Tag Archives: church

September Beginnings

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“Dear brothers and sisters, we can’t help but thank God for you, because your faith is flourishing and your love for one another is growing.”  2Thessalonians 1IMG_4689

Kingdom School has begun, but not as we thought it would!  So many changes – location changed to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Colonie, the  meeting times have changed as we moved from being a GSSM Satellite school to a school that uses teachings from several on line sources but still attends Global Awakening conferences as often as possible .IMG_0296

We have found that the process is more important than the end result.  Through all these changes we have grown in our relationships with the Christians and men and women of God in our area and are understanding more of what role we can play in Revival in the Hudson Valley and Albany Region.  The key is to listen and pay attention to what God is blessing and move in that direction.  That usually means giving up some ideas we’ve had and making room for new ones!IMG_4753

This seems like a good time to look back over what our ministry has accomplished over the past year and we wanted to share with you some of the highlights:

*Taking a team of 15 people to the Global Awakening Conferences in Pennsylvania 3 times last year was an incredible experience.  Watching our students grow in maturity in Christ and gain from the experienced leadership of Randy Clark and others was exciting and gratifying.IMG_4740

*Graduation with over 100 people from this area attending and outstanding pastors from this area: Pastors Stan Slager, Jay Francis, Bart Henegan, Chuck Englefield, Don & Nancy Childs,Rev. Susan Baker Borjeson,Fr. Steve & Lorrie Hart, Fr. Tyler & Audrey Slade, and many others all attesting to the impact the school is having in our area.

* Philmont Community Spirit Day and The Healing service on the Village Green in Philmont were such fun ways to join together with the pastors and people of Philmont who love God and enjoy each others’ company.IMG_5025

*Running Kingdom School 2013-2014 – a unique ministry training program for people to mature in their faith and become equipped to carry the message of the Gospel into everyday life.IMG_4962

 

*I’ve also identified my painting calling more specifically and have spent the summer working on a portfolio of landscapes with which to approach commercial galleries – these can be seen at: www.christinehales.com.  Also I took an egg tempera workshop with Koo Schadler and for my class project I am copying a Raphael portrait.  It isn’t finished yet, but am including a photo of its present state, then next month you will hopefully see it completed.  Egg tempera skills have improved dramatically and I’m ready to do some new icons!photo copy 6

My icon class teaching is increasing this year to include teaching an icon class at The Art Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY.  The Woodstock class this past summer was great and will probably offer that again this summer.  My ongoing Albany icon class is forming an iconography guild: St. Luke’s Guild of Iconographers and we are having our first Guild exhibition this November at the Slate Museum in Granville, NY.photo copy 7

Michael has updated his photography portfolio and is increasing his client base and seeking an agent.  His website is: www.Mickhales.com.  I don’t know how he does everything, but he is passionate about our school, preparing the lessons and working with Carol MacNaughton on outreach opportunities.  The school will be going to an inner city church in Baltimore in October to practice praying on the streets with Jay Baylor.  Very exciting!IMG_5023

Our prayer requests for this month consist of prayers for new business for both of us, blessings on the students of Kingdom School, continued good health, and financial provision that we may grow and expand according to the vision God has placed within us.

“We always thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly.  As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ.”       1 Thessalonians 1image

 

Sending you our love, prayers, and thanks for your prayers,

 

Faithfully,

Michael and Christine

 

Works in Progress!

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Hello Friends and Family:  photo copy 5

I hope this August finds you well – what great weather we are having!  Michael and I have been praying for two things that will both be happening on Saturday, August 10 and we would like to ask you to pray for these events too!

First, At Coxsackie Gospel Community Church at 10AM we will hold an informational meeting about the GSSM Satellite Kingdom School to see how many people may be interested in attending this year.  Registration deadline is August 22 so we need to know soon if we will have enough people to run the school again this year.photo copy 6

Please keep that in your prayers, that God will open the hearts of those He wantxs to attend and that they would come forward with papplications.  If we don’t get enough people, we are fine with whatever God wants to do.

God has been blessing both of us in our professions this month, me with some significant painting sales and two excellent icon classes to teach, and Mick with some jobs and new clients.  We know it is so important to always be seeking what God is doing and come into agreement with that, so please pray for us to see and hear Him clearly.

