Easter!

In my family, Easter is one of the biggest celebrated holidays. Our whole family has a tradition each year on Easter where one person greets with, “He is risen!” and everyone else responds, “He is risen indeed!” The whole day is a huge celebration: every phone call, every conversation and every smile has Jesus in it. But my family is not unique. Most Russians will have similar patterns to their day. In America, the day is celebrated a little bit differently. Yes, we celebrate that Jesus is risen. And on this particular day, the attendance in church grows because everyone invites their family and friends. The Easter Bunny and Easter Egg Hunts are other American traditions, and ultimately it’s another great family celebration.

I love the fact that different countries celebrate the same holiday in different ways. I love the fact that when I think of Easter, I think of Jesus and my family. It reminds me that the reason I am in Loveland, Colorado, right now is because of Jesus. On that day 2000 years ago, He took my sins upon that cross. I love that the story doesn’t end there. On the third day, He rose again and lives with us now, forever. Amazing!

Our church here in Loveland is moving towards Easter with excitement. We are hosting some of the traditional, fun holiday celebrations at the school. We will have an Easter Egg Hunt on the Saturday before Easter. That day will have a huge bouncy slide for kids, cotton candy, popcorn, ice cream and 6,000 candy-filled eggs. We’ve sent out 20,000 invitations for households to come celebrate this Easter with us. The following day we will have our worship service and hopefully some of the people that come to the Easter Egg Hunt will be able to come to the service and celebrate “Jesus is risen” with us.

Prayer requests: Easter is around the corner and we pray that people will bring their kids to an amazing free event and also come to hear the good news the next day.

For our church to reach the city, to share the good news with each person we interact with.

For our family to build stronger friendships around us.

Also check out Sarah's blog post on our Elevation website. http://elevationlife.co/?p=227

Blink

Time flies when you’re having fun. And time flies when you’re planting a church. We have officially been in Loveland, Colorado, for seven months and we’ve been having weekly services for the past three weeks. Since we’ve gone to weekly services, time seems to have sped up. It seems everything is happening in the blink of an eye. One blink and we are starting weekly services. Another and we are done with our first sermon series. What?! Yes, we just finished our first sermon series called Relationship Rehab. We wanted to honor the month of love and do a series out of Ephesians that deals with relationships between husband and wife, parents and kids, employee and employer. A couple weeks ago at our service, a couple had tears in their eyes as they listened to the sermon on the relationship between a husband and wife. After the service, they came up to our pastor and said, “That is exactly what we needed.” Hearing this kind of response really excites me! I want to tell the whole city of Loveland about Elevation Church, but more than that, to tell them about the things Jesus can do and is doing. Most people in Loveland still don’t know Elevation exists, but God is already changing hearts.

Prayer requests:

Spiritual warfare: In our area, several churches have closed their doors and a few are on the verge of collapsing. We knew walking into this journey that there would be spiritual warfare, but we need your prayers now that we’re in it, for both us and other spiritual leaders in our area.

Our next sermon series is called, “I Am: Jesus According to Jesus.” It will be a study of Jesus’ “I am” statements. Pray that He will be exalted!

For boldness, all the time!

Recent Happenings

Before I write about life and ministry, I want to apologize for not keeping up with this blog. We’ll try to start writing more!

These past seven months in Loveland have gone by so fast. We’ve made a lot of friendships, and life has started to get into a sort of rhythm. As for church, we had our last preview service a couple weeks ago; all of them have been awesome. We are getting really close to the start of weekly services on February 12^th, and we’ve just kicked off our Life Groups! With all these things happening at the same time, life has started to get busy. In the midst of all this, what is most exciting are the life changing decisions that have been happening all around us. We had three people wanting to learn more about the way of Jesus Christ. That has been thrilling, because our vision for Elevation is to see people who are far from God filled with new life in Christ.

