PRAISE

  • Eyes! The doctor thinks all is well with my eyes. Probably more importantly, I am regaining vision now. Still have a bubble running around in there! Just a smaller one. But it is good to feel like there is progress.
  • Abe and Vera made a 3-day trip visiting about half of the Centers of Hope. They had safety on the road, traveling hundreds of miles, leaving from Kyiv at 9 AM on Friday and Abe returned home last night at midnight. Many good reports. Some struggles of course. And the hours of sitting in the car with someone else driving gave them lots of time to plan for the fall.

PRAYER

  • Pray for the Center of Hope husband and wife teams. There can be a lot of stresses and figuring out the balancing of family and ministry. Pray that the Lord will protect these marriages and help them be sensitive to each other and not just overcome with the needs around them.
  • Pray specifically for Dennis and Nadia. They just got married recently and work with another couple. There seem to be some frictions. At a later time I will share some of the challenges that our leaders face. But all of them are either working on a team or trying to build a team. We each have individual gifts so teams are essential if you want a Center to actually become a functioning church. But a lot of grace and communication and overcoming of differences has to happen along the way.
  • Pray as invitations begin to go out for the upcoming workshop the beginning of September. Abe will be presenting ideas and actual prototypes for having worship services and sermons that will speak to the unchurched and the “smartphone” generation. This will be open to all church leaders in the Baptist Union, not just our CofH workers. There is a possibility of 200 or more people attending. There is such a need for our churches to be able to connect people with a living, caring God who wants to have a relationship—as opposed to joining a “club” hoping that will give them an inside track to God!! Pray for God to open hearts to come and hear new ideas. Pray for spiritual leaders to be burdened for our suffering people who feel lost with life turned upside down.

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How desperately people need hope—eternal hope. The hope you and I often take for granted.

Rom 10:14  But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? NLT