God's Gals

Sharon Combs, Erin DeRose, Erin Szczerba, Lauri Connelly, Susas Estes

Not Pictured: Sherma Oliver




I got the "you're in trouble" email from Gary. I wonder if I'm the only leader who hasn't submitted the picture yet!! Wouldn't surprise me. :-)

We have been having a great time in our group. As you can imagine, as a group of women, we have a hard time fitting in all we'd like to discuss!! We are really growing to love each other and have talked about planning a white water rafting trip this summer. We're also planning on continuing to meet after the 40 days are up.

We have chosen to support a low-income single mom with 2 kids. One of the kids attends South Elementary where Erin DeRose teaches 4th grade. He has epilepsy and struggles emotionally and socially. His mom, Sophie, was blown away when Erin told her we want to help her family. We will be using the $335 to pay for family counseling sessions and Sophie could not be more thrilled. She said this is the most important thing for her family right now.

Plan C...

The Heldt group is at it again. We are going to join in a city effort to clean up trash from one of the creek beds running through town. If you are eager to get out and serve again, feel free to throw on a Plum Creek shirt and join us. Here's the details...

What: “Spring Up the Creek Day”
Where: Festival Park (corner of Second and Perry Streets in Castle Rock)
When: Saturday, May 3rd. 9 – 11:30am (with “celebration” to follow if you want to stick around)
What is provided: instructions, map, gloves, trash bags, dumpsters.

Hopefully we will have a follow-up post this weekend!

Rachel

Weekend at Bernie's

Hey Everyone...

This is the Partridge/Pitsch group. We have had a great time growing together during 40 Days of Community and are planning on staying together, too!

Our service project is this coming Saturday, May 3rd at a man named Bernie's home in the Meadows. Bernie and his wife are senior citizens who are in need of some extra help this spring. We are helping them with their yard work, staining their deck, making some meals and other miscellaneous spring clean-up projects.

We are planning on using our Plum Creek funds to help pay for some of these projects as well as helping to purchase some craft items for a local program that works with children who have lost a parent or sibling in the recent past.

We are from the top (L to R): Angie and Dan Richardson, Matt and Andrea Pitsch, Andrea Seely and Nate Stokes, Charlene and Stevan Tewell, Colleen and Sam Shumate, Amanda and Gary Partridge.

Combining Forces for our Project

Our group is teaming up with a couple of other groups, and renovating the outdoor courtyard of the nursing home in town, the Castle Rock Care Center. We plan to make a beautiful spot for the residents to spend summer days outside, and to build relationship with the Care Center to be involved with them in the future also. (for those of you who read our family blog, this is a repeat :-))






It's inspiring to see what a huge impact it can have to just reach out and do a little something for the people around you. I just heard a speaker who was talking about reaching out and serving even when the need feels overwhelming, say, "You can't do everything. You can't do nothing. You CAN do something. What are you going to do to impact the world?" I hope our Journey Groups can life our lives this way.

Rachael S.

Road Block

Well... the owner of the car wash is not interested in being part of our campaign. He will not let us be there and says he gets enough business without our $300 in three hours promise. So our plans are currently on hold. Please pray for direction for our group. This is our second time being shut down. We will make a positive impact in this community even if the community is resisting it!

Rachel Heldt

Coming soon to a car wash near you!

I guess we don't have a real group name, but Mike likes to call us "the BEST group ever." Anyway, we are heading out to the trenches to serve our community this weekend. We will be at the coin operated car wash on Wilcox this Saturday from 9-12 (or until we run out of quarters) washing cars of those in our community. Mike picked up $330 in quarters from the bank today. That's a conversation piece right there! We are looking forward to posting pictures and stories of our time together!

Rachel Heldt

BTO: formerly known as the Vinson Group

Represented are the Goin's, the Cellar's, the Gerlach's, Ms. Norton, Mr. Myhill, the Gibb's, the Campbell's and the Vinson's.

Respectfully,
BTO
Formerly known as The Vinson Group

The Engquist Group

Hi, everyone. This is the Engquist group. As you can see it looks like some in our group have halos but we know better. The truth is the light of God just shines brightly on all of us.

The Cooley Group

Hi everyone! Just wanted to introduce our group and put up our picture. God has certainly blessed us with an amazing group of people that we can do life with. Although, we are definitely going to have to spend some time coming up with a better name for our group.

Possible Service Idea for Your Group

Hi!

If your group hasn't come up with a service idea yet, we have one to pass along to you. Share Colorado is to a food distribution on April 26th at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, it's a worthy cause and they would love the help. For more information, contact Neal Thompson at nealth3@hotmail.com.

What an impact we have the opportunity to have on our community through all our different acts of service and love! Isn't it amazing to be a part of something so great?! It's tremendous what we can do when we all have the same heart and vision.

Can't wait to hear all the stories!
Rachael S.

He calls us friend...

This last Journey Group meeting we got into a discussion around friendship. We asked each other about the real friendships we have in our lives. We asked ourselves 'what kind of friends are we'? This led to a time of reflecting upon our meaningful friendships with non-believers. Do we have any non-believer friends? What kind of friend are we? A good one? A not-so-good one?

I have continued to think about my friendships with both believers and non-believers. What kind of a friend am I? Am I truly loving them with the friendship that Christ showed/shows us?

I remembered a letter that I wrote to my oldest son on the topic of friendship which I felt like sharing with our group and community.

You can read it by clicking here.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read it- I hope it challenges you as it continues to challenge me.

