His Goodness is overwhelming!

Okay, okay... here I am 3 months later getting back in the routine of blogging after that crazy summer! Sorry that it has been so long. After I had accidently deleted all my children's ministry emails off my contact list it really threw me into a whirl wind of chalupas and I kept putting my blogging off until I fixed my contact situation. Anyways, we are now in Sept. which is 3/4 of the way through the year. I would like to take this blog and use it to review all that God has done this year:

Next Generation Conference
We had 10 different churches attend this conference. All of them completely blown away by what God is doing here. (It came out to almost 30 different registered guests) That is a great number for only promoting it for 1.5 months. They were blown away by the servanthood, willingness, and energy of our children ministry teams. all the way from birth to 5th grade. Way to represent team!!!

Kid Craze!!!
We had a count of 215 kids, 141 adults, and 72 salvations!!!
WOW!!! Those numbers blew away our expectations. It sure was an amazing night!!!

Easter Sunday Services
We had a record attendance all the way across the board! We had a total of
614 people walk through our doors Easter Sunday! 160 of those people were in the care of JourneyKIDS!!! We had a whopping 86 kids just in Mainstreet.
The week before we had a record number of 70 kids and we completely blew that out of the water Easter Sunday! (keep in mind both these dates were during spring
break) Is that not awesome!!! Our Preschool classes all had an awesome craft that they took home. I had parents commenting on how great they were.

Easter Egg Hunt
It was flawless!!! There were so many hands involved in making it great! We had people doing everything from stuffing eggs, organizing prizes, making signs, setting up, tearing down, and creating an environment during the event. We had nearly 500 kids there and an estimated 2,000 people total at the football field that day. There wasn't a single kid who left that field unhappy. We kept the energy high and had it all done within 30 min. We began to tear down and had everything back at the church by 3:30. Is that not awesome or what!!!

Our very first VBS!
We had an average attendance of 117 kids and 70 kids with perfect attendance the entire week! unheard of, especially when you don't do any promoting at all. (We were scared to because we would run out of room!) We had an average of 40... I repeat, 40 leaders who made it an event to remember! Absolutely AWESOME!!!

KIDS Sunday
This was the Sunday after our VBS where Pastor Jeff gave us the entire service to show off all that God was doing in the children's ministry! It was unbelieveable! I was so proud of those kids that day as they proclaimed their position as the next generation. We as adults we make sure they reach even greater heights as we proclaim, prepare, and praise them! The house was packed with around 550 people coming to church that Sunday and at least 80 of them were from our VBS week!

Summer Events
We rocked the community as we reached out every chance we got. We were a huge part of Diamond Daze and Freedom Fest this year as we proclaimed llife over our community. We definitely were a shining light in the city! Great job body of Christ. You sure did pull together well and our community recognized it.

New Land!!
HOLY COW!!! We purchased nearly 22 acres of land for the vision God has given Journey Church to be the light on the hill. The entire church headed out there that following sunday and made an ugly, overgrown mass of land look like a beautiful park! It gives me chlls down my back as I think of all the lives will be changed on that very land! I can see it in my dreams! We plan on breaking land before the year is up and having the our very own elementary and child care facilities up and running by the beginning of the next school year. And a few months after that we will break ground for our new state of the art Worship Facility! It is going to be the greatest thing Sallisaw has seen. But the people of Sallisaw sure do deserve it because God has a plan for this community!

TeamKID
We ended the TeamKID year in May with a bang!! Running a consistent 40+ kids every week. As we have begun the '08-'09 year they keep on coming! We have been up and running for 2 weeks and we have already reached new hights with a high attendance of 47 kids and growing! Ms. Teresa took over TeamKID this year (due to Ms Kim having to finish her teaching degree) and she has done a marvelous job!

3 Services!!!
ANOTHER HOLY COW!!! This week we start running 3 service because we just simply do not fit! We are heading into the fall season and making huge strides to a consistent 600+ attendance and we just do not have the room! God's people have really stepped up to take care of all the extra work to make another service happen. Wow... where are we headed next.

Now keep in mind... these are simply just some of the main highlights... God has been working and rockin-rollin'. He has been changing lives and using them to do great things for Him and I am simply glad to be a part of such a