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Building an endowment for the future of Mile Hi Church

2015 YEAR IN REVIEW

Foundation Growth Builds Momentum

Page 1

FOUNDATION FEBRUARY Get to Know the Mile Hi

Church’s Benefactor Page 2

GIVING WHILE LIVING Foundation Initiative

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THROUGH THE EYES OF OUR MEMBERS

The Kindsfathers: A True Gift to Mile Hi Church

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OUR BRAIN, MIND, AND SPIRITUALITY

Part Five Page 6

ABOUT US Page 8

IN THIS ISSUE

In 2015, we added more new Nautilus Society members than in any other

12-month period. This brings us to 203 Nautilus members; congregants who have committed a substantial gift to Mile Hi Church via the Foundation Endowment either through our Giving While Living program, cash, real property or via deferred gifts through their estates, insurance policies, annuities, 401(k)’s or another financial instrument. We extend gratitude to those new members:• Peter Kandell• George Harding• Rev. Christina Plym• Claudia Abbott• Beverly Sparks• Sara Jane Wehnes• William David Little• Lisa Curtis• Steve and Terri Kindsfather• Rev. Michelle Medrano• Ken Crismon

The Mile Hi Church Foundation meets regularly with investment advisers and ensures that the funds are invested in a way that balances risk and profitability. In the last three years the Foundation contributed $90,000 to Mile Hi Church for critical infrastructure needs such as lighting and sound improvements in the Vogt Center, stage extension in the Sanctuary, and the move and refresh of the bookstore into the Sanctuary Lobby. The Mile Hi Church Foundation is grateful for the major bequests and gifts received 2015, including gifts from:• Ralph and Fran Tuchman Living Trust• The Estate of Donald Joy• The Estate of M. Louise Hausburg• The Estate of Jessica Putney• Donations through Cars Helping

Charities• Seed donation for the future

memorial garden – the first in the Giving While Living program – from Steve and Terri Kindsfather.

2015 in Review: Foundation Growth Builds Momentum

KEEP ON GROWING Improvements are being made across the Mile Hi Church campus because of your generosity.

JAN – MAR 2016

MILE HI CHURCH FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER

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Our second annual Foundation February

provides an excellent way to increase awareness of the Foundation and the Nautilus Society.

Imagine a future where the Foundation has the annual earnings from its endowment to contribute $300,000 to the church for things such as new community outreach programs, additional pastoral support programs, and financial support to send hundreds of kids to camps, workshops and conferences. With your

help, we can make this dream a lot closer to reality.

“Foundation February is integral to our effort in not only raising awareness of how our congregation can ensure the long-term prosperity of the church we love, but also the importance of our individual responsibility to protect our estates by means of a will,” said Dave Perlowski, Foundation Secretary.

Foundation members will be available after services during February at information tables at both ends of the Sanctuary Lobby.

Information packets will be available, and we invite you to drop by and meet your Foundation directors.

Foundation February: Get to Know the Mile Hi Church’s Benefactor

ENSURE LONG-TERM PROSPERITY

Dave Perlowski, Foundation Secretary

A TALENTED TEAM Meet the Mile Hi Church Foundation team on Sundays in February.

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The Mile Hi Church Foundation was established to provide ongoing financial support to the Church to

assure that the needed resources always will be available to fulfill its mission, “To serve as a spiritual beacon for personal empowerment and global enlightenment.”

Since 2008, the endowment has grown substantially, and gifts to the Church from the endowment have helped to support a wide range of projects. Funds contributed to the endowment have largely come from bequests and other planned gifts. While it is true that for many people their largest charitable gift is likely to come in some form of planned gift, others are interested in making a gift to Mile Hi that will have a perpetual impact. It’s common for these individuals to want to be able to have their gift focus on an area that is important to them.

In the past year an increasing number of people have asked about ways to provide a gift, over and above their support of the General Fund, to support specific activities at Mile Hi. At the same time Foundation Board Members began to consider ways congregants could support the Foundation before their transition.

