January 2012

We thought it was time we gave an update!

Well, things here are going well. Rhiana is in her Junior year of High School now (which means she only has one year left before leaving for college or university!!!) She is almost set on studying art and design, so we are starting our search of various colleges in and around Atlanta, the US and the UK! She is doing really well and, although she still has some on-going medical issues, they are not hindering her from her enjoying life! She is hoping to pass her driving test in a couple of months and getting her own car, which will be great! Jordan is trying out for High School Soccer today and should hear the results tomorrow! He is doing great in school and has grown about 6 inches this past year - making him as tall as Trev (and taller soon!) He works out a lot and loves playing acoustic and electric guitar in the worship band on a regular basis.

JUBILEE Church is doing great! We are currently looking at purchasing a building and would appreciate your prayers. The building we are considering is just across the road from REVIVE and RESTORE and is around 15,000 square feet. We have recently enlarged our leadership team and are so grateful for the great team of guys God has given us! We are seeing gradual growth and believing God for much more!

REVIVE is still getting busier - to the point that we are considering opening another store! Watch this space..... RESTORE is also growing and right now we believe that God has called us to look into 3 different initiatives, regarding serving the homeless in our community. The first is for the church to run a 'recovery' program for those facing 'hurts, habits and hangups' (everyone qualifies!) We feel that we need to offer some support especially to some of the guys we are helping, who have problems in the area of addiction. Right now Tracy and the team are getting some more specialized training in this area and we hope to be able to offer this initiative in the near future. The second initiative (goes hand in hand with the third quite possibly) is a 'house' to home some of the people we have been serving. The house would be 'managed' and would be a shared home between 3-4 people. We are looking for a building with a workshop or basement, where we could also implement the third initiative - an employment strategy. A lot of these guys are good with their hands, so we are hoping to put them them to work, restoring second-hand / donated furniture to sell at REVIVE. Again, we would really appreciate your prayers for these initiatives. It's been an exciting year as we have seen at least 4 of our guys/gals gain employment and get out of the woods! One is working at a great restaurant, as a chef, and the other 3 have been working regularly on a demolition site. We have at least 5 or 6 of these folk coming to the Sunday meeting on a regular basis and 3 of them are in mid-week Life Groups - praise God! There are still many others who are we are working with and supporting and would appreciate your prayers for ongoing wisdom as we seek to serve them well. Please continue to pray that we see lives transformed and restored for the glory of God!!!!

We have just enjoyed a great 10 weeks, over Thanksgiving and Christmas, with Trev's parents and mine! It was wonderful and we miss them all so much, now that the house is empty again. However, we are looking forward to having Jay and Robin with us in March, when they come and visit for a couple of weeks! We are excited to see them again!

GREEN CARD UPDATE! ....... well, the tax situation is now completed and we are waiting for all our paperwork to be returned, so that we can update everything and return it, ready for filing. Please pray into this - it has been an on-going battle (and a source of frustration!) but God is in control and we are trusting Him for the result. We will keep you posted!

We love you all very much and thank you for your love and support.

God bless,

Love Trevor, Tracy, Rhiana and Jordan

April 2011

It's been far too long since our last update, so I shall try and condense our news!

Rhiana is doing really well, however, we would ask you pray for her. She was recently diagnosed with Central Sleep Apnea. This is a rare form of sleep apnea and is, most probably, due to brain stem damage. During part of her sleep cycle (and frequently during the day) her brain does not receive the message to breathe, so she stops breathing and suddenly gasps for air. We are in the process of investigating this more, in the meantime Rhiana sees a Pulmonologist every 3 months to keep an eye on things, but she gets pretty tired and there are some side effects. Please join us in praying that God will heal Rhiana of this condition and that she will not require further medical intervention. She is currently enjoying school and starting to look towards her options for College. Right now, she is keen to study Fashion Design & Business and is considering staying in the US v coming back to the UK for her studies!!! Jordan is currently taking his end of year exams, and will start High School at the end of the Summer! He is still actively involved in soccer and scoring goals and he is enjoying his guitar more and more (especially now that we have a London themed music room in the basement!!

We are looking forward to some visits from family later this year. Trev's parents are coming out in October, followed by Tracy's parents in December, staying for Christmas. We are excited!!!!

Many people are interested to know where our 'visa/green card application' stands. Well, it's a long story and full of complications, but the main issue right now is tied up with our taxes. Please pray that this gets resolved soon and that our green card application is found favorable. It will be a long process, but we will keep you posted!

