Journey of Shawn Peoples' Walk in Grace!

Yes this post is about some of the many things I have learned NOT to do. I am learning through trial and tribulation in hopes that those who trust us for leadership in future church plants will learn from our mistakes. I hope you all read this and it spurs you to remember the life lessons that Jesus has given you and that you pass these lessons on. So here we go: 1. The most important: Do nothing without speaking to your Daddy first. So many times I have made the mistake of guessing to charging ahead without talking to our Father in heaven. It has caused a ton of heartache and pain. If I would have talked to Him first, He would guided my heart to better decisions or to the decision to wait on His work to be complete before He has me do anything. I have learned this a few times. I have allowed others to talk me into something only to have it blow up on me later. There is an incredible grace waiting on the Lord to direct your path and I have more than once learned it is better to be

Being here in Hawaii for these last 8 months has given me some new opinions on politics and the church. As a pastor I am learning how people react to politics when it comes to the church. Many times politics and the church are not separate issues. I have been amazed by the incredible amount of people within the church that get excited every four years when a presidential election comes around (some of you actually talk about it all the time and get excited when I speak against your candidate, but who's keeping track). As I watched the election results yesterday afternoon (yes being 5 hours behind has its advantages like not losing sleep) and as I spent the evening helping a friend serve food to a candidate's party I have come to several conclusions about the church and our recent election. Some of these I find humorous and hope you do to. Some of these sadden me and causes me to pray harder for the church and our country. Before I share these know that this is not an attack on

So today during election day I thought it would be appropriate to reflect back on last week. Many of you know that we held an outreach last week in Kapolei. We were invited to use the front yard of one of our team members in a Hawaiian Homestead (a place where it is only lawful for Hawaiians to own the land and build their houses). I only expected to see maybe 100-150 people and bought supplies accordingly. If you know me, I always buy extra for the next event because it saves money to buy more than less. Well I am glad I did, we met over 500 people that night. We gave all of our Shave Ice out (400 things of it), almost all of our popcorn (300+) and all the hot dogs we purchased (200, yeah I blew that one). I had the honor of sharing the Gospel to hundreds of people at once. We had over 100 people register for prizes and had 50 families indicate that they wanted some sort of contact from us. We will be following up on this for months. This Sunday our core team will begin to worship t