God is Starting Something New

Since the fire, many things have changed! We obviously have no building, office, or an easy place to meet. I miss having our programs in a place with a working kitchen, I miss our cafeteria, our small group and large group rooms, and I Really miss having my own office (Picture). However God has decided to start something new with Lifeline this year, and in spite of all the hardship God is doing an AMAZING work with Lifeline right now.

Are we under a lot of financial strain....Yes, are our working areas tight....Yes, and tensions a little high because we are working long hours....Very much a YES. But God is blessing us in ways we never even imagined. In the weeks after the fire we moved our Elementary program into Mary Beck elementary, our Middle School to an old Elementary School gym, and the girls are meeting a different volunteers house every week. We had 16 kids come to know Jesus Christ as there personal savior in just two week, and had our numbers explode!!

We have seen growth in all of our programs this year, however the area we have seen the most growth in (by far) is the Elementary Club. The week before the fire we had 35-40 kids signed up for our program. Today that number is well over 100 kids, and we are seeing new kids come EVERY week! In fact we have kids from Hawthorne Elementary (the elementary school Jenna works at) that want to come but can't get a ride to club and our vans are to full to pick them up!

It is not only the kids that are noticing, after being at Mary Beck Elementary for only a few weeks, Hawthorne came to me and asked what it would take to start a Lifeline program at there school as well!! Praise God, without the fire we would not have had the opportunity to enter the schools like we did. And now we reaching over twice as many kids as we were before and soon could double that number again! So please continue to pray! I am working on getting volunteers, food providers, staff, bus drivers, and churches that want to be a part of launching a SECOND Lifeline elementary program. My goal is to launch after Christmas break, that would be Jan 16th. So please keep us in your prayers. Thank you for your prayers and support over these last few months Jenna and I really appreciate it and love you all!

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Lifeline Youth Ministries

Aftermath of the Fire "More than a building"

Family and Friends

As I am sure you are all aware Sunday September 23rd our Lifeline building was destroyed in a fire that started in a building behind Lifeline. While the fire came as a huge shock to us it has been neat to see what God has done in the aftermath of that fire. We have setup a temporary office at the YMCA, found 3 different locations for our different club programs, had almost 150 volunteers come to help our cleanup and salvage efforts, and had countless other phone calls and donations to keep everything running. Praise be to God we have not missed a beat, we did not miss a single club or lose any club members, in fact we are growing in spite of losing our building. I have also seen more kids come to Christ in this period time then I ever have! We have had 16 kids come to know Christ as their personal savior in the last two weeks!! So while our building is mostly destroyed, and many look at us with sadness and pity we feel blessed because we know that the work of God is not limited to a building! While we still have many struggles to overcome we are certain God has prepared the way for us! 

Pray God will continue to use this opportunity to affect many lives in Elkhart, and pray also as we find out how much money we will receive from the insurance company on Monday and that number will greatly impact our plans of re-building and moving forward. Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouragement during this time!

God Bless

More information and pictures available at https://www.facebook.com/LifelineYFC

June June June

Busy, busy, busy. The word that most aptly describes our life right now! It feels like we haven't stopped running since school got out in May. Summer activities are in full swing right now, keeping Caleb and the staff very busy through the week. Every Tuesday and Thursday from 1-3pm, they take 40-45 kids to the local pool. On Wednesdays, it's open clubhouse for a few hours. Open Gym is on Tuesday nights for Jr. and Sr. High boys, while across the street, the BBQ at the River Run Apartments is underway. And I can't forget the non-scheduled activities, where we build relationships in smaller groups. We are enjoying the informal schedule of the summer, where we can focus on building the kids up, building our relationships with them, and just plain hangin' out. There is nothing better than having thirty kids voicing their excitement to see you :)

Here are some highlights from the last month:

• Caleb's counseling training: Every Monday until August 20th, Caleb travels to Lafayette, IN to take classes in biblical counseling training. It goes from 9am to 9pm, and the end half of the day is spent observing actual counseling sessions. 
• Jenna's trip home: Jenna took a quick trip back to Spokane to see her brother, Chris, graduate from high school. We are VERY proud of him and his accomplishments. It was very good to be home for even a few days. 
• Indianapolis: Jenna's birthday was June 17th, so we spent the weekend in Indianapolis as a birthday get-away weekend. We visited the zoo, watched a dolpin show, ate delicious food, shopped, and visited an art musuem. It was a great time, and Caleb enjoyed his first days off in two weeks. 
• VBS/Camp: This week, our church put on their VBS program. Six elementary kids from Lifeline joined Caleb and our new intern, Jessica, at Sugar Grove Church and got "Zapped" this week. From what we hear, the kids are enjoying it alot! We also had six kids up at a week-long camp with another church. We picked them up today, and found out that two of our girls who went up to camp committed their lives to Christ!!! And a boy who attended VBS also accepted Christ!! Praise Jesus! This is a huge highlight for us, to see the Lord moving in our kids' hearts. 

