Welcome to Frazer’s weekly feature called the Breaking Good News! Here you’ll find how your tithing and service is touching and changing lives everyday through our ministries and programs.
CRAVE-Youth Ministry
Frazer’s youth ministry recently took a large group of students away for a Covenant Retreat. These teens focus on the rewards of staying sexually pure and making good decisions. The weekend always ends with a meaningful service where the teens are given the opportunity to make a covenant to stay pure and receive a purity ring. Please pray for these young people as they navigate through a world of temptation and peer pressure.
CRAVE-Dodge ball
After 9 weeks of studying how to handle money God’s way through Financial Peace University, Frazer’s youth celebrated with a knock-down dodge ball tournament! This is a favorite and highly anticipated event in the youth ministry with students organizing teams, selecting names and making t-shirts. Great play by all, in the end, the Yams took the title for a second straight year. A surprise exhibition team showed up, “The Old People” to play the Yams, but the old folks couldn’t get the job done either. Playing with “The Old People”, Teaching pastor Dr. Patrick Quinn; Frazer IT Director Keith Williams and Youth Minister Chase Faulk. Thankfully no injuries to report!
Unchained-Financial Peace University
The classes are completed and it’s time to celebrate! For the past 9 weeks, close to 1000 adults and several hundred children and youth participated in Financial Peace University at Frazer UMC. We’ve shared stories of people getting out of debt, cutting up credit cards and discovering new open lines of communication with their spouse regarding finances. Here’s a report from one small group taking FPU:
“Hey – Our FPU class ended yesterday and I wanted to share some of the celebration with you. Here are two of the pictures with our “credit card” cake. We cut up the debt and celebrated the victories. We completed our snapshot cards and WOW!!
Here are our totals for the 3 Sunday afternoon classes:
Total non-mortgage debt paid: $31,736.15
Total money saved: $49,818.36
Credit cards cut up: 11
The blessings that we received individually and as a class are hard to express. I watched the large group show their budgets in class. We had budgets written on notebook paper, Dave’s forms, spreadsheets, and even, on the back of an envelope. We were able to show that it didn’t have to follow just one form…that DONE and WORKING were the most important aspects. We saw more budget sheets each month and learned together that it’s easier with each one.”
These are some of the hundreds of success stories coming out of Financial Peace University as people worked to break the chains of financial stress and learn to live by Biblical principles. Come to church this Sunday morning, November 15, for a Celebration of Living Unchained!
Missions—In Christ’s Way
“In Christ’s Way” is a ministry at Frazer working to give people a “hand up”. It’s intended to help people get over an unexpected hurdle in their life as they work to support their family and get back on solid footing financially. Your tithing and special offerings on some Communion Sundays provide the funding to change lives. Take a look at some of what “In Christ’s Way” was able to do over the last month:
1) Pay the mortgage for a family that had burial expenses for the death of a family member.
2) Pay the mortgage for a family where the husband lost his job due to downsizing and was out of work for a while before finding another job.
3) Pay the monthly power bill and rent for a woman who had major surgery but didn’t have enough sick leave to cover her time off.
4) Pay the power deposit and partial rent for a woman to move into an apartment after leaving an abusive situation.
In all of the above situations, at least one adult in each of these families have full time jobs. Their situation turned suddenly and that’s when “In Christ’s Way” stepped into help. Thank you for your support of this ministry!
Frazer Outreach—Pike Road School Leadership Summit
Frazer UMC had a unique opportunity recently to minister to the 7th and 8th graders who attend the new Pike Road School. While teachers attended a conference in Montgomery, school leaders took the middle school students to see a showing of the movie, “Woodlawn”. This is a christian movie based on the true story of integrating a high school football team in Alabama.
After the movie, the students came to Frazer for a mini leadership summit—they enjoyed lunch provided by Zaxby’s and then broke out into smaller sessions to hear from various speakers sharing their experiences of overcoming adversity. Angela Hampton was one of the speakers, she teaches at Pike Road and volunteers as a 1st grade Sunday School teacher at Frazer!
Sav-A-Life Fundraising Gala
Sav-A-Life Montgomery brought a well-known christian comedian to Frazer UMC for its Annual Fundraising Gala. Speaker and author Mike Williams is heard daily on XM Radio’s Laugh USA. Mike has written 8 books including, “Love is NOT a Three-Letter Word” (a new look at abstinence). He shared his personal adoption story and the rescue and adoption of his son. Mike shares his talent of comedy with many christian groups in an effort to help fund ministries aimed at changing and saving lives. A special thanks to Martha Poole Simmons for taking photographs at this event.
Children’s Ministry
During this month of thankfulness, Frazer’s Chilidren’s Ministry recently wrote “thank you” cards to God. Children’s Director Cami Culpepper said this is a great exercise to help our children have thankful hearts and to learn how to praise our Savior! Sounds like a great activity for young and old alike!
This is just some of the Breaking Good News happening in our Frazer Family! Stay tuned for more details of how God is moving through Frazer UMC.