This week we have at the mission a team of young people from Brookside Baptist Church in Wisconsin here for their annual short-term mission trip. The group, with their pastor, has been conducting street-level evangelistic outreach, helping in the food pantry, singing in our church and chapel services, and helping in other tasks such as pressure washing the sidewalks and taking out the voluminous amount of garbage and recycling cardboard our food pantry generates (true of any food pantry our size). The group asked me to go with them to a Mets game last night, and I did. It was an enjoyable time for the group, taking the 7 train up into East Queens. I think this was the first time some of the kids had ridden the elevated 7 train or any elevated train, seeing views of the city peculiar to that route.
Yesterday in chapel, I distributed 27 Spanish Bibles to the crowd, telling them to use them for the service and, if they did not want to read them later, to leave them here at church for next time. About 6 Spanish Bibles were left after the service. If any of our readers desire to help our mission financially, we have at least two key needs I am aware of. One is for infrastructure capital – for installing things such as ceiling fans in the sanctuary. Another is for Bibles, especially Spanish Bibles and Bible-booklets which we have been giving in great numbers recently.
Yesterday in chapel, as part of the English service, I preached more Spanish than I have ever spoken in any other venue in my life, and I barely speak Spanish. I am doing this out of necessity. A sizeable portion of our English-chapel crowd is actually elderly Spanish-speaking people. It is highly rewarding to speak to them the wonderful words of life in their own native tongue, preaching simple truths of salvation which may be new to some of them. The challenge is appealing to me. I have prayed the Lord to keep me from accidently introducing any false doctrine. Even this morning I was texted by a Spanish attendee to our church (not chapel services) who asked me if I would speak some Spanish for the church services on Sundays. What a joy it is to issue the wonderful words of life!
Galen continues with resoluteness to work on various projects here at the church. He has a knack for (and training in) hanging doors and other such things. Galen preaches in our Thursday chapel services and, along with Brad and Heather, is helping to provide some wonderful and edifying music for our services this summer.
Pastor Bill and family had a great time on their vacation in Bill’s native Colorado recently. A church from Wylie, Texas furnished the trip, and Bill and family came back with interesting stories. Bill spoke of driving along a Rocky Mountain ridge on which were two lanes paved, no guard rails, and sheer drops immediately off each side. (I can only imagine what a pot hole might mean in that scenario.) Unforunately, Bill Jr. didn't bring back any Big Foot sighting accounts.
To any of our North Carolina readers: I am taking some of the Jones kids to see a soccer match between our native Carolina RailHawks and the New York Cosmos out in Long Island next month. I am a Virginian, living in New York, preparing to return to Cary, NC (home of the RailHawks) this fall. I wonder whom I should pull for?
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