Saturday, June 4, 2016

Saturday Post -- 04/05/16

Me right now, without the glassesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
You can pretty much count on our posts being somewhat curtailed on the first Saturday of each month, as this is the day on which the Langham Trinidad group meets…at 6am! So difficult was it to find a time during sensible hours that suited everyone that the group elected to stage meetings at a time when everyone would definitely be available (if not entirely awake). Thus far, the early start has not been too much of a hindrance, and this morning we enjoyed our first such preaching class since theLevel 2 conference last month.

Regular readers will be aware that one of the strengths of the Langham Preaching programme is the frequency of visits from their national overseers (based in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba), and, not even three weeks since the retreat, we also received confirmation this week of the first such follow-up visit in October from our good friend Edwin.

My week has mostly been taken up with more administrative tasks for church, and preparation of the morning meditations at Fundación Totaí. Taking place before FT opens for ‘business’, these are an integral part of the day, an opportunity to hear from God’s word and prayerfully reflect upon it. Three of us are involved in this, taking a month each on a three month rotation. I have been slowly but steadily working through Mark’s gospel with the staff, the shortest of the four gospel accounts, yet five ‘months’ later (in reality, since May 2015), we’re only at Wednesday of Holy Week!

I’m passionate about the morning meditations, from a discipleship and evangelism standpoint, and so I’m happy to set aside the time to prepare each of them from scratch, though usually they take me around 90 minutes’ of work. With my other commitments, that requires time management; I usually do one a week, but in leaner preaching spells (such as right now) I try to get a few out of the way at once. It’s paying off, with the Christians in the group coming to a deeper appreciation of Mark’s purposes and themes, and the non-Christians reading through an entire gospel account, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Amanda, meanwhile, has had various monthly departmental meetings (another trait of the start of the month), but is also turning her attention to the summer’s volunteers. This year we do not have a team, but three individuals spread across the next few months (the third is hoping to stay on for the best part of a year). Next weekend, God-willing, the first of these three will have arrived on a medical placement from the USA, and Amanda will be charged with overseeing her time in Trinidad.

We say 'summer' volunteers, of course, when in actual fact, it's winter here, and feels like it. Hooray!
  
Prayer
  • The adoption. You know the score. We remain answerless.
  • For Amanda as she prepares for the arrival of this summer’s volunteers.
  • For the morning meditations delivered by Craig, San and Elías (this month); that the saints would be built up, unbelievers’ hearts would be softened, and that Christ would be established at the centre of the day ahead.

Praise
  • For a great start this morning to the new year of monthly Langham meetings.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!


Craig & Amanda

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.