1-Grace Baptist Church, New Bethlehem, PA; 2-Kathy Evans, FBC Maysville worked with Life Community Church, Greensboro; 3- Region 8 Feeding; 4- Biltmore Church, Asheville; 5- Mt Zion Wesleyan, Thomasville.6-Daystar Church, Greensboro; 7-Purchase the lastest in Disaster Rebuild fashion when you volunteer at one of the five rebuild sites; 8-Florence Baptist Association; 9-Princeton Church, Football coaches and players; 10-Mission Discovery group from Bloomfield, NJ; Not pictured-Bill Martin, Billy Carter, Paul Staph, Michael Locklear; Shane & Isaiah, see below.This week has been filled with lots of ministry and labor of love. I (Billy) apologize to start off for not getting building pictures. But this operation is so big and busy at this time I had trouble getting away from the rebuild center to even look at what’s happening in the field. However, I do know that we had many volunteers this week who have done an awesome job. Three homes were completed so families could return home, painting, flooring laid, door and windows installed, sheetrock hung and finished, electrical and plumbing done both rough in and completions, roofing, insulation and even more tear out jobs completed. Let’s just say much work was done this week by volunteers with a servant’s heart that came to Lumberton to serve as GOD needs them to and it was a big success.Now for the most exciting news. On Friday we had a first for Lumberton Rebuild Center. We had a young lady with a team from PA who gave her testimony during our devotion time on Wednesday night. She shared with us what her life had been like with an alcoholic father and divorced non Christian parents. She told us she had recently accepted Jesus into her life and what a difference it had made. The next night she told her group leader that she wanted him to baptize her while they were still here. Even though he was not a pastor he agreed to do it if we could provide the vessel for the water.
We set out to find what we needed to make it happen. Billy went over to the construction company to see if they had anything we could use. They had a bathtub sitting in their yard. He brought it over we got it cleaned up and filled with water.
Billy had talked to a man that worked over at the construction company that told him his 8 year old granddaughter had accepted Jesus two weeks ago. She didn't want to be baptized in the ocean or the river so they talked about bringing her over to get baptized in the tub. He wanted to bring about 10 family members so we invited them to join us for dinner.
So on Friday night after dinner and a short devotion we all went out to the prayer garden and two young girls were baptized. Then we all sang Amazing Grace. It was a glorious evening that we will never forget.
PS-Don’t think that because so much got done this week that the operation is anywhere near complete. Today we have 30 homes on the working list which still leaves 120 on the waiting list to get started on and new requests coming in almost every day. Call, text or e-mail us or NCBM office to get your group on the schedule to help rebuild the Lumberton area. We need many skilled teams so the teams who are not so skilled can fill in and help when they respond.
No comments:
Post a Comment