Today's Meetings:

9.45am Children's Bible Club
10.15am Sunday Prayer Meeting in cottage
11.00am Morning Service
5.40pm Lord's Table (see note on reverse)
6.30pm Evening Service

Weekly Meetings:

Wednesday

9.30am to 11.00am Mums & Tots
3.45pm to 4.45pm Children's Hour
6.45 to 8.00 KIC club - For Year 4, 5 & 6 children.

Thursday

2.00pm Ladies Rest Hour - Speaker: Ann Long
7.45pm Bible study and prayer meeting - Speaker: Pastor

Friday

7.30pm to 9.00pm FOY - For secondary school children

Sunday

11.00am & 6.30pm Sunday Services - Led by Pastor

Thought For The Week:

"The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul." Psalm 121:7

Prayer For The Church:

Continue to pray for the midweek meetings that God may bless these. Pray particularly that the leaders will be given wisdom in managing discipline issues.
Pray for Ruth as she seeks another job.
Pray for Debbie that the Lord will lead her concerning a job.
Pray for Ralph as he is involved with planning for the camp re-union and for the camps next year.

Prayer For The Local Area:

High Wycombe is the church on the Prayer Diary for the coming week. Praise for an encouraging open air recently, pray for our outreach in the town centre every two weeks, pray for wisdom in the leadership and for our weekend away 26th-28th October.

Soho/Covent Garden. An email written in the early minutes of Wednesday morning shared news of a thrilling conversation with a man at the book table outside the Fair Share shop on Tuesday evening. Please pray that ‘R' will read the gospel of Mark that he took away with him and come to know Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord.

Prayer For The Wider Area:

The Grace World View - Niger
Niger is located in western Africa. It shares borders with several countries including Nigeria, Chad, and Algeria. All but the very southern part of the country is Sahara desert.

Nearly 13 million people live in Niger. There are many different people groups and there has been fighting among these groups for many years.

The people of Niger are very poor. Uranium mining once brought significant income but has fallen off in recent years. Most survive on subsistence agriculture. There is little prospect for improvement in the near future.

Niger was a French colony before gaining independence in 1960. After independence, Niger suffered through a long series of military governments and coups. A peace accord in 1995 failed to hold as two more coups occurred in 1996 and 1999. The 1999 coup led to the free election of a civilian government.

The vast majority of the people are Muslim. Despite this, other groups are for the most part free to practice their religion. However, there is a growing call within the Muslim community for the imposition of Islamic law. This would effectively end religious freedom.

Traditional African religions are still practiced by approximately 2% of the people. Evangelicals are very few in number - about one tenth of 1%.

Proposed new amendment in Parliament Homosexual rights activists are calling upon the government to extend existing racial hatred law to cover ‘homophobic' incidents. Stonewall, the homosexual rights lobby group, have been encouraging their supporters to write to their MPs asking them to support an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which receives its second reading on Monday 8th October. The amendment would be aimed at tackling words and behaviour which ‘stir up hate against gay people'.If such an amendment is put forward it is likely to be in the form of the existing "incitement against racial hatred" law.

The type of actions targeted would not only be violently homophobic words, but would no doubt cover any criticism of practising homosexuality, homosexual acts and lifestyles. We faced a very similar battle with the religious hatred law, which was eventually amended to protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion. That amended law came into force on Monday 1st October 2007.

Weekly Bible Readings:

Mon 8th Oct

Job 23

Hebrews 11

Tue 9th Oct

Job 24

Hebrews 12

Wed 10th Oct

Job 25

Hebrews 13

Thur 11th Oct

Job 26

James 1

Fri 12th Oct

Job 27

James 2

Sat 13th Oct

Job 28

James 3

Sun 14th Oct

Job 29

James 4

General Announcements:

Association meetings yesterday A very big thank you to those who were able to help at the meetings in Tonbridge yesterday - particularly to Sarah and Rachel as they helped run the crèche throughout the day. Our willingness to help with such meetings can be a real source of encouragement to others.