Here is what's happening at Grace!
Sunday July 15th 2018
Psalm 16 'Always On My Mind'
Time: 10:00AM
VBS Tear Down
VBS Tear Down will be taking place immediately following the morning service on July 15! Please consider staying after the service to help disassemble the island. Please contact Kristi Cowan at kristi.cowan@hotmail.com if you are able to help.
Nursery Sign up
Have you enjoyed our Nursery services this year? If so, please consider signing up for a week during the summer to give our amazing GK Leaders a break! We need your help! There will always be an experienced helper in the nursery when you are there, and we welcome both moms AND dads to help us out. Please consider signing up for a week or two. Click on the sign-up sheet below, as well we have a paper copy outside the GK Nursery.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ml2STnQC0MQLrtkilwSXuTTuJArNhr0mzcNo1UP8mUE/edit#gid=0
CO-ED Baby CELEBRATION For Cam and Angela Harrop
Join us for a BBQ to celebrate the arrival of Cam and Angela Harrop's baby boy, James! Sunday, July 29th at 1:00pm at Zac and Natasha's house (14 Western Avenue, Guelph). In lieu of gifts, Cam and Angela have requested that donations are made to the Ronald Mcdonald House since James had to be hospitalized for a week in London after he was born. Cam and Angela shared that James received the best possible care and they were thankful to be able to stay at Ronald McDonald House during this time. It made an otherwise difficult and stressful experience much easier and they are very grateful for that. We will collect donations at the BBQ or you can donate online through the link below.
https://www.rmhc-swo.ca/how-you-can-help/online-donation
Please RSVP to Natasha for the BBQ natasha.m.fairchild@gmail.com or 519-820-7892.
Operation Christmas Child Director Needed
Each year, all ages of people in churches and groups of all sizes collect the goods required to pack shoebox Christmas gifts to be sent to children in need living in more than 100 countries. Parents often use the project to teach their kids about giving. For several years Grace Community Church has generously supported this worthwhile cause.
This year, we need someone who can fill the role of director of operations for the OCC initiative at Grace. Although the actual shoebox collection will be in November the director’s responsibilities start in July. We have a clearly defined “job description” so if you think you could fill this important position please contact Bryan at bryan@gracecommunity.ca or (519) 831-3497. THANKS!
Grace Coffee Coordinator and Kitchen Manager
Grace is growing and with growth our coffee/kitchen ministry team needs a person with vision, passion and leadership skills to help craft this key component of our Sunday morning experience. If you think you may be the person who could fill this role, please contact Bryan at bryan@gracecommunity.ca or (519) 831-3497
Call For Prayer- Ecuador Missions Experience 2018
From July 22nd to July 31st, our missions team will be running a carnival for the children of Carmen Bajo, Ecuador! We will be bringing carnival games and prizes, planning dramas, and singing Spanish worship songs each morning. In the afternoons, we will be helping with construction at the Carmen Bajo church, and will interact with the Youth Group! We are excited to see how God works through our team, and in the lives of our team members. Please pray for safe travels, changed lives, and team growth. Our awesome Team Members are:
Steve Kennedy
Mark Brown
Sandy Brown
Hannah Sutherns
Alexis McDougall
Sarah Cantelon
Lucas Skolseg
Christiaan Baas
UPDATE FROM BRONWYN FAIRCHILD ON MISSION IN WALES
I never intended my first, proper newsletter to be 6 months into my 8 month term here, but that just shows a little bit of what my time has been like here, jam packed! So I will share a brief overview and if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask me and I will gladly share more!
In January I joined the YWAM Wrexham, Wales team. The first month was preparation for the discipleship training school (longer than intended because all of the students were waiting on their visas). By February 10th all the trainees had arrived and we were underway with DTS!
