Tag Archives: prayer

Advent Waiting

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Dear Friends and Family:    _MG_9195

One of my friends has made his Christmas puddings and is now waiting… and we are all in the season of lighting candles and waiting.  It is a Holy time, and we look forward to celebrating Christmas in a special way each year.

Looking back over 2014, we realize the direction that God is giving us and want to share that with you, our trusted partners:

Living in the Capital region which has the lowest churched population in America, we are  recognizing the need for changing our strategy about how to bring the Kingdom to our region.

archgabrielWe realized that operating as a ministry we are competing with other churches and ministries for the same small group of people. Meanwhile, the unchurched remain disinterested or sporadically participating in ministry activities.  Power evangelism needs to be adapted to reach a hardened and skeptical population.

Over the past year, Kingdom Arts Ministry has been involved in building Pastoral relationships through Michael’s involvement with the Capital District Ministers Association. He has also been the guest speaker at several area local churches, regularly brought meals to the elderly through the meals on wheels program, and been a strong supporter of the local “Community Spirit Day” that attracted over 250 low income local families to hear the Gospel message preached through Teen Challenge and local churches. The message was mingled with free food and entertainment for the children and held in our Town Park.

photo copy 10Christine has been reaching out to artists  in the capital region and has a strong desire to create more community events for artists. Last Spring, she partnered with the Columbia County Arts Council and the Hudson Chamber of Commerce to produce an exhibition and performance of local artists meeting the business community. She has also started an Artist Way group –a spiritual program of development for artists, in our home. She is working on a large commission of eight Icons of modern saints for Saint Vincents Church in Albany, as well as leading Icon retreats in Saratoga and an ongoing Icon writing class and fellowship at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Albany.photo copy 9

Waiting for 2015, we realize that we are laying foundations of relationships that we can partner with over the next year to find ways to collaborate and bring a culture of God and honor to our region. We are so grateful to all of you who partner with us financially and in prayer. Without your help we really would not be able to do what we do. Our world is certainly in a difficult time and challenging in so many ways. We draw strength and joy from your prayers and support. You are instruments of God’s help and a source of His provision for us. Thank you! LadySign

Next month we will outline our direction as a ministry for 2015. We have already been laying the groundwork and it promises to be both exciting and challenging!

Thank you and we love you, Please pray for us that we stay close to God’s plan and hear His voice clearly. You are in our prayers daily too.

Love, Christine and Michael

Giving Thanks in November

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Hello Friends and family:  photo 2

The fall has been so beautiful – I can’t resist sending you some photos of what it’s been looking like around here.  A great place to live if you’re a painter or photographer :).

We attended the ANGA Retreat this fall and met some great people- Betsy and Sam Stalcup have a ministry called Godhealstoday and we are looking into partnering with them for teaching and prayer ministry events in the new year.

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We are focusing on local prayer partnering opportunities and are happy with the relationships God is bringing to us.  Last night we had a prayer meeting in our home and prayed for Philmont, Claverack and all the families within our area.  We plan to meet regularly to pray and share about the ways God is answering our prayers.

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THe Albany Icon class I teach is growing into a prayerful community of artists that are growing in their understanding and technical skill in Icon writing. _MG_6745__ The Healing Icon Retreats in Saratoga have been really wonderful. Action packed for two days, but such a joy to see people concentrating in prayer and fellowship for two days.

 

 

At Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Albany, we will be giving workshops for their Holy Spirit Weekend, November 21 & 22 ,.My workshop will be “The Joy of Prophetic Painting”.  This will be a hands-on workshop and all are welcome. Michael will be teaching on deliverance.

Often we have no feed back for how our prayers have helped others. At the ANGA retreat sitting at our small group table was someone we did not know and he surprised us by saying Michael had prayed for him in Brooklyn nearly nine months before and he had received healing from a very painful nerve condition. Sometimes we get to hear what God did when we reached out to others but often that is not the case._MG_6624__ Michael loves to pray for healing for people and yesterday he had a visit to NYC and got to pray for three different people for healing, one in an elevator and two on the streets. The reactions initially are surprise that someone would offer to pray, then always real gratitude and then the comments like ‘I feel peace, or warmth or soothing just happened’. The last person he prayed for last night said ” Wow, thank you so much for your prayer. I really felt something and I’m Jewish!’ What Joy God is!

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is Good! His faithful love endures forever.” Psalm 136:1

We give thanks to the Lord for you all and keep you in our prayers.
Blessings and love,

Michael and Christine

 

Month of Snow!

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Dear Family and Friends:   photo copy

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Does our blog always coincide with a major snowstorm? Since we have one once or twice a week now, it is very likely!  I’m including some snow photos this month for our friends and family in the UK.  I’m even painting snow landscapes!!! Never before, but now one has to find beauty in the snow!

We are expecting 8-12 inches tomorrow and we had that x2 last week, so today we will go to Hudson and celebrate our twenty year wedding anniversary, then get ready to get some serious work done in the snow tomorrow!

