emacs/var/backup/!home!chris!org!newsletter.org~

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:ID:       20210801T064905.174320
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#+TITLE: Newsletters
#+STARTUP: overview

* Newsletter Process
The process I like to follow with my newsletters.
- [ ] Write the newsletter in Org-Mode
- [ ] Collect images
- [ ] Create layout in Scribus
- [ ] Export as PDF to send to Abbie ( Or get Abbie to try Scribus )
- [ ] Send to Abbie for approval
- [ ] Tweaks
- [ ] Export final as PDF
- [ ] Print from Gwenview


* May 2020
** Mission Trips
   Over the next few weeks we'll be going out on Mission Trips finally! Unfortunately, we couldn't go through with our original plans. We were forced to switch everything up due to COVID-19. Sadly, we told teenagers and their supporters that we'll be trying to switch things up. In order to still have an impact with our teenagers and community, we decided to do local mission trips instead! So, many of you will have already heard about the trips we are doing right around our home towns! From June 7-10 and 14-17 we'll be staying at Luctor CRC near Prairie View and serving the communities around our homes! Many of the kids who signed up and surely bummed that we can't go to the places we had planned, but after talking to a few, I've found them quite excited about the prospect of getting to do things with their own communities!
** Staff Retreat
** Camp
** Prayer
* June 2020
** Mission Trips
This past month we went on 3 mission trips all right here in Kansas and Nebraska! Many of you were probably aware of the 2 that I participated in right here in our own church, but there was another that I did not get to be a part of that took place in Oxford, NE. It's a really cool thing to see how we can be a part of something right in our own backyard. Many of the students who went were hoping to get to go to Michigan or Kansas City, but due to COVID-19, we decided to take our trips home and see what God wanted to do right here.
*** Week 1
One of the coolest things about our first trip was that many of the kids were really wrestling with scripture while we were there. So, while we worked on painting a house, I had kids asking me some pretty deep questions. Like, "Why is the Old Testament hard to understand?", or "What does the Bible say about free will and predestination? What do churches teach about that." On this trip we basically painted an entire house (painting gives a ton of time to discuss these topics!) and tore out the paneling and cupboards of the consistory room in our church. It was an incredible honor to get to work on our own church even! Finally, we went and helped the family of one of our staff members after some debris had made a terrible mess of their farm yard.
*** Week 2
Our second trip was a lot of fun because I got to work with a lot of the students who were going on mission trip, but I wasn't likely to get to work with because I wasn't originally planned to go with them. For example, this was Mary Baird's first mission trip and I loved getting to work with her brother Aidan in the past, so it was cool that I got to be there for her first trip! On this trip, we painted the soffit and porch of a friend in Logan, and got to paint an entire house of a gentleman from Long Island. We also went to Atwood and helped another affiliate group of ours with a few projects around their building they use for TFC, like stripping a wood floor down bare.
** Camp
One of the major things about our camp this year is that we didn't know if we were going to even have it. However, I'm so happy to tell you all that as of last week we found out that we can actually have camp!!! Now, unfortunately it's only at 50% capacity for students. Meaning we can only have half the kids there not including staff, but it's at least something! And, maybe we'll get lucky and have even less restrictions when the day comes!
** On Turmoil and Fear
With all that's going on in our world, I don't know if I'd be ok with, not taking an opportunity to share what I think God is saying. There may be a lot of things we read online, a lot of things we are afraid of, a lot of opinions, craziness, nonsense, and just general fear from everything we see and hear today about protests, riots, COVID-19, and everything in between.
It's easy to get caught up in wondering what will happen, fearing for our country, or fighting this world. And I personally have been wondering what kind of world are my sons growing up in. It's really hard to ignore all of that with COVID and rioting everywhere. But sometimes all of that fear and worrying tends to leave us missing the important things. From all of this, I can't stop thinking that it is of most importance for me and my family to "fix our eyes on Jesus". My sons could be growing up in a world vastly unlike the one that I grew up in. And even more alien than the one my father grew up in, but throughout all of that I'm reminded of what God spoke to us through the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 1:9 "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."
This may seem like a sad outlook on life and in fact most of Ecclesiastes is that way, however, I would encourage you to give it another read during this time. Likely written by Solomon near the end of his life, Ecclesiastes is asking us to recognize the world for what it is. A fallen one. Our world is and never will be, by our own power, what life was like in the garden. Humans will always hate, fight, and kill each other, it's the power of sin that rules over this world. There will always be war, strife, and pestilence in our world until Jesus returns. This is not new, and the power to overcome it does not exist in us building a country that can handle and fight off this kind of strife we've all endured for the last few months, but rather in the Church clinging to her groom, Jesus. So, I invite you, if this has been hard the past few months and you feel like you are fighting a losing battle in your prayers and hopes that more people will calm down and turn to a biblical worldview, take heart in this, that's the way things are supposed to go. Jesus will overcome it all in the end and our hope can simply rest in that.

