Praise and Prayer

We returned Friday from the Strategic Planning meetings for TouchGlobal Crisis Response staff, held at Trinity Church in Covington, Louisiana. While down there, we were told we needed to set a date to move as the need is great for us to be there. I will be the Media/Communications Manager with the responsibilities of maintaining the Katrina Project website, updating and editing the Relief Cast monthly newsletter, and contacting 150 new churches in the next year to promote awareness and encourage participation in the relief efforts. I will also be the On-boarding Coordinator responsible for connecting with new missionaries to Covington/New Orleans pre-deployment, providing them with resources to connect them with the missionary staff and the local church, and to pray with them as they make the transition. Phil will be working with supplies/tools and will also be a Field Coach to come alongside new missionaries in helping them assimilate to their new lives in Louisiana. That being said, we are moving to Covington, Louisiana on Sunday, October 21^st. (Phil’s 28^th birthday)

We are bringing a team with us from Lakeland EFC to serve that week in Covington/New Orleans. If you are interested, please contact us as soon as possible so we can get you connected with a team.

God has made it clear to us that this date is the one he wants us to move on. We are trusting Him that He will provide the financial support that we need committed in the next four weeks in order to make this move. We have seen God’s direction and provision with clarity and He has answered our prayers. Praise God! Within 24 hours of flying down to New Orleans, we had two more monthly supporters and 1 additional renter with another possible renter as well. God has provided!

Thursday morning on our way to the airport, I got really car sick. By the time we checked our bag and checked in, I felt worse. Walking made me sick. We decided it would be best to not fly out and to wait until I was feeling better. I was also having a terrible headache…extreme pain. I had been having headaches for two weeks straight with little to no relief. I woke up with one and went to bed with one.

Seven hours and two Dramamine later, we began to look into our travel options. Phil was told at the airport that it was going to cost $100/person to change our flights. He called the airline and they said it was going to be $176/person to fly out Friday. That would cost us over $350 that we weren’t prepared for. Phil then started to call car rental companies to see about renting a car and driving straight through the night. That would’ve cost ½ as much, but neither one of us were up to pulling an all-night driving marathon, plus we could only rent a vehicle from one airport and drop it off at another.

We decided that we would just eat the cost and pray that God would provide. As Phil once again called the airline, he prayed and asked God to intervene. He asked that God would provide the finances to cover the extra cost. Phil booked us on the first Friday flight to Chicago. Then I saw him kicking his feet in excitement as the person he spoke with told him the cost. He got off of the phone to tell me the good news. It was only going to cost $25/person to change our flight. YEA, GOD! There is no explanation other than God providing for us and hearing our prayers.

Encouraged by this, we settled back into the camper for the night. I decided that I was going to pray about my headache. I had been trying everything on my own to get rid of it, but hadn’t simply asked God to take it away. I told God that I knew I couldn’t get rid of it on my own, and that I was tired of relying on myself to fix it. I asked Him to take away my headache. Within seconds…yes, seconds…my headache that I had for TWO weeks was gone. COMPLETELY GONE!!! I woke up Friday still with no headache and today, no headache. GOD is AWESOME!!!! All I had to do was humble myself before Him and admit that I can’t do things on my own. Turning it over to the Lord was all He wanted of me.

As we prepare for this next season of ministry in our lives, we have many hurdles to jump. I need to tie things up at work, which will be very difficult for me. I have never grown to love an Employer, Manager and Co-workers as much as I have at Great Lakes Credit Union. It is going to be very difficult for me to leave there. But I know that I have their support in doing this so I ask that you pray for me emotionally as I transition out. Another difficult thing for us will be leaving the Crossing Sr. High youth group. This has been our ministry home and family for the past few years.

We will be packing up a lot of things in our house and will be looking to sell items and find temporary homes for items in the next few weeks. We will most likely have a garage sale on Saturday, September 29^th and if you have items to donate or would be willing to help us price the night before or sell that day, any help would be much appreciated. We will use the $ raised at the sale to cover our moving expenses and the drive down to Covington, where we will be moving into a small trailer in a trailer court a few miles away from Trinity Church.

