A Cow and a Good Beginning...

We hope all our readers are being blessed and that their times of corporate worship this year have been awesome… ours have been wonderful.  There are many reasons for that happening, so, if you have a few minutes, sit back and let us tell you about a few of them.

The first reason this Sunday was so heavenly was the singing. For a couple of months, with the exception of our children dancing, we haven’t really felt much of the Spirit in our corporate praise. It felt, sort of like it was becoming… well, ‘one of those things you just do on Sunday morning’… just because it’s Sunday morning.

Our Father had already begun talking to us of His desire to strongly support us this year. So we are getting pretty excited. From the first Sunday of this New Year, He spoke to us about preparing ourselves. We realized that we had to fully devote ourselves to Him in everything we do to have His full support. In other words we had to examine and deal with wherever we were half-hearted concerning His will. This is the passage that really brought it home to us.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal (completely devoted) to Him…" (2Ch 16:9)

We talked about the singing after a gathering some weeks back and agreed that we were offering our Father a diseased, spotted offering and our hearts were not right. There was no practice or real effort from our ‘worship team’ going into the praise and worship. Just showing up on Sunday morning drumming out the same old songs sung over and over.

Finally Beatrice, James’ wife, stood up and said … I am sorry about our praise and worship. We will repent and get our hearts right… and sure enough … they did.

As a result, the Sunday before last, as our singers began to sing, the sound was amazing! It was as though everyone had taken voice lessons. There were some beautiful new songs sung that morning and the work they had put into the music was very evident. It was also very evident that God was strongly supporting their efforts.

That was two weeks ago, but this Sunday the singing was truly inspired. There was power in the praise and passion in the worship. I believe it touched everyone present including some of our missionary friends that were visiting.

As the singing began, our beautiful and wonderful children came running out of their youth room and broke into praise and dance. 

Their dancing has become the delight of all who visit StoneHouse Fellowship and to us as well. After the dancing they came to the front and sang some wonderful songs they had learned earlier that morning.

Speaking of the children’s youth room… we are already packed out as you can readily see and we could really use some help purchasing some materials for making some benches for the children. So if you feel led to contribute... the benches are twenty five dollars each. That's fully made. 

These pictures were taken at the beginning of our time together. As more people arrive we have to take the chairs from the children and bring them out to the main room to accommodate the adults. That leaves a bunch of kids sitting on the gravel floor. Nothing critical… but it sure would be nice if we could get more of them off the ground.

In fact it got so crowded during the teaching last Sunday, the kids had to go out in the front yard of the Church. Our creative teachers had them do stretching and exercises and they loved it.

One consistent thing about our gatherings is you never know what’s going to happen next. Like that morning. Right before we began to teach, one of our dear members brought in a baby cow and presented it to us. Yep that’s right …a cow!

So we blessed her family, laid hands on the cow asking our Father to bless this new beginning of the StoneHouse Fellowship Dairy Business. Thankfully, Margret, the lady who owns a farm where we are beginning our next church (Engasura), said she would be happy to keep it for us. Not sure our landlord would have been very happy with a cow in our front yard. 

The children took turns petting the cow till Margret (the lady with the farm) called a three wheeled ‘tuk, tuk’ to come and hauled it off to her farm.

Lastly; James, Thomas and I gave to the church what we believe to be the third message from God concerning how to begin this New Year with His full support. 

For those who want to know what our Father has been saying to us, the first message we preached in printed form, complete with the scriptures can be accessed by clicking Here. The second one Here  and the third message will be posted on the blog ‘My Captive Thoughts’ toward the end of this week.

Well that’s all for now … but keep up to date with what’s happening at the StoneHouse on our Facebook page. Click StoneHouse to check it out.  

Much grace…. The StoneHouse Family