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Hello Great Family,

Week 2 – Hope & Help for the Oxford community.  I love serving a GREAT God at one of His great churches!  Our efforts to bring hope and help to our community have continued.  I traveled to eastern Pennsylvania Monday and returned Wednesday to participate in the funeral of a dear friend and mentor Mel Walker.  I was blessed to come back and see that everything had moved forward, and many people had stepped up and done the things that needed to be done while I was gone.  Praise God!... and a very special thank you to a wonderful staff at our church!

Our goal as a church is to be WITH hurting people. Somebody younger than me needs to start the hashtag, “#WITHOxford”.  Being “for” Oxford is nice but being “WITH” Oxford is essential.  Remember, the promise of Christmas is Emmanuel…God WITH us.  Let’s keep the promise by being WITH our community.  Show up!  That’s it! Show up and love.  Use words if necessary and never use words that divide or alienate hurting people.  Now is not the time to share opinions about this crisis.  There are already buckets and buckets of words out there.  Let’s respond WITH buckets and buckets and buckets of love! Honestly…Show up! Love! That’s it!

Our focus now is to assemble the gift bags for the staff at Oxford High School.  Melisa Hall from our church office is doing a fantastic job heading this effort.  We have received two large donations that helped us expand our efforts to include over 200 people who work at the school.  All donations that we have received that were given specifically for the gift bags up through today, Friday, December 10 will be used for that purpose.  Starting Saturday, December 11 we are encouraging you to give financially to our “Oakwood Cares” fund.  It is with the Oakwood Cares fund that we will finish the gift bags and be doing ongoing ministry in the Oxford community.

We have rescheduled “Picture Day” for after the first of the year.  We will let you know when this will happen.  Please feel free to use our decorated background to take your own Christmas family photo.

Last Sunday we had many visitors.  I pray many will return and hear from God’s Word.  We plan to continue the “Wonder of Christmas” series with a message entitled, “The Wonder of a Star”.  The Gospel will be communicated, and the balm of care and encouragement will be applied.  If you know someone who came last week, please encourage them to come back again.  We want to have an ongoing ministry in people’s lives.

God Bless,
P.D. (Psalm 139)