Thursday, December 25, 2008

Pierre Family Update



Merry Christmas to our friends and family!

We wanted to take the time in the midst of this wonderful season to stop and share our thankfulness for each of you for the love and support you have offered and provided for us at different time throughout our lives.

We wanted to share a quick update about the past year of our life and share some things to pray with us about:

* We celebrated our first year anniversary in August! Our first year of marriage was incredible and so much fun. We were truly blessed by the Lord as he spent our first year of marriage knitting our hearts together and revealing more of himself to us each day. Please pray that the Lord would be glorified in our marriage and that our family and home would be a tool for God to minister to others through.

* We have recently completed all of our classes and paperwork to become foster parents. The next step is to get our home licensed so we can have children placed with us. We are currently reading and praying a lot about parenting and are looking forward with anticipation to the children God may bring our way! Please pray that God would provide us with a place to live with a third bedroom (we want to be able to take siblings and due to state licensing standards would need a third bedroom).

* Dennae spent most of the year working as a family advocate with children at Sojourner Center (a domestic violence shelter) and recently was promoted to be the Program Coordinator, overseeing the transitional housing programs. It has been a challenging and wonderful learning experience and she enjoys being able to be a part of the women and children's healing and growth. Please continue to pray that God would use her greatly in the lives of these women and children to holistically heal from the trauma and abuse they have experienced.

* Vermon continues to serve as the lead pastor of Roosevelt Community Church in downtown Phoenix. This past year was the first year in which the church existed without support from her mother church, Camelback Bible Church. We saw the Lord provide for our needs and continue to build us into a church family with people coming from many different social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds but united together around the great gospel of Christ. It has been a challenging and even at times overwhelming task to effectively lead this young church, but above all it's been exciting to see the Lord so clearly at work within our body. Vermon is thankful to the Lord to be where he is, doing what he's doing. Please continue to pray that the Lord would grow Vermon and the other leaders at Roosevelt in wisdom and courage as they follow God's will for the church.

* Lastly, we have been praying and thinking a lot about how to minister and reach out into the community we are living in. We live in downtown Phoenix and are praying for God to open up many doors to minister to the diverse populations downtown. Please pray with us for God to deepen our love for these people we are called to and that he would mightily move in Phoenix and call many to himself!



We hope you had a wonderful Christmas.

Blessings,
Dennae and Vermon Pierre