We also humbly ask for prayer and financial support to help us be the Hands and Feet of Christ in serving Him by serving others as missionaries. If you have pledged to support us and have sent in your donation, please let us know as this past week we learned that if you do not designate correctly on a check which name and account # you are donating to, the support does not get applied to the correct account. Once a donation is made, you will receive a receipt in the mail with another envelope to continue to send in the monthly support. You can also look at the options to donate support on the right-hand side of our blog. We are updating our blog weekly, sometimes daily. Please visit for current prayer requests and updates of what the Lord is doing. http://www.iheartno.blogspot.com/

Please email us and feel free to forward this email to anyone that you think may want to join our prayer or financial support base. weheartno@gmail.com

My life lesson this week: God hears the needs of His children and blesses them.

God Bless and Bless God!

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Amy (for Phil and Amy Stokes)

Greetings from New Orleans; part II

The last couple days have been pretty productive days. Praise the Lord for the work we were able to accomplish. It was really good to get some background on the ministry were are going to be working with and also talk about this coming year. It was good to take a look back and see what has been going on here with the staff. It is really cool seeing how God has been making Himself more real to them, but also revealing to them ways they can continue to move forward more efficiently.

In the past few days we were told to set a date to move down here and to do it. Really cool news but a huge leap of faith on our end. We've been waiting for this date for sometime now, and after much praying and planning and seeking the Lord and changing plans and so on... OCT 21, 2007!! We are so excited about this. On one hand, we now have a deadline to raise support, get the house packed up, etc... and that can be stressful. On the other hand, it's a huge relief!

We are planning to bring a team down with us that week. If you are interested in joining us for that, please let us know as soon as possible.

If you are interested in supporting us prayerfully and/or financially, please let us know. There is a place on the right of our blog to donate online or set up a bank EFT withdrawal.

Thanks again for your love, prayer and support!

Greetings from New Orleans

Hello everybody! First of all, I want to thank all of you for your prayers. Our travels yesterday were not only safe, but somewhat enjoyable. We made it through airport security at O'Hare in about 3 minutes. Upon our arrival to baggage claim in New Orleans, our bags were one of the first out. Our ride arrived about ten minutes later, and we were off! Amazing.

Well, as we prepare to meet this morning, we ask that you would be praying for our time. That it would be encouraging, insightful, and productive. Most of all, pray that the Lord would be in our midst.

Also to note, we got word from back home that a second renter will be moving in in the next weeks! Praise the Lord. There is a possible third renter that was looking at the place last night. Please continue to lift this up in prayer.

I will be updating here daily this week, so please check back often.

If you are interested in supporting us prayerfully or financially, please email us:
weheartno@gmail.com

Still Pluggin' Along

I was thinking back on this week, I first thought that not much had changed or happened since our last post. How easily we forget how God sustains us.

I'll start with this weekend. Amy's folks were here with her brother, Matt, and his kids, Isaac and Taylor. We had a pretty good time with them. Our focus was to get some stuff done around the house to shore up some small issues. We were able to get most of the list completed, and than some! We recently had some water in our basement that did a little more damage than it normally does. The water doesn't come in through the foundation, but rather the window wells. Our goal was to seal off the windows in question. We considered a couple of options and settled on 3/4 inch pressure treated plywood. In the midst of pre-drilling holes in the metal, my drill bit found its way into Amy's dad's little finger, fracturing the bone, and possibly leaving a little metal behind. OUCH! After a couple hours in an immediate care facility near our house, we were on the way back home, finger splinted and wrapped. Needless to say, we took it a little easier the next day. Please be praying for continued healing for his finger and comfort as that process takes it course.

We found out this week that the mission board at our church is going to support us in our trip to New Orleans for the Strategic Planning meeting. Thank you all for you prayers in this area. We really appreciate and rely on your prayer support.

We are still working through some paper work. We sent in the most important forms, but need to finish that early this week. We are hoping to hear from EFCA about our health insurance. At this point, we don't know where or how this need will be met, but we are confident in our Lord, that He will take care of this. Please pray with us regarding this issue.

