Sunday, August 12

Wow! God is so awesome!

We had 25 people show up! Whoo hooo! We had some "regulars"
come....which is so cool that we have regulars....I mean this is such a God thing, and we had a buncha newbies. Our musician, Hosea, called in sick. When we realized he wasn't coming, we made a big deal to our new church family that we needed to pray for him. They all seemed genuinely concerned and missed him terribly (as did all of us). I was kinda worried the people wouldn't stay cause we didn't have music, but we played a little on a CD player, and it took awhile, but finally some of the people got into it. And "Lucifer" showed up today and stayed for the entire service....even the preaching! Pretty amazing for a self proclaimed "devout heathen." And we stayed more than an hour afterwards just fellowshipping with the people.

We had a new guy named Willie who came that collects aluminum cans for a living. I make it a point now to bring a bag full of cans each Sunday that we have collected from our soda addiction at the Strausser house, so Willie was the lucky recipient of the cans this week. After we fed him and gave him the cans, he sat down and got comfortable, pulled out his own Bible from his duffel bag and totally got into the teaching! Later Frank talked with him and Willie said he had a desire to preach at the Marina. So
Frank told him he should just go for it. He seemed surprised that someone
would believe in him and encourage him to just do it. Wouldn't that be so cool? A homeless man reaching out to other people on the Marina preaching the Word and minister to people? And earlier when Frank went to shake his hand, he said he didn't want to shake Frank's hand cause he had dirty hands. (Willie had dirty hands, not Frank) Frank said he didn't care about dirty hands, and then Willie shook his hand. You could tell he just felt accepted and loved....dirt and all. Yay God!!

We did have one probable salvation. She was a first timer and showed up about a third of the way in the service. She told me she didn't know we had this down here. She sat and listened and was really absorbed in the presentation of the Gospel. I wondered if she was a prostitute, another man had later made a comment that led me to believe she might have been. She was pretty messed up looking, but we loved on her anyway. Thank God for germX!! She seemed sort of shy around us, but I could tell God's love was piercing the darkness within her.

When Frank asked if you weren't saved to look up at him,
she looked up, but she didn't come forward. He did lead the group in a
prayer and she seemed like she might have repeated it to herself kinda under
her breath. If she comes next week we'll talk to her. I think she was embarrassed to come forward. That's ok. We can be pretty patient. We were bombarded with all the people wanting to come give us a hug or tell us about their weeks or pray for them for this and that so she left before we got a chance to to talk to her one on one.

God is so good!!

We are thinking about trying to rent a conference room or something for
Thanksgiving Day at one of the down town hotels. I'd love to have a
congregational Thanksgiving dinner with them all, just like a big ole family
dinner or something. You know, make it real special. Paige was asking what we were going to do when the weather gets cold because she still wants us to be her church, but she wants us to get a building for the cold months because she gets sick easily. So if you think of us, pray that God would lead us to the right area and that everything will fall into place for the winter months. It will be here before we know it. I know it will all work out, because He's just that kind of God and He's been putting this whole thing together all along...Wow!

Oh, oh, oh.....cool......as anyone from Augusta knows, we have been experiencing record heat this month....my face melts when I go outside. The temps have been above a hundred for about two weeks in a row. I was wondering how we were going to be able to handle 95 degrees at 9 a.m on Sunday and I was praying and asking God to just give us a cool day. Well the forecast
certainly wasn't calling for cool temps today, but would you believe that it was only 77 degrees this morning? Awesome! And we had a nice breeze for the time we were outside, the clouds were also covering the bright sun. And the gnats weren't as bad as usual. God gave us a special gift in that whole temp thing this morning. Thank You God for that relief in temps! You totally rock!