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The second event on Saturday, August 10 is the Philmont Healing Service to be held on the Village Green at 4PM.  THe meeting Michael has been hosting of the Philmont Pastors believed they heard from God to hold this healing service on this date.  “Coincidentally” there will be a huge punk-rock festival with thousands of people drinking and all the rest and it just a couple of miles away and it will be in full swing on August 10. Yay God! Something is going on in the heavenlies and our little band of four ministers are going to lead a healing service that we pray will change the atmosphere of this village forever.  We are praying that all the young and neglected families from Main street will come with their children.  Our friend Brenda has made some of her amazing posters which we now have all over town. gold SO, wherever you are, please lift us up in prayer on Saturday, August 10.  We re praying for healings, restored relationships, and a changed atmosphere – that the spirits of poverty, addiction, mockery, unbelief and alcoholism be gone, in Jesus’ name.

We will be posting the photos and news from Philmont Healing Service Day.  Thank you for your  prayers!

Love you all!

Michael and Christine

Shaking It Up!

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Does it seem to you that God is doing a lot of shaking of things these days?  The ups and downs of living every day in world where the weather has gone off the charts, the news is hard to listen to, and the internal chatter is often not exactly helpful.  “Pray without ceasing”, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, seems to be my refuge.  When I pray in the middle of negative thoughts, I literally experience a shift in my world.  It’s so exciting.  It feels like we are entering a new time of promise and excitement as we hold on to our dreams and move forward in spite of obstacles.

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We began May with the Graduation of the   GSSM Kingdom Satellite School students. What a day!  We had over 100 visitors, and all remarked on feeling the Presence of God when they walked in to our worship.grad  What an honor to steward these students through this last school year and watch them become transformed through this amazing program that releases God’s love in ever greater degrees.  Such powerful testimonies.  Pastor Jay Francis of Rock Road Chapel, Berne, NY, gave a great commencement address on Revival and its cost, and the students offered prophetic words to the first 37 people who took a ticket for the Prophetic Presbytery.,   Both students and those receiving a prophetic word were lifted up as God gave each one the revelation they needed.  So many were impressed with the accuracy of the Words they received.  Truly blessings were had by all.gotherdun

I think Michael and I felt a tremendous sense of achievement and happiness that the school blessed us and so many people.  now we look forward to continuing on for next fall with a new first year and a follow up /outreach class for the graduates from this year.  As we grow in our relationships with area leaders and churches, we hope to connect up our graduates with many outreach IMG_3671opportunities in the years to come.

Our good friends Bob & Marge Morrison, ANGA Ambassadors from Global Awakening visited us – a layover while waiting to pick up their children arriving back from the Mission field at the NYC Airport.

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We had a great time visiting Stonecrop Gardens with them.

 

We also had great visits from our children- Mark, Kristi and our grandaughter Carwen who had her first painting lesson!

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I would like to have a service remembering the martyrs of our faith on MEMORIAL DAY, too!  And the original Patriots who fought the Revolutionary war because we owe so much to those who suffered even unto death that we might have all that we have today.IMG_6056

Christine has added an icon teaching class to her schedule for the summer in Woodstock and also changed the location of the Albany class to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Colonie.  Her “Mandylion’ icon is in a group exhibition now at WAAM in Woodstock and her contemporary drawings  will be in a group exhibition in Kingston in July.  She’s trying to finish up a grant request to fund a major exhibition in 2014, so please keep her in your prayers for all this!   Michael has been photographing when possible, some beautiful gardens.  We are praying for him to get a good garden book going this year, so we ask you prayers for this also.

IMG_3821Also, a great visit with daughter Micah and son-in law Tore. His film, “Abel’s Field” is available nationally – Walmart, Amazon.com, etc. so it’s time to get your copy.  Very inpiring to see a contemporary Biblical story that is well done!

One last thing- last month Christine felt led to write an article for the local paper on Community Transformation Through Prayer.  A woman, Brenda Van Alphen,  called up in response to this and said she was trying to get a revival going in Philmont for June 1 and she was in despair that no one would help her – would we help?  Since then Michael has held two meetings with Brenda and all the pastors in Philmont who are now working together to participate in the Revival.  Brenda hired the town Park for the day and will be providing free hot dogs and hamburgers as well as having preachers and singers coming from all over.  philmontOur Kingdom school will have a table called “Destiny Refreshment” to talk to people and give them encouraging words from God.  We are all so excited to see what God’s going to do!  we are praying that this will be an atmosphere changer, and that churches will once again flourish in the area.

