Meet the Thrift Store Staff

If you want to know what it takes to run a thrift store: you are looking at them! (minus the guy): These ladies are our HNB Thrift Jewels, for they make it happen, day in and day out with little pay and never ending work! Pictured from left to Right: Trey, April, Kristy, Molly and Linda.

We wouldn't get very far without our volunteers, so we are thankful for them as well. And so if you are looking for a place to serve, look no farther.

Thrift Store Grand Opening!!

It was great to celebrate the opening of the store. Thank you to all of you that helped make the "Grand Opening" a reality. Special thanks to IRC, Park Ave., Crosswalk Community and Redeemer Pres. for contributing in supplies and manpower to the grand opening celebration. And we can't forget Chick-fil-a and the cow!!

Open for business!!

For many of us it is hard to believe that we actually made it- the store opened! Many many hands went into this labor of love and we are extremely grateful for all of you that gave of your time and energy to get us to this point.

Our story also hit the newspaper racks today as well. Florida today did a nice piece on the opening of the thrift store and how it fits into our overall vision.

As i watched the shuttle launch today, i was grateful for the reminder that we are in a town that knows how to launch big things. our prayer is that God will make much of our little launch today and that he will multiple the impact of it into
thousands of lives that are changed. my heart swells with gratitude and joy as i stand by and see what God is doing in our midst- Aslan is on the move and He can do
all things!

Our 1st Award and more...

This past tuesday, the City of Titusville asked us to come to the City Council meeting for they wanted to recognize our work on Mr. Roleoff Shank's house which was a joint venture between the city and several local churches. To my surprise we ended up receiving six plaques on behalf of all the churches involved. we had no idea that the city was going to make such a big deal about it, but they were excited for it was a breakthrough for them as well. They were celebrating for it seems that the code enforcement arm of the city, asked "neighborhood services" to explore what was going on with this code violation house (Mr. Shank's). Neighborhood Services found Mr. Shank unable to take care of his home and then went on to find some grant monies to assist with his roof damage. It was neighborhood services and Ms. Juanita Spells-Houston that contacted us to assist with the project.

I thanked the city for the plaques and told them that we were committed to serving our community. I also told them that we didn't invite all the students that served at this project for we believe we are called to serve and we really don't want individual recognition for something that God has called us to do. My prayer is that the city would never be able to afford all the plaques they would have to hand out for our service to our community. We know our Father is pleased by us living like him and that is thanks enough.

On a side note, i laughed out loud after the council meeting, for a reporter from Florida Today had called me right before the council meeting and she wanted to talk about the Thrift Store and HNB. As i am driving to the council meeting i listen to her phone message and she mentions that she will be at the council meeting taking notes for the paper. She didn't know i was scheduled to be recognized that night, so when i showed up to the meeting- i sat next to a young woman that looked like a reporter (notepad in hand). and so i asked her,"are you Amanda from the Florida Today?" she said yes. I introduced myself and told her that i just got her message. she asked me, why i was there? I said, "just wait and see". Then the mayor hands me six plaques. It definitely added to our credibility and I laugh at God's timing.
walking with God is quite fun and always full of surprises.

Meet the Board of Directors

If you want to know the engine behind the scenes to "Hope for North Brevard". This is our dream team (as pictured from left to right): Trey Gordon, Lori Ginn, Chrissy Gordon, Lisa Schmidt, Bill Bahr, Barry Forbes, Ray Navarro.

This is the group that is responsible for the vision casting of HNB and to staying on mission as we move forward. I am very grateful for their shared vision and ownership to seeing HNB become a reality- we couldn't do it without them!

Make do with what you have

when you don't have a ladder that will reach, you make do with what you have. I wouldn't recommend this as a safety suggestion- but it gets the job done.

Okay, HNB Thrift, Here we go!!!

Yesterday, i received the keys to our potential new thrift store on garden street. We are drawing up the lease now and we agree in principle on the terms. We are awaiting the city's approval as well as to the location. So you can pray for that!

Our Board of Directors met on monday night to discuss if we should pursue opening the store. We discussed the pros and cons and felt as if God had opened some doors for us to pursue this venture. We are grateful for the harvest of merchandise he has supplied already, particularly through the Estate Liquidators. We are also grateful for Kristy Sacik and God leading her to us to run the facility, for we prayed that God would lead someone to have a passion to run it and she has been wonderful.

The owner of the building, Tracy Rendina, was very accommodating to our offer and we feel like she will be great to work with as well. We have a great location. great staff and great stuff to sell. We pray that God will multiple all that we do for his kingdom work.

We are planning a painting party this Saturday, Oct. 17th from 8-4pm, so if you want to join us as we start this new venture, please do!

Thank you God!

Today was one of those days, that you are just amazed at what God is doing. A day of gladness, a day of good news! One that i want to pass on to you.

