Golden Anniversary Banquet!
We are having our banquet on September 27th. Please, save the date. Tickets will be $10 a person. We will feed you, wow you with progress updates on all ministries and entertain you. It will be a night to remember as we have dug through many old files to find that Wayne and Ann started ministering here in 1969. We will blend some of the past with the present and share amazing testimonies of what God has been doing. We are asking for a huge show of support as time is short. If you are a business owner, we would ask that you prayerfully consider sponsoring a gift basket door prize or contribute to cover the cost of food. London Bridge Baptist has graciously agreed to allow us to have our banquet in their beautiful gymnasium. This will be an amazing time of fellowship and fun as we are actively fundraising for the future of the ministry. There will be opportunities to give and pledge support for any of our amazing ministry fields.
        
Please check banquet ticket slip and include payment to purchase tickets and reserve your seat as space is limited.
 
Impossible Mission!
We are in need of help with the planning and logistics of the banquet. If you can help please call 757-498-4700 to volunteer. We need help making phone calls and decorating. If this is something you are gifted in, please help. We know God will make a way where there seems to be no way. He makes the impossible possible. We know this is short notice and we are praying for a great turnout. With your help, we can do it.
 
Yard Sale!
Our next yard sale will be on September 6th and 7th at 2605 Ballentine Blvd in Norfolk. Come out and find a treasure and help us to raise the money needed to continue to accomplish the goals for the ministry. It is much easier when we all work together. We have seen so many things accomplished that seemed completely impossible when you look at it from our human vantage point.
 
Graduation and Moving on Ceremony!
We are having the graduation ceremony for the men in the program next Friday, August 9th at 6pm at Kingdom World Outreach Center located at 4221 Pleasant Valley Rd. Suite 133. Please come out and help us celebrate the progress of the men in the program as they have been found faithful and desire to share their testimonies with you.
 
 2019 is our 50th Year in Virginia Beach
We can continue to impact lives with your help. We have many opportunities opening to us. We desire to see the world transformed by the love of Christ. We have seen miracles happen and lives changed by the power of prayer. We need prayers for wisdom and discernment as we reach out and continue to live out our faith daily in action. Many people are reaching out to us with many different needs. Lord, help us to be able to discern the difference between the needy and the greedy. We want to be good stewards of the Lord’s resources and we desire to be a blessing where we can. This definitely needs to be covered in prayer.
 

We are still working towards some Major Goals!
It was this time last year that we started saving for our Women and Children’s home. To date we have raised over $30,000. We still have a long way to go. We are shooting for having the home in place by 2021. We think this is definitely a possibility. We are always doing fundraisers and with amazing people like you in our corner, how could we fail? We are excited about the opportunity to impact the lives of these precious women and children. Again, if every person could give just $200 we would be right in the ballpark of where we need to be to purchase the home. I know some people can give more to make up for the people on fixed incomes. Let’s make this dream a reality. Other ways you can help is to advertise our Estate Sales. We are sending everyone a flyer. Please give it to a friend or hang it in your break room at work. Share it with your Bible study groups, hand them out at church or anywhere you think it will help. You have over 2 weeks to invite. You can also share it on Facebook. We appreciate everything you do to help us accomplish these impossible goals. We never have small dreams. We know they are completely impossible but for God. Won’t he do it? I believe He will and He will amaze all of us by using people like you and me to do it!
 Banquet!
We are planning our banquet for September 20th or 27th. We hope to have all details mapped out for you in the next newsletter. This will be our first banquet so we are looking to some people that came in before us for their wisdom. We hope to be able to share all the details of the various ministries and the latest happenings. We are making progress in every area. Some of the progress involves legal paperwork not yet signed so we will hold off on announcing it until everything has been finalized. It has truly been an adventure and a wild ride of ups and downs for the last 3 years. We have seen people come and people go but most importantly, we have seen people grow. We hope you will mark your calendars and tell your friends. We hope to meet you all there.
 
