God gave us a great start to Christmas as Kay Lee arrived safely home this morning. We praise the Lord for God's provision through a family member for her to come home for Christmas. We haven't seen her since she left for camp this past May.

Our service this morning went well. Katie was unable to attend due to illness. So, we adjusted some things, but still had a good morning. I preached on Luke 2, A Christmas Carol Story. We found the Christmas Carols in the Christmas story and enjoyed focusing on the birth of the Lord.

Yesterday, we viewed a potential church property. It is a house with a decent size garden where we could potentially build an auditorium. Please continue to pray for wisdom. This home is in a very good location. We can afford to purchase it, but we would need to wait on the Lord for His provision to build. Prayer appreciated.... 

Thank you for praying for the day of prayer. We delayed it one week to yesterday after high winds and snow were forecast. The weather yesterday was much more agreeable. 

We started this prayer time about 2 and a half years ago, I think. The five men who have most often been present (myself included) were there yesterday. The furthest away drives about 3 hours. It's about a 2 hour trip from here.

We spend 2 hours in prayer before lunch and then another 2 hours in prayer after lunch. I believe God is greatly using this prayer time and trust that we will see tangible fruit from our labours in prayers. Thank you for praying for this time.

We enjoyed having another first time visitor this morning. This lady has been in contact for several months. She lives in the heart of Edinburgh and took bus out to Loanhead and we collected her in our church mini bus. It was a blessing to have her with us.

Our communion service is normally Sunday PM the first Sunday of every month. Because several were not going to be able to make it last Sunday night, we moved it to our Sunday School hour this morning. It was a blessing to start our day with a focus on the sacrifice and suffering of our Lord for our sins.

I preached this morning a "Christmas Message" as it touches the birth of Jesus. I preached on the textual biography of the great prophet, preacher, John the Baptist - Miracle Baby Number 1, from Luke 1. He was an awesome answer to prayer and a gracious gift of God to his parents and to his Jewish audience.

Tonight we are going to have our normal service with a special activity afterwards of setting up our church Christmas Tree. We are looking forward to a fun evening. Thank you for praying for our services. God gave us a blessed morning.

Storm Barra has arrived and it's not very nice outside just now. I was able to get out with flyers yesterday afternoon. I was rained out in the morning. For those of you who remember my F. D. T. (Flyer Distribution Tool) - interestingly, it was ripped through a mail slot yesterday by a D.O.G. That is the reason I use an FDT as it puts the flyer nicely through the mail slot bristles and protects your hand. Thankfully my hand wasn't ripped through the mail slot. The lady was very nice and gave me back my small cheese board (civilian terminology.) The dog ran to the window immediately after obtaining my paddle and growled menacingly at me. I'm just thankful that I was holding the F.D.T. with a quick release grip so that the little guy still had all of his teeth. :) (Just in case anyone thinks that there isn't excitement in putting out Gospel flyers.)

I had one good short conversation with a teenager yesterday. Today Tommy was my partner as we got out before the storm and distributed flyers. God allowed us a to meet an older woman who may want to attend our carol sing service. I'm going to follow up and see if we can collect her for that service.

Thank you for praying for our outreach.

God blessed us with a good day despite the unexpected. The unexpected was that the heat in the conference room was off when we arrived. It has a cement floor and it does not heat up quickly. We moved Sunday School to the cafe and "endured" colder than normal temps in the AM service. It made for an interesting change of pace and we made some memories.

Tonight a pleasant surprise was having two young ladies join us for the evening service. They are sisters who are students. One of them is located near us. We enjoyed fellowshipping with them for a little bit after the service.

I preached this morning on "Being Stout for God" from Habakuk 3:13-18. Our study on the Life of David in Sunday School is also being uploaded weekly to sermon audio. 

God gave us some good follow up appointments with two mothers yesterday. We are praying that their children will want to come to church. Both mothers indicated they would bring them if they want to come.

Thanks for praying for our church. God gave us an encouraging day.

PS. Our day of pray in Blair Atholl has been put back one week to the 14th. Storm Barra is arriving on Tuesday with up to 70mph winds and snow.

Thank you for your prayers regarding our land enquiry. Here is what I just shared with our church family. Your continued prayers are much appreciated as we wait on the Lord for His perfect will.

Good evening church family,

Sometimes as I do evangelism God does something that you have to step back and say, "GOD DID THAT." I'm sure we should say it more often than we do, but there are times where it is SO CLEARLY of God that even unbelievers have to admit it.

