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May 5, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
The Countdown Is On
When we started counting down to our trip in weeks rather than months, it started to feel real. In less than six weeks, our family of four will be heading to Uganda for the entire summer. The genesis of this trip was a moment more than a year ago. God met Rebecca in the car, and then Rebecca called me. “I think we’re supposed to go back to Uganda”, she said. “I’m not so sure about that”, I replied.
“Dear, I think God told me this.” “Oh,” I said, “then we’ll have to think about that.” We started following where the Wind was blowing, and sure enough, I can say confidently today that God is leading us where we’re headed. We want to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you for journeying alongside us, letting us borrow your faith and cash in your prayers, and of course, for all the practical ways you’ve helped us so far. Sure, the four Mills’s are making the trek, but we don’t go alone. You’re with us Here’s Where We’re At Making lists and packing, making more lists and packing some more. Our guest room has been overwhelmed by suitcases, voltage converters, and closed toe sandals. We’re putting everything together a little bit at a time. Our plan is to pack our personal suitcases as efficiently as possible so that we can have room to bring things that some folks have requested. Some things we’re planning to bring along: Post partum diapers Baby aspirin for pregnant women Belly bands Supplements Clothes We’re currently fundraising to raise money for birth kits that we’ll be hand delivering to the village. Each kit is worth $10 and gives a pregnant woman everything she needs to be accepted at the hospital for delivery. Any support helps make a measurable difference in someone’s life.Support Our Trip Our Trip Is Shaping Up Did you know that time is told differently in different parts of the world? Affectionately, there’s a way to tell time the African way, which simply means that things don’t always start on time or go according to plan. That being said, the schedule for our trip is shaping up. It’s not fixed, but here’s an idea of what we’ll be doing at any given time. We’ll be partnering with Pambazuka Ministries in Jinja to serve pregnant teens in their care. Rebecca will be teaching prenatal and postpartum care, breastfeeding and newborn care, and bringing menstrual education to schools. She’ll also be teaching nurses some midwifery skills. Alexander will be leading bible studies for the staff and women in the ministry, as well as discipling young pastors in the area. We’ll then go into the village to work with Redeemer Ministries to distribute the aforementioned birthing kits. The mortality rate of birthing women in Uganda is 1 in 47, and these life-saving kits can have a measurable impact on reversing that. What's Next We have to finish packing of course, prepare our home to be away for the summer, and set our work up for success as we take unpaid leaves. Our visas finally came through this week (thank God!), and we only have two vaccine appointments left. We'd love your specific prayer over these next few weeks. How to Pray For Us 🙏 Our yellow fever vaccinations – Rebecca and I are both vaccinated from our last trip, but the boys need their shots. This is big one, so pray for grace and gentle healing. 🙏 The rest of our supplies – we’re still collecting everything we need for ourselves to be in Africa for the summer, as well as the things we want to bring to donate to others. We’re so grateful for you. We wouldn’t have as much courage to follow the Spirit if we didn’t know that you were on the journey with us. Grace and peace.
Alexander, Rebecca, Asher & Aiden To get in contact with us directly now or while we’re away, email alexander@lifeabundantniagara.com. We’ll be checking in regularly.
May 5, 2026 • 2 Minute Read
This Sunday at Church – Mother's Day Panel
This is your one-stop spot for everything happening in our church family. From kids to adults, small groups to special events, here's how you can grow in connection with our faith community. This Sunday, May 10th 🌸 It’s Mother’s Day, and we’ll be hosting a generational panel of moms in our church to share from their wells of wisdom. Each mom is parenting in a different stage, and they will all bring their individual journey with God to the table. Thursday, May 7th 🙏 Join us every Thursday at 1:00pm in the sanctuary for prayer. Bring your own prayer requests, your prayers for others, and your willingness to be formed through the practice of prayer.New here? We'd love to connect. Community Prayer We are a people of prayer. Here’s what we’re praying for this week: 🙏 Jim Mills – Jim is in the final stage of his battle with cancer. Pray for God’s nearness to be known and felt. 🙏 Alexander, Rebecca, Asher & Aiden – Our pastors are heading to Uganda in less than 6 weeks. Pray for their provision and peace.Read The Latest On The Mills' Trip 🙏 Our Students – As the school year draws to an end, pray for our students that they would have the strength to finish well. 🙏 Jordan, Jessica, Hazel & Margot – Jordan and Jess welcomed baby Margot to the family this week. Pray for health, healing, and a gentle adjustment for big sister Hazel. Submit your own prayer request here. Giving Your generosity makes our work in Niagara possible. We’re so grateful for you.Give Now Here Stay Connected 📩 Subscribe to this Collection to get these updates delivered directly to your inbox. 📸 Follow us on Instagram 💬 Pastoral care or questions? Connect with us here. Services: Sundays @ 10:30am
