Grace Notes

Bright Lights Internship

Reinforcements

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We have been blessed to have four young ladies from out of state join our team here for 10 weeks as “Bright Lights Interns.” It’s been fun to get to know each of them, and I’ve already been blessed by their friendship.

Sarah and Rachel doing some “internship orientation” with Kelsey, Emily, Bailey, and Kristen. 🙂

Bailey and Emily

Some of the projects they’ve been working on in the afternoons this week have included writing and recording testimonies for the Bright Lights Set 7 CD, planning the lesson and activity for the next Bright Lights meeting, working on sending a mailing out regarding upcoming conferences, shrink-wrapping and labeling, proofreading new resources, packing orders, and other misc. things.

The mornings are spent in personal study time, training videos, reading assignments, memorizing Colossians, and other things like that.

Emily and Kristen packing orders

Saturday we took off to head to the mall to do some witnessing. It was an exciting afternoon and we were very encouraged by some of the “Divine Encounters” the Lord arranged.

Bright Lights Office/Miscellaneous

Bright Lights Group Locator Tool

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Often people contact us to ask if there is a Bright Lights group in their area, so we set up a google map on our website of the Bright Lights groups that have started around the nation and internationally. Click HERE to use this tool on our webpage and see if there is a group near you!

If you feel led, please join us in praying for these Bright Lights groups! It is our desire that they may be “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you [they] shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life… (Phil 2:15-16)

Bright Lights Local Group

Two Wrong Options

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At our last Bright Lights meeting, Sarah shared some important thoughts for the new year. One thing she mentioned is that when we see sins or weaknesses in our life, we often have the tendency to either 1) think it’s impossible for us to change and not even try or 2) to try in our own strength.

Those are both incorrect responses. The correct responce is, first of all, to pray and ask God to change us. What is impossible for us, is very possible for Him!

Sarah asked the girls if there were areas in their lives they needed to change, or areas in which they desire to grow. She then emphasized that we need to be fervently *asking* God to change us! It was so sweet to see the girls spontaneously begin raising their hands sharing areas of their life they wanted to ask God to change.
“I want to be nice to my brothers and sisters,”
“I want to seek Him more with all my heart,”
And many other things.


We then took about 20 minutes and played soft music while the girls spread out all over the chruch to have some time alone with the Lord to talk about these things. It was a special time.


We don’t have the power to walk in a way that is worthy of the calling that we have received—but God is able to give us the strength. Are we asking for Him to do it?! Let’s earnestly plead with God to change us in those areas we know we need to grow!

As a side note, Stephen’s boy’s group (the Light Shop) celebrated their 9th anniversary with ice cream sundaes at their meeting on Monday night. Special milemark. 🙂 We are excited that the Light Shop material will be available in print soon.

Miscellaneous/Thoughts

Full Quiver! (Psalm 127)

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After lunch today, we watched this great documentary of the Bates Family–a homeschool family with 18 kids from Tennessee. We appreciated the good job ABC did with the documentary and praise the Lord for the beautiful testimony this family has!

Click HERE to view the 8 minute clip. I think you’ll enjoy it! 🙂

“Rebekah and I regret that we did not have a more Biblical view of family when we were younger. Many years ago the Lord used Psalm 127 and some hard lessons to drastically change our perspective about children and families. He corrected our misconceptions and errors and gave us a love for children. We went from wanting no children to wanting many. We do not deserve any but God gave us three, and we are so grateful for them.

Families are important to God and this concept has become a major ministry message for us. Over the years it has been one of our objectives to communicate to other parents how much God loves children and how much he desires for parents to raise up a “godly seed” for His kingdom. We are thrilled now every time we hear of a large family being brought up to serve the Lord.”
-Harold Mally

“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” (Psalm 127:3-5)

Miscellaneous

The Offense of the Cross

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In 1983, my dad was studying 1 Corinthians 1 and came across a verse which changed his life. It so dramatically transformed his thinking that his entire method of doing ministry changed from that point on.

We consider this message to be foundational in our family, in the Bright Lights ministry, in evangelism, and in discipleship.

Last Sunday my dad gave this message at church, so I thought I’d post it up on here as well!

Noah's Archive Bookstore

Noah’s Archive Sign Installation

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Some projects are just extra hard to complete, and this sign was one of them! There seemed to be a new obstacle to work through at every step. But we saw many answers to prayer. Below are some pictures of the sign creating process.

