May 2011

Well, Bryan wrote this at the beginning of the month, but all five of us have been hit with some bug or another (and then sharing them!), so I'm way behind. =(

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 enable a light on a spiritually dark campus of 15,000 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.

How God Used You;

We could not do this ministry without our team:

§ We have a recruit who has said they want to go forward with the process of becoming a Christian Challenge staffer at a new campus! More to come as that process takes place.

§ Awesome premarital counseling.

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

§ I’m going to be discipling "S" over the summer.

§ One of our girls who has slowly come out of Mormonism

§ Healing with losing Madison Grace

§ New campus starting in the fall

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

§ Our support

§ Sanctuary Church

Pray for Healing

Be in prayer for my friend who called me on a five hour drive to Phoenix in the middle of a family emergency. He was on the way to my place in need of some prayer and comfort. Jamie and I listened to a heart wrenching story of what has been going on in his life almost as if it had been pulled out of a movie. We ended up talking and praying until four the next morning, which was when he needed to go to the airport. Pray that God continues to work in his family. Some good things have already happened, but he is at the beginning of a long, hard road.

I’m just thankful that God has allowed us to be friends and that we were able to offer some comfort. These are the times when I’m glad that God has molded our hearts through the pain of losing a daughter, because we are able to understand pain and loss.

Discipling

I’m going to be taking on a new student to disciple this summer. "S" has been coming to Bible study (which has been going really well this semester) and we’ve grown close. I took him out this week and we talked about going deeper in Scripture one on one.

All of our students have been growing spiritually this semester. We have one girl who will be leaving this year to do missionary work with her new husband and a girl who left Mormonism: she also invited a friend to Bible study, who was saved at the beginning of the semester! She is still with us and we’re continuing to follow up with here.

Ministry in Odd Places (continued from last month)

It turns out “D,” the guy that I met through parting out my Toyota after it broke down, is not unlike many non-Christians that I’ve met. He is a good husband, he doesn’t drink, he’s loving to his 16 month old daughter, and he even took in a couple of teenagers whose parents were on drugs and couldn’t take care of them. On the outside, he is a good person who looks like a Christian.

However, the parents who were on drugs and should have been taking care of their kids (who were living with “D”) claimed to be Christians, and so now “D” has such a bad picture of Christians.

I am working on giving him a better picture of a Christian. I also don’t want to be silent about the gospel, so I shared with him last time we were together, but also spent a lot of the time listening. His family background reminds me of one of our girls who took three years of prayer and sharing with her until she accepted Christ.

The funny thing is that he happens to be the husband of a student on our campus! So this is an opportunity to reach one of the commuter students as well.

I am confident though that God loves him and there is a reason that God connected us, so I’m going to continue doing what God called me to do, and that’s share my faith and to be a light in the darkness.

Pappah Chuck came in for a visit!

Powers Update

THANK YOU! Due to “Taxpayer Privacy,” we do not know who was able to donate owed AZ state tax money to help with D’s Christian education, but we want to say, THANK YOU, either way! We have a HUGE answer to prayer: D's entire kindergarten year is PAID IN FULL!!! Praise Jehovah Jireh, our Provider. Although we raise our support to be able to minister to college students, God has blessed us with so many blessings and opportunities. After my amazing experience with Christian education, I have always known that I want that for my children. Thank you for your prayers for this and your help!

The sweet brothers at a local museum

April 2011 - God Answers Prayer!

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 a spiritually dark campus of 15,000 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

Pre-Marital Counseling: GREAT resources (even if you're single or already married)

Another facet of the ministry that we really enjoy is premarital counseling. When you’re in college, you are at the age where getting married is not very far off. We actually have three engaged couples in our group right now, and I wouldn’t doubt it if we had more next year.

We really believe this as an important part of the ministry when it comes up, because so many marriages end in divorce. Often times, students have been taught awful habits by their parents and they have no idea what is about to come if they go in without learning how to have a Godly marriage. We go through Love Languages (http://www.5lovelanguages.com/), Personality styles (our favorite is: "Personality Plus" http://www.amazon.com/Personality-Plus-Couples-Understanding-Yourself/dp/0800757645/ref=pd_sim_b_1 ), and Fear Dance (http://www.smalleymarriage.com/resources/pdf/The%20Fear%20Dance.pdf) by Dr. Smalley. Each of those things helped our marriage SO much. And Personality Plus has helped us tremendously in every day life. It (in our opinion) is a MUST read for ANYone, married, single, etc. It has also helped us understand our children better.

Pray for Joe. He’s one of our students who we’ve been writing letters to while he’s at boot camp

Ministry in Odd Places

As some of you may already know, my car broke down in a major way. It’s wasn’t a water pump or radiator that ended up being the problem. It was a hole, a new hole that wasn’t supposed to be there in the side of my engine.

Needless to say, that rendered my car useless, and I made the decision to part out my car because you can’t sell a car that doesn’t run for very much!

Through selling parts to the car, I met a guy who ended up coming a couple times and we were having conversations back and forth just based on a common interest of Toyotas. I was able to direct the conversation to the spiritual, and we actually talked for a while about where he was with his views on Jesus and I also was able to share what I thought about Jesus.

We are continuing our conversation, and I am going to keep sharing Jesus with him through an open door that God provided though a unique avenue. Side note: God miraculously provided money (seemingly out of nowhere!) for a new (to us!) car for me so Jamie can use her vehicle for kids’ appointments, etc. Thank you to those who gave.