384 Concession 7 Rd., Niagara on the Lake
April 21, 2026 • 3 Minute Read
How to see God
My dad takes a conservative approach to giving and using nicknames. For the most part, he’ll call you by your given name. That was my experience as a child with one exception – he affectionately called me Farsight. Born from the imagination of C.S. Lewis into the land of Narnia, Farsight was a talking eagle who served as a messenger to the King. True to his nature and name, his eyesight was spectacular. He saw what others couldn’t. I guess I garnered the name thanks to my ability to notice. The deer on the field edge, the chickadee perched, the missing lego over there. By nature it seems, I’m often able to see what others can’t. Yet here’s the truth – I’m not eagle-eyed. My ability to see is no more than 20/20, in fact without my glasses, it’s much less than that. I’m convinced, however, that seeing—and more importantly, noticing—is a nurtured ability. It’s practiced and perfected. It’s work. The poet says, “to pay attention is our endless and proper work.” The priest agrees: “My only prayer practice is attention.” There’s a sacred discipline to the art of noticing. Paying attention to the budding branch, the singing bird, the forming storm, is no doubt an act of spiritual practice. This act of noticing makes an opportunity to at least acknowledge God, and at best encounter him. Worship him. See him, hear him, smell him, touch him, taste him. Worship him. And yes, this takes practice. It’s not hyperbole to say that there are more voices and visions vying for our attention now more than there ever have been, so this work may be more difficult than ever as well. Hard work is good work, beloved. Begin here with an intentional choice today: go for a walk,
get a house plant,
look up from your phone.
gaze at the gluten structure of a piece of bread,
think about your fingerprints,
look up from your phone.
listen to a bird song,
listen to a secular song,
look up from your phone. Look up, look around, look above and below. Open your eyes to see that there’s evidence of resurrection everywhere you look. But you have to look. God can be and is revealed in all manner of ordinary things, especially created things. There are reflections of his goodness in just about every corner, crack, and crevasse if you’re looking for him. May we be formed into a people who are always looking, noticing, and behold God wherever he may be found. Grace and peace,
Pastor Alexander
August 21, 2023 • 3 Minute Read
God loves you. So what?
I grew up in a home that had a tune to it. My dad was mostly at the helm of the sounds of our scene, whether it was at home, in the car, or anywhere in between - there was always music playing (and if it wasn’t playing, he was singing or humming his own). Some of his favourites were Rich Mullins and Keith Green, some of mine were Anberlin and TobyMac. So I guess I come by it honestly, having a home of my own now that rarely sits in silence. In the evenings its spinning vinyl that sings, but more often than not it’s something streaming over the interconnected network of networks and through the TV (I don’t think my dad could have imagined that this is how we’d be listening to music nowadays). Some of my favourites this week are Sam McCabe and Jon Batiste. Although most of the music in our home is streamed, some of it is still sung. For the last two years we’ve been singing a handful of songs with Asher at bedtime—the doxology, The Blessing, I Love You Lord—to name a few. One of the first ones he ever sang along to though is one that most of us are likely familiar with. “Jesus loves me, this I know…” For a while in his infancy he’d chime in on the me’s, so’s, and “strong”. It was as if his vocal cords were tethered to our heart strings. We swooned. Now as he’s getting older and his vocabulary is growing in step with his personality, the song has taken a bit of a turn. “Turn on Jesus loves me song!” I hear from the backseat before I can engage the car in drive. I turn it on. He sings, “Jesus loves you this I know…” Jesus loves you. For the last couple weeks he has routinely dropped the “me” and exchanged it for “you”. I’m not naive enough to believe that he is changing the words intentionally to convey some deep theological truth. He’s two, his brain is just barely online, and he has simply jumbled up the song. But this morning as he sang his scrambled song, I thought of you, and I just wanted to remind you that God does love you. I hope it’s not the first time you’re hearing that, and even if it’s not I hope you have the courage today to believe it. Rich Mullins famously said “I grew up hearing everyone tell me ‘God loves you'. I would say ‘big deal, God loves everybody. That don't make me special! That just proves that God ain't got no taste’”. I love Rich and I like his music (thanks, Dad), but that’s a view too cynical for me. God loves everybody, but He also loves you. You’re a chosen, cherished, child of God, and He’s not stuck with you. He has set a place at His table just for you, and He says come. Take your seat. Eat, drink, and be merry. So go ahead into your day empowered by the knowledge that God loves you. Grace and peace,
Pastor Alexander
August 1, 2023 • 3 Minute Read
Our commitment to community
