Blessed With a Building / Deeds 4 Needs

Who could have imagined an 8,900 square foot building being donated to Vision Onward? That is just one of the cool things we have learned about God- - -expect the unexpected. There have been things we have expected to happen which did not happen and even more things we never would have expected that have happened. We have finally realized that it doesn't matter what our expectations are because God is sovereign and whatever is meant to happen will happen.

This past week we received the deed and keys to the old Coffer Music building on Tuxedo. It was a generous donation from Bill Coffer. This will be an awesome headquarters now for Vision Onward. It has 4,000 square feet of overhead garage space where we can park Ya'Way while we are reconstructing it. It also has office spaces and large storage rooms. There are so many things it can be used for and we are very grateful to Mr. Coffer for this amazing gift. It does have flood damage so it is currently being worked on by members of the Commonwealth. We thank them for their hard work as well. We have learned so many valuable things from them. They have such amazing servant hearts and are a great example of living a life of service.

We are also excited about two mothers who have asked us to pick up their boys for church this Sunday. These are contacts we made at Douglas Park on Wednesdays and we brought their boys to the Walk This Way event this past weekend. They are amazing young boys and their mothers are sweet as can be. One mother had back surgery this past week and we have been able to show Christ's love to her through Deeds 4 Needs and Shonna D. bringing her dinner and flowers tonight.

We just received an email from Shonna D about her visit with the mother who had back surgery. This is what she had to say, "We went in to meet K----, and I asked her if I could pray for her. She was not feeling very good at that time. She welcomed it. So we prayed. God is so wonderful. This is something new for me, being able to step out of my comfort zone and meet someone new and being able to pray for them. She was so thankful for everything. She mentioned that when she was better she was planning on finding a church. She is so thankful that Jeff is picking her son up in the morning to take him to church. She also said that if I wanted to come over and read scriptures to her to come over anytime. If she is not a christian she is really willing to know more. Praise the Lord. Your ministry is really planting seeds! Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to serve!"

Thank you Jesus!! We will continue to pray for her healing both physically and spiritually! It is so great to to see the blessings from people serving. Not only a blessing to those who are being served, but it is just as much a blessing for those who are serving. This is the beauty of the Deeds 4 Needs Ministry. It allows relationships to develop and grow through serving. When we serve people, they truly feel loved and cared for. This gains favor so they are softened to hear the good news of Jesus! Hallelujah!!

God is so good. We praise Him for what He is doing in Bartlesville. We pray that His love will be contagious. We pray that more and more people will have the desire to reach out to the downcast. We have seen so many sad, lonely and lost faces who just need someone to show REAL love to them. Someone to share with them the good news we have in Christ. Someone to show them a different way to live their lives. Please pray about whether that person might be you!!!!

If you are interested in receiving a blessing by serving, please visit Deeds 4 Needs and see if there is a need you can fill. We will soon be putting Deeds 4 Needs under the Vision Onward website, but for now you can check it at the above link provided.

Walk This Way 2007

Wow, where to begin with the weekend we just had!! The words that come to our minds as we reflect on the weekend are: unbelievable, exhausting, humbling, heart breaking, awesome, inspiring, enlightening, entertaining, moving, but most of all God glorifying.

God's Army arrived in on Thursday and were able to be a part of The House FM all request hour that night. The DJ, Carter, is a good friend of Bryan Hindman so Bryan hooked us up with him so we could get some air time. God's Army just released their new album "6:12", which is in reference to Ephesians 6:12. So it was good to get some air time with their new songs. Many called in and expressed how much they liked their music. I was even listening to their all request hour tonight and someone called in requesting one of God's Army's songs. Below is a picture of the live video feed from their website:

On Friday, the band began by visiting Hoover and they were given free range to talk about whatever they wanted- - -even God. The teacher also told the students they would receive extra credit if they went to the concert. Later that afternoon the band visited the Westside Community Center and The Boys and Girls Club and spoke with children. The day wrapped up with the band members having dinner with their host families and then spending some time out at the High School Football game.

