Joy of Christmas from a Boaz Mentor

Where is the JOY of Christmas!


Christmas for me is a wonderful time of year! I know it is not a happy time for everyone but hope and pray that those people, they will eventually find joy in Christmas. I personally, have gone through a period in my life where I did not look forward to Christmas. I lost my mother to Cancer on December 15th, 1984. That year and for a few years to follow Christmas was a sad time.


However, I’m sure we all can remember the thrill of Christmas as a child! All the lights, excitement and the anticipation of what Santa was going to bring to us. I am now a grand-mother of five (I’m counting the one due in January) but when I was a child,( and even when my children were small) things were much different than what they are now. As a child it was an adventure for us to go to town with Mum and Dad to get the groceries. I don’t think I can remember eating out in a restaurant as a child but do remember someone bringing store cooked pizza to our home one time and how excited I was and how extravagant it was. We did not receive gifts/treats year round; they usually only came on our birthdays and at Christmas. And OH! How thrilling it made Christmas seem! Now, as a society, when we want something, a lot of US (me included), go out and get it. When Christmas rolls around I think most of us struggle with what we will buy for gifts for family and children because they ‘have everything’! And there is such a huge variety of toys, etc., out there now that many children seem to want everything because they can’t make up their minds what they want. And because of that, it takes away a lot of the joy of giving.


Well this year we, my husband Howard and I have had some of the joy put back into our Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, with the exception of when my mother passing away near Christmas, I have and will always love Christmas. I love buying for my children and grand-children but when they already have so much and you are on a budget, it is hard.


However, a few months ago I had lunch with our Youth Pastor, Scott Wood at Morning Gate Church as I had expressed an interest in helping out with the youth. By the time our lunch was over, we both agreed
that I probably would be a ‘better fit’ for Boaz Ministries, a Ministry that Scott had founded. 


I started helping out on Friday nights with a group of local youth and some of their parents. Through the rapport that Scott had built with the parents of these youth, he and some of those parents decided that they would like to see some of these children mentored. Scott then asked to meet with Howard and I and asked us if we would be interested in mentoring one of these youth. After a brief time of thought and pray we called Scott and told him yes. We have committed to spending 90 minutes a week with our mentee, 8 year old Tyisha. We have been out about ½ dozen times now and what a new outlook it gives you. She is a vibrant, sociable child who is very easy to love. She goes between calling us Howard and Brenda to Grampie and Grammie, which we are thrilled with. She is quick to correct us if she knows we are wrong but does it in a very great way. And her smile would win anyone’s heart. She is thrilled to have not only one mentor but two and has on occasion bragged to her sister, Mikayla, that she has ‘two of them’. And now as Christmas approaches it has put the thrill back into my Christmas because we are able to share with Maria and her children, some of what we have been blessed with. I know Howard has noticed more excitement in me this year. 


I am so thankful for being a part of Boaz Ministries and even more thankful that Maria has allowed us to become part of her extended family. We are, truly loving the time with Ty and it is touching our hearts in ways that we could never have imagined. It is one thing to know that there is a need out there and give to it, but it is sooooooo much more rewarding to actually become a part of a ministry such as this. Maria and her family may feel that we are blessing them but she will never know truly, how much this is blessing us. Thank you Boaz Ministries and Thank you Maria for allowing us to be a part of this. The one part of this journey that I do want to mention is this: Howard and I have felt for a long time that, as much as we know we would enjoy going on a Mission Trip to some foreign country, that our mission field was here in ‘our own back yard’. And we feel that through God’s direction it has brought us to Boaz Ministries. We are truly thankful and are so happy that His JOY (Jesus Others You) is in us this Christmas.

Bake Sale

Our good friends at the Goody Shop have partnered with Boaz 


Ministries again this year for our 3rd annual Christmas bake 


sale. 


We have 100 packages of Christmas baking and we are selling them 


for $8 each. You can buy them for yourself or you can make a 


donation to us for a family in need and we will deliver the


Christmas baking to them. Either way, you help support Boaz!

Seasons of change

November has come and gone for another year. It was a great November for a number of reasons, here are my top 3 reasons:
1. I got to stash my Movember stache. I loved growing it for awareness of prostate cancer, but am having to get rid of the hideousness of a moustache.

2. My favorite hockey team the Boston Bruins, never lost a game in regulation. That's right they were 12-0-1!

3. God worked a miracle in the month of November to provide us with a place to do our ministry from. You can read the previous blogs to see how that all happened.

