Archives March 2012

Saturday was  a great day of fun, fellowship, and missions awareness. It was my family’s first opportunity to participate in Relationships For Christ’s annual March For Missions. It is a 10K run/walk to raise funds and awareness for different mission projects around the world. This year was to raise funds for Project Samuel, a project in Zambia, Africa for vulnerable children. Our friends, the Vowell family, head up this ministry.

I had signed up to form and lead a team of runners/walkers for this event. I was blessed to win an award for having the largest team.

The largest part of my team consisted of my friends from Team 2:10 (Do good works Eph. 2:10) who are a part of Masterpiece Fitness our partner in the Orphan Hope Marathon. John Hurtado, one of the Team 2:10 members was the first to finish the race and he won a trophy.

This group inspires and encourages me with their big hearts for orphans and missions. I hope to work with them on many projects to come.

My dear friend, Mike Ford, was also on my team and won 3rd place. What an inspiration he is. When I met him just a few years ago he weighed in excess of 400 pounds and now he is a fitness trainer and competition runner.

We had a wonderful time. Lisa, Beverly, Brooke, and I set out together but Brooke quickly joined the runners, Lisa took off with a fast walking friend, and sweet Beverly stayed back to hold my arm and plod along with slow dad. We had a wonderful time to talk and enjoy the beautiful Woodlands day. Because of my battle with Lupus and the pain and inflammation that always is ravaging my body, I didn’t think I would be able to walk even 1/2 of the specified distance but Beverly and I just kept walking and walking and our conversation helped me to ignore the pain and the next thing you know we were at the finish line! It was fun and Relationships For Christ raised $8,000.00 for Project Samuel. Praise God.

One of the great joys of following Jesus these past 30 years has been investing in younger men and women and seeing them become leaders in the kingdom of God. Again and again over the years God has put young people in my life, sometimes for a very short period of time, and has allowed me to pour into them from the overflow of my relationship with Him. Since my junior year in high school I have had a passion to build young leaders. It probably arose from the fact that the young evangelist who led me to Christ was only 22 years old and he had such a profound impact on my life that I wanted to pass that on. Later as I read the Bible and church history I realized that this is a repeating pattern in God’s strategy for building His kingdom.

Lisa and I have had the great joy of having dozens of young people live with us and hundreds sit at our dinner table over the years as we encouraged them in the Lord. We have been so blessed to see many of them go on to be pastors, youth pastors, missionaries, and church planters serving all over the U.S. and on 3 continents. We regularly have the joy of hearing from many of them and this week was no different.

What a joy to spend time on the phone this week with Chris, our young friend in Colombia, and hear what God is doing for and through him. What a blessing to spend a couple of hours on the phone this week with Brian, a young church planter in San Angelo, Texas, that we have had the privilege of mentoring for several years now and hear all that God is doing in their family and young congregation to reach the nations.

This morning I was blessed to receive this message from another young man who worked for me and my sons one summer when he was home from Bible college and he and his new wife at the time spent time at our dinner table.

“Hey Matt not sure if you remember me, but i would like to say thank you your influence and kindness to me and my wife. I think back to working with you and your sons often. God has worked in our family alot since that time we now have 3 kids with one on the way. And God has called us to be apart of a church plant in the Southern Houston area “Advance Church” http://www.advancehouston.com/ We are reaching out to change the World and doing so by starting a multi-lingual Church and sending the reached back to there home country to spread the Good News of Jesus. Did not think God would ever call me back to Houston and now he has and I am trusting God to do something, Amazing! I would love it if you and your family prayed for us during this time. Thank you so much.”

Randy Rutledge
Advance Church – Advancing Christ to a Changing World – Coming to Houston in 2012
www.advancehouston.com

Thank you Lord for allowing us to be a little part of what you are doing in the world. I can’t wait for heaven when all the stories that we don’t even know about now will be told.

