Northwest News!

It has been a blessing to have Evangelist Chris Stansell with us. He arrived in from Tennessee on Tuesday evening after about 25 hours of travelling.  Last night he sang preached for us from Daniel 2 and did a great job!  We are having a tremendous time of fellowship together.  He will be preaching for us on Saturday at the youth rally and then on Sunday all day.  I hope you will make plans to come this Sunday to hear him.  You will recieve a blessing.

Pastor Martin Wickens from Faith Baptist Church in Glengormley just emailed and said they have half a dozen teenagers signed up to come on Saturday to the youth rally.  We are looking forward to a good time, and it is a blessing to have friends in the ministry like Martin and Carrie Wickens.

Despite the sickness bug going around, we had a great day in the Lord with 26 folks attending the morning service and 13 the evening service.  Please pray for those who are not feeling well.

If you missed the service this morning and would like to get the message on CD, just let me or Jonathon know.  I think the message on “Making Sense of Abuse” was a help to people.  I know studying and preparing for it really helped me.

Please be in prayer about our youth rally this Saturday for God to bring the teenagers in and for some to be saved!

Also, I want to praise the Lord for His watchcare over us despite my distracted driving.  We had a small accident tonight on our way to church, but God protected us and our car is still driveable even though it doesn’t look the best.

It is late and I will be going to sleep in about two minutes, but I just wanted to write a short update.

After some study this morning, Jonathon, Kyle, and I knocked on 51 doors on the cityside.  We were in quite a wealthy area.  A couple of people were interested in the church.  This is the first time I have knocked doors over there.  I think people were surprised that our church (a Baptist church, from the wateside) would be over there, but our message is not just for some people; it is for all people from all backgrounds no matter where they live!

At 12:45, Teri, the kids, and I left for Newcastle.  We drove the 2.5 hours there to see Greenhill YMCA, which is where we are thinking of having our youth camp next summer.  It was a real nice camp and may work for us.  On the way back, we stopped at Pizza Hut and the Sainsburys.  It was fun to get away for a few hours but great to get back.

I wanted to say thanks to David and Jonathon for taking care of setting up tonight.  That take a big burden off of me, and I really appreciate it.

God bless you all real good, and I am looking forward to preaching on, “Making Sense of Abuse” from 2 Samuel 13 in a just a few hours.  I hope to see you there.

I want to say, “Thanks” to everyone who is continuing to promote the youth rally.  Some of our young people are talking about inviting their friends.  Others are leaving flyers at local shops.

Yesterday, Jonathon and I took stacks of flyers to 9 various secondary schools in the city.  We have two more that we are going to take them to today.  Pray that some of these flyers will make it to the students.

If you can come to the youth rally, 1 December, 4.30-7.30 PM to help us with the food, greeting, talking to the young people, and dealing with those who respond to the call for salvation.

Also, pray for Evangelist Chris Stansell as he prepares to preach to the young people that night.

I just got word from Pastor Don Randall in Portadown that he will be coming up to our youth rally and bringing a group of about 10 from Lighthouse Baptist Church with them.  I hope that you are making plans to come, inviting people, and praying for this special event.

I am looking forward to tomorrow.  We continue on in our “All Mixed Up?” series looking at “Making Sense of Suffering” and the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  David will be teaching the Discovery Zone class and talking about creation.  Also, we will be announcing our meetings for our Acts 1:8 Vision outreach teams for 2008.

This was quite an eventful week for us as a family.  Our car was stolen, then found, then we had to pay for the towing and junking of the car because it was not worth fixing.  Also, our home remortgage went through this week with a few complications, but it all worked out.  Also, for some reason, we decided to paint some of the rooms in our house.  We are halfway done and hope to finish it next week.

We passed out about 500 flyers today for our message series outside the shopping centre.  It still amazes me how the rain does not faze people here.  It was really coming down today, but the carpark at Foyleside was almost completely full and people were everywhere.  I think everybody was out doing Christmas shopping already.

One of the most exciting ways that I have found to do my devotions is to pray through Scripture.  My friend Austin Gardner, pastor of Vision Baptist Church, showed me how to do this several years ago and it has revolutionized my devotional life.  I used to read my Bible and then pray through my list which became very ritualistic and dry.  It was like reading a grocery list to God every morning.  Then I began to just pray through the verses of Scripture that I was reading.  It made my reading more personal and applicable and it made my prayer life fresh and new each day.  Also, I know that I am praying according to God’s will because I am praying the very words of Scripture.

Here is an article that explains some about praying through Scripture that I think you will enjoy.  Just try it and see the difference.  If you have questions, let me know.  You can also find out more at this Bible Reading Revolution blog started by my friend John Pearson.

We had a great day today.  We launched a brand new series today called “All Mixed Up?” with our first messaged called, “Making Sense of Addictions.”  I hope the message was a help to those who heard it.

We had 29 folks in the morning service and 15 in the evening.  In the volunteer meeting, we went over how to lead a person to Christ.  I am excited and so grateful for all our volunteers and how they are helping more and more with so many things like the set up, the church administration, the music, etc.

It was great to have 1 first-time visitor this morning, 3 second-time visitors, and 3 third-time visitors.  It is always good to have people come back again.