THE HEART OF TEXAS IS BIGGER THAN A HURRICANE
FALL 2017
Delivering Good News to the Community.
CONTENTS Thrive Community Church kicked off their grand opening this Fall, see what the buzz is about.
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Never underestimate the power of Texas’ resolve. Read about how Pine Country gave a helping hand.
Why? 8
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While the world was looking up during the eclipse, the balloon scientists were looking down onto the world.
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Local high school student raises money and puts hundreds of kids through swimming lessons.
Brandon Greene from the Hope Station shares the reason of the “why” in life.
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To get the leaders of tomorrow to grow their imagination, they have to read!
Paying it forward.
Thank you to Thrive Community Church for translating Beacon for our online Spanish readers. Gracias a Thrive Community Church por traducir Beacon a nuestros lectores Españoles en línea.
Delivering Hope, Inspiration, and Change in the Pine Country
Delivering Good News to the Community.
PUBLISHER Full Armor Foundation 501(c)(3) Organization MAILING ADDRESS PO BOX 591624, San Antonio, TX 78259 BEACON OFFICE (903) 724-2274
MEDIA PARTNERS We are excited about partnering with our good friends at 93.5 KBPC. Pine Country 93.5 is the one station that listeners from East Texas, can count on for instant, up-to-date weather information...the latest SRN Network News at the top of the hour... and the biggest variety of Today’s Country Hits music
COMMUNITY MANAGER Blake Clifton, blake@pinecountrybeacon.com ONLINE PineCountryBeacon.com @PineCountryBeacon PUBLISHED Quarterly * Photos by www.blakeverdoorn.com including cover
PUBLISHER’S NOTE A special thank you to our local Whataburger locations who are passionate about our mission to deliver, hope, inspiration, and change to the Pine Country and surrounding areas.
“ T his is your chance to get involved in the community”
- Jackie P I N E C O U N T R Y B E AC O N . C O M | 3
OUR COMMUNITY
Pastor brings joy to the Athens area. WITH NATHAN HERRINGTON
Real change is seen when people who can change the world decide to stay where they are to make their mark. Not all missions are abroad. The Beacon team sat down with a world changer this summer, and dove into the mind of Nathan Herrington, a businessman whose goals drastically changed. In Athens, Texas you will find the momentum of good all around you. Nathan is certainly doing his part to bring joy in the area. When asked how he started this movement in Pine Country, he light-heartedly replied, “with fear and trembling”.
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About five years ago, Nathan left the business world and headed to Honduras. He engaged the country and it stole his heart. He was charged with a mission. “Let’s start to plant churches.” Honduras holds many challenges and needs, but beautiful people always defeat ugly situations. Communities don’t want our money. They don’t always want our food. They don’t just want our clothes. They want us. Nathan gave himself to the country, and they loved him for it. After understanding both Texas and Honduras, as well as other places like Chile in South America, the question of “Where are going to plant a church” finally came. Nathan and his wife knew that the two main objectives were to connect people to a purpose, and keep an identity in missions. “We love the process of helping people find what their life’s purpose is,” Nathan included. Signs of community coming together were everywhere in Athens. This is where the difference would be made. The team began rallying the right people to plant their church in Texas. What was the priority of this church? Who did they want to serve? What would they teach? Where would money go? First things first, calling the church the very word that they wish to see in Athens and its people. Thrive. Nathan shared how special it has been to see the right people filling slots in the church so perfectly. Thrive Community Church had their soft open in March of this year. Their major launch is on September 17th, 2017. As Nathan mentioned, the foundation of Thrive will always be missional. Putting their money where their mouth is, Thrive is committed to seeing churches in Honduras, before they even have their own building. The church is its people, not the walls. With full transparency, Nathan shared the breakdown of where their resources will go toward. 30% of their resources will go to their building fund.
Thrive Church is being intentional about bringing the joy of salvation and love of Christ to the Athens area. Nathan’s wife, Alejandra Herrington introduces the unconditional love of Christ Jesus to a young girl attending a recent baptism.
That means building and planting, not their own building. 20% heads to general ministry, 30% for salaries, and the last 10% for missional giving, on the local, national, and international level. Our money always mirrors our priorities. Thrive is staying consistent with their foundation. The Beacon is finding folks every day wanting their community to be better. Uplifting for neighbors, safe to raise their kids. We enjoyed hearing Nathan speak on his vision for the area. “I think people want change, and to be actively involved in this city. We are trying to seek the unchurched, which sounds obvious but it isn’t. That is a decision we must make, to befriend those that aren’t within our church walls.” Talk about a great way to unite a city. When a business, a church, a project is in its beginning stages, a cloud of chaos always seems to follow. When asked how he was blocking that cloud to see the success in these early stages, Nathan shared what he has seen. “A successful 2017 for us is a continued unity. Things are taking care of themselves, I just don’t want any of this to become monotonous, because it isn’t. There are so many exciting things here,
setting a DNA to our culture, powering through hiccups, and at the end of this we will see a church that a lot of people can call home.” Thrive is hoping to grow enough to launch more and more churches. Nathan has seen that in smaller churches, the people in the church get to use their skills and gifts more often.
