June Newsletter

We're having a problem accessing our email list of those who desire to receive the newsletter by email instead of snail mail. I (mary) am not sure how to remedy the problem and want to apologize. I am trying to work on it but if you know of others who may have mentioned they haven't heard from us would you give them this newsletter link to go to- Thank you! A prayer that I can access the very large number of email addresses would be appreciated too!

Below is our June 2011 Newsletter.

Please click on page- it will come up in a new window. If you will then click on that again it will enlarge so that you can read it! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to see what the Lord is doing in SE Colorado!

The Wild Frontier

I thought I would share with you a fact that I recently learned about the area where we live and serve in ministry.
I keep telling you that we are in rural South East Colorado.
But I was informed recently that we are not rural, we are considered frontier.

Here is the definition that explains that determination:

Frontier areas are sparsely populated rural areas that are isolated from population centers and services. While frontier is sometimes defined simplistically as places having a population density of six or fewer people per square mile this does not take into account other important factors that may isolate a community.

What are some of the challenges facing frontier areas?

Answer: The isolation and distances that classify an area as frontier results in long trips to attend school, shop for groceries, get health care, and reach other basic services. Public transportation options are often limited or unavailable in frontier areas, making access to needed services difficult for low-income households, the elderly and disabled. Frontier areas face seasonal travel barriers that can make travel difficult. For those living in mountainous areas, some roads and passes may be closed in winter, leading to longer travel times. Residents may find that winter driving in the frontier extends travel times because they need to slow down to adequately account for road conditions and limited visibility. Flooding caused by melting snow and heavy rains can force the closure of main roads for unexpected and extended periods of time in both mountainous and flatland landscapes.

The economy in frontier areas is usually based on a few specific resources or activities and so are more at risk of downturns and boom-bust cycles. Tourism, farming, ranching, logging, and mining are some of the businesses that are common in rural areas. Frontier communities may be more vulnerable to less desirable sources of business income, such as nuclear waste disposal. Frontier areas where much of the land is federally owned may lack an adequate tax base to pay for needed services. (In SE Colorado most of the land is privately owned ranch land which is taxed but not at the level of residential property, leaving the counties with a low tax base for services).

This information is from the Rural Assistance Center website. My added comment in parenthesis.

My intention is not to bring you facts that you can add to your trivia bank. My desire is to give you something that forms a picture, a mural if you will, of the people and the challenges to ministry in this area. For the sake of keeping this update from getting too long I am going leave you with this info and let the Spirit of Jesus paint a picture in your mind.

Next update I will give you some snapshots to add to this mural.
Tonight I will also extend the invitation of “come and you will see” John 1:39.


Blessings


A little update from Mary-

Happy Birthday Sweet William!

Bill with his Mom and Dad this January

Christmas Newsletter

Below is our Christmas newsletter. To view double click on the page- it will come up in a new window. Click once on page and it will be full window size for easy reading!

Merry Christmas!

A Week In New Mexico-

After a week in New Mexico to take care of the house situation I, Mary am home. I sit here trying to figure out a way to concisely tell you of my week- I am not sure how successful I will be at the concise part!!

First, thank you so much for all the prayers that were prayed on my behalf. It is such a wonderful blessing realizing so many care and are praying for us!!

My week started with much of the same run around from different agencies, sheriffs dept., Magistrate court, etc. It seems no one really wants to deal with things like this so the buck is passed. After talking to a real estate friend, he suggested I go and speak with the Tularosa Chief of police. He was a real blessing and though he said that I would probably have to go to court and need a lawyer he suggested that we go and speak to the tenants. So the Chief followed me and we talked to the young woman about needing to leave the premises. That night around 10:30 the buyer called Bill asking if we could work something out and that she wanted to pay all the back payments and other costs that were involved.We decided to sleep on it and in the morning I felt that I was supposed to meet her for coffee and talk in person instead of the phone thing. As we talked about the house situation God just opened the door for me to share Jesus and His desire for her life. We spent much of our time talking and I prayed with her before leaving.

