March Meeting Notes

Upcoming Events...

March 22 10:00 - ?  Rock wall training.  Need as many men as possible to come get certified to operate the rock wall.

April 12 8:00-12:00 - Church work day.  Come help spruce things up around the church in preparation for Easter.  We will be cutting grass, landscaping, and other minor repairs.

May 17th - Mother/Daughter Dinner.  Need men to come help prepare, cook, and serve the ladies.

2nd Monday of each month Bryan is hosting a youth guys bible study at his house from 6-9.  This is a great opportunity for the men of our church to connect with the youth guys.  The study Bryan is doing is all about what it takes to be a christian man in this world.  We eat, do some bible study, teach some man skills (jump start a car, change a tire, grill a burger, etc..).  I encourage you to participate.

Fellowship Dinner this Sunday night

This Sunday 3/16 6:00 steak dinner and hang out by the fire and discuss men stuff!  All men encouraged to be there.

2013 In Review

We had a great year in 2013, had lots of fellowship and did some Kingdom work also.  Here is a list of things from memory that we did in 2013, these are in no particular order just as they came to mind.  Feel free to comment if you notice something missing.

• Had a great time and raised some funds for outreach during our Christmas ham sale.  We sold a 30 whole hams (some we halved).  Thanks to Montevallo's mens group for loaning us the smoker again this year, could not do it without them.  Head Chef Bill Scholl did an excellent job running the ship.  We were also able to give our staff a ham as a Christmas gift.
• Also had fun getting greasy frying and smoking turkeys during Thanksgiving.  We cajun fried 30 whole turkeys and smoked 75 breasts.  We were not able to get the boneless breasts this year so we slaved away and de-boned 75 bone in breasts.  They turned out great!  We partnered with our Feed My Sheep ministry and gave away 50 of the breasts to folks that come to the food pantry once a month!
• Raised around $1800 between the Turkey and Ham fundraisers!
• Bought the Calera Middle School football team and staff a Chick-Fil-A box meal for their last home game.
• Had the Calera High School football team and cheerleaders in for a steak dinner.  This is an annual event and one of my favorites to have 80+ students from the high school in our church fellow-shipping and enjoyed a Rib-eye hot of the grill.
• A few of us braved the storms and went down to Fort Morgan for some fishing in October.  Had a great time but did not catch much.  Hoping to do this again this year.
• Had the president of Adaptive Aquatics Joe Ray in for our November meeting.  He gave a great presentation of the work that is down out in Wilsonville on Lay Lake by his organization.  We raised $200 in donations during that meeting to help support them.
• Had Conservation Officer Shawn Dixon in for our September meeting.  This was probably one of my favorite meetings of 2013.  Shawn presented some great material and he put up with being berated by our serious and some not so serious questions :)
• Cooked and gave out hot dogs for the prayer in the park service the weekend before school started.  This was a great event where we worked with other churches in Calera to give out school supplies and pray for the students and teachers in Calera.
• Did a 1 day outreach this summer with Firehouse Homeless shelter in Birmingham.  We split up in a couple of teams and tacked some grass cutting and painting in one of their apartments.  We donated 10 gallons of white paint to them.  After a hard days work a few of us went over to the new Regions Field and watched the Barrons play.  Hoping to do this again in 2014.
• This summer we took care of getting food for our Tuesday Family Fun nights in the park.  This was a great opportunity for the church family to get together and have some fun in the park after a long hard day of work and school.
• Sponsored a young mans Camp Sumatanga camp fee this summer.
• We cooked and served the ladies during their annual Mother Daughter Dinner in May.  We had a good time together cooking and waiting tables and served the ladies at the same time.  Had about 15-20 men show up and we all dressed in black.  I have to say we looked nice,or at least most of us :)
• Smoked some hams for Easter.  I think we sold 40 whole hams and we raised $1300.
• Held our Narrow Gate event over spring break.  This is a top secret mission, if you want to learn more about it talk to one of the guys in our group.
• We put 5 youth members to work on a February work day to earn money towards their encounter trip.  Paid $450 towards their trip.
• Put on a pancake breakfast for the Calera High School wrestling team at the new middle school to help them pay for a new wrestling mat.
• Had our annual Chili Cook-off in January.  Jason Carlee took home the trophy.
• Worked alot this year on our expansion trailers.  Got a deck built, got them underpinned, got electricity ran to them.  We still have a little bit of work to get them ready for use.