Coach-Daddy

Powers Update

Dallas is playing T-ball now with Bryan as the coach. It has been a VERY fun thing to get to do an organized sport. Dallas hasn’t enjoyed it as much as we have…but we’re sticking with it!

The babies toddlers ;) and I enjoy going to the games and watching. More on our Fam Blog: http://powers411.blogspot.com/ .

We have had three major answerd to prayer: #1 Dallas’ Christian education paid for the first year (PRAISE GOD!) through ACSTO (more below). #2 Ten new Ministry Partners this month! SO encouraging and helping fill the gap of a huge need. #3 Money for a car for Bryan. Thank You, Father!

Our twins and Dallas with some sweet baby twins, Parker and Weston

AZ: Support that doesn’t cost a penny…

We put this in last month, but there is still time to be a part of this ministry THIS year (donation made by 4/15/11 to apply for 2010. Can even be done online) or anytime to apply for 2011). If you are going to owe any AZ Tax, please consider blessing us. If you already filed and paid any AZ State income tax, please consider us for next year:

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 (http://acsto.org/, Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, Inc.) designated for Dallas Powers at (please email me for school as I don't want to post it. but if you don't have time to email me, just donate and we can let them know his school as soon as poss. But we have to meet the deadline.) You will receive a tax credit dollar for dollar against AZ State income tax.

How God Used You;

We could not do this ministry without our team:

§ We have a recruit who has said they want to go forward with the process of becoming a Christian Challenge staffer at a new campus! More to come as that process takes place.

§ Awesome premarital counseling.

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

§ The older students I’ve been reaching.

§ Recruiting some more people to come on staff.

§ Small groups – God to move mightily

§ Healing with losing Madison Grace

§ Health for us and the boys.

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

§ Our support

§ Sanctuary Church

§ More salvations

We jokingly call this, "Baby Jail." This is where the twins and I (and if we're lucky, big kid, Noah) hang out during Tee Ball games.

March 2011

The Harvest is Plentiful!

When we came to Christian Challenge there were about 20 students in Metro Phoenix (excluding ASU, Tempe Campus) that would say that Christian Challenge was ministering to them. The thought of reaching the quarter of a million students that didn’t go to ASU Tempe was a relatively new idea.

Fast forward four years. (I can’t believe we’ve been here that long!) There are now campuses all over the Valley with Christian Challenges on them. We’ve personally been blessed to get to recruit some of the staff members to come on and take those campuses. We’ve also been personally blessed to get to start some of these from ground up and turn them over to other ministers who could lead the growing campus so we could start another.

Over the course of four years, Christian Challenge has gone from 20 to 200 and we saw some of the excitement that comes from that as we all worshiped together this month. Our group actually led the worship for all the other groups and did very well to be such a new worship team.

We have one new leader stepping up into the role as a worship leader, and we have a girl playing violin with us who was saved last semester, and another leader with one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. Nick, our new leader is maturing into this role of being a worship leader, something that could end up being a life calling.

Fast forward another four years and we have endless possibilities. That is why we need people to be a part of our team financially. We are committing to see more campuses and salvations and callings to the ministry, and that can’t happen without you.

How does even $10 a month help reach college students?

It’s easy. Because that’s part of a salary. When you give, you are creating a position in ministry that would not be there without you. God adds your gift to the other monthly gifts and He (through His people) provides for all of our needs. This is a staff position that is so needed because ASU Downtown has such a need for Christ. We are the only Christian club that doesn’t treat Downtown as a minor addition to ASU Tempe. With 15,000 people who need Christ, we don’t view it as minor.

It is also very encouraging to know people are supporting what we care so deeply about and are praying for our students. As people who also support campus ministers, it is encouraging to give because you know you are a part of something that is making a significant impact in a spiritually dark place.

The two most important reasons which we have no control over is obedience. IF God is telling you to give and be a Ministry Partner, then He provides and He blesses. The second important reason is: God uses each dollar for His Kingdom purposes.

Recruiting

It turns out that recruiting other people to be campus ministers alongside me has become a large part of our ministry. The largest community college in the nation now has a Christian Challenge minister on it because God allowed me to bring him onto our team. We are also really excited to see a couple of friends of ours start volunteering with ASU Tempe this month.

Please be praying that the guys that I am talking to now will go where God is leading them, which hopefully will be serving with us. There is one guy that I am talking to seriously who is out of state. Several others are here in the city near unreached campuses. New staff are such a strategic way to follow the vision be sharing Christ on every campus throughout Metro Phoenix (300,000+ college students).

Powers Update (by Jamie)

Support that doesn’t cost a penny…

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 at Bethany Learning Center. You will receive a tax credit dollar for dollar against AZ State income tax. Pls. call me or visit http://acsto.org/ or http://acsto.org/faq.html

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

§ PRAISE: Student who accepted Christ being very involved in Bible study.

§ The older students I’ve been reaching.

§ PRAISE: Worship Night with a great worship team!

§ Recruiting some more people to come on staff.

§ Small groups – God to move mightily

§ Master’s degree

§ Healing with losing Madison Grace

§ Health for us and the boys.

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

§ Our support

§ Sanctuary Church

§ More salvations

How can we pray for you?

How God Used You;

We could not do this ministry without our team:

Read more about most in the sections below

-Worship leader stepping up

-Christian Challenge growing more than ever

- Incredible Bible Studies.

- Great Leadership

- Guys coming closer to surrendering to Christ.

-Passionate leadership team ready to do the work it takes this semester.

-New and old students are being reached.

-Getting to guide students through different stages in life.

-Investing in a local church.

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

thank you!