A day of Thanksgiving

What a fantastic Sunday.

We are part of such a warm and welcoming in assembly... and today with our news out, it spread quickly. We felt such love and joy from all those we fellowship with. I know news of a upcoming baby is always well accepted - I have been on the congratulating side many, many times... and I have always been truly excited for the new parents-to-be. But to experience the other side of it yourself... even though it's expected that people will be happy for you, it is SO heartwarming to see their big smiles and sincere congratulations.

There is just something so special about the miracle of new life.

My friend, Jersey Girl is due January 5th so it will be great to get all the newborn tips from her, as she'll be 5 months ahead of me... :) Until the Lord brings in a few more young couples, our children will be the only babies growing up in our assembly for awhile. I'm thankful we will have each other for support when our children are the ones making the noise... ;)   I can't wait until January to cuddle her little one and smell that new born smell...  it'll help tie me over until I can hold my own. :)

In addition to feeling so much love today, there were many other things to be thankful for. It was the first  night of a two week gospel series so we had seedsowers and invitations go out in the mail to the community last week. This morning a mom and her two teenage daughters came out for the Sunday School / Ministry. Jersey Girl and I teach the teen girl class, and these two visiting teens joined us. Now, we weren't prepared to teach a class at all since we were going to stay up and listen to the ministry (guest speakers often give us a day off! *smile*)... but since it seemed they specifically came for the teen class, we decided we better wing something.  We ended up playing Bible Trivia so it wasn't much of a class, but it was a good ice breaker and hopefully the girls come back with their mom. They're from Nigeria and only moved to Canada a few months ago. Just in time for winter... what an adjustment! They definitely have bible teaching background, as they knew many of the Bible Trivia answers.

Having them show up and join our class is an eye opener... we currently have 3 girls in our class - saved and baptized and one is in fellowship... but we ARE the teen girl class so we need to be prepared for new faces - saved or not saved. We have too few young people to separate into 2 classes... We pray for those from the community to come in, yet when they do we are completely unprepared and have no idea how to work outside our structured comfort zone. I don't really have any idea how to change that, but know that we need to figure something out. Do any of you teach an older class? How do you adjust to new class members when you're going through a topic or study? Do you do anything special for newcomers or do you try to melt them into the routine and continue on?

Tonight we had a delicious dinner at the hall - ham & hashbrowns... my favorite! We had a number of visitors in for the dinner and the gospel meeting. There were a couple connections to the Christians who came out that we have prayed for - for years... so we have much to be thankful for and to encourage us to keep praying.

If you have a moment, pray for us and our two weeks of meetings... for those who will come out and hear the Good News, and for us to have courage to invite others in.