Revive and Restore are both doing really well. Revive now employs around 25 staff, full and part-time, and stays continuously busy day after day. I believe we now have over 6,000 consignors! Please pray that the relationships and friendships that have been made through the store, will bear fruit and that we will see many of these amazing folk saved and added to Jubilee Church! We believe that God has provided an amazing venue, with a great atmosphere, that causes people to 'open up' and we have been privileged to pray with many of our customers while they are there. We are expectant of miracles, salvation, signs and wonders and would ask you pray that God moves powerfully in this community, which is so in need of Him.

Restore is currently serving around 10-15 homeless individuals in our community on a regular basis, and has the privilege of serving many others, who call for help or drop in to use the food pantry or the resource center. We would really appreciate your prayers for the 'next step'. We are seeking God about opening a 'transitional house' for a number of these guys. Many of them require shelter, in order to find employment etc and we are considering purchasing a 4-5 bedroomed house, to accommodate these individuals, while we work with them to resolve issues of unemployment, addiction, hopelessness, etc. We are also considering starting a 'back to work' program, where these guys can take unwanted pieces of furniture and 'restore' them, selling them at Revive, to make some money. We would ask you to pray for the people we are serving - many of their situations look 'hopeless' but we have a God who is more than able to provide all that they need. Our hope is that, ultimately, they will find Him as their Savior, but in the meantime, we want to demonstrate His love and acceptance to them on a daily basis, whilst looking to help provide their practical needs, including food, clothing, hygiene products, etc. Our desire is to "Provide hope, help and healing to individuals, without discrimination, restoring broken lives, one at a time". We would appreciate your prayers for Ronnie, who we met a few weeks ago. He was homeless, unemployed and hungry. He was invited to our "Community Table" that evening, where he had a good home-cooked meal and then joined us at our Sunday morning meeting that weekend. He has been coming ever since and God has been moving powerfully in his life. Ronnie is currently living with us, as part of the family, and now is employed part-time at Revive. His hope is to purchase a vehicle and start his own 'handyman' business, enabling him to get back on his feet. For more information on 'Restore', please visit our new website at www.jubileechurchrestore.com

Thank you for all your love and support. We pray that you have a great Easter, celebrating our risen King!!! He is the reason for it all!

With our love,

The Atkins

August/Sept 2010

We thought it was about time we blogged again! Well, the kids had the usual 3 months off school for the summer and we had a week of that in Florida - it was such a good break and sooooo relaxing (well, as relaxing as walking round Seaworld can be in 100 degrees of heat!)

Rhiana and Jordan are doing really well back at school. Rhiana is now in 10th Grade High School and studying Art, French and Chemistry this year. Jordan is now in 8th Grade Middle School and taking High School classes in Math and Science.

REVIVE is still crazy busy and we are just in the process of taking on a new venue - it will be called RESTORE and will be our 'Sale Shop' and also be the venue for RESTORE offices for Trish and myself! We are excited about this - although it is making lots of extra work for Trev! Please pray for the work we are doing amongst the community - there are many people in need of help and lots of them are homeless. We are still taking cooked meals out, on our 'Friday Food Drop' to at least 7 homeless men and women in the area but we are aware of others (and are in the process of finding them!) Two of the guys we serve on a regular basis are regularly attending Jubilee Church and on the set up team, arriving at 7.45am to get things ready for the service! We have been amazed to see 3 of them complete ALPHA and are currently praying that God would add 'Cowboy' to us - we are helping to pay his weekly rent at a local motel, since he was struggling to survive the heat during the summer. Please pray that he finds some employment, so that we can get him set up with his own room before the winter sets in (believe it or not, it can get really cold in Atlanta!) Please also continue to pray for Kenna, she is the lady with the brain tumor that I mentioned earlier in the year. Kenna is now committed to Jubilee Church, volunteering at REVIVE and helping on our Friday Food Drop regularly. It has been wonderful to have her living with a family in the church and God is really blessing her. Please pray, however, that Kenna would know God's healing and that she would be granted her disability payment. She has been fighting for this for almost 3 years now and we currently have an attorney to help her. She lives on an incredibly small amount of money each month - not enough to even pay for one week's rent in a motel, but she remains so cheerful and is a blessing to everyone that knows her!

We have now converted our basement, enabling us to have more people live here (or come visit!) and that has been really useful over the past few months. Trev and I finished painting today and are now really looking forward to both his, and my, parents coming out to visit before the end of the year!

