Bartlett Newsletter

Dear Friends and Family,

Hello 2012! And hello everyone, I hope your New Years was great! Well, I’m back on the road again, and this summit has been truly amazing. It’s been one of the busiest ones by far, but it has been great to get back into the swing of things! I actually left Atlanta and flew back up to Michigan to meet up with some of the team up there. Some of the team drove down in the bus and the truck while me and Senor Nathan drove another truck for some extra transportation. It has been great getting to know the people of Bartlett, Tenn. and to see God work in their lives. So let’s get started then!

The Church

Ellendale Baptist church has about 1000 members and has the unique story of being built building by building over the years to where now there are 7 independent structures for different ministries. Pastor Jerry really loves to get into the Word, and many of His people stood up throughout the summit and thanked him specifically for that. Bartlett is a really interesting town, they have almost one of everything: shops, stores, restaurants, etc. In addition, they also have a church on almost every street corner, so it’s really neat to see such a following from the community in Ellendale. And through slightly older congregation, God really broke through in the areas of church unity, pride, and just having things in our lives that take the place of God. These people were by far some of the nicest people I have met in any church. Whereas normally the team would have to walk up and start conversations, they church members were the ones who were initiating all the conversations with us! They have really blessed me, and I know they have blessed the rest of the team too!

The Ministry

This summit stretched our team in ways that no summit has before. A pastor’s conference called OneCry was taking place right down the road and they wanted us to play for it. What did that entail? Getting up earlier than our Sunday morning call time, working the conference all day, then driving back and doing a summit meeting that night. Needless to say, God was more than faithful. I wrote this little insert that night to explain a little of what happened that day.

Can I share with you what God to me today? It’s pretty amazing. Ok, so today, our team got to lead the ONECRY Pastor’s meeting in Memphis, Tenn at Faith Baptist Church. There were 150+ pastors and guests all coming to find out what Onecry was all about. So we had to get up early, like be at the church at 6:30 early. But lo and behold, Dustin (worship leader) bought us Mcd’s for breakfast, the day was off to a good start. After tons of little tiny difficulties, and God showing His power, the conference got under way, and men such a Bill Elliff and Michael Cait got up and shared their hearts, really crazy stuff. Now lunch, that was what blew my day away. I had asked if I could sit with the other pastors and after getting permission, me and another team member sat down at what appeared a regular table of guys. One of the 4 men was a gentlemen in all African attire by the name of Edmund and he had some incredible stories. He had trusted God to get him over to the US, and then after hearing about One Cry, God provided for the money to get him here. Another gentleman at the table had actually lived right around the area of Georgia that I used to live, almost within 20-30 minutes. The man to my left got into a conversation about sign language and how I learned it and got on the road. I found out that he was a worship leader and that he had a smaller congregation but he enjoyed a lot of the stuff I got to do. After lunch, I got up, truly blessed. One of my friends came up to me, and I just said “Man, lunch was great.” They answered, “Yeah, I can imagine, you had lunch with Clay Crosse.” Who? I know that was the worship leader, but who was he? Turns out, I was sitting right next to a 4 time Dove Award winner and never knew it. God truly blessed my socks off, and he saw it fit to even show me how much he blessed me.

Like I said, we were truly blessed. This summit, I got to stay with Justin Weeks, a happy heart city worker and one hilarious guy! We were able to stay with Stan and Pam Walls, two dear people that have really welcomed us into their home and, along with their dog Sam, into their hearts. We are going to miss them a lot. L

The Team

What can I say? It is so good to back with my second family. It was so cool to see our team meet back in a hotel lobby in Bartlett and just start talking and laughing just like we had never left. So far this summt, some of us have hit the mall, restaurants, we’re even going to play Tennis later today! I think that one of the two highlights for my team has been playing volleyball with the church’s college group, and also going to the Memphis zoo! The host families have been such a blessing, inviting the team over to just have fun, it’s a nice way to relax and just spend some time and laugh. After this summit, I’m really excited to see how God is going to use us this next half of the year!

My Life

Life has been going really good. Or more accurately, God has been really good to me. I have gotten to be in more and more skits for both Base Camp and Happy Heart City, and it’s an incredible blessing (even when the skits go wrong every once in a while J ) Signing is back with singing and it will never cease to amaze me just how God can use it. As I signed some of the nights, I would look out and see people of all ages from a young girl in Base Camp to an elderly gentleman trying to follow along and sign with me. It’s something that I honestly can’t explain in words, it’s one of those “You have to be there to experience it” kind of things. However, God chose to use something else to blow my mind this summit. On the second Sunday, there is a time for people to come back and talk about salvation. I got the honor of talking with a man named Chris, who was just confused about where he was. After about 10-15 minutes, I had no idea what else to say, and so I felt God just say “Don’t worry, just pray.” So we prayed and I asked him to read 1 John. Imagine my joy when he came up to me the next Sunday night to tell me that he had been saved that Wednesday! I could not believe it. God had chosen this man to come into his family, and I got to see it happen before my eyes. The acting is fun, and the signing is encouraging, but this story really does take the cake for my entire year on the road so far. J

Thanks to you all for your continued support. If you ever want to write me, please do! I love getting mail, email, and I WILL respond! (New Year’s Resolution…kind of ;) I pray that these letters really give you an idea of just how awesome our God truly is. Well, off the play some tennis! Love you all!

Josh  

Christmas Newsletter

Hello all! I hope this little message finds you all enjoying your Christmas season! God has been teaching me so much over the break, but I really wanted to share something that God showed me today, especially considering the time of year that we are in right now.  

During my time on the road, my Mom has had the opportunity to minister to a very sweet lady named Kay and her husband Gene for a full day, once a week, for about the past 4 months. Kay has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and now is to the point where she forgets things after about only 10-15 seconds.  Mom mainly just spends time with Mrs. Kay for a day so that Mr. Gene can go out and just spend some refreshing time by himself. I learned that Mom would be going over a couple of times while I was home ,and I wanted to get a chance to meet them before I left, so yesterday I took a detour and went to their house to stop by and visit on the way to spending a day with extended family. When I first met her, we talked for about 3 minutes (and got to dance to Christmas Songs, I was sold after that J) and then she took me into their living room where their Christmas tree was all set up. We had “a really good time” in her words. J The first ornament she showed me was a snowflake, her favorite. A couple others were shown off, like a church steeple and a picture of her and a friend of hers. And then, all of a sudden, she went back to the snowflake, and started all over again. This happened for about 6 times, sometimes the order varied, but it was always the same ornaments. She also showed me little knick knacks that she had collected, and a little bit around her house. I only got to stay there for about 30 minutes before I had to leave, but God used Mrs. Kay and Mr. Gene to impact my heart in several ways in those few minutes.

Mrs. Kay is so in love with God, to the point that it is part of her very being. Even if she can’t remember from minute to minute, she still knows the truths that she learned years ago about God, and she is still sharing them with anyone she comes in contact with. What a testimony and what a challenge to become more like Him. Words of encouragement for me about God always being with me, finding value in Christ, and totally leaning on Him all came out in just those few 30 minutes. What a blessing to my soul!

Mr. Gene is 100% loyal to his wife. You can clearly see that he still loves her, and will love her “until death do they part.” After only 30 minutes of spending time with Mrs. Kay, it was great, but it was very physically and emotionally draining. I cannot imagine the amounts of patience that Mr. Gene has to live day in and day out with her, but I was shown an example of marriage today that I hope that one day I can at least come close to being worthy of living out in my own life.  

Lastly, as I look back on my day, I can only think, “How silly are my worries and troubles that plague my mind every day?” The most that Mrs. Kay knows about Mr. Gene is that he is a very nice man, who takes very good care of her, and yet he still lives with her, fully aware of that knowledge and cares for her every day. And I find myself complaining about things not going my way sometime or someone getting what I would really like. How selfish. And even especially around this time of the year when the biggest problem we have might be as little as someone cutting us off in traffic, how silly does that seem when compared to Mr. Gene and Mrs. Kay’s life? And yet, how do they respond? With love, joy, peace, patience…hey, those sound familiar don’t they? So often we talk about living through the Fruit of the Spirit, but I feel like today, I got to meet two people who truly live them out, not just in an “easy” life, but in one that if they were to get angry or depressed, the world would think it as the “normal” reaction. What an encouragement to see two people not being normal, but instead looking to Jesus for strength and comfort. Wow wow wow!

All in all, an incredible time, and I hope that it was an encouragement to you as well. As I close, I just want to take a moment to thank you all for all of the support and prayers that you have given me this past 5 months, and for some of you, perhaps even longer than that. It has been such a blessing to see God work in these churches, but without your support and prayers, it would have made things a tad more difficult to make this a reality. J I look forward to sharing with you all what God does in 2012, and I am so excited to hear about how God moves and works in your hearts in the days to come.

God bless, and remember the TRUE reason for this season (and for the rest of the year as well!)