Looking forward to another great year in 2014!

Turkey Time!

It is that time of year again men, time to start selling some Turkeys.  Same format as always (why fix what ain't broken), 35 for a whole Cajun fried turkey and 25 for a smoked bone in breast.  Will be cooking them on Wednesday the 27th with pickup available between 1 and 6 PM.

Flyers will be in this weeks bulletin and I will have extra's at the desk or you can email/text/call me with an order.

I am challenging each of you to sale/buy 1 turkey, that is easy.  All of the profits go directly into the mens group account to do kingdom work at the church and in the community.

We will also be smoking boneless breasts for about 50 Feed My Sheep families this year.

Things we need to make this a success are:
Sale turkeys...Take the order forms to work, friends, relatives, neighbors, etc....  I can promise you these are some awesome turkeys!

Your time...There will be plenty of opportunity to help out that week.  Early in the week we will pickup the turkeys, we will prep them the night before, and we will fry and smoke all day Wednesday.  This is a great time to get to know and fellowship with other men in the group, you won't regret it I promise.  We are missing our chief fry-man this year (Clay), so I am looking for someone to fill that role.

Turkey Fryer...If you have a fryer we can borrow that would be great.  Let me know, you can bring it up anytime and we will lock it up in the shed.

Propane...If you have a propane tank at home, preferably with some propane it it.  Again let me know.  This can be a huge profit eater buying propane.


Oil... If you want to donate a jug of peanut oil.  Again this is a big profit eater.

Updates

First off I apologize for the long gap between posts, no excuses just have not made it a priority on updating.

A good bit of activity has happened since our last post.  Below are some updates on what has recently happened and upcoming activities.

We hosted the CHS football team for a steak dinner on 10/17.  We served up 80 rib-eyes to the team as well as cheerleaders and staff.  It was a great success!

We also bought Chick-Fil-A dinner for the CMS football team on 10/15 for their last game of the season.

A good bit of activity has occurred on the Trailers.  The deck is complete and skirting is 90% complete around the trailers.  Next step is to repair rotten trim around windows/doors and install trim around skirting.  Almost there guys!

We will be having our annual Thanksgiving Turkey fundraiser on 11/28.  Flyers will be available this week, same pricing as in the past Whole Cajun Fried for 35 or Smoked Breast for 25.  All proceeds go directly to the Men's Group for outreach and Trailer repairs.

For this months meeting on 11/17 the executive director of Adaptive Aquatic Joe Ray will be coming to speak with us about his organization.  If you are not familiar with it, please hit their websitte at http://www.adaptiveaquatics.org/.

Minor Set back

Good news is all the sprinkler lines we cut during trenching have been repaired.

Well gang we had a minor setback last Saturday with our trailer renovation.  There was a short in the front wall of trailer #1 that caused a minor fire.  The Calera and Alabaster FD responded and it was put out very quickly after it started.  Luckily it happened while someone was there to notice it.

We have accessed the damage and decided to block off the back third of that trailer and just use it for storage and not classroom space.  We will tear out that wall that was burned, the carpet in the section, and the floor that burned.  The wall will be formed back up with approximately an 8' X 6' opening to the outside where we will install a metal roll up door.  The reason for this is that when Upward starts back up again we can roll open the door and use that as a place for the sound equipment, or it could be used to sell concessions, or any other number of things.

Work will start back up this coming Saturday 9/14 at 7:00 AM.  I realize this is football season but we will be finished long before the Tigers or the Tide take the field.  Please come and pitch in to get this project finished up.

Just as a general update below are the priority of things to be done.
Repair fire damage
Install locks
Under-pin
Clean inside (youth servolution!)
Paint outside
Build steps/deck

Thanks,
Brad

Trailer work day 8/24

We had a productive work day this past Saturday on the trailers.

We now have power to both trailers and both HVAC units are working!!!!

Also got 3 of the 5 water lines patched in the amphitheater.

Work will continue this Saturday 8/31, I realize it is opening weekend of FOOTBALL but come early before the games.