Dear Partner,
When my dad would write his November pledge partner letter every year, he would list 100 things he was thankful for. One year he wrote he was thankful for Sharon, her cooking and the kitchen being pregnant with potential. He shared this during our Wednesday night church service before Thanksgiving that year and following his reading I stood and asked, "did anyone else hear my dad just say my mom was pregnant?"
I'll not try to compete with the "100 list" for you today but I will say I am unbelievably thankful for a place called Hiawatha. I met lifetime friends, made huge spiritual decisions, fell in love with my wife, all at a place called Hiawatha. I have been able to serve a lifetime of summers, seen lives impacted for the cause of Christ, witnessed hundreds of kids get saved, all at a place called Hiawatha. Each of those blessings has hundreds of extensions with memories and special moments that were all generated from those initial blessings. I can't imagine what my life would have looked like without HYC.
In Genesis 32 Jacob is getting ready to meet his brother Esau, as he prays, he begins to thank God for all the blessings he has been given. He records all his cattle, goats, sheep, wives, servants. At the end of the blessings, he says in verse 10 "I am unworthy of all the kindness you have shown me 'but". My guess is we probably all do that a little this Thanksgiving as well. We have our own roll of 100 blessings that we could share but if we're honest we also have a "but" we could throw in there at the end.
This Thanksgiving, while I'm grateful for the hundred plus blessings from Hiawatha through my lifetime, my "but" is that the Southern Baptist of MI have voted not to sell Bambi Lake to HYC this past Friday.
This currently leaves HYC without a home for this coming summer and an uncertain future. While this isn't the vote we had hoped for I just checked and Philippians 4:6 is still in the Bible and it says "Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God."
Thankful for 53 years of blessings from Hiawatha to reflect on and even more thankful for a heavenly Father who knows the plans for HYC moving forward even when we don't.
Thank you for your prayers.
Sincerely,
Craig