recovery – Hollywood Impact Studios

June 6, 2019

MIRACLE MOUNTAIN PROGRAM – News & Updates

HOLLYWOOD IMPACT STUDIOS’ – MIRACLE MOUNTAIN PROGRAM just completed its first brush abatement/fire prevention school taught by retired LACoFD Fire Captain, Darryl Coe.

Darryl did an outstanding job. This in-depth class taught our students the proper way, the LACoFD way, of clearing brush for maximum fire prevention.

Thanks for Darryl, our chainsaw class was taught by F.S.A. Nathan Sotro, who was amazing. He taught everything from the proper maintenance to the safe operation of a chainsaw.

Our class even got a demonstration from a real fire camp. These guys were incredible.

This class was held over a two week period, was a lot of fun, we learned a ton and also had some great team building. We hope our HOLLYWOOD IMPACT STUDIOS FIRE PREVENTION TEAM can do their part to help make this fire season a little better than last years.

Fire Camp #7

Thank you to Mission College Re-Entry Hub for sending over Julio Catalan. Our guys have already started working! They just finished their third job; putting money in their pockets and making Santa Clarita a little safer against wildfires. Much thanks to the County of Los Angeles 5th District, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and of course Retired Fire Captain Darryl Coe!

December 29, 2018

8th ANNUAL ANGEL TREE – 2018

Our 8th Annual Angel Tree Gift Giving Event was a great evening of fun, fellowship but most of all giving gifts and showing God’s love to those children in need. For those who may not know, Angel Tree is a ministry of Prison Fellowship. Volunteers go out and buy gifts for children with an incarcerated parent. Statics show that keeping a relationship between an incarcerated parent and their children greatly reduce the chance of those children going to jail or prison.

As in past years, we start out at In N Out Burgers for dinner and fellowship. One of the neat things about this is that we get to connect with past Hollywood Impact Studio friends that we may not have seen since last year. It’s a time to catch up and hear their success stories. Praise God! Thank you to In N Out for your excellent food and service.

Then after a great meal, we loaded onto the Grace Baptist bus and Eden Ministries van and headed to Pacoima. Thank you Grace Baptist Church and Eden Ministries for allowing us to use your vehicles and to Bob Amstutz for volunteering to drive the bus.

We delivered gifts to (5) family, 15 children. We also had a fun time singing some Christmas carols through the neighborhoods. We may not have the greatest voices, but it is all to God’s Glory.

And we had our annual end of the evening photograph of everyone. Again what a great evening. Thank you to everyone who attended and to those who pray for this ministry.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! Excited to see what God does through this ministry in 2019!

October 27, 2018

HOLLYWOOD IMPACT STUDIOS – ALUMNI & MIRACLE MOUNTAIN – News & Update

I know it’s been a very long since we have updated the blog… Lots going on. All good.

First on HOLLYWOOD IMPACT STUDIOS – IN-JAIL PROGRAM. We finished semester #26 with a terrific shoot. We interviewed producer Ardon Albrecht who was one of the original producers on the THIS IS THE LIFE series. This interview will go on the next DVD as bonus material. Here are some photos from the shoot.

One very exciting fact about this particular shoot is that we had three of our formerly incarcerated guys as part of this project mentoring currently incarcerated guys. Love this MINISTRY!

It was a great shoot! We’re down for this month and then will start semester #27 in November.

Next, our ALUMNI PROGRAM is going well and we’ve added THE STRAIGHT & NARROW MEN’S GROUP led by our Chaplain Matthew Feldmeth. After several meetings, we had a pizza party to help bound this group of men.

MIRACLE MOUNTAIN – we now have an agreement with the County of Los Angeles to begin our vocational training center on the lower compound. We’re preparing it for students and now accepting applications.

It’s been a great few months. We will try to update our blog a little more often. Thank you for your support!

August 5, 2017August 6, 2017

MIRACLE MOUNTAIN – News & Updates

We held our first class on Miracle Mountain and solved a problem at the same time. The problem: we had a huge bee hive inside a wall of the big house on the lower compound.

The solution:

We brought down master bee keeper Art Hall from San Jose to teach “Introduction to Bee Keeping”.

After some classroom instruction we headed to the wood shop to build bee hives (the bees new home).

We had sixteen students of different ages and background. All were very enthusiastic and involved. Lots of good bonding time, laughter and fellowship, though you wouldn’t know it by our facial expressions (except Richie!).

Even a few of the our kids helped in building the bee hives.

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Then it was back to the classroom to try on our bee suits.

Whew! all that on Friday…

Saturday we suited up and headed to the lower compound to begin the process of moving our visitors to their new home.

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It was an extremely long day, and hot! The bees were not as enthusiastic as we were so progress was slow, but we still needed to get our new bees safely into their new home.

Sunday we housed them and moved them into their new neighborhood. No, not Sesame Street. Bees need to be in full sunlight and besides, Oscar wouldn’t be thrilled with bees digging around in his garbage!

We also learned how to take care of our new bees in their hive and the bee hive that Art (our instructor) donated. We learned it’s best to have two bee hives so you can tell if something is wrong with a hive, or not.

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On Monday we learned the profession of bee keeping, harvesting honey, wax and propolis. We tasted honey from our very own hive and said goodbye to our instructor.

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It was truly an excellent class. Learned a lot and saved a hive of bees an preserved our environment and will tie in nicely to our organic gardening class, but that’s for another time down the road.

Thanks be to God for keeping us all safe, even in the heat and a special thank you to Art Hall, Master Bee Keeper!