See how your skill-set can be used at Thrive! At the end of day, the true encouragement is seeing individuals who are so talented come together and leave our community better than they found it. Don’t wait
around to get involved, see the exciting things that Nathan and his team are doing! Thrive is currently meeting at Athens Christian Preparatory Academy Campus, off Highway 175-E.
“ We love the process of helping people find what their life’s purpose is”
For more information about Thrive, visit their website at https://www.livewithpurpose.church, or their Facebook page under Thrive Community Church Athens.
Pastor Nathan
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OUR COMMUNITY M
Hurricanes Bring Out The Best in Texas
East Texas Lends Helping Hand. Hurricane Harvey devastated the Galveston and Houston area in South Texas. Millions were affected by the flooding and extreme winds. We were down as Texans, and the country felt the pain. But you can never underestimate the strength of a unified America, and more specifically a unified Texas. We take care of our own, we scramble our efforts to help our brothers and sisters. We were down but not defeated. There is pride behind what we saw from the United States to send aid to Texas. As many know, JJ Watt set out for a $200,000 goal to help fellow Houston residents. A few weeks later, the country rallied and raised over 37 million dollars
to help the area! Incredible. But how did Pine Country get involved with Hurricane Harvey healing? Thousands of folks in our area got in their cars and trucks to get boats to help people who lost their homes. Many gutted homes to give a new start to Texans. Below are just a few businesses that sent money, food, hygiene-products, and man hours to Harvey relief areas: • Kelly Carroll from Carroll’s Automotive and Tire Pros. • Brian Rucker from Rucker Equipment • DeWayne Williamson from Palestine Chrysler
United Methodist, and Thrive Community Church. Nathan Herrington from Thrive Church went down to Houston with their grill, and fed over one thousand people who were displaced from the storm. They had a couple hundred hamburger patties and hot dogs, and fed an entire apartment complex who was running on empty in food. Absolutely incredible. The word awesome can be used to describe the power of a hurricane. But equally powerful and awe-inspiring is the reaction of Texans taking care of their own. Don’t Mess With Texas goes for Hurricanes, too.
• Evangelistic Temple • Hope Station in Palestine • Elkhart Fire Department • United Way of Pine Country
Pastor Nathan Herrington (third from left) and other men from Thrive Community Church with their BBQ grill after feeding over 1,000 people displaced by the hurricane.
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Athens got in on the action as well. Specifically the churches came together to form ACT, or Athens Churches Together. Among these churches from Athens were First Presbyterian, First Baptist, Sand Springs Baptist, Nazarene Church, St Edwards Catholic Church, First
Left to right: Brian Rucker, Rucker Equipment Company, Brian’s father, Kelly Carroll, owner Carrolls Automotive & Tire Pros and Mendi Perry, Director of Operations, Carrolls Automotive & Tire Pros.
Pine Country’s Role During the 2017 Solar Eclipse. This image was taken from a balloon at its highest point. You can see the shadow the Moon is casting onto our planet.
WITH ROSS HAYS
The country came together this past August 21st to witness an event that is of the utmost rarity. A solar eclipse, as the Moon came in front of our Sun. What most do NOT know is that great minds right here in Pine Country played a specific role in the viewing and documenting of the eclipse. We interviewed Ross Hays, meteorologist and atmospheric scientist at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. The facility is a sub-orbital program out of NASA. They are located next door to the Palestine Airport, and are a highly interesting facility to visit. To give insight on the global reach of our very own Balloon Facility, Ross and his team travel to countries including Antarctica, Arctic Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia to execute research and balloon trials. Pine Country has a lot to be proud of with this facility. Now these scientific balloons are not what you may picture in your head. They are
incredibly large. “Each of our balloons are about the size of the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium. 900 feet tall.” Ross has been in this business for over a decade. This August, Ross’ team received an educational grant to launch “hand-released balloons” into the atmosphere to capture the eclipse at a vantage point that no one could compete with. Their adventure took the team to Idaho. “Oh it was beautiful, a perfect dry climate with no clouds. We watched the Sun come over and around and perfectly came in place for the eclipse. These specific balloons were about the size of a pickup truck. They elevated to 100,000 feet and captured images that few people have. Instead of taking images of just the Moon in front of the Sun, pictures were taken of the Earth’s surface, with the Moon’s monstrous shadow engulfing part of the planet. This is an event we will not see soon. Hopefully you safely got a look at the
Ross Hays has spent 13 years here in Pine Country. Before that he was a weather producer with CNN.