As a result of these conversations the Giving While Living program was launched. A cooperative effort between the Church and the Foundation, Giving While Living is designed to build the endowment while creating four funds that will provide perpetual financial support to focused programs and initiatives of Mile Hi Church.

Donations to these funds will support core areas important to you and the church:

• Infrastructure: strengthening our spiritual home • Youth: investing in our future• Education: teaching the spiritual principles that set

us free• Outreach: living our beliefs

If you would like to explore ways you could make a gift that would have a perpetual impact at Mile Hi, either as the result of a planned gift or by making a current designated gift over and above your support of the General Fund, please contact the Mile Hi Church Foundation and set up a private consultation by calling 720-974-9003; emailing info@milehichurchfoundation.org; or visiting us at www.milehichurchfoundation.org.

Foundation Giving While Living Initiative

A LABOR OF LOVE Your heartfelt giving goes to work in so many ways.

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Psst. Want to know a secret? It’s been kept

quiet for a while now, but I’m about to break it wide open. In Steve and Terri Kindsfather, Mile Hi Church has a quiet but amazingly generous couple of members. You won’t believe the contributions they have quietly made over the years.

This couple is a true treasure to Mile Hi Church. As an onlooker, the two enjoy life to the fullest by living large. They work and play together and enjoy traveling.

It wasn’t by circumstance that their lives unfolded with such grace. Steve’s parents were two of the original 17 individuals that founded Mile Hi Church in the Kirby vacuum store on West Colfax 56 years ago. Both of his parents earned a Bachelor of Religious Science diploma in 1956, comparable to the ministerial degree of today. This is the nurturing and awakened environment in which Steve grew up: learning, embracing and living the teachings and

principles of Science of the Mind. By no coincidence, his future wife, Terri, shared a similar spiritual background. Both credit their joy-filled lives of adventure and abundance to the Science of Mind teachings.

In 2012, Steve began working with the Mile Hi Church Foundation and became a director in 2014, a priority for him. He says it is the connection to the Science of Mind teachings and values they engender that inspired him to do his part in keeping

the endowment strong and growing. Steve says he wants to help create a “safe and secure future for Mile Hi Church’s possibilities of unimaginable expansion.”

Terri and Steve don’t just talk about their support; they have generously invested in the future of their MHC community. As Nautilus Society members, they recently became the first to donate to the Foundation’s new initiative, Giving While Living.

Through the Eyes of our Members: The Kindsfathers: A True Gift to Mile Hi ChurchBy Judy Turner, Practitioner and MHCF Director

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“We both chose to give back because the Mile Hi Church and community moves us,” Terri explained. “We want to harmonize with what has truly touched or lives.”

Their generosity continues beyond the Foundation. Steve shares his talents with a multitude of ministries: he is a practitioner and TA for beyond Limits, serves on the safety team, a facilitator for Adventure in Faith and Prosperity, a talented photographer and member of the photography team. He also has worked at the Prayer and Care

Center, helped construct the children’s playground. Terri and Steve also have served for eight years as MHC greeters. One of his recent works of heart was his intricate woodwork in helping create the Music Department’s Angel Award, which recognizes the MHC Music Ministry and angels who support it.

Terri and Steve have walked their path hand-in-hand with Source. Together they live a fully conscious life, wrapping each other in love and devotion. That love expands far and wide beyond them. Through

their support of MHC and the SOM teachings, they choose to expand opportunities for children and families to grow and thrive at MHC, and new members to embrace and embody the Science of Mind principles.

A CARING COUPLE Steve and Terri Kindsfather love to give.

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There is so much to say about the title of these articles that I cannot even begin to put it all here, so I will do my best to finish this series in this reading and the next one. If any of you would like more information, just contact me through the Foundation, and I will be more than happy to connect with you. Now here we go…

The next most active time when our brain experiences significant spiritual growth occurs from around ages

11 to 13 upward to age 19. Some of this has to do with the hormonal changes that we all go through, but the brain is going through rapid growth, too. Working with teens as I have in the past 35 years, I find that for some, this is a time of amazing spiritual transformation.