John 15:18
#+BEGIN_QUOTE
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
#+END_QUOTE

* July-August 2020
** Camp Camp Camp
Camp was an extremely weird situation this year. There were lots of times where we would have loved to make camp work, but in the end, God had other plans. As I write this the camp team is actually delivering camp care packages to every student who would have come to camp. It's been a hard month for us, for the camp team, and even for the teens who would have come. They have worked so hard over the past year to build a camp experience that may give teenagers a glimpse of the importance of scripture and adhering to God's word, but we now cannot share that experience with teenagers.

I've not been on staff for near as long as some others, but we've done camp every year for a very long time, and since we started, this is the first time we cannot. This pandemic has really flipped our world upside down with fear and danger. Everyone has opinions about it, but no one really knows what to do about it. None of us know what is best to do and we are all trying our best to do what's right.

In the end though, just as our incredible camp team tried to capture, we can all go back to the one thing that is never taken from us, the Word of God. Even in utter chaos and the world falling about, if you can rely on God's Word, there shouldn't be anything that can really disrupt your world. And the crazy part about that is that, it happened! When the pandemic started, everyone on staff had some wanderings about if camp might become a reality, but to actually see it, we all wish it weren’t so, but here we are. If you haven't got a chance, check out TFC's Facebook page to find the videos the camp team put together to try and give a brief picture of what we would have shared at camp this year!
** Curriculum Planning
Although we've had to cancel camp this year, we've also been preparing for the next year of TFC. Despite the major cancellations that always seem to be happening because of Coronavirus, we will always have teenagers to disciple. Because of that, I've actually been leading some of the others on staff in preparing our curriculum for the year. We've only just started, but we have a lot of ground covered already. We have plans and a direction and even a few lesson ideas already on paper.

Let me give you a glimpse of what we're working on. Acts is a book of the Bible filled with hints of what Jesus can do if you allow him to work through you and your community. This year, we wanted to capture that as we point teenagers to what the early church looked like in Acts. So, a number of the staff and I took some time to just immerse ourselves in the book of Acts.

We found that Jesus does something in that early church that we honestly don't see very often in our little world of northwest Kansas and southwest Nebraska. Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, drives the early church to spread the Gospel like wildfire. In fact, I'd say it's even more effective than wildfire. In light of today, I'd say the Gospel was spreading similar to how COVID and news surrounding it spreads! It was crazy for that early church! With that in our minds as we tried to nail down our theme for the year, we felt God guiding us to sharing just how powerful that Gospel is.

We decided we could talk about how important it is to spread that Gospel, but what would be more impactful is simply showing teenagers the raw Gospel and it's power, then allowing that to be the motivation we have to wanting to share it with others. When one reads Acts, they may find that when people discovered the power of the Gospel they quickly want to share it with the others in their families and communities. It's this infectious desire to share the Gospel with others that we'd like to highlight as we work through Acts this year with the students.
** Baby!
Many of you might know that Abbie and I welcomed another cute little baby to our world on July 31st! Luke James Cochrun has been an absolute joy to have in our lives, well aside from the lack of sleep! We love his smiles and his long hair! AND HIS BRIGHT BLUE EYES! It's our prayer that he'll grow into an incredible man of God that is ready to love and serve the Lord, his community, and his friends and family around him. Thank you all so much for all the prayers and support that you give us. With everything going on, it's a bit overwhelming to be constantly adding to our plates with a new child amidst the pandemic and all the strange things we've had to go through and change for TFC, but God knows what He is doing and we can rest on his everlasting grace and mercy!
* September - 2020 - DON'T GET STAMPS OR RETURN ENVELOPES
** Prayers Needed!
Before our mandatory break from TFC due to being quarantined, we were in the process of getting it all up and running properly. And unfortunately we've been having a real hard time finding adult leaders for various things at TFC. It's super important to have adults show up and assist us at TFC because we find that many of our students will gravitate to other personalities and that leader becomes crucial in helping teenagers get to know Jesus. Many times a teen will look up to one of the adults at TFC as their mentor and it becomes a powerful relationship that leads to Jesus when we have enough adults to be there for teens who need someone to talk to, share life with, cry with, and laugh with. Pray that we'll have enough adults to do TFC each night and have a good group of volunteers and leaders to show kids how to live and love like Jesus!