God has been so good and we are incredibly grateful for his continued blessing and grace in our lives. The challenges are numerous but we are excited about the plans that God has for Atlanta and we believe we are going to see some amazing answers to prayer as we walk into the promises he has for us this coming year!

We love you all very much and look forward to keeping in touch with you all over the next few months.

Update - April 2010 (at last!!)

Sorry it's taken so long! Where does the time go?

This will be a brief update, just to let you where things are at with us all.

Rhiana is doing so well. She has just had her 1 year check, since her spine surgery last April. She is doing great and is now able to swim and dance and bend (a little!) She is limited in her movement in her right arm and will start physio on that soon but apart from that, she is doing great. She still has some restrictions in her breathing too and walking uphill gets to her badly, but in the main, she copes really well! Jordan has just got over a huge bout of 'poison ivy' attack! For those of you who are not familiar with poison ivy - it's straight from the devil!.. and it grows in my yard! He was out building a camp in the woods last week and two days later was smothered in a violent, weeping, sore, itchy rash over his whole body and face! Thankfully, it has almost cleared up and he is back to his soccer and basketball. Trev is now working 3 days in REVIVE and 2 days for JUBILEE CHURCH. This has been really good and has enabled him to take on more eldership / pastoral responsibilities. Tracy is still working voluntarily for RESTORE and we have now been able to help support around 25-30 individuals / families. We are currently looking for a venue for Tracy and Trish to work from - please pray into this - we have a couple of options right now but are really looking for God's leading on this.

We still have Kyle and Sonya living with us and are thrilled to report that they have just celebrated 60 days sobriety! God is REALLY teaching them so much and they have experienced so much blessing as they walk in obedience to His will. Both of them have recently got great new jobs and are saving for a place of their own, possibly moving out in the summer. It has been such a privilege to see the miracles God has been doing in their lives - it truly has been so exciting and we have loved having them as a part of our family.

God has recently been speaking to us about 'restoring homes' (as in 'makeovers') and we have already have at least one house to work on for an elderly lady in the community. We would appreciate your prayers into this new venture too. Please pray for favor from businesses in the community - that they would be open to donating materials, time, money, etc to make these transformations possible for families in the community who need help.

Well, that's a very brief overview of the past few months! We now have (the majority of) our Green Card Application in with an attorney and would really appreciate your prayers for favor with Immigrations. This is a fairly long process, so we probably won't hear anything for a number of months.

Thank you all for your continued support - it's always soooo good to hear from many of you on the phone / by email.

September/October 2009

Well, for some reason, the last update I wrote, did not save - sorry to all those who are trying to stay up to date with things here in Atlanta. I will try and give you a quick overview of the past 4 months!

Rhiana is doing really well. She is now enjoying 'High School' full time. She is now at 6 months post-op and has a month full of appointments and tests. She will have another MRI at the end of this month, which will determine how things have turned out with her spine surgery. She is having some pain in her left shoulderblade at the moment and is still very limited in the activities she can do (still nothing other than walking and a bit of bike riding). She is finding creative ways of picking things up (her feet are now her second set of hands!) and she is still unable to carry anything heavy. She has been diagnosed with 'Restrictive Lung Disease' since her surgery. This is due to one of her lungs being compressed by the spine - the curve was around 80 degrees and was pushing on the lung, compressing it. They had hoped that once the curve was corrected, the lung would re-inflate - however this is not the case ..... yet! Please continue to pray for Rhiana - it's still quite a battle for her and yet she remains her very cheerful and optimistic self! Love her!

Jordan is doing very well in Middle School and still loving Math! (something I cannot understand for the life of me!) He is doing really well in his new soccer team - so far they have won all their matches this season. He has continued to enjoy playing both accoustic and electric guitar and has now joined the worship band and plays twice a month - plays and jumps around the stage!!

Trev is still working full-time at REVIVE and loving every minute of it! The store is still growing (actually, it's bursting at the seams!) We have now employed over 20 part-time staff, from both the church and the community. Four of our staff have recently become Christians and two of them have now been baptised!!!!! SO EXCITING! We have recently had two other Newfrontiers churches send people to get training in starting a consignment store in their area and we really look forward to seeing those start and flourish. It really has been such a God-inspired idea in helping Church Planting!