Nursing Home Ministry!
We need more help in the nursing home. Our volunteers are growing weary. We need to lift their hands as they show up every week. We are grateful for every volunteer. We have a man in our Discipleship Program that is getting his license next week and he will be driving some of the men down to help as well. They meet every Sunday evening and do worship and church service. Please reach out if you are willing to help.
 
Graduation!
We are sure everyone has been to more than their share of graduation ceremonies and parties. I know we have too. We will be having a graduation ceremony for some of the Disciples. We will let you know the date in the next newsletter. We really hope you will take some time out to come and celebrate their accomplishments. It really renews our strength when we see guys persevere to the completion of their goals. We look forward to you joining us.
 
 
Fundraising plan from last year - Still good!
If every person were able to give $200 we will have a home that should be able to help about 100 women and children per year. I know some of our supporters support us in prayer only, because of a lack of finances, but I believe others will be able to pick up the slack. If just 200 people gave $1000 each, the home is in place. I know there are some very generous people that will step up and make this dream a reality. Imagine being part of transforming so many lives for the kingdom of God. Tangible ways you can help-
1.      Share the need with people you know. We will always make ourselves available to come share.
2.      Follow us on Facebook and share the post about the need for the house.
3.      Post about us on social media and draw others into being part of the solution.
4.      Share our newsletter with friends and family.
Together we can! With the Lord, there is nothing impossible. Please make every check this month have Women’s Home in the memo. We will use savings to pay the bills. We need every dollar to go to this house for this need. God willing next month’s newsletter will be a miraculous testimony of God’s faithful provision!!!
We would love to hear from you!
Please like us on Facebook so you can see our current events.
You can also call us with praise reports and prayer requests at 757-498-4700
You can write to us at :
PO Box 4326                                             Virginia Beach, VA 23454-0326
Please call before coming for a visit as we are out in the community a lot of the time.
 
2425 Bowland Pkwy      Suite 108    Virginia Beach, VA 23454
Or
3026 Tait Terrace Norfolk
 
Homeless to Independent!
You can get people at your job to take a collection. You can ask bosses and business owners to support. Start asking people to help those who cannot help themselves. Let’s be the hands and feet of Jesus here! We can give these women their own Independence Day.
 
God bless You always!
John and Tammy Savola

Graduation Time!!!
It is that time again. We will be celebrating the achievements of two of our disciples next month. We will share all the details with you in the next newsletter. Steven Bullock and Randy Boyd have diligently pursued their goals since they have been with us and we need to recognize them for their faithfulness.
Graduates:
Steven Bullock
Randy Boyd
Please plan to be in attendance. It really means a lot to them to have your support. We can allow for testimonies if they have impacted your life in any way.
 
Malawi Update
We are making a lot of progress in Malawi with people coming to the Lord daily. It really makes me feel like a slacker over here as there is such a hunger for God in other countries. We are praying for revival in the jails and prisons and here on the streets of Virginia Beach as we refuse to grow weary while doing good deeds. They are sending me photos almost every day and it is truly heart breaking to know there are children in the world that are not able to attend school because of “nakedness” when clothing can be had for free here. Continue to pray. The small bit we are doing there is resulting in a huge impact.
Estate Sale!!
We will be having an amazing Estate Sale at our work building in Virginia Beach. We have many amazing items and would love for you all to stop by and find a treasure. All items are priced at 50% of their value or less. We have awesome collectibles including porcelain dolls, pewter, household goods, wall art, furniture, lamps, knick-knacks, and many exciting deals. These items are of amazing quality. We will post a flyer on our website and Facebook page. Please share it to everyone you know as we are going full speed ahead to save money for our Women’s and Children’s Home.
Location:
Outreach for Christ Work Building
2425 Bowland Pkwy
Suite 108
Virginia Beach, VA 23454
Dates:
Thursday June 27th noon to 6pm
Friday June 28th noon to 6pm
Saturday June 29th 10am to 6pm
 
