We began September with promotion Sunday! We had three promoted, a upper elementary girl C into the youth group and two sweet 3 years olds into the brand new preschool class! We're especially thankful for the Lord answering our prayers for another family with young children. Hudson is no longer alone in his Sunday School class and he loves his "little friends" as he calls them.
Later in September we had a small group of adults from church go see the movie, War Room. Great movie! I later took an unchurched/unsaved neighbor to see it. I prayed the days before that the Lord would use this movie to open her eyes. After the movie, while walking back to our car, she said "Well, that was eye opening!" I laughed, then explained by prayer! God is good.
Toward the end of September, we took a week vacation. We finally made hte 14+ hour drive to West Virginia to see James' family. It had been over 3 years since James had went home. Hudson did wonderfully well on the trip, considering what a long, boring drive it is. We had a great time seeing everyone. On the way home, we stopped to spend the Day with Thomas. That was definitely a highlight that Hudson still talks about.
We started October out with a baby shower for a sweet girl in church. Baby Ava is due in about a month and we are so excited to meet her!
In mid-October, I chaperoned two sweet girls (plus Hudson) to our state WMU's Mission Exploration. It was a day dedicated to learning about the cowboy church - doing crafts, singing songs, reading Bible stories, learning about cowboy culture, and hearing from a cowboy pastor.
October ended with a baptism! The B family came forward, the wife professing faith in Christ and desiring baptism and the husband moving his membership. They've been one of the couples that began worshiping with us around Easter of this year that we've been praying for.
We ended October with special musical guests The Calvary Road Trio leading worship one evening. Plus we celebrated Bro. J's 75th bithday!
November began with another baby shower - woot! Baby W #3 will join us towards the end of the year. Since we have two babies due very soon, our church recently purchased a baby changing table and two baby cribs for the nursery. It is so exciting to see this growth and the fact that we need to purchase such items is a blessing from Jesus!
We hosted the associational Hymn Sing in November where churches from all over join together to sing praises to Jesus, followed by food afterwards because we're Baptist. LOL Hudson sang three songs: Jesus Loves Me (all three verses), The Wise Man/Foolish Man, and ABCs because I don't fight every battle! I have no pictures from the night, sorry. I was too busy singing!
The week of Hymn Sing, we lost our oldest-living church member, "Aunt" Maxine. She was two months shy of her 96th birthday. James preached her funeral, poining people to Christ by using Scripture and the example Maxine lived in her life. She will be missed, but I'm so glad to have known her these past almost three years.
We took 17 Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes to our local collection church. From here, they will go to Denver, then Mexico. So thankful for a generous church family that cares for kids.
Winter is coming. Who am I kidding? It's already here - it snowed this weekend. We have a lot of festive Christmas events planned: decorating the Christmas tree (first tree the church has had in 40+ years!), Christmas program and lunch, visiting a sister church's Christmas musical, Christmas Eve service, New Years Eve party with youth, etc...
Praises:
- Growth! I just had to log into our Lifeway account to increase our Sunday School literature. Yay! In addition to now having a preschool class, one of our adult class has grown by several families. This is good news and we are very thankful.
- Baptism of sweet KB and her husband RB joining our church.
Prayers:
- The S family: B, L, K and Z. B is desperate for salvation, as is L. We've made several good inroads with them with the gospel, but have had several setbacks due to B's drug addiction. Please pray for them - that the strongholds of meth and prescription pills will be broken and that they will come to Christ.
- We have had two believing families worshiping with us for several months now. They are members of a sister church that they left after an ugly removal of their pastor. They are extremely hurt and honestly, scared, of joining a new church. Pray that they will find healing and comfort at our little congregation.
- Pray for our two pregnant mamas J and N. They are due around Christmas/New Years and are at that point in pregnancy where they are fairly miserable. Pray for relief and perseverance.
- Winter is always hard here. The weather prevents much from going on and for me, it leads to a lot of discouragement and sadness. I used to love winter, until I lived in an area that consistently gets a winter. Haha!
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