Aaron Proffitt

We have been in Tampa for over a week now and it feels like we have been here for a month. Reason being, we have not stopped. I have only had a little time to post blogs that are not time consuming so I figured this morning I would post something a little more lengthy and substantive.

Our time here has been nothing short of fantastic! It started over a week ago now after we had to say bye to some of our closest friends and family members at the storage place in Harrisonburg. That was a tough moment. I think Ashlee cried all the way to Roanoke. It still hasn’t quite hit me that I won’t be ministering in Harrisonburg any more.

Our trip down the east coast was nothing short of brutal. It rained the entire way to Florida. We drove through some of the most intense rain I had ever experienced. We nearly drove off the road multiple times and saw many others who had accomplished that very thing. But we didn’t stop. We were on a mission. The mission was to get at least to Jacksonville before we stopped for the night. And that is what we did. Funny thing is, right when we crossed the Florida state line, the rain stopped. How about that for some validation? Hey, we would have taken anything from God at that point to let us know we were doing the right thing. It was an exciting moment after a treacherous 12 hours on the road. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Drew was an absolute stud on the trip down. No problems there. That was a huge answer to prayer. Also, if it were not for Ashlee’s father Ted driving our moving truck down, we would still be in Harrisonburg waiting for the storm to subside. He was such a blessing to have.

On Sunday morning a week ago, we got on the road again after a great night’s sleep in Jacksonville (although I did have to walk outside the hotel room in my boxers at 2am to tell an old drunk couple to keep the noise down…that was pretty funny). We arrived in Tampa right after noon. Speedy, JR, and Emilio, along with a few other Aletheia Tampa people met us at our new house to help us haul our stuff in. We had everything out of the moving truck in about a half hour. (Just another side note…Our home is amazing. Ashlee was overwhelmed by how incredible it turned out. It has so much character and has more space than we could have ever dreamed. We feel incredibly blessed to be in this home.)

We have done so much ministry during our short time here. We’ve already had multiple groups of people over to our new home and on Saturday we had our very first Aletheia Tampa event. 14 people showed up to our home for ice cream sundaes, root beer floats, games, and the Final Four baby! We’ve had a great time getting to know some of the awesome contacts that our boys have made over the previous 3 months. The church body here already has a solid core and most of our Harrisonburg team isn’t even in Tampa yet! I also had a chance to go out on USF’s campus on Saturday with Emilio and JR. God led us to two guys, both of whom were Christians ironically, who were really excited about Aletheia. I feel that it is going to be really easy to connect with people on this campus.

We will have our Monday night gathering tonight. I am hoping that it will be the last one at the boy’s apartment. We are officially a campus organization at USF now but still have not received a call back from the student org’s office to confirm reserving a room on campus. Hopefully by next week, we will be able to start holding our large group gatherings on campus. I have prepared a Bible study that centers on the mission and core values of Aletheia Tampa and will review our purpose as a ministry here in this area using Acts 13-20 as my guide. It should be fun casting the vision of what God intends to do here. I also intend to start some small groups this week.

Please pray for tonight as well as the coming days and weeks of ministry. Pray also that we will be able to get on campus to meet this next week.

That’s it for now. Love to all.