Anna Videos

The following are two videos of Anna. One is of her crawling. The other is her finding out what "Cheerios"(or at least the Walmart equivalent) are. She does not quite understand how to eat them yet.

One more week behind us.

Thank the Lord for helping us make it through this week. I have been working more than I like in my secular job, thus limiting my time in other areas. But the Lord will help me. I reached the quarter century mark this past week. Thursday I turned 25! Wow, I am getting old! HAHA!! I didn't get home until 6:30 and then had to get ready for church. I got there about 10 min. late because I got a little side tracked. After service they had cake and ice cream for me. So it turned out alright.
Yesterday I had a little bit of relaxing time. We went to Kelley's grandparents. While everyone else watched football and talked,I just curled up with a book. Also, some friends of ours from out of state were in town and stopped by to see us for a little while. It was good to see them since we hadn't seen them for about two years.
This morning we had a young lady show up that hadn't come for quite a while. She had come to a couple of services with her daughters a few months back, but we hadn't seen her for a couple of months and had been unable to reach her at home when we tried to stop by and visit. She showed up unexpectedly this morning with her son. The girls were with some other family members, but it was good to see her after all this time, especially since we had changed locations. Kelley had sent her a card last week so we thank the Lord for the positive result.
I feel that we had a good service tonight. I started things a little different as I jumped straight into preaching after the opening prayer. I felt lead to preach on worship and felt that it would be best to cover it, before we actually got into worshiping. It seemed that everyone received it well. We are looking to see great things this year. To God be all of the praise, honor, and glory. Amen.

Equality

One thing that I believe is especially good in The Church of God is the equality that there is. One example is the Operation Banner of Love that I referred to in my last post. Another thing that made me think of this is a bookmark. How does a bookmark do that you ask? Well, our missionary leader got the mission ladies bookmarks at the assembly. They were bought from the mission table to raise money for missions. They were made, along with at least one other thing(a beautiful, I'm told, table cloth), by the ladies of the Church in North India and sent with their overseer to be sold at the mission table to raise money for missions. This made me make a correction in my mind. Generally, when I think of raising money for missions, I think of people in the US raising money and sending it abroad. But, that is not how things work in the Church. We all work together to accomplish the mission that Christ has given us, reaching the lost for Christ. So the question is, am I doing my equal part, are you doing your equal part? Lord help each of us to truly ascribe to equality and do our part to reach this world.

Long Day!

We left about 7:00 a.m. and got back some time about 6:30 p.m. We did have a good visit with the Loya's though. It had been since back in March since Kelley had gotten to go with me to see them. They seem to be doing pretty well. I went down with the intent to search around for some different places we might be able to rent for services, and it turns out Bro. David knows some one who has built a small church that might work out perfectly for us. It is back in the Newburgh area, where they used to live before, on the other side of Evansville from them now, but we will see what the Lord will work out. Please pray that the Lord's will would be done as we are looking forward to doing more work in Evansville this year. We have another member of the church that has moved into the area as well. So we would like to get something going very strongly. I believe that having a place to meet other than a home would help out a lot. At least it seems to have here.
Anna has done very well this week and did especially good today while traveling. In addition to saying "momma" last Sunday evening during service, she is trying to start crawling. Yesterday, she finally figured out how to get her knees underneath her, so I figure it is just a matter of time before she really takes off. She already rolls and turns circles like crazy.
Hope you have a good service tomorrow morning!

Banner of Love

I would just like to say thank you to all who have raised money for the Banner of Love program. Thanks to it, we now have a large church flag to put in our church. We received it in the mail yesterday. When the program began, and possibly even still now, many people probably just thought of churches overseas not having a flag because of finances, but the program is being a blessing to our church. We are not destitute or anything, but the finances that we have are going towards just having a place to worship, and the upkeep on it. So it has been a blessing to receive a flag without having to wonder where to cut a corner somewhere else. It came to me, during the assembly sometime, that possibly we would be able to get a flag thru the program, but I did not feel that I should say anything. The Lord worked it out that I didn't need to ask. Our overseer asked one of our members if we had a flag. Upon discovering that we didn't, he said that he would look into getting one for us. It is wonderful to know that in this world-wide church we are all the same. If there is a need we work to fill it, whether the local congregation be here in Franklin, South Africa, Colombia, or India. Please pray for us that we can be a blessing to others, as others have been a blessing to us.

Baby Girl is growing up!

Well, Anna said her first word Sunday Evening during church while I was preaching. I didn't hear it but apparently she said "mama." Now since she has discovered that she can do it, she is often doing it nonstop. She is also moving around all over the place. She is not crawling yet, but rolls, and twists and turns almost constantly. It seems as if every new day she is doing something new. Where does the time go?

Back healed!

I forgot to mention that the Lord touched my back at the Assembly Friday night. I have been having bad problems with it and the Lord touched it. Thank you Lord! I don't have the time to mess with any back problems. God still heals!

More Assembly Notes

During Bro. Smith's Annual Address, he gave the following information:
As of the last reports for the Church,

18,782 members - an increase of over 500+
1202 ministers- an increase of 235
567 Churches
45 countries
39 states in the US
Organized in 4 new countries this year.

I felt that this was a good report due to everything the church has been dealing with the past few years.

EVANGELISM- It seems that this was a major focus during the GA this year. I am glad to hear everyone focused on winning souls. It is what I have been trying to encourage the local church here to do consistently. During the past month and a half we have had 2 people that attend our church to get saved. Neither of them in one of our local services, but I can definitely see God moving. We had a wonderful Sunday School and Morning service the Sunday we left for the Assembly. I am looking forward to what God has for us tomorrow. I just received word that a young lady that we have not seen for a while is supposed to be at church tomorrow. She loves coming to church, but due to some situations beyond her control, is often unable to. Please pray that things will open up for her to be able to attend more often. Also, the young lady that got saved last fall, my cousin, will be getting out of jail soon. Pray that she will be able to stand strong against the attacks of the devil.

JESUS-This seemed to be one of the other main focuses of the assembly. I loved Bro. Byers message on the Corner. It is certainly true that everything that we need is in the Cornerstone-Jesus.

If things will work out soon, I will try to pull some highlights off of the DVD's from the assembly and put them up on Youtube.

God bless, and let's reap the harvest for Jesus.

Couple of new(to me) websites

I was recently made aware of two church websites.
One is for The Church of God in the Philippines

The other is The Church of God in Mexico
The Mexico one is in Spanish, but if you click around you will find lots of wonderful pictures of the saints there is Mexico.

Quick post

Don't have time for a long post, but I just wanted to say what a GREAT assembly we had. The Spirit of God was present in a mighty way and moved wonderfully. In addition, I would request that you please pray for Ron Legg. He had to be taken to the hospital at some point during the week and is in need of prayer.