In Christ, 

Josh    

Aledo, IL

Last summit of 2011- Aledo, IL

(This one is going to be a little bit longer, but that is because this is probably the last post of 2011)

For the last summit of the year, our team left the Life Action Camp after Thanksgiving Break, and hopped down to Aledo, IL, a small little town of about 3,700 people total. (Note: I have found out this year that I am a huge fan of small towns) This was our only 8 day summit of this half of the year, where we arrived on Friday, started Sunday and continued until the following Sunday, and then tore down that night. But this week showed us that God does not need a “time frame” in order to change lives and hearts as we got to see many different stories told and lives change in just the short time we were there.

The Church

First Baptist Church of Aledo has about 300-400 members in it, but since the community is so small, this church still has a big impact on the town. Pastor Luke has lead the church for a number of years, and every single member that I ever talked to had nothing but glowing comments about him. I got to talk to him a little myself, and he was very deliberate and thoughtful when he spoke, but still could carry on the conversation and was interested in what was being said. In short: I like him. J The stories that came out the last night during popcorn testimonies were pretty amazing, including one couple thanking God for bringing their daughter’s boyfriend to Christ that morning, a prayer request that they had been praying since the beginning of the relationship. Please continue to lift up Aledo as they continue to seek God’s Will for their lives, and also about some important decisions in their church’s near future.

The Ministry

The Praise team got really stretched for this summit, in more ways than one. First Baptist has a much smaller stage than most churches, so we had to drop two male and female singers, so that we only had about 4-5 singers for every song. This put a LOT more pressure on the ones leading, but they held up and carried through to the end. Our worship leader Dustin left on Thursday to get home to spend time with his wife, Jen, who has been having medical problems for the past 2 months (Please keep her in your prayers, we’ve kind of adopted each other as siblings J) . In his absence, Trevor Jones picked up the slack, and led the worship team on Sunday morning and night. (And might I say he did a fantastic job too!) Me and Jason Farson roomed together this summit, and we got to stay with Jo and Paul Kernan, a dear couple that I KNOW we will miss (Along with Banana splits, late night talks, and all the bickering we did back and forth J) I am going to save the comments about signing for the “My Life” segment, because this church touched me in signing much more than most of the other churches.

The Team

Short and sweet…I miss my team. A lot. But I know that if we stayed which each other all year….we’d probably kill each other. Haha, the entire team is now officially home, but I have a feeling that we will all be Facebooking, Skyping, and texting throughout the month. A couple team members even get this newsletter so this is a shout out to them! Please pray that as we are home for a month that we do not grow slack or lazy but that we will continue to pursue God, and come back more in love with Him than when we left.

My Life

This summit, I was asked to play a couple of parts in skits for Base Camp (2^nd-5^th grade) and I loved it! It was a great group of kids and it’s a LOT of fun to act with the BC teachers because they are very “improv” minded when they act, so sometimes you just go with the flow and the resulting skit is much funnier than the original idea. Now, onto signing. J

Since we only had two male singers, I kind of knew that I would be one of the ones off, but I got a surprise when I was told that they still wanted signing, just no singing! I got to sign without a mic! It was definitely one of the most fun and enjoyable times I have ever had on the team, and at the same time it helped me learn self control in signing while still putting joy and energy into it. God really blessed me again through signing this summit by encouraging words from the congregation. During popcorn testimonies, an elderly woman got up and thanked the team for being there and then thanked me for the signing that it had greatly blessed her. It was truly humbling, and even more so when more people came up afterwards to thank me. Praise God, because without Him, I couldn’t sign, let alone take my next breath. However, my biggest encouragement came in Base Camp. One of the teachers asked a young man what he had liked about the summit so far. The boy turned to me and said, “I actually kinda really enjoyed the signing, it’s really cool how you do that on stage, even though you don’t sing.” Out of the mouths of babes. That one little answer encouraged me more than that boy will ever know, because that was the first time a kid had said that he appreciated the signing. Up until then, I had just viewed it as a ministry to adults, but now God has encouraged me that in the next half of the year, He can use it to bless anyone He wants to, even kids.

Prayer Request: I am so thankful to go home, but I must admit I am a little afraid that I could easily get into the mindset of “I’m not in Life Action right now, so I can just go back to what I want.” That is so far from the truth. Please pray that I would continue this upward climb towards knowing God more that started this year, and that I would never be satisfied with what I know of Him. 

Well, here I sit in Midway airport, ready to take off. Thank you again so much for the prayers, they honestly do mean the world to me. Thank you all again!

Merry Christmas!

