Wednesday 1 May 2019

April Update


G’day Praying Friends:

We pray that you had a wonderful time this Easter season celebrating our risen Saviour! Your prayers were answered in abundance and we are so excited to share with you all God has been doing in our ministry here in Australia.

Easter came early for us as we did our Easter Outreach on 7 April. This was the first weekend before school holidays began and we find that if we do it any later, the kids forget. Our church devoted the entire week before the outreach to prayer – we made up a checklist of all the daylight hours for people to tick off times they would be praying. This event was literally bathed in prayer. We were praying for 50 kids (based on our supplies!) but God decided we could handle 60😊 There were also 25+ parents that stayed for the outreach. One of the ladies from our church gave the gospel presentation in story form. She spoke on the children’s level and it was so impactful. How thankful we are for people to hear the gospel so clearly! We had several inquiries on the day about church and other children’s programs. Our people had good conversations with parents as well. What an opportunity to continue to sow seeds of the gospel in the lives of our community!

This year we decided to do a Good Friday service – something we’ve never done before. Here in Melbourne, all shops and business are closed on Good Friday and open on Easter. There are exceptions, of course, but that seems to be the norm. We decided to have a morning service – not expecting a huge turnout. There were more than we anticipated would come – and a couple of visitors as well. It wasn’t a “normal” service. We actually took a walk with Jesus on that Friday. We read Scripture, sang songs that were appropriate with the Scripture, and did other readings as well. It was SO moving – and put a completely different perspective on the weekend. It truly set the tone for our Sunday celebration! It’s something we will definitely be doing in the future.

As we’ve told you in the past, Easter is always one of our lowest attended services (along with Christmas, to be honest). They both take place during school holidays and families are gone for most of the time. Definitely not like in America! We were thankful for those who came along and celebrated our Risen Saviour with us!

This Saturday, 4 May, we will be hosting a Mother and Daughter Afternoon Tea. Please pray that we can be a blessing to those that come along.

Also, please be in prayer for our men’s and ladies Bible studies beginning in May. We’ve had a great response to those wanting to come along.

Our prayer during this season is that we take the resurrection with us through the whole year. We want to say, as the disciples did after meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus, “did our hearts not burn within us”? It’s easy to celebrate the death and resurrection and then go on with life. But it is the very thing that has changed our life forever! May we live with that resurrection power everywhere we go!

Shining the Light Down Under,
Rob and Jackie