What a start to 2022! It has been very eventful in our nation, but may we all keep our eyes on the prize.
“May the God of Hope fill you will all joy and peace as you trust in Him”-Romans 15:13
I am praying that this letter finds all of you happy, full of joy, and overflowing with peace. We trust God and He has a good and perfect plan for all of us. We have amazing things happening at Freedom and Victory house and we welcome and are grateful for each and every woman coming through our houses. God is doing amazing things in these women. What a miracle! Watching the Victory in their lives blows my mind, and is so powerful to be a part of and watch what God is doing.
We want to thank all of our faithful supporters, especially Christian Help. What a blessing you are to us! We want to thank you for all the dehumidifiers, mattresses, solar lights, beautiful goodies for the women, and everything else you give us, the blessings you give are too numerous to count. The breakthroughs, also, in our women from the prayer team that comes through once a month is so powerful to watch. We want to thank Michael and Rebecca Lamae and Kim Spencer, our anointed, powerful, prayer warriors for their time each month to pray over these women. The breakthroughs are too many to count and we are eternally grateful.
What We’ve Been Up To
New Year Goal Setting
For the New Year, we worked on Goal Setting. It is an important part of recovery to set real, attainable goals and work to accomplish them. Armor Up helps give women realistic goal setting skills. We help these women develop the skills necessary for taking the actionable steps to work towards these goals throughout the year. This workshop party where we put our goals for the year on poster board helped these women to think about what they want to attain in their future and to speak life over their future and to become all that God has called them to be in their passion and purpose using the time, talents, and treasure God has blessed them with.
Word of the Year Art
Another Armor Up new year tradition is our Word of the Year Art Event. We pray the previous month over what we need to focus on for the upcoming year, and then we paint our word of intention. This is a very powerful exercise of reflection and intention, to find the one word that defines our focus for the year. This exercise helps the women to reflect on their current situation and needs, then set their intention for the new year and ask God to help them achieve focus in that area of their life to promote change.
Volunteering at Christian Sharing Center
Armor Up always always guides women to give back and this is an example of one of our outreaches. A big part of our program and recovery is giving back of our talent, time, and/or treasure through service work. (Our motto is you can’t keep it if you don’t give it away.) In February we did an outreach to the Christian Sharing Center where we sorted through tons of bins and boxes of donations, folded and hung clothes, and cleaned. It was a day of giving back to our community, and a team building event for our women.
House Dinner, Church, and Bible Study
Birthday Celebrations
Birthdays are a big deal at Armor Up as a celebration of life. We make birthdays special celebrations, and everyone has a good time. Happy birthday Mikala! Happy birthday Lisa! We are so happy to spend your big day with you and are glad you are with us.
Trip to the Fair
In March a bunch of us went to the fair for a night of fun. What a blast we had at the Central Florida fair. We do have fun clean and sober. What a miracle all of you are all of us are. God is so good. I loved every minute with my peeps, with my motley Crew. Seeing all of you smile and laugh and just the lights and the food and the smells it’s amazing how our senses come alive and we are so present and grateful for every little thing. So aware of our surroundings…..When we wake up the next day we remember it all and we feel great. it’s a beautiful thing. I love you ladies to the moon and back. God bless you all.
Baptisms
We had 2 more of our women get baptized! Congratulations to Mikala and Tawnie on this step in their spiritual journey. Baptism represents a changed heart and is an inward expression of rededication and surrendering to Jesus and an outward expression of being cleansed of all past sins and a new beginning with Christ as our center. Baptism is a personal choice, and while not all of our women choose to be baptized, the ones that do find baptism to be a big step in their recovery process as they surrender their wills and ways and past for God’s total healing and redemption in all that He has for their future. We are so proud of all of them, and so grateful and blessed to be able to take part in this.
April Service Project
On April 10th we are excited that we will be going down to Lake Eola with 80 backpacks for the homeless to minister and pray and share the gospel with the homeless, the hurting, and anyone in need. Any supplies and donations (eg: toiletries, blankets, jackets, men’s shoes)for these backpacks would be greatly appreciated! Please call Angella at 407-592-6950.
Get Involved
As always, we rely on your support to make these things happen. If you have it in your heart to give, please visit our get involved page to see ways that you can help us support our mission.