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This week I thought it would be cool to give a lay out of what my week usually looks like. So I will go day by day and tell you what my schedule looks like week to week.
Sunday, I ride the bus to pick up my kid from Nickerson to take them to church. I am responsible for the kids until they get back on the bus to go home, so if there is a problem at kids church I am called in to get my kids. I also make sure everyone gets back on the bus after church is over. We don’t ride back on the bus with the kids but we are trying to change that right now because the kids fight a lot on the way home. Sunday afternoon I have a life group at the church I go hiking with. We have so much fun and I get some great picture as well.
Monday, Every other week I count the offering at the church with my about a block team. Monday is our day off so when it is not our week to count the offering we have the whole day off. I spend most of the day checking up on sleep and reading.  Monday night I go to a Bible Study with a friend. I really enjoy having time to get away and just focus on worshiping my Savoir.
Tuesday, I work in the office with the church treasurer Dan Scot. I mostly work on filing paper work and just odd jobs he gives me to do. At three we have a after school program for the kids in the youth discipleship program and the kid that go to the dream center academy. We have a dream class, guitar class, arts class and a volleyball class. I work with the volleyball class right now but I jump for class to class. The churches youth group meets on Tuesday night in one of the chapels here at the Dream Center. I usually go to the youth group because I love the worship and because my girls come sometimes.
Wednesday, I work in the Adopt a Block office in the morning mostly printing out the files we will need for the next week and printing out the bible study we do for the kids on Saturday. In the afternoon we have our Movement track to help us, so we do different things like deliver furniture to a needy family,  we will pick up trash from around the neighborhood, or we will canvas for different events the Dream Center is having. We have the after school program again as well. Wednesday night I go to a inter prayer group. I love have a full hour to just pray and knowing I will not be interrupted. I think this is my favorite time of the week.
Thursday, I spend all day in the office working on finishing putting the packets for our different Adopt a Block sites together. I also check the messages on our answering machine and I return the calls that I can for Jonathan. At four I jump on the bus again to go and get my kids for our Thursday night church service. Because of the traffic the bus leaves the Dream Center at four and we don’t get to the church until right before seven.  It is hard to keep the kids calm when they are in the bus that long.
Friday, in the morning we go over to Gik our ministry that works with all the donations that are given to the Dream Center and we bag up all the hygiene items for Adopt a Block on Saturday. Then we put all the bag in our shed, so that on Saturday morning I can give all the site leaders their bag of hygiene items to give out. Friday afternoon we go with our track to visit a retirement home. It is so much fun coloring and playing games with the residents. We spend about an hour at the retirement home and then we come back to the Dream Center for our after school program. Friday night we go out to Skid Row with snacks to give out. Our goal is to use the snacks as a way to start a conversation with people. We have anywhere from fifteen to a hundred people go out with us every week.
Saturday, Is our big Adopt a Block day. I start with getting the food ready to go out and then we have an hour of prayer before our rally starts. The rally is for tell every one what AAB is and what we do. After the rally we all go and get all of our food and bags of hygiene items. We then jump on the bus and go to our sites.  We give out all of the food and hygiene items to all the families that line up every week and then we walk around asking if anyone would like prayer or if we can serve in any way. After Adopt a Block I have the rest of the day to relax and read.
So that is my whole week 🙂

June 16-23, 2012 is our next mission trip to Bogota, Colombia. If you feel even the slightest tug in your spirit to come on this trip, act on it! 🙂 You will never be the same.

http://www.orphanhopeintl.org/summer-2012-mission-trip/

Giving the gift of presence to the lonely and forgotten…

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I can’t believe that it has almost been six months since I can to the Dream Center. It feels like yesterday that I was saying good bye to my dad and getting on a airplane. I have learned so much and I know God has so much more to teach me in my next six months. I know Jesus has a great plan for my life and I can’t wait to use all I have learned in the next place He sends me. Last Friday night after we went out to Skid Row I was able to go out on our prostitute outreach. As we were talking with some street racers about the Lord, a man came up and asked us for some cash. He explained how him and his wife had just come over the boarder and were on there way to San Francisco but they had ran out of gas. On the way to the gas station the man told me that they had not eaten anything for three days. We were able to give them twenty dollars worth of gas and some tacos. I know that man will never forget us.
 Last Monday we want on a one night camping retreat for all the site leaders for our Adopt A Block sites in Joshua Tree park. We had a great time doing some team building exercises, hiking and just sitting around the camp fire sharing stores and eating some good food. Joshua Tree is so beautiful! The mountains look like some one piled up a lot of boulders on top of each other. This Friday we were able to go with our track to our retirement home. I love every time we are able to go and just spend some time with the residents there. There are some ladies that are starting to  remember me, I love to see them start smiling when they see me coming. God is so good to me. I can’t wait to see what He is going to do this week.