| 10-4-11 |
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| Written by Philip Pinto |
| Friday, 28 October 2011 07:39 |
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Dear praying friends,
The Pilgrimage board has been planning since March to meet together on the Pilgrimage-Cedar Springs campus in October. In April, we expanded the board to its capacity (as allowed by our constitution), and not all the board members have even met one another. Our interaction has been limited to e-mail conversations, as that is how we have been conducting our meetings since some of our board members live several hundred miles away. Another characteristic of our board members is that they are far from wealthy and don’t have much expendable income; a trip of this magnitude is a huge burden for them. I had hoped Pilgrimage would be able to reimburse at least some of the expense of getting here, but Pilgrimage donations have been down the past few months. At this point I’m looking everywhere I can think to cut expenses. We are hoping to use technology to at least have a “live” meeting through the phone/ internet. Please pray that the members who live a distance would be able to participate with those who live in the area, and that the meeting would help keep Pilgrimage moving in the direction God has for us.
We have seen God at work in the last few weeks in a couple of ways. One of the biggest things has been through a young man who came to our first daycamp (in 2001) as a little boy and has been active ever since. He completed training in Newport, AR, as a diesel mechanic in the spring, and has not been able to get a job locally in that field. He works now at a sawmill shoveling sawdust and stacking lumber and railroad ties. He realizes that he will probably have to move to a different area in order to find a job in his field, but he has some challenges to overcome. I invited him to move into the cabin at Pilgrimage-Cedar Springs so that he could get a taste of life on his own by at least having a place to stay away from his parents. He moved out last week (9/27), and has been basically just spending the nights in the cabin for now. We are praying that this will be a good transition for him to life completely independent of his parents. When we started the cabin in 1998, it was where I was going to live. I saw it at that time as a place where other young men like me could live for the first time on their own. While it has been used for interns over the years, this is the first time it is being used to this extent. Interns are basically living with us, they just have their own cabin in which to stay. Bobby right now doesn’t see us much at all. Please pray for Bobby as he is seeking the Lord on what He has planned for him. Pray that his time here would help him become independent. The timing on this is also good as we have been heavily involved working to rebuild the church that has called me as pastor. In fact, we have rented a house in Cherokee Village because living 35 miles from the church makes it nearly impossible to connect with the community and limits the ministry. God provided a house that will end up costing just about what the church is paying us (after rent, utilities, etc.) that is large enough for our family and with plenty of room to have people over for meals, games, Bible studies, and such. Not only that, on the first day here we discovered that the yard of this house is used as a shortcut by neighborhood kids from one place to another, so we have already been able to begin connecting. Clearly, God is at work in providing this house! I hope to soon get some of the neighborhood teens involved in what is going on at Pilgrimage-Cedar Springs on Friday nights. We are still praying for another church (especially from the Pocahontas area) to take an interest in what God is doing with the teens from that area at and through Pilgrimage-Cedar Springs on Friday nights. As I begin to focus on the youth God seems to bringing in the Cherokee Village area, I am faced with a huge challenge of maintaining the work, which is still going well, with youth in Pocahontas, Ravenden Springs, Imboden, and between. Some of these youth are in church, but not all of them and they desperately need a church to welcome them and nurture them. Thanks for your continued support through prayer! -Philip & Melissa Pinto |
