Our Little Junior Leader is Heading to Washington!

Meet Chloe: She is fun loving, caring, tenderhearted, sensitive, and maybe a little dramatic.  

 She's not the bold, obvious, in your face kind of leader.  No, Chloe is more the quiet, gentle, serving kind of leader.  She has always been sensitive to the needs of others, ready to lend a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or even a gentle speech of the hard truth when people need to hear it.

She has always stepped up to the plate to serve at school, church, and (most of the time) at home, too.  She served as treasurer on her 6th grade student council, thrived in drama her 5th and 6th grade years, and began a new journey of playing the flute in the 6th grade band.  She received the Citizenship Award her 6th grade year, an honor bestowed to the student who exhibited consistent leadership and service to her fellow classmates and teachers throughout the year.  This year, Chloe is in the flag crew, band, and is getting ready for tryouts for basketball.  In church, she has served for years as a greeter, always meeting visitors and regular attenders with a bright smile and happy conversation.  She also helps in the children's classes and on the praise team.

It was a great honor to receive a letter in the mail, along with enrollment forms from Envision telling us that Chloe had been nominated by one of her teachers to be a part of the 2017 Junior National Leaders Conference!  She will have the opportunity to join other middle school students from all over the country for a week of leadership education in Washington D.C.  While the trip itself is a huge honor, it also has a very large price tag.  Chloe and I are working on a few ideas for how she can be a part of raising the funds, she will also be working to earn money for the trip.  If you would like to help Chloe get to Washington, please watch for different opportunities as we provide them.  In the mean time, if you are able to simply donate to her fund, please use the "donate" button provided below or on the sidebar.  We will have the exact figure when we launch our first fund raiser, but the need is over $3,000.  Thank you in advance for showing an interest in this awesome opportunity for our baby and thank you for your continued prayers and support for our family!

 

Happy Anniversary!

Can you believe that it's already been a year since we began this new journey?!  At this time last year, we were visiting Warsaw, IN for Josh to candidate to be the new Pastor of Warsaw Baptist Church.  We were called and began our new ministry on April 1, 2014.  We sent out a few prayer letters last year to several hundred of our closest friends and family, but as we dove headlong into ministry and life those letters have fallen by the wayside.  Please accept our apologies for this negligence!  We are working on a new letter, but here's a brief update!

So much has happened since we moved, it's hard to know what all to share!  The kids are all doing well.  They are all making friends in school and in the neighborhood.  Peter is starting to choose his High School schedule for next year, making decisions on what extra curricular activities he wants to do as well.  While he plans for high school, Bethany had her first middle school meeting where we learned about all the changes that will occur from 6th to 7th grade.  She has already decided that she wants to try some art classes and robotics during her Jr. High years as electives, in addition to sports and band.  She also plans on taking French as her exploring languages course.  Chloe has had a lot of fun this year in the drama club.  She has been staying after school for drama club once a week all year and has a big production coming up soon where she will be playing a jester!  We are extremely happy with the public school system down here.  There are some great opportunities for our children.  Peter has been taking a high school math class this year, so he will already have that out of the way for when he enters 9th grade.

We added three new members to our family last year.  Lacie, Night, and Oreo have brought an added level of joy and responsibility for our children.  The kids have done a great job of taking care of them and the animals help to lift their spirits when they get homesick.  We had a bit of a scare with Lacie a couple months ago when she broke her front leg playing on the icy deck stairs with Night.  God was so good to lead us to a vet that gave us a great deal and took very good care of her!  She is now completely healed and only has a tiny limp when she's tired.  They sure do keep life fun!

Those who know us well, know that we are all VERY relational people in this family.  None of us even know what it's like to be an introvert, and so friendships have always been so important to all of us.  It's awesome how God knows the tiniest detail of our lives and works everything in His perfect timing.  About the same time we were beginning our ministry, God was leading another family to a church plant about 30 minutes south of us.  After God did some working, our church is now sponsoring a church plant and we have become great friends with Jacob and Kassie.  They have 5 young children who are SO loved by our kids.  He's also brought several other pastors and pastor wives into our life who have been amazing counselors, mentors, and friends over this last year. As if all that wasn't enough, God also gave us amazing neighbors to share campfires and cookouts with! We are so overwhelmed at how good God is to us, and what a blessing He has given to us in these friendships!

The ministry down here is going fairly well.   Every day, Josh and I meet new people in the community who have either never heard about the love of Jesus, or who have walked away from His love.  We get to share the gospel with someone almost every single day!  I wish we could say that it hasn't been without it's challenges.  When Josh was ordained, a pastor friend of ours warned us to be on guard because there's now a target on our back for the enemy.  He was not exaggerating!  Even in the midst of attacks, we are reassured by God that He has called us and He will see us through.   The church hasn't grown a lot numerically, but we have seen major spiritual growth in many of it's members.  We've had several salvations, baptisms, a marriage, new ministries, one-on-one discipleship, and great Bible study participation over the last year.  There have been bumps in the road, but we have seen that God is up to something in Warsaw, IN!  

