A Word from Summer
the Willards
Winter Ministry Change in Ministry: Dw ight w ill be taking a new leadership position with Word of Life. His new title is National Coordinator of Operations for Local Church Ministries. This will require us moving to Schroon Lake, N Y this summer. We will continue to cover our area till a new person is in place. Please pray for the person that God has prepared to take our place. We are excited about this new opportunity but it is bittersweet. It is going to be very hard to leave everyone and our area. It is our home area where we both grew up and we have invested 20 years of our lives here. God has so blessed us with a great home church that we will miss very much. It was a very difficult decision to make as everything in ministry was going really smoothly and we were having an increase in support. Counseling Conference in Lafayette, IN Diana did the Women’s Track and Dwight did Track 4 which has rotating topics each year. Such a great time of refreshment in
the Word for us personally and training to help others we come in contact with. It is such a wonderful encouragement that God’s Word has wisdom for every situation in life we face. We had great visits with the Wilkes (PA Area missionaries) as we traveled out with them and many other staff and friends who attended the conference. We would highly recommend it if you ever get the opportunity to attend. Snowcamp Dw ight had the privilege of being at Snowcamp three different weekends this year. He was able to teach a new believers class to those who made decisions on Friday night. Also a great time of connecting with leaders and staff throughout the weekends Engage: Develop Stage: April 11th in Epsom NH. W e are excited to have one of the traveling drama teams from BI come and help at Engage this year. Pray Churches will see it is not totally different just improved with a
focus on ministry. We have heard great reports from other areas this Spring and looking forward to how God is going to use Engage to better prepare students for ministry now and into the future. Winter Training: Thank you to Russ Elam for doing an Olympian Seminar on reaching the unchurched in your local area. Pastor Kohl, our intentional Interim pastor at Eastford did a seminar on the 10 Essentials for Effective Teaching. Both days were a great day of encouragement and fellowship with others who are serving in youth ministry
Olympian Sleepover We had a great time at Christian Fellowship’s annual sleepover. Dwight had the privilege of sharing the Gospel and seeing many children come for counseling. Fascar Rally W e had tw o Fascar Rallies this winter at Colonial Baptist and Sturtevant Chapel Live for More Tour: We hosted this neat group of students from the BI at our home church. They did dramas, music, games and testimonies with youth groups hosted by local churches all over SNE.
The Summer Ahead Engage: Deploy July 20-26. Camp will begin on Sunday and all competition will be on Monday. There are many logistics to work through on many levels as we prepare We look forward to working with all the staff who come each year. We have built a special team. Sale of House and Moving W e have much to do to get our house on the market. The goal is to
have it listed by the end of April. Pray as we fit these projects into our normal schedule. Pray our house will sell quickly without any problems and that God would direct us on new housing Covering Our Area: We will still be covering our Area over the next year till a new person is in place so we will also be doing Reverb Planning: Pray for us as we will be negotiating new contracts with our vendors. Mailings will be going out this summer. Pray more churches will bring their youth groups and they will reach out to their communities that need to hear the Gospel.
Fascar Fun
35 Route 197 Woodstock, CT 06281 Phone: 860-923-3106 Cell: 860.377.0848 E-mail: dwillard@wol.org
dkwillard, dwightwillard & WOL Central & Southern New England
Praise Band at Snowcamp @WOLDwight
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. love becomes a part of us.” Helen Keller
All that we
From the Homefront Kaitlyn has a full schedule with 5 classes so she can transfer in as a full Junior next year and working 20 plus hours a week at TJ Maxx. Kaitlyn turns 20 on April 24th. We did a tour of Baptist Bible College back in January. She is excited to be finishing out her degree at a Christian University. She has faced many challenges at QVCC and has learned to defend her views. Pray that God will show Kaitlyn what direction He wants her to go with her degree. Right now she is leaning towards getting a Masters in Library Science or writing. Both girls w ill be going on a missions trip to Philadelphia with Score Domestic as part of a group from our home church Eastford Baptist. They will be working in soup kitchens, homeless shelters and doing various work projects. Their trip is July 5-10th. Paige is doing a literature class on different kinds of mysteries. She also has Unified Foods where she is teamed up with students with disabilities to learn cooking skills.
Paige turns 18 on April 8th. Pray for a job for her in the food industry this summer. She needs to see if that is where God is directing her. She will head to Florida Bible Institute in Sept. Parents: Both sides of our family is having some health issues that weigh heavy on our hearts. We appreciate your prayers for our aging parents. Purging of stuff: As we start the multitude of house projects to prepare for our move, we are also cleaning out stuff. We had fun going through all the memory stuff we had saved over the years. We pared it down to a box for each of us. Diana is trying to being thankful for all the ways God has blessed instead of being so sad that everything is changing. We have a new adventure ahead of us. Diana is looking forward to attending a Ladies’ Conference in Derry NH with Lysa Terkeurst as the speaker. Lysa is one of Diana’s
favorite authors. She will be going up with a group from our home church. Diana finished her responsibilities on the Transition Team and a new pastoral search committee is now working hard. Diana was able to pick up another cleaning job twice a week that has helped the budget a lot. Change Ahead: We will be empty nesters next year with both girls going off to school which means Diana will return to work full time. Pray with us as we find a new home and church in which to get involved. We will be dealing with many major life changes at once. New home: P ray for God’s guidance for the timing and choosing of a new home. We have done some drive bye’s but cannot seriously consider anything till our house sells. We are still debating whether we should live in the Pottersville end or the Schroon Lake end of town. Open Invitation: W e w ould like to extend an open invitation to stay with us anytime you will be in Schroon Lake area. We would love to see you all as you visit and come through the Schroon Lake area. We are planning to have room for guests in our new home.