As a church, we are starting to see what the needs are in our community. A few weeks ago, we provided a teacher appreciation breakfast at the high school where we meet. It was awesome to see about thirty hardworking teachers come to enjoy a little relaxation and pampering. We also did a gas buy-down to love on the people in our community without discrimination. Since we didn’t even know what that was about two months ago, we assume you may not either. Here’s how it works: we partnered with Shell gas station to bring down the price of gas 55 cents a gallon for every person who came to fill up. By the end of the three hours there was a huge line and everyone had a smile on their face. If they asked why, we told them, “We figured we’d like cheap gas, so we decided this was a great way to do unto others.”

Prayer requests:

· Weekly services start on February 12^th. Pray that God moves in big ways on that Sunday.

· Spiritual warfare: For Gods protection on our lives as we do His work.

· Direction: We, Sarah and I, want everything we do to be Spirit-led; we want to live on God’s mission without our own agenda, which at times is very difficult. We also need direction about what our future holds.)

· Service: That our eyes and ears be open to figure out our community’s needs

Let us know how we can pray for you!

Mike Newtons blog about our work in Loveland

http://mikesmission.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/passion-for-people-nov-14th/

At the Starting Line

It's been a while. Things have certainly picked up pace around here! To give just a quick update, this past Sunday we held our second of four preview services and saw sixty people from the community join us for worship -- twice as many as our first service! Many of our friends that we've now been getting to know for a few months returned for the second time, and two new people expressed a desire to know more about a relationship with Christ. We were so encouraged to see God's love through us bearing first fruits! It has been amazing to watch a community beginning to form of people from different walks of life.

Sergei and I (Sarah) have been spending the majority of our time building friendships with people God brings into our life. Relationships are what we thrive on, and we believe that is what the Body of Christ is made up of -- people joined together in love. Several people near us have reached out to us, too, and so we're beginning to feel like Loveland is home. Transitions have always been hard for me, but Sergei's persistent knack at finding and deepening friendships has begun to make this transition much easier; what a gift from God that man is!

The Mandolin Cafe

We're also falling in love with our little downtown. 4th Street is fabulous! We often spend our afternoons at The Mandolin Cafe, a locally-owned coffee shop with an eclectic personality. A couple blocks down is Anthology Books, a veritable Shop Around The Corner. On another of our downtown streets is a ministry called House of Neighborly Service, providing resources for low-income families. We plan to serve there frequently as a church and as a family. On the other side of town, they've put up an ice rink that will stay up most of the winter. We've already been twice, and we're hoping that this and other hotspots in our city can become places for ministry (as well as places to just have fun!).

One of our greatest needs right now is for a children's ministry in our church, and I've been praying about heading that up. Please pray for me as I consider taking on this responsibility, and as Angus and I talk out the details. Continue to pray for Sergei and Angus as they seek to move the church in a direction most glorifying to God. Pray for Jack and Tracy Ryan and Renee Mesplay who are trying to sell their homes in Kentucky to move out here and help the church.

Thanks for your encouragements and prayers! God has used our friends and family to keep our spirits energized, and we couldn't be more thankful.

A Sense of Home

Sergei is painting a wall in the study as I write this. I'm sitting on the couch in the living room with a warm cup of coffee, and not a box in sight. That's a good feeling. Sergei and I have settled into our apartment and it has become home to us. I can tell that I will always look back on this little place with a warm sense of affection. We've cooked here, put paintings up on the walls, finally unpacked the closet, defeated the sugar ants in the kitchen (though that may be a continuing battle), hung curtains, cleaned bathrooms, watched movies, eaten dinner at our little kitchen table, and had guests over for food and games. Although the decorative process continues, I don't think there is anything we could do that would make it feel more like home. Aside from the wet paint, it's all ready for visitors. (Hint hint.)