eclipse. Our universe is truly an amazing creation, and we can truly say that moments like these in our world are nothing less that awesome. For more information on the Balloon Facility, visit csbf.nasa.gov
Facts about the 2017 Eclipse: • The last total eclipse was 40 years ago in the U.S. • The last “coast-to-coast” eclipse we had was 90 years ago. • Balloon launches were held all around the country. The teams came to Palestine in advance of the Eclipse to test their tracking system, and student payloads were also launched here to select which student team payloads would be included on balloons for the Eclipse Project. • Do not look directly at the eclipse! (Our apologies if this advice came too late)
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OUR COMMUNITY
Why? BY BRANDON GREENE
This one small word is a show stopper. This one word demands an answer of purpose. It requires a search of one’s motivations. What’s the reason, the real reason? That’s what is being asked here. Some find that question in other ways. Businesses, for example, may ask the “what’s in it for me” question. However, when it comes to the comparison of personal or corporate fulfillment and blessings, not every why answers are created equal. We all have different answers to this question of why we do what we do: to make money, look good, be comfortable, you name it. Although these goals are, in and of themselves, good things, we know within that there has to be more to life than that. These endeavors,
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The life-changing and motive-defining question.
when they stand alone, are not enough to fulfill us, and when we try to go after these passions as our top priority, we end each day asking why. Money for money’s sake is never enough. No matter how hard we try, youthful looks are for youth, and we can’t stay there forever. Underneath, we understand true fulfillment usually comes from some sort of emptying, not adding, of ourselves. Whether it’s random acts of kindness, investing in someone else’s life, sharing your blessings with others, or simply offering love, you’ll feel energized. These begin to serve as our answers to the why questions, and that is when we find an incredible joy and meaningful fulfillment. I would encourage you to remember the true purpose of blessings. When you don’t have the fuel to continue, when your family, or friends or team feel disconnected, rely on the why to pull yourselves back together. So I ask you the life-changing and motive-defining question: why. Why do you do what you do? Hope Station wants to become part of that answer. As a non-profit Christian ministry for the homeless, we do what we do because we love to see hope reappear in the
So I ask you the life-changing and motive-defining question: why.
Why do you do what you do? eyes of those who have lost it. I would ask you to consider partnering in our efforts while providing an avenue of purpose for you and your staff. It may just become a team building motivation for your business to gather around a worthy cause. Would you consider becoming a monthly contributing partner with Hope Station? Let’s add HOPE to that purpose! Let’s add HOPE STATION to the answer of why! Thank you, and may God bless you,
Brandon Greene, Executive Director
True fulfillment usually comes from some sort of emptying, not adding, of ourselves.
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OUR COMMUNITY
Palestine Swim aking a difference comes M when someone with the eyes to identify a problem has the heart to turn their vision into action. 17 year -old Serena Coker started the Palestine Swim Initiative.
The Beacon team found its next incredible story of hope in the YMCA building. Seventeen year-old Serena Coker is stirring the community to empower the Palestine Swim Initiative to come alive. When Serena got word that four children could not swim in the floods of last year, losing their lives, she moved to ensure that will not happen again. What can a high school kid do to affect that much of the community? At YMCA, swimming sessions are held for young people to learn how to hold their own in the water. The swimming sessions last two weeks, and cost $85. Enter Serena and her passion to enable these kids to swim. Serena is going to be a senior in high school this year, currently ranked in the top few of her class. She won the leadership award for her swim team, an award voted by her teammates. Cindy Piersol, CEO at YMCA, has seen Serena in action. “She’s driven and loyal, quite the firecracker! You can count on her to go above and beyond on her time here.” Her team includes Chenoa Logan-Mason, Lead Coordinator, Matthew Cotten, Aquatics Director, and Kathrine Newton, The
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Swim Program Manager. Together they have formed this Initiative. “This is a team effort of volunteers and the YMCA to make parents aware of the importance of their children learning to swim, and to make swim lessons affordable to all,” Serena included. On August 26th of last year, Serena spoke in front of the city council and shared her dream. Because the city owns the pool at the Y, she needed the green light from the council to use the pool for lessons. The council approved, and the mayor made the first donation to the cause. The goal was to raise $30,000, starting this past January. That is the cost of 400 kids getting to experience the swimming sessions. So far Serena and her team have raised $26,000 and are still looking for help on their final run to their goal! All corners of the community have participated as sponsors, supporters and advocates. There is a divine purity in the efforts of enabling kids to have a great time learning new things. To see a campaign this large headed up by a high schooler should inspire us all, and begs the question, “what have I done today to improve the
“ This is a team effort of volunteers and the YMCA to make parents aware of the importance of their children learning to swim, and to make swim lessons affordable to all,” — Serena Coker world’s tomorrow?” We can all learn something from our young people. In this example, the hard part is already done! All we have to do is come behind this initiative and show our support. And rest assured, it is worth supporting. To find out more about the Swim Initiative, or to donate toward the cause, call YMCA at 903.729.3139, or send a check to YMCA, noted to the Palestine Swim Initiative.
