TCC Moon Chapel

What have been up to during the month of February? I assure you, we have not fallen off the planet. Rather, we have been busy preparing for the dedication of Taylor Community Center. One part of the dedication was the dedication of the our chapel, which we have named "Moon Chapel" after Bill and Helen Moon. (Helen is pictured above with Gerson.) Bill and Helen were instrumental in the construction of TCC. The chapel always held a special place in Helen's heart. She desired that it would be a place of prayer.
When Helen retired from World Gospel Mission about a year ago, the chapel was pretty bare. It had the basics: chairs and a borrowed podium. Helen wanted to see the chapel have an altar and look like a prayer chapel!

The Lord provided! He sent Mike and Jan Cummings (who happen to be related to my father) from Southern Illinois. The arrived in the Rio Grande Valley for a month-long stay. We put them to work! While they were here, Mike made an altar, a podium, and a cross for the chapel. What a blessing!
While Mike did amazing things with the wood, Jan was his handy helper and stained it all. She was also an extra set of hands to hand him tools and help in whatever way her husband needed.
Meanwhile, Mom and I began working on making the chapel look warmer. After brainstorming, we decided to make banners based on the Fruits of the Spirit. We designed the banners on paper, then began looking at fabric and putting the banners together. Thanks to my mom's expertise with a sewing machine, the banners turned out fabulously!
Love ------ The greatest sacrifice and example of love --- Jesus dying for us on a cross.
Joy ---- Based upon, "Joy comes in the morning."
Peace --- "I've Got Peace Like a River!"
Patience --- We're all under construction. Praise God He's not done with us yet!
Kindness ----Eeveryone united to help one another, regardless of race, age, or economic status.
Goodness --- Comes from pure motives from a pure heart.
Mike installed the altar and the cross and moved the podium into place.
Then he hung the banners on the wall. Now the chapel looks like a prayer chapel! What a joy it was to see Helen see the chapel for the first time and realize her dream of a quiet place to pray had become a reality!

Dear Praying Friends,

February has flown by! I haven't had the time to post as much as I would've liked. It has been a month full of planning and preparing for a super special event.

This Saturday, the 25th of February, Taylor Community Center will be celebrating its 10 year anniversary since the ground-breaking in 2002. We will be serving a spaghetti dinner and having a worship service afterwards, praising God for His faithfulness.

I was asked to be the chairperson of the committee planning this event. I have never been in charge of planning an event to this scale and it has been overwhelming. Yet, in my weakness God has shown Himself to be all sufficient and has extended His grace and help over and over again.

One way the Lord the Lord has shown us His goodness is by sending us many winter Texans who have volunteers and have spent many hours helping us get ready for this celebration. He continues to surprise us with His provision and help.

Would you pray for us as we finish off all the details in this final week leading up to Saturday? We have a lot of work still to do. Our desire, above all, for this event is that God to be glorified and for HIS name to be lifted high!

Thanks, praying friends. We love and appreciate each of you.

Busy, Busy, Busy?

My intention was to update this ministry blog every week. Recently, I've realized what a lofty goal that was! Life continues to busy, busy, busy, but we desire with ever fiber of our being to not just be BUSY, but to be PURPOSEFUL in all we do.

Our pastor has been challenging us with this. So often, those of us in Christian ministries feel we need to be BUSY and fill our days being BUSY for God. We have the misconception we are working "for" God, but in reality we should be working WITH Him. For if He is not WITH us as we work, we accomplish nothing but empty busyness. OR we can be still, listen to His voice, follow His instructions, and move mountains!

God is doing great things in us. It must begin in US. Will you continue to pray for us --- that all we do is purposeful and God-centered? That we will listen to HIS voice and HIS plans and say goodbye to any busyness that is not effective? We don't want to be busy for the sake of being busy. If we're busy, we want it to be a busy that is anointed by God and makes an eternal difference.

Fun, Food, Fellowship

Many of you prayed for the Christmas Ladies' Tea Debbie and I hosted before Christmas. It was so much fun to plan, prepare and decorate! Debbie and I hoped to have a big turnout and planned for about 25 women. We baked, decorated, and prepared with much excitment.

The night finally arrived and only 6 women showed up. We soon realized we were going to have a small crowd and decided to make the best of it! First the ladies ate of the bounty we had prepared. Then we played several fun games.

Our theme for the night was "The Gift," so our games revolved around that theme. One game involved wrapping a woman up as a gift and we gave prizes for the most creatively and the most elegantly wrapped lady.

There were 2 teams of 3 ladies, and they really got excited about this game! It was joy to see them giggle and laugh as the wrapped their friends.

As you can see, their creative juices flowed freely and two of the ladies became lovely wrapped presents!

These two ladies were great sports and allowed their teammates to have total creative license! They giggled as much as the rest of us!

After the games, I shared a short devotional with the ladies. As it happens, all the ladies who showed up are Christian women, so I changed the devotional from being evanglistic in nature to one the challenged us as Christian women to humble ourselves as Jesus humbled himself to come to this earth as a tiny babe. It was a special time for all of us.

Although I was disappointed that there were no "new" ladies who attended, during the evening I was reminded that even Christian women need to time to be pampered, loved on, and encouraged in the Word. Although we had planned on this event being evanglistic in nature, God used instead to build up the body of believers who are working alongside of us in many different ways.

After the devotional, it was time to clean up. (This cafeteria and kitchen are in TCC and used by Taylor Christian School for lunch.) The ladies quickly jumped in to help the clean-up go quickly. All six ladies helped Debbie and me make food baskets to take to ladies who couldn't come due to sickness or other conflicts. Then they cleaned off the tables, folded tablecloths, and brought plates/baskets of food into the kitchen. What a blessing to have such help! (Debbie is the lady on the right! She was my co-host!)

