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/