It was a beautiful morning. Today, I went down to Princess St. by the Duke of Wellington Statue and preached for an hour. I covet your prayers for my street preaching. It takes a lot of energy and I also need God's guidance. My voice is always pretty weak when I get done. It is hard to stop as you see loads of people walking towards you and you want to say something that has the potential of impacting their life for all of eternity.

I had two elderly ladies shake my hand (while I was preaching and say) "bless you." I had some thumbs up as well. There was very little negative today and people were respectful. 

This afternoon, my family tackled one of the tougher jobs on our church to do list. We started painting the activity centre ceiling. This is a "ribbed" ceiling and there is a LOT of trim work. It was not a quick job, but we got most of the first coat of brilliant white paint on today. We hope to fully paint these front halls (activity centre and fellowship hall) in the next two weeks. Thanks for praying for wisdom and grace for our work.

It is always encouraging to see guests coming to church. We had a 15 year old boy visit on Wednesday. I believe that I am correct to say that he had never been to church before. We had another 15 year old young man join us (with his family) for the youth activity on Friday. All of these were in church today. We also had a relative of a church family visiting with us. What a blessing! On top of that our attendance was good, there was a great spirit, and our church is excited about what God is doing. Thanks for praying.

I preached this morning on the topic of developing a personal prayer life. If we can develop our prayer life, we can develop a closer walk with God. How vital for our families and ministry! 

In case you haven't seen it - here is a link to a video update on the property. The link takes you to our sermon audio website and will play the video from there.

In case it's too far for you to come personally and visit us, here is a link to a video of our property. Your prayers are much appreciated as we continue to steward God's gracious provision.

After taking some time off from normal ministry last week (to work on God's house) I am back into a more normal routine this week. Yesterday I put out some flyers close to our church location. Works are still going on at the church. A tree which was in the neighbours telephone wires was taken down much to the delight of our neighbours. We had a professional take it down because of the precarious position.

Today, Logan and I went into Edinburgh and did street evangelism. I preached in two locations this morning while Logan handed out leafletts. If you have been to Edinburgh, you may know the location of Grey Friar's Bobby. This is a statue of a famous little dog. I preached beside that and had several good responses from people going past. (Thumbs up, knowing nods.... only one lady gave me a gesture of anger.)

When some men began cutting concrete nearby, we decided to move over by McEwan Hall and the University of Edinburgh property. I enjoy preaching in this location as people are always seated nearby. Several people got to hear God's truth for a longer amount of time. God was good to give us His guidance and enablement. I would appreciate very much your prayers for the power of God whenever we are out doing street preaching. Thanks for your prayers. God is working.

Praise the Lord for another Sunday. It was good to be in the House of the Lord this morning and the Lord gave us good services. Our discipleship lesson in SS was on evangelism. It was a good reminder of our responsability to tell (witness) to others. I preached this morning on, "How to be at peace when the world is seemingly winning." David, in Psalm 37, by divine inspiration gave several commands to help us to succeed when Satan wants us to be deceived regarding this battle.

It was a special blessing this morning to have a return adult visitor and 4 visitors from the States. Blake Huffman, a college student who attended our church 2 years ago, kindly sent his parents and couple friends to visit us. We've enjoyed being with his parents before and it was a joy to catch up with them and show them God's answer to prayer for a church property.

Please continue to pray for God to build his church. We have had several inquiries about visiting but 3 of these have yet to come along. Thanks for praying.

Works update from the week: As you'll see below we were busy and God blessed our labours.

Activity Centre - Sanded and primed yesterday. Now using filler to patch any remaining blemishes. Afterwards we will put up lining paper and then paint.

Fellowship Hall -The lower have of the buffet is now painted.

Exterior 

    - wall finished, 

    - shed finished, 

    - skip (dumster) filled with rubble, 

    - picnic tables and play park stained.

    - 2 stumps cut down.

lean to remodel: Doors to be stained soon.