RESTORE (the new initiative with the poor in our community) has already been affecting those around us. We are currently do a 'food run' every Friday, taking hot food and drinks to the homeless in Acworth and Woodstock. Through doing this, we have met a number of great guys (and gals), one of whom is now attending church and on the current ALPHA course!!! He has also just signed up to help on the 'set up' team on Sunday morning and has joined the team on the weekly 'food runs' to serve others in the same situation as himself! We are also serving a single lady who lives near to REVIVE who is very unwell with a brain tumor. She is struggling financially and having to live in a room at a long-stay motel. She cannot get out easily, can't drive and has almost become homeless twice since we got to know her. She has started attending Jubilee and we have someone from the church meeting with her weekly, to take her out shopping/for coffee etc. Please pray especially for a couple we are involved with helping. We got to know them around Christmas last year, after they had been living in their car. They are now coming to church and have both felt that they want to commit their lives to God and make some major changes in their lives. This has not been easy for them - in fact, it has been a HUGE battle. Please pray that God will give them both the strength they need, in getting help and trusting Him to provide for them in that. At times it has felt too much for them and yet they are still pressing forward. Please also pray for wisdom in how we should help them. We are very involved in their lives right now and are really relying on God's leading and sustaining in this very difficult situation.

Well, the sun is out and the floods have pretty much subsided around us - it was a really bad couple of weeks for a lot of neighborhoods around us. For those that hadn't heard, we had major flooding here a couple of week's ago. Many have lost their homes, and belongings. Temporary shelters where put up in various counties, and hundreds of people were evacuated and will now be trying to get their lives back on track as the shelters close. Please pray that we, as a church, will be able to bless many of these families, through REVIVE and RESTORE and that our resources stretch far enough to do so!

Thank you all for your on-going prayers and love and support. We really look forward to being back at Christmas for a couple of weeks and seeing some of you then!

God bless!

May Update

Well, Rhiana's progress has been amazing. She is now pretty much doing everything for herself - except bending and lifting - this she is not allowed to do for a couple of months yet. She will not be able to do any sport/exercise for a year but other than that she is doing great. She is 3 inches taller (same height as Mum now and still growing!!!), she is beautifully straight and learning to keep her new posture (since a lot of her muscles were so over-stretched before the surgery). She is no longer in pain which is wonderful and on no medication now! PRAISE THE LORD. She is able to now sit for long periods of time, without getting back ache (which was such a problem with the curve!) One thing we would really appreciate your prayers on - Rhiana now has a shunt in her spinal column, which is to drain off any fluid. As you know, after her brain surgery last year, she was experiencing a lot of headaches, which was because of a build up of fluid on her spinal column. In the past couple of weeks Rhiana has had a couple of fairly mild headaches when laughing or coughing and we would we ask that join us in praying that the fluid would not build up again and that the shunt (which is now surrounded with metal work and solid bone!) would do it's job and that she would be 'headache free' again! Rhiana will resume school in August when she starts High School!
Jordan is anxiously awaiting for school to end this Friday! He will then have 10 weeks holiday before starting Middle School! He is done extremely well this year and is especially happy to have been asked to join the worship team at Church, playing accoustic/electric guitar! He is trying out for a new soccer club this week and hopes to make the team so that he can get some play in during the summer holiday.
Trev has recently been asked to join the Leadership Team at Jubilee Church as an Elder which we are excited about and would appreciate your prayers towards. He is very busy, managing REVIVE, which is continually growing and making more money! We now have almost 4,000 consigners which is pretty mind-blowing. The challenge is continuing to grow in the space that we have (whoever thought that we couldn't fill 8,000 square feet was SO wrong!)
Tracy is really enjoying heading up RESTORE - Jubilee's latest initiative in helping the poor in the community. We are currently helping 9 families/individuals with varying needs and are now praying towards a venue that we can work from and would appreciate your prayers in finding somewhere and the provision of finances to rent the space. One of the ladies who came to us for help back in December last year, is now coming to church regularly with her husband and is being baptised this week!!! We are VERY excited about what God has in store for this community and are looking forward to seeing many peoples lives 'restored' and brought into the Kingdom!
That's about all for now! Thank you all for your continued love and support - we appreciate you all so much! God bless.

Sorry for the long delay in updates. Rhiana is doing very well. She is getting more and more active. We still have to help her get out of bed but she is taking walks up the road now. It is great to see her strengthening day by day and we still have not gotten used to how she looks so tall and elegant! She is still sleeping in the living room but she did do the stairs 3 times yesterday so that could soon change. Thank you so much for your prayers, love and support.