November 09 update

Hi everyone,

What a summer and fall we have had.

It has been quite a time. Sorry we have been out of touch. We are all on facebook, and we invite you to find us there as well.

Some of the highlights of recent days include:

Nicholas, now 18 was awarded the Boy Scout Eagle rank, a high honor. It is Boy Scout's highest rank, and less than 4% earn it. He is still in his senior year in his home school. He is beginning to look at his options for his next season of life, doing things with computers seems to be his main interest.

Our family just framed up a 1800 square foot house, plus the 24x24 garage, and porch.

In just 16 days, we had it framed, sheeted, doors, windows and overhead door in, metal roof installed, soffit installed, and all interior framing complete. We will be doing the drywall in a couple of weeks, after the electrican and plumber are finished with rough in.

Joshua(16) has been working hard on music, it is his primary interest. He led our church's youth service from the guitar, and did a great job. With Samuel playing his bass like a pro. The youth did a human video as well. It is awesome and I challenge you to see and hear it on our church website www.abbynrc.com

Joshua and Samuel both share a dream to attend Hillsongs college in Sydney Australia to pursue music and ministry. Hillsongs college is responsible for a lot of today's comtemporary music.

The boys are all studying and working hard. We are very grateful for their hearts and attitudes.

Ethan(7) and Rosa(3) are a joy to us every day. Of course so are the other four.. they wanted to make sure I pointed that out.

Our church is thriving in all areas, this past week we had a record attendance of 47 kids in Awana, and a record attendance of 147 in the Sunday service.

Brian, Charlotte, Joshua, and Samuel play in the Sunday worship team most weeks. It has been a blast leading and teaching the church in worship, the congregation has been so gracious to us, and God has been glorified.

Brian, Joshua, Samuel and some others will be attending a worship seminar in Wisconsin Rapids this Saturday. It is being put on from a leader from Hillsong college.

Brian has booked a music concert for our church for this Sunday night, we are looking forward to this, it will be our church's first real concert. It will be a coffee house style concert, and the artists, David and John Yonker are great.

We have been hired by the Colby School board to install the theatre audio system. It has been a interesting process, and has provided us a incredible opportunity for our future.

We have learned that there are very few sound consultants in our greater area, and it seems most have a high budget mentality.

We are working with one of our areas largest music stores, Brian has known the owner since his early teens, (like 30 years). We have learned that this store does not service on site consulting needs, only because he has no one to do the work. We have talking about a win win situation here, and the owner of the store is nearly as excited as we are. Our business is CWC Inc. (doing business as Central Wisconsin Construction, and have added the name Consulting With Clarity for the sound consulting branch of the business.) It is exciting to have the opportunity to take your hobby and be hired as a pro to help others in need. Our heart in this whole thing is to provide excellent service at common sense prices. It seems as the need is quite high, how exciting.

We have booked a trip to Florida for vacation in January and will spend some time in Biloxi MS on the return side of the trip. We will assess our work load at that time and decide how to spend our winter months. Right now it seems we have work in WI. It has been our prayer that if it is God's will for us to be up here in the frozen tundra, God would need to provide open doors for us.

Most of us would rather travel south, but we want to be in God's will.

Charlotte's sister Peggy and her husband Michael have moved back to California. Michael's job in St. Paul ran dry and he got a great job north of L.A.

Amanda and Nathan, Charlotte's sister and brother-in-law, are expecting their first little blessing from heaven. No, our families don't peek, so we know she is having a baby... but we will have to see in January if we have a niece or nephew. This will be the first time for us to be an auntie and uncle. So exciting!

We will spend thanksgiving with Charlotte's family at our home this year.

We will try to do a better job with updates.

God bless you all!

The Haines family

Time flies when you are having fun

Hi everyone,



Wow, it has been a long time since we have posted.



Things have been CRAZY......busy this year.



I do not even know where to start, so I will just start.





Charlotte has taken on some hefty responsibilities. She has taken on the main role in the Tiger den of Cub scouts, this includes recruiting and training.



Also, she has taken on the leader role for the Cubbies group in Awana at our church.

The Boy Scouts have also been busy this year. In addition to our usual summer camps, the scouts also had a regional event this year, celebrating 100 years of scouting. Charlotte, Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel and Andrew attended this event at the EAA grounds in Oshkosh, WI. Over 10,700 attended.

We spent a weekend camping at Medford this July to celebrate the 4th. We were given news that Charlotte's youngest sister Amanda is expecting a baby due about Jan. 1.

