Please, have a seat!

It was such a great blessing to sit in our 51 new chairs this morning. We thank the Lord for those people who generously contributed to replace our old well worn chairs for new chairs suitable for worship! Today the sermon was "Godly Resolutions for Life" based on Romans 12:9-18

The north and south of it!

This Sunday was a bit of a challenge! Parkwood Baptist Church on the south side invited me back to hear more about our church plant ministry. I agreed but told them I had to be out by 10:30 in order to get back up north to our church in time to preach at 11:15. It's about a 35 minute drive if traffic is in your favor. It was, and I was able to speak to the Parkwood folks for about 20 minutes and then "ran" out the door as they finished their service and I hopped back in the car and made it to River North Baptist Church just as my visiting brother who was filling in for me, was closing a session of prayer. We so appreciate Parkwood and their willingness to become involved in our ministry and I thank the Lord for His great timing in allowing my brother and his family to be here this weekend not only to visit but to pinch hit for me again.

Home for the holidays!

Today was the last Sunday for several of our college students as they leave for home for Christmas break. So we gave them a "sweet" send-off. Two of the ladies baked cookies and Tamra and I assembled some other candies to thank the students for their faithfulness to the church. It was a great day in the Lord, even sunny and warm! As always, I am so blessed by the friendships and Christian love that I see growing and strengthening our church. Please continue to pray for our church plant through the Christmas season. Beth (left) a student at Moody shares a good bye with Nancy, a new believer who lives 45 minutes to the north but commutes in each Sunday with her boyfriend Hector who is also a new believer. Beth and Nancy were strangers in September, but have grown closer this fall & winter!

Slow Train Coming!

I received a last minute request to speak and present our ministry at both services at a church downstate. The pastor was off to visit his brand new granddaugthter and thought this would be a good time to introduce River North Baptist Church to his flock for future consideration of support. It is a five hour drive which I did not relish in the face of an oncoming snowstorm and single digit temperatures. So Amtrak became my best option at $66 round trip. I could sit and work on the stuff I needed to finish before Monday! After waiting 90 minutes to leave it was a pretty uneventful trip except for one little problem. It was dark and I could only see an occasional light whiz by so I didn't really think too much when the train came to a slow stop. I thought it was just another station. When the train began to move backwards I got a little concerned. "Don't worry folks!" the conductor announced, "we hit the brakes a couple miles back and slid to a stop due to ice on the tracks, we slid passed the station and have to go back." Huh? A two mile skid? ok now I was worried; but we got along fine and eventually made it to our stop 2 hours late. I was so grateful for Brett, Ryan and Mark who filled in for me Sunday and Dan, a grad student at Moody, who preached. Tamra also stayed behind to be the ring leader for our morning worship. We had 30 in attendance with four new visitors, thank the Lord!