Wednesday, October 20, 2010

ministry update...

Well I first want to just say thank you to all that are following for your patience in waiting for this blog post. Things have been pretty busy over here, which has been great.

I guess I will start this update by sharing how things are going with the church. All is going well! I have been continuing to teach the family bible hour on the sunday morning service. I am still going through the book of I corinthians. And I know I may have said this before, but I really love this book. Last week I taught through chapter 8. This is a very practical book, showing that we have a responsibility to use our knowledge with love. That when we use our knowledge without love, it will not edify. I continue to get good feedback from those in the church. It seems more and more people are coming up asking me for copies of the teachings so they can go and share it with family or friends. I am not saying this for my glory, but to God's glory alone being that it is him that reveals these truths. As we come to the close of this year we are now in reflection of this year and busy casting a vision for next. This year really has been a year of learning and immersing. Julia and I have built many good relationships with some of the members of the church and I feel a little more "in" the church. Please pray for wisdom as we cast a vision for next year. Pray that we as a church would see the ministries the Lord is calling us to, and that we are faithful in them.

We have come to the end of the membership class. It has been a great class, and I am already looking forward to the next class. We finished our class with the responsibilities of church members at MOnte Christo Baptist church. It was a great ending to this class. Now, many of them have not been baptized, so on the 14th of Nov. I will have the privilege of baptizing some of them. I am looking forward to this being that I have gotten to know them pretty well over most of this year. Pray that God would use these members in the church to share the Gospel and bring much glory to God through there membership.

I have started to spend two full day at the church every week. This has been a great time of both prayer and encouragement. This will be a time for counseling as well. Most of all it is a great time for Laban and I to spend some good quality time together in discussion and prayer for the church. We both have been enjoying this!

The House to House ministry continues on. We have been meeting at Paulina's house for the last few weeks. By meeting there, we have another guy joining our bible study on a regular basis. This past week I taught through Eph. 3:1-7. I am loving this book more and more! We have been inviting more people to join our group lately. Please pray that God would add to our number. All of us who are meeting together see the value in this group. It is really the only opportunity right now for interaction and many questions.

Lastly, I wanted to share about a pastors fraternal that I attended last week. For those that have been following our ministry for a while you would remember what these are. But for those that this is new for, let me first start by explaining what these are. These fraternals are times when all the pastors from like minded churches(reformed baptist) get together for prayer, encouragement, sharing of praises and trials, and talking about the needs of the churches and how we can help each other through it. These are precious times that I would never want to miss. They are kind of also a retreat! This time we decided to meet at swakopmund baptist church on the coast. So monday morning we drove over to the coast to meet up with the other pastors. It was a very refreshing time that was much needed for many of the pastors. One of the big topics of this fraternal was to decide if we would like to implement our own ministerial training school here in namibia. This would be geared specifically towards training pastors. We had a guy named James Williamson come from Zambia to share what they are doing in this resolve. He is a part of the copperbelt ministerial college. There website is http://omegaserver.biz/cmc/?page_id=83. We are hoping to start this in some capacity next year. I will be attending this college. So please pray that God would provide the needed funds to do this. We are excited about this opportunity. It will realy allow us to give good solid pastoral training to the men in our churches. Please for much wisdom in this. It will be alot of work on our end, but it is very important.

Well, Thank you for your continued interest in the Work here. We are so thankful for your continued love and prayers. And as always we are so thankful for those that are giving funds each month to help with our day to day needs! You are our partners! I hope this has been encouraging to you and please continue to pray for us as we press on in the calling the Lord has graciously given to us.

Oh....and grace and Julia are doing great!...I will try to post some pictures soon. Thanks!

Buddy

Thursday, October 07, 2010

brief update on woodcarvers..

Hello friends,

I just wanted to write you to give you all a status on things with the woodcarvers. Currently, they are in the process of rebuilding the market. A local business stepped up and agreed to rebuild the market for them for free. This is a huge praise!! Also, the local gov. came and gave some money to buy food for each family. This is great being that they did not have food at home. Now the need that is left is to some how restock there market. There has been given a amount of $3000USD toward this need by some of you reading this. We will be able to take a portion of this to help those from the bible study to get back on there feet, and take a portion to reach out and help some others at the market. Our aim always is the Glory of God! So please pray that through this we will be able to reach out to others in the market and that God would be glorified! I will write again very soon with a ministry update.