News at Grace Fellowship
Grace Update
April 2009
This is Stukeley calling . . .
It has been some time since I have put out the update. It hasn’t been because nothing is going on because we are seeing God move more and more.
In January we decided to take a month and teach in our all age bible study, small group, and worship service about praying together as a body. We pray as a group on Tuesdays and we have a group that pray over the internet at 6:30 am every Wednesday and Friday. I also have a group of men who are called my “PIT (pastor’s intercessory prayer team) Crew that prays together every Thursday for the pastor and the services on Sunday. We also started a prayer group on Monday nights for people who can’t make the Morning Prayer groups. One of the visual signs that God is answering our commitment to praying together is we pray each time we meet for God to give us the nations (villages), and at least one new person to come to a Sunday Worship Service. “Ask me for the nations, and every nation on earth will belong to you.”(Psalm 2:8 CEV) Since we have started praying this together we have been having between 25-30 people attend every Sunday. This past Sunday (29th of March) we had 37. In addition to the numbers, we are having at least one new person visit every week and many of them have been coming more than once.
We have launched a new web page, www.grace-fellowship.org.uk , take a look. The site has the sermons on audio that can be downloaded to an mp3 player; you may also listen on line.
We are excited about what God is doing at Grace Fellowship. January started with a bang. On the 18th we had our first baptism (2 children and an adult) with 45 people in attendance and 3 preschoolers. More young couples are attending and we are thrilled. We have started a pre-school SS class and a high school class. Please pray we will get enough people to provide a nursery and pre-school during worship. Pray that someone with a heart for babies will join and help us start a SS class for babies. Also pray that a motivated couple will come along side us to do Children’s/Family ministry.
The distribution of the “Good News” newspapers is going well. We distribute about 350 each month and people have begun to tell us they enjoy them. We will do a survey in three months to determine if it is useful to continue.
Jepye and I will be in the US from April 13 to May 27, we hope to see and /or talk with many of you.
Now that we have the web page I will be posting the update to the “News” page. If you would prefer to get the news that way and not get these emails if you will reply to this email with “prefer web” in the address line I will remove you from the update list.
Serving together,
Paul and Jepye of the Stukeleys, England
February 2009
This month has seen a couple of new initiatives. Firstly, we started to back up our regular Tuesday morning prayer meeting with conference call prayers on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 6.30am via Skype. If you would like to join us please let us know and we will organize it. If you do not have Skype it is a free download and we can quickly tell you how to get it. Why should the world have all the fun?!
We have also committed to delivering the ‘Good News Paper’ around Great and Little Stukeley monthly for the next few months. We have divided the villages up so that no-one has to do too much. We are very grateful to all those were kind enough to agree to help. We hope that seeing some Good News drop through the letter box will encourage people to take a look and see what God is doing in the lives of people, some very famous and some quite ordinary, though we should point out that no-one is really ordinary, everyone is special because we are made by God and loved by Him.
January 2009
This month we have seen 3 people go through the waters of baptism and it has given us all a real buzz to see God moving. Two young sisters had given their hearts to the Lord and another lady decided to follow Jesus and be baptized. They are always in our prayers as they strive to live the Christian life in today’s world.
Christmas 2008
Although it seems a long time ago we should mention that last year, on Christmas Day 17 members of the congregation sat down together in our Fellowship Hall (complete with refurbished kitchen!) to Christmas dinner.
Because everybody brought something nobody had too much to do and the meal was a wonderful mixture of English and American tradition. Of course we had turkey and roast potatoes but we also had green bean casserole, a wonderful stuffing and corn bake. Yes, we had Christmas Pud, but we also had Pumpkin Pie, Sweet Potato Pie and a lovely concoction of fluffy pink with marshmallow which can be eaten with either the main or sweet course. Ages at the table ranged from about 2 to 70 and after the meal we played table games. Those who were hungry enough snacked on the leftover for tea and when the evening ended at about 19.00 there was enough left over for everyone to take food home for Boxing Day. In fact it was so successful that it is probably going to become an annual event.