Please help us make this a great success by inviting your Bible Study Teams and Small Groups to come out and support. We can do so much more when we work together.
Street Ministry
One of our street ministers is doing something that he is extremely gifted in. We know this is not something everyone is able to do. He actually goes every week to an abortion clinic and ministers to and loves on the people in line. He does not condemn them or tell them they are going to hell. He just loves on them. He is having amazing results as people are canceling their abortion appointments and coming to the Lord. The most amazing story he shared with us a couple weeks ago is about a lady that came up to him and asked if he remembered her and he said no. She said she had been in their last year and because of him she now had her beautiful baby boy with her. She actually brought her baby to meet him. He was the reason this special life was spared. People are going to this extreme out of fear and lack of hope. Sometimes it just takes a kind word to encourage someone or give them a glimmer of hope to see that even though it may not be an ideal situation, God can still turn it around to be amazing. Praise God for Mr. David Donnelly. He is out there doing an amazing job of reaching the lost and restoring people back to the Lord. Please continue to pray for all our street ministers as they all have amazing stories every week of lives impacted for the Lord.
     John and Tammy Savola
 
Ministry openings for volunteers!
Calling all volunteers……Help Help Help!!! We can always use help pricing items for the estate sale. If you have a smart phone and know how to google things, come on out and help. We are in a time crunch with tons of items and only a handful of people.

 
Banquet!
We will be sharing the details of our upcoming banquet on either the third or fourth Friday evening in September in our next newsletter. If you are able to donate a gift or prize to be a door prize, please do so now.
Upcoming News!
We have some amazing news coming up. I know I keep telling you that. I just want to make sure the paperwork is done and everything is official before I share the amazing blessings that have been happening for Outreach. God has been so faithful and sometimes we feel as though we can hardly keep up with his fast pace.

​Make it happen!
Please share this newsletter with your Pastors, small group leaders and families. We need to gather more support as we have a huge goal that can potentially transform the lives of generations to come. We are hoping to have more people see the value of investing in the lives of people that have stumbled onto the wrong path. We have found so many people in need of Jesus. If we work together, we can do so much more.

Finally Finished
We finally finished redoing the stairs from floor number two to floor number three at the Discipleship House. This was a huge job as it is a very old house built in 1925. The entryway looked very uninviting
and needed sprucing up. We put some flower decals and Amazing Grace so this is what you see when you come in the door. Much better than the dingy stained carpet that covered the stairs before. We pray that all that enter here are blessed and not just by what they see.

Easter Blessings!
We were very blessed to be able to do Easter Baskets for those in need. This was amazing. We were able to bless many families as we had 60 Easter Baskets for different age ranges. We took the leftover baskets out into the low income neighborhoods and the Lord had a plan. We saw a lady sitting outside with two small children and we prayed and went to see her. I asked if she had everything she needed for the kids for Easter and she immediately started crying. I knew we were in the right place at the right time. The children’s eyes lit up when they saw they were getting Easter Baskets. This made our day and reminded us of the reason we do everything.
 
Happy Mother’s Day
This is not always a happy time for mothers or children. In this ministry we see many situations where mothers are apart from their children. We have mothers in jail or prison and some that have just walked away from responsibility. Some of the women have turned to drugs. We also have some mothers that have children in jail or prison. This could be a time of grieving over what could have been. There could be mothers struggling to find forgiveness for abortion. Please keep this in mind while loving on people this month. If it is in your ability to offer the kindness and love to someone struggling, by all means, please do so. There is no condemnation in Christ. There is also no shame in a comeback. Sometimes we can be the helping hand of compassion to help someone heal from some of these devastating things. I know when I had a hard time getting over my past and all I could do was remember the bad things, God sent someone. A kind lady told me “That is not who you are anymore.” I couldn’t seem to see myself as forgiven and loved by God. It took hearing it from someone else to make it real to me. Let’s reach out and let people know that Jesus loves them, no matter what they may have done in the past.
     John and Tammy Savola