** COVID Hits HARD - Quarantined
Well, this is really hard to share with you all, but some of you may know this already. Here at TFC, we've had to stop meetings the last two weeks because one of our staff contracted COVID. The worst part about it is that we all had a staff meeting shortly before we found out and therefore we had to stop all operations for two weeks while we all quarantined.

It's one of those moments that's really hard to grasp what to do about it, but we've all decided that essentially it just means, we take a break. Lots of us have been using it to work on other projects or spend more time with the Lord. So luckily we've found a lot of use for this time, but it's still hard to have to stop for two weeks.

At home for me, I've been doing a lot of just spending time with our family. Abbie loves having me help her with the boys and it's been a lot of fun to just do some projects with them or just spend the morning playing with Josiah and Luke! But another great part, was been watching God use this by helping our students step up to the plate.

** SYATP
On the 23 of September, we were supposed to be gathering around the flag pole for a country-wide event call See You At The Pole. Unfortunately, I've been quarantined and we don't have a lot of other adults who'd be around during that 7am time slot that we've been able to do it at the school. Essentially, we all assumed it just wouldn't happen at Northern Valley this year. I text our ministry team about it and said that unless they wanted to just do it entirely without my help (which, it is supposed to be a student-led event, but I often give them a general plan to follow 😉). A few of them said that since we hadn't given them a plan they wouldn't really know where to start. I assumed that was that, we just wouldn't have it in 2020. But late on Tuesday night, Kai Cox sent me this text, "Chris, could you send out a text to everyone that we'll do SYATP 7:30?". And him and I kept chatting back and forth about what he and some others had come up with for SYATP the next morning. Myself being quarantined I couldn't go, but I sent out the texts to let everyone when and where it was an Kai reported back to me that 12 students had come and they gathered around the flag pole of the high school and prayed for each other, their school, the coronavirus, and their community.

I've had a few moments in ministry where I find that God is really growing some incredible young people in our ministry, but this was a big one. To have students determined to see themselves and their peers praying the current needs around them was super awesome to hear about, even if I couldn't see it.

** Home Life
At home, we've loved watching Luke grow so incredibly fast that it's hard to find clothes for him as quickly as he gets rid of them! Here are pictures of him at 1 month and again at 2 months! He's getting so huge! Another funny moment is that when Abbie would take the kids somewhere out of the house, Josiah often asked if daddy was coming. We explained to him that "daddy" was in quarantine and Josiah simply kept asking from then on that if I was still in quarantine anytime he left the house without me. I'm finishing this letter the day I've been released from quarantine and as I walked out the door, I heard Josiah cry out loud that "DADDY" was leaving! I've not really had him cry out after me leaving before and I'm sure he'll miss me on days I need to leave after getting to have 2 solid weeks with me, but it really makes me love that little kid!
* March 2021
** Spring is here
I love the spring. It's a time of new beginnings, but one of my most favorite parts is Easter. At TFC this year we wanted to hit home just how powerful and meaningful the gosepl is, that's why we themed the year Euangelion, which is the greek word for gospel. We want the teens to not just know the gospel, but to feel it.

My family celebrated Easter every year by doing fairly normal Eastery things. We painted eggs, got Easter baskets, but I never grasped the Easter story in a way that would change my life until I read it for myself. To read the story, and let your imagination fill the blanks to the point that you can see yourself as one of the disciples following Jesus into the garden is life changing. Watching him pray and sweat so profusely that it's like great drops of blood, imagining the horror and fear when the soldiers take him away and only the next day as they vote for Barabbas instead of Jesus at the Passover feast.

To feel dread as anyone may turn and arrest you as well for having followed him. The feeling of being completely helpless as the machine of human government crushes the son of God and leaves you with no hope left. It feels as if not even God can overcome the evil in this world...

Then, when there is no hope, Jesus hung on a cross, killed, and put into the grave, everything changes. Suddenly, you hear whispers from others about Jesus being missing, and others even say he's alive! He appears before you in the room with the others, fear, uncertainty, shock, excitement, incomprehensible joy washes over you in a rush and you're completely frozen by emotions. Death isn't the end. Sin can't win. Not even with the most final thing we know in the world, death, it is still nothing compared to God.