Preparing to sandblast. Mike and our other friends from Wood Graphics down the street were GREAT to work with, and we’ve gotten very well acquainted because of all we’ve had to work through together. Lots of decisions; lots of discussion. They were very patient with us. 🙂

This man has been painting signs for over 50 years and he did a great job.

The engineering details of mounting the sign with the new wooden sign post cover

Installation!

Putting on the last end cap!

“Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.” (Psalm 147:1)

Announcements/Family News

On the Road

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I can’t believe how our 2011 schedule is filling up! Below is a list of the home school conferences we will be speaking at this year as well as the the Bright Lights conferences that have been scheduled so far. We’d appreciate prayer! 🙂 Hopefully we’ll be able to see many of you along the way!

February

7, Cedar Rapids, IA
Bright Lights Spring Internship Begins

March

3-5 Memphis, TN (Midsouth Homeschool Convention)

17-19 Greenville, SC (Southeast Homeschool Convention)

31-April 2 Cincinnati, OH (Midwest Homeschool Convention)

May

6-7 Arlington, TX (Homeschool Book Fair)

27-28 Manchester, NH (Christian Home Educators of New Hampshire)

June

23-25 Philadelphia, PA (Northeast Homeschool Convention)

27 Cedar Rapids, IA
Bright Lights Summer Internship Begins

July

5-6 Oshkosh, WI
Bright Lights “Strong in the Lord Conference”

8-9 Oshkosh, WI
Bright Lights “Radiant Purity Conference”

12-13 Omaha, NE
Bright Lights “Strong in the Lord Conference”

15-16 Omaha, NE
Bright Lights “Radiant Purity Conference”

August

9-10 Collegeville, PA
Bright Lights “Strong in the Lord Conference”

12-13 Collegeville, PA
Bright Lights “Radiant Purity Conference”

16-17 Willoughby Hills, OH
Bright Lights “Strong in the Lord Conference”

19-20 Willoughby Hills, OH
Bright Lights “Radiant Purity Conference”

Announcements/Radiant Purity Conferences

Radiant Purity Video Conferences!

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We are very excited about this new venue available for discipling young ladies, since we know we can do only a limited number of live conferences. Thanks to the help of many good friends, the DVDs of the Radiant Purity Conference are now AVAILABLE for Bright Lights leaders to use to run video conferences in their area. Nickie, Rachel, and Sarah also recently designed a 50-page journal to help girls internalize the message and dig deeper into the Word. The first RP Video Conference took place last month in Michigan.

The next Radiant Purity Video Conference is scheduled for Cambridge, Minnesota (near the Twin Cities) on January 22. If you live in the area and would be interested in attending, click here for details.

Click here for pdf of the above flyer. (Thanks to Nickie for her great job in designing it.)

To learn more about the Radiant Purity Conference, click here.

Family News

Recent Random Pictures

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Hi and Merry Christmas Everyone! Well, I have some random pictures from the last week or so… they don’t really go together, but I thought I’d post them all anyway.

A special Christmas lunch at a nearby sandwhich shop with the girls in the BL Office here…Nickie, Sarah Rachel, Bekah.

Ok so when we bought our Christmas tree this year, we were told that it had been returned because it wouldn’t stand up straight. (I know. Who returns their Christmas tree?!) But my dad and I thought, No problem…We’ll work with it. Unfortunately we didn’t have as much success as we thought. This is how we found the tree on Christmas morning. I love Stephen’s expression. It was a race to get all the water and pine needles off the carpeting before Mom got up!

Christmas caroling! This is actually a great ministry, people are generally very touched.

Our “littlest caroler” warming up from the cold.

Stephen bought another guitar the other day. I’m so excited…

Yesterday morning was official “winter wonderland” in Marion, Iowa! All the trees were like this — It was amazing!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

And Mary said, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour….” (Luke 1:46-47)

Christmas Ministry Ideas/Miscellaneous/Witnessing Stories

Christmas Story Printout

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Here’s an idea of how to get into witnessing conversations at Christmas. Ask people, “Have you read the Christmas story from the Bible yet this year?” If they haven’t, you can give them a copy! — a great way to get people into the Word. One friend at church asked us for 35 copies to mail in her Christmas cards. I thought that was a really good idea.

If you’d like to print off copies you can do so HERE. It’s 2 pages, so print it on both sides.