No update on the roommate situation. Please continue to pray, not only for the probable roommate, but also for one more.

We are planning on a yard sale in the near future (maybe next Saturday). If you are interested in helping with this (set-up, tear-down, etc...) please email us. We'll contact you when we know the date! We may also need some help during the week before the sale to organize and price the items. This is a two-tier deal. We are trying to downsize as well as make some money.

Lastly, we have been blessed by the support we've raised. As we posted last week, we have some goals for support raising. As a response to that post, we now have 1-$100, 1-$50, & 2-$25 supporters. Each of these is per month! Thank you all so much. If you are interested in supporting us at one of these pledge levels or making a one time donation, or interested in becoming prayer supporters, please let us know by email.

Moving forward, this week Thursday, we will be meeting with the elders at our church to talk about our plans. Also, next Sunday will be the congregational business meeting at Lakeland. The main focus of this time will be the new mission statement, which I believe is a great step in the life of the church. Also discussed will be the upcoming budget. Please pray for these meeting this week. Pray for wisdom of the elders and others in this coming week.

Thanks again to all of you for your support. Please continue to pray.

weheartno@gmail.com

Pledging/Support Raising

We received our acceptance package this week. We now have our donor # and address to send support. It will be listed below in the Strategic Planning blog. Right now, we do not have the ability to accept pledges to be sent to the EFCA, however, in order to get some indication of where we need to go with our support-raising, we have come up with an idea that will help us track where we are at.

We set a few goals in regards to monthly pledges and one-time donations for support. At first we were hesitant in setting these, but are trusting that the Lord will provide. Our first goal is for 10 people/families to pledge $100/month for a minimum of 1 year. (We would like to be there for 2 years, but realize we should make that decision prayerfully after being there at least a few months.)

Our second goal is for 20 people/families to pledge $50/month for a minimum of 1 year. Our third goal is for 40 people/families to pledge $25/month for a minimum of 1 year. One-time donations will also be gladly accepted and can be sent right away to the EFCA address listed below.

If we reach our first 2 goals, we will have enough support pledged/raised to be able to deploy to New Orleans. Please prayerfully consider one of these opportunities to support us. If you are interested in pledging support, please email us at: weheartno@gmail.com, and we will get you the necessary information as soon as it is available to us.

The Lord has blessed us indeed with a great prayer support base! Thank you! Please continue to pray for this time of transition for us and for the hearts of those we will come in contact with while in New Orleans. May HIS name be known to all the nations!

Fund Raising for Strategic Planning

Hello everybody. We wanted to post an update on our situation. We've been really encouraged about the work God is doing in our lives. I shared last week that we needed to sell our 2nd car. Well, after a couple of set backs, it looks like we'll be able to sell that car to my dad! We've also had some exciting news regarding another renter. He's about 95% sure of moving in around October. Please continue to pray for these things. Though we have people in place, we understand things happen, so we don't want to get our hopes up, but we're encouraged all the same that our Lord is providing for our needs!

I also shared last week that we were planning to attend the Strategic Planning meeting in N.O. in two weeks. Amy had a wonderful idea to raise funds to pay for plane tickets. Her and a few girls from the youth group were able to make a about 50 of the bracelets (pictured above) . We started selling them at youth group on Friday night. There is a suggested donation of $5 for them and it's worked out really well! We are certainly on our way. We've raised almost $100 of the $400 we need to pay for the plane tickets. We are thinking of giving bracelets to all of our supporters. We hope it would serve, not only as a reminder to our supporters to remember us in their prayers, but also as a conversation-starter with their friends and families.

Please continue to pray for us as the Lord brings us through this transition. We long to fully rely on Him, knowing that we can't do it on our own. Please ask the Lord to be working in us in this way.

We are compiling a list of names and email addresses of those who wish to support us financially and those who commit to praying for us every week. If you would like to be on that list, please email us at: weheartno@gmail.com

Please send one-time donations to:

EFCA Donor Services

901 E 78 ST

Minneapolis, MN 55420

*Make check payable to EFCA and include the donor # 1562 in the memo section of the check.