First Place Basketball Team & Baptisms (Nov 23, 2009)
In spite of the chilly, rain yesterday, the Lord blessed with a good number of decisions. We are thankful for the way God continues to use this ministry. Let me share a few of the highlights with you.
Let's begin with the buses. What a joy it is to see our faithful bus workers each week board these vehicles to bring children to Sunday School. The Lord rewarded their efforts yesterday with a slight peak in bus attendance. Six precious young people prayed to receive Christ in the counseling center of bus church. Amen!
On Fort Benning this week, we had to battle the annual School of Americas protest. Thousands of people come to Fort Benning each year to protest the former School of Americas, where Latin soldiers are trained in military expertise. The protest does not really affect what goes on inside Fort Benning. Since Bob Ingram was tied up helping police who monitor the protest, Pastor Liedtke performed the Bible studies. 216 soldiers attended this week with 40 of them standing to receive Christ as personal Savior. Praise the Lord!
We were privileged to witness three baptisms yesterday. The first was that of LeAnn O'Brien. LeAnn came to us several years ago through our program which put a packet of information about Grace on every door in Columbus. LeAnn put her daughter in our school because of that packet and started attending Grace Baptist Church. LeAnn had many adjustments to make in her thinking because she was coming from a liberal Methodist background. But God slowly made the changes, and yesterday LeAnn was immersed and welcomed into the membership of Grace Baptist Church. Amen!
We also baptized two young people yesterday. We praise the Lord for the baptisms of Sean Henry and Emily Hurst.
We had a good number of visitors yesterday, both at the main campus and at our Lumpkin sattelite. Pray for us as we follow up on these contacts.
Don't forget that our mid-week service will be moved to Tuesday night this week because of the Thanksgiving holidays. Be sure to join us for this special thanksgiving service.
Also, be in much prayer about our annual Christmas at Grace festivities, December 11-13. A special youth rally will take place at Hollywood Connection. Evangelist Bryan Samms will be our featured speaker. We are expecting hundreds of unevangelized teens to be in this service. On Saturday, Uncle Charlie from CBH Ministries will return to Grace to conduct our children's rally. And Sunday will feature the Daybreak Quartet, an evangelistic message, and a free ham dinner to all who attend. We are praying for 1500 this weekend with dozens of salvation decisions. I trust that you will pray with us.
On the school front, our boys basketball team returned from Milton, Florida on Saturday night with a hard-fought first place finish in the Conqueror Classic Basketball Tournament. Congratulations to coaches Joe and Joey Harmon and to all our players. When the team came home, they presented me with a warm-up jersey (not that there is any danger of me warming up any time soon). We play one of our toughest opponents, Mt. Area, tonight at home.
And in conclusion, just in case you didn't hear, Ohio State beat Michigan for the sixth year in a row. The Browns? Now that's a different story!