Sunday, March 9, 2008

Sunday Flashback

When we have a visiting missionary at NHC it's always an exceptional day. It's our belief that missionaries are God's choice servants - the cream of His crop. We're careful to invite the very best to be a part of our global team.

Today, Stacey Smith was with us for the first time in 6 years. (Read about her ministry to abandoned children in Quito, Ecuador in the post below this one.) What I've done over the last few years is to bring the missionary up on the platform with me and do an "interview", highlighting his/her/their work. Stacey did a great job.

But the icing on the cake is when we brought up Joseph and his new "forever family", Chris and Suzie from VA Beach. Joseph is one of Stacey's "Precious Miracles". He even sang "Jesus Loves Me" for us. (Pepe, you rocked the house in the 2nd gathering!) And to top it off, the church responded with an incredibly generous love offering for PM.

The MP 13 Band introduce a new song (to us), "I Am Free". It's been around a little while, but what a fun song to sing about the power of Christ to deliver us from bondage.

Lots of guests today, too. I watched a couple of young moms with kids in tow come into the lobby and commented, "Who are these guys?" It's become one of my favorite phrases every week as more and more people are coming to check out what God is doing at NHC.

Easter is just 2 weeks away. Our 3/23 wall of people we're praying for and plan to invite is filling up! Resurrection Day is going to blow out the walls.

And 32 of our partners (ie. "members") were officially graduated this morning from NHCU after "going around the bases" and taking 20 hours (5 classes) designed to help them on their journey of becoming fully-devoted Christ followers. Congrats and celebrate!

Then, after lunch with the family at The Lone Cedar (after sharing appetizers of crab dip and onion straws I had the small cobb salad), it was time for a great Sunday afternoon nap in the recliner!

4 comments:

Apple said...

Rick, I was probably one of the moms you were wondering about. It is a wonderful Sunday for us when we get to visit with your church family. Today was a blessing for us being able to hear Stacey speak of her mission. Thank you for sharing with us...you will, hopefully, be seeing us more and more in your congregation. We have some obligations to tie up at our church now before we can worship with you more regularly...but we are continuing to pray for God's will in this.

Scott said...

Sounds like an awesome day Rick. I really like the new song your band taught you!

Rick Lawrenson said...

It was Scott.
I already knew the song from listening to it on CDs. But it was new to the church worship gathering, and lots of fun.

They put up a cool background behind the words of an opened tomb with bright light coming from it.

CFHusband said...

glad the hear the tech team is doing cool things without me!