Dear NEO family,

We are only a week from our Annual Celebration of Mission and Ministry and Jim and Christy Thornton and Vicki Crossland already have the Journal completed and emailed to the General Secretary’s Office! This may be an NEO record! We are blessed to have a great District Secretary, Jim Thornton, a wonderful team of ministry leaders and pastors who got everything turned in promptly and tremendous assistants in Christy and Vicki.

Tulsa Family Church will be hosting a candidate for their Lead Pastor postion this weekend and voting on June 21. Let's continue to pray for Family Church, Pryor and Okmulgee in this time of transition.

In the midst of the busyness of Assembly, we still had good reporting of our May statistics. I always love the pastors telling us what they are celebrating:

Jim Wilson, Pawhuska…We've seen our children's ministry expand from 8 to 18 this month. We had 60 Bikers at our bi-annual Biker Breakfast, and 32 kid's at our Children's Crusade with pastor Rob Deihl.

John Whitsett, Tulsa Central… The 40 Days of Love emphasis has generated 3-4 new small groups. It really is outstanding material---not only the DVD based small-group curriculum, but the sermon resources are outstanding as well. We are also assembling a team to begin to look at the design for the inside of our Multipurpose Wing so that we don’t lose momentum on this project.

David Stevens, Vinita… A wonderful District Ministry Celebration. The Pastor’s Reports I was able to hear were all positive and inspiring. We begin our new year with a very positive attitude and renewed dedication to reach new people for the Lord and do an even better job of ministering to our church people. Our people are catching the vision of being disciples and making disciples in Vinita. Caravans and teens are vital, growing ministries that we are going to continue to work to improve and encourage. Our new web site is going well http://www.vinitanazarene.com .

Jeff Wooten, Wagoner Cornerstone Community…we were blessed in the month of May with 4 baptisms. God has changed the lives of many, but 4 needed to publically share their new life walk with an on purpose display of their changed lives. The water was warm and the hearts of God’s people are on fire by the power of his Holy Spirit. Prayer needs consist of facilities expenses. We had ice damage to our roof and some parking lot issues that will cost in full around $7,000. God will provide with his house and all will be taken care of. For specific prayer needs see our website at www.wagnaz.org . At Wagoner CCCN we are seeing ALL ages at our altars and growth through birth and re-birth. Our members are awesome, our pastor FINALLY got ordained, and a sense of urgency is brewing. Our new church board in not bored at all, and is ready for our best year ever. We have a new name, a new vision, and a new hope. God has a purpose for us and we will be a vital spiritual force in our community, PERIOD. As the song writer stated well, “We are determined that we are invincible, until God has finished his purpose in us”!!

Angela Bentley, Bristow… continued numerical growth from many directions, great spiritual growth – especially in our young people and a growing sense of unity and fellowship within the body. Our new pianist and worship team has enriched our worship tremendously and God’s spirit has been powerful in our services. We also celebrated many faithful years of dedication and service with Bill and Barbara Weaver as we honored them with a Distinguished Service Award.

Mike Howard, Drumright…This year 26 were saved. We are seeing some of the mothers, from our Kids Wednesday Night "God's Time", come to Church with their kids. We are averaging close to 60 with our kids and workers on
Wednesday nights. This last Wednesday night our total attendance was 76. Another victory, we are seeing people who do not go to church here, coming to help with the renovations on our Teen House.

Wayde Normandin, Chelsea… The dedication of a baby and young child from our church on Mother's Day.

Don Cowan, Sapulpa… We had a great year and we have so much to be grateful for as God allowed us to see others and needs as never before. We see the evidence of lives being changed. We saw a 30% increase in tithes this year. We had a part helping in two churches this year, Bristow Church of the Nazarene and South County Community Church. We have a great new children’s director and the new life in our children’s ministry.

