Praise
We have been blessed by God! He has proven himself faithful to our group, time and time again through this process. One of our first prayer requests was for God to give us influence and favor in our community. To say that he has done that would be an understatement. God has opened doors and made provisions for us that would have been impossible without him. 

We praise God for these and so many more things: paint. Yep, paint. I found enough paint in a closet of the building to paint all of the sanctuary, foyer, sitting area, and coffee shop. FREE! Go God! Chairs. Someone from our group offered to pay $1,000 to start the ball rolling towards us getting new chairs to replace the very outdated pews. Then a good friend from our support church in MS gave $3000, then another gave $500, then another $300, then another $200 and the next thing we knew we were sitting on brand new chairs! GO GOD!

Then last week someone from our group said, “I’ll give money towards new parking lot materials.” Then another person joined in and the next thing we knew trucks were dropping crushed asphalt on our parking lot. Another friend loaned us his dump trailer, and another friend donated his time to spread the materials on the parking lot. It is amazing watching God work! GO GOD!

This week someone dropped by the church and volunteered to do some much needed electrical work. We NEED this big time and God sent someone to our door! GO GOD!

At every turn God has proven himself faithful and shown us influence and favor. God is working in Laporte, Colorado and we know it has much to do with your faithfulness to pray for us.

                        

We are aiming towards an Easter launch date. That's April 12th and it's not far off! Please mark this date on your calendar! We'd love for you to come be a part of our launch team. 

Prayer Requests

We are still searching for a worship leader. Please pray that we will find the person God has for our church.

Pray for our team, as we continue the final preparations on the building and rooms.

Pray for the first service to go smoothly and for people to feel the sense of community and love that we want to portray.

The first year of a new church start is especially difficult financially. Please consider partnering with us monthly. Also…

How can you help?

• By praying for the Revive team. We are sustained by your prayers! By praying regularly for us you stand in the gap on our behalf. Each time you do, you help build a hedge of protection around us. Please consider praying daily, weekly, or monthly for us and let me know! Your prayers mean more than you know.
• By giving to our ministry, you help us keep the lights on. We have regular tithes and offerings but as churches begin they usually find themselves in tight places financially. Finances will make or break new ministries. Will you consider giving to our ministry needs - Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly? To give, visit www.livevertical.tv and click on the GIVE tab. Drop down box to Perry Project - Colorado. Thank you in advance for your gift.
• By coming to assist us personally. If you are planning a mission trip this summer would you consider coming here? We need teams for canvassing, prayer walking, sports camps, service projects, and many other needs. Please let me know if you’d like to join us! We have some teams coming this spring and summer and are super thankful for those that can give of their time for this ministry.

Revive church

4698 Rist Canyon Rd

Laporte, CO 80512

Dear Friends,

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been on mission in Colorado for a year now. It’s been one crazy ride! Missi and I were talking about all of the miracles that God provided to get us here. There were so many miracles that it would take several of these letters just to give you a glimpse into how much God has done to get us to where we are. We are so grateful for God’s provision and leadership. 

We are also very grateful for your prayer support over this past year. Without your faithfulness to pray for us, this letter would be very different. Thank you so much! We are humbled by your thoughts and prayers and know that without you we would not be able to be here.

Having said that, we are now at the place in our ministry where we need so much more than we can provide out of our personal budget. Thankfully, we are debt free, aside from our house. But the church plant is ready to take off and we need your help.

A few months ago we were invited to teach at a little church within our target area. After two months of teaching on spiritual health, we were approached by one of the elders who asked, “How can we close the doors of this church and follow a vision like yours?” We were blown away by their question. With that question in mind I began to lead the church in a month-long fast and prayer time. Many of you knew about this and prayed along with us. 

After months of praying and fasting, the church decided to turn over their property, leadership, and accounts to us to replant a church with a new vision in the same location. They decided to join our team to begin working toward growing the Kingdom of God in Northern Colorado. This is such a tremendous gift from God! God has also given us a name, Revive. 

As exciting as that sounds, we now find ourselves looking to launch Easter Sunday, 2020! With such a great opportunity also comes a great financial burden. We estimate we’ll need nearly $100,000.00 for the first year. 

 We are so thankful to have a building but it needs lot of work, such as: completing the youth area (a separate building), cleaning, painting, adding children’s and youth equipment, new sound equipment, lighting, computers for worship services and children’s and youth environments, parking lot work, playground update, and educational material for small groups, and so much more. Thankfully our building is paid for, so the resources we raise will go towards the critical areas mentioned above.

We need your help! We are not asking for anyone to give a specific amount to our church. We are asking you to give as you feel led by God to give. We ask you to pray for wisdom and then give accordingly and generously. Our home church, Vertical, in Gluckstadt, MS has an account set up in our name. It’s called the Perry Project, Colorado. You can give to us on the Vertical site and have confidence that your gift will be used to further God’s Kingdom here in Colorado. And your contribution is tax deductible. We hope you will join our effort to make disciples of Christ in Northern Colorado by giving generously. 

