The opportunity to sponsor a child continues at CCC for the next few weeks. Consider sponsoring a child for $38 a month on your own, as a family, or as a small group. You can pick up sponsorship packets on Sunday mornings or if you stop by CCC during the week.

You can listen to the whole Stack the Deck series including Compassion Sunday by clicking here.

Over 100 volunteers give their time and talent to help create irresistible environments for families each week at CCC. Summer is a great opportunity to give them a break. We do this by creating a Summer Team for volunteers to serve in Children’s Ministry during July & August, but not necessarily every week. If you are interested in serving on the Summer Team, you can sign up in the lobby at CCC to attend the Orientation on Wednesday, June 16, at 6:30PM. You can sign up even if you can’t attend the Orientation.

This is a great opportunity for anyone who has more time to give during the summer. It’s also a great opportunity for anyone who has not served on a team at CCC yet. The Summer Team gives you a chance to contribute according to your availability and during a specified window of time. I’m really looking forward to serving with the summer team. What are you doing this summer?

Nick Blevins
nick@communitycc.net

For more race information go to www.thrivebaltimore.net. It’s going to be a great time, don’t miss out!

Dave Ramsey’s Gazelle Budget Lite – This is an online calculator that helps create a budget based on net monthly income.

Crown Financial offers free Percentage Guides that gives you an idea of what categories to budget for and approximately what percentage of your income should be assigned to each category. Use the one that fits your context the closest:

• Singles
• Single Parent
• Married Couple (no kids)
• Family of Four
• Family of Six

They also offer a Budget Analysis Form to help compare the difference between what you’re currently spending and the new monthly guideline budget you chose from the above resources.

Mint.com is a free online resource that will track all of your debit and credit card expenses. Mint will automatically categorize them, but you can create your own subcategories and tags as well. At any point you can see a pie chart showing the breakdown of where your money is going.

These trips were created so that students from CCC would have the opportunity to experience a culture and an environment different from their own. Our hope is to see every student from CCC participate on one of the Summer Service Trips. For more information about each trip, check out the Sign Up table in the lobby at CCC.

Besides the Summer Service Trips, there are a lot of other things happening over the next few months just for students here at CCC. Make sure to grab a Student Ministry Newsletter and a Summer Trip Schedule at the sign up table this Sunday!

Ryan Arnold
ryan.arnold@communitycc.net

I had prepared my children for a Christmas without presents. I reiterated daily how at this point in our lives, it would be negligent of me to spend money we didn’t have on Christmas. When I saw the amount of gifts for my children, I was overwhelmed. I have never known how touching or powerful the kindness of strangers could be. When my kids woke up Christmas morning and saw the many presents, they were shocked – screaming at 4:00 in the morning, but strangely enough they unwrapped their presents very slowly, loving every one.

I was trying to be happy so that my mom wouldn’t cry, but I was just pretending because it was a bad time. We were all trying to smile and think that we would get presents. And then Santa came, and my mom was crying, and I don’t know why because we got lots of presents. I got nice clothes and a CD player and a game and a stocking and candy. My favorite is a Razor, but I can’t ride it inside.

At Christmas I was worried about getting things for my children. When I saw all their gifts, I was shocked and then I wished I hadn’t spent so much time worrying about it. It is really nice that you helped us. My children went crazy, and we had to go outside so they could run around and calm down. Thank you for my gifts too. I didn’t think there would be gifts for me, too.

I live in a big house with a lot of people. We didn’t know that we would have a good Christmas, but we did. Santa brought me and all of us kids a lot of stuff, and we had fun. I was mad at my mother when we came here, but now I’m not.

Christmas was really nice. I got so much help. All of us moms got together one night before Christmas, and we got to see our children’s presents. We were wrapping things together. It was a sense of family that I don’t have now. It’s going to make me cry to think of it. Thank you for your help.

It is such a joy and a privilege to be a part of this community that really strives to follow Jesus in the ways we live.

Leigh Ann Hawkey

If you’ve been considering going on a service trip this year, you can still jump on the Dominican team. It’s not too late. Even though the trip isn’t until June 12, the team is forming now. There has been a lot of interest, and we are in the process of meeting with each person to go over some of the details of the trip, answer any questions, and have a chance to get to know each other a little.

Making new friends is a fun part of any service trip. We really get to know people on a deeper level when we step out of our normal environment and regular routine and spend a week together. It is such a unique opportunity to put aside our schedules, blackberries, agendas and ipods and see what God will do in our lives when we spend a week serving in his name. For those that are ready to take this step and join the team, I’ll bet the week spent in the Dominican Republic will be the highlight of the year.

February 7 is the last day to sign up and get some information on the trip. You can sign up in the lobby at CCC or email leighann@communitycc.net

As we loaded the many bags and boxes of supplies onto the U-Haul Sunday afternoon, we prayed that the people receiving them would be blessed and gain comfort from them. We will continue to pray for the church to shine brightly and for the name of Jesus to be held high through these difficult days in Haiti. It is also our prayer that everyone who contributed to the supply drive was blessed by the opportunity to care for those who are truly in need. The church is at its best when we serve and give.

Community Christian Church has sent several teams over the past few years to serve with the Northwest Haiti Christian Mission. The Christian Mission sent a medical team into Port-au-Prince in the hours that followed the earthquake, and they have let us know of some of the immediate needs that we are able to supply. We are collecting some specific supplies at CCC and shipping them out on Sunday, January 24. If you would like to purchase some supplies and drop them off at CCC this Sunday, please check out the list of items by clicking HERE.

You could also help by donating to one of these organizations:

Compassion International has 65,000 sponsored children in Haiti.

World Vision has sponsored children in Haiti & is doing disaster relief work. 

Samaritan’s Purse is providing disaster relief supplies. They hope to have 6,000 temporary shelters up in a couple weeks & by the end of next week will be providing 500,000 gallons of clean water daily.

Convoy of Hope has a warehouse there & feeds 7,000 children daily. They are providing food & disaster relief supplies. Here are some photos of their work so far.

World Hope is mobilizing their staff in Haiti & will be coordinating volunteers and volunteer groups from the U.S. (once emergency needs have been met).

When we pulled up at the Family Crisis Center with bags and bags and bags of presents, they were just blown away. The staff at the center told us the mothers and children weren’t expecting anything at all for Christmas and this would be a big surprise. I wish we could have seen the children’s faces on Christmas morning. I’m sure it was even a bigger blessing to the mothers as they were able to wrap and give those presents to their kids. I drove away from the center overcome with joy. Yes, I was happy to have space in my car again, but I got to experience the joy of giving. I also was so very proud of the families in our church community who try to follow Jesus and be a light to the world.

Thank you to everyone who provided Christmas presents for these families. We’ve already heard several stories of how people have been moved by this experience of either giving or receiving. If you have a story about Adopt-A-Family for Christmas, we would love to hear it. Email your story to leighann@communitycc.net

Another value for the Student Ministry at CCC is service. We believe that students should have opportunities to not only learn to follow Jesus but also have some real opportunities to serve as well. For that reason, over the past two summers, the only trips we have offered for both middle and high school students have been service trips. We want to ingrain the importance of service in our summer trips. We hope when students evaluate how they can spend their summer, they will automatically want to serve. When it came time to plan this year’s summer trips we immediately began thinking of the best service trip opportunities for CCC students. Check out this year’s summer service trips:

Middle School – LIVE out LOUD
From July 12th until July 17th middle school students from CCC will go to Lancaster, PA for LIVE out LOUD. LIVE out LOUD will help students recognize the heart of service through repairing, renovating and transforming houses. Not only will students be doing minor home repair, but they will also come to an understanding of the awesome relationship that Jesus offers through worship, small group discussions, and relationships with trip leaders.

High School – Dominican Republic
From June 19th until June 26th high school students from CCC will go to the Dominican Republic for their summer service trip. In the Dominican we will partner with David & Virginia Savage. David & Virginia have been working in the Dominican for over 30 years doing local church planting. While there students will have the opportunity to do church construction, programming for children, and other community projects. The Dominican Republic trip can be a life changing experience for any student that goes.

It is the hope of the CCC Student Ministry Team that every student will go on one of these trips. Trip packets will be available Sunday, December 20th at the information table in the lobby at CCC. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, ryan.arnold@communitycc.net

Ryan Arnold
Student Ministry Director

That’s why our Frontline Ministry is so vital in creating a welcoming, come as you are atmosphere. It all starts out in the parking lot when someone smiles and waves at you even in the snow or rain. We’re communicating that we’re glad you’re here, and you can expect to have a great church experience. We love to have fun at CCC, and sometimes our parking volunteers get in on the fun by “dressing up”. You never know when you might pull up and see them wearing a cap n gown in May or sitting under a beach umbrella in August. Frontline doesn’t stop in the parking lot. We always have plenty of free fresh hot coffee to enjoy during the service, and sometimes we have cookies or hot dogs just because we can. Frontline does a lot of things you probably see like handing out programs or helping people find a seat, but we also do a lot of behind the scenes things like keeping the facility clean and taking out the trash. Our mission is to help people find their way back to God, and sometimes it’s the little things that can become a speed bump on that journey. So if it’s putting out signs to make it easier to find us, keeping the mints in the bathroom overflowing, or simply saying hello, Frontline helps smooth out some of those potential speed bumps so the road back to God is a little straighter.

Are you interested in helping create great first impressions at CCC?  Click here to find out how you can get involved.

Leigh Ann Hawkey

These are difficult times, and the reality for some of our neighbors and single moms is they won’t be celebrating Christmas with presents this year. It’s sad to think about kids waking up on Christmas morning without a single present to open and the parents who find themselves unable to do anything about it. The families and small groups at CCC are making sure these families have some gifts under the tree by adopting a family for Christmas. We are working together with our community partners to purchase and deliver gifts to the families who need them the most.

Let me encourage you to sign up for a family and help make some Christmas memories for someone. You can sign up on Sunday in the lobby at CCC, or you can email me leighann@communitycc.net. We’ll get back to you with a family’s Christmas list no later than December 6. There isn’t a set dollar amount – just do what you can. A few small gifts can make a big difference.

Leigh Ann Hawkey