New Years Eve Party

On New Years Eve 2005 we had a party at Sheila and Ev Mayo's house. We had a plethora of snacks and we hung out with each other in a nice peacful manner until Sarah suggested we play a game called "I never". The game is played with 1 less seat than there are players. The person without a seat stands in the middle and makes a statement that begins with "I never". For example, "I've never been to New York City". Once the statement had been made, then all the people who have been to New York City have to change seats. Everyone frantically searches for an empty seat until there is one person left with out a place to sit, and then that person makes a declaration of "I never" and the game continues on thusly(I'm not even sure thats a word, but it makes me feel posh to say words that sound British).
We played this game for about an hour...it was a whole lot of fun. And we learned more about each other in the process. (by the way...this is a rather physical game, with lots of darting here and slithering there...defintly not for the faint of heart)

Some of the interesting tidbits of info that we learned from this game:
Sheila has proposed to someone...and so has Ev(I wonder if they did it at the same time)
Ev has given birth...hmmmm
Don and Ben have both knitted before
Ben has also worn high heels and worn a brazier...(really its not as bad as it sounds...its worse)
Don has never written his name in the snow in Europe...??????(I'm still laughing about that one)
Some of us have been skinny dipping that shouldnt have....

needless to say we laughed, and laughed, and then laughed some more...thanks Sarah for a great suggestion.
The initial suggestion that we play "pinchy-winchy" was turned down.

After the mayhem of "I never" wore down we had a Chinese gift exchange that was a little different than normal. We were instructed to bring a gift that represented something of the Lord (qualities or aspects of Him)that we wanted better displayed in our lives. Some of the gifts were:
Rest
A brother-lovin', Satan hatin', Spirit-sharin', Burden-Bearin', Christ-Displayin', Blessing-sayin', All Forgiving, Jesus-living, Brotherhood in Arlington.
Self-Abandonment
An awareness of Him
Roots
The Heart of God
Exploration
The Bride

It really was amazing at how important some of these gifts were...maybe not to everyone...but each one became very special to someone. Thank you sisters for suggesting we do this!

After the gift exhange, Sarah read a letter from Gene about the Thanksgiving conference in Jacksonville.

A little before 11:00 pm we received a call from the Church in Jacksonville. We all huddled around the conference phone and sang "I See My Saviour in Each Face" (its the song that is sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne)
Then Aaron read the Journal that Donna keeps about the church happenings during the year (Donna was home taking care of Jared who was sick). It was great to be reminded about how rich the Lord is...and I always find myself thinking "oh yeah...that was this year". Its funny how events from not so long ago seem to have taken place so very long ago.

A Rough Timeline

Feb. 4, 2002 Nick's first visit
2/07/2002 Enter the Crawfords
How We Met Bob
4/27/2002 Nicks second visit
June 2002 Gene’s conference
Sept 15, 2002 Nick visits
Oct ? Sisters make visit to Jacksonville (Lucy, Kim, Leslie, Patty, Jean, Sylvia, Bob, and Russell)
Oct ? Fedrick moves to Arlington
Thanksgiving 2002 Kim and Sylvia go to Roanoke

Date ? Gene visits Arlington to deal with Fredrick

April 15, 2003 Brothers to Roanoke (Russell, Dan, Ben, Bob, Fredrick)

May 2003 Heromans move to Arlington

August 2003 Nick visits –helps set date for neighborhood vote
Date ? Mike and Diane Southerland start meeting with Arlington.
October 9, 2003 – The issue of neighborhood is settled
October 10, 2003 – Bill and Sarah Heroman buy the first house in the neighborhood

Toby and Tracy Hinshaw
Date ? David Miller conference in Jacksonville

December, 2003 – Aaron and Donna Rodriguez come and visit from North Carolina and Buy a house that weekend.


Feb, 2004 Valentines gift to the sisters

Feb 21, 2004 Nick visits

Date? Eric Rapp from Philly visits

Date? John and Sandra Del Grasso’s & John Sanders

May 2004, Halfords move to the neighborhood

July 22, 2004 Don Woodard moves to the neighborhood

Oct 11, 2004 Mike and Diane buy their first house in the neighborhood

Dec 2004 – Wests, Mayos, and Wilsons move to the neighborhood in the same week

Jan 2005 – Nick Visit

Sept 2005? -- Rossers move to the neighborhood

Nov 2005 Nick Visit (blows up brothers meeting)

Nov 2005 – Thanksgiving day conference in Jacksonville (Gene takes over as worker in Arlington)

Don

Don Woodard was driving down from Wichita Falls often enough to consider him a regular. When Jean and Don started dating was when Don made the decision to move to Arlington. Funny how the Lord works…not too long after moving his life to Arlington he and Jean broke up. Shortly after the break up Jean stopped meeting with the Church. (and that’s all I have to say about that).

