Sweating it out!

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Hi Friends and Prayer Warriors,

I hope you're finding ways to stay cool in the midst of the oppressive heat that's been covering most of the country.  Despite the heat, the Lord's work rolls on.  This week a bunch of our friends and supporters from Central Baptist Church in Wendell, NC are on mission trips to Enola and York, PA.  They're doing a sports camp, backyard bible clubs, and other outreach activities to help plant a church in that very unreached area.  Please keep them in your prayers this week.

We had a great time with Mike and Tim the week before last planning for the future.  There are some changes on the horizon for Mountain Vision, and we're excited to have you along for the ride.  We appreciate your continued prayers as we seek to follow the Lord as a team.  I'll keep you up to date as "dormant ideas" (as Charlie calls them) become active and present realities. 

Tim and Mike and the Cornetts at our house to hang out with Lily and visit.

On Sunday the 31, our friends Craig and Melissa Glogower and their 3 boys will be arriving to spend the week ministering alongside of us.  We're excited to have them coming and are planning to put them to work!  Please be in prayer for their family as they join us, that it will be a mutually encouraging week. 

Sometime the end of next week, probably Thursday and Friday, members of a mission team from Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Garner will be arriving to serve alongside of us.  They're coming to do an extreme bathroom makeover for a disabled woman, as well as to serve in the ministry here.  I'll post more details and specific prayer requests next week.


Things you can be praying for this week.
1.  Please pray that we will find a local Southern Baptist church to connect with.  We've been visiting, and are praying through where the Lord would have us to join and minister in the local church.
2.  Please pray for the Glogowers, for the plans for their trip as well as their safe travels.
3.  Please pray for the Lord's direction as we finalize the plans for the Mount Moriah trip.

As always, thank you for your prayers.  We couldn't do this without you!

Too funny not to post.  Look how intensely Lily is focused on grabbing Mrs. Earlene's ear!

Chatting with Daddy.

We put up 120 ears of corn I bought out of the back of a pick-up on Saturday.  It's yummy!

Lily and the pickle jar.  It was cold, so it must have felt good on her teething gums.

Some day she'll get to enjoy the pickles too!

I missed the jar here, but look at that intensity!

A Busy Week Ahead!

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Look at all my teeth!

Hi Friends and Prayer Warriors!


Thank you for your continued prayer support of our ministry.  We believe that "the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much!" (James 5:16)  Last week we were blessed to have Clint come over and install a heat pump for a disabled lady here in town.  She had been without heat or A/C for well over a year.  She was so excited to call and tell me on Friday that her house was a very pleasant 76 degrees, and that her son was asleep in his room (instead of on the kitchen floor where there is a small window unit air conditioner).  We praise the Lord for Clint and his willingness to live sacrificially to bless others.

Clint: "Uh-Oh, does this mean I'm going to be on the blog?"  Me: "Yes it does, so smile pretty!"

Out with the old.

Checking for snakes.

In with the new!

Bert and Clint installing the new air handler.

We also had our monthly food distribution last Thursday.  We were able to bless 45 families with boxes of food from Second Harvest.  All went smoothly, so thank you for your prayers for that.

Clients waiting for the Second Harvest truck.

The line starting to form at the Storehouse.

This week, Mike Scheer, the Missions Pastor at Denton Bible Church, and Tim Ford, Mike's flunkie, (just kidding Tim! Tim is an integral part of the DBC Mission's team who helps in all kinds of ways, like coming to meet with us!) will be arriving late Tuesday and then spending all day Wednesday and Thursday meeting with our team to talk about our present situation, vision, and strategy.  I anticipate that those will be long and, at times, tense days of planning as we seek to determine the Lord's will and leading for the next phase of Mountain Vision.  All of us desire to be squarely in the Lord's plan, so please be praying that the Lord will make his plan especially clear to all of us.

On Sunday, July 17, Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Garner, NC, will be voting on whether or not to partner with our ministry financially.  Please pray that the Lord would allow us to find favor in the eyes of the church, and that a beautiful partnership would emerge there.


