One receives the Holy Ghost!

We are SO EXCITED to have a 12-year-old girl receive the Holy Ghost today! I could tell through church that God was dealing with her and when the call to come was given, Sis. McClain asked her if she would like to come and pray. She said yes and she began to weep when I put my hands on her head. Within in a couple minutes, she was speaking in tongues! She came with her aunt. This young lady's two younger brothers came also and were a part of our new Sunday School class!

We had 36 today! That is one more than our normal Sunday record (excluding Easter). We also are minus the family of 5 from Bro. Bernard's church who have gone back to the mother church now! So, there is progress.

Our ensemble sang "Goin' Up Yonder"(the old song) and did awesome! The Spirit was really moving in our midst today. I believe that the Friday night prayer intensified the response of the church.

Speaking of that, our Section came on Friday night for a Prayer Service and on Saturday morning for outreach.

Sis. Esther Hunt, our section's prayer coordinator.

Sis. Flo Shaw, the South Texas District prayer coordinator.

Binding together in prayer.

It was great to have Trevon Norman (seen on the left here) and Cosme Ojeda (not pictured) with us this weekend from Wichita Falls. They joined in with us for prayer and outreach.

Pastor Dwayne Shaw, New Life Temple - East Austin

Bro. Shaw finished out the night with his comments. He felt a prophetic word that this church would be a mighty revival center and felt so impressed that things greater than we can even imagine are on the horizon. We are believing...and it is happening!

On Saturday, we were able to distribute around 700 doorhangers to houses in the neighborhoods near our new location. We are planning to send postcards to these same houses in a couple weeks using a mailing service here that is Apostolic-owned and then going back to these houses a few weeks after that and knocking on their doors to invite them. Maybe it will help "soften" the ground a little or give us some name recognition when they open their doors. It was great to have our presbyter, Pastor Charles Stephens, to help us put these doorhangers out!

Following the outreach on Saturday, we took Trevon and Cosme downtown to see the bats fly at dusk. Our boys enjoyed so much having the guys here in town. They laughed a lot!

As we were waiting, boats started coming to watch the bat flight. One of them in particular caught our eye and ear...they were playing live country music on a raft of sorts! It was pretty neat.

There's more to tell, but I will keep it for another post.....

My Turn

Celebrity Look-alikes

I thought I would try this out and see who looks like me! Uhhh - I think not. Oh well, a little laugh never hurt anyone.

Ordination and back to Youth Ministry

This week was a very special and event filled week! We attended our first South Texas District Conference and really were surprised at how many people we know. Of course, they were a part of the Texas District for a lot of the years that we have been in ministry. We were blessed to be Ordained at this conference. Also, Pastor and Sis. Elms (as she has posted about on her blog) were there to be a part of it and she took these pictures. These are pictures that only people who attend a Spirit-filled church would understand. Those ugly, crying, worshipping, straining pictures! The Spirit was so strong. Our family has grown together so much since coming to Pflugerville. We understand that we are in this together, so it was so great to have the boys be a part of this special time.

Most of our years of ministry have been spent with our Pastor, Wendell Elms, so it was so special to have him pray with us. We are so thankful that they took the time to come be a part of it all - (even if it was in SOUTH TEXAS!)

Of course, having Pastor David Bernard pray with us was also special since we are working closely with him now. He spoke some prophetic words to us during his prayer. (He is the one on the far left getting ready to pray with Pastor Elms looking on.)

Bro. Danny Johnson, my high school principal at Life Christian Academy, is on the District Board and was the first to pray with us. He also was the one who interviewed me at the ordination seminar. He told the other guys on the interviewing committee that he has known me for 27 years! I couldn't believe it had been that long! All of us who were involved in the truck rollover accident in May, 1980 that took the life of my friend, Tim Hodgson (Karen Prince's brother), share a special bond with Danny and Barbara Johnson from the few short years that they were in Wichita Falls.

I like this picture with Dad praying with us. Also, if you will look in the very center of the picture, you will see a white haired gentleman. He is Missionary Richard Carver.

