One of the girls in our college group at our church stepped up and did the Harvest Festival. We were proud of her for doing it and thought the she deserved a mention. 

Many have already seen the pictures from our worship night where we had 182 people. We were too excited to wait to put it in the newsletter and had to put it on Facebook. We even had three students drive four hours to get there! 

We took a regional director weekend and talked long term strategy. It was good to evaluate what we’ve been doing and how to improve on our strategy. This has been a dream for years to have all four regional directors in place so that we can best reach all 23 campuses in Metro Phoenix.



We had a guys camping trip with some college students and all three of our boys. Where we were camping, there was a drunk girl who kept screaming that she wanted to go home. The boys started praying for her and within seconds, she started crying out for God to forgive her. 

It’s amazing to get to work with students whose first thought is to pray, not to yell at her to shut up like the rest of the campsite. It’s been a great season of ministry with some great students. 

Powers Update

 This month the boys got to hang out with college students more than ever! They LOVED the camping trip with the college guys! They all said it was their “favorite thing ever.” We had an impromptu Veteran’s Day Party at our house that turned into a Nerf War for awhile, so they LOVED that and had some fun wrestling. Colton and Hendrix turned FOUR Sept. 25th and Dallas turned EIGHT Nov. 5th! 

AZ Partners: Giving That Doesn't Cost a Penny:  Instead of paying State Tax to the State, you can donate (for a tax credit, dollar for dollar) that money to be used for Christian education, specifically to benefit a missionary family. You can bless us tremendously by using some of your owed Arizona State income tax dollars to donate to ACSTO (Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, Inc.) designated for Dallas Powers at ______ School (Please email me for school; I don't want to post it on the internet! jamiempowers@yahoo.com .) You will receive a tax credit dollar for dollar against AZ State income tax. Please call me for more information or there is lots of information on their website: ACSTO.org 

How God Used You; 

We could not do this ministry without our team:

- Making disciples who are making disciples  

- Great worship community

- Students’ roommates getting involved 

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

- One of our beloved former students and his wife 
lost their sweet baby girl. Please pray for healing 
as they grieve.
- Two Ministry Partners lost a parent.
- Brian at ASU Downtown

- Sean at Chandler Gilbert CC

- Aaron at Central Arizona College 

- Sarah at South Mountain CC and her support raising

- Tim at Paradise Valley CC 

- Hallams serving in Alaska

- We need a new roof and new AC unit. (PRAISE –it (34 yr. old unit) made it through the summer!)

- Orphans in Mexico 

- Chandler Gilbert Community College and the church partnership

- Healing with losing Madison 

- Us to train our boys up in a Godly way. 

- Our support ($350/month away from FULLY FUNDED!)

- Sanctuary Church 

Colton fell asleep while "helping daddy" on campus

September 2013

How are my donations used in Christian Challenge?

- You are creating a position in ministry that would not be there without you. 

- You become part of a team that reaches students for Christ who are not being reached by a typical church. 

- You allow there to be light on five spiritually dark campuses of more than 70,000 students!  

What type of donations are the most helpful?

- A regular monthly donation helps provide a consistent salary for this huge ministry task.   

- One prompted by God. He is the Provider, and He does so through His people. 
         
- One which you want to see make a difference all over Arizona. 

Easiest Way to Give…Online: Automatic giving through your bank's online bill-pay or through NAMB's giving site, Kintera (See link --> )

Full swing at Grand Canyon University 

This may be one of the most crazy semesters of the seven years of collegiate ministry we’ve been in. We came straight from a packed summer into new campuses and new staff. 

We have had more resistance from administration about setting up a Christian Challenge here than any other campus I’ve been on. It is not the Southern Baptist school that it used to be and it is attracting a different type of student. 

However, God has been at work on our campus. Several of our Christian Challenge leaders from other campuses have transferred to GCU, so the easy part was setting up a worship band and finding teachers. We have so many solid leaders at the campus that we have to rotate our teaching schedule to give everyone a chance. This is a real testament to our strategy of reaching all 23 campuses in Metro Phoenix. It is rare that we lose a student because they transfer to a school where there isn't a Christian Challenge. This year I got a student that came from a friend named Chris (he was in my youth ministry,  I discipled him in college, started a Christian Challenge Club at ASU-Poly with him and he is now a pastor). 

 We've already taken a retreat and we are working on partnering with the church next door to the campus. One of the leaders is considering switching his major from Criminal Justice to Christian Studies because he is praying about going into the ministry. Please pray for wisdom for him.

With all the students we have now, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, but I have loved being with this batch of students. This is a new era. I loved the group of student leaders that we started Christian Challenge at ASU Downtown with and the second group of leaders, and I am really excited about what God has already done in this time. 

One of our students posted on Facebook about how he was  excited to prep for our Bible study and that God was speaking to him through the passage.  

 The Need for Christian Challenge on GCU

College life on a Christian campus isn't always as Christ centered as students hope that it is. One of the girls came to our first Bible study and talked about how she came to GCU so that she wouldn't be around all the temptation. Within the first week she saw all three of her roommates drunk and they were inviting her to drinking parties.

