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!

The Adopt a Cabin Project

 
At Arrowhead it can be a challenge to stay ahead of all the maintenance and repair work that we need to do. We are working diligently to bring all of our buildings up to a consistent level of repair. The next piece of this process is for us to upgrade and improve our summer camp cabins.

We have six cabins that we use as accommodation for our campers during summer camp. These buildings are winterized, each has a baseboard heater and built in bunks; they each have a shingle roof and a small porch.

At Arrowhead we have some beautiful big pines, cedars and fir trees, these leave a lovely coat of needles on the floor of the forest. Unfortunately they also leave a lovely coat of needles on each roof, which then promotes the growth of moss. One of the upgrades that we are excited to include in this project is a brand new shiny red steel roof for each cabin. This will help us promote the longevity of our buildings. We are also planning to include some brown aluminum fascia for each building as well.

Each of the buildings is finished inside with chip board. This unfortunately leaves us with some odour issue in the heat of summer. The adopt a cabin renovations will see this removed and replaced with tongue & grooved pine boards. We will also be installing a larger window and pot lights into each building.

Each building has a solid wood door, this unfortunately has not served sufficiently to use these buildings in the winter. That coupled with a need to insulate the floor, it is our hope to install insulated doors for winter use and screen doors for summer use; we will also be insulating the floors.

This may all seem like a daunting task that is prohibitively expensive. Working with our local supplier we have determined that each cabin will cost between $4,000 and $4,500 dollars. The way that translates to our "Adopt a Cabin Project" will be determined by those church groups that feel led to join with us.

By committing to take part in this project a group commits to raise funds and work through all of the renovations over the course of five years to completion. If a group would like to partner with us in this program, but does not feel that they will be able to come here and complete the work, we can arrange to have the work done on your behalf.

We currently have two churches that have expressed interest in partnering with us in this program. It's always exciting to see people come and serve and minister along side us in this way. If you think this might be something your church or group would be interested in, don't hesitate to drop me a line.



This video was created by a friend of ours, Micheal Parrington, for use in making known the opportunity to minister at ANBC in very practical physical ways. It will perhaps give you a bit of an idea what it is like to serve here during one of our semiannual work weeks.

Little Southwest Raised the Roof

The ANBC mini-home... our home... has a (much needed) brand new roof tonight. Thanks to the kindness and hard work of our friends at Little Southwest Baptist Church in the Miramichi. Darren and Tammy Goodfellow came out yesterday and began prepping the roof, the rest of the team joined them this morning! By 3 o'clock a new roof was on and we were packing up!

It is such a huge encouragement and blessing to have the church care for the ministry here in this way. We had a great day working together, I don't think I've ever worked with as much laughter and productivity at the same time!

Truro, Hatfield Point and Cumberland Bay

Our week started out last Sunday with a trip to the People's Church in Truro, Nova Scotia. Liz didn't accompany me on this ministry update trip - she remained behind at the Center to meet the arriving folks for our work week. It was a real pleasure to be at People's church and connect with some old friends. They are hosting their missions month and I was invited to share a ministry update for the Sunday evening service. Because Liz wasn't able to accompany me - I invited Todd Hill, a friend of ours from our church here in Cumberland Bay, to come along for the ride. We picked up Ben Bedecki on the way - it was a great night for a road trip and nice to have an extra few sets of eyes watching for moose.

Monday morning we started bright and early on some work projects. Our friends Rob & Irene joined us along with Paul and Ken from Lisbon Falls. They accomplished a lot of necessary projects; some plumbing, electrical, winterizing, equipment servicing, carpentry, landscaping, tree cutting, to name a few! We very much enjoyed the fellowship and company, working alongside our friends this week.

The boat has been winterized and our tractor has two brand new front tires to get us ready for the winter! We're well prepared and almost finished with our winterizing projects.

On Wednesday night I was invited to give a thirty minute update at Hatfield Point Baptist church. Ken and Paul accompanied me and we enjoyed an evening of fellowship with the folks there and a great opportunity to share our excitement in our ministries with NCEM at ANBC.

Tomorrow morning we'll be hitting the road and heading for Lisbon Falls, Maine to take part in their missions conference - we should be home Thursday next week! Please keep us in prayer as we travel and present Arrowhead's ministry.

Ken putting the finishing touches on some plumbing!

Our lovely new sink in the medic station.

Ken finishing up the install!

Paul made sure we that we're all ready for the winter.

Rob cleaned the moss and leaves from off the roofs of several of our cabins.

Paul cut down a lot of deadwood and wind damage for us.

Rob did some carpentry for us this week - this was one of his projects - a wheel cart for our bows and arrows.

Little Southwest Baptist Church

Well my friends, I must apologize for my brief blog absence of late. It has been a busy time and I haven't allowed myself to take time to update all of you on what's been happening here at Arrowhead!

It has been year end, and as the book keeper for Arrowhead Native Bible Center I've had a few extra tasks for my part. I know that out at headquarters the finance department has been, and will continue to be busy as they prepare all of the books from various departments for the auditor. Keep them in prayer as they labour in good stewardship of that which the Lord has seen fit to bless us with.

This Spring has come with a lot of deadfall on the property of ANBC. I've been busy collecting and burning brush this past week. Throughout the week I've had the very welcome assistance of some folks from our church. It's certainly a blessing to be able to enjoy the outdoors this time of year!

Liz and Marcia, Kevin and I have all been busy rounding up materials, supplies and equipment for our work week coming up at Arrowhead. We have teams coming from several different churches, some as far away as Ontario, for the week of April 25th to 30th. These teams are coming ready to work, and will be helping us with MANY projects at the center. I will give you regular updates during our work week and share pictures of all of the work that we are hoping to have done. We are very excited and blessed by the sacrificial work that the work teams will do! We are certainly praying for good weather on April 30th when the largest number of people will be at ANBC to assist us with jobs!

Today we traveled to Sillikers, NB with the Strouts to share with the folks at Little Southwest Baptist Church about the ministries at Arrowhead Native Bible Center. What an encouragement it was to be among the folks there. Their enthusiasm for the ministry and concern for First Nations ministry is a blessing to us. I was so excited when we walked in and were greeted by a large sign and sign up sheet for a work day at ANBC on April 30th. There were already 16 people signed up to come along.

It's going to be a great week as we welcome Len and Lorrayne Breen, our field directors, who will be arriving from Ontario on Tuesday. They will be here for three weeks as we enjoy the work week and prepare for some meetings with NCEM executive in early May. Please keep them in prayer as they travel tomorrow and Wednesday!