Things started off very slowly Saturday morning with just a handful of kids at the workshops. We were determined not to get defeated by the low numbers, so Rich, Johno, Laura Jones and I hopped on Barnabus, cranked up the music and cruised the Westside neighborhoods looking for kids. Within the hour, the bus was full of kids and just as we arrived with our bus, the Westside Community Center van arrived with a van load full of kids as well. Praise God!!!! It was amazing to see how God brought the kids like that. By lunch time we had so many kids, we didn't have enough chairs for everyone to sit. The kids were awesome during the workshops and seemed to enjoy themselves tremendously. They did workshops in dancing, rapping, and songwriting- - -with one of the favorites being a rap where the kids picked words and the artists had to make up a rap about them. The rap ended up being about Meatloaf and Asparagus. Here is a picture of Taivia teaching the dance moves to their song "Warrior".

After the workshops, we moved outside to Frontier Park with the Slide, Boxing ring, Juniper Jump, cotton candy, and craft table. The kids LOVED all of that. Janet Rix told us about how Camryn and Emma Robertson got all the kids around the table ready to do crafts and told them they couldn't do crafts until they listened to the Bible story. So Camryn and Emma proceeded to tell them about God and Jesus and then allowed the kids to do their crafts. By the end of it, they had about 18-19 kids signed up for a Bible Study. We are not sure when this is supposed to take place, but we will figure that out if these kids are wanting to do it.

We started serving dinner around 5:30 and we had TONS of people come through and eat. We ended up serving 600 hamburgers and we are not sure how many hot dogs- - -A LOT!! After dinner, God's Army and Tedashii both had awesome performances and everyone seemed to really enjoy their music. It was amazing watching people of different churches, different races, different ages, different socio-economic classes all coming together to enjoy an incredible day of worship!! We are very thankful to all the hardworking volunteers who made this event possible. We are humbled and awed by the sacrifices that so many made in order to show love to the people on the Westside. There were parents who said, "We never have anything like this over here!" We met so many kids and parents and now the doors have been opened to become a part of their lives. We can't wait to begin developing relationships in order to help these families find hope in Christ.

Thank you to all the volunteers who came out!! We appreciate you and love you!!! We also want to thank the host families for their hospitality in opening their homes- Brian and Aubrey Baker, Donnie and Tammie Mooreland, Caroline Casselberry, and Jude and Mindi Henry.

Special thanks to those volunteers who worked especially hard:

Bryan Hindman

Jude and Mindi Henry

Kristin and Keith Girard

Gary and Janet Rix

Judy and Melvin Hill

Mark and Laura Jones

Johno, Rich, Seth and Daniel

Brad and Kristin Barber

Brian and Aubrey Baker

Kalan and Mandi Powers

Paige Saylor

Jim and Laura Robertson

Alex and Rachel Feria

Hannah Gore

Erin Strobel

The M.O.B. group - -(Missions on Bartlesville)

Caroline Casselberry

Donnie and Tammie Mooreland

Frank and Shonna Dickinson

HOPEFULLY WE WILL POST MORE PICTURES LATER!! God Bless you all!!!!

Wednesday Devotion & Popsicles at Douglas Park

In the midst of all the busyness of last minute details for the Walk This Way event, we were able to escape from it all and do our Wednesday night devotion and popsicles at Douglas Park tonight. It was the perfect time to stop and remember the reason why we are doing what we are doing. There were quite a few kids there for a change and we actually had one little boy, Jarell, join us for our devotion. Then, a little later his friend, Darris, joined us for a popsicle and we told them about the concert and they were real excited and wanted to come. Jarell's mom came out a little later and Jeff was able to talk with her and tell her about the concert and she said she would bring them if we could bring them home after it was over. Jeff also found out that she is about to have back surgery this coming Wednesday so we are hoping to be able to show God's love to her after her surgery and through recovery with a visit, a card, some flowers and a meal.

It is so neat to see how God opens the doors for us to show His love when we are just willing to do what He calls us to do- - - -love and serve. It would have been SO EASY to have skipped going to the park tonight with everything else going on- - -and it actually crossed my mind because when we went last week there was NO one there and sometimes it feels like a waste of time- - -but if we had, we would not have met Jarrell, Darris and Jarell's mom. We would have missed that chance to find out about her surgery, which gives us the opportunity to serve her through her recovery. I am so thankful that we didn't allow the busyness of this week to keep us from that time we had with them tonight. Thank you God for slowing us down tonight to see a bit of You!!!

That is our prayer for the remainder of the week- - -that we do not allow the busyness of the weekend to cause us to lose sight of why we are doing what we are doing. The details are not important; the PEOPLE are important. The people there are not going to care about all the minor details- - -they want to see that WE CARE about the people. Showing LOVE to them is so much more important and that is what they will remember when it is all said and done!!!

Dear Father, let Your LOVE shine through all the chaos!!!!

CALLING ALL VOLUNTEERS!!

The Walk This Way event is quickly approaching. We are in need of willing bodies to help us out during this event. We appreciate all the people who have offered to help out and it is now just a matter of securing names and times for people willing to serve. We have needs from Saturday at 9:00 am - 7:00 pm and Sunday from 8:00 am - 11:00 am. If you would be willing to take a 1, 2, 3 or 4 hour shift we would greatly appreciate it. We will have workshops, juniper jump, blow up slide and boxing arena, sno cones, cotton candy, drinks, merchandise table, serving dinner on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday. So there is plenty to do if you are willing to serve. Please call us at 876-1928 or email us at marci@visiononward.org.

Prayer requests:
1. Good weather for the weekend
2. Volunteer needs to be met
3. For God to prepare hearts to be open to the message of hope and salvation for those who may not yet know Him
4. God would use us to bring Him glory- - -that the whole weekend would glorify Him
5. We would see a uniting among churches and community for a common good.

Thank you to everyone and God Bless!!!!

BarnaBus Near Completion

BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES OF THE BUS



The bus we previously blogged about, Barnabus, is a 13 passenger bus we currently plan to utilize for taking people to and from church who do not have transportation. Future plans will also include transporting groups of relief aid workers to areas of need along with picking up people in need to bring them to a place of service.

We were able to accomplish a lot of work on the bus this week thanks to the graciousness of people willing to give time and resources. Johno has spent numerous hours wiring, priming, painting and rewiring after some electrical problems and we are so grateful for his giving spirit. We are also very thankful for Brian McDaniel, owner of Truck Ranch, who allowed us to use his business garage to do the painting- - - -that was a huge help!!! So, it has now been wired with speakers and painted. We now just need to get the vinyl logo and some stencilling work done.

This week is going to be a crazy week due to the upcoming Walk This Way concert. The bands will be flying in on Thursday evening and we plan on showing them around the community on Friday. We are also going to try to visit schools on Friday and will be attending the High School football game Friday night. Workshops start at 10 am on Saturday and will finish up around 2 pm. Free dinner will be served at 6 pm Saturday and the concert begins at 7 pm. Sunday morning begins with free breakfast at 9:00 and the service going from 9:15 -11:15. Sunday morning will include KAA kids from camp, Greater First Baptist worship dancers, Mike Colaw leading worship and God's Army delivering the message. It should be a GREAT service!!!

LABOR Day Weekend

It has truly been a LABOR Day Weekend for us thanks to some great friends who were willing to sacrifice their time and energy working on one of the buses (Barnabus) for Vision Onward. It is so neat to see people pulling together for a common cause and having great fellowship in the meantime. We were blessed by both the Jones family and the Henry family on Saturday as we spent the day together working, playing, eating and fellowshipping. The men were able to get the wheelchair lift taken out, which will give the bus much more room on the inside. They also completed sanding down the exterior in preparation for painting. Kayla and Camryn also worked hard on cleaning the inside of the bus.

Then again on Monday, Jude and Johno came out and worked from early morning until about 3 pm. Johno is an extremely talented guy to have around and he wired up some speakers we had here at the house into the bus and did many other other handy things. God is so good at putting just the right people in our paths right when we need them to accomplish a task at hand. We are so thankful to everyone who came.

We are hoping to have this bus on the road by the weekend of Walk This Way event so it can be used to transport the bands around town. So we have about 9 days to get it wrapped up.

Thank you to everyone who helped out this weekend: Mark & Laura Jones, Jude & Mindi Henry, Kayla and Camryn, and Johno!! You all are awesome and we appreciate it so much!!

How many Jesus Christ followers does it take to screw in 2 bolts?????

Apparently, THREE!!!