We purchased a downtown Abbotsford building this year and have added a third apartment. We invested much work into this project, including updating many issues with the building.

The whole family is working hard on music. We play regularly on the worship team at church. Joshua had the opportunity to obtain a awesome guitar this week. He is now playing drums, keys, and guitar.

Work has been plentiful. In fact, we are running hard to keep up. Since finishing the apartment, we have done several window jobs, restored 2 distressed garages, and completed a roof job.

We will be framing up a house soon, we have been hired to partner with a person desiring to be his own general contractor. It is a 1800 square foot house with a attached garage and large porch.

Just this evening, we have been approved by the buildings and grounds committee as the recommended bidder for the theatre audio project for the Colby High School.

We have booked a vacation for January in Florida. We are planning to visit south Mississippi on our return.

We are all healthy, and blessed.

The kids are growing so fast, even baby Rosa is already 3.

I apologize for being out of touch, life has been so crazy.

I pray you are very blessed as you read these words.

Brian

Finally, the pictures we promised!!

Hi everyone,

Wow, a month has past since the last post. These are pictures of the completed church, including ministry in action. Enjoy!

The Haines family

June update

Hi everyone!

Wow, we are finally almost finished with the church remodel. We have been hired to do numerous extra projects as we were well under budget. It turns out we were able to recondition almost the entire basement, which was not part of the original plan.

We have a couple of weeks left, however.

We plan to go to the Boy Scout family camp in a couple of weeks. We are all excited to have the opportunity for a little rest an relaxation. This will be Nicholas' last year camping as a Scout, as he turns 18 in July.

Joshua and Samuel spent last week at the Scout Northwoods challenge. Joshua served as a leader.

Andrew and Ethan are attending the summer school program and are enjoying it.

We made the trip up to Rhinelander this past Saturday to enjoy the doings and the trip.

It FINALLY warmed up this week, in fact highs are over 90 these days!

We have a lot of work waiting for us, in fact it almost overwhelming.

We mentioned in the last post that Brian has an interest in offering sound consulting, design and install services. He provided this service to the church and has an opportunity to do the same for the public school in our theatre. He will be turning in our bid tomorrow and are very excited about the opportunity to provide these services to our own community. He feels strongly that he has a far better proposal than the competing bids. The contract will be awarded to the best bidder on July 20 at the school board meeting. Pray for us to have favor with the school superintendant, Terry Downen, other advisors, and the school board. It seems as though there is a great need for consultants in this speciality field.

We will soon be adding an apartment to a building we recently purchased.

Our church is doing great. We had our building dedication service on June 14. We had 140 attending the the English service, the most ever.

We followed that service up with a picnic at a nearby city park. In addition to our Church, we joined up with the Hispanic church and had nearly 300 attendees. It was a very great day!

We will upload some pictures of the recent weeks.

Thank you for checking in our page.

May God richly bless you this week according to HIS riches in Glory!!

In Christ

The Haines family

Pressing on

Hi everyone,

Sorry we have not posted much lately, but we are kind of stuck in a rut. Work at the church, eat, sleep, work at the church.

We are taping the drywall in the fellowship hall. The room is 1800 square feet, the size of a larger 3 bedroom ranch house.

Everything is going very well, the building is turning out nice, services are being well attended, and growing. We are healthy. The kids are growing up very fast.

Our cub scouts had their soap box derby last Saturday Ethan got to race for the first time. All 5 of the boys are now in scouting.

Rosa turned 3 on May 8. She is such a big girl already. We are so proud of her.

Charlotte and all the boys marched in the local Memorial Day parade with the scouts.

Nicholas has been busy trying to earn his Eagle Scout rank. He has taken on the updating of the old historical marker in Colby. There were old overgrown shrubs that needed to be updated.

He and the other scouts have replaced it with a new landscape garden. The jobsite part of the project is now complete, and hopefully he will meet the rest of the requirements to acheive this rank. Only 2% of scouts reach this high honor and he is very close now.

One thing maybe exciting is that Brian has been interested in offering services to the public in sound consulting, designing, and installation. He has been frustrated with a consistant problem where people are spending huge sums of money on gear, and have no ability to use it correctly. He has had professionals in related businesses, such as music stores confirm this.

He has over 25 years experience in sound, from the early years in the rock band, d.j. service, many years at Beleiver's church, Nightmare, and now North Ridge Church.

Our church trusted him to design, obtain, and install the sound system. It turned out great, and a very modest budget was used.