Bill and I are feeling that God is calling us to extend grace to her. We have experienced His grace and mercy time and time again in our lives and I believe that we are just, as Bill likes to say, conduits for Jesus to flow through. We don't know exactly just all of what this will look like in this situation. For right now it is giving her till the end of the month to get our home in order to turn back over to us. We also have hooked her up with a dear friend who helps families with their finances by showing them God's principals for money and helping with budgets etc. Other questions and ideas are still in the air which we are just waiting on the Father's leading.

I spent 2 days at the storage unit of which the contents were given us. Much of the time was sorting and taking lots of loads to the garbage dump. I had 2 precious friends, Alisa and Monette and Monettes' boys bless me tremendously by helping me with this task. Thank you so much friends!!

We would appreciate your continued prayers concerning the house situation and also for the family involved.

Thanksgiving is upon us. A day set aside to ponder and mediate at the wonderful blessings given each one of us. I am thankful for the blessing of knowing-

Jesus loves me, this I know. Our prayer is that you may know more deeply the reality of Jesus' love for you.

Thankful for you!

Bill and Mary

Asking for your prayers

I (Mary) am heading down to Alamogordo for the difficult task of the process of evicting the family who bought our Tularosa house August of last year. We were owner financing the home and because of default of payment this is the unfortunate conclusion. Bill has many obligations here in CO and it seemed logical for me to run down to NM.

We have been unsuccessful at this point knowing just where to go from here so my first stop will be the Sheriff's department as it seems we have all paperwork in order. From neighbors in the area it sounds like the older son may be the only one really living in the house. He is violent from what they say. Would you pray that the house doesn't get vandalized during this event and that God would somehow be glorified even in this situation.

I do not know how long this process will take and so may be in Alamogordo till Friday or Saturday. Would love to go to coffee or see you!! I still have a NM cell phone# 921-2104. Give me a call!

We also were blessed with a storage unit there in Alamo (from someone who now lives in Colorado!) that is full of things that have been given to us to sell and use the funds for the food and clothing pantry so I will be trying to go through the unit and sorting as to what goes and needs to be thrown.

I am so glad we have you beside us- thank you for praying-it means so very much!

Bee Blessed

mary

FUN FUN For Everyone!

We've been busy and having so much fun since we last talked!
Fellow AFM misionaries , the Craigs, came and spent the night-
It was so fun getting to see them again!

(CLICK ON ANY OF THE PICTURES TO ENLARGE THEM)

I (Mary) have been doing a lot of this! We have been blessed with gifts of apples, peaches,pears,etc and now we have wonderful jars of goodies in our pantry-
I even made candied crab apples and a new recipe
Peach Salsa-- It is yummy!

This Sunday I (Bill) was talking about knowing God,
and that one way we can know Him better is by observing what He is up to in our lives.
I really desire to take note of and learn about Him from some of the easily unnoticed things that He is doing.
So can I tell you about some of the things He is doing here?

First, let me tell you about our need for clothing racks.
In response to our last email a number of you came up with some good suggestions.
But I am not going to use any of them. Do you want to know why?
Well one of our supporters has come up with approximately 10 racks from a department store. These are very nice racks!
Do you think maybe God wants to tell the people of Aguilar
"this is just a sample of how much I LOVE YOU"
by giving them nice racks for their clothing pantry?

If any of you in Alamogordo area have some nice gently used clothing you would like to get rid of - let us know- we will have plenty of room in between the racks. We are especially in need of baby, childrens, and mens clothing. We will be coming down this Thursday Oct. 21 and heading back very early Sunday morning to get back in time for the Aguilar Fellowship that evening.

Next, the food pantry gave out 59 boxes of food on Oct.1.
This helped 140 people!
Several people came in the day we were trying to organize and get the boxes together.
They saw that we were at the building and just came to help-
WHAT A BLESSING!

Getting boxes ready to distribute!

