Since our last post...

An update on our last post. Now Allison has no teeth on top. I am going to tell you, it is the cutest thing ever. She has this incredible lisp now. I keep asking her to say words with s's. Then it makes me laugh. She is awesome! This weekend I asked her if she wanted to paint her nails with me. I asked her to pick colors. For me she picked black and silver... I thought this was funny. She knows me so well. For her she picked pink and pink with sparkles Ha! So we proceeded to paint our nails. Once she had hers done she was thrilled. But then seen the blue and decided she wanted them blue instead. So after the 10th please I caved. I removed all the paint from her fingers and started to paint them blue. I had the first coat of blue on and she looked at me and said "Mama, I think I should have left them pink!" So yes... I removed the paint for the second time and painted them pink again! Patience is a wonderful thing.

We are officially a church as of this week. It is so exciting. After many hours of deciding on a name that we all liked and would be timeless, we decided on PORTICO. We came across this name while reading a church planting book. It talked about "the Portico". I was curious, so I did a little research on it. Portico is a porch or a covered entry way. Portico refers to Solomon's Porch which was a large colonnaded entry to the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus taught there on many occasions. It was also the place where the governor would address the people regarding a decree or judgement he had made on a particular case. But, in Acts 4:4 salvation came to the portico; "But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand." A place that was reserved for judgement became a place for salvation. It seems to us that Portland is a place where people are waiting to be judged by the "religious". We want to be a place of salvation, not a place of judgement.

So this last Saturday night was our first PORTICO LAUNCH TEAM service. After many hours of practice our worship team led like we had a full house. It was soooo exciting. We are so proud of our team. We have a ton of talent, we are very excited to see what God will do. Mark taught on our first Core Value 'Prayer'. We want to be a church that is founded on prayer. Then, a church that continues in prayer. Prayer is what helps us become more like Jesus. Also, He set the ultimate example for us and ever lives to make intercession for us. We are called to do the same. Our heart is for the hurting, so intercession is one of the ways we can help people who are in a life situation deeper than they can handle.



Due to our having church on Saturday night we decided to have Sunday morning breakfast church this week. We had potluck style breakfast, swedish pancakes, bacon, breakfast pizza, eggs, cinnamon rolls... the list is endless, along with fun and just hanging out together.




Two weeks ago we have the pleasure of being apart of the Assemblies Church Planting Bootcamp in Seattle. Four of us attended, along with the Oregon Ministry Network Pastor/Assistant Superintendent Lee McCloud and his wife Cindy, and Lila Pearson, Assistant to Pastor Lee McCloud. I can't even begin to tell you how much of a benefit plus blessing it was to us all. It was informative and interactive. It helped us tremendously. We were incredibly well taken care of with the bonus of getting to know Lee, Cindy and Lila. A big THANK YOU to them & OMN.