Order My Steps..

There is a popular Christian song that says" Order my steps in your word etc... I feel that God can guide all of our steps if we let him. I have mentioned before about how God takes care of us.

Several years ago we were wanting to get involved with outreach to the nursing homes and other areas of ministry to encourage people. But we needed a keyboard and amplifier among other things. So we kept praying and doing the best we could.

One night a visitor came to church he was an older gentleman. I went by and shook his hand and I ended up teaching him Bible Studies for several weeks at his house. He came every Sunday morning for awhile. Then he started missing some and when I called he told me was was sick. Within a few weeks I found out he had cancer and he died. I went to his funeral and met some other ministers that were there and come to find out he had two half brothers in Canada.

Those brothers are pastoring Pentecostal Churches and they were glad that I had spent time with their brother before he passed away. They had prayed for years for him to get his heart right with God. I explained his experience and the many times we had prayed together and they rejoiced.

I went to the store about three weeks later and met his wife and she asked me to come by and see her. So I went by and she gave me a card. She told me that her husband had left the youth group some money because he was thankful for all that we were doing for God. God has a way of taking care of us if we do our part.

It was enough to purchase an excellent keyboard and amplifier plus other things to help us in or efforts of ministry. I contacted his half brothers at General Conference and they were so excited that his legacy would live on especially after their 50+ years of praying for him!

Community Thanksgiving Dinner Today!

We had a fantastic time today with the Community Thanksgiving Dinner. Pastor Trout started the day with prayer for all the church staff that was there to serve. We prayed for the people and we also prayed for the basketball team from the high school. Words and pictures can not hardly express what we saw and felt today in reaching out to those families.

Some of the families were from shelters for abused women. Others were from homeless shelters. Our church bus went to pick up fifteen homeless people and when they got to the location there were fifty people wanting to come eat. They called from up to 17 miles away for a ride to come to the church today. Others had no problems as such but they just wanted to come to the church a have a good dinner and fellowship with God’s people. Several of the church people and even couples spent most of the day transporting people to and from the dinner.

One lady that came was 91 and she used to take care of one of the men in the church when he was a baby. Another couple came and he had backslid from a large charismatic church in the area because he said that since they had grown real big all they could talk about was money. His wife wanted to get their daughter baptized and a certain church wanted to have them pay $500 to perform a baptism. Needless to say the wife was devastated because they did not have the money. Imagine a church charging for various plans or parts of salvation!

There was a lady that came and she had her oxygen tank on wheels. We moved chairs around to make it easier for her to get to a table and be seated. She was a little embarrassed to be treated so well and she kept apologizing and got a little overwhelmed. One of our ladies reached out and gave her a hug and within seconds they both were crying. I guess our prayers were working and God was reaching out through the hurts and scars and the people could feel His love in a real way today!!

Another family of 4 walked a mile this morning to get to the church and eat. What moved me was their desire to be there because the man had knee surgery on Oct 3 and could barely walk around the dining area today. When they were ready to go home I loaded them up and took them. They promised to come to church tomorrow!

The North East High school Girl’s Basketball Team came today to help us serve the tables. To help control the crowd and to let them know that we wanted to treat them royal, we brought the people in and seated them. They checked off on a piece of paper what they wanted to eat. The girls went around and picked up the forms and turned them into the kitchen. Then they took the plates to the tables and brought an assortment of deserts to choose from as well. When we counted those forms we found out that we served 400 people today!

Community Outreach Dinner!

Please be in prayer for our church this Saturday. For the past several years we have done a community outreach dinner for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This dinner has grown to about 500 people that come to eat and fellowship with our church people. Some of them are homeless, some from various shelters and others are friends of our saints that don't normally come to church. They all come to eat and have a good time. We also have bags of goodies (donations from area businesses) that we pass out to those in need including some clothes and coats that have been donated.

There has been a great turn out from the community to help us in this effort. In fact the North East High School Basketball Teams (Guys & Girls) get into a heated discussion with their coaches as to who can come help serve. Our fellowship hall only seats about 100. So we have to rotate everyone in to feed them. I will update you with pictures I hope. Our digital camera was baptized while we were on the St John's River Cruise in Florida for my folks anniversary! We forgot to say in Jesus name! LOL!!