My morning, started off with a meeting with Rev. Glenn Dames, the senior pastor at St. James AME. We met for almost two hours talking about our shared passion for youth and families. I had been praying particularly for an African-American pastor to link arms with, for we desire to do gospel-centered community, which very much includes multiple races if I am reading Revelation right! We also believe that their is work to be done in our town when it comes to racial reconciliation and it is to our shame that Sunday is the most segregated day of the week.
Anyways, i was very encouraged by his enthusiasm and desire to work together. i pray that God will continue to develop that relationship.

Right after that i got a call from Kristy Sacik about our thrift store venture. We had asked her to go on a info gathering mission so we could make a wise decision as to if the thrift store really is a via income producing option for HNB. She came into the office and she was glowing with excitement. The first thing she asked me was, "what do you think the SPCA thrift store sells a month at their old location (which is where we are considering moving to)?? I said, my prayer is that it would be more than $5,000 a month for it probably wouldn't be worth all the work if it is not that high! She grins and says, they sold between $35,000-$50,000 a month in gross sales- can u believe that? I had no idea that a thrift store could produce that kind of income, but if that is really possible, do you know how much ministry we could be doing with that kind of income? That is just awesome!!!

This news coming on the heels, that we now have our 2nd estate sale pick-up this weekend, which is a very high end sale. God has already supplied a garage full of items from another quality sale and now we have another one and we haven't even made a phone call yet. We don't even have a store. we haven't even asked all the partners and churches that we know, that would be interested in donating items to our cause to give. I am just blow away.

It gets better. After that i got an email back from the mayor saying he would like to meet. He came to our pastor's prayer meeting, which is amazing that he sought us out and not the other way around. I introduced myself at that meeting and he told me to email him, but i was skeptical if he would email me back or be interested in meeting about HNB. In fact, after that i call another call from the city, that they would like to schedule a meeting next week to talk about possible partnerships with some other interested parties for a youth community center. I had been trying to work my way up the chain of city employees to talk about how the city could help us with acquiring a youth center and hadn't really gotten very far. Now, i am asked to attend a meeting that is two steps up the chain from where i was working, and they are the ones calling me.
Not every day is a day of soaring on wings like eagles, but today surely was...
Thank you God! I needed that!
I pray that it encourages you as well.
trey <><

Future HNB Thrift Store??

So we are considering making a run at opening our very own HNB Thrift Store, for God has opened some doors to make it happen. We are now asking for wisdom as to when and if we should walk through them, and make a go of it. God has provide a pipeline of thrift donations through supporters that run an estate liquidation company, as well as leaders such as, Kristy Sacik who would like to manage the store. We have a target location (pictured) on garden street where the old SPCA thrift store was, and there are some benefits to having it at that location such as: price, good donation drop off area, location on the north end of town, & the fact that people still drop things off at that location.

Please pray for the Board of Directors as we discuss this option, and if you have interest in being a part of this arm of HNB please let us know. The goal of the thrift store would be to help raise funds for the ministries of HNB, with the possibility of moving the thrift store into the future outreach center as a way to offset the center's expenses.

Our Project Home: week 2

last month we gutted an elderly man's home in cooperation with the city of titusville, which is going to replace his roof. This past saturday, we came together again to paint the inside of his house. The roof was suppose to be done, but the city was delayed due to a paperwork problem.

One encouraging note, was that one of the local neighbors was encouraged by the students work a couple weeks ago, so they decided to paint the outside of Mr. Shank's home (pictured). We were planning to do that, but it is exciting to see our work stimulate others into action as well.

We had over 30 adults and students come out for this project, so it was standing room only inside of the house at times. Thank you to: IRC Methodist, Park Ave. Baptist, Crosswalk Community, Crossroads Community, Christ Community, and Redeemer Presbyterian for coming out to help. Special thanks to IRC for providing the paint from a local paint contractor who donated it. We were able to use our "project titusville" paint supplies that we have collected from our past projects, so that was a blessing. It looks as though we are ready to serve our local community. Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself" and we are working on putting those words into action.

We hope to see the roof completed in the next week and continue our repairs of Mr. Shank's home. I am also still looking for a 3-wheeled bike for Mr. Shank to ride, though it will take a miracle for me to convince him that he needs such a thing.

Our friends in Mexico

While i was in Oaxaca, Mexico we not only dedicated the building and all of the new high school students enrolled in Armonia's program, but we also got to see some of the students that we worked alongside two years ago, who are now in Mexico City, pursuing college educations. Through the help of Armonia and U.S. churches, some of these students are the 1st students of their tribe's history to ever attend college. We really do take for granted all of the opportunities we have in the U.S. and it is great to be a part of serving a ministry that desires "justice for the oppressed" and to "make things right" in honor of our redemptive King.