Rikiki (trainee from Wyoming,USA), Towella (trainee from Zambia), Rachel (staff from England), Joe (staff from England), Andrew (trainee from England), Paul (staff from Georgia,USA), Sandy (trainee from Sri Lanka,) me, and Stanley (trainee from Zambia). [Stanley and Towella are married]
This is our team, diverse in cultures and ages! Not your typical age range for a DTS within YWAM (youth with a mission [pun intended]) With our school we have been able to cater to all ages! Sadly at the end of April one of the trainees, Sandy, decided to leave. Now we are 4 staff and 4 students.
The main values in YWAM are to know God and make him known, so every week we have a new speaker come in and teach during the mornings. A few examples of the topics are: intercession, Jesus and discipleship, hearing God’s voice, grace and the cross, evangelism, Holy Spirit, identity, original design & freedom, prayer, sin and repentance, to name a few. All during the lecture phase we volunteered at an after school kids club being conducted by one of the churches in town and street evangelism on a regular basis. Half way through the lecture phase we did a week long ‘mini outreach’ in Liverpool. While we were there we had teaching on healing, did evangelism in the city center, in the hostel we stayed at, and joined with the local YWAM team for a worship event.
We will be located at the two (very small) yellow dots. In Serbia we will be in Užice and in Croatia we will be in Kaštel Novi very close to Split
Part way through May we finished our lecture phase. Then we moved into the next part of the school which is the main outreach! On Wednesday, May 16th Andrew, Rikiki and I left for Serbia! We will be going to Serbia and Croatia for a total of 10 weeks. My fellow staff member Joe, and I, have planned it. Let me tell you, it was not easy, but I have been learning a lot, and relying a lot on God! While we are there the vast majority of the time will consist of various forms of evangelism - some street evangelism in the city centers, meeting with people regularly in cafes, doing dramas, face painting, and volunteering at kids’ English camps.
At the moment we are living in a village called Bela Zemlja, just a 15 minute taxi ride from the main city Uzice. We had some complications with the whole team arriving at the same time, but after a week we were all together again. We have been making great relationships with people in the city and sharing our testimonies and God's love to them. The vast majority of people in Serbia are religious and believe in God, but their faith is mostly about duty and tradition and not about knowing God on a loving relational level. When sharing the gospel, we talk a lot about our testimonies and how we have seen God move in our own lives and share that they can experience that too!
For our team, the beginning was hard, but we have been working together quite well lately and growing closer. We have come a long way (praise God!) and continue to pray and work towards an even deeper unity. Today we swap our leaders from Wrexham and Rachel has left but Paul arrives tomorrow. On June 28th, Rikiki, Andrew, Paul, and I travel to Split, Croatia, to work there for 3 weeks. Sadly, Stanley and Towella were not able to get their visas for Croatia, so they and Joe will be staying in Serbia for the last 3 weeks.
( Above: Rachel and I in the city center (Trg) and our house in Bela Zemlja)
Above: Hanging our with some of the younger kids in Bela Zemlja (Rachel and Joe featured in the picture). Our team celebrating Stefan's prom/graduation. (One of the Serbian boys we met at the cafe)
Thank you everyone for all your prayers and support, the outreach started out a bit rough and tough leading something like this for the first time, but we are doing very well now and seeing God move in so many ways. Please keep me and my team in your prayers. For more frequent updates from our team here is our blog page: https://missionsinthebalkans.wordpress.com/
At this point in my mission I still have some funding needs, so if you wish to help me in this way, you can donate to my page, Bronwyn Fairchild FB09, online at:
Please Pray:
1. That God would use me and my teammates to introduce many people to Jesus
2. For God to provide the necessary funding for my 8 month mission
3. That I would be a Godly, loving, faith-filled leader to my teammates
4. For God to help me everyday as I co-lead our mission in Serbia and Croatia
5. For love and unity and patience on our team as we live and work in close quarters
I’m always accepting snail mail as well, which I will receive when I return to Wrexham on my birthday in July! :)
My mailing address in Wales is: Bronwyn Fairchild, 25 Hightown Road, Wrexham, LL13 8EB WALES