It's a blessing to see sunshine after a mostly cloudy week! We had guests from the States meet up with us on Friday. They are from Florida and they were rejoicing in any breaks in the clouds. :) It was a blessing to have them with us and show them some of the church history in our area.

God gave us a solid ministry morning. We had decent attendance in SS and good attendance in the morning service. A man visited for his first time. He moved into our area 2 months ago and saw the church service times and then came this morning. He intends to come again. Praise the Lord!

I preached this morning on the coming great day of Victory when Jesus reigns for 1,000 years on this earth. The text was Isaiah 25. It's exciting to think that "upside down world" is going to be turned right side up and that God's people will be vindicated and encouraged by the Lord.

I hope that God blesses/blessed you and your church with a wonderful day like our own. Thank you for praying for our services.

Thank you for praying for our church Valentine's banquet. This was not for couples, but for our church family and it was a wonderful time. The children did a great job preparing the meal, decorating, serving and cleaning up. They also shared 1 Corinthians 13,  played hand chimes, and the teens did a skit. 

We had great attendance and 3 first time visitors. I preached on 1 John 4:7-12, "Love, Love, Love." It was a very interesting consideration as the Word of God teaches that we can not love without God, because GOD IS LOVE. I felt like I learned something as I studied which I partly knew, but never fully appreciated.

Please pray for God to continue to do a great work in the hearts of our church family and our guests. Thanks for your part in praying for this special night.

Thank you for praying for our church Valentine's banquet. This was not for couples, but for our church family and it was a wonderful time. The children did a great job preparing the meal, decorating, serving and cleaning up. They also shared 1 Corinthians 13,  played hand chimes, and the teens did a skit. 

We had great attendance and 3 first time visitors. I preached on 1 John 4:7-12, "Love, Love, Love." It was a very interesting consideration as the Word of God teaches that we can not love without God, because GOD IS LOVE. I felt like I learned something as I studied which I partly knew, but never fully appreciated.

Please pray for God to continue to do a great work in the hearts of our church family and our guests. Thanks for your part in praying for this special night.

It's been a "dreich" start to the week. If you don't know that good Scottish word it means, "depressing, miserable or cold." It's ALMOST been all of that this week. We're not depressed, but we could be. It's not "happy" weather outside, so we must focus on happy thoughts on the inside. :) ("Encouraging ourselves in the Lord.")

I couldn't get out in evangelism, but the Lord has allowed me to push forward on an evangelistic tool. I prepared a sport's card size flyer to use in our street and personal evangelism. I'll put a couple of pics below. I've ordered 5,000 and should have them before the end of the week.

We're also getting ready for our church Valentine's Banquet which begins tomorrow evening at 6:30. I've already heard skit rehearsal this morning for a radio scramble skit that the teens will be doing. As you would imagine, I"m going to preach on the love of God. My text is 1 John 4. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us..."

Please pray for the power of God to awaken the hearts of men to His Gospel and His love. Thank you for praying for God's work in Scotland.

I feel like I just turned around and another Sunday is here. This past week went incredibly fast. I put out literature on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was a study day and ministry night. Thursday, I flew to Ireland and enjoyed fellowship and prayer. Brother Les Hill had two missionaries join us in the morning and three joining us for an afternoon prayer session. We also met up with one of our missionaries, Brother Layton Kelly, who runs New Hope Residential men's home in Ireland. 

There have been many hinderance to our church attendance. Please pray for God's healing hand. One of our young men has glandular fever (mono) and is really ill. Otherwise, there has just been a lot of other bugs going around. We know that everyone struggles with illness (not just churches) but it does seem at times to be spiritual warfare.

One of the greatest thrills today, was having a man back in church who had turned away from the Lord. He came back with a testimony of repentance and desire to follow God. It was great to have him back with us.

I preached on, "When God Appears" from Jacob's conversion in Genesis 28. It was interesting that God's appearance impacted Jacobs - head, heart and will. God is working and there were some open responses in the invitation time. Please pray for God to do a thorough work in the hearts of all of our church family.

This Wednesday we are having a Valentine's Banquet which our children are going to put on for us. People have been signing up and we are trusting God for a great night. Please pray for visitors and for our church family to be encouraged. Thank you for praying for our family and ministry. God is good and we know it is in answer to your prayers.

God gave us a good, but busy week. A guest flew in from Ireland and was with us from Sunday night through Wednesday morning. Monday was street preaching. Tuesday and Wednesday were literature distribution days. All of Loanhead has nearly received the new flyers. This is around 3500 homes. Pastor Dillman helped me on Wednesday.

Friday was our youth activity. We had two teens not make it due to illness. But, we enjoyed a great time with those who made it; playing a game called, "Five Crowns," eating pizza, and having a challenge from God's Word on the feeding of the 5,000. 

God blessed us with two adulte visitors this morning. It was fun to meet them. Our attendance was good despite having many unable to attend due to illness. Please pray for our church to get well soon as it is affecting us significantly just now.