We did also plan our next summer missions trip back to Oaxaca, which now thanks to the student residence hall that we helped build, we can now take up to 60 adults and students next summer. Our goal is to have several churches from Titusville join us, as we look to build either another residence hall or a community center in Oaxaca. The dates for the trip are June 17-26th 2010, so mark it down if you are interested.

Mexico: one building complete

I just got back from a 7 day trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, which was a medical/construction trip dedicated to serving a ministry called "Armonia" which is where I took a team 2 summers ago to work on the foundation of the building shown. I was very excited to see it completed and I am sure my students would be excited to see it as well. Armonia is a ministry to the poor of Mexico, which has had a great influence on my understanding of how to care for the poor as well as my desire to build community here in Titusville.

The building shown houses 48 high school students of indigenous indians of different tribes within Mexico. You may not know that Mexico is the most diverse country in the world, with over 340 different languages spoken outside of Spanish. With that comes severe discrimination of the indians within their own country. Armonia's goal is to offer these students a chance to be able to go to high school and onto college as well, with the goal of changing their culture from the inside out. It is very exciting redemptive work and we are glad to be a part of it.

Youth Pastors prepping for SYATP

September marks one big event that local youth pastor work together on and this year is no exception. See You At The Pole (SYATP) is a national day of public prayer in schools and our local yp network helps to put on a local youth rally as well. this year SYATP is wednesday, sept. 23rd and this year's rally is going to be held at Park Ave. Baptist Church at 7pm. So far, we have these churches committed to attending: Park Ave, IRC Methodist, Crosswalk Community, New Venture, Christ Community, Crossroads Community, 1st Baptist downtown, St. Gabriel's Episcopal and Redeemer Presbyterian. We are hoping for several others and we are excited to come together for a night of worship, prayer and encouragement. We long to see some great things happen on our local campuses and our prayer is that SYATP will be a launching pad for that very thing!!!

Our YP network meets the 2nd & 4th friday of every month at Sunrise Bread Company at 8:30-10am. One of my goals is to help local ministries thrive, as well as help them work together for the benefit of the kingdom work here in Titusville.

Our 1st HNB meeting!!

Tuesday, August 25th we had our 1st Hope for North Brevard meeting, where we talked about the vision and where we were in the process, as well as how others could get involved. We had a good turn out and we hope to be able to spread the word to others in town that have the same vision.

We are planning to meet on the last tuesday of every month, at least for the fall as a way to fellowship together and keep everyone in the loop as to how things are progressing. Our next meeting is scheduled for tuesday, Sept. 29th at 7pm at the home of Robert & Joyce Gordon (3712 Glenn Road, Mims, FL). Spread the word and we hope to see you at the next meeting.

One of our goals of the meetings is to find out how you all would like to be involved, so if you didn't fill out an information card, please email or call me so I can help you get plugged in.

Pastor's Prayer Retreat

I was very fortunate to be able to attend a pastor's prayer retreat with 22 other
pastors in town, who decided that it would be worthwhile to take 2 days together to pray for an extended time together. We meet every wednesday morning at Crosswalk to pray for an hour, but this allowed us a much longer time to be together. I can't express how excited I am to see these local pastors care for one another, how committed they are to the expansion of God's kingdom work in Titusville, as well as how committed they are to working together to meet these goals.

They realize that God's kingdom work is bigger than their individual churches and that we need to help one another. One of the things that came out of our prayer time is the visual of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the wall and as each church in town has it's section of the wall, but when the trumpet sounds and we have a brother in need that we would go to help them.

For me personally, I was encouraged as the pastors prayed over Hope for North Brevard and the startup of our ministry, as well as feeling God's confirmation that I was where he wanted me to be, which gives me great peace and assurance as we step out in faith. In all of this, it leads me to worship, for God is the faithful one and he has been constantly reminding me of that. I encourage you all to pray with us as the pastors try and discern what God would have us to do corporately to build up the body of Christ. My prayer is that HNB would be a part of that, if God's see fit to use us in that way.

The pastors have started the "Joseph fund", which is a fund that a lot of local churches are participating in to help set aside monies for families that have been affected by job loss and they are working with North Brevard Charities to help distribute the funds. If you would like more information about the Joseph Fund, come and see me.

Our role in serving

What the city was asking was if we could help gut the house, so the roofers could come in and repair the roofs and ceiling without all the contents of the house in the way, as well as that it could get damaged during the repair. Ms. Juanita Spells, from the city was trying to do most of this work by herself on the weekends (which is not part of her job, by the way) but she was determined to care for this elderly man.

