VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2

Pastor's Blog

"Look Who's Got the Winning Ticket!"

Nothing like a Powerball jackpot frenzy to warm a frigid winter’s night! Americans (and Canadians) are still queuing up by the tens of  thousands for a chance to win a record $1.5 billion-plus at tonight’s 10:59 Powerball drawing. Chances of winning the grand prize? One in 229,000,000. And yet by Monday this week Michiganders were spending $156,000 per hour on lottery tickets!

In case you were wondering how to spend $1.5 billion, USA TODAY offers five suggestions. (1) Buy a fleet of Gulfstream G650 private jets (@ $65 million apiece you can take home 23 of them). (2) Match the gross domestic product of the island nations of St. Vincent and Grenadines combined (spend the remaining $200 million on that large stone mansion for sale in the Windy City). (3) Buy the new Tesla Model S ecofriendly electric car for $71,100 (then do the same for 21,096 of your closest friends). (4) Rent the royal two-bedroom suite at the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai for $34,555 a night (with $1.5 billion you’ll be able to stay for 42,320 nights or 116 years—if you have the time!). (5) Purchase a flotilla of five “super yachts” (100-meter-long cabin cruisers with an onboard staff of 50 for roughly $275 million apiece)...read more

by Dwight Nelson, Lead Pastor

TV Ministry to Provide Closed Captioning

New Perceptions, Pioneer's Television Ministry, is excited to announce it will now provide closed captioning services for its new content. Thanks to the generous support from viewers and Pioneer members we are now able to bring this service to our community. Among our broadcast partners, WHME-TV of South Bend, IN, will be the first to air our program with closed captioning. To continue to support this and other New Perceptions endeavors, please mark "TV Ministry" on your tithe envelope or give online at www.newperceptions.tv. Thank you.

by Richard Parke, PMC Media Ministries Director

How My GROW Group Enriched My Life

My fiancé, Sorin, had only been in the US a couple of months.  We were sitting in church looking at the new GROW Group catalog for the summer of 2015 and saw the group Maximum Marriage that would be led by Roger and Peggy Dudley, good friends of my family.  We thought that would be a wonderful group for us to join together, as our wedding was going to take place about two months later.  We both signed up that Sabbath afternoon.  Three more married couples ended up attending that group with us.  As Roger was explaining to the group at the beginning that we were engaged and getting married that summer, he said he was sure the whole group would be invited to our wedding.  He knew that we would all form strong friendships in that group, but I was just starting to send out my wedding invitations at that time and I thought, I hardly know these couples right now, and right now is when I’m doing the invitations!  But what he said turned out to be prophetic.  

Sorin had moved here from Spain and his good friends who were able were trying to come from Europe to be his groomsmen.  Shortly before our wedding, most of his groomsmen fell through for one reason or another and weren’t able to come.  At the last minute, two of the guys from our GROW Group, Terrence Umali and Neat Randriamialison, agreed to be groomsmen and stand with us on our wedding day.  Everyone in the GROW Group attended the wedding and sat at the same table at the reception except for the two with us at the head table.  What a wonderful time we all had sharing our wedding experience with our friends from the GROW Group!  Our group, which started in June, met the day before our wedding and ended the week after we came back from our honeymoon.  We ended the group as a married couple.  

What a blessing the Maximum Marriage group was to us!  Not only did it give us valuable information to help make our marriage strong, it gave us wonderful new friends and was an integral part of our special day.  But this is the nature of GROW Groups.  They are a wonderful way to learn and grow together and also form lasting friendships. I might also add that three members of a former GROW Group I had been in also attended our wedding.  Being a part of a GROW Group enriches your life more than you can ever imagine, and I would encourage you to join one this semester.  You never know what friendships you might discover, what new things you will learn, or how it might change your life for the better!

GROW Group 2016 Registration begins on January 16. Find a group here or indicate your first and second preference on this Sabbath's PMC Connect Card. Transforming this generation will take all of us practicing Christ-centered community with each other and serving Him together.

For questions or more info, contact Pastor Sabine or Autumn Mincinoiu via growgroups@pmchurch.org​ or 269-471-3553

Autumn Mincinoiu, GROW Group Member