GateKeepers Ministries

It has been quite the summer in our household and has been centered around something that occurred one year ago.  A family asked if we might be willing to sell our house because it met the needs of their family nicely and to make a long story short, we believed God was leading us in our decision to indeed sell the house we had lived in over eight years.  That put us scrambling for what God would have us do and we had nine months to figure it out.  We looked at every option we could think, i.e. moving to another town, purchasing an existing home, purchasing an existing home and adding an in-law apartment or build new.  Without going into the details and decision making of why we chose, we chose to build and again firmly believed this is what God was leading us to do.  That decision has led to many other decision points but the most interesting is that we had to be out of our former home three months before our new home is ready for occupancy and therefore multiple living quarters in the meantime while also working on the house.

It has been a summer where our oldest daughter has been wrapping up her college experience by receiving her MA (Medical Assistant) certificate and our oldest son is getting ready to begin his college experience.  Where has the time gone?  So I share this so there may be some kind of appreciation of the whirlwind these last three months, and longer, have been and the slight amount of stress that has been floating around our family.

Now, without placing all that aside, we excitedly anticipate what is coming this Monday, August 10.  It is what opened the doors wider than we could have possible have imagined last year and what was the talk of the campus and most certainly the football players at nearly every meal we had around our table with them last year.  I am talking of the Central State University Football team heading to Scioto Hills Camp for the first four days of fall training and conditioning.  Words the players used to describe it last year were: “pure torture, punishment, excruciating, unforgettable, best experience of my life, emotional, never heard myself think before, I found I have a family here, I found Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior…”  and the list goes on.

Last year we saw nearly 30 young men give their lives to Christ and we are asking God to move again this year.  We leave CSU this coming Monday at 6:45 am and are at Scioto Hills Camp through Thursday morning.  Would you please pray for unity, health, wisdom, Don Callan, Ralph Lewis and me as we will be speaking to the guys twice per day while there?  Pray that the Holy Spirit will use this as a time to open their spiritual eyes and the guys who have already made a decision to give their lives to Christ will grow on that and those who have never made that decision will be so convicted.

Let the season begin!!