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