All of us have had our lives impacted in some way by the coronavirus. Our family is supposed to be leaving on 6 April for the USA. The Andersons are supposed to be arriving here on 1 April. We'll see what God does and how God leads.

God gave us a good morning. You'd enjoy hearing the duet before the message this morning.  "I'm Living by Faith." Benson and Blake sang the duet. I preached this morning a topical message on, "Covid-19, A Faith Response." 

We've started doing evangelism on Sunday afternoons with some of our church family. Lord willing, we'll be able to get out this afternoon - weather permitting. We appreciate your prayers with everything going on. Please pray that the decisions we make would be clearly the leading of the Lord.

Video Link to our AM Service

It was a blessing to get with 6 other men yesterday and spend several hours in prayer. I'm thankful that God has opened the door for these gatherings. Our next one is planned for November as our family will be away on furlough (Lord willing ) for 6 months. Please pray about our furlough. The virus is causing a lot of flight changes in different countries. God has a perfect plan and we know as for God - HIS WAY IS PERFECT.

We've got a full schedule today. Our normal Sunday begins with a prayer time from 9:40-9:55. 10 is SS and 11 is our morning service. We get home about 1:00 and need to leave here by about 1:40 to get to the Trust Service which begins around 2:00. We'll get back home hopefully by 3:15. Then at 4:15 we have our (Titus and Timothy) TNT class. We're doing evangelism right now. Lord willing, we'll have the weather we need to get out this afternoon. 5:15 is our youth choir/ men's prayer time. 6:00 is our evening service. 

It's a full schedule and it makes for a great day as God gives us some extra strength for a demanding schedule. We appreciate your prayers in that regard. I continued a message this morning on, "Outspoken for God" from Acts 4. The early church was outspoken in persecution, in preaching, in position, in prayer and in provision. God gave us a good morning. Praise His name and thank you for your prayers!

Tuesday of this week is a day of prayer for the missionary men. Please pray with us for a great day in prayer.

Sermon Video Link

I'm just back from a beautiful morning of putting out Gospel flyers in Edinburgh. I was in an area about 3 miles from our church location. Please pray for these flyers as they are going into homes where I haven't previously been. 

The only conversation I had this morning didn't really cheer me up. I handed a man a flyer and he said, "What's this?" I said, "I'm the Baptist preacher in Loanhead and it's something I've written about faith in God." His response as he handed it back, "You DO have a problem."

You know, I can't argue with him. The problem I have is that men are sinners in need of Jesus. The sad thing was that he handed back the remedy. Please pray for the Gospel to break through the sin hardened unbelieving hearts of a perverse generation who have rejected God. 

Tonight we are looking forward to a BBQ with some fellow missionaries. The Dillmans are coming over as are the Tim Peterson family from Germany. We'll make the most of this nice weather.

My normal Monday morning is reading at a library near our home. Today I decided to go to an Edinburgh library with the plan of doing some evangelism afterwards. However, when I got there the library was closed. So instead of reading, I handed out flyers for about half the morning and then shot some video for sharing at Camp Chetek this summer. Our family has the privilige of being the camp missionary for Junior Week II and Teen Week II.

Even though it was icy out this morning, I'm thankful for some decent weather. We had another named storm yesterday. That makes 3 out of the last 4 Sundays where we had named storms. The Met Office names a storm here if it meets certain bad criteria... high winds, rain, snow.... I saw that we may have just had our wettest February on record, but that remains to be calculated. So, praise the Lord, for a decent weather week.

Katie has her ladies' meeting tonight at our home. I know she would appreciate your prayers for God's blessing.

God has given us some encouragement lately. Keep praying for God's great grace for Free Baptist Church. We enjoyed sharing our furlough presentation with the church this morning. Everyone really enjoyed it. It's great to look back at what God has done.

Our family did special music this morning that we have prepared for furlough. We're not looking forward to leaving our church... but, we look forward to having the opportunity to minister as a family and share what God is doing here.

I preached this morning on being, "Outspoken For God" from Acts 4. It's the first part of a two part message God put on my heart about boldness. The early church was a bold church. God can help us to be the same. We live in a day where we need to be bold. God help us to speak up for His truth

video link from today's message

I was able to get out today and put out Gospel flyers. The weather has been very fierce. It snowed all of yesterday morning. It was cold this morning, but right now the sun has come out.

God gave me a wonderful divine appointment with a lady who was saved about a year ago. She thanked me for the flyer and said that she was looking for a church. I will be suprised if we don't see her visit our church soon. Please pray for God to meet her need and direct her according to His perfect will. Her testimony was that she had everything and that she had nothing. She had a big void in her life before she came to the Lord. Praise God for His grace at work in her life.

I met another sweet Christian lady at a bus stop as I was walking past. God has encouraged me today and I'm thankful. God still has his "7,000." (Romans 11)

After named storms every weekend, it was a blessing to be between weather warnings for yesterday and tomorrow. We have sunshine and great weather for door to door this afternoon. We've done some evangelism training recently and are going to put it to use at 4:15 today. Your prayers are appreciated.

I enjoyed preaching this morning on Paul's Gospel Pep Talk in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Paul gave a great motivational Gospel race challenge and we enjoyed looking at it this morning. I also enjoyed singing a trio with my oldest boy, Benson and a college student, Blake. It is on the audio and video if you want to listen in. Praise God we had a mother and brother present this morning. They are not strangers and we were very thankful to have them join us. God's good. Keep praying!

God provided a two hour weather window this morning and I was able to put out between 2-3 hundred flyers. Just as I got back to the car a soaking rain set in. I saw it coming and knew it was going to be close. I didn't have any long conversation but two short opportunities to briefly speak to someone and personally hand them a flyer.

On my return home, I stopped at the home of a family who's daughter attends our church. Please pray for her father. He got an infection in both his legs that also can attack your organs. He's home from the hospital but can't go down the steps from their flat which is on the first floor (second floor in the US.) He's five weeks into this and needs God's grace to get back on his feet. He wants to attend church and was going to start to come more at the beginning of this year but then got ill. God knows. Your prayers are appreciated.

Tonight our children are looking forward to serving everyone at our John 3:16 banquet. They have been planning this special night for a few weeks. We're going to eat and fellowship together and I'm going to preach a message on God's love from John 3:16. Your prayers are appreciated for this special night.

This is the third Sunday in a row with high winds. We've got wind gusts warnings and we could hear the wind during the service. Thankfully our church signs held up. A water weighted sign for our church blew over last week.

I enjoyed preaching this morning on Micah's resolve in a spiritually difficult day. We can definitely identify Micah's day in our own day and we need to decide as he did What To Do When..... The message is from the last chapter of Micah, chapter 7.

God's blessed our church. As I put our furlough presentation together this past week, God reminded me of His great goodness. We're very thankful for each person and family He has brought to our assembly.

video link