Here are a few photos of an outreach of our Kingdom School at the Schenectady soup kitchen last month. We love our students and so much enjoy our worship times together.photo copy 6photo copy 2

Michael has been visiting local area photo copy 5churches each Sunday as well as continuing to develop relationships with other  Pastors at the Capital District Ministers’ Fellowship.

We will be meeting with our mentors, the Litteers, soon.  They pour so much wisdom into us – we are so blessed.

I’m excited about painting – a gallery in NJ just sold a large one and I expect to curate an exhibition in Hudson next month. It’s part of a project building relationships with local businesses and the CCCA to promote and value artists and their value as economic stimulators.  I believe that my church right now is the art world and I am having fun carrying the atmosphere of heaven to folks who might not otherwise get to experience it.

photo  This cross is in our back garden and you can see the deer tracks running through!

I’m teaching an extra icon writing class here in Philmont and that is a joy.  Here is one of my egg tempera portraits of Nelson Mandela.  I’ve been reading his biographies since Christmas and have learned so much about the spiritual walk through him. His strength and ability to keep his eye on the goal is inspiring.

He reminds me of the words of Saint Paul:         photo copy 3

“You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.  And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.”  1 Thessalonians 1:6-7 Mandela was educated by Methodists in his youth and I believe that early faith and education was a foundation for his ability to persevere and uphold his belief in freedom for all people.

Our prayer requests this month center around our need for more relationships with people who are excited to love and serve God in this area.  We look to the Lord for direction and discernment and we give thanks for the blossoming of our careers in photography and painting to be all that God has destined for them to be.

Many thanks to all f you who support this ministry with your gifts and prayers.  You are daily in our prayers,

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Love, Michael and Christine

Michael’s Photography website:

www.mickhales.com

Christine’s Painting Websites: www.christinehales.com

www.newchristianicons.com

October Pumpkin Time!

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“I love the Lord, because He hears and answers my prayers.  Because He bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I have breath!”  Psalm 116:1-2photo copy 3

Hello Friends and Family:

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Just as October draws to a close, our Kingdom School students are preparing to travel to Baltimore for on site street ministry training from the amazing Burning Heart Ministry with Jay Baylor.  Michael will be leading two of our second year students and four first year interns with a very full schedule of ministering to the poor and taking the Gospel to the streets in Baltimore, MD.  We fully expect miracles to take place, so more on that next blog!photo copy 8

Kingdom School is going well, with merging second and first year students for many of the teachings, but each year having a separate curriculum and reading list.  Only God could have orchestrated this combination but we are gratefully enjoying the interactions of our new group.  Great people, all in Love with Jesus!

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My iconography teaching is going well – loving the students and the devotion to prayer and sharing the Presence of God in icons.  We have now formed the St. Luke’s Guild of Iconography with a FB page and lots of great photos of icons in progress.  We are an ecumenical group of artist who share a similar vision for  God’s Kingdom and how icons play a part in experiencing and bringing the Presence of God into our daily  lives.hm-141_t

I’ve been blessed with the honor of having the Catholic Missal publication for 2014 using my Christ in Glory Icon.      Michael has had an article recently in New York Cottage and Garden Magazine and we are having fun getting our images out into the world.  Seed!  Because God is in everything we do and we want more and more people to receive Him through images.  The stealth method of Evangelization!

Second year students have just finished reading Danny Silk’s “Culture of Honor”and it is a must read, having to do with creating a culture amongst ourselves that allows us to make mistakes, repent and stay in relationship to God and each other. photo copy 2 “Remember, the Old Covenant was an external covenant, a system of controls to keep sinners in line.  But the New Covenant is an internal covenant for sons and daughters who, because of their new nature, can be trusted with the responsibility to govern themselves and have access to the power of self control through the Holy Spirit”.  Isn’t that good?  There’s so much more worth sharing – I hope you can get a copy of the book, too.

Our prayer requests for this season are: For more good clients for Michael’s Photography, for good galleries to represent and sell my paintings, and for our Kingdom Community to flourish, grow and multiply. We pray for wisdom to take all the steps God wants us to take to further His Kingdom in the realms He has placed before us.photo copy 4

Please pray especially for our team going to Baltimore, that they experience God’s Holy Spirit healing people today and that they bring that with them wherever they go!photo

We earnestly desire contact with each one of you, so please keep in touch and know that you are in our prayers, also.

Much love,

Christine and Michael

May – GRADUATION 2013

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IMG_3481Hello Friends and Family:

Such a slow, chilly spring.  I almost thought moles had eaten the daffodils I planted last fall, but yes, they are now coming up! photoI expect you are all ready for more warmth too, and we know that the day will come when it is all here.  Faith is like that too, and as we now find ourselves with Graduation for our Kingdom GSSM Satellite School we IMG_3409remember this time last year we didn’t even know that there would be a school.  IMG_3454We thought God was calling us to do a school but how?  In this past year, God has shown up in interesting ways when  we needed financial support, guidance, and God encounters with people.