Wall painted:

Playground and picnic tables getting stained:

God blessed us with a great week. The work projects were accomplished. The fence and interior paint projects both got two coats of paint. The sign is now installed at the entrance of the property.

On Thursday, my 4 boys, myself and Tommy, went to Irelaned for men's camp. The focus was on Enoch and it was a tremendous time. There were 6 preaching sessions and 2 prayer sessions spread over 3 days. You'd need to have been there to understand how good it was to be present. :) It was great! I preached on Friday and want to thank those of you who were praying for that ministry opportunity. My message was, "It's time to walk with God" from the text, "And Enoch walked with God AFTER he begat Methuselah....."

This morning our attendance was down, but we still enjoyed having a first time visitor with us. Our SS was a study on prayer and then in the AM I preached on, "Holy Ghost Power" from Acts 1. Please pray for our church to have a fresh outpouring of God's Spirit, and to recognise our need. 

This evening a minister friend, Jon Gleason, will be preaching. After the service, we have a fellowship meal planned. Jon's wife, Terri, passed away from a brain tumour this past year. Jon is going to share some testimonies of God's grace with us. We are looking forward to His ministry.

I normally have updated this page 2-3 times a week. However, life has gotten busy and I've gotten behind in my update. God gave us a good week, weekend and start to this week. Our attendance Sunday was strong. There was a great spirit and we enjoyed a fellowship meal after both services. (The evening service fellowship is left overs.)

You probably would not be suprised to hear me say that I preached on the resurrection. We took a look at Calvary and the Empty Tomb. 

Yesterday and today, my family did some work projects at the church. The outdoor project was staining the fence along one side of the property. The interior project was painting the lower half of a wall around the fellowship hall. Both projects went really well.

Last week, we worked at the church as well and I built a sign board. We will soon have 4x4 foot church sign in place there. It will be a vinyl printed sign on Aluminium backing.

Thanks for praying for us. It's busy, but all is going well.  The flat roof replacement and added insulation is nearly complete. The electrician should be finished with his work this coming Friday.

I enjoyed a beautiful morning doing evangelism in Edinburgh. I'm still replacing my receiver on our street speaker and so I didn't do street preaching today. However, it is a joy to do one on one evangelism. 

God gave me many divine appointments. I spoke with two young people who are studying in Exeter, but are from Turkey. They are non practicing Muslims. After that I spoke with a believer from Romania who lives in Sheffield. He needs a good church and I hope he will email me as he said he intended to do.

I spoke with a very elderly woman and her Catholic daughter. I believe this was truly of the Lord as I intended to turn, but felt like God wanted me to approach them. The elderly woman didn't speak much at all, but patted the bench by her and had me sit down. I had a good opportunity to share the Gospel with them.

Next I spoke to a young lady who believes that God is IN everything and that we are gods. She said that she didn't believe the Bible because it came from men. She then took out a book she was reading about the spiritual truth she was sharing. I questioned how she could believe that since it came through men. It was a good conversation.

The last opportunity was with a Catholic young lady from Denmark. Please pray for Maria's eyes to be opened to the Gospel as a gift and not to be earned by our works. We sat on a park bench and looked up some verses in my Bible.

The above reminds me to ask you to please pray for divine appointments. We have seen God provide some unique opportunities in answer to your prayers. Thanks for praying.

We are making some progress in our renovations of the property. The flat roof replacement is going well. It should speed up this next week as I believe better weather is forecast. We also made some good progress on the renovations of the front hall. All of the wall paper is now down in the activity centre. Please pray for wisdom whether we should put lining paper back up or have the walls skimmed to make them smooth. 

We want to get to the painting stage as we are currently in the, "This does not look good" but necessary stage. Our church family is working really hard on cleaning up the property inside and out. 

Our attendance was down this morning as some are away and others are ill. We still had good services this morning and thank the Lord for meeting with us. Thanks for praying for SFBC.