He came up to the boys after everyone had prayed for us, but before the service was completely over and told them that God had drawn his attention to them while he was on the platform. He told them that God had His hand on their life and if they would partner with their parents that God had great things in store for them. It was really a special moment for them. Come to find out, he and his wife had visited in the Layne's home for several days during deputation many years ago. Sis. Layne loved them so much that she cried as they had to leave. Bro. Carver didn't know who we were until after the service was over.

It was also special to have my Dad and Mom there for the occasion. They are such a blessing to all of my family. We look forward to their visits so much. To have them there praying with us made it all complete. The only thing that would have topped it all off would have been having Bro. and Sis. Layne there. They would be so happy for us. But they live on through all of our family's ministry.

P.S. After being ordained, I am now being referred to as "His Holleyness" by some at the Bernard's church....they think they are so cute!

HERE WE GO, AGAIN!

Back to youth ministry! Karla and I took our youth group to the Austin/Hill Country SFC Rally and Lock-in on Friday night out in the country near Georgetown. They had a lot of fun! Above is Chad being "bunny-eared" by Phillip. This is the same thing the young people have done since I began youth ministry in 1984!

Hannah, Lindsey and Bonnie.

Jasmine (Sis. E) acting so cool, Cameron, Jordan and Erika.
Jasmine calls us Bro. and Sis. H!

Phylicia, Kaylene, Cheyanne and Lorraine.

I will tell you that being over 40, I did not stay up all night. We drove home at around midnight and slept until 5am and then went back and picked them up. This is one of the blessings of being a daughterwork - the mother church had plenty of chaperones.... whew! Cameron won a karaoke machine with a camera built-in!

This week, our section will be coming to Pflugerville. Friday night will be a time of prayer with the South Texas Prayer Coordinator and Saturday they will put doorhangers out in the neighborhood around our new location.
•We will have a greeter meeting on Wednesday to get that ministry organized.
•Our youth class started today with Karla teaching.
•We are organizing a bus ministry (pray with us for a leader.) Someone has bought a bus and donated it to us! I haven't seen it yet or have many details other than it runs and looks nice. I will fill you in as we get this ministry started.
•We are organizing church cleaning teams and they will start in May.

Thanks for your continued prayers and words of encouragement! You don't know how much it means to us.

We're Still Here

Just thought I'd let everyone know we are still around. This week has been busy - we had South Texas District Conference at the beginning of the week, church Wednesday, Thursday was quiet, Friday was a youth rally and lock-in and today we have Element Student Ministry at our house.

Anyway, I'm sure Gene will blog more after the weekend. Meanwhile, I thought I'd leave you with a picture to occupy your time. WHO IS IT?

A Broken Place - A broken record!

We wondered last night as practice was taking place and sleet began to build up on the cars whether anyone would be in service today.....
but woke up this morning with better temperatures, no rain

AND 49 IN ATTENDANCE!
Our record was 35. We had three new people in the altar this morning with tears on their faces. I spoke about "The Broken Place." That is where God really comes to life. Some of those in attendance today are in the broken place, and God became very real to them.

Several new things happened today:
We had our first children's Sunday School class, but we have no pictures. :(

We had our first sign language song...
No Greater Love, given by Taqueria and Phylicia McClain as well as Lindsey and Kayleen Stephens. They did awesome! The presence of the Lord moved as they signed.

We had our first group song. Karla put together a ladies ensemble to sing, “Revelation song.” Wow! There were two new soloists in that song and Chad really showed out on the drums. There is a part of the song that says, “Flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder.” When they sang that, Chad did a deep roll that sounded like THUNDER! He shocked me! They practiced last night when I wasn't there, so it was so cool. The crowd was on their feet!


Excitement was in the air, the conviction of the Lord dealt with many hearts and we proclaimed the joy of the Easter story. It was a good day.

Hill Country Views

Thought you might enjoy looking at the Hill Country in Spring. We are enjoying taking in the sights as a family. We had a couple hours to look around. A "storm was a-brewin" as Chad explained it, but somehow we missed the rain all the way around!

These pictures are even better when you click on them to enlarge.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RONDA!!

49 years ago today Murray, Lila, Keith and Linda welcomed into the world Ronda Carlene!! (I came along 9 years later)

Today we celebrate HER! She is a wonderful sister and friend. Out of the three of us girls - she is the most like Mother to me - her looks, personality, actions, everything! Even though she is FAR away, distance can't take away the closeness we share as family.

