Greetings!  

This has been a beautiful spring, full of fun and accomplishments!  

 

• We are excited for you to see our new banners that grace CRC's entrance. They will be here to greet you now when you come! See picture below.

• Our spring paper newsletter is out. If you didn't get one, call or email and we will get one out to you! Also, if you want extras to give to friends and to post at church let us know. We can send you a dozen.

• CRC helped support Grace Hansen on a medical mission trip to Haiti in May where she got to share Christ and shadow two physicians in some rural  areas. 

 

Grace, with the team, in Haiti

• Memorial Day Weekend Retreat was well attended with about 75 guests! Our speaker got us thinking about how God can not only redeem our past, but how He uses it all for His glory in unexpected ways. Tom also started a huge water balloon fight, which the teens loved.

• We should be getting our plans back from the county any day now for the deck addition to the Lamppost. Sam Frank and Michael Wellman volunteered their time to draw up the blue prints. MMAP has arrived to begin the construction. The Lamppost and the deck add-on funds were a gracious gift from the Darren and Janine Pritt Family!! Many thanks to you all!

• We recently had the leaders and interns of Teen Challenge here, along with the founder of Teen Challenge for the Northwest. What an honor! Also, we discovered that there are over 200 Teen Challenge Ministry locations in the U.S. and twelve hundred world-wide.

• Our volunteer Summer Staff will be arriving in just a couple of weeks and will be headed up by Abigail Swayze.  Please pray for them as they have graciously come to serve. We are thrilled to have them join our staff team soon.

We had an exciting answer to prayer recently. When Tim went to submit the plans for the deck, with the county, someone in charge had informed Tim that we could not use volunteer labor for commercial projects. This was quite a surprise and something new, but the man was very firm. The news was a terrible blow because much of our work is done by volunteers. We would be sunk without them! The next day, at the staff meeting, Tim relayed the news and had the staff pray. A few days later, Tim called the county to confirm, once again, whether or not this news was really true. The woman on the other line said that she had overheard the conversation that the man had with Tim. Without hesitation she called a meeting to discuss the matter. The conclusion was, "Yes, you can do the work with volunteers!" Praise the Lord!

On another note, Tim and I made new friends with Liaw and Chai, a couple who are Wycliff missionaries in Papua New Guinea. Liaw shared with me that even before he went to this country thirteen years ago to minister and translate the Bible, he made a decision that he would love the people. He would love them whether they liked him or not, whether they appreciated him or understood him or not. What would it accomplish is he translated the whole Bible in their language and had not the love of God for them, unconditionally? If things got hard, he would be there for them first. After hearing this, I thought to myself how much this would benefit us all if we would go into marriage, work, and life with this vision. How often we go into life haphazard, with no thought, plan, or resolutions for when things get tough.

How we need to make some declarations in life that we do not break; principles that guide our life and that do not change. Of course, the eternal decisions matter the most, those things that God has commanded us, like loving Him with all our heart. The Bible is our guidepost to what is important in life and how we should live. Are these the standards that we live by? Are there lines that we have drawn in the sand that we will not cross? So often, our flesh and the world blur these, making everything relative to people's emotions and circumstances rather than what God commands us.  

According to Wikipedia, "the lyrics to 'I Have Decided to Follow Jesus' are based on the last words of a man in Assam, north-east India, who along with his family was converted to Christianity in the middle of the 19th century through the efforts of a Welsh missionary. Called to renounce his faith by the village chief, the convert declared, "I have decided to follow Jesus." In response to threats to his family, he continued, "Though no one joins me, still I will follow." His wife was killed, and he was executed while singing, "The cross before me, the world behind me." This display of faith is reported to have led to the conversion of the chief and others in the village." I pray that we would have these same convictions.

Also, while we were out traveling, Tim and I got to visit a couple of days with a long time friend of the family and the Center, Jean Moberg, out in Wisconsin. This wonderful woman, who did several of our stained glass art, banners and sandblastings, as well as the paintings of the sheep and the Good Shepherd on our Good Shepherd Lodge, is doing well and is still actively doing art for her church and Retirement Community.

Now that our spring adventures are just fond memories, summer is now around the corner, so don't forget to view below our up-coming speakers. We can't wait to see you all soon!

In the love of Christ,

Julie Hansen