Sergei and Angus have been working hard every day to hammer out the details of getting Elevation Church off the ground. The major project at hand: narrowing in on a location. We're also really excited about this weekend: all of the team here in Loveland so far is taking a retreat to Estes Park on Friday and Saturday. Angus's parents have a cabin there where we will all stay, removed from civilization and the busy commotion of our lives to have some deep fellowship and worship together. We'll discuss our expectations for the church and our part in ministry, and we'll discover together what God is calling us to be and to do in the Loveland community and, more specifically, how that vision will be played out. Pray for us as we meet, that the Holy Spirit would unify us in mind and spirit!

I am still looking for a job. (Whew!) I'm daily seeking the Lord to see where He will place me, and daily checking Craig's List and Monster and revising my resume for various job applications. All of this has me pretty tired out, so pray for my spiritual and relational energy in the midst of the job hunt.

A HUGE praise: We have been richly blessed with relationships. God brings friends in mysterious ways, and we have been amazed to find great friendships developing with people that, a month ago, were strangers to us. We pray that we can minister into the lives of the people we meet, as God is ministering into our lives through many of those same people. May our love be unconditional!

One final note: Marriage. Is. Magical. In every way, except there are no literal sparkles floating around in the air. Sergei and I have been married for two months and six days (in two hours), and every day has been more splendid than the day before. As much as we (and others) wondered early on if we were crazy leaving everything we knew behind to come work for God's Kingdom in Loveland in our first year of marriage ... God has blown us away tenfold by His goodness in drawing us closer and closer to each other in Him. We left our homes, travelled 1300 miles, and discovered home in each other. It can only be Christ who has done this great thing. "Those who look to Him are radiant, and they will never be ashamed." (Psalm 34:5) We are, as C.S. Lewis described it, two people looking outward together in the same direction. May we never look any other way.

We are not owed.

I’ve been reading through the book of Luke, and in my reading I again came across Jesus’ story about a reckless son. The story starts something like this… Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man accepts sinners and eats with them." At that moment, Jesus looked at the religious leaders and told them three stories. The first one was about a lost sheep, followed by a lost coin, and finally a lost son. In the lost sheep story, Jesus shared how a shepherd leaves ninety-nine of his sheep to go find the one lost sheep, and when he finds it, he throws a party. In the lost coin story, a lady had ten silver coins but lost one. When she finds the coin, she throws a party. Jesus’ final story of the prodigal son gets a little bit more complicated. The younger of two sons asks his father for his portion of his father’s possessions. The father divides his possessions and gives the son his portion. Soon after, the son runs off to a nearby city. He lives a crazy party life off his father’s money until it all runs out. To survive, he gets a job feeding pigs in return for a meal of the same food the pigs eat. At that moment, he realizes that he is eating worse off than his father’s servants. He comes up with a great apology and treks home. When the son is still a distance away, his father sees him, runs to him and embraces him. The father then throws a huge party to celebrate his son’s return.

Enter older brother. He has been out in the fields all day, and as he’s walking home, he hears music and dancing. When he finds out that the party is for his younger brother who has come back home, he refuses to join in. The father comes outside to share the joy of the moment with his oldest son, only to be cut deep by his son’s greeting statement: 'Look here! All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a feast of even a goat, so that I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has wasted your money with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!' The father tries to comfort his son and finally says, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'"

I have heard this story a million times and honestly I wanted to skim through it this past time. But as I kept reading, I realized how easy it is to become each character in the story. This particular time, I found myself as the older brother. I found myself staring straight at God and telling him he owes me something. – Excuse me?!!! Who the heck am I? I’m just a little Sergei and I don’t deserve anything but what God gives. Yes, I had a hard week with getting my license and registration because of (awesome) laws in the state of Colorado, but I don’t have the right to play a victim. These laws that they have were here before me and the world does not revolve around me. And why am I demanding a party from God because of my righteousness? Every day is a party, because what is His is mine.

I hope you are reminded that you’re part of God’s story, and when things aren’t going your way, it’s because they are not supposed to. You are not the main character in this story of life, He is. It’s His story. Instead of complaining, we can join the party; look to Him; be fully alive: "The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God." (St. Irenaeus)