Hello FBC Family!
O LORD, God of hosts, who is mighty as You are, O LORD, with Your faithfulness all around You? (Psalm 89:8)
There truly is no one like our God! He is holy, He is mighty, He is faithful. All of that and so much more. Exalt Him today simply for who He is!
This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 21-22, is our FBC Family Missions Conference! Doug Hazen, who focuses on prayer mobilization with WorldVenture, will be our guest speaker on Sunday morning. While speaking with him a little while back, he recommended I read Pressure Points by J.D. Payne. I started looking online for the book, and then noticed it on top of a stack of books that had been given to me! Anyway, in the book, after showing some charts describing the number of adherents to various religions in specific countries around the world, Payne makes the following statement:
“A glimpse at these numbers… should move us to prayer and service as we recognize the enormity of the challenge in seeing the nations come to adore their Creator” (pg. 52). That thought is in line with what Doug will be sharing with us Sunday morning from Matthew 9:36-38, “God’s Staggering Promises.” Please spend some time in that passage in preparation for Sunday.
Remember this is a conference for everyone, for the whole family. It begins Saturday at 9am. Nursery will be available, there will be hands-on and inspiring activities for kids, opportunities to interact with some of the missionaries we support locally and globally, prizes raffled off, including one each of my three favorite books on missions and coffee shop gift cards, a time for families to pray together for our missionaries, a great brunch including sub sandwhiches, a fun quiz to see how well you know about some of our missionaries, Turkish coffee, videos from a few of our supported missionaries, and what I expect to be a very interesting panel questions and discussion time, with a special focus on experiences of answered prayer, specific prayer requests, etc. Various missionaries will have displays up in the fellowship hall for you to browse, learn, and meet them. We hope to close Saturday and raffle off prizes at 12:45pm, so we should be done by 1:00.
On Sunday at 9am (Sunday School hour), adults will be in the worship center for presentation and interviews with Pastor Justin, and a few local missionaries, while the children will have 3 activity stations focusing on Haiti, Japan, and Turkey. The fellowship hall will be open again between services for browsing the displays and meeting the missionaries. The worship service (10:30) will include music led by Teen Challenge worship team, and of course the message by Doug Hazen. As mentioned before, we will take a special “loose change or whatever you want to give” offering to complete the project of raising funds for the swing set structure at Camp Praise in Alaska. Please plan on being here for the exciting events of both days! I think you’ll be glad you did!
12 days to Trunk-or-Treat! I don’t know the candy competition totals from this week, but this I do know: the 2 leagues are close in weight, and we need a lot more candy! Please consider a generous donation of candy to the baseball league of your choice. We are also in need of more vehicles. If you haven’t signed yours up yet, please do so this weekend! We want to fill our parking lot with the friendly folks of FBC, their decorated cars, trucks, boats, tanks, etc.! This is a fun event that brings us together and is a great blessing to families in our community. It’s our desire to shine the light of Jesus Christ brightly on this dark night. So please consider joining us. Please be inviting families you know. And please be in prayer for God to work through this effort to draw people in our community to Himself!
Finally, thank you to all of you who have been praying for Molly while she’s in Mexico. The Lord has been working mightily in her life. We are so grateful. She has started a blog to occasionally record her thoughts about what she is experiencing. Below is a link to her latest post:
https://mollyelizabethbeach.wordpress.com/2017/10/19/a-step-of-faith/
Looking forward to seeing you all Saturday and Sunday! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Love From Your Pastor,
Michael
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