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On May 11, Fifteen students will be graduating from our school and we will be celebrating with a ceremony that includes an address by Pastor Jay Francis from Rock Road Chapel and IAM ministries, and a Prophetic Presbytery.  Some of our students have been invited to give presentations at local churches, teaching on Words of Knowledge, and healing prayer.  The response we are getting is that local churches are hungry to experience what our students have been learning all year.

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Several of our students will be leading youth ministry in our area too, and it seems that our youth is eager to participate in developing a closer relationship with Jesus, too.

We are seeing the effect of our school on communities in our area. Christine wrote an article for a local paper about Community Transformation Through Prayer, which served as encouragement for a woman who feels called to bring a Revival to our town of Philmont by hosting a celebration of God in our local town park on June 1.  We were able to hold a meeting in our home for all the local pastors to get together and each will be sharing in some way with this Revival.  So exciting to see what God is going to do!photo

Now we are praying about what direction God wants to take Kingdom School for next year. We appreciate your prayers as always.

We believe that God is doing extraordinary things in these days and we see an Awakening around us. It is as though we are seeing the first flowers of the Holy Spirit spring, the crocus are starting to appear of His Kingdom. They are popping up all around and we are sure that there is going to be a powerful out pouring of the Holy Spirit. Commissioning celebration

Consider yourself invited to GRADUATION!! Either in prayer or in person. Bless you!! You are each in our prayers and we look forward to hearing from you,

In His love,

Christine and MichaelIMG_3520

Thanksgiving!

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Dear Friends and Family:

As November draws to a close, we have so much to be grateful for.  

Having Thanksgiving in Boston with our son, daughter-in-law and new grand daughter was delightful!  Being able to visit my mother who is recovering well from a broken hip and seeing her smiling, settling in back at our house, seeing old friends and making new friends.

But I wonder if you are experiencing the battles and seemingly unending difficulties that we are?  It’s almost becoming funny, that the moment we solve one huge problem and feel we can relax-BOOM!- another one hits.

And they all seek to distract us from the things that really ARE important.  Like prayer, worship, fellowship with God.  

This is our back garden – can you see the little deer?  There’s a family of them that live back there by the cross.  In a way, our succeeding in all the recent battles secures the safety of their home.   I think that is the way of intercessory prayer, too.  People willingly taking up the battle in prayer wins
peace for many others who are unaware of what it costs.      We are praying with a couple of icons these days -like this detail of Saint Anthony, the father of monasticism.

He was a great intercessor for his time and withstood many temptations and assaults from the demons. In 2 Chronicles 5:13 when Solomon completed the House of the Lord, and brought the Ark of the covenant in, it was the duty of of the trumpeters and singers to praise the Lord saying “For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.”  I think this is the task – no matter how awful the onslaught is, to sing praise that God is good, He is always good, and His steadfast love endures forever.  When the people praised God with those words, the Glory of the Lord came down and filled the temple.

We are the Temple and what could be  better than being filled with the Presence of the Lord?  This photo is from the blessing of the icons and the iconographers’ hands at Saint Nicholas’ Church where I teach, in Cohoes last month. It was a joy and honor to be there.

We are planning for  a January start for a house Church in our home in Philmont, a small discipleship group, and Michael will be doing some Bible teaching.  We plan to be praying and asking to see if God is calling us to start a Global Awakening satellite school of ministry in this area in September.

Back in Bristol, we are so encouraged by all the prayer efforts that are happening there. It seems that people are uniting across the denominations to pray together – outside and inside churches. Dec 1 there is a UK wide prayer on the streets which some of our friends in Bristol are participating in, and John Mulinde’s World Trumpet Mission is having a strong prayer presence too.  There are many more prayer events and we are really thrilled to hear about each one, and we pray together with each one.   

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We are also seeing a very powerful presence of the Lord in some of the prayer meetings at St. Michael’s Church in Colonie and experienced being held on the floor by His Presence. We have both started prayer walking on the streets and find it a way to hear God’s heartbeat for the village. There was recently a death in this community which has shaken the village as it happened so quickly and it has opened up opportunities for us to pray for people. It has also revealed a strong masonic presence in the village. The words keep coming to my mind as we discern what God is doing here from a prayer session in June, “Build an Ark, in Philmont. A place of my powerful presence.” So we ask for your prayers for this that we would build God’s ark here, it so desperately needs it.

I prayed for a lady in the drug store in Boston the other day for her broken wrist, she literally said before I started to pray for her, ‘I wish someone would come along and bless me and get rid of all these demons attacking me.’ God had it all planned for me to be there. We always need to remember God has so much more for us than we can possibly imagine and when it seems to be so dark we need to hold on to God with all our heart, for He is really all there is and His love endures forever.

We hope you have a Happy Christmas with the true blessings of the good news of the birth of Jesus Christ our savior, born so humbly yet full of so much power in each of our lives today.

PS  We REALLY want and need your prayers!!! It makes a huge difference!!  And we will continue to pray for you too!           Love,            Christine and Michael.