Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Hurricane Irene has left a long trail of destruction and death through the Caribbean and along the U.S. East coast into Canada. Initial reports from Charles Fleming indicate that our members in Haiti and the Bahamas suffered only minimal damage, and so far our U.S. district pastors are reporting that our members along the East Coast were also spared the worst, though some members had to evacuate their homes, and are experiencing continuing power outages.
We are united in support and prayer for all those affected by the storm who are grieving the death of loved ones and enduring the loss of property.
Even in the midst of tragedy and pain, life moves on. This week we celebrate with Scott and Barbara Wertz the birth of their first grandchild (Scott is a long time employee in our Glendora home office) and rejoice in milestone anniversaries of our Exeter, England and Salt Lake City, Utah churches.
Once again we’re reminded that life continually brings both tragedy and celebration. In both, we look to God’s promises to use all of life’s circumstances for our ultimate good.
Remember that prayer is the battleground where we fight the good fight of faith.
Love from my family to yours,
Joseph Tkach
On June 24-26, leaders of GCI churches in Bicol, Philippines gathered for a leadership retreat. Senior pastors and pastoral team members of churches from Albay, Camarines Norte and Sur, Legaspi, Sorsogon, and Tabaco attended. Dr. Rey Taniajura, Area Superintendent for Bicol, and his wife June were facilitators. The three day event focused on learning debriefing as a tool in pastoral care ministry. Debriefing is a powerful means for pastors and other leaders to offer members a caring “shoulder to cry on.”
During the retreat, Pastor Ernesto Aycardo was ordained an elder.
The September issue of Equipper is now available online at http://www.wcg.org/mindev/Web%20Documents/Equipper6.9.pdf.
This issue addresses the topic of FaithTalk groups. These groups focus on reaching out to unchurched people who have spiritual interest.
To learn more about this tool for relational evangelism, see the GCI FaithTalk equipper blog at http://faithtalkgroups.blogspot.com/.
The Salt Lake City, Utah, congregation, Grace Fellowship, celebrated their 45th anniversary with a barbeque in the backyard of members, Bill and Bambi Patterson.
Bill Bryce, part of the pastoral team in Salt Lake and one of the founding members of the church there, gave a brief overview of what’s happened in Grace Fellowship over the last 45 years. The 52 who attended the celebration enjoyed reminiscing and fellowshipping. The Salt Lake City church began August 20, 1966.
Jim Friddle gives us this update on the progress of his wife Marj:
Dear ones,
Marj and I thank you for the outpouring of love shown by your prayers, cards and e-mails. We ask you to continue your prayers for Marj.
After Marj was released from the hospital on antibiotics on Aug 23, she began to have abdominal pain and inflammation on Aug 27. We took her to the E.R. on the next day and she was admitted to the hospital for examination and treatment. That night her incision was opened and heavy drainage gushed out. The next morning, the surgeon cleaned and probed inside her abdomen and stuffed gauze inside to absorb the infection. The Doctor said that the infection was approximately 1 1/2 inches deep in the tissue above the surgery to the colon and intestine. He said that this is a common occurrence with colon operations where a speck of unclean matter is not cleaned out during the operation. Thankfully, no infection was found around the colon itself.
Marj is being given antibiotics and potassium to treat skin and tissue infection. The Doctor wants to keep her in the hospital until the infection is completely gone. We ask for your continued prayers for her. We are thankful to God that he has removed the cancer in her colon!
Love, Jim
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
We hope you enjoy our new Weekly Update. We continue to make improvements based upon your suggestions, including the new archives feature, which makes it easy to find past articles (see the link above). Thanks for the suggestions.
We email Weekly Update to our pastors in the U.S., and our Mission Developers and National Directors elsewhere. We encourage them individually to forward the email to others. Weekly Update can then be viewed by all at update.gci.org/. You may wish to link that site on your social media (such as FaceBook). Let’s share the good news of what God is doing!
This issue of Weekly Update contains the following:
May you realize God’s blessings! And remember that prayer is the battleground where we fight the good fight of faith.
Love from my family to yours,
Joseph Tkach
GCI pastor Rand Holm asks that we pray for Dr. John and Naomi Biswas. They were on their way to Rand’s congregation in Ventura, CA to give an update on their work with the Bengali Evangelistic Association (which John leads). As they travelled by car, they were rear ended and pushed forward into another car being driven by Rand. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries, however John and Naomi were shaken up and her right leg still hurts.
Base Camp, the Generations Ministries camp in middle Tennessee, was held recently in Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park near Eva. Dual themes of Pandamania and Living Loved brought a wonderful spirit of unity to the camp.
The camp had several traditional activities and some new ones, including “Marshmallow Mania” where campers shot each other with marshmallows using specially assembled and decorated shooters.
Though we plan to be at the same location in 2012, we are looking for another facility to accommodate growth and a wider variety of activities.
Here is a video report:
