December 2008

How God Used You:
Read more about most in the sections below

- Missionary from Peru came to be a guest speaker at Sanctuary
-Peru mission trip being planned for Spring Break

-Bible Studies and discipleship keep getting better!

-Events each weekend for community

- Church attendance is staying strong even with midterms and holidays.

-Sanctuary and Christian Challenge students’ eyes are opened to human trafficking and we are taking action.

-Lots of students are being met through ASU events.

-We have been able to have a lot of great one-on-one time with our students & new and/or unchurched students.

-We’ve been praying for you.

Made possible by God’s mighty power and your prayers & giving: thank you!

Happy Thanksgiving & Merry Christmas!

We hope you had a great time with your family on Thanksgiving. We were pleased to have ours with two people from Sanctuary who weren’t able to be home for the holidays.

Student Spotlight!

It’s surprising that it took us so long to find this out, but we have a student named Jeremiah who was one of the top students in the nation for physics who also scored a perfect score on his S.A.T.’s for math. Needless to say, he is incredibly smart and had planned to go to MIT for quite some time before coming to Poly.

MIT did not accept his application and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do because his dream had been crushed. He actually considered not going to college because of the cost and not getting to go to MIT, but ASU Poly accepted him on a full scholarship.

Although this was great news, Jeremiah was still depressed when he got to Poly because he wasn’t where he thought God had wanted him to be, at his dream school. So after a week being at Poly, Jeremiah sat down to pray. He came to the conclusion that God had put him at Poly for a reason, and although he didn’t know what it was, he committed to God that he would do it.

Within MINUTES, Jamie called him and asked him to be the president of Christian Challenge at Poly so we could be an official organization. He agreed and has been an incredible blessing to us ever since.

He shared this story when I asked him to lead the Man Clan Bible study after my knee surgery. I was amazed by this story and by his natural teaching ability.

We are truly blessed to have Jeremiah, and amazed that God would work to bring us together in a way that only He can do. Pray that God will bring us more leaders like Jeremiah and that we can raise up leaders from our church.

Jeremiah at Christian Challenge's AZ Fuzion event

Purity

For New Readers (to catch you up): I (Bryan) got a heart for Church Planting while Jamie and I were commissioned as missionaries by the North American Mission Board. They shared that Church Planting is the most effective way of reaching college students and where Christian Challenge, nationwide, will be heading. God has provided a co-planter/co-pastor, Jason Robinson, student leaders, a FREE place to meet ON CAMPUS and a serious passion to reach the unchurched on the campus.

Jason and Bryan just finished up a 5 week sermon series on purity. It’s still amazing that we get to work together and how great it is for the students to get two different perspectives from people with two different life experiences.

But it has been a great time for our church, and even with the extreme busyness (end of semester projects, finals) of the students, we are staying steady and even seeing some new faces.

Powers Update

The ACL surgery went well! Thanks for praying. I (Bryan) had never broken a bone or had surgery; so I really didn’t know what to expect. The pain was tolerable, and I am walking around normally now. There are still times in the morning or when I’ve been sitting for too long that it will get stiff and sore, but it is much better than I expected it to be.

Dallas is now 3! He had a great time at his dinosaur-themed party. He is such an amazing blessing to us each day. As usual, he is busy entertaining everyone and cracking us up!

Please pray, our support is not meeting our bills. We are praying for faith and provision.

Prayer Needs

One of the students who has been coming less and less finally stopped coming and we found out that he had been baptized into the Mormon “church.” Please pray that God will direct him back. Also pray that he will be able to see the deep lack of Truth, freedom, Christ as Savior, etc. in that religion and be able to get out of it.

Also, another student’s young sister, age six. Was taken by their addict father (who has custody L) and he has disappeared with her. Please pray for her safety and peace for the distraught family.

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

- Student to return to Christ
- Missing 6 year old
- Our support is insufficient to pay our bills
- Healing with losing Madison Grace –it has been especially difficult for Jamie
- Bryan’s recovery
- Kim as she starts MSC
- PRAISE – Sanctuary’s amazing student leaders
- Mission trip plans to Peru for Spring Break.
- That students, especially unchurched/unsaved will continue to be drawn to CC & Sanctuary
- Prayer and PRAISE: In-vitro and surrogacy
- PRAISE: New church plant
-16 have accepted Christ
- C., G., S. & M. to accept Christ
-Sharing the Gospel on campus

How can we pray for you?

November, 2008

How God Used You:
Read more about most in the sections below

- Bible Studies keep getting better!

-Events each weekend for community
-Game night
-Movie night
-Boo Bash for ASU

- Sanctuary is staying strong with lots of unchurched/unsaved visitors

-Sanctuary and Christian Challenge students’ eyes are opened to human trafficking and we are taking action.

-Lots of students are being met through ASU events.

-We have been able to have a lot of great one-on-one time with our students & new and/or unchurched students.

-We’ve been praying for you.

Made possible by God’s mighty power and your prayers & giving...thank you!





Peru Mission Trip

We are planning a mission trip to Peru during Spring Break and are excited to get to meet the missionary stationed there. He is even preaching at Sanctuary one Sunday. It’s been wonderful to see God already at work in the trip. We had no idea that this missionary was going to come to Arizona for a conference. We just prayed that God would lead us to the right mission opportunity and this is obviously where He wanted us. We have already had a huge response from our congregation who want to go on the trip, even with few details available.

What we do know is that we will be during Arizona State’s Spring Break, so that our students who don’t live in Arizona during the summer will be able to go. We will also be going to a remote area to a people group who have had little to no gospel exposure.

Recession?

Well some analysts say it’s not and some say it is…either way, it’s been hard for a lot of people. As our support team struggles, we also struggle. We have lost $2250 a month in support and are almost through our savings. We are asking you to please pray about an extra one-time gift or beginning or increasing your monthly support if you are able. God has always provided and we wait knowing that He will provide! Every trip to the mail box has been one of anticipation (expecting a check down to the dollar of the money we need for a bill)!! We are truly, truly in awe of the way God provides for our needs through His people.

I (Jamie) have been reading a lot of Isaiah as I am in need of verses of promise and comfort as and grieve the loss of and miss my Madison. This verse has been a comfort to me as well as reminding me to stay focused on Heaven and remain faithful and fruitful while in this “mist” of a life. I pray it ministers to you as well.

“They will enter Zion with singing;
Everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
Isaiah 35:10

Many dreams have been lost this year for many people: financial security or comfort and the life they expected with that and for Bryan and me, our life on earth parenting both of our children, watching our daughter grow up and marry and hold her hand and guide her as she has her own children, even to just know her personality. This life comes with joy and sorrow, but we are not living for here…join us in keeping our eyes on Heaven.

Intramurals

We have discovered a new way to meet students who would never come to the Christian Challenge table that we set up in the student union. We are now putting teams together for the intramural sports. ASU’s intramural program is just getting off the ground at Poly, so they have been extremely happy to see club involvement.

We just finished a co-ed flag football season, coming in 2nd place, (out of three teamsJ) and we’re getting ready to start in on a softball season. We have met so many new students that we haven’t even seen on campus before, and are getting to form some great relationships with the staff, which is crucial to a Christian club that has to have support from the college.

Please be praying for the students that we meet through sports. We have met some that said they had gotten fliers on their door and would have liked to come to something, but didn’t know anyone who was going, so they didn’t; now they know us. God is using sports in a big way on this campus. Please pray that softball will be a success like football.

Powers Update

While playing flag football with the students, I (Bryan) collapsed in excruciating pain. I have dealt with a knee injury before, but never had conclusive word on what was wrong from my doctor. This time we found out that I tore my ACL in my knee about 7 years ago while wakeboarding. We didn’t know because this injury doesn’t show up on X-ray, only on MRI’s. During the game, the bones in the leg collided into each other because there was no ligament there to stop them from sliding over each other. So I will have to have surgery on the 13th of this month. The
surgeon also looked at the other knee and said that it is also loose and we should do an MRI to see if it was torn as well. Please pray for the surgery, bills and pain.





Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

-Bryan’s knee surgery

-Kim as she starts MSC

-PRAISE - Fall semester has been amazing reaching new freshman.

-Mission trip plans to Peru for Spring Break.

-That students, especially unchurched/unsaved, will continue to be drawn to CC & Sanctuary

-Our healing with losing Madison Grace

-Prayer and PRAISE: In-vitro and surrogacy

-PRAISE: New church plant
-16 have accepted Christ

- C., G., S. & M. to accept Christ

-Sharing the Gospel on campus

- For our support needs to reach 100%.

