Merry Christmas!

We are sending out a big “Merry Christmas” to Church of the Heartland in Starke County and our extended COTH family.  We treasure our relationship with you!  The friendships we have are priceless.  We absolutely love doing life with you all!  There is no other place we would rather be (well maybe on a warm, sunny beach these days but we’d bring you along too:) )  Have an awesome Christmas with your families.  And together let’s remember Jesus our Saviour for His gift of eternal life with Him!  God bless you!  Pastor Shawn & Lyndee

A new way to annoy friends

I’m so excited…. thanks to my friend Pastor Heath I was introduced to a new way of annoying my friends.  I’m always on the lookout for ways to let them know how much I care.  This is a way of sending video emails of yourself through a website called tokbox.com.  And super easy to do, I highly recommend it.

Technically you can also use it for video-conferencing and such blah blah blah.  I like it for the torture affect. My big face talking right on their screen at them!!  He he.  Chrissy Kinney got a good one of me impersonating Santa.  It was fun, she loves (or puts up with) my humor!  Watch out Lyndee may be coming to a computer screen near you!  (and thanks, Pastor Heath   my friends thank you too )

Betty Turner Memorial

I’m sad today about the loss of a good friend of ours at Church of the Heartland.  Betty Turner passed away on Sunday.  She ’s been fighting cancer, a broken hip, & other health problems.  She’s now new & whole with her Savior today though.  It makes me smile to remember how faith-filled she was.  You wouldn’t get far in a conversation with Betty before she would be praising God for something.  I know our family will miss her very much.  She was so much more than a congregation member to us-she was family.  Our kids thought of her as a grandma and she loved that.

On Friday, December 19 at 12noon at our church will be a memorial service to celebrate Betty’s life.  Our church will be providing a meal afterwards for the family and friends.  Please contact me if you would like to help out, 806-3304  Thanks, Lyndee

Christmas Big Sunday

Join us for our Christmas Big Sunday, December 21st

 

We look forward to spending this Christmas season with you and your family!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benefit Dinner for Tolson Family

There will be a benefit spaghetti dinner for the family of Krista Tolson on Saturday, December 13th from 12noon – 6:00pm at the Washington Township Building.  There will also be gospel singing all day by various groups including our church’s praise & worship team.

They will be receiving donations to help the family with expenses.  Please remember the family in your prayers during this difficult time.

God with Us by His Word

This was the first week of our Christmas series: Crave More Presence!

Ted Westafer was a guest speaker at our campus with a great message on “God with Us by His Word”  We need to crave His Word, the Bible.   It’s the one thing that will change us, our relationships, our situations, our attitudes, our character and more.

Here’s the challenge this week:  Spend time with God this week.  The Bible is God talking to us.  Together let’s get to know what God is saying about our lives. What would happen to our Starke County campus if we began to read and apply the Bible together.  We would be amazed!  Let’s do it, what do you say? 

Guest Speakers: Beware!

OK, so Shawn was out of town of Sunday and I had to be “chief” at Sunday morning service. This was the first week for our Christmas series and everything needed to be just right. I had a pep talk and prayer with our leaders, decorations were in place, Christmas music in the background. We were ready!
Ted Westafer was filling in for Shawn so I knew our service would be top notch. However, crazy me didn’t factor in the fact that our church is a government protected sanctuary for these BATS! They torment the daycare workers from time to time but have stayed clear of Sunday mornings until today……
Awesome praise and worship, offering and annoucements done, introduce Ted and our bat friend took flight. It literally did laps around our sanctuary one end to the other. You would hear little squeals from ladies hiding under their coats as the bat passed them. I was imagining it getting caught in someone’s hair-like mine!! I was thinking, “Of course when Shawn is gone, Lord have mercy!”
They don’t teach this kind of stuff in Bible college. Where was the class about protecting the congregation from flying rodents? I’m glad we had a guest speaker like Ted, he just went with it until someone finally captured the little tormenter.
Just shows this is the church you should attend. You never know what the next Sunday will bring. But we may never get a guest speaker again.  Although, I pledge to personally make sure the church is completely secured of flying creatures before service commences