Initiative When Serena got word that four children could not swim in the floods of last year, losing their lives, she moved to ensure that will not happen again.
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The
King’s Rei
Paying It Forward. The King’s Rein Equine Assisted Outreach Baleigh Hall is paying it forward as a volunteer at The King’s Rein Equine Assisted Outreach. Having been through equine therapy herself, she now seeks to help others find breakthroughs with their mental, emotional and behavioral challenges through horses, acceptance and unconditional love. As a bright, independent teen, Baleigh got mixed up with the wrong crowd and was headed down a path that would ended up either in jail or in
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street life. In an effort to stop Baleigh’s path of self-destruction, her parents enrolled her in a boarding school in Montana for troubled teens. It is there that Baleigh first experienced equine therapy and the incredible turn-around it made in her life. Once Baleigh changed the way she approached relationships, she was more receptive to counseling and advanced very quickly through the program. Upon returning home to East Texas,
she wanted to become involved with horses again. Baleigh discovered The King’s Rein Equine Assisted Outreach and signed on as a volunteer. She now encourages others and helps them face their challenges with a spirit of hope and confidence in a brighter future. The King’s Rein is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Contact: Shannon DeCraene Ph: 903.714.0830 Email: info@thekingsrein. org Website: www.thekingsrein.org www.facebook.com/thekingsrein
in
The King’s Rein is an equine assisted outreach that helps people with emotional, mental and behavioral challenges due to traumatic life events. The program helps to restore people’s self-worth, confidence, trust, discipline and compassion. Through the horses and volunteers, the people who come to The King’s Rein experience
“
I wasn’t wanting to change – I was still
living the same old attitudes and behaviors that I used to until my counselor helped me see that my attitudes and behaviors directly affected my rela-
Baleigh Hall
tionship with my horse…and others. I broke down crying. After that I decided to change the way I was with my horse, the people in the school, my counselors and my family. That was a major
healing and the transforming
turning point for me – I really started to try. Horses do not lie.
power of love through acceptance
They can tell if you are not being real. Once I started being real,
and encouragement, realizing
they started to accept me. I then began to see the same results
they have hope and a future.
throughout my relationships at the boarding school.
“
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OUR COMMUNITY
Every person has that one book that will change their perspective on life.
Learning and Art Festival
Opening up imagination and new worlds of thinking.
This past June, United Way held the Dogwood Children’s Learning and Art Festival. The event was put on primarily by United Way and the Palestine Public Library. The goal was simple: offer the exposure of reading to the young people in the community. Richard Jones with United Way has seen the fruit of children exploring their imaginations. “Our society can only grow with the use and growth of our imagination, and we must give our children the ability to tap into growing their minds.” The primary goal is to get children reading during the summer time, continuously building imagination in an active way. There is no engineer, no doctor, no architect without an imagination. These festivals are just one of many ways to stimulate the mind. In this case, over 200 books were given out to the community. The library brought in the nationally renowned author John Manders to bring additional excitement to the day. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time! “Let’s put books in kids’ hands, especially in the summer!” The day was done hand in hand with the Library Summer
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Richard Jones with United Way encourages children to build their imagination by reading.
Reading Program. “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” Author John Green believed that every person has that one book that will change their perspective on life. This festival, libraries
and programs everywhere are doing their part to open up imagination and new worlds of thinking. This festival showed how much fun it is to read - even in the summer time! There are many ways to get your hands on great books, so put your nose in a book next time you have an hour or two!
For more information, visit www.unitedwayofeastcentraltexas.org
Please Join Us for Worship on Sundays 9 or 11a.m.
FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 422 S. Magnolia St., Palestine, Texas 75801 fumcpalestine.org
PALESTINE HOMETOWN PHARMACY Open 7 Days A Week
8:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. M-F 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Sat 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (Most Sundays)
Drive Thru Available
(903) 729-3100
101 Medical Drive (Behind Hospital) Palestine, TX 75801
Layne Vannoy, R. PH - Lisa Parker, R. PH Most RX and TX Medicaid Accepted P I N E C O U N T R Y B E AC O N . C O M | 1 5
Full Armor Foundation PO Box 591624 San Antonio, TX 78259
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