'News from Journey Community Church' Check out this link to our latest Journey Newsletter!!
For those of you who are not familiar with our work here in Fernley, Nevada... here is a little update...
Rod and I began this new church plant journey over a year ago, as we moved out to Fernley, NV the last day of January 2009. We spent our first months just getting to know the community and praying that God would show us where the needs were in this small city of just under 20,000 people. As we began to get involved in the community we knew that God was leading us to plant a church that would reach out to the kids and families to meet their needs. Our very first activities were service projects...cleaning up the In-Town park, free car wash, having a free family movie night with an open air cinema complete with popcorn and sodas, and a week of Kids Camp; all held at the In-Town Park. We also took part in the towns Fourth of July celebrations in the Out-of-Town park by setting up a baby changing station, and a cool down tent. All of these activities were well received and appreciated and all took place before we even had our first church service.
I am still amazed as I reflect back on how God brought people to us as we struggled to figure out just how we were going to do this church plant thing. As we prayed about how to go about putting together a launch team, God brought another ministry couple from Reno to us who introduced us to people in Fernley who, it would seem, were just waiting for us to come along and plant a church. We were amazed and awed as God expanded the launch team to around 30 people.
Our "Grand Beginnings Service" (launch date)was September 13,2009! I have posted a few pictures below of the big day...so exciting as we had over 200 in attendance! God is sooo awesome!!
Now...as you will see if you read the newsletter attachment above(at the top of this post)...we are getting ready to move into a more permanent facility(we have been meeting at Fernley Highschool). This is a very exciting and, yes, scary venture...and as the name of the church implies another big step on this Journey!
I feel incredibly blessed as I have been married to my college sweetheart, Rod Idle, for twenty seven years(July 30th) and we have two beautiful children(not so much children anymore). Our daughter, Lyndsay, is 22 years old and left her fulltime ministry in Virginia to serve as our Worship/Youth minister. She is a very gifted young lady and a joy to be around! We are so blessed to have witnessed her recent wedding(in our backyard) to Joshua Terry. It is such a blessing to have them serving together with us at Journey.
Our son, Bradley, is 25 years old and has moved with us to Nevada from Virginia. He is presently recovering from a brain trauma event caused by a rare migraine condition. We praise God that he is expected to eventually regain all that was lost in the event...and he is determined to resume his third year of college and go into the ministry as soon as he is able. In the meantime, we are so grateful to have him with us as ,even with this, God has enabled him to minister to people in a very unique way.
We appreciate all of your prayers and encouragement as we continue on this amazing Journey!
