Dear praying friends,

Have I already told you that on Monday nights we host a dinner at our house? We learned this from our friends and Manchester Envision site coordinators Justin and Brittany Siemens. Ours varies a little bit, because we rotate between hosting our boys and their girlfriends on one Monday, and having a larger circle of people that come to dinner at our home on the next. This last Monday was the larger group, and it is such a joy to have people from various walks of life sitting together at a table, enjoying food and life together.

Tuesday, we were guests! One of the local aXcess teams prepared a meal and invited other Alliance workers to come and join them at their ministry center. It was nice to sit down and enjoy being together with them in their space.

And then last night we hosted Art O'Clock in our gallery again! That event is always a great chance for us to connect with people, and we had some new artists share last night. Can you please pray for me as I reach out to artists and invite them to share? Sometimes it is harder to fill the evenings than others, but the time always feels rewarding for the artists and the audience.

That did make for three very full days in a row! We are also in budget season, so we are feeling the strain a little in every direction. Pray for us as we finish up our budgets and look ahead to the coming fiscal year.

A few last requests from us:

1. I am not even sure how to ask you to pray for the wall in our acoustic room to get installed. The glass company owner has been sick, the glass manufacturer can't seem to get the right pieces made, our general contractor keeps writing to them - everything seems to be held up in unexplainable ways! Please pray for that to get done!
2. We are going to start renting desks in the office sharing area before it is done so we can have the needed income to offset our rent costs. Pray for us as we build this community!
3. On the publishing side, we have a few projects that we are having strange problems finalizing. We sent them to the printer(s), and one responded, stating there are errors. We keep trying to correct them the errors, but something is not working. We have tried again! Pray that we can get that book printed!
4. We have some creative projects in the works that require a certain level of creativity that we are feeling we are currently lacking because of the load over the last month. Pray for some space so we can engage in the projects we need to move forward well from a healthy and creative space!

Thanks for your prayers,

mike