November 2017 Newsletter

The group of guys who lovingly cleaned up

the whole Salvation Army facility one

Saturday afternoon.

As we flip to this time of year on the calendar, we enter a season of thankfulness. This season, we have so much to be grateful for. We try to live each day with an attitude of gratitude, but lately, God is blowing our minds in many different ways. Some days all we can do is pick up our jaws off the floor and marvel in His unending goodness of all that He is doing within the ministry here in Leavenworth County.

  

Our prayer for a while now has been to establish a relationship within the gates at Fort Leavenworth through the school system. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with the principal at Patton Jr. High School, which serves grades 7-9 on post. He is an amazing Christ follower and has many faculty that are also believers. In our time together, I simply listened to some of the needs he has for adult volunteers within his school. While our hope is to eventually offer a program to where we can build relationships and share Jesus with the students at Patton, our current plan is to step in and serve in a capacity that helps meet the current need. Principal Wiebe gave us the green light to start serving in his school, serving as those needed extra adults to simply be present with students. This will look like additional help in the morning as students arrive to be a bright, smiling face that greets them and gets their day off to a positive start. It will also look like having adults available during the lunch period to eat with students and build relationships with them, striking up conversations with topics like how school is going, after school activities, and being available to listen to their hurts and struggles that they may have being a military teen. We hope to start serving at Patton after the first of the year as students return from Christmas break, with a presence in the school 2-3 days per week.

Another reason to be thankful is for the continued partnership with the Harrold Youth Center on post. They offer many programs for the military youth at Fort Leavenworth through their joint partnership with The Boys and Girls Club, including a program for teenage boys called Passport to Manhood. Through this program, they are able to teach these youths how to bridge the gap from childhood into adulthood by adequately equipping them to face challenges ahead of them. In this program, they are taught basic life skills like money management, hygiene, respect in relationships, and many other topics. Through this program we are able to build relationships with them with the hopes of sharing our story, listening to their stories, and pointing them in the direction of Jesus.

Phil, Amy & Parker together ringing bells
for the localSalvation Army. 

As if that isn’t enough reasons to celebrate and be grateful, there’s still more! Since initially vision casting for the affiliate as we began serving in Leavenworth County, our hope was to eventually have a presence in all of the 6 school districts that serve the county. This was a long-term goal and our hope was to accomplish that within 10 years. Since our inception, we have been praying and have been seeking opportunities to meet with faculty, athletics, and other organizations within the schools to begin building these relationships. God has been busy paving the way providing opportunities. As we have been obediently following, we now have relationships with key stakeholders in 4 of the 6 school districts. God is good! We hope to continue growing these relationships as we seek to serve as God allows, loving on these teens in our community.

Allison, our additional staff member of the YFC affiliate, has been gaining a lot of ground in the Southern part of the county as she serves at Basehor-Linwood Middle School. She has been building relationships through the mentoring program they offer. She serves twice a week in the theater class and has befriended many girls and has also been spending time with them outside of the classroom. They have gotten groups together and played volleyball, among other activities. Allison recently had the opportunity to sit down with one of the student’s mothers to brainstorm how they could form a girls small group and begin sharing Jesus as they grow their relationships.

Our wonderful adults serving

the teens their Italian food.

Phil's table of guys sharing

during the meal.

Then, shifting gears toward our leaders, we couldn’t be more thankful for each of them as they passionately serve our teens right when and where they show up. For instance, Al chose to go to the beginning scrimmage of the first basketball events at Leavenworth High School, specifically where two of our young men, Caleb and Jacob were playing for the freshman team. Yet if all of this isn’t enough to show God amazing thanks, our leaders continued to love our teens in our end-of-semester Thanksgiving Italian feast. The adults chose to serve them an all out food smorgasbord on their final basketball evening of the semester, in a family-style sit-down meal, to include tons of pies, cake and other desserts. Multiple students complimented and thanked the adults for showing them so much love in a meal they’d haven’t experienced before or in a long time together with their ‘family.’ In Phil’s table, he asked students he was sitting with specifically what they were thankful for and multiple comments flew out that students were thankful for their ‘family away from home on Thursdays.’ Impact beyond any belief being made in and

through our servant leaders!

Finally, we wouldn’t be where we are if it weren’t for opening our hearts and listening to our brothers and sisters already doing Kingdom work throughout our area, hence building

The huge group of volunteers for the Thanksgiving meal.

relationships with folks we’ve mentioned in previous newsletters. Specifically, our ongoing partnership with the Salvation Army in Leavenworth has been nothing short of God’s miracle to our obedience to support and show up to help out in a new program not offered in such a long time. Throughout our inception in June of this year to end of November, we have reached over 620 total headcount of teens who have come into contact with us via the program and beyond it with serving opportunities, flag football events and other moments spent with our teens. Also, our other amazing partner who does phenomenal Kingdom work in the community, Unity in the Community Movement, yet again offered for us to partner and serve the people physically and spiritually. We got to gather a couple of our teens to help out with a turkey and clothing giveaway at their church location and also had the pleasure of helping serve in their annual Thanksgiving dinner to the community event. It is truly God’s best when we seek to partner where folks are already on His mission to serve as we have with our UIC brothers and sisters to impact our teens and their families for His glory.

Phil chose to serve UIC dressed as a clown
during a recent Turkey & coat giveaway.

So, there you all have it – God’s been SO good and we have tons to share! We are thankful for each of you who pray, partner financially and care for us as we work diligently as God leads us to work with the teens we encounter all throughout Leavenworth County. Pray for more hands for the harvest as we have shared that we’re getting new permissions and there will be a huge need for more hands to the work!

Thankful for each one of you!

Phil, Amy & Parker