Some things to pray for:

• A house: We have been looking to buy a house in the next few months. Please pray that God leads us to a house that serves our ministry but also is a space to relax when we aren't at Lifeline. 
• Energy: The summer activities require a lot of energy. Pray that we can keep up with these crazy kids.
• New believers: Pray that the Lord guides our words and actions as we help our three new believers learn how to be followers of Jesus.

Thank you for being such wonderful friends, family, and support for us. It has been a long year and we are so thankful to have you behind us, even though we may no longer live near some of you. If you ever have any questions, or want to get involved, please let us know!! God Bless!

Fishing Tournament

One of Caleb's many roles at Lifeline is being the Sports Director and being a member of a local sports league. During the summer, the Michiana Youth Sports League puts on a fishing tournament as one activity for kids to take part in. We brought twelve kids from nine to sixteen years old, along with three very helpful volunteers! The tournament was held at Potato Creek State Park (the site of our future camping adventures in the next couple months.) The league includes Boys and Girls Clubs from the area, so we had some stiff competition. However!!! We dominated :) Overall, the group caught 104 inches of fish, the longest being a 9 1/2" fish caught by Demetrius. The second place team only caught 45 inches. It was a fun morning of fishing, baiting the hooks with worms, untangling lines, teaching kids how to cast, and pulling the hook out of a fish's mouth. Reminded me of when my dad (Mark Ainslie) taught me how to fish and had so much patience with me as I learned. Here are some pictures of the successful fishermen and fisherwomen!

Ashley and Isabell

Eager fishermen!

These guys caught the most fish in the entire group!

Daniel and Christian :)

Tyshawn Knight, who, on the banner we received, wrote Tyshawn Stanton instead :) 

Andrea kicked butt, catching three fish!

The whole group minus volunteers. So proud of them and first place!!

Soccer Team :)

Back in April and May, Caleb coached our Lifeline soccer team. Thought we would put up a picture of the team and our post-tournament celebration!

We placed second in the tournament, and came back from a four game losing streak to winning our next three. So proud of the team and how hard they worked. Excited for next year!!

As a celebration of the season, we all went out to pizza. Seven pizzas and five baskets of breadsticks later, they were still tired but at least full!

Run-A-Thon

Summer for Lifeline is almost here!! Our kids only have two and a half weeks left of school and then we leap into summer activities. If you are anything like me (Jenna), the minute I looked at our calendar, I stress out haha. But it is full of opportunities to make and develop deeper personal relationships with our elementary kids. Lifeline's weekly activities will include going to the neighborhood pool twice a week, having open gym, River Run BBQ's, and having an open clubhouse for kids to come hangout. Then in June, fifth and sixth graders have the opportunity to go to a week-long church camp, learn about Jesus, and be outdoors in His creation. That same week, our third and fourth graders can attend a VBS put on by the church Caleb and I attend, Sugar Grove. Caleb and I will also be taking kids camping in tents and sleeping bags 3 or 4 times this summer.  Almost none of them have ever gone camping so that should be a lot of fun.

On May 26th, we at Lifeline are having a Run-A-Thon. The Run-A-Thon is something that Lifeline has done for many years. It is an opportunity to raise awareness for what we are doing as well as get the community and our kids to get more involved in raising money for Lifeline. The runners (local runners) as well as Lifeline supporters and kids try to get as many people to pledge money as possible for them to complete a 5, 10, or 15K run. The goal behind the Run-A-Thon is to raise enough funds to pay for all our summer activies. We need funds in order to take kids camping, to go to the pool, to feed them lunch, etc.Caleb and I are excited for our first Run-A-Thon. It's no Bloomsday but it will be fun to run a race with our elementary kids. I will probably go with the kids who want to take a slower pace and Caleb wants to run with all the kids that want to run.

We are asking for prayers for this event, that it will go smoothly, we can get a lot of Lifeline kids involved, and also that we can raise enough money to pay for our summer events! Also if you decide you would like to make a pledge for the Stantons as we run the race we would love that. (We are getting killed by other staff members in pledges right now!!) You can help support us at Lifeline with a one-time gift so that we can keep doing our summer activities. All you have to do is send an e-mail to either of us with your address, phone number and the amount you would like to pledge: $10, $15, $20 or more. We only need the pledge now, and would be collecting the tax-deductible pledges by mail after the race.