We noticed in our local newspaper that our high school is doing a sound system in the remodel of the school theatre, the very room our church was birthed. It also listed the budget, which was triple what we spent at the church. The system needed there is similar to the system needed for our church. We contacted them about our interest in bidding on the project, and they are interested! It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Brian will be doing sound for a wedding at the Marshfield North Ridge Church for a friend from the years at Believer's church.

We will post some random pictures of life here at this time.

In Christ

The Haines family

Big Tree, Little house

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update, and I am going to load some pictures.

Last weekend we had some thunderstorms in our area. In Spencer, a large maple tree split and fell on a small ranch house. We were hired by the owner's insurance company to do the repairs.
We took a leave from the church job on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
We had to repair a number of broken trusses, a number of sheets of plywood that were damaged, subfascia boards, and a ridge beam.

As of today, we have all structural repairs finished, and the new roof is on. We will return in June to finish the fascia, gutters and interior repairs. There are a number of cracks, a limb pushed into the bathroom and the dining light was pushed through the ceiling.

The church has hired us to finish the basement of the church. This will be a large drywall job, and a large ceiling job.

We have a deadline to meet as there is a wedding dinner in the basement on June 6. The church also plans a grand opening celebration on June 14. We should be able to meet these deadlines.

Nicholas spent the weekend camping with the Boy Scouts.

Our family has been working hard with music. Charlotte has been playing keyboards, and Joshua
will play lead guitar tomorrow.

We have been keeping busy with all the usual things, schooling, scouts, church and work.
If you are in the area, stop by and see the church, it is turning out very nice.

Thanks for checking our blog.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Remembering Kristi

Hi everyone,

I am typing in front of open windows, it is over 70 degrees for the first time in many months. It is so refreshing.

Our hearts are heavy. Charlotte's cousin Kristi passed away Monday at the age of 24. She contracted a case of pnuemonia, and somehow a bloodclot related to it got into her heart.
She was sick over the weekend and her caretakers decided to take her in to get checked.
Kristi walked in to the Stanley hospital, then was airlifted to Marshfield where she passed away in the ICU.
Her parents drove fast from Stanley to Marshfield and did not even make it there in time.
The funeral wake was Thursday and was well attended. The funeral was Friday and was well attended. Brian served as a pallbearer. The weather was so pretty, it seemed odd to do a funeral. Every person released a helium balloon at the burial site. It was cool symbolism.


We are still mostly busy with the church remodel. Things are going great. We celebrated Easter along with our hispanic congregation and had 154 in atttendance. Praise be to God!

We have been installing the technical details, mounting the projecter, speakers, things of that nature this week, and installing windows.

Easter was celebrated at our home on Saturday before Easter with Charlotte's parents, Michael and Peggy, Nathan and Amanda, and Becky.

Nicholas and Joshua are now doing behind the wheel training.

Brian, Nicholas, Joshua, Samuel and Andrew along with 8 others from the youth group went to see Pillar and Fireflight at Rhinelander on Wed. night.

The Boy scouts did roadside cleanup. It is the 2 miles south of Colby on SHW 13.

Nicholas is working on his Boy Scout Eagle project, it has to be complete before he turns 18 on July 23. He is coordinating improving the historical marker site in Colby about Colby cheese.

Thanks for checking in on us.

In Christ

The Haines family.

Almost ready for Easter!

Hi everyone,

The last 2 weeks have been push weeks at the church project. There was much to accomplish, but we have been able to meet the goals! We are moving into the remodeled sanctuary this weekend, in time for Easter. There are minor projects remaining on the main level, but nothing to prevent us from using the building.

We have funds remaining and will be able to do some improvements to the lower level.

Again, our church has had it's needs met. To accomodate the children's church during the lower level remodeling, the City of Abbotsford has agreed to let us use the vacated city hall chambers, just across the street, rent free!

You are invited to join us for Easter service, 10:00 A.M.

Services will resume at 9:00 A.M. next week.

We are looking forward to a little more balanced life in the near future, it has been too much work and no play lately. Spring is in the air, it makes us anxious to enjoy the outdoors and time with the kids.

We are anticipating a very busy summer, we have numerous offers for work.

Our family is well, it our prayer that yours is as well.

Thanks for checking our blog.

In Christ

The Haines family

Easter is coming, lots of work remaining

Hi everyone,

How time flies. We noticed we have not posted in about a month, the longest ever.

The last post was about the battle of the bands. We did not win, but gave the winning band a great challenge. We had a blast. Brian wound up doing the sound for all of the other bands, and we were left without a sound man. We learned some good things at the seminar.