Yes, this world is still filled with hate, pain, sorrow, and grief. It is still ruled by broken humans that always crush the wrong person. It's still filled with sickness and death that happens at all the wrong moments and hurts the people we love. It's still filling us ourselves with the wrong emotions and driving us to make horrible choices and enticing us to destroy the things we love. But, Jesus overcame it all. And in that, he gives us hope. Hope that we too can follow him in being a new human. A new kind of human that isn't filled with hate, isn't corrupted by greed and lust, a kind of human that only wants to love and help others into the same walk of life. Jesus' victory means you and I get a chance at being a part of that new way of life right now. Yes later there will come a time when no pain or sorrow exists at all, but now we have an incredible opportunity to be a part of heaven here. We do that when we gather with other believers and love each other, when we serve others, when we sing together, when we open the word together! We do that by being the body of Christ now.

That's the incredible story and the world of absolute hope we have wanted to help kids grasp and spread this year at TFC. At NVTFC, we have been having a lot fewer students show up now that we changed locations, but our mission is still the same. To help teenagers grasp that truth. Please pray for us this Spring. That as we open a new chapter, we can help kids grasp this Euangelion, this Good News. And that our community may grow to love and cling to that truth through the teenagers who share it with them.

*** Pigeons
If you've ever heard Tom Lehrer's Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, you get why I love spring so much. It makes people just silly and fun! It gives us all a sense of joy as the winter melts away and the air grows warmer and warmer. You perk up a little more, and join in song and dance a little more. Well, maybe not that last one so much, but we all feel more joy!
* April 2021
** Looking Forward
Boy has this been a rather interesting year. Many times this year I've thought we've been dealing with some very strange and difficult changes, but all together, I now see God has simply just been using what's been going on to move us forward. I'm still not necessarily sure what it is that God has been doing, but I know He's been at work, and I know what He is doing is good.
*** Paul in Phillipi
This year at TFC we've been studying the book of Acts and one of the hardest parts of diving into this book is that the apostles in Acts don't always have it very easy! Paul, over and over, throughout his missionary journeys, is attacked on every front. Paul doesn't have it easy, and the funny thing is, he started all the hardship that he is now enduring! There is one story in Acts 16 where Paul is being followed by a girl who is possessed by a spirit. After a while it says that Paul merely got annoyed with the girl following them around and commanded the spirit to come out of her. Her masters cared nothing for her or Paul, they only cared for how much money they could make with he living under the power of a spirit! So, now there were ticked off! They lied to get a whole bunch of the crowd in the city to help them beat Paul and his friends with rods and throw them into prison. This all happens right before that famous story of Paul in prison and being freed by an earthquake, but because Paul loves Jesus so much, he was singing hymns the whole time and when he doesn't escape at the first chance possible, the jailer pauses from committing suicide and Paul evangelizes to him and converts him to Jesus! I say all this to show how hard Paul had it.
*** Paul in Rome
Paul had it even harder as he wanted to bring money to Jerusalem for the poor church there. As he makes it back people have heard many stories of Paul's missions and were angry that he was preaching about Jesus. They too lie about him to get their way and get Paul arrested. For years Paul is stuck testifying to this group or that leader and is tossed around as a political game all because some people lied about him. This though, is where Paul hears the thing that gives him the most hope. Acts 23:11, Jesus appears to Paul as he sits in custody being batted around like a volleyball in a state game of politics. He tells Paul that just as he has testified before these leaders, he'll testify before Caesar in Rome. This hope, that Paul will get the honor of being the tool God uses to push the gospel to the gentiles and the center of the known world, it's powerful. And, it's comforting.

While I don't know what God's plan is for NVTFC this next summer, but I do know that if He's asked us to be the tools He uses to reach teenagers in this area, He'll make it work. There is something oh so powerfully comforting in knowing that things are working out just the way they are supposed to. And in that, we find ourselves ready to serve God no matter what!
*** The Summer Plan
This summer we are super excited for what God is doing in our ministry! I've got 3 of our regular 5 kids coming on mission trip with us and hoping they'll all come to camp! It's gonna be so nice to actually be able to go do the things we haven't been able to do for a year! Since Covid started, our plans have constantly been dashed but it does seem like we are starting to actually be able to do the things we have missed doing so much! Please pray for this crew as they get a chance to enjoy the fun of serving with friends while serving Jesus! And pray for our community as we hope more of the teens will want to come do camp than are coming to TFC!
* May 2021
** Escape Room
As we've rounded out the year, I've really enjoyed working with the students who've been coming to TFC and REALLY enjoyed picking on them! To make the end of our year special, I thought it'd be good to do something that we'd not be able to do with a larger group. So I thought it'd be fun to put together an escape room! If you've never heard of an escape room it's essentially a room that you get locked into with a small group of people and are only allowed out if you find the key. To get the key you will be asked to figure out all kinds of puzzles, riddles, and clues that eventually lead you to the key as you put everything together. It's a ton of fun and gets a lot of people to feel like they are the spies they watch on TV all the time. I still remember that while we were doing this, Ame, one of our adult leaders, told me, "I feel like I'm on White Collar right now." It's just a ton of fun! They kids loved it! They wrestled through clues and all kinds of difficult puzzles, but the best part was just getting to work together with these incredible kids and watch them as they realized the next riddle!