Michael
On behalf of BTO

Shelton Group...what a great looking group of people!

Here is the 'family photo' of our group, minus the wonderful Thompson kids. We are super blessed to have been brought together to 'do life' with each other!

The Gathering - A Special Weekend

3 years...one email a week. This is our marketing plan. I hesitate even saying that. The idea of Christianity and marketing in the same sentence makes me nauseous. Over time our email list has grown for our "Gatherings". Some people come over on Saturday weekly, some monthly, and some only on special occasions.

I abused our email list last week. Yep, I strained and sent out two. Here's what happened...

My sister and her husband Danny are stationed in Norfolk, VA. Two weeks ago, Danny was serving on his 4th tour in Iraq when he was made aware that his father in WY. suffered a massive heart attack. After fighting to get home, he and my sister were able to make it out and see him before he died.

Friday and Saturday would be the last days Kari and Danny would spend here. After a week of funerals, obligations, grieving, I had this sense that they needed to spend Friday with us and just wind down. I told them to come over, that I'd call a few friends and we'd play some cards.

Subsequently, I turned around and emailed my community. I briefly relayed the situation and told them we would be hanging on Friday in addition to our normal "Gathering" on Saturday.

Friday evening arrives and our community, friends, and neighbors show up in droves. 25+ people on a days notice bring food, drinks, and children....Awesome!

We're about half way through the evening, all sitting around the card table, and my neighbor, Joe, who gathers with us regularly stands up.
He says, "I don't know if this is out of place or not, but on behalf of all of us, Danny, we are so sorry for your loss. We don't know why these things happen, maybe so you can be out of Iraq and here with us, we just don't know." He proceeded to raise his glass, and simply said, "A toast to your Dad's life."

We briefly offered our condolences, and Danny, a very non emotional guy, glances at me. I soberly whispered, "Welcome home, Danny." What I meant by that, and I think it echoed the look on his face, "Welcome to our community."

We went well into the early morning hours. A neighbor I haven't seen since December, gave me a hug and said, "Man, you don't know how bad I needed this." (Now a new member of our email list)

The funny thing is, we only had about 6 at our "Official Saturday Gathering". I think the title of the lesson was "Because We Need Each Other." Apparently, most of us already learned that lesson the night before....

-Jeff

Just a heads up!

The Vinson group (which has just been renamed) wants to thank the other groups who have jumped out there with group photos- very nice.

Get ready as we are close to capturing the true essence and beauty of 'BTO' formerly know as the Vinson Group. I think you will all be quite impressed. Probably not as impressed as the Heldt's photo or the 'Gathering'!

From this point forward, we'd prefer to be known as BTO (Better Together Overdrive) formerly known as the Vinson group, which was formerly known as the artist Prince.


Lots of love,

BTO

"The Gathering" 1000 Days of Community

Picture: A bunch of our children posing during our neighborhood "Gathering"

As some of you know, The Gathering is not experimenting with the idea of being in close community. We're in our third year of living in close connection with friends and neighbors. Mimi and I were so frustrated a few years ago. Because we were deeply involved with our local church, we noticed a polarizing effect. We were not close to our neighbors. Although pleasant niceties would be exchanged, you always felt like you had the plague. This is what Pastor Doug talks about when he has to divulge to the other strangers in his golfing foursome that he is "a Pastor". People panic. Neighbors become more defensive and less apt to open up. If we're honest we don't let our guard down either, do we?

So a handful of us who were of the same mind just decide to have church at our house. We had no intentions of building a church, but being the church. Our Saturday evenings are filled with great music, food, drink, scripture, sacred communion, tears, and laughter. More often then not, our evenings turn into early mornings. There are evenings where the holiest thing we can do is open up lawn chairs and start a fire pit in the middle of our Cul-de-Sac. The Jesus dialogue spills. We become closer as people who follow, and people who don't. We live so connected to one another that we simply cannot hide our flaws - we either help each other deal with them or love one another in spite of them.

The other night, I was seeing our last friend out of the house. As I closed the door and turned around, I paused. With a slight shake of the head, almost in disbelief, I whispered to God "There's nothing else I'd rather be doing with my time..."

- Jeff and Mimi

Vinson Group Coming Online

Cool blog! Hope to be posting a picture soon...

Here are some ideas that we've discussed for our group and possibly linked up with other J-Groups:

• Ministering at the Castle Rock Nursing Home
• Women's shelter
• Creating a venue for high-school musicians to perform as their are few opportunities/venues (to engage them and their families)

We had a group BIG IDEA, of taking over the lease on the Harley Davidson building to open a youth oriented center to minister to the kids in our community: for the church and un-churched. Now that's a God-sized idea! (which might require 2 weeks of the church's giving)

Blessings,
Michael Vinson
www.worldorphans.org
www.fallen-scales.com

The Heldt's Group is in the Hizzy!

Have you seen a finer group of people in your life? Okay, be nice and take that as a rhetorical question.
We have been blessed with an amazing group of people from different vocations, different points of life, and with different stories. We can't wait to continue to get to know everyone better as we look to get out and serve the community. (not pictured: Erik and Brooke Dienberg)

Welcome To Plum Creek Community Church's Better Together Online Forum

Hey guys thanks for joining the online communication discussing all that is happening in our Journey Groups.  

We would love to see posts sharing what your group is thinking about doing for your community service project.

We would also love to see the pictures you are taking of your groups.

Here is the first picture that we have received it is Tim and Mike's group.  Thanks for being the first to send it in.