2013 Overview

We had an amazing year in 2013! Christ's love and provision was poured out upon many people at The Ministry House during food distributions. Here is an overview on what happened:

Over 40,000 pounds of food was given to those in need.
An average of 65 families came through each distribution.
Over 300 families were given food (serving over 1,000 people)
We were able to pray with most of the people at one distribution or another.
Many people were encouraged.
A 30x60 addition was built onto the side of the ministry house to act as a sanctuary, food distribution center, and place for upcoming christian movie nights. (The shell of the addition is complete, the interior is not yet fully functional)

We are looking forward to 2014!!! We are hoping and praying that the Lords hand will continue to be with us in a strong and mighty way as others continue to be served and lifted in prayer.
We praise God for all of our friends and family who have supported us in prayer through out the year. We are also so thankful for all of the volunteers who have sacrificed much of their time to come here and serve others.  THANK YOU ALL! God bless!

Day 2 in Harveyville

Family and Friends,

Today (mar 3^rd) we had a few other soldiers of the Lord come with us to Harveyville.  We had seven people go, including Myself, Charles and Elvie Aiekens, Micah, Caleb, Jadon (which are my three older boys), and Adam Asebedo (who says he's also ours!) We had a very good work crew for sure! Today our group served in a variety of different ways. First some of us went to pack up belongings for the elderly which were having to move out of there demolition scheduled building. Some of us went to rake and pick up nails for the parade of dump trucks at the Methodist church and parsonage, which were both totally destroyed. After those tasks we all met at a farm just on the edge of town. We were told to start picking up debris on the land and out of the creek. Come to find out this debris were once the farmers out buildings and sheds, I believe he lost every one of them except a damaged pig pen. Our crew and the other teams that were there did such an amazing job separating the personals for the home owners and the rest of the pieces to be hauled away to the land fill. Even though the day(s) have been very exhausting, I believe that our team and the other volunteers would have just kept on asking the question, (where do we go next?) but by the end of this day the work needed done was going to have to be done by heavy equipment and dump trucks.

         While we were there serving I couldn’t help noticing how much love you feel from each person that came to help. When God talks about going and helping the needy, and that’s what you go and do. It is very evident that God is right there with you and everyone else serving, by the selfless actions you see and the love that you feel coming from each person. I feel that, if I noticed this that much and I am only one serving, I can only imagine how much love the Holy Spirit is allowing the people in the community to feel!!! This seems to be the eye of hope, or a blanket of peace that is unexplainable that makes a community like this one want to re-build and come back stronger. I thank each of you for your prayers, and please join me in continuing to pray for this community, and those other communities that experience some destruction to feel the same out pour of love as Harveyville has.

       With love, Pastor Joey Orebaugh

P.S. Starting Mar 4^th if you would like to serve the tornado victims of Harveyville you have to e-mail harveyvilletornado@gmail.com  and provide them with your name, address, phone number and how you might be able to serve. This may be the only way through the police barricades into town.

First Day In Harveyville!

 

Trip to Harveyville! First day

Today (Mar 2^nd) I left early with Chuck and Elvie (awesome couple), to Harveyville where the tornado ripped through and devastated the town, to serve and see what we could do to help. Once again another humbling experience for sure! There were so many homes destroyed, damaged, and families that were forced out of there homes, It will take a long time to re-build the town, but I know they will! There were too many volunteers to count, a very cool sight to see the hearts of every one so eager to help and serve any way they could. We spent the day digging through apartments with no more exterior walls and no roof on them, separating debris, weeds, sticks, and personal belongings. One elderly lady we met today had an incredible story of what happened to her. While the walls and roof was coming off around her, she was sitting in the dark on her bed. Now if you think about it God was totally with her, these were brick walls and an entire roof totally gone, and she was just sitting there! How amazing! Then after all of that she went to the rescue of her neighbors including her brother in one apartment on one side of her and a single mom with her two babies (which were knocked out) on the other side. (The babies are ok!) After spending some time with her listening to her story and praying with her she felt very blessed to have her life, and didn’t care so much about the material things. Please pray for the people and the community of Harveyville. We will be going back tomorrow with hopefully more people. We plan to worship God through the acts of our services.

             With love Pastor Joey Orebaugh

     P.S.  I will be posting some pictures that have been taken of the area in the next few days. God bless you!

