The Doors are Open!

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August was a full month, but the highlight was probably our little princess turning 5!
It's hard to believe we got here this quickly.

Dear Friends and Prayer Warriors,
Thank you so much for all your prayers and support through the relocation of the Mountain Vision Storehouse.  Looking back, it's been the main subject of this blog for about six months, and I'm happy to tell you that it's finally finished! We opened to the public on Tuesday, August 18th.  Here's a recap of what the Lord has done.

By God's grace we completed a renovation with an estimated retail value in excess of $50,000 for approximately $10,000.  In order to do this, the Lord provided more than a dozen local professionals who donated their time, equipment, materials, and expertise to the project. The Lord also provided missions team from Denton Bible Church in Denton, TX, Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC, and First Baptist Church here in Greeneville, who together completed the bulk of the task.  Altogether we have logged well over 1,000 volunteer hours since early summer, and we are truly thankful to everyone who played a part in praying, giving, and serving! We couldn't have done it without you!

Here are some before and after pictures.

Inside these roll-up doors is where the new Storehouse is moving.

The roll-up doors have been replaced with our familiar red doors, and our cow made the move as well.

Even the cow got a face-lift and a fresh coat of paint.

This is the room that became the bathroom.  Once upon a time, it was an embalming room.

It's hard to capture the after exactly because the one room is now three, but you get the idea.  There's been an incredible transformation in here, and we now have awesome, handicap accessible restrooms!

This was the Office before we started, with a definite 1960's funeral home style.

And this is the office today! Updated to have not just a modern feel, but welcoming one!

The Waiting Area didn't exist.  We connected the office to the outside by building in a new waiting area, framing in the garage doors, and adding a new entrance.  The large garage area where I am standing while taking this picture became the new area for clothing racks, shelving for household items, etc.

Now we have a comfortable area for our clients to wait or kids to play while others are being served.

This is a panorama of sorts of what used to be the garage, and now holds clothing, household items, etc.

Again, thank you to everyone who prayed, gave, and served to make this move possible.  The first two weeks have had a bit of a learning curve, but overall have been outstanding.  You can continue to pray that the Lord would raise up more local volunteers to serve alongside us.  The Lord has already been answering that prayer, but this will be an ongoing need as we serve an increased number of families because of our more accessible location.

Meanwhile, in other ministry news...
While the Storehouse transition has dominated the blog headlines, our church leadership training initiatives have been silently chugging along in the background.  However, our first Seminary Extension class in Greeneville will start on Monday night (8/31)!  We currently have three students signed up, and we're excited about getting this new ministry venture off the ground. One lesson I've learned over the years is that the law of inertia applies to more than physics.  Getting the ball rolling in the first place is always the biggest challenge, and then things tend to roll on more easily going forward!

I've been blessed to have some excellent meetings in the last two weeks, and it appears the Lord may be opening the door to an exciting new ministry opportunity here that I will tell you about in the next post.  In the meantime, we appreciate your prayers for the Lord's continued guidance and direction as we move the ministry forward, laboring to help local churches BE the Church, and training church leaders to be more effective ministers of the gospel.

In Family News...

Lily started Kindergarten in homeschool. She missed the age cutoff to start Kindergarten in the public school this year, so she and mommy have embarked on a homeschooling adventure that we will take a year at a time!

 Lily is studying reading, writing, math, Bible, and social studies.  So far, math is her favorite subject! But most of all, she wants to be a princess when she grows up!

Lily is also studying personal finance.  She now has some chores she does just because she is a part of this family, and some chores she gets paid a commission to do.  On pay-day, the money gets divided into these three jars.

August is also the start of the summer harvest, which is so much fun!  These purple and gold tomatoes are from plants that volunteered beside the house!

Hosea loves melons of all types.  Trying to take his picture with some of this years varieties proved a bit of a challenge! He is chewing on a Minnesota Midget cantaloupe.

Lily helped me pick some of this year's bumper watermelon crop!

I love growing different kinds of tomatoes.  They're all delicious, yet subtly different.  To me they highlight God's creativity in his blessings to us.

What to do with so much watermelon? We made watermelon ice cream (sorbet), and the kids loved it!

Lily  with her princess cake.

Lily wanted a low-key party this year with just her best friend Riley.

So, the girls got to go get their nails done and play with make-up.  Craziness.

Hosea is a wide open little booger with a smile as big as the Texas sky! He is learning more words every day, and often does "school" right alongside his big sister. Here, they are learning about the weather!

God has been incredibly gracious to us, and we are blessed to have you following along and praying for us!

Things you can be praying for...

1. Praise the Lord with us for the completion and move of the Storehouse ministry!
2. Praise the Lord with us for Lily's five incredible years!
3. Praise the Lord with us that Meredith's daddy's cancer appears to have responded well to treatments thus far, and he feels pretty good overall.
4. Pray for the Lord's blessing on the launch of our new Seminary Extension class next week.
5. Pray for the Lord's continued guidance and direction as we explore potential new strategic ministry initiatives in the coming weeks.