Jan UPDATE

Happy new years to you all!

 

It is always exciting at the new year for me to be able to look back at the old year and see where you have come from in just a short year. It is always amazing how fast the time goes by. looking back on this old year is very humbling for me, to be surrounded by so many great people and having so many opportunities to do what you love is also very humbling, considering there are so many people that lack such opportunities that we take for granted so easily.

This last year has brought us all a year older - a creative 6 yr old Jacob, even if it was at the end of the year. (His birthday is Dec 31st) A vibrant 3yr old Leah, and Amanda and I didn't get a year younger either. We are blessed and healthy and are looking forward to a new year to see what God has for us this year.

December was a wonderful month, we were able to see all of our family and spend some time together with all of them. We had opportunity to be at a couple of churches local to us here in the Newnan area, and then after Christmas, Amanda and I drove to Chicago to be at a youth retreat for the youth ministry of our friends at Grace Church. Where I had the opportunity to speak with them each day, and saw several give their heart to the Lord.
We left Chicago and drove to Detroit to visit our friends at Riverwood Community Church. We are so grateful for these opportunities to share about the heart that God has given us for our friends in Pine Ridge this last month and are looking forward to the busy month ahead of us. We have been blessed this month with Coats and blankets as well as a whole van load of personal hygiene products that will make their way back to Pine Ridge in a couple of weeks. Thank you to all who have gathered this stuff together for us.

We now have a date of when we will be heading back. We are leaving Feb 23rd to head back to Pine Ridge. This is very exciting for us and we are very much looking forward to being back there. Please pray that as we prepare for this, that the transition would go well for Jacob and Leah especially. Sometimes I think they handle the back and forth better than we do even though they don't fully understand what is going on all the time. We can probably learn from that and just not try and fully understand everything but in all our ways lean on the Lord and trust that His ways are always good.

I have been so challenged these last couple of months by having a heart that desires to have a Big God. I know that God is big whether I believe He is or not and my beliefs do not change God but they do however change the way I live my life. I want to live my life knowing and believing that God is everything that I am not, and in Him I lack nothing. The bible says that without faith it is impossible to please Him. My heart wants to please Him by living a life that says "my God is greater than ______" when we realize this truth there is nothing that can stand against us because of His greatness. Our needs have been met by the greatness of God, I don't know where it all comes from and I don't know where it will come from next month, all I do know is that God is faithful to Himself and that means he cannot go against His word.

We have a lot going on this month and ask that you would continue to pray for us as we head into getting ready for the transition back to Pine Ridge.

Something that we are really looking forward to is at the end of this month and I would love to see everyone of you there and we love for you to invite your friends and church family as well. We are having a night or worship on January 25th to worship the Lord and to make aware of the needs in Pine Ridge. We did this same thing last year and were blessed by it and had heard from many of you how it had blessed your heart as well. This year we want it to be a time where you can catch the vision that we have for the Lakota people. A good native friend of ours in Pine Ridge, Mike Brennan (Pastor Two Shadows) will be there and share some of his heart and we hope to have plenty of pictures for you to check out and then just have a sweet time of worshiping together in song.

January 25th at 7:00pm

Crossroads Church -

2564 Hwy 154

Newnan, GA 30265

Our schedule for January is -

9th - Carrolton Performing arts Center

12th - 14th Leesburg, MS and Gulfport, MS

19th - 21st Memphis, AR and Danville, AR

27th - Feb 9th - Northwest Territory (Matt only)

If you would like to support us monthly or just a one time donation you can donate

online www.youthevangelismstratgies.com

paypal athadden@gmail.com

check:

YES

HCR 49 Box 242

Porcupine, SD 57772
Memo - Hadden Family

Thank you for all your prayers and support, we love you all

Learning to serve the Lord in all we do,

Matt, Amanda, Jacob and Leah