Josh  

Adrian, MI

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings from the North! And when I say north, I mean Adrian, Michigan! The email finds me sitting in my fourth host home, enjoying one of our rare (and much needed) rest days. Let me start this out by saying that I need to apologize to a lot of you on this list. I have been trying my best to keep up to date on my “blog” online, and whenever I wrote on it about a summit; I would post it to my Facebook page. However, I realized this summit that a lot of my supporters either don’t have a Facebook, or just don’t get on it that much, and in that, I have not been able to allow to enjoy all that God has been doing in me and through me at these last four churches. So from me to you, I sincerely apologize. I have taken a different route now, and instead, I will be sending out an email update instead. This is actually much better because if you have sponsored me at all, it shows up on my private page of the ministry website, along with information such as email address, that way I won’t be missing anyone.

Let me start by showing this link. This is a web address to my first blog posts about our first three churches that we have been to so far, along with other musings from before the year started:

http://alifeinaction2011.blogspot.com/

So now, hopefully that you are all caught up, let me go ahead and tell you a little bit about what is going on.

The Church

Right now we are serving Ogden church; it’s a church of about 750 and it is right outside the city of Adrian, Michigan. We have had some really cool stories come out of this church, but please keep praying that God continues to give this church “Ah-ha” moments as they learn more about him.

The Ministry

 God has been using music and signing in some really cool ways at this church. Ogden is a much more contemporary church than ones we have been in, and so we have gotten to break out some of our more “energetic” songs, which has been a lot of fun! Our host home (Jerry, Wendy, and Paul) have nothing but incredible to me and Clay Debolt, and I know that he and I will miss them greatly. I had an elderly man come up to me one night, and talk to me a little bit about signing, and how much he appreciated it, so I take that as a confirmation that I am still totally in God’s Will for doing it in worship.

The Team

You all can be praying for the team. As we get closer to the winter months, more and more of our team members continue to get sick, and right about now we normally have about 4 or 5 people feeling really under the weather. It’s going to be really hard saying goodbye to the team in December, but on the plus side, we get to spend Thanksgiving with them, so that’ll be nice. In fact, we are getting ready for our Christmas Party as we speak!

My Life

God has been using this summit to teach me that I can learn so many things from those who are older/wiser than me. Throughout this summit, I have gained more wisdom from older men on the team than all three previous summits combined, and I am so grateful for that. I hope and pray that it becomes a reoccurring theme and that I will continue to seek counsel from Godly influences in my life. I would like to ask for prayer. I am getting very homesick. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to miss my team so much, but I have not been home in almost 4 months, and I really do miss my parents and family. Please pray that God can work through me, so that I can finish with a spirit of Excellence and bring Him glory, so that I can then rest in Him during my month off.

Thank you all so much for your prayers, and I look forward to seeing you all soon!

           In Christ,

                              Josh

The End (of the Beginning)

Dear Readers,

Well, we have come to a fork in the road (keep on walking and you’ll find the knife later). I have decided to end this blog with this final post. Why do you ask? Good question. I’m glad I had some answers ready.

After this post, I will be switching to an email style of newsletter, where I will still do the same format (with some tweeks of my own) but it will be sent out to the group of my supporters (and anyone else who wants to follow along) The main reason for switching was that some of my supporter simply are not on Facebook. If they aren’t on Facebook, even though I am posting all of my blogs on a regular site, it is hard to explain to people how to get on there without Facebook (even I can’t remember the URL sometimes). Also, in moving to the email, it’ll let me know who is getting and reading the updates, so I will have a much better sense of who is following along, instead of only being able to guess from the 500+ Facebooks friends that could have been potentially reading it. Don’t get me wrong, if you’ve been following on Facebook and still want to, that’s great! Just shot me your email on a message, and I will get you on the list, but this way, it will be much more controllable. I also check my email much more often than my blog, so if I get any responses, I’ll be able to see them a lot quicker. In fact, even as I wrote this, I already got a reply back from someone, now isn’t that nice. :D Thank you again for all the prayers, love, and support you all have shown, and I can only hope that this change can help the connection between all of us stay that much stronger!

Once again, if you would like to be added to the email list, just message or text me. Thanks!

                                                                                                                                                                Josh

Senatobia, MS

It's time to hear about church number 3, so for that, we are heading back down South, where Sweet Tea is measured by the amount of cups of sugar you put into it!

After leaving Morton, we shot straight down through Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, finally ending up in Senatobia MS. Lifepoint church is about 7 years old, and they have just moved into a new building. It's a church of about 600 or so, and their Pastor's name is George Ross. (Trivia fact: George was actually the former youth pastor of Clay, one of the boys on the team.)