The whole time, I wanted this night to give them and myself a chance to bond and realize that Northern Valley TFC isn't about size, but rather it's the relationship we build, the community we build in light of the Lord moving in our hearts.

** Mission Trip
Some of you may be reading this while we are on mission trip, but some of you might be reading it just before we leave! Those students I was talking about that came to our escape room, I was so glad that 3 of them decided to be a part of mission trip this year. It's a huge honor and excitement to know that some of our most dedicated students are coming on one of the coolest parts of the ministry of TFC.

Every year as a staff we discuss how some of the kids are so committed that they'll drop anything to be a part of what's going on. Then on the flip side, we have students who attend Wednesday night TFC, but we can't get them to do anything or go anywhere outside of their town. Even in their hometown, they will often show up fairly intermittently anyway. 

So it is with great excitement that I'll be able to take three of our students on mission trip and dive deep into living life more like what Jesus intended us to live like, as servants! Please pray for us as we go to Cary Mississippi and learn to let the Spirit lead. I'm attaching our picture paper to this letter so that you can pray for the students by name! Thank you for supporting us on this!
* June 2021
** Mission Trip
This year on Mission Trip, we had an absolute blast! Some of the coolest moments include seeing poverty stricken people slowly breaking free from that poverty, helping teenagers grow deeply in their relationship with Christ, and finding the Lord having everything in place for us every step of the way. Sometimes on mission trip we find ourselves struggling to see our work as being helpful when it feels like so many people that we work with and for never seem to progress past the small amount of help we provide and remain in the poverty world they are stuck in.

Every time I've been to a Mississippi mission trip, the purpose has been to work alongside folks who are stuck in poverty and help them with real and big problems, while hopefully freeing the staff at Cary to build strong relationships with those folks so they can break out of the poverty that enslaves them. Most of the time though, it is REAL hard to see how that works because we are only there for a short time. We tell the teens on the trip about Cary and do our best to help them capture the power of the relationships that the Cary staff will build with these people, but that's a very hard thing to do.

This year though, many of the students not only got see that, but worked alongside a woman who embodied what that process is supposed to look like! The one house we worked at belonged to a husband and wife named Diego and Leah. While Diego had to work a lot while we basically redid a lot of their house, Leah was there with us and WORKED right alongside us a lot! The relationships we were able to build with her was incredible! Many of the students got to know her quite well and also saw her learning how to take care of home right alongside them! This opened doors to helping many of the teens to see how a relationship founded in Christ makes a world of difference in changing lives. Jesus used Leah to grab the attention of teenagers and draw them closer to Him.

Along that line, I can't count the number of times that God uses PEOPLE on mission trip to change lives. It's all about relationships, God uses people to change lives over and over. Why else does Jesus come as a MAN!? That's why the most incredible thing on this trip to watch was how God used the relationships of people in Cary and others on the team. At the end of our trip, one student was talking about the friends that they made and how a deep conversation they had transitioned into their desire to be missionaries and serving the Lord oversees or how they love getting to help people in hard situations through their reliance on the Holy Spirit.

Thank you all SO much for being a part of this mission trip by praying for and supporting us. So many of you have encouraged Abbie and I over and over through the years, but a lot of you have also supported and prayed for many of these teenagers who are in our communities. Thank you so much for that. You are an INCREDIBLE support for our ministry and on this trip!

** Planning for Camp and SPLASHING around
For the rest of this summer, many of us are pushing hard at getting ready for camp! TFC Camp this year is planned again for the last two weeks of July. The theme is "Strangely Dim" based off the song, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus". Throughout our camp time, we'll dive deep into recognizing the glory of God and how it should render all our worries and worldly thoughts, strangely dim in comparison to God's incredible Glory!