I preached on our theme, "Crucified with Him" unto His Lordship from Romans 6, the latter half of the chapter. I have really enjoyed this study and believe it has greatly benefited our church.

This week is normal, except for a planned flight to Ireland on Thursday for a day of prayer with some other ministers. Would you please pray that God will meet with us in power? My good friend, Les Hill, has invited other friends of ours to be in attendance. There should be 5-6 of us. Thanks for praying!

God's blessed us with a great day. Katie is doing well! Praise the Lord. Thank you again for your prayers for her. A young lady, Rebekah, who is from Germany is with us for a few nights and arrived last night. We were thankful that Katie is well as the plan seemed like it might not work. Rebekah and Katie enjoyed walking around Edinburgh today.

I was also in Edinburgh doing street preaching. This morning was interesting. A man spat at my speaker a few minutes after I started. Then about 15 minutes into preaching a busker (street performer) set up very close to me and put on very loud music. I could not remain in that spot. I've preached through a lot of noise, but this was too much.

God had a great spot open for me very near the statue of David Livingstone. Livingstone is immortalised standing there with his hand raised gripping a Bible. God gave me tremendous liberty despite some pushback at times. 

God also put on my heart to cut some of the preaching from this morning and make a 5 minute evangelism video for a Facebook advertisement. Would you pray that God would use it to bring at least one Scottish person to Jesus Christ? Please also pray that it will stir the hearts of believers to pray for Scotland. 

If you are not on facebook and would like to see it, I've uploaded it to our sermon audio page. We appreciate your prayers. God is leading. God is working.

Praise the Lord, Katie was able to attend church today. Her scan on Friday morning showed three kidney stone. She's been pretty miserable. If church was yesterday, she would have had to stay home. Although she was up in the night with pain, she feels good today and was able to attend church. Is this the conclusion of the story? We hope so. Please pray for her to be fully recovered.

God gave us a good morning. We had good attendance in SS and church. Some, who had been absent for quite some time due to illness, were back out. We also had repeat visitors whish is a blessing.

We continued our Crucified with Him theme this morning as we studied the first half of Romans 6, Crucified with Him to Lust. "That the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin." I have benefited from this study and I believe it has been of benefit to our church family.

The storm did not do any signficant damage. We had a couple of trees go down across our road. Thankfully, I had already brought Katie back home from the hospital. We also had a small fence in our back garden blown over and the lid ripped off a large storage container. That's not too bad for a once in a generation storm. 

Tonight is our annual general meeting. We praise God for His goodness and I look forward to sharing the specifics of our church finances with our congregation. Thank you for your intercession for Katie and as always for our ministry.

Good morning, this is an unusual Friday morning update as there are unusual things happening this week.

I'd appreciate your prayers for Katie as she ended up in hospital with suspected kidney stones. They kept her overnight and have done a scan this morning. We've not yet heard the report back on that.

Meanwhile, we are getting a once in a generation storm today. Scotland gets a lot of bad storms. However, they have issued the highest warning for this one, and wind speeds of 115mph have been recorded in Northern Ireland as the eye of the storm is passing above it. That eye is going to track above us as well. Please pray for God to watch over Scotland and our church families. 

In other exciting news, someone backed into the church boundary brick wall earlier this week with a lorry (semi) and caused significant damage.  For whatever reason, they didn't let us know of the damage. However, all things work together for good. We are going to seek to open that corner up and it should look great. Last night my two youngest boys, Nelsona and Mac, helped me remove all that was broken down to the ground. We'll work on it more after the storm.

Brother Don Dillman and I enjoyed a good outing on Wednesday and were able to get a fair amount of literature out in his area. Thankfully the weather on Wednesday was great. Thanks for taking the needs above to the Lord. We very much appreciate your prayers.

It feels great to be back at it. Evangelism was impacted by the holidays, but mostly it has been the weather. Thankfully, our weather is now much better and evangelism is going strong. We enjoyed doing door to door on Saturday. A teenage girl went with us and it's a blessing having her along. Katie and she knocked doors together.

On Monday, I was able to put out several hundred flyers in Loanhead. We love our village and thank God for each opporunity we have to share Christ with them. Please that God would mercifully work and that many will find the mercy, grace and forgiveness of God.

Today, I was down street preaching in Edinburgh. Thankfully, my video equipment worked and that outing is on sermonaudio.com as well as on Facebook. Please pray that God will work in the hearts of those who heard the preaching or who will hear the preaching online. God gave tremendous liberty and I appreciate your prayers for that ministry.

Lord willing, tomorrow will be evangelism with Brother Dillman in his area. We have done evangelism together for the last 15 years this coming March. I'm either getting old.... or lying. (I guess I'm getting old.) Don and Chris are good friends. Please pray for their work, Almond Valley Baptist Church in Livingston. Thanks as always for your prayers.

PS. With regard to weather, a named storm is arriving on Friday with gusts to 70 or 80 in Scotland. :)