Mid-Week Memo

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Hey Five Oakers,

What a great weekend packing meals. I want to talk to you about that and a few other things:

# 1- I think this was our third year of devoting the entire weekend to partner with Feed My Starving Children to feed hungry kids around the world. It's still just as much fun and just as impacting for those kids who receive the meals. How did we do? 1,260 volunteers packed 257,040 meals. That will feed 704 starving children for a full year! Seriously, don't gloss over that. Praise God over it! We also helped local folks by collecting approximately 1,500 non-perishable food items for Good in the Hood, a food shelf partner of Union Gospel Mission. We'll be celebrating this weekend and showing you a video. At the end of this post you can see a little video Jerry Meras produced for our staff team of some of the staff working at the Feed Event.

# 2- I received several reports/stories about interesting spiritual conversations that occurred with invitees. One of the teachers from a local elementary school commented to one of our Five Oaks parents, while tearing up, how she couldn't believe her student (a Five Oaks' third grader) prayed in front of all those people out loud at the end of the session. Another Five Oaker brought a bunch of co-workers. One of them asked, "Is this your church?" And then explained that she lives right close by, with the implication being that she needed to try it out.

# 3- We have no Communication Cards this week, so I have no comments to list. But I was going to take this opportunity to say a few things about feedback and comments, but it got too long. So I'll do it in a separate post tomorrow. You won't want to miss it.

# 4- We received one first impression card response this week from a first-time guest: "Love the response time in service."

# 5- I recieved this email from Dee Meyers, our Women's Ministry Director:

Hi Pastor Henry -

We are so excited about an awesome event we have coming up.  Kim Dorantes, our Impact Coordinator has organized an opportunity for us to take advantage of the Spring Break week to make an impact on our area. 

On Wednesday March 14, in lieu of bible study, we are going to be making sandwiches for 363.org from 9:30 - 11:30am and everyone is welcome. The idea behind this organization is help a void for the other 363 days of the year (besides Thanksgiving and Christmas which receive so much attention).

While the moms are making sandwiches, the young children are going to be making "take home snack kits" for the families staying at Tubman Shelter.  These are going to be bags filled with granola bars, pop tarts, easy mac, etc.  We are asking those who would like to attend to bring a box of something to donate for the snack kit (a non-perishable box item that these dislocated families can easily use). 

The folks that run 363 are so grateful for our help and they are going to be coming to our event to film, take pictures, etc. for their promotional materials!

Way to go Women's Ministry. One of my daily prayers for our church is that Impact ministry take hold in our lives. This is more evidence of that prayer being answered!

# 6- VBS registration is now live. I'll never forget the energy of the final large group session I attended last summer. I hope we can capture some of that on video this year. Register here.

Remember to check out my comments on comments tomorrow and the staff Feed video below. And remember to "spring" your clocks forward this weekend.

I love you guys and am blessed to serve you,

Pastor Henry