December 1, 2004

Dear First Free Family,

Christmas brings lots of excitement - friends and family coming over, trees and cookies to be decorated, lights and socks to be hung. On Sundays we gather together to worship Him who came. This is our season - Christ is the reason for all our celebration! As you celebrate His coming, I thought it would be exciting to be reminded of the good things God has done here at First Free this past year. Here are some highlights:

1. Our Fall has been thrilling. Our Worship is strong and is growing. Pastor Eric and the worship team have continued each week to lead us as a church before the throne of God. Rick Olson has provided new leadership as our choir director, and the choir has tripled in size. We sense a high level of anticipation for our worship services.
2. Last Winter we began an Outreach called, "10 Keys for Unlocking the Bible". We had 34 attend for the 10 weeks and half of those were friends outside of the church. At least one person received Christ through that outreach. (Starting January 17, 2005, on Monday nights "10 Keys" will start up again.)
3. Our attendance this Fall has increased also, with our average Sunday morning worship attendance at 310. Over the past year, we have welcomed 35 new members into our Fellowship.
4. Our Children's Ministry continues to Mature. Beth Brown was hired as our part-time Children's Ministry Director this past August. Our nursery is full, and the elementary age classes are expanding.
5. We had two baptism services. Three were baptized at Lake Nokomis in August. Eleven were baptized in our own baptistery on a Sunday morning this past October. What a thrilling worship service!
6. Our Student Ministry sent eight Senior High students to Salt Lake City for the National Youth Conference. Eleven Junior High students went to an EQUIP conference in August.
7. A group of young mothers started a new Outreach ministry called MOPS (Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers). There are 30 young mothers - half of them come from the neighborhood.
8. Financially, God has blessed us. Our giving is slightly up from last year but is a bit behind our spending at this time. We are confident that December will be a strong giving month with year-end gifts.
9. Our Missions' giving also remains strong, slightly behind budget but ahead of last year. This past year we were able to give a slight increase to each of our missionaries - something we had not been able to do in the past couple of years.

My prayer is that God will continue to use us here at First Free for His purposes!

Yours and His,

Pastor Joel

P.S. Why not right now begin to think and pray about whom you could invite to our Christmas Eve Service, from 5:30 - 6:20 pm?