Northwest News!

It has been a good day.  I usually try to take Mondays off to spend with my family and catch up on personal things.  I really enjoyed spedning time with my family.  They are the best and I am so blessed.

We had 20 with 1 first-time visitor in the Sunday morning service and 23 in the evening service.  We looked at “A Good Testimony” from 1 Timothy 6 in the evening. I wanted to just say a word of thanks to our creche workers who are the unsung heroes and make it possible for parents and everyone to fully enjoy the services.  WE APPRECIATE YOU ALL!

The message this morning was about the end of the world and how our cursed world will be destroyed by fire (2 Peter 3) and then recreated as a new heaven and new earth.  I am a big believer in this kind of global warming.  We had a good time this morning with one first-time visitor who came as a result of a flyer we put through his letterbox on Saturday.  I am not sure the attendance but will let you know that tonight.

For the past couple of weeks, we have had unusually good weather.  Amazingly, it was HOT here yesterday!  Today, the weather is back to normal with overcast skys and rain.  For the youth club tonight, we are going to be driving up to Faith Baptist Church in Glengormley for their youth meeting at 7.30 PM, because The Junction is not available for us.

I am glad that we made hay while the sun was shining and put leaflets through 150 letterboxes on Tuesday and 290 on yesterday.  Hopefully, we will have a good day tomorrow at 11.00 for community outreach, as we strive to spread the gospel. 

REMINDER TO MEN: Our men’s fellowship is tomorrow morning at 9.00 AM at Yankees Cafe in Ballykelly.  Join us for breakfast, fellowship, Bible study, and prayer.

The Lord really blessed us yesterday with a great time together.  We were at a different hotel from the one we normally meet at, but it was till a good time of fellowship, worship, and growth for us.  We had 20 in attendance in the morning and a great time looking at Revelation 19-20 and “Will the Baddies Win?”. 

After the morning service, some of us went up to Clogh Mills to Bethel Baptist Church to hear Mike Suptin from Virgina preach.  We got back just in time for the evening service.  We had 14 in the evening service, and we looked at the Ministry of the Church from 1 Timothy 5.  We also observed the Lord’s Supper together.

I am real excited to see how our folks are growing and developing in their Christian lives and walk with the Lord.  It is encouraging to see a zeal for souls and for discipleship.  We exist not as a social club but as an army to reach our community, and I hope that we will never lose our focus of reaching souls.

Today, we had a good time with our friends Martin & Carrie Wickens from Faith Baptist Church.  It was good to fellowship with them and talk about planning a youth conference for sometime in July.  More details to come about that, but keep it in your prayers.  We are hoping to get many likeminded churches to send their young people, and we are asking God for over 100 young people and young adults to come.

The Lord blessed in a great way today on our Friend Day and our BBQ at the Park.  We had a great crowd with 43 in attendance and 5 first-time visitors.  The weather was wonderful for the BBQ and everyone had a great time and good food.

After the morning and afternoon service, ten of us went up to Glengormley to be a part of Steve and April Baker’s  departure service.  It was a real long day and i am absolutely “shattered” as they say here, but I must say that I enjoyed it with all of my heart.  It was a really good day for our church, and I am looking forward to what God is going to do.

Thanks for praying.  Thanks to David for his hard work with the music and the cooking.  Thanks to Rodney and Christine for bringing the tent for shelter.  Thanks to all the ladies for the good food.  Thanks to Jonathon and David for tearing down the equipment at the church.  Thanks for coming and bringing your friends.  Last but not least, thank the Lord for His continued blessings on us.

What a wonderful day we had together as a church!  The Lord blessed us with beautiful weather and a wonderful time of fellowship.

We started out the morning with our discipleship classes, looking at the doctrine of eternal security.  This is the second week of the discipleship classes.  If you have not attened yet, let me encourage you to join us at 10.30 AM on Sunday mornings.

In the morning, we had 26 folks in attendance.  I preached on “Living with Depression.”  We had one first time visitor in the morning service.  In the evening, we finished the message from John 21 on “What To Do When You Fail.”  We had 16 people there, and we had our quarterly vision night looking at what God did for us in the last quarter and our vision for the rest of the year.

We are excited about Friend Day coming up on this Sunday.  I hope you will join us and bring a friend with you.  We will start a new message series called “Back 2 the Future”, enjoy a BBQ, and have fun at Ness Woods.  We will eat at 1.00 PM and then have an time of music and a message at 3.00 PM.  We should finish by 4.00 PM, and then you can go home.  There will be no evening service this coming Sunday night.

I am excited because:

1. We had a great service on Wednesday night looking at John 21 with 15 folks in attendance!
2. The Friday night youth club went well with a new Polish young person coming to the meeting!  We also met some more young people who may coming to our next youth club.  David did a great job with the music and the lesson on Friday as well.
3. We had a great time of fellowship at the men’s breakfast today!  The text we discussed was Titus 1:9-11.  It was great to have two men from Limavady join us today.
4. 10 people went out this morning at 11 AM to put leaflets through doors inviting people to church.
5. Tomorrow morning is going to be a great service as we look at “Living with Depression” and how to get victory on a daily basis over depression.  Then in the evening is our vision night when we will discuss what God has done in the last quarter and our vision for the rest of the year.
6. Next Sunday is friend day with a BBQ at the Park.  Make plans to come and bring a friend!
7. God is my Father and loved me so much He sent His Son Jesus to die for me.  Now that is something to get excited about!

See you tomorrow!

I am so delighted that God has allowed me to pastor and lead such a wonderful group of people.  It is such a privilege to stand up every Sunday and open the Word of God.  The Lord blessed today.  We had 18 in the morning service with 2 first-time visitors.  In the evening service, there were 16 people total.

We had a great time in our discipleship classes today with 15 people in attendance.  We went over the first lesson on Salvation.  If you did not make it out to the services today, you missed a special blessing.  I hope you can join us this coming Sunday morning.  The discipleship class is at 10.30 AM and will be a big help to explain the basics of the Christian faith and help you grow as a Christian.  The morning service will be at 11.30 AM, and we will be finishing the last message in our series on “Coping with Depression.”

We had a very fun time this afternoon and evening on our teen treasure hunt.  We had 9 teenagers come out for the activity.  We split them into two teams, and they had to work as a team through a series of 7 clues until they found the hidden treasure (hidden in the spare tire well of our car)!

Thanks to all of our leaders who helped out, to the parents for supporting the youth ministry of our church, to those who watched the leader’s children, and to the teenagers for coming to the activity.  We hope to see you next Friday for the Youth Drop-in club at The Junction (8 Bishop St., City Centre).

Last but not least, I want to thank the Lord for giving us good weather and good health to get out and enjoy a good evening.

I have to admit that I was real tired today as we have been going strong for about 2 weeks straight with our gospel missiona and our mission trip to Morocco.  Also, the time change last night did not help.

I preached this morning on, “Understanding the Condition, Causes, and Cure of Depression.”  It was very encouraging to see many in their place and faithfully serving.  Our church is really fired up about living for the Lord; people are reading their Bibles like wild men and women; folks are wanting to go visiting and know what they can do to help the church grow; God is working on people who need to be saved; and God is doing some amazing things.

We had 16 in the morning service. Some were out due to sickness and other reasons.  In the evening, we watched a 25 minute video that we made about our trip to Morocco, and we had 15 in the evening service.

Please pray for Sylvia’s granddaughter who is ill right now and they are runinng tests.  Also, pray for John Wilson, a friend of ours, who is in the hospital at the moment with pneumonia.

Let me encourage you to read about what God is doing at Faith Baptist Church in the lives of the young people there.