Another Link Addition

A friend keeps leaking out amazing website links to me one by one. The latest is a blog page from the associate pastor of Northgate Church near Atlanta. They are seeing miracle healings come one after the other, and this blog keeps up with some of the testimonies. You can find the link in the right column labeled "Kingdom Power". The church's main website also lists more testimonies.

Northgate Church is holding an evangelistic training conference July 6th-8th. If you want to see the power of God impacting a community, this is the place to do it. Amazing miracles are happening today for those that believe.

Gene Strite Download Addition

Hi Folks,

While I've been too busy to write a full testimony about my trip, I've finally accomplished another major addition to the site. I added a teaching series on building financial wealth from a man named Gene Strite who has spent considerable time with our congregation this year. He has a high school education, and is a self-made multi-millionaire. He is also the head pastor of World Harvest Outreach Church in Chambersburg, PA. If you think you're going to be wealthy someday, but are just waiting for God to just start raining the money down from heaven or send you that magic job that pays twice what you're already making, you really need to listen to this series. Anyone who wants to build wealth would benefit from listening to his training. It has totally changed my mindset on money spending. One statement he made profoundly affected me and made me realize that I needed to change something in order to become affective at building wealth. He said that the middle class people are essentially no different than the poor class. They both squander their money, but the middle class simply have more money to squander. The wealthy have a fundamentally different approach to spending and investing. Beyond my own enjoyment of this series, we have received high compliments back from every family we have given copies of this teaching to. They all have agreed that this series is profound.

Check out the MP3's on my download page (link in right column). I suggest you right click to download this series and click "Save Target As". The site seems to have some problem downloading the other way. Bon Apetit!

PS. I'd really be interested to get any comments back on this series after you've listened to it. Drop me a line on email, or preferably, register and post a comment on the blog.

Quick Testimony

Hey Everyone,

Thank you so much for those of you who prayed for my partner and I during our ministry trip. It was truly an awesome experience and I appreciate your support. I am very busy with responsibilities and homework at the moment, but I will post more stories from the trip later. For now, all I really have time to say is that God was with us very powerfully. So much so, that we were blessed by receiving an '86 Cadillac and $1000.00 for the ministry that we provided to a local church. This church was hungry for God and we were able to encourage and bless them very richly in their ministry. I look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks.

Ashley

Please Pray

Well, tomorrow is the motherload of ministry outings for me. MSM students are being sent out to various cities in the southeast for about 3 days to do some crazy ministry outreaches. I've been very busy lately between assignments, job searches, etc., and have not had much time to keep this blog flowing. Hopefully that will change before too long. But for this week, if any of you feel especially spiritual, please pray for me and my partner as we go to Roanoke, VA and look for God to show up in our ministry. It would be especially helpful if some of you would commit to praying for us Monday thru Thursday every morning as we start our day. Thanks in advance for standing with us in prayer. I hope to post some of the better ministry encounters as I have in the past. Hopefully they will bring some inspiration to you all. We love and appreciate all of you friends and family who have done so much to help and encourage us being up here. To me, this week is a culmination of all of the training, difficulties, hopes, and sacrifices that have been contributed to this season of our lives.

Many blessings,

Ashley

Photos Update (second post)

Hey Everyone,

Sorry about those of you who could not find the last post I made. It really messed up the website somehow, and I had to delete it to fix the problem. All that to say, I've updated some of my photos and you can see the individual folders by clicking on the links below. To see the main menu of photos, just click "Hawkins Photos in NC" in the right column of this page.

Sammy Chillin'

Friends of NC

Daddy & Sammy at McDowell Nature Researve

Midnight Snack

Dear Samuel,

The things you do ALWAYS surprise me. Like last night you woke up at what felt like 3 or 4 and woke me up with a "Heeeeyyy.." and said that you were hungry/thirsty and wanted some juice. Good thing your dad was closer to the edge of the bed because he got up and got you a sippy cup. We didn't want to get you up and sit at the table because you probably would have stayed up longer than you did. You fell asleep again, thankfully, and I handed Daddy the sippy cup after waking him later in the morning.

Your vocabulary is expanding. You are wanting to communicate so much that you babble to our neighbors and wiggle your jaw to see if anything coherent will come out. It is the cutest thing. For now you sing the Belly Button song with Mr. Lunt and sing "no, no, no" when he says "I don't got no belly button..."

We are enjoying your new language, and we are seeing your personality through it as well as your steadfast thought patterns (AKA strong will), but this just encourages us that you will stand up for what you believe in the future. We love you very much!

My Pilot

I love to fly. Ever since I was a little kid and flew with my mom to Texas, I was captivated by the whole idea of being able to get up above the world moving so fast, and see everything from a different perspective. I think I was probably less than 5 years old at the time, but I remember some details about that day. I remember that my mother bought me a jelly biscuit. I remember flying into San Antonio in the late evening and watching all the little city lights that seemed like specs below. I remember that my mother got me a visit with the pilots to see the cockpit that day, and that she had a conversation with the stewardess about whether or I could sit by the window seat on an exit aisle.

I bet your thinking I'm going to say something about how our perspectives have changed since we've been here at the school, but that isn't really what I had in mind. You see, the most critical part of flying an airplane is really the landing. Any numbskull can keep a plane in the air (assuming you have fuel), but it takes a very skilled person to land one. Being an aerospace engineer by training, I have a keen interest in this part of the flight because there are 2 really neat things that happen. First, when the plane reaches an altitude equal to the length of the plane's wingspan, something happens called ground effect which gives the plane a boost of lift causing the flight path to flatten out. Pilots all know they have to account for this or they will actually overshoot the runway every time. The second thing that happens is the landing flare. To bleed off speed, the pilot gently pulls back on the stick causing the nose to rise and the plane to lose speed, gently stalling and dropping the plane to the ground. These 2 events together cause the plane to have about 10 seconds of very smooth gliding just before landing where the outside wind gusts don't seem to buffet the plane very much. Then, just after this peaceful glide, wham! The tires hit the ground and screech a little. All of a sudden, the plane has transitioned from its slowest speed of flight, to its fastest speed on the ground. For the first time since the flight began, you realize how very fast the plane is really moving as you see the runway lights zipping by. The brakes vibrate; the plane shutters and makes all kinds of sounds as it slows down.

The funny thing is that I am so focused on this process that when the plane begins ground effect, I feel as though time stands still. I feel connected to the plane and the hands of the pilot holding the stick. I have to put my trust in his ability to make that transition from air to ground. Some pilots make it very smooth. But I've been on planes a few times when it really slammed down onto the tarmac. A few times, the plane started swerving left and right while the pilot was trying to get it under control. That's rather unnerving to me, because I'm always thinking in the back of my mind, "I wonder if you can actually roll an airplane?!"

I suppose the point I'm trying to make, is that this imagery seems to be the best way I can describe the season of life I'm in right now. I'm gliding in this place protected momentarily from the turbulence of the air and the harshness of the ground. I know their is a transition coming up fast, and I'm finding I have to again put my trust in a man sitting up front in a cockpit, behind a door that I can't see. Gee, I hope he's there...with both hands on the controls. I hope he remembered the flaps. The approach seems smooth, and I'm feeling at one with the plane and the pilot for the first time since the flight began. If I can't trust THIS pilot, who can I trust???

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