Dear Pastor, Friends, and Church Families,
Greetings again from Ireland! We want to thank the so many people who sent us cards, and gifts this past Christmas. We just were so blessed by the love shown. Thank you for caring so much for us, and praying for us! In the ministry here, we had a great time with our people! God brought out 59 people to church in Blarney on Christmas day, for an hour of preaching, singing, and family fellowship! Everybody says, “It makes Christmas REAL”, and it wouldn’t be Christmas unless we all got together and worshipped Him who came into this world to save sinners! AMEN!
Three New Names in Glory! Carmell M. has been coming out for about 2 months with her husband, and new baby. While in discipleship, she realized her need for Jesus Christ instead of her religious good works! Tony O. rang me up looking to learn about God. We started studying the only accurate source of information about such a being – the Bible. I watched him struggle with the clarity, and power of the Scriptures. He had been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for years and years, and knew it was not the answer. Well, on Sunday morning, 29th December, 2002, he surrendered to THE Answer, Jesus Christ! What a difference Christ has made in this man’s life! And then Colin A. came all the way from South Africa, from a family that were anti-god, to meet a Baptist preacher, who can’t shut up about Jesus! Well, Jesus won, and Colin’s name is in the Book of Life!
A House on Fire! Literally! Yes, you read right! We had a house-fire two days after Christmas! We had some friends down from the Dublin area with us for the weekend. And at about 9.00pm, while we all were downstairs fixing popcorn with all the kids, with no warning, the power blinked and went out. All the sockets were dead. Just after that I smelled smoke, and I and the other man went upstairs to find the source of the smoke. It was coming out of my and Nita's bedroom. When we opened the door, the heat of the smoke was incredible. We called the fire department, and got everybody out. I cannot adequately describe how I felt, and yet how grateful I was to such a gracious God who watched over us! None of us were hurt, and dozens of our neighbours gathered around us, and came to our aid with offers of beds to sleep in, and to do anything we needed! I was just stunned. We all (about 100 people by now) were standing across the road and just waiting and praying until the fire department arrived. They went right upstairs, and with masks on went into the bedroom, and put the fire out. We saw it all with a sense of horror. About 45 minutes later, they were shovelling the burnt stuff out the window onto our front lawn to make sure there were no smouldering fires. They also pulled up parts of the floors, and the ceiling to check for further flare-ups. Amazingly, there was no damage to the attic areas, or beneath the floor boards other than the fire-hose water damage and the major smoke damage throughout the upstairs. The smoke and heat damage had pretty well affected every part of the upstairs. The firemen decided it was an electrical fault in the wall. If it had happened while we were asleep, we would be hugging the feet of Jesus right now! Amen! The Lord is too good to us! Your prayers made the difference for us! We are all staying in one of our church member’s home with them, which is a real blessing! The insurance company is slow, but the Lord is in command!
Welcome Betsy Collins! God sent a wonderful single missionary lady named Betsy Collins to help us with all the labours here in Blarney and Mallow! We are so blessed to have her, but are not full up yet! Are you coming too?
Building Programme Status. At Christmas, we took up a special offering for our church building fund, and raised $2,900 on our own. That was our 5 loaves and two fish offering. Then, three churches sent us an additional $15,000 more for our building fund! Wow! Amazing! We are so excited! That brings our fund up to $50,000, praise the Lord!
Prayer Requests
· Pray hard for Marlene who has bone cancer and is dying. Pray for miraculous remission, for God’s glory!
· Praise God for Carmell, Tony and Colin getting saved! Also praise God for Denis S. settling his salvation with God!
· Pray for the following people to get saved: Sandra, Paul H, and the Mayer family; Charlie, Pat, another Pat, and Carrie all need to get saved; and, we need many new families in the churches here!
· In Mallow, a man named Brian, still needs our prayers – God can make all the difference in his life – he got saved last year, but he needs a miracle in his life, and more importantly, in his heart!
· Pray
for us to be able to buy the property we are currently looking at! We need about
$100,000 impossible dollars more to own our own building! Thank God for our All-Possible
God!