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. 

Lisbon Falls Baptist Church

It was great to spend the weekend in Lisbon Falls, Maine at Lisbon Falls Baptist Church. I met with the volunteer team on Friday evening and then again on Saturday morning. It is always exciting to meet with our incoming teams and share their enthusiasm. I always feel like I'm at home in Lisbon Falls and it was great to be able to visit with so many friends on this trip. In addition to our volunteer orientation sessions, it was a privilege to open the Word with everyone on Sunday evening.

Chatting with the Matt and John in the parking lot, Pastor Alden will be bringing the group up to Arrowhead  for our second junior camp! I love these guys.

Small group discussion during our volunteer orientation sessions. 

It was so encouraging to enjoy some fellowship with these dear brothers. Their love for the Lord and enthusiasm for the Gospel is contagious.

Enjoyed some fellowship with Matt McGuire and Mrs. Michel after church service Sunday evening.

Have we lost everyone?

Greetings everyone (if in fact there is still anyone reading our blog); I know it has been far too long since we last posted an update. And believe me, MUCH has happened. It is my hope to be able to be more regular with updates now in the new year that we are having a bit more of a regular routine again in our lives.

Last fall, in October, we visited Lisbon Falls Baptist Church for a part of their missions conference. It was a wonderful refreshing time and we enjoyed the time with our Maine "family", as we always do.

We returned from the conference in Maine, and were immediately thrust into a major renovation project at the mission house we live in. With our ever expanding family we found it necessary to have more room in which to live here at the Center. So, by the grace of NCEM and the kindness of numerous donors, we have seen a 16' x 22' addition to the ANBC mission house. The process was far more challenging and fraught with unexpected (and expected) pitfalls. I won't belabor the details, but suffice it to say that challenges encountered with the foundation dramatically impacted the entire project. We are so very thankful for all of the many volunteers who came out, sometimes at the last minute, to help us see the project through - if it were not for them we would most certainly have been left with a serious mess. I would like very much to thank everyone by name, but I'm afraid that would be impossible at this point, so many folk gave of their time and energy to serve and see this project complete before winter!

The addition is 3 rooms, the biggest of which will serve as a "den", office and spare bedroom. We have very much been blessed by the woodstove this winter; and by the gift of firewood that we received from a neighbour.

Thanks to the resourcefulness of one of our volunteers, a very gifted carpenter, we have a lovely murphy bed that will allow us to have overnight guests.

The other large room in the addition is a utility room for us to store our cleaning supplies and deep freeze; it also gives a space for Liz to have for doing crafts and making soap.

Although I wasn't able to completely finish the addition before Willow arrived, I had much of the noisy work done and finished everything up the week prior to Christmas. 

On December 1st we were blessed to welcome Willow Grace Fawcett into the world. She was a most precious Christmas gift for our little family. 

It is amazing to see her grow and to see Ivy's love for her little sister. We feel so blessed.

We are now into a new year, and we have some exciting plans for ministry in the coming months.  Stay tuned in the coming week for our 2015 schedule and programs as well as applications and opportunities to serve. We will be holding our first advisory team meeting of 2015 this coming Saturday; I am very excited to touch base with the team and discuss some of our plans for the coming year!

Thanks so much for your continued support in prayer and finances - we are so blessed to be able to serve at Arrowhead, and we are further blessed by those of you who come along side of us every day in ministry!

First Volunteer Training of the Year

On Mothers Day weekend we had the immense privilege of being in Lisbon Falls with our friends at Lisbon Falls Baptist Church. They had asked us to come and offer the volunteer training program for anyone coming to ANBC as well as those in the church interested in looking a little more closely at cross cultural communication. We had more than a dozen folks out and it was great to be able to look at the material with them.

We will be having a couple of different groups from Lisbon Falls join us this summer throughout the summer and are very much looking forward to ministering alongside them this summer.

