Candy Harvesting

Jacob was asked at school if he was going to go trick or treating, he replied,  “no, I don’t celebrate Halloween, but I will be celebrating the harvest of candy.”  So, we went candy harvesting.

People in New Orleans love to party.  So, Halloween is a pretty big event throughout the city.  Through friends, we discovered the most amazing candy harvesting neighborhood I have ever seen.  The roads are closed by the police, kids and adults are both in costume.  There are thousands of people on the street.  Everyone gives great candy, but there are also people giving away pizza, jambalaya, soda, wine, toothbrushes and toothpaste.  I was thrilled to get a $3 tube of toothpaste for free.  Many houses have elaborate displays that include lights and sound systems.  It’s quite the spectacle.

You can see the boys below.  Mitchell is wearing the jacket I bought while in college.

 

Super Saturday

Super Saturday is an extension of the eXcite All Stars Summer Camp.  The program is run by Gerald and Penny Williams, who are part of Hope Christian Church.  Gerald is an Associate Pastor at Hope and serves on the teaching team.  October 31 was the first Super Saturday, it’s purpose is to keep the relational connection with the kids from the summer camp, teach life skills, promote fitness and convey spiritual truth.  Jesus is clearly on display at Super Saturday.

I had the opportunity to teach a very simple photography class.  My tips for good pictures with an automatic camera were to: 1. Keep the sun at your back.  2. Get close when photographing people.

I also had the opportunity to share a message on thankfulness.  The entire day was built on this verse from I Thessalonians 5:18.  Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

I took the inflatables that Hope has and set them up, kids always love to jump in the inflatables!  It was a good day of ministry and I’ll be back next month.

 

Saints Block Party

Our Saints Block party was a lot of fun.  The Saints won the game and as of this writing they are 7-0, so people in New Orleans are pretty excited about their team.  We had the game on our 12 foot by nine foot video screen.  This is a fantastic way to watch football.  We grilled out and set up our inflatables for the kids.

We distributed invitations to the party in the neighborhood around the church building.  The local rep for Monster Energy Drinks received an invitation and contacted me about making a donation to our party.  I said that we would be happy to take whatever he could give us, he brought us some of every flavor drink they make.

The event was really good because we got to share it with some members of the New Orleans Deaf Church.  We put the closed captioning on and we all enjoyed the game together.  It was a great bridge builder between the two churches.

 

Jennifer’s 40th Birthday

Jennifer’s birthday was great!  At last count she has received 87 birthday cards and numerous packages by mail.  Thank you to everyone who sent cards, emails and gifts to express your love to Jennifer.

Jennifer also had a birthday party.  I didn’t think that I could pull off a surprise party, but it ended up that I did.  Her party was listed on the calendar on our computer for at least two weeks.  About five days before her party, I realized that she had no idea that there was to be a party for her at a friend’s house.  So, I removed the party info from the calendar and kept quiet.  Jennifer had her birthday off of work and we spent the day together.  We went to the park, then ate out for lunch.  We went out to dinner as a family that evening.  Jennifer had cards and flowers, but no cake on her birthday.  And no party.  The party was three days later, so I had to suffer a little disappointment from Jennifer.  She told Mitchell that she was disappointed that we didn’t get her a cake for her birthday.  All was made right on Sunday night as more than thirty people crowed into the Peterson home to wish Jennifer a happy birthday.  Thanks again to everyone who helped make this birthday really memorable and special.  The pictures below are some of the people from the party.  You can see Mitchell serving as Jennifer’s stunt-double and blowing out the candles.  She was sick with bronchitis and didn’t want to blow germs on the cake.  Good work Mitchell!

 

My First Louisiana Wedding

I performed my first Louisiana wedding on October 17, 2009.  It was a beautiful, outdoor wedding at a park on the Northshore.  The couple, Nick and Amy are part of Hope Christian Church.  Nick leads the music for our worship through singing at our Celebration service.  It’s a lot of fun to do a wedding for people that you know and care about.  This was also my first wedding in which one of the bridesmaids was a man and one of the groomsmen was a woman.  In fact, the woman was the best man or best woman.  I wasn’t sure how to refer to these two; bridesmaid-man, brideman, groomswoman, best-woman?  I was in uncharted waters.  I did get a good laugh from the guests during the ceremony as I made an accountability charge to the wedding party.  So, it all worked out the the couple is now very, happily married.  Check me out below, I’m the one in the middle.

 

Faux Fireplace

The house that we bought had a faux fireplace.  It never was a fireplace and couldn’t be used as a fireplace.  It was made of fake brick and took up the only wall space where a TV could sit.  So, I got inspired or was procrastinating writing my message for Sunday, I’m not really sure which it was and removed our faux fireplace.  Under the fireplace, I found a piece of yellow (I’m pretty sure that it was bright yellow when new) shag carpet.  The shag was two inches long.  A friend of mine told me that it was her responsibility to rake the shag carpet when she visited her aunt.  I’m really glad that no one that I know is still “rakin’ the shag”.  The worst thing about the shag carpet was that it sat in the flood water from Hurricane Katrina for many weeks.  It was very gross carpet!  It was good to get it out of our house.  You can see before, shag and after pictures below.  There is still a hole in our wall, but I think it’s an improvement.  Fixing it is a project for another day.

 

Sunday Messages

I’m starting to find a bit of a routine with my message preparation.  I do tend to procrastinate writing my message though.  I don’t consider myself a writer and my messages tend to be the equivalent of a six to eight page paper.  So, it is usually at least Friday before I’ve completed the coming Sunday’s message.  If you’d like to listen to one of my messages, click here.  Below is a picture of me from a recent Sunday Celebration service.

 

Hope Messages Available

All of the messages from the Hope Christian Church Celebration services are available for download or as streaming audio.

Click here for audio messages.

 

The Hope Team

Hope Christian Church has a staff of three now.  I’m super-excited about the men that God has called to serve at Hope with me.  Gerald and Nick are both part-time to begin, while I serve full-time.  Gerald is on the Teaching Team, which means that he gives about one-third of the messages and I give about two-thirds of the messages.  Gerald helps in a variety of other areas, but his main focus at this time is the Teaching Team.  Nick is the Music Intern.  Nick also serves in a variety of areas, but is main focus is to prepare for and lead the church in our times of worship through singing.

We are establishing Hope as an intentionally diverse church.  We believe that the Church ought to reflect the diversity of the early church, the diversity of Heaven and the diversity of the community that the church is physically located in.  Because of this belief, we have assembled an intentionally diverse staff.  We believe that diversity must be modeled at the highest levels of leadership in order to have diversity in the church.

I know that there will be opposition to what we are doing and there will be people who don’t understand why diversity is a value for us.  But that’s okay, because I know that God has called Hope Christian Church to be a diverse and authentic community living like Jesus in order to transform people, out city and the world.

 

1st Service At Hope

We had our first Celebration service at on September 6.  We did two “dry run” weeks and then had our first Celebration service on September 20 for the community.  It was good to have had those two practice weeks.  We had a few minor AV bumps, but they were all fixable.

The Celebration service went really well in the month of September.  There is a lot that goes into starting a new church and a lot that needs to happen for the Celebration service to take place.  This, along with moving into a new house made the month of September very full and tiring.  I’m really glad to be past these and moving towards a slightly more routine season of life.

Sharing space with Canal Blvd. Baptist Deaf Church has gone really well so far.  We finish our service by 10:30 am and they begin their service at 10:45.  They use some of our equipment and then we work together to get it all cleaned up and put away at the end of their service.

These pics are from our recent service.