Sometime in early 2019 a headline in the local newspaper tugged our hearts into action. “Niagara Falls in Desperate Need of Respite Care” it read, reporting on the urgent need for foster homes in the city. Respite (or short term) homes were of particular demand to help meet the emergent needs of newborns coming into care due to the increasing crisis of opioid use. That was the thread that towed our heart strings towards opening our home to foster care. Fast forward a few seasons, dozens of hours of training, and hundreds of pieces of paper work to Mary’s parent’s backyard in the late summer. In unconventional fashion and in complete secret, our friends and family threw us a shower. Rebecca and I had only been married for a couple of years, we had no kids of our own yet, and we had just moved into our first home. Our community gleaned that we had a lot of the same needs that expecting parents would, so they surrounded us with a shower as if we were welcoming our own. We received diapers, toys, and clothes, amongst a bounty of other things to prepare us for the journey ahead. What I remember from that day wasn’t the gifts though, it was the commitment that our community made. Much like when we dedicate children in our church, our community stood on the brink of this new season with us and said “we’re here for you too”. I believed them then, and they’re proving it now. Jump forward in time again and Rebecca and I have a toddler of our own, another on the way, and a life that is full to the brim. We’ve harboured countless children in our home since that shower in the summer. This week, the phone rang again. It’s rarely easy to say yes, but the good thing to do is often the difficult one. We said yes to a 9 month old little boy and for a week our house has been stretching at the seams. I’m writing this with that boy sleeping in my arms, and two of those aforementioned friends are currently walking out our front door. “Want us to bring pizza over for dinner tonight?” they asked earlier in the day, inviting themselves over with dinner in hand. We shared a simple and hectic meal - the adults laughed, the babies cried - and from across the table I saw Jordan and Jessica doing exactly what they pledged to do for us all those years ago. It was a promise fulfilled in a pizza. It was love, grace, and community embodied. We had an unspoken need this week and our friends perceived it. You’ll surely have a need that I hope to meet for you. This is the commitment we’ve made to each other in this community, and we are bound by the love of God that is building us up into his body. So if you’re reading this letter, consider this my affirmation of my commitment to you. I hope it also fans the flame of community life and love in your heart as well. Grace and peace,
Pastor Alexander
July 17, 2023 • 3 Minute Read
The portrait of a praying woman
It’s rumoured that she was younger than 8 years old when her parents dedicated her to a Benedictine monastery on the westside of Germany. There she would live and grow in the grace of God, leading her fellow nuns into the Light through music, visions, and connection to the earth. Her name was Hildegard of Bingen, she died in 1179, and her portrait hangs in our kitchen by the back door. I bought her portrait as a gift to Rebecca earlier this year as winter was melting into spring. We hung it by the back door intentionally, because the backdoor leads us to our garden. Saint Hildegard reminds me of Rebecca in all sorts of ways, but especially in the way that she revered the cosmos and everything within it. She was a gardener, a forager, and a medical plant practitioner. She didn't want to simply visit this world but wanted to be fully in it, embracing the wonder and goodness of God's creation. "Glance at the sun,” Hildegard says. “See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of earth's greenings. Now think. What delight God gives to humankind with all these things. Who gives all these shining gifts, if not God?" That reads like a poem, doesn’t it? A Psalm, even? We’re practicing praying the Psalms as a community, beginning each one of our worship services by praying an entire poem together. The Psalms are the training ground for prayer, and so we’re learning how to pray. One Psalm at a time. Today, pray this Psalm of creation with me. If you’re reading this, you’re surely looking at a screen of some kind. So take a step outside or at the very least move yourself next to a window, behold the cosmos, and let us pray: Hallelujah!
Praise God from heaven, praise him from the mountaintops;
Praise him, all you his angels,
praise him, all you his warriors,
Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, you morning stars;
Praise him, high heaven, praise him, heavenly rain clouds;
Praise, oh let them praise the name of God—he spoke the word, and there they were!
He set them in place from all time to eternity;
He gave his orders, and that’s it!
Praise God from earth, you sea dragons, you fathomless ocean deeps;
Fire and hail, snow and ice, hurricanes obeying his orders;
Mountains and all hills, apple orchards and cedar forests;
Wild beasts and herds of cattle, snakes, and birds in flight;
Earth’s kings and all races,
leaders and important people,
Robust men and women in their prime,
and yes, greybeards and little children.
Let them praise the name of God—it’s the only Name worth praising.
His radiance exceeds anything in earth and sky;
he’s built a monument—his very own people!
Israel’s children, intimate friends of God.
Hallelujah! Psalm 148, The Message Translation Grace and peace,
Pastor Alexander
Our church is situated on treaty land that has traditionally been home to the Hatiwendaronk, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabe peoples, including the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
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