The teens that allow transformation to be a part of their growth seem to have less emotional and psychological issues than their peers, especially if they have support from

their caregivers. Without support, their life experiences will then stay with their environmental lessons and dynamics and can then create various emotional and behavioral issues that generally lead to becoming a more troubled youth. A lot of the freedom to experience various spiritual dynamics also depends of religious and social beliefs during this time, just as sexual experiences depend on the same environmental aspects.

With the increase use of axons, dendrites, myelination, and white matter, reactions become faster. Teens at this age are more prone to addictions, as well as learning through the lack of thought, or spending a lot of time in thought about various subjects of which they cannot make sense. Because the prefrontal cortex is rapidly expanding to make sense of the chaos, everything they are going through - their various experiences - can become

OUR BRAIN, MIND, AND SPIRITUALITYPART FIVEBy Michael A. Blevins, MA

RAPID GROWTH Teens that allow transformation to be a part of their growth seem to have less issues.

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confusing. However, the ability to have a wide variety of spiritual experiences remains very present.

Part of this comes from one of the two modes of thinking that this age group goes through: analytic thought (systematic process of risk, facts and consequences) and intuitive thought (stems from emotions, hunches, beyond rational experiences or explanation, and sudden impulses). They will put a lot of trust in their decision making, “if it feels right.” For more on this, go to Diamond & Kirkham, 2005; Klaczynski, 2005; Kuhn & Franklin, 2006.

What this means to parents of a child at this age is that your teen will vacillate between the two thinking styles. If they come to believe in their intuition and feelings and find positive feedback from peers and caregivers, they will come to understand who they are as a spiritual and physical being better than those who do not believe or have some spiritual connection. The intuitive thought process allows for the teen to be more creative and to have better decision making processes than their peers that do not. In the brain of such a teen, the prefrontal cortex lights up more, creating and producing higher levels of endorphins that support them grasping spiritual concepts and beliefs, which in turn support the teen to be more centered in who they are and who they are becoming. Overall they are better in school, better with family dynamics, and get in less trouble.

The mind of the teen, Higher Self/Soul, starts using the brain to create itself and to use the spiritual truths they have come to know and trust as steppingstones to their development advantage. This continues until around

the age of 19 to 25, when the prefrontal cortex is fully developed. This does not mean that we stop growing our mind and brain; however, the basic physical aspects of the brain are finished growing. A teen who can develop these skills has been shown to have a healthier outlook on life, success earlier in life than peers, and a more consistent growth pattern than those stuck in analytical thinking as a way of processing experiences in the world.

In the last segment of this series, I will discuss the aging process, how to keep the brain more active, the spiritual dynamics of Near Death Experiences and Near Death Awarenesses in the brain, and how the Mind/Soul uses the brain to help in the death and dying process.

Michael Blevins has a master’s degree in spiritual psychology and has taught psychology and sociology for 13 years at the university level. Having studied with Dr. Joe Dispenza, he infuses neuroscience in all that he does. Michael is the elder leader of the Mile Hi Men’s Ministry, sings in the choir, and works to get the church’s youth into camp each year.

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JAN – MAR 2016

MILE HI CHURCH FOUNDATION

Mile Hi Church Foundation | 9077 W. Alameda Ave. | Lakewood, CO 80226 info@milehichurchfoundation.org | 720-974-9003 | www.milehichurchfoundation.org

OFFICERS:Mike Rengel

President

Leslie Lassi Vice President

Dave Perlowski Secretary

Bob Brocker Treasurer

DIRECTORS:Bob Holt

Linda Humphrey Steve Kindsfather

Judy Turner

RECORDING SECRETARY:Jan LaBrie

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Mile Hi Church Foundation exists to bring to life our affirmation of abundance: to plant seeds that result in future resources of prosperity for Mile Hi Church and all of its programs and endeavors so that all will be abundantly financed and supported. Our long-term financial strength will assure the continuance and development of our programs, facilities, and our church community.

Our Mission...

A Spiritual Community whose teachings and programs are abundantly funded for the good of all life.

Our Vision...

To facilitate the long-term fiscal strength of Mile Hi Church.

Our Commitment...