Jackson's latest adventure

I forgot to add Jackson's latest photo... This week is trailblazing in Kansas. This should make all the peeps up in tornado alley laugh.



Enjoy!
Jess

CARES Ministry

Hello All,

Please be in prayer for the services this weekend at Mosaic. We are promoting the new recovery ministry and allowing people a time to take off the mask and get real about their brokenness in order to let God put them back together again. The Recovery Ministry begins THIS Thursday at 6:30. Please pray for me, pray for the Leadership Team, and pray that people will feel safe enough to come. Check out the Cares Ministry Video that our buddy Leslie did for us to promote. It hopefully will be on the website soon, too: www.mosaicgc.com 

Celebrate Recovery Teaser from milkmedia on Vimeo.

Update after Easter

First, Check out the above picts of Jackson in our new Mo Kids series: Trailblazers: Convicted to stand for what is right EVEN when others don't.

Now.... that you have had a good laugh.....

Hello there Friends and Family!

I know I say this a lot lately...but things have truly been busy. Easter was AWESOME!!!!! Mo Kids had more than enough help and everything went so smoothly. We had over 800 in attendance church wide and at least 10 salvation'. I am still processing the fact that God allowed me to be a part of this. For Easter, we added a 7:00AM service where no child care was provided. Since we set up the children's program the evening before, I was able to attend the 7:00 service. This literally was the first service that I have attended at Mosaic Church! And I got to sit with Shaun, so we attended together. It was such a blessing to be a part of.

This week, we have been busy doing follow up and preparing for this weekend. We had over 600 attend this week. Not to shabby! The kids area was packed house at 11 and the 9:00 had just a little room. We had 150 kids this weekend. Wow! I serve with the most amazing and loving group of volunteers. No matter how hectic, hot, or crazy, they love and serve and children's (and their family's) lives are being changed for it.

I had a really neat opportunity this past week to speak with two children who became Christ followers a few weeks ago while in Mo Kids. We are doing our fist big baptism at the beach on May 3rd and the family wanted to be baptized together and asked me to talk with the girls to clarify what baptism and salvation mean. So, Shaun and I sat down with the first girl, she's a 3rd grader and asked her if she could tell me what big decision she made a few weeks ago. She told me all about how she prayed to Jesus to forgive her of her sins and to come into her heart. She understood so clearly! I then explained to her that baptism was an outward sign to the inward change that she had already made. Her sister, who is almost 5, then came to talk with us. I asked her the same questions, just more in her terms, and she did the cutest thing. She scrunched down and looked up at me and whispered,"Jesus died on a Crwass for me and he wrrosse againn from the grwave for me. I asked him to come into my hweart." Talk about melt your heart! We then explained baptism and she was excited because she was going to get to bring her beach toys to the baptism!

Something that I am learning everyday in teaching kids about just how much God values child like faith. I mean, I knew it, but now to see it and be a part of it is truly amazing! Kids are just so willing to take that step and trust God knowing that He truly has their best interest in heart. In fact, they have been like, why wouldn't I trust Him? Why wouldn't I believe and follow Him? I mean it when I say that they are teaching me.

I got to sit with a child and discuss how to handle anger and we looked it up in the Bible together. It was so neat to get to use all my training as well as the placing Christ at the center of it all. She took away skills in how to handle her anger in good ways, but also learned what God has to say about anger but in a loving way. Not in that I am going to beat you over the head with scripture and quote Christian cliches kind of way, because we all know how effective that is in reaching people, especially children who are hurting. But in a way that showed her how much Jesus cares for her and how she can trust Him no matter what. How profound is that? Good stuff!

On another note, I wrapped up a class at Liberty this week, whoo hoo. I got a B, but I am okay with that considering all the craziness. I am taking one more class right now and then taking the summer off to focus on Extreme Week and the Cares Ministry. I also plan on helping Shaun as he plans his mission trip to Fort Worth.

The Cares ministry officially launches on Thursday, April 30th and lasts 25 weeks. It encompasses Celebrate Recovery, Life Hurts, God Heals, Divorce Care, Divorce Care for Kids, and counseling. God has brought together a great leadership team and once again, I am so blessed to serve with them. A little overwhelmed by the huge need for the program and the amount of hurting people, but deep down I know that this is what the people here so need.

Shaun continues to do good stuff with the youth of Cross Culture. We average around 40, and that is pretty good size for around here. He is also working on the Community aspect of his job, getting new home groups started and running ministry fairs. I am so proud of him and how he manages all of it. Even though working together as leaders has brought its challenges, it is still such an amazing thing to be a part of this together. It is hard to believe that we have almost been here a year. It was this time last year that we were giving our notices and telling the family about our decision.

I thought I'd share a few photos. Some are from Easter and some are from the Ministry Fair we had this weekend that Shaun led and organized. The goal of the fair was to get new people connected to a home group or other area of ministry. He did a great job and our church did a great job in participating! This is what it looks like between services.

Above: Shaun and Rick, who runs our parking lot ministry: the Cone heads. What a great name!Below: This is our Outreach Pastor, Jeremy Allen, our Children's Ministry Assistant, Ashley Coleman, and one of our great greeter's Kyle Gilmore.

Above: This is one of our elders, Doug Molyneaux and Pastor Dustin at Easter. That's all the pciture of adults that I got. I was back in the back with kids after that. :-)

Please continue to pray for protection and wisdom for Shaun and I and the rest of the staff. We love you guys and look forward to some good Tex Mex soon!

Love,

Jessica

Easter

Hello there Amigos y Familia!

Shaun and I have been pretty busy the past few weeks. Shaun preached the main service this past weekend. From what I have heard, he did an awesome job! To listen, please visit our newly redesigned website: www.mosaicgc.com. The site also has tons of info on the new Cares ministry that we are preparing to launch and the new series in the Mo Kids areas.

It is technically spring break here for the kids. But no break for us..... we are preparing for Easter. From what we have been told by our local members, Easter is a huge deal around here! We are hosting a 7:00 service to accommodate the visitors at 9 and 11. Awesome thing about that is that there is no Mo kids at 7, which means that I get to attend my first ever service at Mosaic church and I might even get to sit with Shaun as an attender. It has been almost a year since I have gotten to do that and I miss it sometimes. Please be in prayer for the services and for the staff. Also for all the visitors that will be coming!

We launched our new series this weekend in Mo Kids. Jackson was back for an appearance and he did a great job. The theme for the month is conviction: standing for what is right even when others don't. So we have a theme of Trailblazers. I haven't posted pictures in a long time, so I am finally posting some! Check out the volunteers and the new theme.


Shaun and I are still in school and working hard. I had planned to take my last courses in the summer and then graduate in the summer, but due to all the craziness of work, I am going to postpone and graduate in December. This sets me back, but I have had such a hard time finding a site to do my internship and in locating a Supervisor, that this will buy me some time and allow me to focus on all the work that is coming my way for the summer. So, I am sad, but know that it will work out. Summer is going to be crazy with Celebrate Recovery, Divorce Care, Counseling, Mission Trip, and the ever impending Extreme Week! Please pray for me for strength and focus.

We are planning a weekend off soon! We hope to return to Texas at the end of May. We can't miss the opportunity to see Clayton graduate. Go Clayton! We miss our families tremendously and I hope that they will come see us soon!

Thank you for all your pray and support. Great stuff is happening here and we are grateful to be a part of it. Some days are really good and some days are really hard. But we are learning that you have to have both and that through both He is sovereign. Please continue to pray!

Love,
Jessica