Another student was asking for advice about how to deal with a girl who was texting him who was interested in him. He had heard that by the second week of school that she had already slept with three or four guys and wasn't sure what he should say to her. 

One of our student’s roommates came home drunk after the non-Christian one convinced the Christian one that going to a strip club would be a good idea. 

It’s great that there is a school sponsored worship and Bible studies in the dorm, but they are going to reach a certain type of student. We are reaching a different type of student. We have already been connecting really well with freshman and it’s been amazing being with the students that have transferred from our other campuses. Here’s a Facebook quote from one who is on my leadership team. “The fellowship and family that comes from Christian Challenge has been phenomenal these past two years. Glory be to Christ for using it to bring me closer to Him.”

Pray that God will let us reach these students that are not being reached.

Powers Update

We had a busy summer with Bryan speaking at/planning one youth camp and leading Christian Challenge students (who led the youth) at Zona Youth Camp.  There was also a ton of planning for the school year. 

We were so thankful to get to go on a vacation. Some generous friends let us stay in their house in Pinetop for a week. The kids played outside all week long! 

             Church College Party 

Dallas is back in school, 2nd grade. And the twins started PreK Four at their Christian preschool. God has blessed us with free Christian education, thanks to ACSTO and you and amazingly some State program for preschool! We are amazed by His provision and are so thankful for their schools and teachers! 

How God Used You; 

We could not do this ministry without our team:

- Two new campuses!

- Making disciples 

- Great worship community

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

- Family member who hurt her leg very badly

- Brian A. at ASU Downtown

- Sean at Chandler Gilbert CC

- Aaron at Central Arizona College 

- Sarah Support Raising 

- Hallams serving in Alaska

- We need a new roof and new AC unit. 

- Orphans in Mexico 

- Chandler Gilbert Community College and the church partnership

- Healing with losing Madison 

- Us to train our boys up in a Godly way. 

- Our support ($706/month left to raise!)

- Sanctuary Church 

- More salvations

How can we pray for you?

May 2013

Girl accepts Christ!

One of our girls at ASU Downtown asked me to baptize her which is always exciting. She is one of our freshman student leaders who Brian and I have been working with. (Brian is one of our new staff who will be taking one of my campuses, more of that on the reverse page.) Catherine has grown so much this year and used her baptism to reach out to the campus. 

She invited all of her friends, some from our Bible study. Van was one of the girls who had been coming off and on to the Bible study for a semester after we had given her a Bible when we found out that she was seeking. 

In a perfect partnership, we baptized Catherine at our church, Corona, and Van heard the gospel there from our pastor and she committed her life to Christ. Now it is on our end to disciple her, which Catherine is going to take the lead on. 

I know every Bible that is opened, even if it is years later, that we hand out makes a difference because God’s Word does not return void. It is nice to see such a fast return on investment though. Van was just a girl that Catherine told me about a few months ago. Then she was just another non-Christian student with one of our Bibles, then God got a hold of her and now she is a believer.        

Campus switch up!

For the last year, I have not had a single campus focus, but a regional multi-campus focus. My main campus has been ASU Downtown for several years which has been amazing, but now Brian (also from Kentucky) has joined our staff and he will be stepping into this ministry so that we can start Christian Challenge on more campuses and focus on the region. 

I have another staff member who is coming in for Chandler Gilbert Community College, who I will be training there in August and I will be keeping Mesa Community College, one of the largest community colleges in the nation and Grand Canyon University where Steven, one of my main disciples, will be leading with me. 

 We will be adding Phoenix College to the region where I will be training Aaron in August as well. We are also praying for a start up at South Mountain Community college. 

Spreading our focus puts free Bibles and the gospel in front of the 350,000 college students in Metro Phoenix , as opposed to just the students at a single campus. Over six years, we have gone from 2 campuses to 16. I feel like I’m just now getting a little bit of a handle of the regional director role versus being a single campus minister. Pray for the new guys I’m training and for our new campuses and for me as we prepare for another August!

Powers Update

The twins were sad that school was over (Dallas was okay with it.). All three got great reports from their teachers. Dallas was awarded Bible Achievement Award and the Certificate of Christian Character: Reverence.  We are very proud of all three! I’m looking forward to a slow-paced and relaxing summer  …we’ll see if that happens (not likely!)! 

Dallas did basketball at the YMCA and little league baseball with his cousin, Owen. That was a lot of work with the little brothers, but my (Jamie’s) dad helped drive him and watch the twins during games. 

We’ve also had a bittersweet event happen. Our best friends (we met in seminary eight years ago), Steve and Lindsay Hallam and their adorable kids, Grace (6) and Noah (5) moved to serve God in Alaska. We miss them already, but are so thankful that they are where God wants them and that their support raising is going so well! You can read more about them at: http://chillingwiththehallams.blogspot.com/ .

How God Used You; 

We could not do this ministry without our team:

- New campus!

- Making disciples 

- Great worship community

- Van accepts Christ

- Catherine’s Baptism

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

- Van’s discipleship

- Brian at ASU Downtown

- Sean at Chandler Gilbert CC

- Aaron at Phoenix College 

- Hallams serving in Alaska

- We need a new roof and new AC unit. 

