Blessed Beyond Measure

WOW!  What an exciting week we have had!  Last Sunday our home church commissioned us as neighborhood missionaries, pledging to support us in deed and in prayer.  Since we are Southern Baptists, this was followed by a potluck lunch:)  Then, those that we able walked the block and a half or so to our Challenge House, where we encircled the house, hand in hand, and prayed over it and all those that will be affected by the ministry taking place in it.  What an awesome experience this was!  Such a sweet fellowship with our church family.

On Monday night, ladies from the Beth Faul WMU group came to the Challenge House and cleaned it from top to bottom.  These awesome women came straight from work, cleaning supplies in hand!  They did everything from vacuum and dust to clean the refrigerator shelves.  Another blessing to know that my family could move into a clean house.

Two retired men from our church donated  a 40+ hour work week to paint the entire downstairs of our CH. This will be the common area of the house that will be used by any group that comes in to have a meeting or Bible study.  Such a relief to know that it is freshly painted and ready for whatever this ministry brings our way!

On Thursday, we had a buyer put a contract on our "old" house.  The circumstances behind this buyer choosing our house and the details of the purchase contract leave no doubt that God was in that situation!  We will have a couple of extra weeks to finish moving out the last of our stuff, and maybe even have a moving sale, before the new owner takes possession. (We are waiting on an outdoor storage building to be installed at the CH, so we had to leave behind everything in the attic and garage of the old house.)

Yesterday, Saturday, was our big moving day!  We had 9 men from church show up to help with the move.  We were done in a couple hours!  My mom and I were even able to get a good bit of the kitchen unpacked! 

Even today at church the blessings continued to flow.  We had several people approach us about wanting to reseed the front yard, having a friend remove a tree stump in the backyard (which is holding up the progress of our outbuilding), and just blessing us with gift cards!  We feel so loved as God continues to use our church family to confirm this life changing decision!

Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.  For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  Luke 6:38

And the adventure begins.....

The Kirkmans are moving to the West Side - and we couldn't be more excited!  God has been working on this move for a couple of years.  We attended a Children's Ministry Day sponsored by the local Baptist Association that gave us our first glimpse at what the Challenge House ministry was all about.  We visited all 3 houses - 2 were fully functional and the 3rd was under construction with a major renovation/remodel.  Brad and I walked away from that day very impressed with the Challenge House movement going on here in Hopkinsville.  Little did we know that the 3rd house was being renovated for us to one day live in!

"The goal of the Challenge House movement is to make it easy for people to live out their faith within an under-resourced neighborhood.  While they are there to share not only their Christ-centered reason for relocating, they are also there to help connect kids and adults to opportunities of education, employment, and life skills."  In simpler terms, we will be moving from the comfortable, safe, suburban house that we own, to living in a home we don't own in an "inner city" type neighborhood riddled with poverty and all that goes with it.  We are doing this to show this neighborhood the love of Christ, to give them hope, to show them how to "take back" their community.

We are excited about meeting and befriending our new neighbors, about starting Bible studies, after school tutoring programs, and adult education opportunities, all of which will take place in our house!  God has removed our anxiety about this move and replaced it with a great sense of peace.  We are trusting him to protect us and to open doors of opportunity to share our faith.  If God is for us, then who can be against us?! (Romans 8:31)