How can we pray for you?

October, 2008

How God Used You:
Read more about most in the sections below

- Bible Studies are awesome!

-Events each weekend for community
-Over 100 people at Dodgeball!!!
-Movie night
-Party hosted by one of our sweet families
-Hiking Humphrey’s Peak

-Kick-off Sanctuary service was a HUGE success! Over 50 people came!
-Lots of unchurched/unsaved visitors

-Bryan was able to serve Hurricane victims.

-Sanctuary and Christian Challenge students’ eyes are opened to human trafficking and we are taking action.

-We have been able to have a lot of great one-on-one time with our students & new and/or unchurched students.

We’ve been praying for you.

Made possible by God’s mighty power and your prayers & giving: thank you!

Louisiana Mission Trip

This was an interesting month because we’ve been teaching about missions and reaching out to all places and people groups. After Gustav hit, there was a plea sent out to all the Christian Challenge directors to come to Louisiana to help with hurricane relief.

I (Bryan) prayed about going and really felt led, so he went for a week (planned five days, but ended up being six because Hurricane Ike hit while he was helping with Gustav). It was a great experience. I got to meet another Christian Challenge director and become friends with him. I passed out food stamps in the coliseum and helped remove trees from some houses, including a widow’s house.

It was amazing that God brought everything together, because this trip could have easily been a deleted email.




Taking on the Highest Peak in Arizona

We took some of the guys from our group to hike Humphrey’s Peak, which is almost 13,000 ft at the top. We joked later that the first hiking trip that our church picked to do was the highest one in Arizona. It turned out that going from about 1000 feet above sea level in Phoenix to almost 13,000 in Flagstaff in about a day’s time was pretty hard, so hard that Bryan and one of the other guys got altitude sickness. We got to about 12,000 ft with about 2 miles left of hiking and had to turn around.

Hopefully we’ll get a chance to do this again at the beginning of the summer next year so we can conquer the Peak. However, it was a great time for fellowship and bonding. We now have a new person who is most likely permanently bonded to the group. It was also a good time to get out with just the guys and to have an example of taking on a task that God calls us to, something we’ve been learning on Wednesday nights in guy’s Bible study.

Bible Studies

We have several Bible studies that meet on campus right now, and it’s been really exciting to see what’s going on.

Monday night, we have a group that is led by a first time Bible study leader, which is so exciting to see. He approached us to say that he had something he wanted to do, and he’s been doing it, and even has some new, unchurched people involved.

Our Tuesday night group is also awesome; it’s about growing much deeper in relationship with Christ. We were excited to have a new student who said he came because he googled “ASU Poly Bible Study” and pulled up our website! He has also been coming to Sanctuary.

Wednesday’s “Man Clan” is led by me (Bryan) and has been great. We’ve had some new guys, and they’ve really meshed well.

Thursdays is a ladies group that is co-led by Kim Kelly (one of our core students) and Jamie. They are studying Women of Faith’s: “Discovering God’s Will for Your Life.”

In addition to the Ladies’ Group, another first-time Bible Study leader hosts a coed group at his on campus house that focuses on prayer and discussion. It’s been amazing as well.

Please be praying that we continue to have more people come to each Bible study and for the leaders to be encouraged as they seek to make disciples on the ASU Poly Campus.. We are truly blessed with our student leaders and their dedication.

Dodgeball and Party!

We had just over 100 students come to our Dodgeball event! This has been a wonderful way to meet students and get our name out there.

Two of our students and their parents generously opened their home and hosted a party for Christian Challenge. We have learned that students love to go to a home and parties in a home have been the most successful way of meeting unchurched students that eventually accept Christ. We are excited about what God will do in the lives of the new students we met. Please be praying for them. And we are so thankful for this sweet family not only opening their home, but also providing all of the food, etc. for the party. Praise God!

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

-Small groups and their leaders
-Kim as she starts MSC
-PRAISE - Fall semester has been amazing reaching new freshman.
-Mission trip plans to Peru for Spring Break.
-That students, especially unchurched/unsaved will continue to be drawn to CC & Sanctuary
-Our healing with losing Madison Grace
-Prayer and PRAISE: In-vitro and surrogacy
-PRAISE: New church plant
-16 have accepted Christ
-C., G., S. & M. to accept Christ
-Sharing the Gospel on campus
-For our support needs to reach 100%

How can we pray for you?