Hitting the Ground Running!

How are my donations used in supporting a local missionary?

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

- You become part of a team that reaches young families for Christ who are not being reached in their town.

- You are helping start a church that will plant more churches.   

           
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.

Hitting the Ground Running

            Dewey has been an amazing place to do ministry. We are meeting people and forming relationships faster than we thought could happen. In fact, after being on the ground for a month, God brought 31 to our first Sunday service. That included three from Corona, our incredible sponsor church, who came up to encourage us, but the rest were people from the community that we had meet naturally and who were without a church home.

            The Wilkersons are a family that I overheard asking for directions at a parade because they were new. It turns out that they were Southern Baptists from Tennessee who had been in town for 3 weeks. Now Gary leads prayer before our church service for my sermon, Michelle is helping prep food for everyone (we have a meal after each service) and serving in Children’s Ministry and one of their children and our kids love to play together. They had a Bible study leader tell them that when they left Tennessee that they would be helping start a church and they are right there with us (all hands on deck, meeting needs we didn’t ask them to), even in our first outreach project before our first service. Their friendship and involvement is a HUGE blessing and provision for us.
            We have another family who came as a result of our backpacks (story on the other side) who have 11 kids between the ages of 27 and 2 who have not been to church for about five years. They have been coming and worshipping with us and it’s been really exciting to see that many kids. What excited me was that during my first sermon I challenged the crowd to eat with someone evangelically, basically to invite someone to have a meal with you so that you can encourage them and love them like Jesus loves us. They followed through with it and took a mom who had just been divorced and having a rough time camping with them.

            We met another family who had moved into town while pumping gas. After two minutes of talking we had their phone number and dinner plans. While we were at dinner Jamie started sharing the gospel with the mom and I was able to listen to some of the dad’s issues with religion and do some apologetics. He will need some prayer because there are some walls to break down before he will be open to submitting to Christ.

            There are so many more that we have met and it has thrown us off a bit simply because we were ready to ease in with a Bible study, but instead we have started meeting as a church and already outgrown our living room!

               

 Backpack Drive

Thanks to Corona for 50 backpacks that were used to meet people in our community! The first thing that Dewey Fellowship did was a service event (!), even before we met to worship together. We were happy to serve and the families were very happy to be served. We had to get more backpacks as we ran out and we passed the new ones out at our first Sunday. We had two families at the first service as a result of the Backpack Drive!

Jamie met a mom who had also lost a daughter at the Backpack Drive and they are going to meet for coffee. The mom said that meeting Jamie at the backpack drive was the highlight of her day because she hasn’t had anyone to talk to about her daughter. Pray for her and Jamie as she loves on her like Jesus.

Powers Update

         

          We are SO thankful that God called our children to Dewey as well as both of us. The boys left the house that they had lived in since birth, with grandparents two streets away, the school that they LOVED, with all of their friends, an amazing, loving church and their life of college students everywhere and they did it willingly and joyfully and God has blessed that. They LOVE Dewey and our new life. They wonder why EVERYONE doesn’t live in Dewey (“WHY did we live in Mesa so long!?” “Why doesn’t EVERYONE live in Dewey?!” “I LOVE Dewey” “I LOVE our new house!”)! We are thankful every day for God’s direction and Will and provision for us. He changed our hearts and desires for Dewey and for the country and then led us here: He is AMAZING!
            It’s hard to be the “new kid,” but we could not be more proud of the way that our kids are introducing themselves to new kids at the park, at Fireworks and nearly everywhere we go to invite them to Dewey Fellowship.

            They each have at least one new friend at school, as well as the Wonderful Wilkerson children (Praise the Lord), but we are still praying for at least one Strong friendship with another boy who loves Jesus for each boy. Please join us in that prayer.

            We were SO thankful our Dee Dee (kids’ name for Bryan’s mom) helped us move. We

also had many dear friends help us in Mesa and NEW friends (strangers, then) show up to help unload us! WOW, do we feel LOVED! Thank you!

           The boys also fell in love with Kentucky. Bryan’s Grandma generously flew us in for an AMAZING family reunion that we’ll never forget!           

Dewey Boys!

 How God Used You;

We could not do this ministry without our team:

§  There is now a church for young family in a city where 90% of residents do not attend a Bible Based church

§  Great worship community

§  People who have not gone to church in years are now coming to worship Jesus

Thank You for Your Prayers!

Please pray…

§   That we will be able to learn the northern Arizona culture.

§   New leadership and more Harvestors

§   Hallams serving in Alaska

§   Alice as she raises support to be the youth and college director.

§   Our worship person

§   Someone to help with children

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

§   Our support

§   More salvations

How can we pray for you?

Kentucky! The night we arrived.

Grandma Brooks took us to the Creation Museum!

Grandma Brooks, Dee Dee and Joel took us to Mammoth Cave!

KY: Aunt Sherri’s church let Bryan preach.

With the awesome staffers at Zona Youth Camp!

Our amazing church, Corona, sending us.

First Service

Memaw's House

First Service

Big News! After being with Christian Challenge for 10 years we are stepping into a new role as lead church planter in Dewey, Arizona

Big News!  

            After being with Christian Challenge for 10 years we are stepping into a new role as lead church planter in Dewey, Arizona. God clearly called us to this area and it started ten years ago (when God called Bryan into church planting). One and a half years ago, we felt a call away from the city and then many seemingly “chance” incidences, which were clearly ordained by God, we were interviewed and called to start a church in Dewey.

            We are going to get to work with young families, which is overdue because we have been a young family for almost eleven years. This is a group that really isn’t being reached or targeted up in the town we are going to. One of the churches there sold their playground equipment because they wanted to focus their efforts fully on the retirement community, so although it is a smaller area than where we are now, there is still a great need as there are many young families.