We also mentioned having a week off. We were blessed by Nathan and Amanda offering to watch all 6 children for spring break. This enabled us to have a whole week off.

We spent the week in downtown Minneapolis. The family and the church respected our time off and we were left completely alone. No phone calls even. In fact no one even knew where we were.

We had such a blast. We never get time alone. One highlight of the trip was an outing to the Waubasha cave in St. Paul. On Thursday evenings, they have a swing dance. It is amazing. There were hundreds there, and to our suprise, the majority under the age of 30. The crowd was there to dance, most only drinking water. If you are ever in the Twin Cities, check it out.

We have been working long days on the church remodel. We are about 3/4 finished with the project and the plan is to move in April 12, Easter. The church has now hired us to do the windows. We are very excited as we have accomplished more than what was planned, and completely in budget.

Our family is also very involved in the worship band. With the Silva family currently in Brazil, Brian is the full time worship leader, Joshua is either on drums or keyboard, Samuel is on bass most weeks, Charlotte is on keys some weeks, and Nicholas is involved with sound, overheads, and recording.

Ricardo taught us a lot. We have been able to press on with an awesome worship band. We practice 2 nights every week, plus Sunday morning.

We would be honored to have you as our guests. We will meet one last time at Colby High School this Sunday at 9:00 A.M.
Easter will be at 10:00 at the church in Abbotsford.
Our church website is www.abbynrc.com We have services posted online.

We are sad we never made it to MS this winter, but feel we are in God's will.

The kids are all growing up so fast, Nicholas will be 18 in July. Wow.

Thanks for checking in on our blog.
May God richly bless you according to His riches in Glory.

In Christ,

The Haines family

Battle of the Bands

Hi everyone,

We are trying to keep the blog up in between all of the craziness going on. It seems like there is more to do all the time.

Nicholas and Joshua have their driving temps and are enjoying learning. Mom and Dad have a little more gray hair.

Our excitement for the week is revolving around an event being held in Rhinelander. A church there is holding a worship seminar, which Brian, Samuel, Jesse, and Dwayne are attending.
The day concludes with a battle of the bands and the winner will front for Pillar and Fireflight on April 15 at the Rhinelander High School. It was too cool to pass up. Some think we have a chance at winning, but let's face it, they are our friends, ha ha.
We are excited to have our new sound mixer now, our old one is pretty tired.

We are working hard at the church. We have the drywall taped and are ready to spray texture, primer and ceilings.
The church is hoping to have an Easter service in the new sanctuary. I am feeling the pressure!

We have been very busy in the rentals as well, several have changed hands lately. We are helping with Peggy and Michael's duplex and Nathan and Amanda's house as well.
Today we wrote an offer on a nice Abbotsford duplex.

Nathan and Amanda have offered to watch our kids during their spring break, so we are considering doing something spontaneous next week.

Brian, Joshua, and Nicholas have provided the worship at the Withee church the last 3 weeks, but will have some weeks off now.

We are so looking forward to spring, but are grateful that daylight savings time is back.
We will try to post pics of the kids and more sometime soon.

Thanks for checking our blog, our prayer is that all is well with you.

In Christ,
The Haines family

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A mission trip

Hi everyone,

It has been a crazy month. We have been working hard on the church remodel. Gary and Jesse helped a few weeks. Now it is pretty much our family. We have had heating and plumbing subcontractors in and their rough ins are complete.

The drywall is all up and we are taping it.

With the missionary family having to go home for now, we are stepping up to help out filling some of the needs that the church now has.

Brian will be the worship leader now for Sunday services. He will also lead worship at the Withee church some Saturdays. We are thankful for all of the teaching we have received from Ricardo the last 14 months, as we feel equipped to take on this responsibility.

We also had to deal with the house that was rented to them. Things turned crazy there too. The day before they needed to leave, they planned to carry out their belongings to storage. Their son and daughter-in-law from Stevens Point came to help. Their daughter-in-law was 7 and a half month pregnant. Fifteen minutes after arriving her water broke, and they all headed back to Stevens Point to have the baby. At 7:00 A.M. the baby boy was born. They returned to Abbotsford at 10:00 A.M. and headed out for the airport at 11:30 A.M. That is amazing timing.
The house was rented back out in one day on a month to month lease so they can have it back when they return. We had to deal with the mess the last people left behind to make room for the new renters. The plan had been to do it in the spring.

As you all know, we had full intention to spend the winter in MS, but we have pretty much resigned to the fact that God had a plan for us to be here at this time, to help build his church here at this time in more ways than one. What a journey it has been, people are being added every week. We had 5 adult men baptized last week in the Hispanic congregation. This is amazing in their culture, where men are even more macho than in our culture.