And these two ladies were an extra-special blessing. Treasure Berens (L) and Carol Wonch (R) are two retired WGM missionaries who were instrumental in ministries of Taylor Christian School for many years. They stayed and washed dishes, took down tables and moved chairs! What troopers! Although we kept saying they go home and rest, these two ladies stayed until Debbie and I were ready to walk out the doors with everything cleaned up. What a joy to work with such servants of God!

Thank you for your prayers. Continue to pray for us as we look for creative ways to get to know the women of this neighborhood. We won't give up or become discouraged. Little by little, we're trusting God to open doors for seeds to be planted and for His Kingdom to expand here in this little corner of McAllen.

A New Beginning

Happy New Year!

As we were about to enter 2012, I looked at my brother (who was visiting us) and said something to the effect of, "When did the New Year cease to be as exciting for me? Rather than waiting anxiously to see the Ball drop in Time Square, I'm more excited about midnight hitting so I can go to bed!" (That is probably because I have two little ones who don't sleep through the night!)

Although I no longer get excited about the ball dropping in New York, I AM excited about what 2012 is going to hold. We serve a BIG and AWESOME God, and I have no doubt He has some wonderful surprises for us around the bend.

At times it easy in my humanity to begin to stress and worry about some of things we are anticipating in 2012. I look at our list of responsibilities with the ministry, and sometimes I'm exhausted looking at the needs and demands. Sometimes I'm tempted to be tired before I even begin!

ut then God has a funny way of reminding me of WHO HE IS. Today Jayden fell asleep on the couch as he was watching a video. I looked at him and was amazed at how quickly and easily he fell into a sound slumber. He didn't care where he was as long as he was comfy. He didn't have a care in the world! He didn't worry about what would happen when he woke up, about whether or not he would have food to eat, or whether or not someone would be here to greet him when he did wake up! He was resting peacefully.


God nudged me at that point and gently reminded me that I should be like Jayden. Why do I need to stress and worry so much about the future that I'm unable to sleep? Just as Jayden trusts his daddy and me to take care of him, I need to trust my Heavenly Daddy to take care of us. I need to trust Him and rely on HIS strength to get me through 2012. I need to trust Him to care for our needs in 2012, just as He took such good care of us in 2011. I need to trust completely in His love for me and my family and REST in His tremendous care.

Join us in RESTING in 2012. May we be like Jayden ---- without a care in the world. For we serve a RISEN SAVIOR who is MIGHTY and FAITHFUL.

The Winds and the Rain Obey

This afternoon Debbie and I decided to go door to door in the TCC neighborhood to invite women to our ladies' tea next week. As I was loading the kids into the car to go meet Debbie, she called my cell phone to tell me it had started sprinkling. I looked at the sky and sure enough -- the sky was dark with rain clouds. I told her the kids were loaded and we were going to head over there anyway in hopes that it wouldn't rain.

On the short trip over I prayed a simple prayer, "Lord, hold off the rain for one hour!" We've been in a drought, so McAllen needs all the rain it can get. I WANTED it to rain ---just not for an hour!

All the way over to TCC I had to use my windshield wipers due to the rain falling against my windshield. However, as I got closer, the rain got less and less. By the time I pulled into the guest house parking lot, it was barely sprinkling!

I got the boys in the double stroller and Debbie, the boys and I headed out. We stopped to pray, and before we had even gotten a block the sun broke out from behind the clouds. We looked up and saw BLUE sky with white clouds. Then we looked in all other directions. What did we see? Black clouds surrounded us in all directions!

The Lord gave us a beautiful afternoon to canvass the neighborhood! Would you believe a cool breeze blew in and many had their doors open with just a screen door separating them from us. We could call out, "Hello!" and they would come to the door so we could hand the ladies a invitation. It was an incredible time!

An hour later, the sky above us darkened and we headed quickly back to the guest house. What an amazing reminder that God HEARS our prayers and even the weather obeys Him! Isn't it great that God cares about DETAILS! I asked for an hour --- He gave us an hour where important contacts were made. (Of course, I turned to Debbie after the hour and said, "I should have asked for an hour and a half! :) ) I do believe God gave us that hour and that divine appointments were made.

Praise the Lord! We serve an awesome God!

Ladies' Tea

We have been enjoying the cooler weather that arrived last week! It's been overcast, rainy, and cool. What a change from the normal sunny, clear, dry and hot days we normally have. As Gerson said to me yesterday, "The soccer field is happy, happy, happy!" The ground needed rain and we praise God for the recent showers. It's also been nice to drink a cup of hot coffee or hot chocolate without sweating!

As we enter this busy season, we have been looking for ways to reach the community with the real reason we celebrate Christmas. After talking over the possiblity with Debbie McKelvey, we have decided to host a women's tea on Tuesday, December 20 in the evening. Our desire is to give the ladies in the community a lovely break from the day to day busyness of life, to have fun, to feel loved, to be served, and to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel.

We have planned, shopped, and prayed. Will you join us in praying that the Lord will bring the women He wants to attend? Debbie and I plan to go door to door handing out inviations over the next few evenings. Please pray for us --- that we can make connections and show Christ's love to everyone who comes to the door to greet us. Pray for us as we finalize the menu, the games, the decorations, and all the details so that it will be a night the ladies remember. Pray for the women who attend, that they will have sensitive hearts to hear all God has for them.

We are excited! Thanks for joining us in prayer! We look forward to what God is going to do! We can't wait to introduce these special ladies to the precious Baby Jesus who desires to be their Savior!