It was nice to be in Maine for the holiday and spend some time together as a family for Mother's Day. Some friends made their home available to us and we were very comfortable while we were there.

A long overdue update!

Hello friends, I must first begin by making apologies for the long delay in this post hitting the interwebs. Since camp has concluded, we have remained exceptionally busy; first with our Eastern Field conference and the grand opening of the Waban-Aki Book Shop. We have spent the past several weeks doing a great deal of travel and ministry updates as we've visited family and friends abroad. But prior to that we hosted our annual ladies retreat here at Arrowhead.

There was a smaller turn out this year than in past years, but a wonderful time of fellowship and teaching of the Fruit of the Spirit was enjoyed by the ladies. Special music was brought by Jane Ness and Theresa Hickman.

 Of course, craft time is always important.

And, the afternoon tea!

After the ladies retreat, we had the pleasure of visiting and opening the Word at Forest Hills Fellowship Baptist Church in Cole Harbour, NS. It is always wonderful to be with the folks there and share with them what has been happening with NCEM at ANBC.

The following week we were given the wonderful opportunity to have a few days of rest in North Conway in New Hampshire. We were able to enjoy some relaxation and time together in a beautiful community, we even visited the Fryeburg Fair - a wonderful agricultural fair in Maine.

Ivy very much loved all of the animals.

Ivy & mommy having some chowder.

Ivy & daddy at Old MacDonald's Farm.

It was such a wonderful blessing to be able to have these few days of vacation together. We are so very thankful for the kindness of friends who made this possible for us.

After our little vacation we were truly blessed to be able to share with our friends at Lisbon Falls Baptist Church in Lisbon Falls, Maine. We will also be looking forward to having a group of folks come from there to join us at the end of this month for a week of ministry in labour at the Center! We treasure our time with them at this time of year!

Upon our return from Maine we enjoyed a one day trip to the Miramichi to be with the missions society of Calvary Baptist Church for the first of their monthly meetings for this fall. They are a committed group of believers who apply themselves to prayerfully and financially supporting missions.

Our last visit this fall was with our friends at The People's Church in Truro, NS to be a part of their missions conference this past weekend. We shared with them the upcoming work weeks and our need for labourers - and the response has been overwhelming. There is a gentleman with a construction company who is planning to bring some of his crew up to help us install the roof steel on our cabins.

Although, as a family, we are feeling a bit weary we are so encouraged and excited about the ministry here at ANBC. We really feel that the Lord is preparing ANBC for some growth in ministry. We will have opportunity for a rest for the month of December as we work in the office and prepare for the new year - and I know that we will look back fondly at all of the wonderful things that the Lord has done this fall. It is a blessing for us to be able to serve here at Arrowhead and we very much love the ministry here.

Lisbon Falls Baptist Church 50th anniversary missions conference

We've just returned form a wonderful week in Lisbon Falls, Maine. We had a wonderful week connecting with friends and many of our staff from this past summer. LFBC did a fantastic job of hosting the conference, there was a full schedule and lots of opportunity to interact with the church at various functions.

We spent the week with some friends from the church, and they spoiled us during our free time! We enjoyed some sites in Maine with them and took some time to do Christmas shopping before we came home.

LFBC has been a church that has been hugely engaged with the ministries at ANBC over the past few years. This past summer we were blessed to have 21 people come to serve for our summer camps. And, just last week we had a couple of men from the church join us for a week of work projects! It was a real pleasure for us to be with them this week and share in fellowship, reports and worship!

The ANBC display.

We were treated to an international dinner and time of testimonies.

We enjoyed services and mission reports every night for the week.

The home meetings on Monday night were a great way to chat with folks, answer any questions they had and get to know people a little better.

The Crafts hosted a mission luncheon in their home on Wednesday morning.

John Alden was at ANBC last summer on our summer staff. We enjoyed reconnecting with people at the mission luncheon.

Our friend Mrs. Chetley.

The Michels hosted us for the week - the certainly spoiled us!