How you can pray:

1.  Pray for a revival at Warsaw Baptist Church.  That God would cast out any strongholds and break down any barriers that are keeping His truth from going forth.

2.  Pray for a spiritual awakening in Warsaw, IN.  Pray for God to send laborers who would work in the field with us.  Pray for us to take every opportunity to show the love of God to those around us and for people to experience the hope of the Gospel.

3.  Pray for Valley Harvest Church in Akron, IN and Pastor Jacob and Kassie Wysong

4.  Pray for protection, purpose, and contentment for our children in their new environments.

5.  Pray for God's continued provision and balance as we juggle family, jobs, and ministry.  A specific need we have currently is a second family vehicle.

Thank you all for your love and support!  We have been so encouraged by those friends who have come to visit us and feel blessed to know so many are back home praying for us.  We will hopefully have a new letter ready to go out soon for those who told us they want one.  If you'd like to receive our future email newsletters, please send an email to us at goepfrichfamily@gmail.com and let us know!

The Move: Finding Our Normal

Our move to Warsaw is complete!  We are moved in, unpacked, settled, and working to find our new normal.  The girls have found several kids in the neighborhood their age, but they are all boys.  Peter rides his bike all over our surrounding neighborhoods and hasn't seemed to find anyone his age nearby.  They go back to school on August 12, so we pray every day that God would bring them each a best friend that shares their love for Christ.  It's so strange that life is so different when we only moved an hour south!  It's a completely different world in Warsaw and we absolutely love it down here!  We are preparing another newsletter to send out that will update you on prayer requests, praises, and things God is doing down here this summer.  If you want to receive our newsletter, please send us your address to goepfrichfamily@gmail.com and we will add you!

Here are some pics of our new home and our family since the move.  Enjoy!  Thank you all for your continued prayers!

A Celebration of Manhood

Today marked a very important day in our family and the life of our oldest son, Peter.  Peter is turning 13 years old.  This day has been being planned since the day of Peter's birth.  The ceremony today was a culmination of a two year process that Peter has been going through with his father as he begins his journey into manhood.  He has been learning not just what it means to be a man, but what it means to be a godly man of strong integrity and character.  Peter met with four other men of his choosing who spoke the Word of God into his life and encouraged him to love the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

1 Corinthians 13:11 says "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child;  but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Today, Peter began his journey into manhood.  He will continue to learn from the loving guidance of his father what it means to be a man and to put away childish things.  We are so proud of the young man he already is, and we know that God is going to use this man in mighty, mighty ways!

Thank you to everyone who came to encourage Peter and celebrate with us as he embarks on this new stage of life!

The service began with a blessing from mama.  I publicly took a step back from the coddling/nurturing stage of my life as mom.  As Peter grows into the man God wants him to be, it will be dad who coaches him through.  The hardest thing for a mom to do is to allow her son to be independent from her, but it is necessary for him to be a man of character, strength, and independence.  His future wife will thank me ;)

Peter chose these four men to pour God's truth into his life.  John Sowers spoke on loving God with your heart.  Daniel Goepfrich spoke on the mind.  Van Gurley spoke about loving God with your strength including resources and purity.  Rhett Keiser spoke to him about the soul and sharing his faith.  We could not ask for better mentors for our son.  The respect he has for each of these men will cause him to remember their words as he grows up in the Lord.

Peter's best friend, Eli Smith stood up with him committing to be his "Jonathan".  He agreed to call out sin in Peter's life, challenge him to grow in his walk with the Lord, and do whatever necessary to keep him on the right path.  Peter agree'd to accept this kind of accountability in his life.

Peter was up and down throughout the entire service.  He chose a passage from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, and a life verse.  He was to share the passages and explain why he chose them and what they mean to him.  His Old Testament choice was 1 Samuel 24 because he wants to be as strong as David when he could have killed Saul but respected him instead.  He chose Luke 4:1-14 because he wants to know God's word so much that he can withstand temptation.  His life verse is Job 2:3 because, like Job, he wants to be a blameless man who fears God and shuns evil.  He wants to have integrity even when he doesn't know what God is doing in his life.  He shared several other reasons for each of these as well as sharing one nugget that he learned from each of the four men that he met with.  He did a fantastic job.  He has a great gift at public speaking!

The ceremony ended with a charge from Grandpa Goepfrich to love God and to represent the name of Jesus with great care and obedience.  

From us, Peter received a Ryrie study Bible in the NASB version.  He also received his own framed copy of our family crest and creed.  The items of our creed, as taken from scripture, are Honor, Respect, Courage, Loyalty, Humility, Patience, and Self-Control.  

Praise God for the strong Christian heritage and legacy in the Goepfrich family!

We Have a Church!!

We want to thank everyone who has been praying about our journey to find a church.  It has only been just one year since Josh was formally ordained as a pastor in March of 2013.  Since then, we have been on a roller coaster of seeking the right church that God would have Josh to lead.  Earlier this year, several churches began to actively pursue Josh at the same time from all over the country.  One of those churches was Warsaw Baptist Church in Warsaw, IN.  Josh met with a couple leaders from the church and when he came home I knew that he had been given a burden for this church already.  So, after several meetings and a whole lot of prayer, we all went to Warsaw Baptist on March 2 where Josh preached and formally candidated. We are very happy to report, that on March 9, the church voted unanimously for Josh to be their pastor!  Praise God for the work He is doing in the church and in us!

This is a unique opportunity for our family.  Warsaw Baptist is a small church, with just about 14 members who are ready to bring the gospel to their community. After meeting with the church family last Sunday, it is evident that they love Jesus with their whole hearts and love others more than themselves.  We are all so very excited to grow with this church! Our goal has always been to evangelize the lost and lead the saints to a deeper walk with the Lord.  Even though this church has been around since the 80's, we are coming into a church re-plant situation.  A huge blessing God has given us in this plant, is that we are starting with a physical building and a core of amazing individuals who are committed to making Jesus their life center and, as stated earlier, spreading the gospel in their community!  This is very exciting to us!!

Because of the nature of this call, we are going to need partners in ministry to stand with us. For all of our prayer warriors out there, we have a few immediate needs.  We know that God has called us and He will equip us and provide every need!  Please partner with us as we pray for a house in Warsaw.  We would like to be moved to Warsaw no later than August 1, 2014 so that we have time to settle before the kids start school in the fall.  It's important to us to move there, so that we can begin to build relationships with those in the church and the community.  The second thing we are praying for is a family vehicle for Josh to drive. Currently, he has a single passenger truck that has been a huge blessing from God, but is very difficult when he drives with all three kids in one seat.  Also, as he commutes to Warsaw for now, something with better gas mileage will help tremendously.  Last, but overarching everything, is that God would provide the finances necessary to pay for said house and vehicle as well as living expenses.    He has been faithful to provide for every single one of our needs throughout our lives and we continue to expect Him to meet our needs because He has promised to do so in His way and His timing.  We have seen Him work in miraculous ways, in part because of the prayers of friends and family and in part because His children act upon prompting from the Spirit.  Praying for others allows us to have a part in the work God does in their lives, and we appreciate all of those who partner with us in this way! Every soul we reach with the gospel of Christ can be traced back to your prayers!  Thank you for being a part of what God is doing in Warsaw!

In His Service,
Josh and Melissa
Peter, Bethany, and Chloe

We Got Spirit!

This week is "spirit week" at Community Baptist Christian School, and all the kids dressed up in crazy ways all week long to show their Cougar spirit for the upcoming basketball state tournament this weekend.  I am generally not very good at the creative thing when it comes to costumes and ideas.  Give me a head of hair and I can do anything!  Hand me some photo's and a scrapbook and a few stickers and I'm good to go!  But, ask me to figure out how to turn my 13 year old son into Crush from Finding Nemo, and I am completely lost.  If I weren't so busy, I might have enlisted the help of someone who is creative, but we did what we could and had fun with what we had available.  Tomorrow they will send the CBCS Cougars basketball team off to state!  What a fun week!

Day 1 - Fashion Disaster

Day 2 - Color Theme

Day 3 - Disney Characters
Peter - "Crush from Finding Nemo"
Bethany - "Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty"
Chloe - "The Working Cinderella"

Day 4 - Blue/Gold Day

Prayer Update

Hello friends!  Just wanted to stop by and request our prayer warriors to be in continued prayer for direction as God leads us to the church He has for Josh to shepherd.  He has been actively seeking a church for a while now and we have looked at many that seem perfect for Josh's giftedness and calling.  Please pray for the people leading the search committee's, that they would have discernment and clarity to follow God's leading, as well as strength to get through the very long process of searching for a pastor.  Please pray for the people at the church that God is preparing for us.  Pray that God would give them patience in the waiting for a new pastor and continued spiritual growth.  Pray that the spirit works in the hearts of the unsaved in the community there, that they would be ripe for the harvest when God calls us to it.  Also, pray for us as we patiently wait on God's timing.  Pray that we would have discernment as well to know which church God would have us go to.  Thank you all for your continued support, love, and prayers!  God is at work all around us, and we are grateful to be a part of it!