Friends of Active Love Church,
Grace and peace to you from Jesus Christ our Lord! Christmas is coming! Although the Moehring household won’t start celebrating Christmas until after Thanksgiving, it warms my heart to see that Walmart already has Christmas out in full force, competing with Halloween sales! And our adoptive daughter is already giddy with excitement about having Christmas at home with us this year. It’s fun to observe her as she experiences the world through the eyes of an 8 year old who has spent most of her life as an orphan. She often says “this is my first time to …” Most times I don’t know if that’s actually true or if a veil has been lifted from her eyes and her outlook on the future such that it feels like a new experience to her. She has a new hope for life that includes a knowledge of what Jesus Christ has done for her. I am confident that in the near future she will begin to make that personal and that knowledge will become a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Praise the Lamb!
My how time has flown since our last newsletter in August where I shared the testimonies of how Jesus spoke to us about opening a hang-out place on 318 S Main Street in McGregor. Once we agreed to trust in the Lord on this matter of time and finances, we went all in. We attempted to have the place fully operational before school started on Sept 6th. Connections McGregor opened mid-month and we’ve been working at the store 6 days a week, 3-7pm. I am blessed that my kids still enjoy going to McGregor on a daily basis. Benjamin has made a new friend there, and we hope that friendship will be an inroad with a young family that desperately needs a support network right now. We’ve had a couple of other families frequent Connections who have shown interest in Active Love events. In other words, it’s working! However, I do have several prayer points that we would appreciate you lifting up in prayer with us:
- More families and more opportunities – Call me impatient, but I really want to get into fellowship and discipleship through small groups. I’m okay with the response that we’ve gotten so far considering we haven’t done any advertising yet, but we really need more families to check us out, and more opportunities to have meaningful conversations with those families. Lord I pray for favor, wisdom, and boldness, rooted in love, so that Connections will fulfil its intended purpose.
- Quick sign – Part of the reason we haven’t advertised much yet is because we still don’t have a sign on the front of the building, and it may still be several weeks before it is complete. This has been an ordeal from the beginning and we need God to remove all city and private road blocks to get this done ASAP, as this will also unlock advertising for us within the local paper.
- Sustainability – For long term sustainability, we’ll be converting Connections as an official not-for-profit ministry of Active Love Church. Additionally, we’ll need to grow our support base to work the store and financial support. There are a lot of unknowns here, but we’re moving forward in faith!
- Growth – We’ve had a steady stream of people show interest in worshiping with Active Love Church on Thursday nights, but so far few have come. We have personally benefited from these times nonetheless, but we may need a different strategy to get over the startup hump of being too small.
- Training – This week Rebecca and I are going to a Church Planting boot camp in Houston called CMN Launch. I have been looking forward to this all year long and have high expectations that we will come away from it even better equipped for the tasks ahead. I’m also looking forward to this as a time to connect 1:1 with Rebecca, away from our normal hectic schedules. Please pray that this week lives up to our hopes!
Thank you to Pastor Curtis Jones at Victory Chapel for gifting our church with about 6 or 7 nice tables, which substantially improve the craft and study areas of Connections!
We are blessed to be a blessing (Gen 12:2). It is our passion to see that lived out in the lives of our family. It is our desire to create opportunities for others to experience God’s blessing, and then do the same for others.
Amen, come Lord Jesus,
Pastor Nate Moehring
