Long Hollow White House Campus Blog

Part Dos!  In this edition of the blog, we’ll look at the beautiful village of Ventilla where hiking takes a while as every turn makes you stop to whistle at the beauty of another sweeping view of mountains, valleys and sky.

In this first picture you can see two things, one is an example of the views that surrounded us constantly.  Crazy right?  The other is our fearless leader, Mr. Terry Parks.  If you don’t know his name now, you will in Heaven cause he’s going to be really important. 

After going on a similar trip to Honduras several years ago, Terry left his job as an architect for a successful firm in northern Louisiana to lead these trips full time.  Though a father and husband he has chosen to spend his days either raising support to go on trips, organizing teams or actually out on the field.  Throughout the trip, we stood in awe of this humble servant.  At the end of the trip before we left Ventilla to head to Ocotal and on to a hotel, I jokingly suggested we cut out the free day and hit another village.  It was obviously a joke as we were all dying and suddenly Terry looks up and excitedly says, “I’m in.”  To think that God would honor Terry’s sacrifices by making him such a joyful servant, so ready to fight for the Kingdom, made us feel like small potatoes indeed.

And here’s Ventilla!  This is us at the school we stayed and showed the film.  Here you see the soccer field and the extreme version they played.  Not only did they play barefooted or in rain boots, they played dodging playground A-frames, a shed, and two or three foot rocks.  Needless to say, we held off.

Here’s a shot of some of the wildlife in the area.  I think this monster is called a Madagascar and yes those are standard size bricks.  After the picture someone killed the bug and before we knew it one of the locals had taken it away.  Apparently they eat these bugs and who can blame them?  It looks like a great source of protein.

Here’s the picture that should get you excited.  This picture best captures the blessing of being there.  In this photo, Alex (the man with the longer hair who the kids are facing) is sharing the gospel with several children and they are responding!  Who knows how much the little one’s understood or if they really were giving themselves to the Lord, but even just to see the excitement with which they listened and tried to grasp Alex’s words was a loud testimony to the grace of God. 

Lastly, I wanted to show you this shot of a cross situated at the top of a volcano that overlooks the capital city of Managua.  On the last day as we finished up our trip and began the process of flying back and re-acclimating ourselves, we praised God.  We celebrated because God is working in the backwards country of Nicaragua and He decided to use us!  God used us to continue His work of redemption in the midst of such a dark city and country.  I count myself honored to have the privilege to sacrifice my time and comfort to see His salvation come.  Here’s the final count:

El Coco - 1st night - around 300 attended with 11 (adults and kids) accepting Christ.  2nd night - over 600 attended with 12 kids accepting Christ, one lady advised she would open her home for a church plant

Ventilla - 1st night - 130 attended with 8 adults accepting Christ.  2nd day/night - 29 kids accepted Christ when Alex used the Evangi-cube, around 300 at the movie that night with no one accepting Christ

Hey everybody!  I wanted to put together a picture heavy post as a semi-guided tour of our Nicaragua mission trip.  The goal of this post is to encourage you about missions around the world and to thank you for your prayers on the team’s behalf and making everything run so smoothly while we were gone! 

This first picture is an introduction of the team.  We had 10 Americans (Gringos to the locals) travel down to hike up into the mountains.  The two guys in the front who don’t look like their from Middle Tennessee are in fact Nicaraguan Pastors who accompanied us as guides, translators, and as spiritual leaders.  We are standing in front of First Baptist in Ocotal.  Pretty cool.

In this picture, you can see some of the locals at the first village we visited, El Coco.  We are on the Soccer/Baseball field in the village, a pretty nice one too.  They are gathered facing some of our team playing some game with the younger El Coco children.  This picture also expresses our value in a place where only one of our team members spoke Spanish.  We were a spectacle.  The curiosity that 10 Americans draw in the severely rural Nicaraguan town can be a huge tool. 

And we used that tool to draw folks to the movie.  All day we would do publicity for the Pelicula Americano (American movie) to be played at 6:30, which was about when the sun would set.  In El Coco, a big village for the area, we had 100s of folks turn up to watch the film.  Seriously.  The movies we showed were evangelistic and we showed one each of the nights we were there.  As we went to two different villages, we watched the same two movies in each village.  I wasn’t particularly excited about re-watching the movies but couldn’t complain when I found out the missionary had watched the other movie called Last Flight Out litterally over 100 times.  Probably a world record. 

At the end of the film, Alex Rodriguez, the other handsome fella in the green shirt seen in the first picture, would give an invitation and we watched all the crazy junk we had gone through, all of our discomfort and anxiety, washed away in a beautiful flow of God’s grace.  Over the course of the trip we saw 60 Nicaraguans come forward.  In El Coco, we saw 23.

This is a picture to show you a little of the Village life.  You can see two different homes in the background and this fella crusin’ the strip.  A bit of a show off really.  The villagers would have these animals, and more, just walking around everywhere.  The bulls were pretty big, but nobody seemed to scared of them so we acted tough too.

 I’ve realized that this trip is a little too big for one post.  You’ll have to tune in next week for Bueno Vista de Ventilla, the Village of Beautiful Views, the second part of our Nicaraguan adventure.

