Outpouring of Love

It has been exciting to watch God move in our community and see people responding and reaching out to those who are in need. We launched Deeds 4 Needs a couple months ago and things moved pretty slowly until the past couple weeks. We have received numerous needs- - -which we expected- - - and we have also had a lot of people volunteering to fill needs!! It is so neat to see the two come together. We are so very grateful to all of the people who are showing Christ's love by helping those in need! A few examples of needs that have been filled are:

1. A man getting his house cleaned out to avoid evictions
2. Disabled woman getting her house unpacked
3. Numerous furniture items donated
4. Services for an autistic child
5. Numerous financial donations for Boys & Girls Club & West Side Community Center

We are excited to enroll 11 children into Kumon, who otherwise would not have been able to afford it. A big thanks to Sung Park and Kumon who gave us a reduced rate and also to the West Side Community Center for paying for half the tuition for all kids enrolled. It is awesome to see people and organizations partnering together for the benefit of families and children.

We are also very grateful for our home church, Grace Community, and all of the support that they have provided to us. Our desire is to partner with more and more churches in the community in order to multiply the effect by uniting numerous churches under one cause - - -helping those in need and making a lasting impact in the lives of those we serve. All of this done for the glory of God and for growing His Kingdom!!

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has partnered with us!! We thank God for you!!

Happy Birthday Chris!!

Wednesday was Chris's birthday- - -one of the kids we have been meeting with on Wednesdays and Sundays. He is also one of the boys we took with us to Branson. He seems like one of our own now and he is so special!! He told us on Sunday that Wednesday was his birthday. He also told us that his mom was not going to be able to get him anything. Soooooo that was all we needed to hear. We had a special birthday night for him at Jude's with cupcakes and hot chocolate. As you can tell from the picture at the top- - -he is too cool to smile while we were singing him Happy Birthday, but it was obvious to us that he felt very special. We had asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said, "A Bible". Wow, how can you turn that down?!?! So we purchased him a Boy's Devotional Bible- - -his face was priceless when he opened it. Here is the picture:

He wasn't cool enough to hold that smile back!!

Here are some more pictures:

The Whole Gang

Kayla H., Kayla G, Trinity, Briana, Trey, Raina, Camryn

Darius, Chris, Jalen, and Jerrell (love his new glasses)

Trinity and Rob

Thanks to the staff at Jude's for letting us invade the store while trying to clean up and close!! We appreciate you!!!

What's Next????

We have had a lot of people asking us, "So, what's the next thing that Vision Onward will be doing?" It is kind of hard for us to answer that question. We do not want our ministry to be about the NEXT BIG thing that we are doing. We want it to be about being a part of the lives of the people we are serving and showing them we TRULY care about them. It isn't the BIG events that make a difference. . . .it is the small acts of love that attract people to Christ. We will occassionally have some bigger events, but if we allow that to be our focus, we will not have the time or money to serve individual families as we feel called to do. We have been focusing a lot of our time with 2-4 particular families and really trying to serve them in different areas of their lives. And because of the time we are pouring into the lives of these few families, we have had more and more interest from other families who are wanting to be involved with what we are doing. It is truly growing organically rather than from anything major we are doing.

We have noticed that there are MANY single moms raising kids with NO father figures in the picture. We have a small group of men that have been spending some time with these kids (especially the boys) and trying to give them some positive male role models. There is such a HUGE need for more men and families to serve and disciple single parent families. We are praying for more and more individuals and families to be called into this area of ministry. It is such a huge blessing to help others. . .we have experienced it first hand. The children in the families we have been serving almost feel like our own now.

So, as far as what we are currently doing. . . .we have been meeting with a group of kids every Wednesday night at Douglas Park and doing devotions and praying with them. We have also been picking this same group up on Sundays and taking them to church.

We are also working on the building so we can hopefully get it functional enough to serve a Thanksgiving Dinner. We may be partnering with Agape for Thanksgiving since they do not have enough room where they are at. Our building still needs lots of work though.

We have also launched Deeds 4 Needs and pray to see the community and churches get involved with serving. Whether as individuals, small groups, families, Sunday school classes or as a church, we pray people will get involved in meeting the needs of those in our community. Steve Sjogren said in Conspiracy of Kindness, “It seems people don’t necessarily remember what they are told of God’s love, but they never forget what they have experienced of God’s love.” It is our prayer that Deeds 4 Needs will allow the body of Christ to make an impact on our community…one family at a time.

Please visit http://www.deeds4needs.org/ for a listing of the current needs we have. The website is updated frequently as new needs arrive, so if you would like to be on our mailing list to receive updates, please email marci@visiononward.org.

Here are some pictures of the building:

301 Quapaw - The outside of the building with the walls we tore out.

The future site of our kitchen.

The BIG community room - -one of the rooms we are trying to get finished for Thanksgiving.

Hallway leading to office space.

As you can see, LOTS of work to do!! :>)

Garage Sale / Work Day Success

It was a long day yesterday, but much was accomplished. We sold tons of stuff at the garage sale and there was a lot of work on the building completed.

There are 3 rooms we want to get completed in the building as soon as possible so we can start using it. Although we did not complete all the work we had hoped to, we did raise enough money from the garage sale to cover the costs for all the supplies that were purchased for these 3 rooms.

We are very grateful for all the donations from people in the community for the garage sale! We had a ton of stuff to sell.

We are also thankful to all of our friends who showed up to pitch in with the garage sale and the construction on the building. There are so many to name and I will try to cover them all- - -Jude, Mindi & Lake Henry, Kipplyn, RandiKate & Chandler Summers, Frank & Shonna Dickinson, Laura Jones, Derrick Royer, Rob Nyoff, Henry, Rainbow, Johno, Chelsey, Daniel Walker, Alex, Rachel, & Dominique Feria, Mike & Kara Howze, Kristin Girard, Jim & Laura Robertson, Seth, and John. I hope that covered everyone- - -sorry if I missed someone!

We still have a lot of stuff left over and we are considering holding another sale next month!

We also want to give a HUGE thank you to the Nyoff family- - -especially Jim and Rob! They are a new family in Bartlesville and they have been such a huge blessing to us and to Vision Onward. They have jumped right in and have been able to help us with lots of "construction" things that we would have NEVER been able to do on our own. It has been so neat watching how God continues to place exactly the right people in our paths in order to accomplish His plans. It is also neat to watch how God is using other people, who are willing to serve, to advance His kingdom. The Nyoff's are an awesome example of servants of God and we are so very thankful for them!!!

Here are some pictures from yesterday: