Congratulations to entire St. Mark family.  In case you haven’t heard by now, the Kohl’s contest is over and even though the results won’t be officially posted until September 22, we were in the #6 slot just before the contest ended at 12:59 am EST.  In addition, both of our partner schools [Lucas and St. Clement] were also in the top 20.

I just wanted to say a very heartfelt thank you to everyone out there who passed out flyers, got votes in their offices, sent out emails, etc.  The best thing about this contest was the way that it really brought our entire church family together in such a wonderful way.  We had people out at restaurants and malls and grocery all day today trying to get votes.  It was an inspiring and touching image of our church family.

So I just want to say thank you to everyone.  And let us also thank our Lord and God and Savior who once again shined His light upon our humble little church in such a marvelous way.  Let us all say with King David, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations.”  Psalm 89:1

Thank you and God bless you all. 

Do you believe in miracles?  Well I do and I believe that God may be sending us a chance to witness one right in front of our eyes.  You all know the church’s financial need these days – especially with the upcoming construction and financing.  God, who has promised never to leave us or abandon us, has put a great opportunity in front of us and we need your help to make it happen.

We have a chance to win $500,000 through a contest being held on Facebook by the store Kohls [www.facebook.com/kohls].  They are giving away $500,000 to the 20 schools [public or private] that receive the most votes in their contest.  We need you and everybody you know to go online and vote for Good Shepherd Christian Academy.  Each person is allowed to vote for a certain school 5 times and we need all 5 of those votes to go to Good Shepherd Christian Academy.  For instructions on how to vote, please see the bottom of this email.

And then, once you have voted 5 times, go tell others to vote for Good Shepherd as well.  We need everyone to spread the word to their colleagues, neighbors and friends.  Tell your friends in other churches across the U.S. and even back in Egypt.  Anyone can vote from anywhere in the world!  If it helps, I created this video that you can forward to your friends, explaining why they should vote for us.

I believe that God is sending this contest to us at this time because He knows our need.  For those who were around back in 2002-03 when we were building the current Sunday school building, God did a similar miracle at the time.  He sent us several hundred Sony Vaio computers as a donation and through the selling of those computers, we made a profit of about $500,000.  He just put that money in our lap and I believe He is doing the same thing right now through this contest.

This is your chance to be part of a great work by the Hand of the Lord.  Go vote for Good Shepherd Christian Academy 5 times and then spread the word to everyone you know.  I have no doubt that if we all put our hands together on this and then put those united hands in the Mighty Hand of our God, we’ll see something big happen…

How to Vote

1. Go to www.facebook.com/kohls
2. Click on “Vote Now”
   1. If prompted to “LIKE” the organization click on the option to “LIKE”
   2. If prompted to “ALLOW” access to your information click the option to “ALLOW”
3. Click on SEARCH SCHOOLS and type in Good Shepherd Christian Academy
   1. a.  Make sure to choose the Good Shepherd Christian Academy located in FAIRFAX VA
4. Once chosen, then click on “Cast A Vote”
5. When done, remember to go back and cast your 4 remaining votes as well
6. Go back and place another 5 votes for St. Clement Coptic Orthodox Christian Academy (another school the Coptic Church has in Tennessee).
7. Pass this message along to everyone you know

Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm. Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again. Worse still, the rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful; while the poor who received the gold form the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude, because no generosity would have prompted the gift. Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion, a change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve true justice is to change people’s hearts first – and then they will joyfully share their wealth.

-St. John Chrysostom

Budget Caclulator

Dave Ramsey on How to Get out of Debt

From the Drupal/F1 project page…

This project’s goal is to create a solution for integrating Drupal with the Fellowship One Church Management System (ChMS).

Use the chipin widget here to help make this project happen. When the chipin amount is reached, development will begin. The development approach will be incremental, so once the base module is developed we will be adding features as time goes along.

The chipin here will fund the following features:

• Base Drupal/F1 integration for both Drupal 6 & Drupal 7
• The core work will basically get Drupal talking to the F1 database, doing core API integrations.
• The initial focus will be on user integration. User accounts from Fellowship One will be integrated into the Drupal user database. This includes basic profile information as well as login and site access.

Once these features are complete, more will be added. Next stages will focus on event integration and registrations.

Many thanks to Rob Feature and Matt Farina for getting this going.

Update: Latest photos on flickr.  Videos on Vimeo.

Prayers appreciated.

No need to buy a drink just to hang out either…