Things you can be praying for this week:

1.  Please pray for our meetings with Mike and Tim, that the Lord would be present and guide our conversations.

2.  Please pray for the people at Mount Moriah, that the Lord would move them to partner with us.

On a personal note, Lily's grandparents came to see her last weekend, all of them!  My mom and dad were on vacation about an hour from here, so they drove up for the day on Thursday.  Meredith's parents drove over from NC and spent the weekend playing with Lily and touring the big city of Greeneville. 

Happy to see all of my grandparents!

Making faces at mommy.

She's looking mischievous.   :)

Our ministry starts!

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Hi!

Greetings Friends!

We hope this finds you all doing well and that you had a joyous time celebrating the 4th of July with your family and friends and remembering not only the privilege it is to have the freedom we do in this country but also the spiritual freedom we have through the blood of Christ shed on the cross!

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers over this past week!  Daniel's first round of meetings with the team went well and there are more to come!  The week for Daniel was spent first meeting with Charlie Cornett, our field director, and discussing the current status of our ministry here.  The week rounded out with spending a day cleaning up the grounds and organizing our local storehouse where we give away clothes each week to those in need in the area.  There are many changes on the horizon for our ministry so continue to pray for us!

We left Sunday for a brief trip to see Daniel's family near Dandridge, TN.  It has become a Shrader family tradition that they vacation in the mountains on Douglass Lake around each 4th of July.  It was nice to get to spend time with them, play on the lake, and for Lily to get to see her grandma, grandpa, cousins, and uncle Sam and aunt Alex. She did really well overall even though sleeping in her pack-n-play is not her favorite thing!  As far as development, she has recently learned to wave and say "Hi!" when someone waves and says hi to her! 

The week ahead is a busy one for us!  Thursday the storehouse is hosting Second Harvest, a local food-bank ministry that we partner with.  They are setting up at the storehouse Thursday morning to help distribute food to the needy in the area.  Also on Thursday, a friend from Raleigh is coming to install a new air-conditioning unit for a needy lady in the area who has been without air-conditioning for over a year.  We are so excited to have a friend coming to see first hand the benevolence side of our ministry and to partake in this with us.  Friday we will spend another day doing clean up of the store house with the help of some members of U-Turn for Christ, a two-month minimum residential ministry of restoration, designated primarily for men and women struggling with the sin of addiction. 

On a side note:
Over the past two weeks a big question that Daniel and I have been asking the team is, "Why are we HERE?"  What we mean by this is why are we here in the Greeneville/Johnson City area specifically and not in another region as we seek to launch our pastor training ministry?  That question has been answered by our team but it was also answered locally as I, Meredith, was driving home one day last week and saw the sign of a local Seventh Day Adventist church below:

Note that it's the Seventh-Day Adventist asking the question.  Scary.

How do you take away the message of what it says?  For me, it hit me to read, "How important is doctrine really? You decide if it is".  Doctrine is truth.  How important is truth in our churches?  As Christians?  Paul talks over and over about the importance of holding to sound doctrine and not being swayed by the heresies of those false teachers who sought to destroy the people around them with lies and incorrect teachings.  This is why we are here.  Because this local church is not teaching what is true.  They are questioning whether truth is even important.  Many churches here are not teaching what is in accordance with sound doctrine.  As we launch our pastor training ministry here our heart is that men and women can truly begin to take hold of sound doctrine and understand the importance of it as they share it with those around them and in their congregations.  Hopefully, like a small flame, this region will begin to change because of it. 

Things to pray for this week:

* Pray for our friend as he travels from Raleigh to install an air conditioner.

* Pray for the food distribution Thursday. 

* Pray that God will open doors for the pastor training side of our ministry to begin in the near future.

We love you all!
Daniel, Meredith, and Lily Shrader

Cute ladies!

Cousins!

Headed down to the lake.

Lily doesn't like the water yet!

Hanging out on the dock with Hunter and Hayden.

Checking out the water.

Showing Granny around the dock!

Walking around with cousin Cameryn.

Checking out the puppies.  :)

Playing with Papa's hat!

Wakeboarding on the 4th.