- Our potential staff member who would be at South Mountain CC. 

- Cesar and Andrew at MCC

- Orphans in Mexico 

- Chandler Gilbert Community College and the church partnership

- Healing with losing Madison 

- Us to train our boys up in a Godly way. 

- Our support

- Sanctuary Church 

City Impact

City Impact

We just spent a weekend in Tucson helping five church plants with 160 college students. This was the culmination of hours of planning and monthly meetings in Tucson for a year. 

I got to work with a church planter who I have done some work with in Mexico. His church (that is three years old) is working on planting another church in an area of Tucson with no Southern Baptist churches. 

We went through this area with a team of 20 college, broken up into groups of three, doing surveys and praying for the residents with them. As we pulled up there were about ten Jehovah’s Witness’ ready to go through the same neighborhood that we were. We jumped a few houses ahead of them and just starting going. They were there first, but we had the Truth, so I really didn’t feel bad about taking the neighborhood from them. They ended up getting frustrated that we were there and they just left! 

The prayers that we had with the residents were awesome. My group was bilingual and ended up praying for several of the people in the neighborhood in their first language, Spanish. 

Overall, the whole weekend was amazing. We had at least 19 people accept Christ this weekend as well as two people saying they would have a church in their home. God was moving!  

     

February 2013

Winter Retreat 

This is the fourth Winter Retreat that we have done with Christian Challenge. These are always super impactful for the students and for the churches that we are involved with. This was the first year that we participated in a service with First Baptist Pinetop. I was able to share with them about what Christian Challenge is doing in the Metro Phoenix area and we had three students give a testimony about how CC has impacted them. We even had a student at Northland Pioneer College share, a campus that is in Pinetop that started as a result of the relationships formed with Porter Mountain Baptist Church on the winter retreats. We also did everything in-house this year. We had a couple of speakers lined up that we thought would be great, but they were unable to. We ended up having some of our newer staff members speak, and it was amazing. Brad (our boss) was out of town this year, and left the major planning to Kyle and me. We did forget the food on the sledding day, a couple of cars got stuck heading there, another car broke down on the way home and we had to deal with a drunk guy wandering into the church, but overall it was an amazing weekend. Students walked away challenged, and I walked away with bronchitis. Pray this is a good launching point for the spring semester. We had a great showing from GCU and I’m praying that it will inspire the leadership.



Christian Challenge and Bryan Featured in Golden Gate Bapt. Seminary's Newsletter!

New Staff coming!

Leading so many campuses has been stressful, but by the end of the month, we will have new staff at ASU Downtown! That will immensely help my feelings of being overwhelmed and spread too thin. 
The new staffer is Brian, from Kentucky. I’m a little worried about the transition, because I have worked with some of these students for a long time. I’ve been at ASU Downtown far longer than any other campus. I will still be there training him this semester though.


Powers Update
Support that doesn’t cost a penny…


AZ Partners: Instead of paying State Tax to the State, you can donate (for a tax CREDIT) that money to be used for Christian education, specifically to benefit a missionary family. You can bless us tremendously by using some of your owed Arizona State income tax dollars to donate to ACSTO (Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, Inc.) designated for Dallas Powers and you'll need his school name (please email me for it jamiempowers@yahoo.com). You will receive a tax credit dollar for dollar against AZ State income tax. Pls. call me for more information or there is lots of information on their website: ACSTO.org . 

God has led us to send our children to Christian school and where He leads, He provides. Thanks to donors for us to ACSTO, Dallas’ kindergarten and first grade were paid in full! We Praise and Thank God! Thank you for your help. This school year has been AMAZING! Dallas is learning and growing academically and Spiritually. 

So again, it’s money that has to be paid either way. It can be paid to the State or donated to a School Tuition Organization and used for Christian education. One (or three if you donate more) Tax Form(s) is used to get the credit, which is dollar for dollar.

Please tell us if you do, because we would like to thank you and they cannot tell us who donated (Taxpayer Privacy). 






Other Powers News:

Dallas was featured as one of the Missionary Kids of the Month in the publication sent out by the WMU. We (of course) are proud parents. 

We have also been sick for a solid month. Everyone in the house has been sick at least once, and we've had up to four of us being sick at the same time. It’s been passed from one to another and we've all been to the doctor and on antibiotics. It’s just been a hard month as far as health goes. 

But we had a huge blessing: Bryan’s Grandma came in for a visit and the boys LOVED it! We did, too! 

Dallas Was One of the Missionary Kids Featured in November's RA/GA Mission Magazines!  

How God Used You; 

We could not do this ministry without our team:

- New campus!

- Making disciples 

- Great worship community

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

- “A” salvation and suicidal thoughts to go away

- We need a new roof and new AC unit. 

- Brian and Addie, who are going to come on with ASU Downtown in the spring.

- Cesar and Andrew at MCC

- 2 supporters recently diagnosed with breast cancer

- Orphans in Mexico 

- Chandler Gilbert Community College and the church partnership

- Healing with losing Madison 

- Handling four campuses

- Us to train our boys up in a Godly way. 

- Our support

- Sanctuary Church 

- More salvations

- Four extended family prayer requests