I am happy to say that I immediately sent the word out to our local youth pastors and several responded, with short noticed for the city was on a time-line. We had over 20 adults and students from: IRC Methodist, Crosswalk Community, Crossroads Community, Christ Community and Redeemer Presbyterian show up. We almost completely gutted his entire house, taking over four truck and trailer loads to the dump, because of all the water damaged. We were able to store his most valuable things, thanks to Steve and Debbie Cox of Cox Discount Storage, who are members of CCC, who gave us a storage unit, while Mr. Shank's roof is being repaired. We also bleached and cleaned everything we could. Juanita was overjoyed with all that we were able to accomplish and this project was a good example of the christian community responding to a local need. Thank you to all of you that participated!

A breakdown in community

When we met with the city to discuss how we could help, we visited Mr. Shank's home, which is on Jackson Ave., right next to Miracle City Mall. When we walked through his home to see the water damage from his damaged roof is was quite disturbing on many levels. One, being that his roof and home had been in this condition for the past 5 years. To be very honest i was surprised that this elderly man was still alive for his home was filled with mold and it was hard to breathe. The other disturbing part of this for me, was the fact that all of his neighbors around him had well cared for homes and yards and it seems that no one had checked in on this man, who could no longer care for his home by himself. To me this is an example of the breakdown of community and selfishness. The few neighbors I did speak to were glad that we were helping fix this community "eye-sore" but didn't feel any real since of obligation to help this neighbor in need. This is why we need gospel-centered community.

Our 1st local Service Project

When you pray the prayer, "okay, God i want to be used by you" you don't have to wait too long for that to be answered. In this case, the city of titusville came looking for us, for they had heard (because of our past work with Project Titusville) that we might be able to assist them with a local project. The city, particularly Ms. Juanita Spells (pictured in the center) of Neighborhood Services asked if we could help her care of a local elderly man, Mr. Roleof Shank. Mr. Shank's roof had been damaged since the hurricanes 5 years ago and it had partial collapsed in on his home. The city had found some grant money to assist with the roof, but they needed assistance with getting his house in order for that repair. This is where we come in!

HNB Prayers

I first want to thank God for his provision and care through our transition and for all of you that have encouraged us along the way. Chrissy and I feel very blessed and energized to get HNB going, and we ask you to join with us in these prayers: 1. That HNB be God's vision and not our own- that he would guide us and give us his wisdom for this new ministy. 2. that he would guide the creation of our board of directors and the vision casting of HNB, how we will operate and function as a ministry. 3. continued care for my family and all others that are in this time of transtion. 4.we pray for favor with the IRS and the creation of the 5013c and that we can get it done. 5.That God would draw the supporters and partners we need to get HNB off the ground. 6. Wisdom to the decision to starting the Thrift Store now, as well as the man power and tools we will need to get it done. 7. Wisdom as to when to pursue the youth outreach center (Goodings building), meaning should we make a push for it now, or wait,learn and develop the foundation at a slower pace. We ask for God's guidance in all these decisions. Thank you for joining with us in prayer!
trey <><

Hope for North Brevard, Inc

thought u might want to see our waiting room. some of you helped paint it. Thanks
Matt, Rachel, Vic, Whitney, Matt, Jim, and the super troop, Mike, Marcey and not to leave out Aiden (our DJ).

Welcome to "Hope Counseling Center"

okay, after much sweat, paint and a large group effort, we now have our new counseling center. this project took a lot of hands, some shopping, some donations from several families, especially my parents, Dr. Robert & Joyce Gordon, Chrissy's sister, Wendy Scotchie and several others. Thank you all for making this happen. Our prayer is that this room will be a place of healing, encouragement and life transformation. The address is: 407 S.Washington Ave.,Suite 4B, Titusville,FL 32796

God's Provision

This key doesn't look like much, but it is a great blessing and it comes with a story. This past summer we were looking for a location to start "Hope Counseling Center" for we wanted to get that going. We knew that we wouldn't have much time to pursue finding a place for we were focused on summer camps, but we thought we would check around. We were hoping to be able to borrow someone's office or share space with someone in town, so we could begin to see counseling clients. We also knew that we couldn't really afford much of anything, for we didn't really have any start-up capital.

After a couple visits to some other locations, I decided to go see pastor, John Wright at Crosswalk Community Church. John had been very encouraging in the past as well as very open to others using his resources, and I had seen his downtown office. I really didn't think he had any extra space, but I thought it was worth asking. The exciting part of this story is that God had beat me there, for a couple days before i met with John, Dr. Akers (the owner of John's office building) had just offered John and Crosswalk an additional downtown suite at no additional costs. So when i came knocking on John's door, John felt that God had given him this extra space for a purpose, and Hope for North Brevard & the Counseling Center was part of it. So that day he handed the key shown and I was blown away. I walked out of his office, in shock and once again surprised at God's goodness.

I will say that the longer I have continued to step out in faith on this journey the more aware I am of God's presence and provision for this ministry. In the OT, when the Israelites were about to try to take over the promised land, God told Joshua that He would cross over ahead of them, and that is still true today and for that I am very grateful.