Now the month of December is upon us. For some this is an exciting time, for others it is a time of dread. I have to confess that I love what Christmas represents but I don't enjoy the other trappings of it.


There are lots of gifts you can give people for Christmas. I want to present a gift idea that can make a difference. What if you were to make a donation to our ministry in the name of someone on your shopping list.  For the person who seems to have everything why not give them something that they have never had before and one that can make them very happy. Remember it is much more blessed to give than receive.


The seasons change and we know that is going to happen at certain times. How about changing someones life when they least expect it. You can make a difference and that can give you Christmas joy this season!


If you would like to bless this ministry that blesses others, make a donation on paypal using the link here, or contact us at boazlighthouse@gmail.com and we will give you the information you need.


GO BRUINS!

Home to run Boaz

Update:

God is good. We now have the keys to the duplex on Hawkins St. where the Hawkins Neville Tenants Assoc. operates from. After two meetings with the director and the board of directors for their association, they felt they should partner with us to deliver what we have been doing to their community.

We will be operating our hot meal program on Mondays and Thursdays beginning next Thursday. We have access to the center from 2-7 each of those days. In the afternoons we can offer our tutoring, or teach moms to cook or do counseling or book studies or whatever we desire to do. We will then serve the food from 4:30-6:30 ish.

We have been given their blessing and permission to rearrange the building to suit our needs as we will be using the building more than they do. The cost to us is $0, that's right we have no power bill, phone bill, mortgage or rent payment. I suggested that once a month we could make a donation to their tenants association.  They were ecstatic!

More details to come but we now have a place to operate from indoors and we will be there beginning Dec 1st, the same date we would have had the home for on Neville. But we do not have all the overhead. Praise the Lord!!!

Scott

Teaching moments

I always love when God gives us moments in our lives that are clearly teaching moments. I have had many of those over the last number of days, and I want to share one of those right now.

As we have been praying over the purchase of the house over the last number of weeks, I have been very careful to pray a certain way. My prayer has been, "God I want your will to be done in this situation. I would rather have your will done than mine because I know your will is much greater." This is not a prayer showing a lack of faith, this is a prayer full of faith acknowledging that He is able to do best. He knows what is best! He is so good!


I have been thinking even more about how we come to God. We come to God, and maybe pray for patience! So He gives us opportunities to stretch our patience and we get mad at him or others. We ask for more faith in life, so He puts us in places where we have to stretch our faith, sometimes radically and we get angry with him for not answering our prayers a certain way.


When I got the phone call telling me that the house was not going to be available to us anymore, my first thought was, thank you God. Not that it wouldn't have been nice to have that house in that location but because He answered our prayer very specifically. It was the right answer, maybe it wasn't what I would have wanted but it is what He showed us in response to our prayer.


Maybe you are going through a situation in your life where you are asking God for direction. Can I suggest that you cast all your burdens on Him and ask Him to work out His perfect will for that situation. He says that we are to cast all our cares on Him, because He cares for us." He really does care, sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it is no and sometimes it is not now. Whatever the answer is, the reality is He cares and He has what is best in mind, even when it is not what we would choose.


Thoughts...

Answer on house

As many of you have been observing and reading, our ministry put in a bid on a house in the area where we do much of our ministry on the Northside of the city. We had settled on a price and had a written agreement in place to purchase.


Early in the week we had a home inspection done and it turned up a number of problems that greatly effected the value of the house. It turned out that we would need to spend close to 10,000 to fix the issue. We then offered a new amount today, $7500 less than the original offer. Our offer was rejected and the whole deal was scrapped as the seller sold the home to someone else.


I appreciate all your prayers in this matter. I am not disappointed as my prayer has been all along that God's will would be accomplished and that if this was not for us, then He would clearly show us. I believe we got our answer.


We will press forward in our work there and other areas and trust that in His timing we will have exactly what we need at the right price.


God is good and I trust Him. He is the leader of this ministry and He is in control!

Christmas giving

Want to send a Christmas gift to someone?




 How about making a donation to Boaz in the name of that person? Lots of people already 


have lots of stuff, so maybe this would be a great time to give them something that truly makes a 


difference. We would love to make that happen for you and you could change the lives of others


 at the same time. We will send the card to them from our ministry and send the tax receipt to 


you for your donation! You can make that donation right here on the paypal link.




We also now have wristbands you can buy for people at $5.00, they look awesome and say 


"James 1:27" on one side and "Boaz" on the other.