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. 

Mentors and mentees

I wanted to invite you into our mentoring ministry and help you understand the power of mentoring. This is the report from one of our mentors:

Today my mentee and I had our first official mentor hang out time! I had called earlier this week to schedule the time and what we were planning on doing and called to confirm the night before. So today, November 16th I picked her up at her home. We went to the clay cafe and painted some pretty rad pottery! I thought clay cafe was a good fit for our first hang out session. It was relaxed and made it so we didn't have to focus solely on the conversation, it was a good setting. She tends to be pretty quiet in groups with a lot of people around but as soon as she had the opportunity to talk we had some great conversations!It also gave her the chance to ask me all about myself. It was fun, she's a sweet girl! 

One thing she talked a lot about was school and some of the different work she was doing. She told me about a story that she had written and received an A+ for! After we were done painting we went back to her home and it was about 8:00. I walked her in and wanted to speak with her mom for a minute about next week and to tell her about our time together. Once inside my mentee brought her creative writing to me and let me read it, and then she showed me more of her schoolwork that she had done well on and it was so sweet to see how proud she was and be able to encourage her and build her up! I stayed at their home for about a half an hour, this was a good opportunity for me to talk to her mom more and let her get to know me! I had a great time and I really love this family and can't wait to get to hang out with my mentee more! 

Thanks for blessing me and allowing me to be a part of this ministry!


We would love to have you invest your resources in Boaz. Right now we have 12 kids involved in the mentoring with more waiting on mentees!

Now at 55%

Update:


We are making progress on raising the needed funds to purchase the home we feel we are being led to in our ministry. We now have less than 48 hours to get the funds raised.
As of right now we have a commitment for 55% of the needed amount. Please join us in praying for this miracle or get involved by making a donation. It will be a great investment in the lives of people.

Important update...praying for a miracle

My name is Scott Wood and I am the founder and director of Boaz Lighthouse International Ministries, Inc, (Boaz) Boaz started as a result of a vision from God and a prophetic word spoken over me. we are a registered charity in Canada, receiving our status in April 2011.

We have been active in minsitry reaching out to hurting teens and families for over two years. This past June we felt led by God to begin an outreach in one of the underprivileged areas of our city the Hawkins/Neville St location. There are many hurting, impoverished and hungry people who we have come to love. We have been feeding close to 150 people each week for almost three months, have purchased school supplies for 30 children, provide tutoring for kids and within the last week have launched our mentoring ministry to 14 children/teens in the Neville /Hawkins location.

Winter is quickly approaching and up to this point we have been doing all of our ministry outside in a community park on Neville St. we began to pray about purchasing a home in the area, and a home became available right across from the park we use. We felt led to make an offer on the home and we have a written agreement from the homeowner to sell us the home for the price of $102,500. We have until the 18th, this Friday to show that we have the financing in place.

Boaz Ministry needs people who will commit to funding over the next few years and especially needs some one time donations right away. We have one family already committing to $750/month for 5 years and will also provide an up front donation of $5000. We have another church seriously praying about committing $10,000 right away. Please consider partnering with us to make a difference in the lives of this community. God is already doing amazing things and we know He has great things planned for us in this house! All donations receive a tax receipt from the ministry!

Thank you,

Pastor Scott

Boaz Lighthouse International Ministries, Inc

The final push...needing a miracle

Our ministry has been very active in making a hands on difference in an area of our city called Neville/Hawkins. We  feed up to 150 people/week, provided schools supplies for kids, deliver groceries to families, tutor children, counsel families and recently started a mentoring program with 14  amazing kids.


The reality for us is that almost all of this has taken place in a park on Neville St. The weather is making it much more difficult to operate outside. To this end we found a home to purchase on the same street. We made an offer on the home and after some back and forth we settled on a price. Our offer was conditional on 4 things: 1) home inspection being completed (done) 2. Insurance in place ( will be done by today) 3. Zoning changed (in process) and 4. Proof of financing (need your help)


I started this ministry by faith and God has been faithful. We know that He uses people to accomplish His purposes and we know that this is one of His purposes. We are looking for people/families that would commit to monthly support over the next five years or to a one time gift. We already have  two commitments so we are praying for many moremore before Friday when we reach our deadline.


If you may be interested in helping us out to deliver quality hands on ministry to those in need, please email me at boazlighthouse@gmail.com.


To find out more about what we have been doing read a few of the other blog entries as well. I pray that you will consider helping us help others.