Ministry Needs!
1.      We always need help with household projects. We have several going at this time. We will post photos of every finished project as they are actually finished.
2.      We are in need of a volunteer that is able to drive. Preferably a male. This would be pre-arranged trips to doctors, probation and such. No side trips or last minute stop offs.
3.      We are looking for several volunteers that can commit to a regular schedule, whether it be 4 hours every week, or 40.
4.      We also need help with the food pantry in Norfolk as we have a huge need in that area. We need help separating the food when it comes in and packaging it for give away.
5.      We need help planning the upcoming banquet from people who have attended banquets in the past. We need ideas and pointers as we have never attended an Outreach banquet ourselves.
 
Banquet!
We are planning the banquet for the third or fourth weekend of September. Be on the lookout. Please hold some space for us!
​

Discipleship House
We are making many much-needed renovations to the Discipleship House. We are grateful for our partnership with Operation Blessing. They generously donated enough hardwood flooring to do the entire 3rd floor of the home. We are most of the way finished with this project. It was hard to keep carpet clean in this very high traffic living environment. We are also about half way done with the new shower room. This turned out to be quite a massive job because we found many problems during the demo phase. The entire floor was unlevel as it used to be only a porch. We had to remove everything down to the joists and sister them. We also had to replace an exterior wall beam. We installed a huge capacity water heater for just this shower room as 8 men will be using it daily.  We also did all of the plumbing for the new shower. We still need to install an entire sub floor, shower and tile.  

​

​Baptism
We had two gentlemen from our discipleship program get baptized in the freezing cold Atlantic Ocean. Please continue to pray for these men as they commit to going deeper in their faith. 

Praise God for John Savola braving the cold to stand beside the men he disciples as they get serious about their walk with the Lord.

Easter
If you know any family in a financial struggle, we have quite a few Easter Baskets available. We know some families have a tradition of giving Easter Baskets to their children and if they hit hard times, we don’t want the children to feel as if they were not good enough or have somehow been forgotten. We used some of the leftover toys from Christmas and added candy and faith-based treats. Please reach out to us if you know someone that would be blessed by this new part of our ministry.
 
 
Building Excitement
We are excited about all the amazing things the Lord is doing at Outreach for Christ. We are thrilled about some new things we will be able to share with you over the next couple months. If you have free time, we would love for you to hang with us for a bit and see what we do every day so you will better know how to pray for us. We keep a very busy schedule and run in many different directions every day. We could always use volunteers that could help take these men to various appointments while holding them accountable and allowing no compromise. Surely the harvest is plenty but the workers are few. If you are retired and have some free time you would be willing to share, we would be so thankful. 

​Ministry Prayer Requests
1.      Please be praying for our health. We were unable to get a prayer letter out for this month due to an illness going through the ministry house.
2.      Please pray for God to renew our strength and continue to give us the ability to persevere through every obstacle.
3.      Pray for our family. We are about to have two of our sons join the military on the buddy system so we will only have our eleven year old left under our roof. This is quite an adjustment for us as we are a very close knit family.
4.      Please pray for upcoming partnerships with the ministry as we are branching out to do more locally and abroad.
5.      Pray for the multiplication of our finances and for many new donors to come alongside us in Jesus’ Name!
 
Banquet!
We have not found a location for the banquet. We are in need of a facility that can accommodate 200 people. Please help us out with this. It has been a year now and still no location. And we have not had a banquet in over three years.

This Year’s Focus
We are going into full swing of raising money for our Ann Skinner Home for Women and Children. This will be an amazing legacy for what Wayne and Ann started many years ago. We want to always honor their memory and be a continuation of their dreams and goals. We know we are seeing the answers to many of their prayers. We are excited to partner with new churches and we are open to speak and share at any church or group that will give us some time.
 
Speaking of Speaking
We were blessed to be a part of a recent women’s conference. The River Room Christian Coffee House’s very own Jill Eulo hosted the Healing Your Heart Women’s Conference. There was amazing worship by Cristabelle Braden. Awesome speakers, authors, counselors and more. Tammy Savola was asked to share her testimony of how God brought her into victory over addiction. It was an amazing time. We literally accept every invitation to speak because we want to be faithful in sharing what God is doing in this ministry. If you have never heard us speak, we will be posting more video testimonies on our website. We are asking you to speak to your Pastors about having us share. Women’s Ministry Director’s, we are available!
 
Mission Malawi
We will be having a new video on our mission in Malawi. You will be able to see it on our Facebook page at Outreach for Christ Ministries and our website at outreachforchrist.org.  We are excited about the opportunity to have 2 gifted photographers volunteer their time and talent to go with us. They are committed to raising funding for their tickets as well. We are hoping someone would have the desire and finances to help fund this trip as we are already on a tight budget at the ministry while raising funds for our Ann Skinner Home for Women and Children. We are going to be videoing the conditions there as well as take pictures of our 300 plus orphans so we can get them sponsorship and get them all back in school. We have done the math and we should be able to provide them with food, clothing, school supplies and tuition for $28 a month per child. This is a place of extreme poverty and hunger. Traditionally, Wayne Skinner gave $500 every month to foreign missions. We have consolidated our efforts. We know we can literally work ourselves out of a job in this area because in a short amount of time, they will be self sufficient. We do not spend even $200 a month there and you can see the huge results. We believe we will help them get on their feet and maybe move on to another area if the Lord leads. We will be in an area that does not have electric full time. There is no running water and certainly no air conditioning. (Pray for me!) We are raising money so as not to burden the ministry. Please prayerfully consider helping to make this happen.
Street Ministry- By Stacie Adams
The master said, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city and bring in the poor, maimed, lame and blind.” (Luke 14:21) Every Friday night between 10:30 and midnight, godly men gather in front of the Virginia Beach United Methodist Church at the oceanfront in obedience to the master’s command to speak to some of the most deceived, hurting, self-absorbed or self-medicated people in our town. As you may have guessed from the time and location we have been called to fill a niche’ in the Kingdom by seeking and serving people in the bar district when people are at their most vulnerable, hopeless and sometimes most desperate moments in their lives. Their emotions are often magnified while at the same time they may experience decreased judgment because of drugs or alcohol. This is God’s perfect timing to send laborers into the streets to snatch such people out of the jaws of calamity. People under the influence do not make wise decisions but our God has made provision for their protection both physically and spiritually. Over the past 45 years we cannot possibly say how many lives have been affected by the love of these generous men of God but it is considerable. Please be in prayer for their continued courage and ask the Lord if He would like to use you in such a critical mission.

​World View
We know the world view of St. Patrick’s day is affiliated with drinking and partying. We are not part of this world. This world is not our home. As the late great Billy Graham said, we are just passing through. We see men come into our program where alcohol and drugs have literally ravaged their entire lives. They have lost family relationships, trust, finances, stability and health in many cases. There is nothing better than watching them grow in their knowledge of Christ. We push them, stretch them and encourage them. We help them to establish healthy goals for a great future. We walk them through a process of surrender and move them on to confidence in the Lord almighty. There is no better feeling than walking into the enemy camp where the devil has a serious hold on them and stealing people back for Christ. We love to see them have the victory over every stronghold.
Men’s Breakfast
We were blessed to host the Mighty Men of Valor from Freedom Church for a special prayer breakfast. The men in the program made sausage gravy and biscuits, fried spam, rice, bacon and over easy eggs for everyone. They love sharing their hospitality and talents with guests. Men are invited to come to the house in Norfolk the 3rd Saturday of every month to join in.