So many things we need your prayers for!  Thank you, thank you!  And please let us know how we can pray for you – it is a joy to do so!

Love and blessings to you!   Michael and Christine

Christmas! More of Christ in our lives!

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Hello Dear Friends and Family:

Thank you all for sharing in the excitement and blessings of our Journey with God, particularly this Christmas.  We are so thankful for your support and prayers!  We also recognize the need to ask for more prayer support as we continue to bring light into the spiritual darkness of the Albany region.  We would like you to email us if you would be able to increase your prayer support as intercessors for us in this next year.  We would then keep you informed as prayer concerns arise and ask you to increase the prayer shield of protection over our ministry.  We need a team of solid intercessors as we move forward and hope you will prayerfully consider this.

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Our Kingdom School GSSM Satellite school recently celebrated our own family Thanksgiving at our home with lots of fun playing Biblical charades, feasting on turkey dinner, and sharing our gratitude for all God has done for us this year. We recognize that most of our resources have gone to establishing the Kingdom School since September, with little left over for our

church planting in the Philmont area. Michael had received the Word from God over a year ago to “build an ark in Philmont”, so we are continuing to pray into that.  With that in mind, Michael is organizing a Christmas Carol community Carol singalong to sing carols at the Pinehaven nursing home and along Main street with local residents.  We will all meet

back at our home for Hot Chocolate and aprayer for our area to be blessed especially this year.  Michael continues to hold his bible study in the Philmont library on Sunday evenings and we are praying that God will give us a building in this area for the art/video/satellite school for next year.

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We have lots of room in our home for entertaining and hospitality and will be hosting the director of the GSSM School here while he visits our school and area churches sometime in the New Year. How exciting! We are so blessed by the support from our Global Awakening family, especially Bob and Marge Morrison who hosted us and a special lunch for our students during the recent Healing School in Mechanicsburg PA.  We need our friends so  much and hope we are a blessing to them too!

Please know that you all are very much in our prayers as we approach Christmas this year.  May you be blessed with joy, good health, and abundance of God’s very Presence in your lives!

Much love,

Christine and Michael                       IMG_2445

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September Harvest in the Hudson Valley

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Kingdom School has started!  We are so blessed and excited to have gotten off to a Spirit filled start with 19 students who are handpicked by God, it seems to me!  Each day of classes, more revelation about who God is, and who we REALLY are in Him.  I am so excited I can hardly stand it!

As part of the School, students have a daily Bible reading from a study put together by Global Awakening.  I am finding it to be foundational to really walking this path with God.  Here’s an excerpt from last week’s reading from Romans 8:27-28 (The Message translation):

 “What we’ve learned is this: God does not respond to what WE do; we respond to what GOD does. We’ve finally figured it out.  Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting Him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade.”

And  “God sets right all who welcome His action and enter into it, both those who follow our religious system and those who have never heard of our religion.”  Romans 8:30.

I just am so happy with being able to experience through the Kingdom School all the advanced ministry teachings available through Global Awakening.  We are telecasting by internet the classes held on site in PA, so we have fresh material every week.

 Michael is doing an amazing job as director of the school and I am looking forward to the Spring when people have been filled with all this good material and confidence building in living life with an alive Jesus operating within them.  

I, Christine, have realized how much God wants me to fulfill His call on my life as an artist.  I have jumped into some community art events and am making friends with whom I will share my love of Jesus through sharing our art experiences.    God has blessed me with several commissions which I am working on; here is one of my favorites – Christ the Healer (it’s unfinished yet) .

I. Michael, am also very excited about the school and we are already hearing of some of the fruit; Episcopal services taking twice as long as usual because everyone was given a word of prophecy. A high school was taught how to communicate with God from one of our students and they were crying as they gave their testimonies of what God had said to them. It is so wonderful what God is doing. It is like watching a flower unfold and we know there is so much more to come.

Now we start to do more outreach and we know that this is where the teachings we have heard become a  reality as God shows up when we go out in faith praying on the streets. This is one of the areas that I love to walk in, being natural praying for people who need healing on the streets, in supermarkets, bus stations, hairdressers, just where ever and teaching other people to become comfortable with it as well. God is so gentle and loving that as we see people with His heart we flow with what He is doing. It is so much fun when God takes over and takes things much further than you ever imagined. 