Long awaited and heartily anticipated, the White House Campus Blog is back and ready for action!  Stay tuned in the weeks and months ahead to hear my heart and thoughts as I attempt to steer this ship and lead this family.

That quote sends shivers down my spine, what could possibly be worse than being sticky?!?  This post has a couple of announcements for the little ones.

• Friend Day   Sunday October 26 is Friend Day!  Invite a friend and wear your favorite team jersey, unless it’s not Tennessee.  In that case you can donate it to third world countries.
• Celebration Service!!!   We will have a celebration service for all children who would like to be baptized on Sunday October 26 at either 9:30 or 11:00 service.  We would like to have as many of our kids participate in this special service as possible.  if your child is ready to be baptized at the celebration service, please email Jason.Underhill@LongHollow.com or call 824-4006.
• Fall Festival!!!   As we draw close to the end of the month, we want you to know about the Fall Festival that the church will be putting on at the Hendersonville campus.  Its a night of jumps, games, food and candy.  A healthy alternative to some of the other October 31 activities out there.  It will run from 5-8 and all are welcome!

I’ll leave you with this quote:  There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.  ~Frank A. Clark

That’s what our children’s ministry is all about, empowering parents to evangelize to their little ones as effectively as possible.  May these events and the tireless efforts of our nearly divine children’s workers be of much good to you and your family!!!

Ben

Hankies in hand, we sidle up to the last week in our small groups fair.  If you haven’t gotten into a group, this is the single best way for you to meet the leaders of the different groups and find out where you will fit in most comfortably.  I strongly encourage any of our small groups, they wouldn’t be groups otherwise, but there is definitely a bit of an art to picking the right one.  Make sure you stop by and check it out and meet these fine folks.

And as for the folks who are already in a small group, here are some words from our Small Groups Pastor, Terry Hadaway:

“Trailblazers. That’s the word that comes to mind when I think about the Small Groups in White House. It seems like just yesterday we were plotting a strategy for making groups work in White House and, in a couple of days, we will have approximately 90 new small groups meeting all over the area. So much of what is happening with new groups today was piloted with many of you. You should feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that your commitment to make groups happen proved to us that groups work. As a result, we will see about 600 new adults in Bible study this week! You are a testimony to the fact that life change happens in Small Groups. Just think about what God is going to do in and through the lives of people who are following your example. It is definitely a God thing!”

Ben

Here’s a few announcements from the Alan Tucker who is our volunteer Children’s guru. 

•  A note for parents of Kindergartners and 1st graders:  We will be having a small group class available for them to attend this Sunday the October 12th.  It will be in the cafeteria along with the preschool.  All other grade-schoolers will attend worship with their parents.
• Resource Central is sending up some Long Hollow T-Shirts this Sunday.  They are 3/4 sleeve baseball T’s.   They are white with navy sleeves and have a Long Hollow logo that lists all 3 campuses!  The cost is $10.93  (which includes the tax).

 

 

 

It happened.  I announced the wrong date to the 9:30 service for the Chili-Cook Off Extravaganza.  Sorry guys.  We are actually going to have the Cook-off at the Northwoods park area on Saturday, October 11th at 5:30, not on the 18th.  We will however have the Men’s Prayer Breakfast on October 18th.  Direct all your hate mail to Terry Alexander.

Your lovingly absent-minded coordinator,

Ben

It’s what all five of you that check this blog have been waiting for……….a new post!

That’s right, I am finally going to update this little blog.  This weekend was a weekend of firsts.  We had our  first Lord’s supper, not a small deal as you can imagine, and our first New Comers event.  Both events went off with out much of a hitch, unless you count the unforeseen and total lack of air conditioning that plagued the day and that I forgot to buy mints for the deacon interviews.  I also didn’t have onions on the sandwiches though so that was a win/win.

Guys, as a campus we are doing great.  Certainly much better than we deserve!  We have come out of the gate strong and are now starting to get a little bit of a flow going.  Now its time to get to know each other, to grow close.  I think you know what I’m about to say, get into a small group.  These things aren’t going away and I will not stop talking about them till we have every member into a group.  I’ll let the guests slide, but not for long.

Sunday, we will have info on our Small Groups Table for anyone interested in being a host.  Remember a host is someone who has a heart for people, will open their home, will serve snacks and turn on a DVD player.  I would imagine you qualify!  Please let us know if that’s you, think of a couple of couples you like and want to invite and go for it! 

That’s all for now, definitely more to come.  Contact me at ben.heile@longhollow.com if you have any questions or just want to talk. 

Your coordinator,

ben

Lots of questions surrounding the youth and when and where they are going to meet.  Let me clear some of that up while leaving some of it muddy.  The clear part:  We are going to launch the youth group when we launch the campus on August 10th, not before.  So the preview services won’t include a youth program that night.  The muddy part:  We aren’t 100% sure where the youth will meet yet.  There are some really promising possibilities, but nothing definitive.  Some cool stuff has come up though and rest assured, as per the amount of emphasis the youth get on the other campuses that they will be cared for with the excellence and ‘coolness’ that they get on the other two campuses.  God is so good!

Questions at ben.heile@longhollow.com

The official start times for the services have changed, we are now officially at 9:30 and 11:00, not 9:00 or 9:15.  6 Days till the preview service!!!

Ben Heile