I have been enjoying my first trip to the Northeast. God has given me opportunities to visit many of the volunteers that have come to Louisiana over the years as well as speak to some of the churches that sent them. This trip has brought me to Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and I will be returning to New Orleans Monday September 26th.

My thanks to all of you who have been/are praying for us.  Though it’s been nearly a month since Michael met with several people in Oregon, he’s only been home for about two weeks.  He really enjoyed getting to spend time with as many friends as he could schedule time with while in Portland and getting a chance to share the vision God has given us for the ongoing work here in New Orleans.

Your prayers have meant a lot to us.  Many of you know that Michael has been given a challenge to raise our level of support.  Some may know that he was given deadlines to meet and may be wondering how that has been going.

Well, we were able to report that the first deadline was met –and exceeded a bit!  It was exciting and encouraging for us to be able to report that to the men who had been giving Michael guidance in this area.  Since then, Michael has been working and making time to make phone calls and set up similar appointments with people here in Louisiana in order to meet our next goal for July 1st, which is to be at 60% supported. We are currently at 54%, which means we need about $350 in monthly pledges to reach that next goal.

Your prayers help in part because this is a new area for us.  When we moved down here, all we knew was that God wanted us here working to show His love to the people of Slidell and New Orleans.  We didn’t have training in how to go about being missionaries on support.  Thankfully, through TouchGlobal Crisis Response, we have been blessed by Michael’s opportunity to get some training in that area.

Another way that your prayers help is because we are all in a spiritual battle.  Yours may look different on the outside than ours, but we are both fighting.  We will keep taking the steps to continue the work down here as God provides the direction and the means.

So, fellow warriors, again I thank you for your prayers.  We have seen some of the results of it during Michael’s trip.  We have seen other results since he has been home.  The greatest of these has been the encouragement and preparation for the battle.  And we have been praying for you as well.

Greetings from Portland, OR. I am here for a short time to visit with people and share our vision for New Orleans and to work on raising our support. I am then going to help move my parents from Salem, OR to Denver, CO.

We just sent out our newsletter as well. If you haven’t gotten one and would like to read it you can click here to see a copy.

We have sent out our year end newsletter, some by email and some by regular mail. If you are not on our mailing list you can read it here: http://web.me.com/mjsweetland/CrisisResponse/SweetlandUpdateDec10.pdf

We also included a letter from Faith Bible Church that you can read here: http://web.me.com/mjsweetland/CrisisResponse/FaithBibleChurchLetter.pdf

If you get our newsletter by regular mail and would prefer email, let us know and we can change that.

We recently passed the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. A great deal has happened in the past five years, but a lot remains to be done. The people of New Orleans are resilient and determined to completely restore their city, but this much time wears on the greatest of patience. Please continue to pray for them, and for us and Crisis Response to have the resources needed to continue helping them .

It has taken me a while to write this.  I have been mentally composing this for a while.  My first thoughts kept getting interrupted by my mind being boggled by the whole event.  What you all accomplished still stuns me.  What an amazing surprise and outpouring of love.

I am still overwhelmed thinking about my birthday–not because of my age, but because of what Michael was able to make happen with the help of so many people! I wasn’t looking forward to my 40th birthday because I couldn’t imagine a way that I could spend it with my siblings, parents, or distant friends. Because of Michael making everyone aware of my dearest wishes and asking for help, amazing things happened.

I was thrilled, amazed, and touched by the response and outpouring of love and support of so many. I still am. I treasure the time I was able to spend with family and friends. I am so glad that Michael was able to share the fun with anyone who wished by making video feed of the party available on line (even though it didn’t work as well as planned). If you missed it, the recording from it can be found athttp://www.ustream.tv/channel/big4-0 Even friends I haven’t met yet were able to be a part of it all that way.

Thanks to all of you. Thank you for those who played any part in making Michael’s dream happen. Thank you to the hosts and party planners. Thank you to those who helped Michael deal with going a little crazy with the stress of planning. Thank you to all who donated, prayed, encouraged, kept the secrets, took on extra responsibilities, or travelled to be a part of the most unbelievable birthday I have ever had. Thank you to those who helped provide the yummy party food and drinks. Thank you for the generous and thoughtful gifts. Thank you for the amazing notes, cards, and letters. I feel like there is not enough Thank you to say, that I cannot fully express my thoughts and feelings with words. I have been truly blessed by your friendships.

Because of your help, Michael was able to take me and the kids to dinner at a nice restaurant  (I found out later that it was part of his camouflage for his real plan).  I was able to get my hair done before my birthday.  Michael was able to surprise me by arranging for 6 people to travel to Slidell to spend my birthday with me and help them with the expenses as much as they allowed.  He  also got me a ticket to fly to Michigan on my own to spend time with those family members who were not able to make the trip at the time.  And besides that, he was able with your help, to throw me the biggest surprise party I’ve ever had!  Thank you all, so much.

I have also been blessed by God’s gift of marriage to this man who would do all that he did and endure all the stress he took on himself to pull together such an amazing surprise to make me feel so loved and blessed on my birthday.

As I sat today at Bible Study Fellowship this morning, I again was struck by the special gift God has given Michael as he does the relief work we have been called to do. As we were being taught on the significance of the stories in John chapter 5, the illustration of what it meant to come to Christ was vivid to me because I have seen Michael look at a house in desperate need of gutting.

When we come to Christ, we are to come as we are. Nothing we can do will help. The project is much bigger than we are. We come to Christ with all of the muck and rottenness of a life lived for self and He comes and loves us and cleans us by His effort and pain. We can do nothing, but when He looks at us, He sees us as we can be, what we will be when His work is complete in us.

Michael has been given a blessed gift to be able to do the same thing with the homes of those we are here to help. Yes, he acknowledges that there is work to be done, that the project is bigger than the home owner can do himself, but he also sees the house as it can be. When he comes to the house he sees the hope and often, the homeowner has the chance to see a glimpse of that hope after spending time with Michael and seeing their house through his eyes. What a blessed gift for someone doing this work!

There is a vision Michael has as he looks at the work that still needs to be done in this region. A vision of healing that needs to be done in and through the church in this region. A glimpse of the hope of what God can do and is doing through and in those He brings to continue the physical restoration of this area.

We often question why we still see a need to stay and work here, though we do not have the income needed to continue doing this work. But then we are reminded once again that God has not completed the work He is doing on the Gulf Coast. Is He calling you to be a part? Does He want you to come and catch the vision of what God can do in a heart given over to Him?

I wanted to take a moment and pass on some news about Charles and Judy Dillon. Most of you know them, but for those of you who may not, Charles and Judy run the Carpenter’s House ministry in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. We have been working together with them for a couple of years now. Carpenter’s House is a multi faceted community outreach center, providing food, clothing, household goods and many other needs too numerous to list here. Charles also runs the volunteer teams that work in New Orleans on rebuilding homes.

A few weeks ago Charles was diagnosed with a very rare and untreatable form of Leukemia. He had been suffering from various ailments recently such as back pain, skin disorders, tiredness and other pains. It turns out all of these are symptoms of this disease. There is some experimental treatment he is looking into.

On Monday Judy was told by her doctor that she has bone cancer, and yesterday they confirmed that she also has lung cancer. I do not know how far it has progressed, but because of a trip they had planned her doctor told her to go and enjoy herself. He said it wouldn’t make much difference if they started treatment now or later.

Needless to say they deeply need your prayers. You would be hard pressed to find two people more dedicated to helping the needy in the name of the Lord than Charles and Judy.

The trip they had planned was a 61 day adventure starting Sept. 7th to raise awareness of hunger in America. You can read more about it by clicking here, but to summarize, Charles will be starting at the mouth of the Mississippi in Lake Itasca, MN, and canoeing down the great river to New Orleans. He will be stopping each night to hold meetings about the need to feed the hungry. The medical news that they have received has not dissuaded Charles from attempting this, and after talking with her doctor, Judy has decided to drive along as planned, meeting him at each stop with her parents motorhome. Pray for strength and protection for both of them. Charles’ canoeing progress can be monitored on the Facebook page “Mercy Flows.”

Let me point out first that I am back from Oregon, just in case you were wondering. The drive back was fun but tiring. It was a great blessing to receive my parents’ Safari Van as a gift. It took a lot of needs of off our list (much of our needs list was populated by repairs to our existing Astro Van). We were also blessed by our friends at Montavilla Baptist who filled up the van with all kinds of food items and other needed stuff, even treats for Joel’s dog.

I wanted to share with you some of the ways that we are trying to keep the ministry at Faith’s Hope and its friends connected. We have not been current on our newsletters (both the ministry’s and mine and Terri’s personal one), so we are working on getting back into a regular pattern with that. But we have also started some other methods that will help you to stay connected to what is going on here on a regular basis.

First, there is Facebook. If you are on Facebook you can become a “Fan” of our Faith’s Hope Page. On this page you can get info about us and more importantly get regular updates on the goings on down here in Louisiana. For those that have been involved with the work here there is also a Facebook Group for Faith’s Hope. Terri and I (Michael) are also both on Facebook, so you can send us a friend request if you like.

Next, we are now on Twitter. If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, well, so am I. Simply put it is like a mini blog. It is a way for me to give little (140 characters) updates on what is going on. Some of these Twitter updates will go through to the Faith’s Hope Facebook page, but not all of them. So if you are on Twitter, begin following us today.

We have also started a YouTube channel for Faith’s Hope. We have one of our promotional videos posted there now, and we will add more videos periodically. Some might be more production ones like the one there now, but others will be more candid videos that we think you would enjoy seeing. You can subscribe to our channel and YouTube will notify you whenever we load something new.

And lastly, one that you are obviously familiar with, this blog. The focus of this blog will be shifting slightly from what it has been in the past. We have usually written about our personal aspect of the ministry and our lives here. We are going to focus this blog more on Faith’s Hope as a whole. We will be starting another one shortly that will give us a place to focus on our family and things. The address of that blog will be sweetlandfamily.wordpress.com but it is not yet in operation. I will make an announcement on this blog when it is up and there will also be a link in the side bar.

I hope you will utilize these methods to stay connected with us as we try to stay connected to you. You are all our partners in ministry and the more connected we are the greater God can work through us.

Michael and Joel are in Oregon for a short time.  They left Louisiana 10 days ago and have been busily helping Michael’s folks with a garage sale and move.  They head to Portland today and will be attending Montavilla Baptist on Sunday.  Our former Sunday School class is hosting a potluck lunch after the services.

On Monday, Michael and Joel start a long drive back, hopefully arriving on Friday.  At which time, Michael can ‘relax’ by preparing for the first week with teams we’ve had in a while.  Please be praying as they travel.

While they were gone, the other kids and I have been staying active–caring for Joel’s dog, dealing with Nancy’s dance recital, and helping (in Michael’s place) with the team on loan from Trinity in Covington which was doing advance work and hosting a block party for Faith Bible church in a neighborhood close by where we have done some work on homes.  They were a great group and  Nancy and Aiden have many new friends!