We will start vision services for the community beginning in January. We hope to have at least three vision services and then we will launch Revive for regular services on Easter Sunday of 2020.

Thank you for sharing this journey with us to see many come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Living Sent, 

The Perrys: Steven, Missi, Caleb, Isabel, Lily, and Sam

For contributions: 
Go to www.livevertical.tv click on the giving tab. Scroll down until you see the Perry project, Colorado. Then give as the Lord leads! You will be able to set up your gift as a one-time gift or monthly. Thank you!

Matthew 28:18-20

PS… A couple other needs.
We need mission teams to come help us do the renovations. If you would like to schedule a team to come we would be so grateful! Our building has showers and a kitchen so your cost could stay low! We hope you will join us in the work!
We need your help to launch Revive on Easter Sunday, 2020. If you feel led to come help us with this service please let us know. 

Family Update:
     2019 began with quiet calm as we looked forward to the adventure of this new year. Missi’s new job at Banner Health in Greeley, CO was going as expected. Caleb is working towards graduating high school and preparing for college as he works as a barista. We believe he’ll be attending Front Range Community College in the fall. Isabel is in her Junior year and doing well. Still no driver’s license though! Lily is in the fourth grade and working hard to master everything she touches. Sam is a fun-loving kid who is all boy! All in all, our family is adjusting to our northern Colorado home.

Church Planting Update:
     Before we left Mississippi, we were given some of the best advice that I think anyone has ever given to us. One of Missi’s patients, a former pastor, said we should “adjust your expectations.” He meant that things would not be exactly the way we thought they would be. And boy was he right! We’ve spent over 9 years preparing for this ministry. In truth, we’ve spent a lifetime being equipped to start a church. We’ve had to adjust to what God was doing here. When we got to the mission field, we learned of places that had not church at all - of any denomination or religion. Can you believe it?! Towns like Nunn and Carr have no organized church. Dotted across the Front Range you’ll find thousands of families who are not connected to the Church or to Christ. The field that God is giving us is ripe unto harvest!
   
     We’ve been volunteering at a food pantry in Nunn. Each week a group of people from several churches in the area get together to feed the hungry. It has been incredible to join the work. I’ve met so many people who are not connected to God’s Kingdom. But as I’ve observed the community I have realized that a church in Nunn would fall short of our target. So our scope has been widened to include more communities that are just like Nunn, all along the front range. We are going to engage the communities of Carr, Grover, and Pierce as well as Nunn. All of these communities are within about 20 miles of each other on a vast open range of prairie grass, prairie dogs, pronghorn antelope, and ranches, farms, and unnamed communities. By-in-large there are thousands of people in these areas, combined, who may not be connected to the Body of Christ in any way.
   
      This summer (July) we are planning to have backyard Bible clubs in the community park at Nunn. We will advertise in the surrounding communities. Our hope is to make lasting connections with families through Bible clubs. It should be great! So if you have any current Bible school materials that you could donate we’d be grateful if you’d send it our way! We are also planning prayer walks in the target communities throughout the summer.
   
      Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

     Our hope is to see the Front Range of Northern Colorado come to a thriving and vibrant faith in Jesus Christ, one that is alive because of the redeeming work of our Savior on the cross. We have been given a great opportunity to share the love of Jesus to our neighbors. And we take it seriously. We thank you for sharing this journey with us. Because of your faithful prayers and support we have been sustained and press on towards the prize that God has laid before us.

 In Christ,
 The Perrys

Long, long summer

It has only been very recently that we have had time to take a moment and think about the months that have gone by. So much of our last blogs were about our move to Georgia and all that was happening there. We cannot be sure why God steered us away from the church plant at LifeTree and our new home, but we can surely say He did.
When First Baptist Grand Isle issued the call for Steven to come and serve as their pastor, honestly, at first I didn't know what to say. Steven wanted to preach and to lead people into a deeper relationship with Christ. We jumped on the opportunity.

We had a busy summer with moving in, Day camp for students, summer missionaries, and trying to basically fit in. Cajun country is different from any other place on earth, to say the least. Just getting acqainted with the dialect is challenging. It wasn't long before our kiddos were saying "may-yeh" and ending their sentences with pronouns, "She doesn't like peanut butter and jelly, her." We were settling in!

The people of First Baptist Church made it an easy transition for us. Teaching us how to get the crab meat out of blue crab, telling Steven the best way to catch Redfish, and how to jig for flounder. Our son told us after the first two weeks of being here that he had to get off of all this seafood. Sadly, he's not much of a seafood fan!

