2007-An Awesome Year for the Kingdom!
Happy New Year from all of us at COI! I can't tell you how excited I am about what God has in store for this year! Around here there is a great sense of expectancy and joy for all the great things God will do!
For me, the year started with one of my favorite things: a mission outreach! COI started a base in New Orleans in thought and word days after the hurricane. As I watched the disaster unfold, I knew immediately that we needed to make a way for outreach groups to go to the Gulf Coast.
I won't forget the day I called our Canadian director, Scott Wood to tell him what God was saying to me, to find that he basically already had his bags packed to go. Two weeks after the storm, he made his way to Alabama and Mississippi, and started a base in Bayou LaBatre.
COI was so blessed to mobilize hundreds of willing workers to the area last year. In June, after much planning and a long wait for the city to open, we started in New Orleans as well. I enjoyed my time there last week, and was blessed to see all the fruit of being involved in recovery work.
The people in the region have been very thankful for the groups that have come. After being consistently active in the area, and because our staff and teams have done such good work, they have asked me to please keep the groups coming!! There are still over 6000 homes that need to be gutted, and lots of people moving back to town that could use our prayers and help.
Mobilizing workers into God's harvest fields is only one part of the COI vision. Helping people find their personal destiny through a spiritual encounter is another. Here is a report from a staff member who conducted the team debriefing from last week…
"You are welcome as far as me serving in New Orleans… I feel so blessed to have the opportunity! I look forward to future adventures with you and COI…
Debrief went well… Everyone was tired, but felt a sense of accomplishment because they met their goal of finishing gutting the duplex… The meal was a HUGE success… Norman (a COI cook and all around worker, 60 something and part of COI's Ageless Partner Program) did a wonderful job and the kids really loved it! They could not thank Norman enough…
Everyone shared some amazing moments. It was really something to hear those young kids share what God showed them and/or how the trip impacted their life. Norman even shared his thoughts - including a few tears - on how he was so impressed by the kid's willingness to do whatever. He shared a Bible verse with them and they were very attentive to listen to him."
This awesome group was from Austin, TX, under the leadership of Treb Praytor. Treb oversees one of the most effective church mission programs I have seen. The children in his care start learning about world missions in 6th grade and have the chance to participate locally, nationally, and internationally through college. Talk about releasing young people to find their destiny!! Great work Treb and team….we appreciate your partnership over the years!!
I have such joy in my spirit today! Being involved with God's heart for outreach, and sharing His love continues to change my life. Maybe this year is your time to GO. Remember, God is with you more than you know.
I am humbled to be serving the Kingdom through COI. My parent's (Jack and Rosa Isleib) vision lives on! It is a new time for this organization. The Lord is blessing us. I am proud of our staff, missionaries, and groups. I am awed by the marvelous people we meet daily. 2007 looks like it is going to be a fun and rewarding time for the Kingdom of God!
January 20th, 2007 19:43
I was so blessed to be with Treb’s team coming from Austin. As a freshman under his watchfull eye, I saw the New Orleans mission trip as a chance of a lifetime, I knew the second our sign up forms came out that I was going. I just to share a quick history of the impact Treb has had on my family’s life, and how COI has forever changed my family’s life. I will be 16 in June, and am currently a freshman at Westlake High School. Chris, my eldest brother will be 23 in August, and he is living full-time at home with disabilities. Stephen will be 20 in June, and is currently a freshman at Baylor University and in premed and religion. Grant will be 18 in August, and is a Junior at Westlake High School. Stephen has been on countless trips with COI, and its because of those trips, and because of the guidance of Treb and leaders like Mary Alice that he has felt God calling him into the missions field as a doctor. I am following in his footsteps. Every single mission trip that Treb opens up to me, I immediately say yes. Usually before consulting my parents too. It is because of people like Mary Alice, Denise, Matt, and Norman, that lives are impacted, because I know mission trips like the one I went on to New Orleans this past Winter Break, would not be possible without you guys. I am in utter shock at the work God is doing in the lives of the mission teams, and in the lives of those unseen. The laboring work we did, during the rain and moldy air, we may not have seen the impact of our 3 days of work. Yet, we have taken the biggest step in re-building two families lives.
While we were gutting one side of the apartment complex, two of the girls came across a folder containing pictures. Out of the entire house, the only thing Not destroyed by mold and water and rats were the pictures in that album. Wedding pictures and family pictures are what God kept safe, and so as we continued to gut the house, we look for anything with an address on it, and found cell phone bills under the tile and so we asked Mary Alice to mail the pictures to this unknown family, and so she did.
During one of our water breaks, some of the sophmores had a chance to talk to the neighbors, and he told us his story of watching the people’s house that we were gutting being lifted out of their house, and how they had said that they were planning on coming back. So not only did the family leave everything they owned, they were planning on coming back home!
The fridge hadn’t been touched, the house hadn’t been touched, and there were two rats in the kitchen. Everything that family owned was left in the house. Nice china, similar to what I have at home, was sitting unwashed in their sink. Millienium napkins were in a rather pretty design in the second room, in front of a china cabinent. The house was an utter wreck, and yet we completely gutted the house, and took just about every last nail out of the wall. Mary Alice has a picture in one of her comments of the house in the process of being gutted. Just to give you a rough glimpse at what was taken out of the house, we had a pile from the steps and walls on both sides of the complex, all the way to sitting in the street, and it was at least 10-15 feet high. And we did that twice.
Throwing away someones personal belongings is not easy, and it never will leave my mind
thank you COI