Pray for our camp team as they only have a handful of days left in the office to finish all the details and put together their grand plan! Pray too for our SPLASH teams this summer! We have one more going Natoma and Codell. They'll likely be working with a small team in a lot of heat! Pray that they'll stay cool!
* July 2021
** Camp Memories and Mission
TFC Camp was the place I became a Christian. It was also the place that I fully devoted myself to being a minister of some sort. I have incredibly fond memories of TFC Camp and how it has shaped me and my passion for ministry. It's how I recognized patterns of how to do ministry, how the Holy Spirit draws people to himself, and how I am a part of God's process of bringing people to Him.

I have seen a lot of kids grow a LOT at TFC Camp. It's like a bubble a place that separates them from the rest of the world just long enough with a high enough concentration on getting to know Jesus, that the chances for real change sky rocket.

Take for instance, Tharen Cox. Every year I've watched him grow more and more at TFC Camp by digging into God's Word and leading other kids in his small group. This year, I saw a young man who has fallen in love with God's family take many moments away from his friends that he loves so much and dedicate time to some of the younger kids at camp and point them to Jesus. Not only are those kids getting a chance to see Jesus again through Tharen, but Tharen has been practicing sacrifice so that others may get to know Jesus too!

Or what about Kai Cox. Kai went on mission trip, as did Tharen, this year and grew immensly there, but at TFC Camp, I saw him jump into new leadership roles that just made me smile. One time during one of our free time breaks, instead of playing 9 square or basketball or just chatting, I saw Kai sitting with a group of kids playing his ukulele with another girl playing her guitar, but rather than just general music, which I'm sure they played some of that too, they were playing worship songs and just praising Jesus for who He is. While I'm sure they goofed around some too, Kai wasn't afraid of just leading some of his peers in praising Jesus.

And I saw some cool stuff from Mary Baird too! The three of these kids and I are going to read through the Bible together this year and discuss our findings as we go. While all of us may have been a bit behind schedule, Mary was clearly gobbling through the stories of Genesis. Sometimes the Old Testament is difficult to grasp, but Mary just grasped what was going on. She was telling me about some of her favorite stories and I was shocked of her ability to remember the details even! She is growing into a woman who loves God's Word!

This year at camp, our theme was Strangely Dim. Based off the hymn "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus", the focus has been on helping kids to God's glory and as a result the things of earth simply just become less important. With a radical attention to God's glory, we shouldn't be disrupted or focused on things of earth. It all falls away a bit as we focus on Him. That is a REALLY incredible thing. And I've been SO lucky to see that happen in a lot of these kids. Sometimes it's harder to see, but we celebrate the small wins and ask God to continue in their hearts making them into men and women of Him.

** School Starts so SOON
As Northern Valley Schools startup on August 16th, TFC will start really soon as well! It's a bit scary to think that we'll be starting up so soon even though we only just finished camp! That's sometimes just how things go though, so we are super excited to see what this year will bring! With some of our changes from last year, we are hoping for new beginnings. God does this a lot though. Just the other night I was reading Abraham's story to Josiah out of his new Bible Story book and remembered how God forced Abram and Sarai into a completely new beginning. Without God forcing them into a new unknown realm, we wouldn't have the family of God we have today, we wouldn't have the amazing stories of faith that exist throughout scripture.

New things are scary, but will you pray with us this year as we start up TFC? We have new locations and perhaps even doing junior high and high school at different times so they can have a more tailored experience. Pray that our junior high group will come back full force this year. Pray that as we hone in our attention on the high schoolers they'll have a place just for them to grow in Christ. Pray for the teenagers in the Almena and Long Island KS area. Thank you for your support over the years. As another one starts up I think of Paul's words in Romans 12:4-5, "For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members don’t have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another". So we are so thankful for you as you fulfill your function in Christ as we strive to fulfill ours.

** Housekeeping
As this year may be different, I want to encourage you to reach out to us with questions and prayers of your own. We want to hear from our supporters how life is going! How can we pray for you? How is life going? Please send us an email, text, call or anything.
* August 2021
** Making a New Year a New Chance
August sure is a fun month. Many many times I'm looking at the school year ahead with fear and with excitement. I have no idea what all it will entail, I felt many times looking at this year that I just wish I knew how things would end up playing out so that I could prepare for it, but God has a strange way of making things work while keeping us in the dark.