Today was a divine appointment like that. It really began about a month ago as I bumped into our former postman. I've seen him 3 times since then and I hadn't seen him much at all in the last 4 years since moving out of the area.

Last week as Don and I did flyers, we saw him and I surprised myself by calling him by name. Today as I saw him, I confirmed his name as he walked past me and he stopped for a wee chat. Tommy from my church was with me. Tommy lives about 7 miles away on the East side of Edinburgh. (We were putting out flyers in Loanhead this morning.)

I invited the postman to our Carol Sing on Christmas Eve and gave him him our new church flyer. Tommy said, "The most important thing is knowing Jesus. Do you know Jesus?" He said that he did and was walking away (about 40 feet from us) when Tommy said very loudly to me, "Ask him if he kens (knows) Tommy Woods." The postman kind of jerked and said, "Who?" Tommy replied and and the postman said, "Ai, I ken Tommy Woods." Tommy said, "You are looking at him." As he walked toward us Tommy said to him, "I thought I recognized my brother-in-law." 

This man and Tommy were, "Best Mates" for several years and then the man started dating Tommy's sister. They were married, had children, and then divorced. Tommy had not seen this man in over 20 years. Tommy was able this morning to challenge this man to find Jesus. 

This is a specific answer to our prayers as we often pray for Tommy's unsaved family. Some of you will remember that a couple years ago Tommy and I witnessed to a woman whom God revealed was Tommy's first cousin. (Their dad's were brothers.) They did not know each other and God revealed their relationship through our conversation. OUR GOD IS GREAT AND ABLE TO DO ALL THINGS.

(This will be long, but here is another story from this morning.)

Tommy gave a flyer to a workman who said, "Give one to the guy in the truck." Tommy passed that info. onto me and I tried to hand the flyer to the driver of the truck who had another man with him in the cab. He refused it and said, "I am a heathen." I said, "You know where heathen go when they die?" He said, "In the ground." (It became clear that his mate wanted him to get "evangelized.") So, I took advantage of the opportunity and gave him a 15 second sermon. I said, "There is a verse in the Bible you should know. The Bible says, 'And whosoever is not found in the book of life is cast into the lake of fire.' God doesn't want you to go there. Jesus died so that you don't have to go there. Without Jesus you will go there. There is your sermon for the day, I hope that it stays with you the rest of the week." Please pray for God's grace to awaken those men's hearts.

We had heavy snow falling this morning as we got up. It was beautiful and was a great reminder of the power of God to cover and cleanse our sin.

Our faithful attendees were all out this morning. We enjoyed studying the LIfe of David in Sunday School. I preached this morning on "the poor wise man" from Ecclesiastes 9. He is a great picture of Christ's ability to deliver our city.

Tonight we continued our study of Proverbs. We continue to pray for God to build up our "riders" on the bus. We have 4 we collected today.

God's good. Thank you for your prayers for our family and ministry.

God blessed our Thanksgiving service on Wednesday PM. It was fun to share testimonies and praise the Lord for His grace this past year.

Our family also enjoyed having missionary Amanda Baker and a friend of hers with us for a few days. We had some fun outings like visiting the Edinburgh Christmas Market on Thanksgiving night. We also enjoyed some needed down time.

Last night we had the first named storm of the season, Storm Anwer and it was a good storm. (I enjoy weather.) The boys said a tree was down over in the woods near us and there are a lot of small branches down. God's creation is powerful!

Update on my recent witnessing opportunity and planned Bible study. Unfortunately the young man backed out saying he had other responsibilities he had to attend to on that day. I continue to pray for him and hope that someday we will see him come to Christ.

We had encouraging attendance this morning as most of our church family were there. It was good to see everyone in their place after illness and aches and pains. It was a beautiful COLD autumn day and the sunshine was very wecoming.

I preached this morning on "spiritual power tools" for building God's church from Zechariah 4. I'm glad that the Lord put this study on my heart as it was good for me to dig into Zechariah's vision. This is the passage where God says, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit." Praise God for the golden oil which makes it possible for the church to burn brightly. The temple builders were encouraged by Zechariah's message and we as church builders should be encouraged as well.

I'm having technical difficulties finding the (please skip this part if you are not a "techie" person.) DCIM files on my SD card. Lord willing, we will figure this out and get those recordings uploaded to sermon audio. However, our service was recorded on our Facebook page. Please pray for wisdom as to how to access these files. I've just started a study of the life of David and lesson 2 is also on that SD card.

Thank you for praying for our ministry. God encouraged us this morning.