Dum, Dum, Dum, Dum --------FREDRICK

Frederick and Jennifer Hiner moved to Arlington when the sisters came back from Jacksonville. Unfortunately, the Frederick era of the Church needs it’s own journal, but here I will try to hit only the high points (or low points as they may be). Fredrick and Jennifer moved in with Jean so they could get on their feet…this didn’t last long before the first crisis with Fredrick arose and as Nick put it (Arlington’s first dirty diaper). Fredrick and Jennifer soon moved out of Jeans house.

The Sisters Visit Jacksonville

In October of 2003 the sisters finally made their trip to Jacksonville. This trip included Lucy and Russell, Bob and Sylvia, Leslie, Patty, Jean, and Kim

Nick Visits in Sept, 2002

On September 15 2003 Nick visited again and John Tufts and Jerry Bodily came up from Conroe. Nick gave a message about the time “before the foundations of the world”. The exclusive territory of the Godhead.

The Conference -- June 15, 2002

In June 2002 we had the conference. Gene came along with Tom Beesher and Nick. Shawn and Briana Keeley were also there. The Conroe Saints were there except for Steve (Mike and Diane had stopped meeting with the Conroe Saints). There were a couple of brothers from St. Paul but I cant remember their names. Bruce and Shirley came from Ventura and so did Barbie Meyers.

There were about 85 people in attendance at the conference. We met on Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, and Sunday morning. From this conference we met Jean Vaughn, Don Woodard, and Jim and Brindi something or other.

At the end of the conference Gene talked with the Church in Arlington out on “the grassy knoll”. After the conference Jean Vaughn and Jim and Brindi Testa started meeting with us. Jim and Brindi soon stopped meeting with us because they were into the healing power of God and went to pursue a healer.

Preparing for the Conference

A short while after Nick came for his second visit he called us and told us that we were going to host a conference. Gene was going to speak at the conference and it was going to be a way of bringing people together and let them know that there was a Church in Arlington. That was when we found out how much work it is to host a conference. Nick had Seedsowers send us a database of people in Texas that were on their mailing list. We narrowed the list to addresses that were within 50 miles of the metroplex, and we included some larger cities that were further away. We sent out over 1500 mailers to that list of names.

We also had a tough time finding a place to host the conference. We almost ended up at a bar and grill because we were having trouble finding anywhere that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. But the Lord provided a country club atmosphere overlooking a golf course and it was far cheaper than anything else we could find.

Nicks Second Visit to Arlington

Nick came back for a visit on April 27, 2002. Connie from St. Paul came as well. I think some Steve Groeman from Conroe drove up too. I think this is when we met Art and Al from El Paso. They drove through the night to talk with Nick…they dearly want churchlife in El Paso. This was also the first time that we met Lon and Bonnie Rosser. They were living in Denton.

Nick brought the Lord to us and left us with another assignment. We were not to meet together around the Lord for the next six weeks, but we were to spend as much time together as possible…just being together. He said that he wanted the dross (my word not his) of the institutional church cleared away before Gene Edwards came to officially birth the church (by the way, we still think of Feb 2002 as the birthing of the church in Arlington). We still got together to sing, because we love to do that, and we also spent a lot of time eating together. In fact, in those days almost every get together centered around food, this was even true for the meetings. Eventually that too fell by the wayside.
The following week we tried not to meet and failed miserably. We soon got the hang of it though.

Walter and Patty Ingram

The following Sunday morning was when we met Walter and Patty Ingram. We were meeting and Dan and Kim’s house when the door rang and Dan answered it. Walter was at the door and said “I heard this is where Jesus is” and hugged Dan. That was the first meeting we had that had more people than the four couples that first called Nick. In attendance was the Halfords (Dan and Kim…later it will be important to make that distinction), Peacocks, Bartholomees, Wests, and Ingrams. At this time we were still meeting on Sunday mornings and we were not having any brothers or sisters meetings.