Friends and Life Issues supporters, I’m pleased to inform you that we shattered our previous attendance record (62), by having 115 people on 7-29! Thanks for your prayers for our Bring A Friend Night, it was a blessed evening to have Tommy and Mandy Yates minister to us in song, our Life Issues drama team presented Monkey On Your Back, and Bill Corum gave a powerful testimony of his victory over addiction and crime. I was proud of all our students and leaders who worked together as one man, to host this event and facilitate all of the necessary behind-the-scenes activities from greeting, to the sound booth, to building props for the drama, to cleaning up. Probably the highlight of the evening was that a young lady accepted Christ with one of our lady leaders at the end of the evening, so we rejoice that God delivered her “…from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:” Colossians 1:13b
On August 26th, we will have another special guest, Bryan Callaway, who will be travelling with his family to Zambia Africa in September as a full time missionary there. Bryan was a lost alcoholic man not too many years ago, until God came into his life and changed him forever. Bryan is a gifted and passionate speaker that you won’t want to miss hearing, so please make plans to attend at 7pm on 8-26. It will be our turn to clean the church on 8-26, so we are going to have pizza delivered to HBF after Bryan speaks, and will be asking as many people as possible to stay and help.
We are just a month out from our 4th annual Recovery Walk, to be held on 9-3, and there is still much work to be done. Our friend, Bill, prepared a promotional video for us this year, so please copy and paste this link into your browser to get the scoop on what we’re doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfnDrVvltkQ. We received three more gold level sponsors this week, so we’ve gotten around 15 businesses that have contributed $250 or more, so It’s going well, we’re probably half way to our $10,000 goal! August 17th is the deadline for me to order T-Shirts, so if you have any gold level pledges, make sure to get them to me by then, so that they can get their name advertised on the back of our shirts! We can request and collect pledges up until the day of the walk, but I’ll need business names by 8-17. It’s free to walk, and my goal is to have 100 walkers this year, previously our record was 92, so consider yourself invited!
I want to briefly communicate a need that a dear friend of our ministry has; his name is James, and he and his wife, Michelle, and daughters have helped watch kids for Life Issues for several years. One of HBF’s pastors created a GoFundMe page for this sweet family, so please copy and paste this link into your browser to read their story, and consider how you might be a blessing to them during their hardship: James Family GoFundMe .
We now have 9 people locked into going to India, to address the problems of addiction, with a native pastor / missionary there. We will be conducting a 3-day conference for approximately 50 pastors and their wives, as well as a 1-day outreach in a neighboring district. On our way home from Orissa (east coast of India), we will be spending 2 days in Mumbai (west coast of India), conducting a marriage conference and an outreach program there. We have had 4 meetings thus far and will be having a training led by our mission’s pastor on 8-21, to learn about safety precautions while traveling, and will be learning about getting our VISAs and what shots we need, etc.
Lastly, I want to high-light our Tuesday night Life Issues ministry, there are many good things going on there, as the students and leaders are growing in number and maturity! Our Tuesday night leader, Pat Lee, has completed writing “The Journey Home” (TJH) workbook, which focuses on early recovery from addiction. Pat is working on the front and back covers of this work book, and hopes to publish this work soon, I’ll keep you posted. We have three students going thru TJH with their sponsors, with the desire for them to not only recover from the bondage of addiction, but to move them from addiction to the church to discipleship to ministry, as they continue to follow Christ. We are seeing positive results from TJH, as well as from the one enrolled in TATs, confirming our belief that the truth, and only the truth, makes us free! Addiction recovery is not always a straight path, but by God’s grace we’re getting some traction, and building some synergy coming into this year’s walk, I hope that you can come and walk with us and celebrate what God is doing.
Sincerely, Steve Fleshman – Life Issues pastor and founder, Proverbs 4:23…
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