One of the wonderful parts of the school is our growing as a family as we all go through experiences with the Lord. This last weekend there has been the National Day of Prayer in Wembley Stadium England and also a huge gathering of prayer in Philadelphia,USA. We know that some of our English Christian family were there actively praying and crying out to the Lord.

Our relationship with them is founded on hours of praying together and it is as though we were standing there with them. But whether we gather in stadiums, in classrooms or house churches the wonderful thing about being a Christian is we are part of a huge family. When we move from one town to another, one nation to another we have family there already, God being the father and we are the brothers and sisters. There is nothing like it and we give thanks every day that we are part of that family and it is constantly growing. Wow. God is good all the time.

So family thank you for all your prayers and please do keep them coming. God is doing  wonderful things and we know there is so much more to come in this area.

Spring Prayers

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We have had such a dry winter and spring that the landscape was looking really dried out gasping for rain. Finally we had two days of soft rain and spring is really here and the trees are filling out with fresh green leaves. Sometimes it takes a long time for a breakthrough to come but when you have faith that it is going to happen you keep pushing and pushing for it.

We just had a wonderful weekend with Tom and Maryln Litteer at Living Waters fellowship in Newton, NJ, and we were praying for healing for people. On the Friday evening while praying for someone I got a word from the Lord, ‘Egypt’ so I asked the person we were praying for if that meant anything to her. She said ‘No’.  The next day we were praying for a man who had slight one hearing in one ear only and limited peripheral vision from birth. We were praying with him on and off through the day and at one point I asked him where he was from and he said ‘Egypt’. At that point I knew God meant to heal him and told him, ‘I believe God wants to heal you today,’ and related to him the word I had received the day before. So we kept on praying and praying and I would have given up but for that word we kept on pushing until God showed us how to pray for him and his breakthrough came. His non functioning ear opened up and he could hear with that ear and was not using a hearing aid in his other ear. We are still believing his eyes will open to a full vision as well. To watch someone receive a gift from the Lord like that is so beautiful as they truly understand how much God is a powerful God and loves them in a tangible way. It is as though they receive their own personal springtime with the Lord and all is made new for them.

We are so excited about what the Lord is doing in our area as we start to get feedback on the GSSM satellite school we will be starting in September with our friends Susan and Ralph Baker Borgeson. We are still getting the word out and gathering information as to who would be interested in joining the student body. It is such a great opportunity for people both young and old to be transformed into walking in the supernatural ways of the Kingdom of God naturally every day. We believe it is it a part of our calling in this season to get this underway.

One of the discernments which has come out of our Thursday evening gatherings for prayer and worship is the need to AWAKEN this area, that there is a spirit of slumber over it. The area has taken on the mantle of Rip Van Winkel, the fictitious character who slept through his responsibilities after taking a drink. We have the Rip Van Winkel bridge which joins Columbia and Greene counties, over the Hudson river. Today in our village we had an announcement that there is to be a large Rip Van Winkel puppet show on our village green this Saturday. So we are just praying for that spirit to be lifted off this area that there would be an awakening in the community of the presence of the living and active Lord.

In all these areas that we are involved with we really need to have your prayers. God asked us ‘To build an ark in Philmont.’ and sometimes we call out to Him for more direction. We do ask for your prayers in all we are doing here.

We are excited about re-connecting with our friends in England and joining in with the prayer movement at Penetecost. Prior to the ARISE Pentecost meeting in Bristol, the Olympic torch will pass through and along with it, a prayer baton.  Thousands of UK Churches are organizing to make the most of the media attention on their cities and creating prayer activities to engage people in God’s Kingdom!

From Charisma Christian News,  More than Goldorganizer, Peter Meadows said:”Our conviction is that prayer and mission go hand in hand as churches respond to the Games. So, we are inviting every church, group and organization to explore creative ways to pray for all that will happen before during and after the Games,”Visit www.morethangold.org.uk for more information, and for Bristol related prayer events visit: www.bristolnetworks.org.uk

 We are so grateful to those of you who contributed to make the UK trip possible. Thank you!

Christine is planning a summer icon class on Tuesday afternoons in Woodstock, NY, God willing, and she’s been blessed with sales of some of her prophetic paintings this month.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers, as you are in ours.  We need each other! Love and blessings,  Michael and Christine