Spiritually, we see a great need for awakening here. So many claim to know Christ, but don't live it at all. There is little knowledge of a living relationship with Christ. We want so badly to pass on this knowledge of a loving Savior that wants to have Daily fellowship with us!

I'm not even going to mention how Gustav and Ike disrupted everything. We are still in a state of helping others clean out from under the sand! We spent weeks after the storms serving food and opening our gym with disaster relief supplies. We have had a few hard working teams come down to help clean up as well. Much thanks goes out to the local churches for sending supplies and sending people to serve on Grand Isle.

Now we will settle in for what is promised to be a quiet reprieve from the busy summer. We will enjoy a slightly less occupied island and hopefully get revived for summer 2009!

As we move towards the end of the year I'd like to share some of our exciting moments with you. First, Caleb made a profession of faith and was baptized! We are so proud of Caleb and his decision to follow Christ. It all started when he called me into his room one night. He said he was scared of the shadows in his room. I told him those shadows would not bother him if his eyes were closed. He said ok and all was fine...so I thought. A little later he called me back into his room saying the same thing. When I questioned him a little further I realized that he was having bad dreams. In his dream the shadows were after him. As we talked about the shadows he asked me about heaven and hell. He said he didn't to go to hell and that he wanted me to save him from there. I told him only God could save him from hell. He said he wanted to be saved but didn't know how. So I shared what Scripture says about salvation. He still didn't understand enough to pray in faith. After a few minutes of questions we decided to let the subject rest a bit. A few nights later he called Missi into his room saying the same things again. She went through the Scriptures with him but he still wasn't ready to pray to receive Jesus. This happened several times of a period of weeks. Then one night at about 11:30 pm he called me back into his room. This time he said that he was ready to ask Jesus into his heart. As I questioned him to discover if he was truly ready I was convinced that he was. Yet he still wanted me to pray for him. I told him that I could not save him, only Jesus could do that and he had to pray, not me. He finally put enough of the pieces together to pray. He asked me to turn around and face the other direction while he prayed. He then leaned against my back with his back and began to pray. His prayer was very personal so I will not share that with you, but let me tell you it was very sweet and he was very clear. I believe Jesus moved into his heart that night. Our family rejoiced with Caleb that night, and still do. We are so proud of him and we thank God daily for saving our son.

Isabel is also doing well. She has a huge heart for people and little critters. If she could have her way we would have an animal on every inch of our property. She is a very creative and has entered into the year book cover competition at her school - by her teachers request, I might add. We don't know if she has won yet. Either way, we are still very proud of her. We pray for her salvation everyday and trust God as he draws her near him day by day.

Another thing that has taken place this year is how I became the cub scout master for pack 470. I was snookered into it, but have grown to appreciate the new responsiblity. The boys that God has given me are good boys. Missi was also snookered into becoming the pack advancement chair person. She voluteered for that job! As it so happens the advancement chair is one of the most important jobs in all of scouting. She makes sure every boy gets the patches that are earned. We got into scouting for Caleb. We wanted him to meet some new boys his age. We have developed many new relationships with parents of the scouts. We discovered a fertile ground to share Christ with our new friends.

God continues to work in all of our lives. We are thankful for His love and provision. Everyday is a blessing to just breathe because we know that it is a gift from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ.

It has been a while since our last update, so let me catch you up.

We moved into our new home in Dallas, GA on June 8. With much help from family and friends

we got everything moved in. I started my job with Wellstar Home Care on June 18 and all is going well with that. Steven has been working with Jeff on the plans for LifeTree Church. We are eagerly awaiting the time when Brian and Karen Bridges can move to the area, after Brian completes his degree in New Orleans in December.

We are getting to know our neighbors and co-workers. Caleb and Isabel have really helped that out, since they are eager to play with all of the children in the neighborhood. When a neighbor, upon meeting Isabel for the first time, asked her why we moved here she said, "God brought us here." So, she is our little missionary.

We continue to need your prayers as we reach out to our community, and try to share the love of Jesus. Please pray for LifeTree as we seek a worship leader and core members. So much left to be done in the next months. Thanks to everyone who prays for the Perry's!

Praise Report!

Another praise:

I got a job! Most of you know this was weighing on my mind. We had the house, but no job!? So, we made several trips to Ga for interviews and such, with not much luck. I was really praying about a job that would allow me evenings home with my family, and since 12-hour shifts at the hospital take such a chunk out of my day, I was hoping for a different solution. When I originally spoke to the home health agency they had already filled their position, but they talked things out and decided they could use another nurse! It will keep me (hopefully) in Dallas or surrounding communities. I am also hoping that with the ability to go into people's homes I can share of our new church plant, that is so close!

Thanks to all of you who prayed for us, we sensed your prayers, and now feel they were answered!!