That All Peoples Of The Earth Might Know Him......

It felt like Fall outside this morning as we traveled under the overcast skies, through air that was heavy with humidity accompanied by temperatures in the 50s to gather at FBC.  We came together for the normal practices of joining our hearts and voices in worship and praise to God, but we also got to participate in an activity that reminds us that our mission as Christ-followers involves spreading the good news of Jesus to the whole world and one way we can do this is through Operation Christmas Child!  We began our service by lifting our voices in a song of corporate praise.  After the welcome by Chris, the choir and orchestra and all our talented accompanists presented the heart-felt anthem,"We Will Remember".  We followed that up with more congregational singing before Pastor Wes took us to Revelation 7:9-17 and spoke to us about God cares about ALL people, everywhere, not just a select few; but He has given everyone only one way to approach Him, through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross and our mission is to share that knowledge with the whole world.  One of the largest unreached people groups may surprise you-----it is the deaf community! How do we go about the mission God has put before us, whether it is reaching the deaf community or another group of people?  Three things we must do-----we must pray for open doors and receptive hearts, we must give of the resources we have been blessed with through opportunities like OCC, through our tithes and offerings and we go, down the street and around the world, setting aside our preferences,  Pastor Wes had so much more to say about all this.  You can see it on the Live-stream which is well worth your time.  At the end of our service, we laid hands on the OCC boxes and prayed over them that God would use them to bring people into a personal relationship with Jesus.  In the extras, I have put more pictures showing the praying over the boxes and the packing of the boxes into larger boxes for the next leg of their journey---it was a VERY busy time, but with all the help I could capture on my camera and I did not get pictures of everyone that I would have liked to, we have the boxes ready to load on the truck for tomorrow!  Sorry, almost forgot to add the extra.....