Thanks so much! God Bless!!

Caleb - caleb@yfcministries.com
Jenna- jenna.l.stanton@gmail.com

End of the School Year

Some of our 3rd and 4th graders.

Some of our 5th and 6th graders.

There are only three weeks left before the end of the school year! So we are wrapping things up in our club program and are gearing up for summer! It is exciting to see all the progress that has been made this year. Both in our personal lives and in the lives of our kids here at Lifeline. For the last few weeks Jenna and I have started to take two kids to church with us. Kaniesha, one of Jenna's 8th grade girls, and Tyshawn, one of my 6th grade boys. Tyshawn is a kid that has been coming to clubs all year. At the beginning of the year he was one of the hardest kids to get under control. He is a very energetic kid that loves to have fun, but because of that he has a hard time listening and following directions. Every time we would try and get the kids to put away all the basketballs he would continue to shoot and shoot. I would have to steal the ball from him to get him to stop shooting!!! It was very frustrating. But through the year I have been talking to him about leadership and what it takes to be a leader. It has been great to see him step up into that role these last few months. I have recruited him to help me put away all the basketballs and now he is the kid that steals the basketball from the other kids who do not listen.

Our Lifeline soccer season comes to a close with our playoff tournament this weekend. We had a rough start to the season, losing our first four games but we have bounced back and won our last two games of the season. Even though I have never coached soccer before, it has been a blast. Jenna and I have both really enjoyed getting to know our players. It is a very different culture to the team. Where the basketball team was primarily African American, our soccer team is primarily Hispanic and most of them are in Jr High. One of my former basketball players, Junior, brought his sister Angela onto the team. It has been a great opportunity to get even closer with his family and we even got invited to a quinceañera.

You can pray for us as we gear up for the summer. Pray we will not lose contact with kids during the summer, many move or go to live with or visit relatives in Chicago or South Bend. Pray for our support raising we do a lot of support raising events in the summer. We have our Run-a-Thon coming up May 26th. And our golf fundraiser on June 18th.  God Bless, we miss love and miss you all!!

Spring Break

Yes it is spring break already and we have already had over 80 degree weather. It is beautiful in Elkhart! This week Lifeline is taking 25 high school boys camping in Kentucky. Many of them are basketball players, which is exciting for me. It is amazing how many of our kids don't even get outside of Elkhart and very few who have ever been camping before. This is a great opportunity to get the kids out of their environment so they can see life differently. They will also be challenged by the word of God, so you can be praying that God will really work in the lives of the young men that are a part of this trip. Sadly, I am not going with them. I am staying here so Jenna and I can hang out with our elementary kids.  We are having hangout time and movie nights tonight and Wednesday night. It should be fun.

Soccer season is also starting up. I have never coached soccer before so this is a new experience for me, but I think it is going to be a lot of fun. It is a co-ed indoor league for kids 13-18. I have ten kids that are signed up so far: 8 boys and 2 girls. I am a little short on girls, but I am hoping that more will show up. But so far all of the kids on the team are Hispanic, expect for one, and they all know more about soccer than I do, but Junior, one of my basketball players, is helping me coach. I am excited to get to know some more of these kids.

Elementary Club as been going very well. After Christmas, I guess it is pretty common for numbers to drop some, but this has not been case this year. We have had some huge growth in the last month in our elementary club. Two weeks ago we had 6 new kids in one week and had a record 50 kids that week! So that has been very exciting to see. I am looking forward to this summer where we will be able to do a lot more things with the kids outside of our building. We will spend a lot of time at the pool, doing bbqs, and Jenna and I are hoping to be able to do 4-5 camping trips with kids. So you can pray that we can get a lot of good contact information for our kids in the summer. Summer can be a hard time to track down kids, especially with them moving or being sent to live with other family all over the state.

Tomorrow brings our third round of Stanton visitors! Jonathan and Christy came the first weekend of March, Josh came two weeks after that, and tomorrow Gary and Donna Mae arrive! We are feeling pretty blessed to have our family see and experience what we are doing here in Indiana. We will be headed down to Oklahoma on Thursday to visit Mamaw and the rest of the extended Stanton family for Easter. So excited to see Gary and Donna Mae!

Thank you for reading our blog and for being faithful supporters in prayer and financially. We at Lifeline really appreciate all that you do, even though some of you may not be here in Indiana experiencing it. God bless! Caleb and Jenna

Basketball Team

Here are our Basketball Team pictures. They were taking at the basketball tournament at the end of our season. We ended up getting 2nd place in our tournament.

