A month of encouragment!

This month began with Joy of Torah celebration with Adat Yeshua congregation. You can see from the pictures that the celebration includes the parade with the Torah around the room (Tom is carrying the Torah), wearing prayer shaws (Paul holding Noah), and reading from the Torah (Eric made the bold step to go up and read a blessing in Hebrew). It was a beautiful time to reflect on what a joy and privilege it is to have the Word of God. Psalm 1:2 says, "But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night."




Adat Yeshua also hosted a special speaker this month, Avi Lipkin. He is from Israel and is establishing a new Bible-Bloc party of conservative Jews and Christians in the Knesset. The politicians and leaders in Israel are very liberal, socialist, and anti-God as Avi explained. So there are many citizens not represented in the Knesset. He expects to get 15% of the vote in the next election, which gives them 15% of the members in the Knesset. So it's not difficult to become a part of their system. He spoke for 3 nights on global issues, especially regarding the threat of Isalmic terrorists. It was not only extremely informational but also a wake up call.



Our communtiy also had two corporate meetings this month, aside from our regular evening meetings twice a week. The first one was at the beginning of the month, and Paul gave a message on the prophetic words that are being spoken about our nation through various sources. It was encouraging to hear how many prophets believe we are on the verge of another big revival.



The second meeting was at the end of the month, where the community took time to honor Paul for pastor appreciation month. It was very encouraging; however, we are the ones who feel blessed to have such a wonderful community who is hungry for the Lord and desires to see His kingdom not only established in their lives but also in their city. Paul also shared about the two conferences he attended this month. He went to a transformation summit here in Kansas City, hearing testimonies and strategies from Chief Vuniani from Figi, as well as the pastors in Omaha, Nebraska who are beginning to see major changes in their city. God is putting hope in our hearts that this is beginning to happen across the U.S. The second conference was in Wichita, KS - site of a major abortion clinic. The theme of the conference was spiritual warfare and redeeming the land. They performed repentance acts with Jay Swallow, a Cheyenne who is active in helping restore relations between whites and natives. Dutch Sheets and Chuck Pierce also did prophetic acts to align our state with God's heartbeat by setting His plumbline of righteousness into our land.

The Merriam House of Prayer has also been powerful this month as the Lord has given us specific Scriptures, people and places to pray for during our time. We believe it's now time to start inviting the other pastors and people from the city to join with us. Paul is going to be connecting with the pastors and the mayor in this upcoming month. Please pray for favor for him. Also the Merriam House of Prayer website is now launched - you can check it out at http://www.merriamhop.org/.

(Update: Paul met with Dr. Yang from the Korean Presbyterian church on Wednesday, and he wants to show the Guatemala transformation video to his congregation. That is amazing since we just met him! He also wants to join with us in praying, focusing on city-wide repentance, as a part of the "Merriam Pastors Fellowship" as he called it. We also invited him to speak at our church as a gesture of trust and goodwill, and he was very honored and excited to speak to our young people.)

On a personal note:

We had a wonderful time with Harrison this month. He even called his mom on his own and asked if he could spend another night with us. When she said yes, we all went out for ice cream to celebrate. Lauren went to Florida this month for a week to visit her family. She had a wonderful time. You can view some of the pictures from Florida on Noah's blog. http://noahcalebblake.blogspot.com/. Noah is doing great ... we gave him some oatmeal for the first time. He seemed to like it, since he ate it and didn't make a funny face or spit it out.