When I was in high school my plan for life was to always become a programmer or computer scientist. I've always been fairly good with technology, but I really wanted to build my own things! So I applied to schools like Washburn and K-State to go into computer science. When I took the ACT, they ask you to send your results to up to 3 schools in order to get a financial packet of what it'd cost to go there. I decided that since Ethan Rose, my coworker at TFC and friend since high school, was going to Central Christian College in McPherson KS, that I'd send my results there as well just for fun. It wasn't my plan AT ALL, but somehow when the financial packets made it back to me, I'd be able to go to Central, a private college, for free and would likely have to pay some to go to Washburn or K-State. I was floored! It just didn't make sense at all! God kept me in the dark all throughout high school, but His plan wasn't for me to go into computer science like I always wanted, it was to do Youth Ministry. So I went to Central and studied Youth Ministry.

This year, I'm hoping and praying for clarity in His plan, but since I've witnessed some very radically strange turn arounds before, I'm peaceful and content with whatever it is that He does with Northern Valley TFC!

The plan that we are going with and loosely following is to try to do high school and junior high TFC separate. The junior high will likely meet at 5:15 at the Long Island Methodist Church while the high school will hopefully meet at 6:30 at the Almena Community Building. If those plans change, it's because God has other plans for us and that's not just ok, its GOOD! I've been learning that a lot. I was shown it many times in high school and college, but apparently it's a lesson I'm not perfectly clear with yet since I'm learning it still now. Please pray as this plan ensues! The logistics are going to be tough! I'll have to run from one town to the other quite quickly as we try to get kids home while still making it to high school TFC in a good time!

** A New Opportunity - Driving a Bus to See Kids
Another reason why August is a fun month this year particularly, is that I've got a new opportunity driving the bus for the junior high in Long Island. The school called me seeking someone to help them with the bus route. After Abbie and I thought about it, it seemed like a great opportunity to invest in kids so I called back and signed up.

Each day I drive nearly an hour in the morning and nearly an hour in the afternoon. That's close to 2 hours solid of just life on life with middle school students! It's been an awesome opportunity to pour into them! We talk about a lot of things and it's just been a great time to get to know them!

I also love this new opportunity because it's helped me build great relationships with other folks who work at the school! I've gotten to know the secretary and principal a whole lot more and it's been helpful to work with them even in regards to TFC!

Pray that this new venture continues to just help us get the word about TFC into the ears of kids and gives us an awesome chance to tell them about Jesus!
* September 2021
** Beginning Well
I know that more often than I care to admit I complain about how our world is going to poop, but if we just stop and read scripture for a while, we might find that God has answers for all of the worlds problems, and guess where it's found? That's right, His Word. This year we've been diving very hard into Identity and Purpose in our lessons. And the best place to learn about ourselves is diving into God's word to see how and why He made us! That's the strange part about it, it means in order for us to know ourselves enough, we have to know God well! We'll be reading Genesis 1-3 all year. Slowly making our way through it as we try to understand the complex ideas of our existence on this planet.

Reading Genesis though, we have some kids who've never even read a Bible at all before. "What are verses again?" "It's the ones with the little numbers next to them!" "I've never read a Bible before ok!?"

We laughed and had a good time, but how fun it is to get to help someone read the Bible for the first time! And to think, she'll be digging into a hard topic with us like Identity and Purpose! I'm beginning to think that this year is for those kids. I have a book on my desk titled Beginning Well by Gordon T. Smith. As I've been re-reading it from time to time, I was thinking of my junior high group. Many of them, are new to Christian things as a whole, they've not been around it much at all in their lives. I think this will be an incredible opportunity for our lesson theme.

Identity and Purpose. That's a big idea, it's also a vague idea, and a powerful one. People all over the world want answers to questions that we plan to deal with this year. Who am I and Why am I here? Is marriage still relevant? And a lot more! The first one we dealt with was, "Who am I and Why am I here". Have you ever had that thought? I'm sure you have, I have too, A LOT! That's why we are dealing with those questions this year. And reading Genesis is the best place to do that! It deals with all of those questions and more! Where else would one go to see how God intended things to be?! On top of that, Genesis is so rich and such a perfect tutorial for how to read the Bible! It's our prayer that students who really wish to know more about the world around them will see answers in God's Word that change their entire outlook on life. It's my prayer that the kids who have never read the Bible before will BEGIN WELL. They'll start at the beginning, understand where they've come from, why their here, and they'll want others to know that as well. It's my prayer too that as we use Genesis to help us answer those questions, students at every level will learn how to read the Bible in a way that will equip them to do it for the rest of their lives!

