August news

Dear Ministry Partners and Friends:

I could barely contain myself as I stood there in the doorway of the Old Wilson Schoolhouse Community Center on a Friday night, watching nine children standing below an 8-by-30 foot jungle mural, singing the gospel to a crowded room. The audience? The kids’ parents, grandparents, and siblings, most of whom have never attended Cornerstone, yet came to our family night.

These songs were the fruit of a week filled with music, games, crafts, crying, laughing, and teaching from the gospel – our first ever Camp Cornerstone.

Was it a success? Depends how you measure success.

July news

This past Tuesday seemed like just another ordinary day here in Wyoming. As with most summer mornings in the Tetons, there was a cloudless blue sky, an army of rafts launching into the Snake River, tourists scurrying about, the peaks rising 6000 feet above the valley floor. However, I should have learned by now that there is no such thing as an “ordinary day” in church planting.

April news

Dear Fellow Ministry Friends:

It’s April, that time of year that many locals dread and flee Jackson Hole by escaping to just about any place warmer. With melting snow and periodic rains, this month is appropriately dubbed “mud season.” I personally celebrated by getting my truck stuck up to the rims in mud yesterday morning. But as many get out of town, the varied opportunities here to glorify God and magnify Jesus continue to mount.

December 2008 – January 2009 letter

Dear Fellow Ministry Friends:

First of all, thank you so much for your continued prayers and great financial generosity! Be assured that God is using your sacrifices to further His kingdom here.

Anyone dreaming of a white Christmas here in Jackson Hole watched those dreams come true in a big way on Christmas morning. As I looked out the front door Christmas morning, I wondered how I was going to dig us out of the house. The “snow and clouds, stormy wind” of Psalm 148:8 had certainly fulfilled God’s word with a blizzard that left 2 feet of new snow. Cars were buried, porches disappeared, travel was impossible without 4-wheel drive, and even the ski resort shut down. It was yet another reminder that for the church-planting team here that we are far from our old home in Los Angeles.

October 2008 letter

Dear ministry friends,

A powerful sermon is preached to me every time I walk into my garage, a sermon proclaiming the faithfulness of God in the essential details of our lives. Though I hear no audible words, I am reminded of Jesus’ promise in Matthew 6 that as we live a life in which our concerns revolve around His kingdom, He will take care of our needs. This is the sermon in my garage, where a towering stack of freshly chopped and split lodgepole pine logs stands 6 feet tall and spans the length of the garage three pieces deep, just waiting to be fed to my wood-burning stove as the valley falls into another frigid five-month-long Jackson Hole winter.

September 2008 letter

Hello, friends and family!

On any given Monday, the big red barn building on the east edge of the town of Wilson, Wyoming, is filled with little voices. School buses and SUVs file past the doors, dropping off the children of ski bums and CEOs as teachers greet them in the brisk fall morning air and gather them into their classrooms. A few years ago, this town of 1,400 residents, which sits between the town of Jackson and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, wanted its own elementary school. Affluent Teton County granted the request, complete with pastoral architecture.

On the first Wednesday of this month, God worked out some administrative details that were beyond our control, and the school district granted our team’s request to rent their building as a meeting place for a few hours each Sunday evening. So, on Sunday, September 14, Wilson Elementary School saw a different kind of pastoral treatment.

August 2008 letter

Dear Ministry Friends:

As I started the car early on a recent mid-August morning to go to work, I noticed something extraordinary. The windshield was blurry, and when I turned on the windshield wipers, there was a sound like cold butter being spread across burnt toast. While many of you reading this probably had your air-conditioners blasting that morning, we experienced our first frost of the year. It was yet another reminder, especially after years in balmy Southern California, that we are definitely far away from our old home.

July 2008 letter

Dear ministry friends:

The Lord our God is kind.

After hours of traffic in Southern California late on June 27th and bumper-to-bumper again in Las Vegas, our northbound caravan — four cars and two 24-foot moving trucks towing another two cars — was ready to make some good time across southern Utah as each mile of Interstate 15 brought us closer to a new chapter of life in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Then at 10 o’clock the next morning, a symphony of alarms and lights went off in one of the rented trucks. A radiator hose had exploded.

June 2008 letter

Dear Ministry Partners:

Thank you for your patience with us as we prepare to leave for Jackson Hole. Only one week left! A lot has happened in the last month. Here is a quick rundown of things God has been doing as you have been praying:

May 2008 letter

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…” – Philippians 1:3

Dear ministry partners,

Greetings to you all! We are so encouraged by the overwhelming response to team up with us and support this church-planting effort in its infancy. Thank you so much to all of you for your desire and zeal for the advancement of the Lord’s church. Thank you for your prayer and financial gifts to us. The Lord is working!

Time is passing quickly. As we write this, we are two months from our send-off date on June 27.