Sleepless in a Good Way

My wife was recently helping out as a translator for the introduction meeting of our newest mentor, Ross.  She met with Ross and Elizabeth, the mother of the boy with whom we intended to match Ross.  During the get-to-know-you session, Elizabeth shared a touching story with Julie and Ross about her son Asahel and the "little old man" who lives in their neighborhood.

Not too long ago, the older man invited Asahel to come fishing with him.  Elizabeth said her son was so eager to have a man in his life that he literally couldn't sleep the entire night before the fishing trip.  This was extra special for Asahel, because his mother works 2-3 jobs to pay the bills and rarely has time for special activities.  The next day when he came back from the fishing trip however, Asahel seemed frustrated.  His mother asked him what was wrong, and he said, "I was so tired I ended up sleeping almost the whole time." 

You can imagine Asahel is pretty thrilled about having a mentor who won't just take him fishing once, but intends to do something meaningful with him every week!  Ross is now one month into things and reports God has blessed them with a good start.  Asahel loves to talk, so there hasn't been much ice to break!  And so far it sounds like no one has nodded off...  

Ross, Asahel, and Elizabeth.

Five Years Ago on Father's Day Weekend

I wanted to share with you the sermon that launched our church on the Life Coaches (now Father's Light Mentors) ministry path five years ago.  It ranks as one of the top 10 sermons I've ever heard.  I was a kindergarten Sunday School teacher and small group leader at the time.  Sitting in the pews, I knew I had no time to get involved, but I could barely keep myself from bee-lining it to the ministry table after David Michael's rousing call to serve.

Some 15 months later, God made a way for me to join Mike (the Life Coaches leader at that time) and two other faithful men in the church to relaunch the ministry.  Almost four years later, we've seen God raise up over 20 men and women to dedicate one year of their life (and beyond) to mentoring father-absent children.  And by God's grace 16 are actively mentoring in our church's ministry today!

The sermon is about 50 minutes long and worth hearing in entirety.  The call to serve as a Life Coach/Father's Light mentor comes just before the 41:00 mark if you like to cut to the chase :)

http://www.hopeingod.org/sermon/more-abundantly-all-we-ask-or-think

Hoping with you that we can "blow the dust off this sermon" in 16 years and "marvel,"

Tony

From Life Coaches to Father's Light

We just finished the process of choosing a new ministry name!  It was a little bit bigger of an undertaking than expected.  A name communicates a lot of information... some good, some not so helpful.  It takes a while to sift through a variety of good options.  After quite a bit of discussion we chose the name Father's Light Mentors for a variety of reasons.  

 

 1.  Our ministry addresses father absence head-on, and our ultimate desire is that God would use each mentor to lead children to Himself as their true Heavenly Father.  

2.  If you do a concordance search on "light," you'll see it is a familiar image associated with God's presence, favor, protection, revelation of truth, wisdom, goodness, life and His glory.  And it's not only God who gets associated with these things, but we become His "children of the light" and "light of the world" in Christ. It's hard to find a better constellation of traits that we want to embody as mentors to the kids we serve!

3.  Our name upholds the fact that it is the Father who is the source of anything good in our lives and our mentoring.  The light doesn't come from us. 

4.  Last, we wanted to be sure people knew we're a mentoring ministry.  So what better way to do that than put Mentors in the name :)  And of course, we liked the way Father's Light Mentors sounds -- even if it's a bit of a tongue-twister!

In some ways it feels like starting a new chapter as we announce the new name, and move on to work on a new logo and hopefully our own web page.  But, of course, these are just the window dressings of the ministry.  The flesh and blood, real life-changing work of mentoring the father-absent goes on just the same as it has for almost five years now.  We'd love to have you pray for the small changes we're working on, but we especially would love prayer for the 16 of us who are mentoring and our kids.  Also, please remember the 40+ kids we are hoping to serve at Bethlehem and Hope Academy.  God bless!

Note:  If you're wondering why we had to find a new ministry name, check out the post below.