I love you, Ronda, and hope you have a wonderful and special day!!

In Our New Location!!!

We met at our new location Wednesday night and you should have seen the people as they began coming in. They could not get the smiles off of their faces! They looked around and oohed and aahed. We sang a couple choruses and the presence of the Lord entered the Sanctuary in such a powerful way. We prayed for the chairs, doors, instruments, rooms, outside, inside, the pulpit, the altars.... the people were praying in the Spirit! We then gathered around the pew chairs in a circle, joined hands and prayed for each other. I had preached a message about Creative Faith recently - about the four friends who brought about a miracle in the crippled man's life by tearing the roof off. There was Hope, Work, Vision and Belief. So on that Wednesday, I explained that we had a Hope of growing and moving. We joined together to Work to see it come to pass. Now it was time to share a vision. I opened it up for them to share their Vision of what would happen in this new place. WOW! They began to share and cry and worship. It was so encouraging for everyone. We left that place with Belief that our miracle was coming to pass.

We have been going from sun-up to after midnight every day. You wouldn't think that there would be that much to do! Thank the Lord for the Ace Moving Company that I posted about earlier. They came in on Thursday and moved everything in about 45 minutes. They had all the equipment and I didn't have to carry one thing! God provided and I chuckled - He is so amazing! I actually sat outside and laughed at the incredible One that we are working for. I could not have imagined having a moving company move our church free of charge. But He can.

We still have some work to do. We need to do some painting and finishing our Sunday School area for Easter, but overall it looks great. We are so happy with it. Above is the foyer.

Here is the Sanctuary with our new WONDERFUL chairs. Thanks to many of you, we are now able to seat more people and in comfort! We also have a projector, screen and computer with songs and Scriptures. Today's service was so nice. It is nice to also have carpet. It is so much easier to kneel for prayer.

This is a hospitality area right outside the Sanctuary. The restroom opens off of this and we will have a small refrigerator, microwave and oven behind a moveable wall. When we want to have an event that includes food, we can move the wall and make it a kitchen area with a serving bar.

It really feels like a real church. We have several aisles to choose from and many more seats. We are expecting many great miracles to take place here.
Deliverance, Salvation, Healing...He does it all and why not here?

We tied our all-time record of 35!

Here's some of the girls this morning all excited!

Another snapshot— It looks like my mom is the center of attention!

Away from the grind

I found out today that although the carpet was supposed to be installed this morning, it was being rescheduled for tomorrow morning! I took it a little easier today and finished cleaning out trash and tools. We still have a little trim paint to do and three more doors, but I will work on them tomorrow and Thursday since they are not where the new carpet will be. Because of the rescheduling of the carpet, we postponed our cleaning night to Thursday. So I declared tonight a night off and took a little trip with the family in the Jeep. We went to Guitar Center first in South Austin. Chad just "had" to buy some fancy new lightweight drumsticks with his own money and Cameron can always find something to look at! They had a guitar competition while we were in the store that we didn't even know about. Two of the contestants got to move on to a higher level of competition for a Grand Prize - a 2007 Ford Mustang, a Gibson endorsement, and prizes from Apple, Levis and Sobe. It was pretty cool!

Then we headed out into the hill country...

We found a beautiful overlook toward downtown Austin and the Capitol...


The bluebonnets are starting to bloom. We saw these beside that same road...


We evidently found a very wealthy part of the country as we saw this Lamborghini driving beside us and turning into a phenomenal neighborhood. (The picture is a little blurry.) Cameron and Chad went bonkers over it...


We saw this house perched on the hillside and thought it was so cool. When we got closer and could see the balcony on the side, there was a For Sale sign. We will take it into consideration...no, I guess not. It's too far from Pflugerville!


We found a creek and stopped to enjoy the scenery...


LOOK at the picture below. There is something really strange in this picture! In the middle of the creek is a fire hydrant - go figure!


Awww! Can you feel the love?

FUN, fUn, FuN, fun...


A perfect end to a great time away from the grind...


Well, actually the end was when I was pooped on by a BIG bird under a tree at The Arboretum! Thankfully, my shirt did come clean!