Lovely service

I'm just off to bed. Liz is on night duty with Amanda Ivy who is slowly but surely doing fine.

The service this evening went great. Full church, blessed praise and worship and the sermon really went well and seems to have blessed many lives. PTL! Thanks for your prayers.

I have cuddled Amanda Ivy!

Our 8th grandchild, Lynn & Hutan's daughter Amanda Ivy, was born exactly 4 weeks ago today and finally this afternoon arrived in Patos with her parents and Grandma. It's great to have Liz back and everyone here. Amanda is so cute, very tiny, but slowly making progress. I had my first hold of her and sang to her! We just need to pray for her to put on weight and get stronger quickly. The doctor has said we must avoid visits for the time being so as to avoid the transmission of illnesses or the likes. So praise God with us and please keep praying.

This was the day!

FA Cup final day, FA Amature Cup final and Wimbledon final day were the three days as a lad that I was allowed to watch sport on TV! TV, for my fundamentalist dear old Dad, was tabu, so we sneaked into our neighbour Mrs. Wheeler's ground floor flat in Highlever Road, North Kensingston, and watched on black and white TV. The FA Amature Cup was important because my Mum's home town of Bishop Auckland won it three times in the 1950s

So today I'll cheer for the underdogs in both English and Scottish FA Cups - Aston Villa and Falkirk!

My sermon is all ready for tomorrow in Patos. I will be preaching on Mark 1:40-45 about the purification of a leper who probably wasn't a leper! This is the 4th sermon in my series going through Mark's Gospel. 

Liz, Lynn, Hutan & Amanda have just left João Pessoa gratefully, so they should be in Patos this afternoon. Now this IS good news! PTL!

Blessing

Last night's service was really blessed in the Patos church. I led and gave the Bible study and we had so much participation from different folk with words and songs. Really encouraging.

News from São Mamede is good too where the church plant there which had folded up is about to restart. PTL! In the rural areas the work goes forward in leaps and bounds.

Slowly, very slowly, prem. baby Amanda is getting stronger and it looks like they will all be coming to Patos at the weekend at last after a month in the capital where Amanda of course was born. Thanks for your prayers. Please don't stop.

The water situation in our State is utterly desperate. After the drought from the second half of 2011 through to March 2014 we just had a few good months of rain prior to the drought kicking back in. Hence 2014 never recovered the reservoirs and now with a poor rains of 2015 things are worse than ever. Things are very serious indeed - even in cities which normally don't have droughts, like Campina Grande, there will be water rationing for 3 days every week as from next week!

Field Conference results

One new minister was ordained at the EAB/ACEV annual Field Conference this year held at Itaporanga. The focus for the coming 2015/2016 year was set as 'United we are Stronger' based around John 17:21. Praise God that we experienced this unity at the Conference.

Statistics showed that our 85 churches remained stable in numbers (about 3,600) over the past year with an increase in members and a decrease in the number of Christians in our churches who are not yet members. People evangelized were about 200,000 and those benefitted by social action projects about 100,000. The general assembly felt the latter statistic was more realistic than the former and that the number of those evangelized was probably inflated by over ambitious estimates of those evangelized via our 8 radio ministries spread around the field. Thus for next year a set and uniform way of making these radio audience estimates was put in place. Probably a more realistic evangelism figure for this year would be around 150,000 which is still truly wonderful. PTL!

World Champion in QPR Prediction List!

The following announcement has just been made:  "Congratulations to JOHN PHILIP MEDCRAFT. He kept the top spot for many months. VINCENT VAN DE LUSTGRAAF finished in 2nd spot with PETER HOUSEGO in 3rd. Thank you again for playing along with this every week. It is all for fun but a bit of competition don't hurt anyone. I hope you all join in next season".

http://qprtillidie-predictionleague.webnode.com/table/  

Now your Majesty... what about the next honours list?

Excellent Annual Field Conference

The annual EAB/ACEV Field Conference went superbly well. Any minor moments of tension were quickly overcome in the 4 loooooooooooong general assemblies (which I chaired) which covered a great amount of business. The emphasis was on unity and a good degree of positive vision for the future was evident.

In the final celebration we ordained one lady minister from the beach church at Jacumã and Pr. Wostenes from Campina Grande preached the Word and I led the service.

It wasn't easy for me personally without Liz present, but the Lord helped us. News from João Pessoa is that baby Amanda is slowly but surely getting stronger and hopefully they will all be in Patos by the end of the first week in June. Thank you for praying.

I am extremely tired after the exhausting weekend. I got back in time to lead the service last night in Patos and I also preached! I managed to stay awake for my own sermon!