            There are also colleges up there where our heart will inevitably lead us to do ministry. They will not be the single focus of our ministry, but we will have a balance of them. We are proud and excited to say that we have one student from Phoenix planning on coming with us to raise support in reaching youth and college in the new church plant! Praise God!

            In this new ministry we will continue to support raise. We feel so much security as support raisers and love seeing God’s provision for us. We trust God to provide through His faithful servants. We will be seeking out unchurched families, so there will not be much tithe until they are discipled. The only church members at the start will be our family and the student (we’re not sharing her name yet, so that she can be the one to share her news), so we really need support to begin this work. Yavapai and the ASBC will also be contributing to our health “insurance” (Christian sharing plan) and retirement and the church start up.

                        Support raising enables us to go to an area that the Yavapai association, which covers a large portion of Arizona, labeled as a high priority a decade ago (which is exactly when God called Bryan into church planting). There has not been growth in the churches, even though the area is growing and is projected to continue to grow.

                        We found this out for ourselves when we met a young family in Dewey right before a meeting about the church plant. They had three children, like us, and said that they didn’t have a church for their children in their city. By the end of a 15 minute conversation Jamie had their phone number and the kids were hugging her as they said goodbye. It was a God ordained “chance” meeting.

            Dewey is an amazing place and our boys have prayed every night for months that God would take our ministry there and God has answered their prayers. We are stepping into a new arena with new obstacles, but we are ready for this Fall to be a great time of ministry for our family and for the boys to get to be even more involved in inviting friends to their church and sharing the gospel, which they all do in the best way they can.  

After sitting hours during an interview/meeting in Dewey, we took the boys to nearby Mingus Mountain for some fun

One person in this picture has lived their whole life in the same square mile in Mesa, AZ, except for college! Do you think they'll be okay with the snow?! 

Our three boys climbing (can you see them?) when we were in Prescott, Prescott Valley and Dewey praying over where God was leading us.

At Quailwood (a new neighborhood on the Dewey, Prescott Valley border). This is where they told us to drive through because this area needs a church and as we were prayer walking, we heard God speak to us! This is a picture of our second time prayer walking this community area. 

What happens to everyone else?

Knowing that transition was coming, we have partnered with an amazing church planter, Jim Helman. We have been pulling back and letting him be more of the face of the ministry so that the downtown students will not be forgotten. We have been running a worship service together that is great for students and he has no intentions of leaving anytime soon. 

Sarah is also trained and ready to do everything that needs to be done to continue and help grow the ministry at ASU Downtown. She has grown so much as a staff member and it will be a really loss to not have here on my team, but I couldn’t take her from the students. 

February, 2016

Salvation!

            Early this semester I met Brandon while I was talking to another student. I felt a need to engage him as he had a fresh tattoo only days into his freshman year, while wearing camouflage, which he has wore in some way every day since. He just seemed like someone who I would enjoy connecting with.

            As we started talking over the next couple days, we connected on fishing, outdoors, similar senses of humor and I steered the conversation to the spiritual. He had a curiosity about it and I wasn’t sure where he stood, but I offered to meet with him one on one and discuss Scripture, whatever area he was most curious about.

            He seemed embarrassed to admit that he really didn’t know anything and had never really read the Bible, so I suggested that we go through John. As we started working our way through, he would ask questions like, “Is Gethsemane a place or a person?” This was really refreshing for me to walk through someone who was so new.

            By the time we got to chapter three, I talked about being born again as a new creation. After working through the chapter I told him the old creation is like a hammer, it’s designed to put a nail in the wall (sin nature). The new creation is like a saxophone, you can use it to put a nail in the wall, but that isn’t what it’s designed for, it’s meant for something different (serving Christ). Then I told him he should pray and figure out if he was a hammer who wanted to be a saxophone or a very new saxophone.


 

            He came back the next week after going through chapter four and said that he was a hammer who wanted to be a saxophone. He prayed to accept Christ right there in the ASU Downtown dining hall.

            We have now gone through sixteen chapters of John and he is preparing to go back to New Jersey for the spring semester because of his mom’s health. Please pray that he will be like the seed in the parable of the sower that produces 100 times what was sown. It’s a little scary the release him so soon knowing how common it is for birds to steal or the weeds to choke out the seeds, but we are working hard to get him into another ministry with his camouflage Bible we gave to him. 

A New Opportunity

     With Brandon leaving, we have another student who knows more about Scripture, but is less willing to follow Christ now. We have built a relationship with him over the course of this semester and as we were talking about Brandon leaving, I told him that my Fridays are opening up to disciple another guy now and told him that I would love to go through some Scripture one on one with him.

     He is thinking about it, but I’m pretty sure he will be the next Brandon. He needs Christ and prayer and discipleship. Pray that he will really desire a relationship with Christ because I think he is close and God has moved already. 

Powers Update

         

Giving that doesn’t cost a penny…

            AZ Partners: Instead of paying State Tax to the State, you can donate (for a dollar for dollar tax CREDIT) that money to be used for Christian education, specifically to benefit a missionary family (even if it was already taken out of your check). 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, Hendrix and Colton Powers at (Please email for school)____ school. for the Original Tax Credit and Hendrix and Colton Powers at (Please email for school) ____ school. For the Overflow Tax Credit (Dallas is not eligible). 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 . Donations for 2015 tax year are not due until April 15, 2016!

            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, first, second and third grade were paid in full and we praying for fourth to be as well! Praise the Lord, the twin’s Kindergarten is paid for! Thank you for your help. This school has been AMAZING! The boys are 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. The tax form(s)  used to get the credit are available at ACSTO.org.

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