Summer 2011

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.

New Campus in the Fall!

We will be starting a new campus again with Christian Challenge. Sanctuary is still going strong, ASU Downtown has solid leadership, and now we will be at Grand Canyon University, the college that I left Kentucky to attend.

We will still be at ASU Downtown as well, because we do not have a staff member to turn it over to. That’s one of the huge hurdles that we have to deal with in college ministry. There are FAR more campuses and students than our staff could ever reach. There are 300-350 thousand college students in Metro Phoenix spread across dozens of campuses. Christian Challenge at Grand Canyon University (GCU) will be instrumental in reaching the other campuses, by recruiting Christian Challenge leaders and staff.

We are in the beginning stages of partnering with GCU in an internship program. There are students who come in on a large scholarship provided by GCU, and they are required to spend time with an outside ministry which they choose. We are praying that Christian Challenge will be one of those ministries. Please pray with us in that. We think it is going to go through, because up to now everything to start Christian Challenge at GCU has been provide, including some student leadership.

This will be strategic in reaching other campuses, because these students will be serving with our staff like an intern would. Our plan is for these students to get connected to college ministry with Christian Challenge and to come on staff when they graduate. At that point they would have four years experience with us would help accomplish the task of reaching the college students of the sixth largest city in the nation.

Jamie and I met and started dating at Grand Canyon

in 2001 and now ten years later we are going back to start a ministry there!

Training our very own evangelist!

It is always surprising to hear what kids have to say. We were talking as a family about how good Dallas was with two of his friends. He prays for them all the time because "they don’t have Jesus in their heart." While we were talking, Dallas piped in and said that he had asked one of them if she wanted to have Jesus in her heart. She did and he led her in a prayer!

Dallas had been in Vacation Bible School this week and this is what he had been learning. So, all on his own, he asked her to pray with him to invite Jesus into her heart. They were spending time together and God was at work in a little six-year-old through a five-year-old. We couldn’t be more proud!

Dallas "show boating" at VBS Family Night.Dallas is in the black shirt.Colton and Hendrix in their VBS class
Colton and Hendrix in the wagon that the Children's Minister got to transport them around!

Powers Update

Summer has been busy. We helped at VBS this year, Jamie was the missions teacher, and it was the first time that the twins were able to participate. I went into Kentucky for my grandfather’s funeral and to move my mom back to Arizona. We drove a moving truck back from Kentucky to St. Louis after packing the truck that day, then from there to Albuquerque after being on the road for 15 hours, then finally home.

Before I left, we asked Dallas if it was okay with him for me to be gone for week as long as I brought his grandma home. He said, “Yes!” and was excited to see her.

We’ve been doing foster care meetings and lots of preparation for that. We are getting closer and we are looking forward to the day when we have a little girl in the house. We are hoping and planning that this will happen before Christmas. Dallas has been praying for the kid who will come to our house and that we can make "her feel comfortable."

Colton and Hendrix are both talking more and more. Every fruit or vegetable that they see is an “apple.”

Back in Arizona at her birthday party!

How God Used You;

We could not do this ministry without our team:

§ We have a new campus starting in the fall!

§ Awesome discipleship.

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

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

- New campus at GCU

- Wisdom & God’s Will with fostering

- Healing with losing Madison

- Handling two campuses

- Heading back to the orphanage in Mexico

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

- Our support

- Sanctuary Church

- More salvations

We thank God for you & pray for you. How can we pray more specifically for you?

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.