A Little Road Weary

The last few months have seen a lot of travel for us. It has been fantastic to be able to visit and share with folks about the ministry at ANBC. Our most recent journey afforded us the opportunity to visit a number of places while we were on the road.

We pushed through the run to Gorrie on Friday, We hit the road at about 6am. Kyle and I picked up our friend Matt Peppard on the way. Eighteen hours later we landed at Marcus & Kameron Cooks home in Gorrie, Ontario.

Early morning selfie as we prepared to hit the road. 

Our first order of business was to host the volunteer training sessions at Gorrie Bible Fellowship. As always it was a great time—we're excited to see what the Lord will do this summer.

Sunday morning I was asked to give a brief update about the ministry at Arrowhead. It was a privilege to share about all of the exciting things coming this year at Arrowhead.

It was great to hang with old friends too! 

Sunday afternoon we hit the road for Jackson, MI to the Ethnos360 Bible Institute campus. 

I was privileged to have the opportunity to preach in chapel and share about the ministry of NCEM at Arrowhead. We are looking forward to have one of the students join us for this coming summer at ANBC. 

Our friends Austin and Jesse are students at EBI. It was great to connect with them while we were State side!

We have some friends in Peterborough, Ontario at Peterborough Free Methodist Church. They have been sending ministry teams on a missions trip to Arrowhead for almost a decade. They hosted a Pancake supper at the church while we were in the neighbourhood and we were so pleased to be able to attend and share about what the team will be doing this year when they come. 

We had a bit of a fender bender while we were on the road. We spent over 50 hours behind the wheel during this week long journey, we are thankful to God for His protection—even during this mishap. 

Spring Work Teams

As always we've been immensely blessed by work team volunteers who came to ANBC and gave of themselves in their talents to accomplish much for the sake of the ministry here. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

The soffit, fascia and window trim was all completed on the office building, and a new large window was installed for the radio studio. 

Over the years we have really come to love this group of people like family. Many of them come year after year to serve the Lord alongside us at Arrowhead.  

What a talented group of folks from Gorrie Bible Fellowship in Ontario. They designed, raised funds for and built this cabin for our sporting goods and waterfront supplies. 

It's always a blessing to have this family join us. Hard working, Gospel loving family who just want to serve Jesus.

We have a new sign at the road, thankfully Rob and Dave were able to adjust for whoever the lug was who didn't measure before he ordered the new signs...  

It was great to have the DeNuke family with us for a day this year - here are some of them - happy dish helpers! 

It's not the same if mom's not here. She get the mailing all ready for the Quiver - you can expect it sometime in the next couple of weeks in your mailbox.  

Matthew and Lester are from Gorrie, they had to sneak away a little bit before the rest of their team so they missed the group photo! Thanks for coming guys. 

Darren Goodfellow at River Signs in Miramichi  put some groovy decals on the camp truck for us! We have our very own HotWheels.

These ladies stained and painted and freshened up all over the place this time. Here they stained the sign by the front gate. It looks fantastic! 

One of the major projects for the Peterborough crew was this amazing new lighting in our dining room! It looks great gang! 

We were joined by a small contingent from Lisbon Falls Baptist Church this Spring as well; Paul Marstaller and his son in law Rick Pierce joined us. Here they are putting up one of the brand new signs we have on our property.  

The guys from Gorrie cut down over 100 dead or dying trees on our property. The chainsaws were buzzing the entire time they were here - tireless guys! 

Jeff did a lot of body work on our truck to help us keep it from rusting. It's looking pretty great now!!

Jamie, Jonathan, Jason and Joshua all worked on a number of welding projects; the biggest project was to make new gates for our new property. They also retrofit our box rack for our new truck and added some hooks to our camp out wagon. 

Gorrie Bible Fellowship

It was great to be able to visit Gorrie Bible Fellowship in Gorrie, Ontario. There have been folks coming from Gorrie for almost 20 years to serve the Lord here at Arrowhead. I enjoyed connecting with friends and it was a blessing to be able to share with the youth on Friday night.

I was absolutely blown away by the context of the youth group meeting. I had been asked to speak for 45 minutes to the teens on Friday night, and experience with youth groups left me thinking this was way to ambitious for the attention span of teens. I could't have been more wrong. Youth group started at 7 with an hour of games outside then rolled inside to a time of music and worship, I then spoke for about 45 minutes, and I didn't compete with one cell phone or droopy eyed teen. The group was engaged and present. After I spoke, they broke up into small groups and discussed the lesson for almost an hour - this they did voluntarily. After that the had some food and played games for another hour. It was a great night. It is evident to me that the reason we get such high calibre young people from Gorrie is because of the focus and attention put in Gods Word!

While In Gorrie I met with the team for the entire day on Saturday and part of Sunday afternoon to go through some of the training materials that is meant to help equip them for cross cultural ministry at Arrowhead.

Youth Group Friday night - I learned some great new games!

Small group discussion during our volunteer training sessions. 

Bafa Bafa cross cultural communication role playing activity. 

Jerald and Jamie getting into character for our role playing activity.

So excited to have this great team of folks from Gorrie joining us at Arrowhead this summer! 

We love the Nielsen family. It was so great to have them join us for our Sunday afternoon meetings and look through the Arrowhead summer camp music!

Volunteer Training in Gorrie Ontario

This past weekend I had the tremendous blessing and privilege to be among the fellowship of believers at Gorrie, Ontario! My primary purpose for traveling to Gorrie was to offer the volunteer training program to the team coming from there. We have a group of eleven people (perhaps more) who are committing to give a week (some as many as 6 weeks) of their summer to the ministry at Arrowhead! It is a huge blessing to have the team come, and it was equally a blessing to have them a part of the volunteer training program.

It was a packed weekend to be sure, we met for a few hours Friday night, all day (and I mean all day) on Saturday and Sunday after church. We discussed some very important issues as they relate to the ministries and programs of Arrowhead Native Bible Center.

It was my first fathers day on Sunday, and I almost made it home just in time, but it was close enough - I flew into Fredericton at about 1:30am on Monday morning. Mike & Jamie treated me to a fathers day feast on the way to the airport, so I was well looked after, and once I was with my girls again it was like I'd never left.

 

We had some fun too - here are Sarah, Prisca, Jonny & Andy testing out a camp game for me... 

 

Jessica with the balancing skills...

 

... and of course Mike & Jamie with the big rattles...

We will be holding the volunteer training program again here at Arrowhead over the Canada Day weekend for all of those volunteers in the Maritimes. We are looking forward to a great weekend of fellowship and time in the word and discussing some very important issues with respect to cross cultural evangelism and discipleship. We have asked everyone who is planning to serve with us this year to avail themselves of the training and are prayerful that this will be of great benefit to all involved.