Throughout the next two weeks, God really broke through and changed a lot of hearts and lives in the church. Marriages were restored and God made himself known in a lot of lives of the people. The staff/Pastor relationship was greatly strengthened, and we are all excited to see what God has in store for them in the future.

My host family you ask? Well, let me tell you about them! The Cole family opened up their house to me, Joel, and Caleb, and it was an incredible time. Some of the events included shooting guns, racing go karts, and dancing around a bonfire (at a safe-ish distance of course). We really got to spend some quality time with them, got to go on long walks around their property, play some video games with them, even laugh our heads off with games like Balderdash and Apples to Apples (BTW: did you know that a kakkerlak is an Albino Cockroach? Oh the things you learn in family games)

Signing has been going good, I continue to have about 5-6 people come up each summit and ask where and how I learned it, and it has been encouraging to see the response and the welcoming atmosphere of the churches so far. I am starting to get some different songs thrown at me, since we are going into more contemporary churches, we're having to do quicker songs, so it's a bit of a challenge, but by God's grace, it has been going well.

Finally, God has still been doing a continuing work in me, through these summits. His grace is being made known to me more and more every day, and the Holy Spirit is continually showing me areas that I am not giving up to Christ. I would say that each summit has been a different "period" for me. The first summit was the "test run" period, where God was showing me just what I had gotten myself into. The second was definitely the "breaking" summit, where God broke me wide open to show me where I really was in my relationship with Him. This previous summit was probably my "rebuilding" summit. I came in to this summit a little overwhelmed by what I learned in Morton, but now I have had a chance to sort through some of it, and have been able to start to look at my life one area at a time.

Thank you all so much for your prayers AND DRUM ROLLLL!!!!!! I GET TO COME HOME IN 27 DAYS! Excited much, and I so excited to see all of you again!

In Christ,

Josh        

Morton, IL

Dear friends and family,
               

                It’s officially the end of the second summit! Well, almost, it was about a week ago, but that’s ok! We have left the beautiful city of Morton, IL, and I…..am going to tell you about it!

                We arrived in Morton at the end of September, and it was a LOT larger than our last church! Grace Church is located in the little town of Morton (it has 16,700 people for the population, so says the sign) It’s a really cool little town where everything is only 5 or 6 minutes away from everything else, so if you want to get a coffee at Eli’s or just see a pumpkin farm or two, it’s only a good 5 minute drive. We were able to get our truck unloaded on the same day we got here, and at dinner, we got to split up dinner between three of us, and wound up getting three appetizers for three people, life is good. Senior Clay DeBolt and I got to hang out this summit, and we were greeted by the Wright Family when we got back to the church that night! The Wright’s consist of Craig, Tammy, Jordan, and Taylor oh and Mogli (dog) too! I had such a good time with them, and they were such a blessing to me and Clay’s life. They will be dearly missed (and so will all of the Wii Tennis games, the Nerf Gun Battles, and the late night study sessions J )

                This summit was a lot easier materials wise, I feel that God is blessing me with wisdom…either that or I am slowly losing it and the craziness that is materials is starting to make sense to me. Signing has continued with little or no change, but it was great to hear how God has been using it, and how people think it is really cool that it is adding another level to the worship. Pause: a team member came up and started narrating my blog for me; little does he know I’m going to include it in here. J

I would just like to say that Nathan Cowles is the most amazing guy in the world. He has better looks than anyone on the planet. Also, he is so strong; he makes me look like a pip squeak. I wish I could grow down to be like him. Maybe, someday, if I’m good, Santa will bless me and will turn me into Nathan.      

Thanks Nathan. Unfortunately, someone still doesn’t know Santa is fake, but I’m sure he’ll figure that out eventually. Now where was I? Oh right, ASL. So it was really neat to see God continuing to use ASL in other people’s lives. God used conversations that started in ASL to move to different things and I have gotten to pray with a lot of different church members before we part ways, a really cool ministry opportunity.

In Morton, we got to do a lot of stuff as a team. A couple things I got to do for the first time were 1. Going through a corn maze that wasn’t smaller than my house and 2. Going to the Caterpillar plant. And no, not the insect, but the machine! A gentleman in the church allowed us to come to his work and see first-hand how all the CAT Vehicles operated and we even got to climb on some of them!

Prayer request: God really blew me wide open this summit. I sat through this summit so that I could hear how a Life Action Summit worked, and God used the two weeks to show me areas in my life that I had not given over to God, and I am still sorting through everything. Please pray that this spirit of brokenness won’t leave me and that I’ll continue to place God first, over everything else.  

Whew, summits are getting more and more fun, but also more and more busy! Hope you all enjoyed the update!