Video Update for our Home church in PA!

To watch an update video that we put together for our home church in PA, just click the link!

Hoover's Update Vid!  

Love y'all! 

{CS}BBQ

This past weekend we spent at the "Yaroomba Classic", a surf competition put on by the Coolum Boardriders. Every year we(Christian Surfers) help the boardriders by running the BBQ/concession stand. Some years we make a little profit to help support CS ministries. Jeremy also helped with filming the surfers.

 Jeremy spent the night on the beach protecting all the equipment... sounds much more exciting than what I think it was!!!

It was a beautiful weekend to be at the beach.. Hope you have a blessed week!

this {WEEK}

The Surf Ministry meeting went great! We feel like we all value and share the same purpose and vision. However, we all have a little different approach to fulfilling that vision. It's going to be awesome to see how God uses us all to reach and meet different needs and people. Our intentions are to continue to meet as a group regularly, as we continue on this journey together.

The Boardstore Surf is going well. We had some better days in sales and our stock is starting to fill up. Today(Saturday) Jeremy said there were 15 kids hanging out in the shop in the morning and they came and went through out the day. Pray that they would find a real sense of belonging there.

Religious Education class this week was... good, challenging, scary and awesome all at the same time! We shared the story of Jesus feeing the 5,000. Jeremy researched a bunch of statics and numbers to show the kids how many people in this world are hungry. It painted a good visual picture for them. They seemed to really love it. At the end of my one class, I asked if any of the kids had any questions. These were a few:
"How do you know God is real? It's not like he's just sitting there"
"Who made God?"
"If Jesus is God, Can I be God?"
"Did God have{give birth}Jesus?"
Then there was a whole conversation with a little girl who didn't know Christmas was Jesus's birthday.
I've just assumed that kids in western cultures know the "basics" of Christianity. But they sure don't! Please pray for our RE classes. It's such a huge opportunity!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! We pray for God's presence in your life! Blessings!

SURF MINISTRY UNITY

It's been an exciting last couple weeks for us! God seems to be birthing a lot of vision into ministry opportunities. Now that the surf shop is running smoothly, we are able to focus on the ministry side of things and the relationships that are forming out of the surf shop.

The surf shop is doing exactly what we were hoping it to do: connecting us with the community. When we walk on the school premises to teach RE, so many of the kids say "HEY JEREMY!" It was quite comical for me, as the groms treat Jeremy like some sort of celebrity. I don't say that to boast about my husband but rather in awe of how God is using a surf shop to bridge two generations.

Tomorrow night we are getting together with some of the YWAM crew around that have a heart for surf ministry. The base currently runs a Surfers DTS(Discipleship Training School) each year. They are finding that there are always people wanting to come and staff Surf Ministry but we haven't had the structure to support staff. It will be a night of brainstorming, sharing vision, our hearts & evaluating opportunities.

One thing that I am most excited about it is the new community center in the same area that the school and surf shop are. I think this is a GEM! We hope to go check out the facilities later in the week. It's just a cool thing to dream about--- what we could do there, after school, during school holidays, etc. There's no plan of using it anytime soon just an opportunity for months down the road.


Below are a couple maps to help you place things:
We live in COOLUM BEACH
The surf shop is in MUDJIMBA BEACH
The YWAM base is in MAROOCHYDORE
Ashlee's work & the warehouse for the surf/skate shop is in KAWANA WATERS

It's about a 25 minute drive from Coolum to Kawana!

This is a map of Mudjimba. The distance between the school and the surf shop is about a mile!

We hope that clarifies things! Please pray for the meeting tomorrow night... especially for UNITY!

CS {DINNER}

Thursday nights we have Bible studies with the  Christian Surfers leadership crew in Coolum. 

Some nights we like to also have dinner before.

Chili & cornbread was a new combo for most Aussies

We really value the relationships we have amongst CS!

JEREMY'S {27th}

In honor of Jeremy's 27th birthday we had a little guys night, steak & potato dinner!

And they even wore the birthday hats! (Just for this picture of course!)

his favorite: cheesecake with fresh strawberry sauce

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEREMY!

Christian Surfers Fundraiser!!

Saturday night we had a big Christian Surfers fundraiser auction! We had a goal of raising $10,000 to help support Christian Surfers Queensland as a whole and also some other projects. 

Naomi & I in the kitchen. We served tapas-appetizers/hors' de overs! 

One of the things the auction benefited was a trip to the Philippines. Compassion is teaming up with Christian Surfers and the Australian Christian Channel(ACC) to hopefully make a documentary about the trip. There are 4 groms from Coolum going on the trip with Jordy Merry (his dad works for Compassion!), Mr. Merry & some crew from the (ACC). We will upload their promo video soon!

Some serious bidders! 

The evening ended with a very exciting auction item. Aaron's dreads!! One by one we cut them and sold them. He raised over $500!! Ashlee got to do the "honors"!!

 Since Aaron raised so much money by cutting his dreads, we all decided that for each $100 raised above our goal he must keep one big dreaddy for 1 month! He set the limit of a max of 2 months! We did it, so here is the lock he has to keep till December!! haha

We met our goal and feel complete blessed and blown away by God!