Powering Up then Heading Out

We're going into an exciting and crazy busy week as July flies into August. Sunday night kicked off an annual week-long event that we get to be involved in this year. Power Up Clubs, led by teens in our church, meet in front yards of host homes all over the city. There are 78 clubs that meet either in the morning or 1 of 2 evening slots each day. So each team of young people puts on 3 clubs a day. They "camp out" at the church and have a full schedule of preparing and leading the clubs, then ending the day with a late evening worship time together.

As our part, we are helping host the club that meets at the church -- serving 2 large neighboring apartment complexes. Then Jim is in the band for evening worship sessions. The evening clubs started Sunday night and it was a wet start. The clubs that meet at 5:00 (including  ours) were timed perfectly to get drenched by about a 45-minute deluge! Water day was planned for mid-week, but God has his own event schedule. On Friday evening there will be a big Power Surge final event to further connect with families from the week. Please pray with us that this week many children and their parents will be introduced to the Savior! 

This week is also the first introduction of Patty (see more about Patty in the previous post), our newest Proclaim member, to the office. We are looking forward to distributing office responsibilities to best use all our gifts and strengths. I am in the office as much as possible this week to work with Patty and to finish up some projects since we will be leaving Saturday to head north. On that trip we will spend time with family and stop to visit friends and supporters along the way.

Jami will not travel with us this time as she is in training at her new job at Chick-Fil-A. She is enjoying it, doing well, and learning a lot. This job is a provision from God -- thanks to all who prayed for her through the long search!




(Trying to wake up for an early morning shift)

It's All Coming Together

Thanks for the prayers for our office transition after the seeming disaster with the lightening strike. It has all been pretty challenging, but not nearly as overwhelming as we had anticipated. All the upgrades have been made and new equipment in place, and I am quickly getting past the point where multiple times a day I have to Google what I'm trying to do in Office 2010. 

It was a big victory this past week when we made the decision to finalized the purchase of donor software we had been testing for about 3 weeks. This is a move we have needed to make for at least 6 years! Thanks to God's timing all this has been happening while the Smalleys are back in Jacksonville. Todd amazes us with his ability to make sense out of all this and make everything work like it's supposed to, making all these transitions more painless than we could have hoped. And even when there were frustrating times, I think all of us felt a peace and confidence that God was in control. I have no doubt that prayer carried us through.

So we are back in business just in time to welcome a new office staff member -- an extraordinary blessing and answer to prayer!  Patty and her husband John have been long time supporters and friends of Proclaim in our church in Jacksonville. Most importantly, Patty and John both have a heart for missions and a love for Proclaim. But on top of that Patty has had 12 years experience in administration with another mission organization that uniquely qualify her to meet a growing need within Proclaim as we have recently added several new or reappointed members. This is a lavish provision of God, beyond my most faith-filled prayers! Can you tell I'm excited?

Once again -- God has shown how pointless it is to fear and worry ahead of time about his provision and his enabling. I think he might have mentioned that a couple times . . . 

Kathie

Blessing in Disguise

We are still dealing with the results of one lightening strike! It wasn't even in one of the hurricanes -- just a normal Florida storm. A direct hit to the business where the Proclaim office is took out everything in the building that was connected to the internet or a phone line. That meant several days of scoping out the extent of the damage and then making replacement decisions. The bright side is that it prompted a lot of long overdue upgrades in both hardware and software. The biggest blessing and challenge is a complete change in our donation software. A huge undertaking to select the best program and transfer all the data, but a huge blessing to have a system that will better accommodate the growth that Proclaim is experiencing. We are still in the middle of this transition. 

Proclaim has just finished a tour in Croatia and Bosnia where our newest band Soul Tattoo was well received. See more about the band:  http://www.proclaiminternational.com/bok-hrvatska/

One member of the team is a young lady who was a guest at the Gala in April and was really excited about getting involved in Proclaim's ministry. Destiny immediately put in her application and in less than 2 months was on her first Proclaim tour! She loved Croatia and the tour experience, and even changed her return plans at the end of the tour so she could stay an extra week to help with an English language camp there. We're blessed to see such a quick response on one of our major goals for the Gala events!


Tour photos by Maasej & Haidy