First Family Visit!

Taken by Jonathan Stanton in front of the Chicago Bean :)

Jonathan and Christy Stanton (Caleb's brother and his wife) came to visit us this last weekend to celebrate their one year anniversary. As you might guess, Caleb and I were pretty excited to have family come visit us in the booming metropolis of Elkhart, Indiana. We got to tour them around Elkhart, show them Lifeline, take them to Das Essenhaus to see Amish people, and explore Chicago a bit. On Sunday, we drove into Chicago and just had to have Chicago-style deep dish pizza. We even found a place that had gluten-free crust for me! We went up 103 floors to see the top of the former Sears/now Willis Tower and stood on a see-through ledge. We saw the Bean, which is shown in the picture above. That is our reflection off the Bean. 

For me, I think what meant the most about the Stantons visiting the Stantons was that someone came and got to see even just a taste of what we do here in Elkhart. What do we do here? We invest in God's kingdom. We love on kids who need love and attention. In clubs this year, we taught elementary kids about the Ten Commandments, the Armor of God, and soon the life of Jesus. Most of these wonderful, mostly crazy, children do not know Jesus personally. We try to communicate the love of Jesus and the saving grace of the gospel to seven year olds in the best way we can. Caleb visits Mary Beck Elementary during lunch hours and gets to know our Lifeline members and their friends, showing them that our love for them extends past the two hours we see them on Mondays. Caleb coaches Lifeline's basketball team and is building relationships with our high school guys, while I volunteer with Jr./Sr. High Girl's club and invest in girls who need to hear that we love them no matter what, and Jesus loves them even more than that. To be 100% invested in these kids lives here in Elkhart is an amazing blessing. 

So a huge thank you to Jonathan and Christy for coming out to see us :) We love you both. And as a shameless plug, read our previous blog entry and watch the video that we posted. Kyle Peterson did a fantastic job giving a face to Lifeline Youth For Christ :) 

New Year, New Excitment

I apologize it has been so long since we have updated our blog! These last two months have been a roller coaster ride. We got to go home to Washington and see our amazing family and friends, attended a week long biblical counseling conference, and are over half way done with our Lifeline basketball season.

I have been staying very busy running our sports program. Coaching basketball has been a blast. We have two full basketball teams with a great group of guys! Our Black team is 5-0 and our Blue team is 4-2. We are gunning for a MYSL championship and I believe we have the talent to do it! In the process I have been able to develop some good relationships with some of the players. Jeremy and Elijah (brothers) have been two of our most reliable players, always showing up at least 30min early to practice or games, so we get time to just hang out and talk, which has been fun. Junier Lopez is another guy I have spent a good amount of time with, if you can pray for him and his family. As I have gotten to know him, he has shared about his family situation. His dad was shot and killed about a year ago, which has left him as the man of the house with a younger brother and sister. And just this last week he told me his mom was just diagnosed with breast cancer. I can not imagine what they are going through. So pray we can minister to them in their time of need.

Elementary clubs have been going well. We are going through the Armor of God series and it has really led to some great discussion with our kids. I have been in a small group with three 4th grade boys and it has been great to be able to talk about who God is and what it looks like to follow him. All three of them just recently have told me that they do not have a Bible and want one that they can take to school with them and read during reading time. So it is really exciting to be able to get them their very own bibles! Please continue to pray that the gospel will penetrate the hearts of our students in a very real way.

Here is a video about some of the things that we do at Lifeline. It is one that is made specifically for the church of our director here at Lifeline, so it does not have us talking as much, but it is still a great picture of what we do. Hope you all are doing well we miss you and love you all!

http://vimeo.com/36422479   (The best way to view it is to copy and paste this link above.)

God Bless, Caleb Stanton

Lifeline Christmas Party

On December 19th, we celebrated a Lifeline Christmas! We took 43 kids to Dandinos restaurant to eat some good food and open Christmas presents. And let me say, it was an absolute blast! Many of the kids had no idea what to do with all the food, as they were given four courses and were used to one. Goofy, happy kids make fun times. Here are a few pictures highlighting the party :)

Jaquelyn and Maria

Joey and Travis

Juan is enjoying the mozzarella sticks a little too much!

And so is David

Two of the kids at my table, Amairiya and Thairek 

Caleb's table: David, Byron, and Juan

Byron and his moustache

5th and 6th grade girls awaiting presents

I have never seen anyone SO excited about Barbies

(I got really excited, This girl's name is Ainslee :D )