My junior high group has mostly been these junior high girls who have hardly read the Bible before. It's kind of scary to think that most of our young minds in our schools are in the same boat. A vast majority of them just have never really needed to. Pray for them. Pray for the girls in my group who've admitted they've never read a Bible before, pray that they'll find some very interesting and compelling things in there! Pray that they'll want others to read along with them as well!

** Some Events Coming Up!
TFC has had a tough time getting certain events back up and running after COVID forced us to stop bringing the groups together. Luckily, we are working hard at getting things back to normal! After this summer of getting to do mission trip and camp, we'll be do TFC-wide 180 Encounters again. These 180 Encounters are like a giant TFC night where all the groups come together and get to hear from one of the high school leaders and how God has been changing and challenging them. It's a really cool thing to watch high schoolers take their walk with Christ so seriously that they in turn want to share with their peers and kids younger than them about Jesus. Pray for the 180 group who've been planning this first Encounter on the 24th!

We'll also be getting to do Leadership Retreat again this year at the end of October! The theme is WORD: what, why, and how. I'll have to be honest in that I'm not entirely sure what that all means since I'm not on the team planning it, but I'm confident in our crew that it's linked to our theme this year and drawing our leaders deeper into the Word of God. Pray that this even has a profound impact on our high school leaders as they sacrifice a weekend to dig in deep. God has always been so good to us in this event. It really is a breath of fresh air for our high schoolers who've been so busy!

* November 2021
** New to the Bible
"Chris, I don't know how to work a Bible!" That's how one of the girls in our group responded to me when I asked her and her friend to look up Mark 11:15-19 and tell me how Jesus exercises His authority over the world. It was both eye opening and a bit scary! I'm teaching a lot of kids who just don't know a whole lot about the Bible. Many of them don't know how to find verses, in fact the entire book, chapter, verse concept is quite confusing to them! Luckily, they do understand a table of contents and page numbers, so we are finding our way through it!

I truly do love getting to work with these kids who are just figuring all of this out for the first time though! It's been so cool to watch them as get their first glimpse at Jesus and understand just who God is! With that though, we will have some challenges. This year's theme is "In His Image". We are really dealing with "identity and purpose" a lot and hitting hard some of the more controversial areas of life in our culture. We are going through a section on work right now and how work is an important and powerful thing that God not only created, but gave to us as a BLESSING, not a curse. The curse only made work more difficult, the curse never created work. God made Adam to work before Eve was even there. So, that's a very intersting and complex topic for these young minds, but it is likely to get even tougher. For a lot of these kids who have never set foot in a church, they think the way much of the world thinks.

And after our work section, we'll talk about marriage and sexual identity. Of course our world has messed up that topic by a huge amount as well, but God still has a purpose and plan for that area of life too. As with everything, we covet your prayers in helping us to guide the students back to God's Word and allow the spirit to do His work in their lives to change them. I've heard many of the kids in the junior high talking about sexual identity being fluid to them all, so it's an IMPORTANT thing to get right!

All the difficult topics aside, we have had a plethora of other difficult things going on. We've had to change things for our students many many times this last year, and we are having to do it again. The high school group has been dwindling and many of them weren't connecting with our meeting time much anymore, that coupled with how our junior high group is really starting to grow has made us feel the need to pivot more of our attention to the junior high group for Wednesday nights and less on the high schoolers. Our high school boys especially are now going to be meeting every week for a Bible study while the junior high meeting will get to be nearly 2 hours instead of just 45 minutes. Abbie has picked up cooking supper for our hungry junior highers too, so please pray for her as she feeds them!

This transition hasn't been easy, and honestly, I'm not entirely sure it's helping yet! But, we do believe that we may just need to rebuild with our faithful little junior high kids. Pray with us that this is the right move, that it's where God is leading us. We don't always know why God directs in what directions we go, but I am sure glad that this ministry is His and my mistakes are not big enough to stop His plans. Pray with us too for our junior high kids to keep coming in strong, that even though it is easy to not be there for whatever reason, they'll be curious enough to show up and find a place to call home there!

In other news, we packed some Operation Christmas Child boxes, and I took the high school boys out for supper as we discussed how to do our bible study! We also are in the process of planning a Winter Wonder Slam for the end of the year! Every year the kids love to go ice skating if we can, and I am so excited to be able to take them! It's gonna be a lot of fun and hopefully something that many of them can draw their friends that don't know Jesus to! Pray for those kids who don't know Jesus to come and see Him for the first time!