Dear Church Family and Friends:

As we begin the New Hebrew Year of 5770 I believe this is the time to “Plant new seeds in new fields to reap a new harvest.” One of the new fields we are going to plant are in the areas of home groups. This is the right time to start bringing people together for community, friendship and experiencing God’s presence together in homes. We are going to recognize the leaders today and pray for them. As you look at the list of groups available, you can find a flyer in the foyer with more information about the times and locations. I want to extend a special recognition of each of these leaders…

1- Adult Home Fellowship @ Rick and Sabrina Smith’s led by David and Rhonda Lake

2- Adult Home Fellowship @ Tom and Sylvia Mortensen’s led By Belinda Wright and Eva Dixon

3- Adult Women’s Home Fellowship @ Sandy Jones’ home, led by Sandy

4- Generation Now Home Fellowship @ Mike and Marcia Kaiser’s led by Shane and Cassie Hoffman

5- LifeBlood Youth Friday Evening Coed Home Fellowship @ Mike and Nicole King’s led by Mike and Nicole

6- LifeBlood Youth Saturday Evening Coed Home Fellowship @ Steve and Wendy Haak’s home led by Wendy

7- “The Brotherhood” Guys Youth Home Fellowship @ Philip Brown’s, led by John L’Amoreaux

8- Family Group Fellowship @ Don and Hope Hoffman’s home or the Skyway Gym led by Don & Hope Hoffman

9- Happy Quilters Touch Group @ Skyway Teen Center led by Peggy Brooks

10- Home Group in Prescott Valley @ the Petersen’s home led by Tim Petersen

- Pastor Greg

Dear Church Family and friends:
We know that every fall and winter we move through some of our busiest times and receive many offerings. We normally have the annual Harvest Festival on October 31 with a special offering of $15,000.00 to host the event. We then receive donations for the Thanksgiving Day meals which we take out to families and finally, we help families with Christmas gifts through our Angel Tree program. This year we have prayed about this and we feel it is better for us to focus on providing extra help and care for our families in need. We are not going to host the Harvest Festival this year. We are going to provide Thanksgiving meals for the everyone in need and focus on a larger Christmas outreach starting with our own membership first. This is a way that we can pull together caring for each other and continuing to reach out to the community. We will miss the one outreach event for 2009 but we believe it will be back next year. You will be hearing more on how we can help your family through the holiday season.
- Pastor Greg

Dear Church Family and Friends:

The Lord wants us to be victorious in our everyday life. The circumstances we face are not only natural in origin but they are also spiritual. To overcome the spiritual roots of problems we need special tools or weapons to break the power at the root. Today I am going to give you twelve ways to break through the unseen forces that are holding you back.
- Pastor Greg

Dear Church Family and Friends:
Our annual Harvest Festival which we host on October 31st every year is only seven weeks away. We have averaged over four thousand people every year here in Goodyear and it is one of the largest free parties in all of Phoenix. This is our largest local outreach to our community and it has been on going since 1983. This year we have a very real economic hurdle to overcome. The estimated cost of the outreach is fifteen thousand dollars after all the donations. We do not have this extra money in our budget this year. Recently our special offerings have cut down the general offering which pays all of our financial responsibilities. In order for us to host our outreach this year we need an additional $15,000.00 donated. This donation cannot replace your tithe or offering to the general fund. It must be completely above and beyond as an additional love offering. If you would like to donate to the Harvest Festival, please write this on the special note of your check or place it in a clearly marked envelope. We need to have the funds in by September 15 to move forward with the event. Thank you for your prayers and support. -Pastor Greg

Dear Church Family and Friends:
I am so happy to see God moving in our midst in many wonderful and supernatural ways. When we choose to be his vessel in the natural, he can imprint upon us the super…natural! John and Karen Blehm are ministers commissioned by us here at Skyway in the beginning of the summer. Since we laid commissioning hands upon them, God has been opening the doors of favor to minister to many military personnel in our valley and around the world. Here is a letter we recently received from them…
-Pastor Greg

Dear Praying Team:
I am processing the past 2 days. Praise God for all the services that are now being provided for our troops to strengthen them and their families and for those great people (some voluntarily) who are working to disseminate all the information to them. 78% of our troops are from Judeo-Christian homes. Who said America isn’t a Christian nation? We are thankful for the opportunity to provide spiritual resources through Military Ministry to these troops and their families.

The Yellow Ribbon Program is a DOD mandated program (Karen and John were there) for all our Armed Services, but the Reserves were the first to roll it out. The people who are heading this one up are Christians, PTL! We met a Lt. Colonel and others, including a military wife who was named, with her family, Army Family of the Year for all they are doing for our troops, who were all Christians.

It was amazing that Military Ministry was allowed to provide spiritual resources for the troops at these events…a miracle really in today’s political climate. All the leaders were very grateful for our participation as we explained each resource that we gave away, including our PTSD manuals. We were even asked personally by the Lt. Colonel in charge to return for the last 2 events of this year with our travel expenses to be compensated by the Yellow Ribbon Program (in other words, our government). God just never ceases to amaze us !!

Another “God-incidence” – John had agreed to take the Church BBQ Grill to a VFW event on Saturday. They will be cooking a meal for 300 Reservists troops who are being deployed to the Middle East..this will be their last meal in AZ before they leave. They just “happen” to be part of Chaplain Coggins’ group (Luke AFB), who just “happened’ to be at this event also. She’s starting to be a big cheerleader for us and will be at Saturday’s event along with her Colonel. We will be taking some New Testaments/Daily Bread packets and some 91st Psalms books for them to take with them.

We know lives were changed this weekend through the workshops and resources. A MilMin couple gave the “7 habits of successful military families” presentation with 7 workshops each day. Chaplain Coggins gave a Suicide Prevention Workshop. They are talking about the hard stuff, but that’s what it is going to take to stop the unraveling of military families.

Thank you so much for your willingness to pray!! Your prayers are making a difference and the impossible is being accomplished in the name of Jesus!

Thank you so much,

John and Karen Blehm