Pastor John's son Rueben, from Stevens Point will be the new Hispanic pastor. He has a Evangelical Free church their and has his residency complete. They will meet Saturdays at 11:00 A.M. in the church basement.


It has been amazing to God's perfect plan working out in this whole new church. We have people showing up to meet needs at the right time, for example we are here instead of MS when Ricardo needed to leave, and we have a new piano player here only about one month now. Holly even teaches piano. The school we meet in will be closed for remodeling this summer, but we will be in the new building by then.

We will continue to meet at the Colby School at 9:00 A.M. on Sundays. We would be honored to see you visit, even just to rejoice with us to see what God is doing.

Most of our family got some sickness the last 2 weeks. Joshua, Ethan, and Andrew got hit the worst. Ethan hit 104.7 temperature once. Fortunately Brian was spared.

Thanks for checking the blog, sorry we have not been consistant on updating.

In Christ

The Haines family

Church remodel pictures

These are a variety of pictures of the church remodel.

An unfortunate setback

Hi everyone,

It has been a very busy week as we find ourselves completley busy in helping build our church as well as completely busy remodeling our church building. The building project is going very well, we are doing HVAC, plumbing and electrical. We should be ready to start drywalling within the week.

A major reason our church has the forward momentum that it has is the full time effort of our hispanic pastor and his family. Besides Pastor John and Rosangela we also have their 2 adult sons. Ricardo is our full time worship leader and Junior is our youth leader. Rosangela and Junior also are a part of the worship team as singers.

Due to an immigration system that obviously is broken and our local Assembly of God district's inexperience with immigratioin and Hispanic ministry, they can not get their visas finished without returning toBrazil, their homeland for some months. The timing of this mess is unfortunate as their work is finally bearing much fruit. With their help, both the English and Hispanic churches are vibrant and growing.

The good news is that they have sown much into a lot of us. Ricardo has developed all of the musicians and singers much this past year. We will see where all of this goes. We know that God has a perfect plan, even though to us this is all seen as negative. They will be here only 2 more weeks, and our hearts are heavy because they have become some of our best friends.

We feel that we are in the will of God being here at this time. We are so tired of winter weather and want to be in Mississippi. It has been a brutal winter. We have friends that had their water main freeze despite they are using the water. This main is over 6 feet below the surface. Most nights have been between 0 and -20 for 2 full months.

Brian is funtioning as a key player in the remodel. He is overseeing many aspects of the remodel. The boys are also helping. Charlotte and the boys have been pressing hard on school work. For those of you in Mississippi who are reading this, all we can say is that we want to be in God's will and we will come as soon as we can, hopefully yet this year, if it gets too late, maybe we will come to visit, not just work. Pray for our missionaries to be able to return to us.
Thank you for your prayers, we are so blessed.

In Christ

The Haines family

Time to remodel the church

Hi everyone,

Wow, I can't believe how we have failed to update the blog. It has been a very busy month.

We finished Nathan and Amanda's last week. We will publish pictures soon. It turned out beautiful.

We are fully involved in remodeling the church in Abbotsford. At this time we have the majority of the demolition and framing completed. It is amazing how the structural changes have modernized the facility. Pastor Will's father in law Gary is also working full time on the remodel. He is a very experienced and capable contractor. It has been a pleasure working with him.

It is a blessing how the timing of this whole thing works out. In June the school where we meet will close for major building improvements. We would have been forced to find a place to meet.

There is excitement about the church in the community. We are seeing many visitors in both the English and Hispanic services.

Winter has been brutal this year. We have had many days below zero and numerous nights between -10 and -25. We have about 16 inches of snow.

Charlotte and Brian enrolled in a massage class in Colby this month. We have always enjoyed receiving a massage, but giving one has been difficult for both of us. We have learned so many things and are now being able to bless one another with the benefits of massage. Our instructor Josiah has been very helpful. We would be glad to share more about this with you.

Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel will attend Winterblast at Believer's Church in Marshfield next weekend.

We helped Becky move to Marshfield. Peggy's upper apartment will now be rented out.

Micheal's employer wants him to relocate to Wausau, WI by June. What a turn of events. Only 8 months ago Peggy and Michael were in Bakersfield CA and we thought we would seldom see them.

We are all doing well. The kids are growing up so fast. Rosa speaks well now. Nicholas is turning 18 in July.

We are so glad you take the time to check our blog. May God richly bless you according too His riches in glory!

In Christ

The Haines family