We reorganized how the boxes were given out in order to spend a little more time getting to know people.
We were able to chat with a number of them.
One young man I have tried for two years to be friendly to and to strike up a conversation with absolutely no success.
But while they were waiting for their box of food I got to talk to him a bit.
Then a few days later as I was unloading my pickup full of boxes of clothing I saw "Danny" coming down the street.
I quickly asked God what do you have planned for this moment?
Well he came by and asked if I could use some help.
WOW!
Another wall crumbling.

(person at desk is signing up to get a box while Bill chats with another friend)

To keep from making this too long let me just say Mary and I have had the privilege of meeting a number of new people.
Some through the food boxes, some through hospice, and others by some asking us to go by and meet their friend.
It is so exciting as we observe God opening doors into the lives of people -
many who have been marginalized and some just flat out forgotten.

Prayer requests

1. It is looking like we may be getting our house in Tularosa back. This will create a financial burden for us. Would you pray that this can be resolved.

2. Volunteers for the Food/clothing pantry and other areas of ministry we are seeing needs for (ex. after school Bible Club) but needsomeone to come along side and see this as their calling.

3.Would you be praying about standing in the gap spiritually for specific families and people we are working with?Many here have no one who prays for them and they come to us knowing we are and will be praying.

We would love to have you "adopt" someone that you will faithfully pray for.

We can never say "thank you" enough. Thank you for your financial and prayer support. Thank you for your encouragement and love for us!

l last picture of the building with its fresh coat of paint. You can see way in the back clothes hanging. That will be our clothes sorting area. The tables to the left have free puzzles, devotional books, Our Daily Bread, and tracts. To the right is the coffee bar and then where you cannot see except for a tiny bit (bottom right corner) are more chairs and small table where people can sit and drink their coffee and have a donut while they are waiting for their food boxes. I wish you could see it in person- This building is such a blessing!

A Pipe Dream

We are seeing both good progress and minimal progress in getting the clothing pantry in Aguilar up and running.

Many hands make light work"- that was so true the Saturday we painted the inside of the building! Several from our fellowship and Pastor Dan from Colorado City came out to help spruce up the inside. My, it is amazing what a little paint will do!!

Always good to see someone on his knees! (Pastor Dan Carlson)

Ken was a paint rolling machine!! Blue and pink were old colors-

Custom mixed (Ken and Bill hand mixing ) flat white paint that was graciously donated and
a variety of oops paint colors made a beautiful golden tan -

Mary was holding her breath till it got on the walls as it looked not so good in the buckets!

We are being blessed with a good amount of clothing donations, and are ready to start sorting. The one big hold up is racks to hang the clothing on. Clothing racks seem to be hard to come by so we have decided that we would just make some racks out of pipe. I have checked out the price of black pipe to construct 5' long racks double decked. The materials to build 1 (one) rack will cost $108.00. I am sure that you have figured out pretty quickly that that is waaaayyyyyyy out of our reach financially at this point.

My next thought was maybe, just maybe some of you would know where there is some pipe laying around that needs a new home and purpose. I have wire brushes so the condition of the pipe doesn't have to be new, although new is good. Any heavy duty clothing racks that you have laying around in your garage will do too!! :)

I suppose my biggest dilemma here is that I feel that the majority of any money that comes in should go to buying food for the people of this town. Yet there is a need to provide good clothing for them also.

So here I am before Father God and you seeking wisdom and input in this time and with these 2 needs. We appreciate every one of you so much!

Other Prayer Requests

In my last email we asked you to pray for Peggy, who had had 2 strokes. On Friday Peggy passed from this life. Our prayer was that during this time the Spirit ministered to her spirit to bring her to a place of assurance of salvation beyond the religious teaching she was familiar with. Please continue to pray for her family.

Would you also pray for Pastor Al Dagel. He has a blood infection that the doctors have not figured out as yet. We were blessed this last Sunday to be able to fill in for him at Grace Community Bible Church in Pueblo. We always enjoy being with this church.

Blessings,

Bill & Mary

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