We rejoice with those who are experiencing numerical growth:

NEO TOP GROWTH LEADERS FOR MAY, 2009

SUNDAY SCHOOL
Fuente de Vida +35
Wagoner Cornerstone +22
Bristow +18
Tulsa Central +17
Drumright +14
Pawhuska +12
Horton Chapel +11
Tulsa Hills +9
Reg. Pk. Hispanic +5
Dewey +4
Locust Grove +4

AM WORSHIP
Glenpool SoCo +66
Bristow +29
Owasso Silver Creek +29
Bartlesville +25
Tulsa Family +22
Wagoner Cornerstone +16
Horton Chapel +12
Tulsa First +5
Tulsa Fuente de Vida +5
Locust Grove +4
Pawhuska +4

I loved the interviews of five of our students who are making an impact in the Great Commission Rally. We have great youth on the NEO District. Here are reports I have received from two of our college students serving overseas this summer:

Youth in Mission Report from Saipan where Kendra Hansen (Tulsa Central) is serving: “Hafa Adai,” as they say here on the islands! We made it to Saipan after a few stops in Houston, Tokyo, and Guam. In Guam we had the pleasure of meeting up with the pastor of the Nazarene church in Guam and his wife and son for dinner. We had about a 5 hour layover, so they picked us up and we saw a little of Guam, ate dinner, and spent some time at their house. We finally did get to Saipan at 3:30 in the morning, but we've done really well with the transition and time changes.

We jumped right into everything this week so that we will be prepared once the Buchers (our missionaries) head back to the states in about a week. The people in the church and really just the island are so wonderful and welcoming. We’ve visited the local high school a couple times and talked to the teens and have started to build relationships with some. Kendra and Emily attended the street market for local culture and food while Julianna performed this past weekend in the local band that the Buchers are a part of.

The kids from kids’ club and Sunday mornings are great, and we have all really enjoyed working with them. We all are teaching a different age group, and our first week of Sunday school was somewhat of an adventure, but it was fun. Julianna played keyboard and helped lead music this week for Sunday morning, Emily is trying to learn the route to pick up the kids and how to drive stick shift for the jeep that picks them up, and Kendra has been learning how to take care of the house and find out where supplies are.
Prayer Requests: We can see there is a lot of need on the island, and we all want God to use us in the best possible way to help these people in a way that will long outlast our actual stay here. Please continue to pray for our team as we learn to work together and how to best serve the people we are quickly learning to love. Also, Kendra has had an allergic reaction this weekend to something. She went to the doctor and received medicine, so please pray she will continue to feel better. We hope everyone is doing well and are praying for you all!Kendra, Julianna, and Emily

Austin Snowbarger (Tulsa Central) writes regarding his mission work in Amsterdam: Shelter Christian Hostels operate two hostels in Amsterdam, and I have come here to serve in the Shelter City. There are a handful of full time paid staff, however the majority of the hostels workers are volunteers, like me. We live together, eat together, pray together, learn together, and serve together. It is an international staff, so countries such as South Africa, New Zealand, Germany, England, Netherlands, and the United States are represented here…
The first night I was in Amsterdam, I had the opportunity to go to a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) worship service. YWAM does many cool things in the city, so it was great to spend an evening with those folks. The highlight of the evening turned out to be the demographics. In the group of 20 or so people there that evening, six continents were represented. All together, all worshipping. It was like nothing I had experienced before! A former YWAM staff member shared about the power of a blessing. At the end of the evening, we had an opportunity to give a word of blessing to each other. Iraqi to American, Indian to Irani, Japanese to English. A young man named Jens from Germany and I exchanged blessings, and what he said to me was so encouraging, nearly prophetic. He spoke blessings over my time in Amsterdam and over all the other places in the world God will take me to meet the needs of the hurting. He touched my legs and my arms and blessed my body because of the mountains in life I will climb. I was blown away. If worshipping with brothers and sisters from all over the world was not enough, receiving such an incredible blessing from someone I had never met before really took me back. All of this on my first night in Amsterdam..wow!

May the Lord continue to use you in your corner of the world!

You are loved!

Dave McKellips