Fellow Hokies and friends of [nlcf],
As I was sitting in our student Leadership Community last Monday night, hearing all of the stories about the student’s spring break missions trips to Honduras, Dominican Republic, and New Orleans, my heart was encouraged, full of hope, and renewed with vigor to do the fund-raising work that God has me to do with [nlcf].
Story after story opened my eyes ever more to the amount of poverty and loss people are faced with around the world. I saw how it affected the students, and I saw the impact they had on the communities they were helping. To know that we have already sent over 130 students this year-to-date on short-term missions to help the less privileged made me proud—already breaking our number of missions workers sent in 2006.
I was telling Laurie (my wife) yesterday that this is the kind of church I always want to be a part of—a missional church. These students could have done other things during their break—whether it was to work or go somewhere warm, sunny, and relaxing for spring break. The students sacrificed making money for themselves, and instead raised money to do the work voluntarily. They saw something they were called to that was greater than a nice tan. They were exposed to the most extreme experiences of poverty that I’ve ever heard in our church. We hope to have some of those stories to share with you in the near future.
To update you with a few other highlights going on in [nlcf]:
- We have just updated our website, www.nlcf.net, so take some time to check out the snazzy web-work by web engineer Dave Williams.
- Matt Rogers, a pastor of [nlcf], has just landed an opportunity to publish his book approved by Inter Varsity Press- a well known and established publishing company.
- We’ve just finished the first few weeks of launching the community congregation side of [nlcf] which is currently meeting in the Newman Community on campus. We’ve seen a strong leadership core team and committed congregation of over 60 people this past month, and things are going very well.
- And to top things off we have seen just over $70,000 in pledges made towards the [nlcf] foundation. All of you have played an integral part in making this foundation work, and we appreciate your help in every way financially, prayerfully, and relationally. Please continue to pray for us as we still have a long way to go with raising funds and the downtown building process.
Please drop a line when you get the chance to keep in touch, and let us know if any of contact information has changed to stay in the loop. Take care and God bless!
Chris Dorsey