Life @ Montrose, May 5, 2010

ADVENTIST HERITAGE PRAYER MEETING SERIES
The class is now in its fourth week but it is not too late to join us for inspirational stories from our Adventist past. So far we've covered the background and rise of the Adventist movement, the life and work of William Miller, and now we will look at the doctrinal developments that shaped our church.

Next week, on Thursday May 13, our church is sponsoring a Habitat build project on the north side of town. To sign up please contact Tavia Wilson (417-4886 or taviawilson89@yahoo.com). Please come prepared to work hard and make a difference in our community.

WESTERN SLOPE CAMP MEETING
This summer's western slope camp meeting will be held from Thursday evening, June 3rd, through all-day Sabbath, June 5th at Spring Creek Adventist School. The meetings will begin with a keynote by our conference president, Elder Gary Thurber, on Thursday evening. On Friday there will be seminars and presentations by our two featured speakers for the weekend, Elder Jim Nix, director of the Ellen G. White Estate, and Gary Gibbs, the associate director of The Hope Channel. Andrea Jacobsen, a highly desired youth speaker from Andrews University, will be with the youth in the youth tent. The ABC will also be coming out and children's programs are being planned. Please plan to save the date!

One of the highlights for me this past week was to be able to go with our young people, in two separate groups for the lower and upper graders, to Grand Junction to participate in the Messiah Lutheran Church's western slope track and field event. It was a great, Christian event with lots of Christian young people, including quite a few homeschoolers who participated. On Thursday we were going to go up but by the time I made it up to Grand Junction the event had been cancelled due to weather. We made another try on Friday with the upper graders. It was still cold, but a fun time was had by all. Then on Monday we went up with the lower graders. This time I got drafted on the running long jump. I had fun meeting lots of Christian young people, their teachers along with parents, for a really neat day. Four of our young people won ribbons for their hard work. We also had three Adventist schools who came and participated with us.

Sabbath was a special day because I was able to go up early in the morning and lead out in an early morning church service in Gunnison. I always love going up there--not the least of which is because the drive is so relaxing and beautiful, and of course because they are always so friendly and welcoming. I don't think we need to continue to do more to support our Gunnison church family and now that it is warmer I'm looking forward to being able to have regular church services again. I made it back in time to introduce our special guest speaker, Elder Roscoe Howard, president of the Mid-America Union, who preached a powerful, Spirit-filled message entitled "Running on Empty." In case you missed it, you can download the sermon from our church web site at: http://www.montrosesda.org/audio/2010/05/running-on-empty.html (thanks to Scott Nelson for keeping our church web site current!). I especially appreciated his call at the end when we had virtually the entire church come forward in a service of recommitment.

On Sunday morning a real highlight for me was participating in a church leadership brunch retreat at Alice Carpenter's home (who I can tell you certainly has the gift of hospitality!). We've worked on a rough draft of our mission statement:

"Our mission as the Montrose Seventh-day Adventist Church is to lovingly lead people to become disciples of Jesus Christ."

"We see to accomplish this through: