Celebration Time, come on were Going to Have a good time

Tuesday night was my birthday and I had a lot of friends at church for a surprise birthday party.

It started out with several young people coming for a special art project taught by Ron Bayuzick. I want to thank Ron for giving of his time and talent and helping the night be successful. There were also several adults who shared in creating the art project. Ron seemed to be the happiest that I have seen him in a long time. I am hopeful that he will establish some sort of art program for young teens at the church or I heard that he may want to use Tom and Betsy's barn for an art studio. He is gifted as an art teacher and I will continue to pray for him that he would give that gift to advance others in expressing their creativity. After the art project we had pizza and then came the surprise the birthday cake and magic candles. I am not to good at blowing out candles so some of the young people tried to help me. It was a blast. I was also given a musical birthday card that played the song Celebration time. All those who came signed it. I asked my neighbor when they all signed it and they were doing it one at a time while we were doing our art project, and I hardly noticed anyone leaving the room. I wanted to thank you all for making the evening special for me.





Tonight is Wednesday and we are having our weekly Bible study at my neighbors house. we are studying the book of Ephesians. I recently got a book about causing small group members to be trained in growing in their faith. It has several suggestions on adding new things to your study to encourage people to grow in their faith and how to gradually get them to be disciples. Tonight I will add hymn singing and a icebreaker question. I am not sure of the question yet, but you are supposed to think of a simple one and encourage all participants to take turns answering it. During the opening prayer time, I will encourage each to pray with something they are thankful to God for. i have been having trouble to get them praying at all, so the book gives some advice how to get others started in feeling comfortable in sharing. We will also be sitting in chairs, as laying on the living room floor on the carpet was causing too many distractions. I also bought a thank you card for someone special that we will be sending it to this week, because I want them to begin learning how to reach out to others outside of ourselves . Please pray for this group as we excercise our faith to ourselves and others.



One of the eventual goals as we grow and become more comfortable is to break up into two or more healthy groups. There are a couple of other small groups meeting outside the church in others homes. My encouragement to these people is that if you feel that God has done a good work in what you are doing together in your comfortable group, begin to pray and seek out a few other couples and share that blessing with them. As these groups begin adding to their number the work of the Holy Spirit will multiply those who are being changed by the teaching of the word. A good example of how this is working is with the Wednesday night prayer groups. It was sad for many who regularly attend to see some of us leave and start two home bible study and prayer groups, but as a result we ended up not dividing but multiplying those who are now able to study and pray Wednesday nights. It also worked that way in the early church, when the church was persecuted people met in homes and shared things and met the needs of each other and had things in common. Although they were not able to meet together in one place the gospel was further spread because of the work that was being done in individual homes and as they had opportunity they met together in groups as they were able. So if you are in a small group every so often think about who would be someone new you can invite to help in the spread of friends and neighbors being discipled and cared for and they will be changed also into the image of Christlikeness.