Harveyville Tornado

The Ministry House is collecting food and clothes for the victims in Harveyville, KS. You can drop off items anytime or call Joey at 620-272-1008 for more info. A group of men from Wilsey will be going down to help clean up and deliver all donated items.

"The Building of the House"

Building of the House

There has been so much done here at the Ministry house! There is now heat in the first level, some insulation installed, partial cabinets in the kitchen, little duct work done in the second level, and sheet-rock hung on the whole first floor. We have been working on wiring the second level so we can insulate up there as well. I think that heaven probably doesn’t need all the extra hot air it’s getting from our second floor! (Lol)

However, in spite of all of the exciting progress, we have realized that we have been working so hard on the construction of the building that we have lacked on our end of keeping up with studies and building our own house within us as much lately. The Lord has really laid it on our hearts to re-focus more of our time on our relationship with Him and the study of the Word!

We are asking you to pray for us this week December 5th through December 11th! As a family we are going to set aside 8 to 10 hrs per day to study the word of God, learn from good bible teaching DVD’s and books, do topical studies, praise and worship, have personal prayer time and to pray for one another and for others. The Lord has been reminding us that asking Jesus in our heart is only the beginning, (He is the unfailing foundation, one that will not sink!) and that our task after receiving that foundation is to constantly learn and grow, and to build the house on it out of material that will withstand the fire, (trials and tribulations)… to build a house that won’t burn up when tested, as stated by Paul.

We would really appreciate your prayers this week, please pray that God would show us everything He wants us to learn, and that the boys would all grow in their relationship with the Lord as well! Thank you for reading and keeping up with what’s going on at The Ministry House.

Love you in Christ, Joey, Hazel and family

P.S.
We have been very blessed here, with the company of other believers (friends) coming to visit and pray for this ministry. I want to say thank you to all that has come, and encourage anyone else that feels led by God to come and feel welcome!

P.P.S.
In case you haven’t heard, we were very blessed on November 22 with the birth of Jeremiah Aaron Orebaugh, he makes number eight in our little army here. Hazel and baby Jeremiah did very well and we thank God for a healthy boy!

You can also visit us at: www.theministryhouse.com

Moving Mountains

 

Literally moving mountains of plaster! How amazing it is how God used Merle (president of the Bible School ) with this idea of what to do with all of the old plaster out of the house. He suggested making plaster drive-ways and paths! Well since then we have taken a bunch of loads out from the main floor of the house, but still had an enormous mountain sitting in a bedroom on the second floor. I had been making myself sick when I thought about moving that heavy mountain! Like some of the things in our own lives, burdens or problems that seem like mountains to be moved, we can make our self sick when we think about them. Well what I have found out in the past and now through this plaster-mountain experience, first of all is another reminder of how our God is a mountain mover according to Matthew 17; 20-21, all we have to do is give it to Him and ask Him to guide us through.  Well the mountain had been sitting for a while and time passed, I continued to work around the pile frustrated and inconvenienced… it had to be moved! As you can see in the pictures below the boys and I became creative! We built a ramp out of the second floor window! This was so much better than carrying it out in buckets and believe it or not, the ramp made the plaster land exactly where we needed it to be. Guys this whole process of moving this mountain and putting the pieces all where they belong only took about three hours! Yes it was a lot of sweat, dust and work but overall it was pretty easy. It’s amazing how those mountains in our life seem to be these huge things that are impossible, but then the Lord gives us His strength and guidance, and when we look back we can tell that the Lord had His hand in it all. Then the big question is “why was I so worried?”  

May God bless you!  Thank you for reading this and keeping up with what God is doing here at The Ministry House. You can also find our web site at: www.theministryhouse.com

Love you in Christ !

Joey, Hazel & Family

People Needing Food!

We recently had The Ministry House placed in the Herington and Council Grove papers. The ad read Under construction/Coming Soon....and then described the ministry...Even though the ad was pretty clear that we are not opened yet, people began calling asking for help with food and interested in the Church Service. We haven't met the building requirements to be set up with the food banks yet so we've just been offering to take people to the store...Please pray that the Lord will bless Joey's hands and the hands of volunteers as we all work towards getting things ready! We are so excited to get a small glimpse of the true need that is out there...people really do need our help! One thing we know for sure from our experience at the outreach center in Garden City is that many people come in need of food, but also come with broken hearts, and end up leaving feeling a sense of hope as they learn about the Lord and see and feel the love that the body of Christ has for them! Our arms are aching to be able to hug on them and pray over them!!! We can't wait!!!