Saying Good-Bye...

Sunday, Sept. 11th, we said good-bye to our family in Florida. This past week was our last Sunday with Discover Church and what a blessing it was. I've seen good-byes be very bitter and hard in the past and this was nothing of the sort! Our church family sent us away with blessings and encouragement and yes, a lot of tears. We could not have asked for a better send off and are so thankful!





As it's only the first week, it doesn't quite seem real. We had a wonderful going away party Saturday night and Sunday morning they put together such a sweet video of us and had a powerful time of prayer over us at the end of the service. We are so thankful for Pastor Chip and his wife, Brittni's support and leadership as they have the most on their plate as we departed! We are praising God for the volunteers and staff that He raised up to take on our responsibilities in our ministry areas and have a peace, knowing that this is right!

Please continue to pray for us as we travel, visit family, and transition into a new phase in our lives. And most of all, please pray for our Discover Church family as they transition and grow into this new phase of the church's life! We were so blessed to be changed by what we experienced in Florida and we are asking God to strengthen His church there.


To see all that Discover Church is doing visit www.DiscoverChurchPBC.com and follow them on Twitter and Facebook

To follow all that we will be doing in this next phase of our journey, come here to read our blog and follow us on
Twitter @BenjLitter or @StephLitter
Facebook Benj Litter or Stephanie Litter

New Jobs...and Back to School!

We are excited to say that we officially have jobs waiting for us in Idaho! As we continue to plan, we are seeing God provide in just the right timing and in ways that we could never take credit for. Last week, Benj received an official job offer from the company his brother, Nathanael, works for! Benj had worked there several summers ago and is looking forward to be able to work alongside his brother for the next year!

Just today I received a call from my new manager at a Starbucks in Idaho! We are so thankful that I have a job to look forward to, and it's also the closest to where we'll be living! It's intimidating to think about starting over, meeting new people, and learning so many new things, but we know that God is already going before us and is providing everything we need and will need in this transition!

Not only has the Lord provided jobs, He has provided everything necessary for me to finish my last two classes for my degree! It's a miracle that I don't have more classes to take since I've been out of school for over two years, however, everything down to the last approval and dollar, went through in just the right timing and now I am working hard to do my best in this last semester!

As we transition, God is showing up in every way! We only have a little less than two weeks here in Florida and it is finally feeling real. The packing is getting done and we are making plans to leave now on the 11th after church. We originally thought we would leave in the middle of the week but Benj needs to be in Idaho the following weekend as he will be starting his job on September 19th. I will be starting my first week October 10, so I will be looking forward to a couple of weeks in Ohio with family and then will fly out toward the end of September.

We continue to thank God for all that He is providing and orchestrating through this transition and we give Him the glory for all that is happening! We look forward to posting some pictures soon and writing as we travel! For now, please pray as we finish strong in our last two weeks here in Florida and that God would guide us through saying good byes and packing up to leave!

Discover Church's New Location

Check out our promo video of the new location!


Today was such an exciting day for Discover Church! As you know we now have 5 Sunday's left with Discover Church and what a blessing it was to be able to see the transition to our new location. Discover Church has moved to The Weiss School just a few blocks away from our previous location at the movie theater. The Weiss School is a private elementary and high school and is a great space for the church to grow! Not only has God provided this location with a great price, He has also provided a location that we can use more than just Sunday mornings. We will now have the ability to hold events here and have complete use of the space as opposed to sharing it with the public. It's clean, safe for kids, and a great place to serve families and the staff from the school!

The past few weeks we have also been transitioning for our move. God has provided some amazing leaders to take our areas to the next level. To give you an idea of how we are leading here, I have been responsible for all of the kids ministry of the church. Benj is the church's worship pastor (ordained in April 2011), and has also been overseeing media, web design, and volunteer teams for different areas. He has been building and leading the worship band and God has provided such a great group of volunteers who will do a wonderful job at continuing to lead the church in worshiping God! We are so thankful that God has provided just the right people for Discover Church and we have an amazing peace about what He is doing!

As we are so far away from family and haven't been able to see them for some time, God has overwhelmed us with the love from our "family" here in Florida. The people at Discover Church have become our family and we will miss them very much. As we are so excited for what God has for us next, we know that saying good-bye will be difficult! We dearly love everyone here but we know that God has exciting things in store for them and us in this vision He's given us!

We're Moving!

We are Moving!!!

When: We are leaving Florida September 15th

Where: Denver, Colorado

Why:

At the end of April we felt God’s call on us to plant more churches. We had the opportunity to attend a church planting conference in Orlando with our staff and volunteer team from Discover Church. Since January, we have been feeling a stirring in us for something but didn’t quite know what that was. We thought maybe we should try living in a new neighborhood, or even the possibility of starting the next church plant out of Discover Church in the next town in this county. We knew God was doing something in us, but until this conference we were unclear as to what that was.
The first full day of the conference, Benj went to an early morning Bible study with Rick Warren and really benefited from the things he was teaching. Benj felt as though God was speaking directly to him about planting churches and felt as though we must plant the Church not just a church. We must live out the Gospel and live our everyday lives with people that need Him in that city. Pastor Rick taught about how there is nothing wrong about having a small church, but there is something wrong about having a small vision. At this point Benj thought of Denver, Colorado and not knowing why, just wrote it down and began praying for direction from God.
All the while, God was speaking to me as well. That same morning, I was feeling God speak to me through a seminar I attended. Sitting there, I kept hearing God say “be prepared.” As I listened to the speaker, I was touched by the lesson in a way that made me listen to God’s voice saying that we were about to take a big step of faith and to be prepared for it.
The next evening, we were able to have some time to ourselves to talk and Benj was able to share what God had laid on his heart! It came as no surprise to me and since then we have been praying together that God would guide us as we make big changes in our lives.
Something that truly burdened our hearts at this conference were what they called Missional Communities. We learned a little bit about them and fell in love with the idea of doing church this way. Missional Communities are bigger than small groups and they do life together, serve and grow together. They are meant to provide a way of growing together while serving and loving on the city that you live in. They are similar to small groups in the way they meet and accomplish discipleship, however, with a vision and purpose in mind to listen to the community and then go and serve in those ways. Currently our favorite part of the week is when we get to have friends in our home, eating, learning, and spending time together! It has placed a love for hospitality and discipleship in our hearts that we look forward to doing more in the future.
Some of you may be wondering why we are leaving Florida! We love Discover Church and we love the people that have become family to us. We are sad to go, but excited that God calls His people to something not from something. We know that God has His hand on Discover Church and its people and we are so thankful that He is already putting people in place to take on our responsibilities and opportunities to serve. We know that if we were disobedient and didn’t leave, we would not only be ruining our own opportunities to follow God, but also keeping others that are here from their opportunity to serve in new ways! We know we would be holding back Discover Church if we were to stay. We love this church and will continue to pray for and support them because we know that God had us here for the right amount of time. We know that our plans for this next church came from the teaching and the values of what we are doing here. We feel as though this has been a training ground for what is to come in Denver!

Our Plans:

We are leaving Florida September 15th and will visit our home town in Ohio for a couple of weeks. After that, our plan is to live with Benj’s brother and his family in Idaho for a short while so that we can plan and prepare ourselves for what God wants us to do in Denver. We have the opportunity there to rest and to really ask God to prepare our hearts and to do some training. This will also give us the opportunity to work and pay down some school debt and have valuable time with family! We will be able to drive to Denver in the midst of this time and find a place to live, work, and be a part of the city. We are excited for this next step and ask that you would continue to pray for us as God leads on us this adventure! There are a lot of questions that we don’t quite have answers for yet, but we know that God is faithful and He will provide in every step of the way. We know that God is preparing us and others around us for new steps of faith and we pray that He gives us the strength to say “yes” to Him and follow Him as He leads!

Update....Finally

I know we have really been slacking on our blog so I am going to try, yet again, to commit to sticking with this and actually writing each week!

A few special moments in the lives of the Litter's in Florida....
July 15th, we moved! We literally moved next door to the condo on the end and have wonderful landlords that we are keeping in touch with. It's an updated place and still at a great price....God is continuing to amaze us with the ways He provides for us!

July 25th, the church moved! We have a new location for the church at a movie theater in the same area. We were previously located in a hotel and now have a great space in a renovated movie theater that has made a huge difference. We are also meeting in the mornings at 11am rather than at night now.

August 8-10th, some of our team went on a retreat. We took several of our volunteers to a lake house to spend a few days on leadership training and had an amazing time getting to know one another and allowing God to grow us all in new ways! He is continuing to add to our team.

We have had 8 people come to know Christ since we launched in March and have surpassed our beginning launch attendance numbers. We have had one baptism and more to come very soon. God is bringing new families and individuals into Discover Church and into our lives and we are thankful to be a part of so many lives!

September 7th, Thadd came to stay with us and has moved down here to be a part of Discover Church! We are excited to have him living with us until he can get a job and place of his own and even more excited to have him helping with the church plant! God is doing great things with the people here and we are so thankful to be a part of the journey!


That's enough for now I'm sure and I hope to be more consistent with our blog :) We are so thankful for everyone who supports us and prays for us and the church. We could not be doing this with you!

Exponential Conference 2010

We just got back from a great conference held in Orlando and we are excited about all that we've learned this week and the time we were able to have away! Tuesday through Thursday 5 of us went to the church planter's Exponential Conference. We were able to hear some great speakers, such as Louie Giglio, Francis Chan, Sarah Hatfield, Efrem Smith, Ed Stetzer, and many many more. There were main sessions when we all came together and workshops for specific topics of interest. There's so much that goes in to church planting that we learned about! For those of you at FWC-Chillicothe, you may remember the Cox family from Swaziland. Benj and I ran into them at this conference and they have started their own church plant in PA as well! What a small world for us to run into them there!

Here are a few pictures from our time there....

Discover Church.....

It's hard to believe that Benj and I have been here almost a year! We are having so much fun and learning so much about starting a new church. Some highlights that have happened just in the past 2 months are Launching the church March 7th and holding our very first Easter "sunset" service April 4th! We are seeing a steady turnout each Sunday and we are experiencing how difficult it can be to start a church in this area!

During our Easter service, 3 people accepted Jesus as their personal Savior! YAY GOD!!!!! We also have 2 of our team members that are getting BAPTIZED on May 1st, so we will be holding a Beach Baptism and cookout that weekend! We have so much to be praising God for and we could not be more excited for these 5 individuals that are committing their lives to Christ in new ways!!! Please pray with us as we know the spiritual battle will be difficult for them. Please pray that God will protect them and guide them closer to Him!

Somethings we are also praying about, are finding a new location and growing our church. At the end of the summer we are leaving the Hotel and we are currently looking at new locations such as warehouses, store fronts, schools, and even movie theaters. We would appreciate your prayers for Discover Church and our leadership team to have the wisdom while looking at different locations! Please pray that God provides abundantly in this area!

If there's anything that Benj and I can be praying for you about, please let us know by posting a comment below or emailing us at thelitters@gmail.com -We appreciate all of your love and support and are praying that God blesses and provides for you!

To check out everything we'll be doing with Discover Church visit www.DiscoverChurchPBC.com