Mission Antigua: NBWC

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Day Two work on Grays Farm church

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Here we are day five. God is at work in His Church and in the lives of very team member. We started out looking for adventure and to do some mission work, what ever that means. What we found is that God had something totally different in store for us. Yes we have done a lot of hard work and we've had our share of adventures but more impotently God has transformed our live.
As a ministry team God has created a special bond among us that could be only God given and the friendships we are building with the people here are wonderful.

Last night we spent over two hours praying of the community around Gray's Farm Holiness Church and tonight we had a tremendous service under the tent in the Gray's Farm community. God was truly present in our midst. All of us have been amazed by the poverty here and are hearts have been truly broken. I know that for me Sunday and Monday night services were times of shedding many tears. As God truly worked in my heart. Those who worshiped with us at Gray's Farm Church have so little when it comes to material thing but so much love for the Lord.

Just a couple of thing that God has drawn my attention to concerning the wonderful people here. First of all they worship God with everything that is within them, time is not a disruption, they make know effort to cut God's time short. We on the other hand panic if the service runs more than an hour. Secondly, they have a great awareness of the working of the enemy and great faith in the power of God to defeat him. Many time in our live we lose sight of the craftiness of Satan and are some times lulled to sleep.

God is doing wonderful thing here and we are trusting God that this is just the beginning. Keep the team and these precious people in your prayers. We are all praying for you.

Dennis & Tom

A Little Fun in the Sun

Friends, here are 2 slideshows from the past couple days.
To view them may require you to have high speed internet.
We apologize for that but wanted to post a large amount of photos for you to see.

Painting Begins: slideshow

Sunday Pictures (posted on Tuesday)

An overview of part of the city with a Cruise Ship in background

The family who hosted Peter & Frank for Sunday lunch.

Antigua's General Superintendent meeting with our team.

Missionary, Ron Jones, and a great local Pastor, Pastor Daniel

Monday, March 3, 2008

Power of Prayer

We just got back from a prayer meeting at the church we have been working on. We started there this morning working on painting the outside. Frank really got into working on the plumbing in the outside bathrooms. They haven't had a working bathroom there. It looks like by tomorrow that they will have an operating bathroom for the congregation and the preschool that is in the basement during the week. Frank was a blessing using his gifts that he has to help out the body of Christ. As were all of the members of the team as we worked on revitalizing this church. This church (Grays Farm Wesleyan Church) really needs our prayers as the devil is doing everything to convince people that this is a church that is dying and I can tell you from personal experience that it isn't as the ho;y spirit was felt tonight in a tremendous way at the prayer meeting. This week is the Wesleyan mens week where the men get out and help the communties. They have picked the Grays Farm area and church as the area that they are going to help out this week. The plan today for them was to come down to the church and get a couple of us to canvas the area and go door to door spreading the word. When they got down there they saw how bad of shape that it was in and decided to stay and help us out on fixing things up. They were a big help. Seeing all of this has really changed my heart in how I think about things. It just breaks your heart when you see a church that is in an area that is struggling to survive and you know that the area is in real need of a church as the devil has a foot hold in the area. It also has shown me that churches that are doing well need to help out churches in the area that are in need. I think that is something that we as a church need to look at doing. I challenge all of the congregation that reads this post to pray about helping other churches in our area. Let the Lord lay on your heart how you can help out. I really feel that everyone in the church should experience some kind of a missions trip as it will melt your heart to see people that don't have anything that have a love for the Lord that you don't see as much as in areas that have plenty of material things. It doesn't have to be a missions trip where you leave the country. It can be a missions trip to say the inner city of Flint. It allows people to see another culture and see how they worship the Lord. It won't be easy. I can guarantee you that the enemy will be doing everything that you can think of to discourage you. Sometimes to spread the Word, you need to step out of your comfort zone. We have to remember that no matter what that Satan can't derail the plans of God as long as we put our faith in Christ.

On another note, our prayers have been answered and our leader will be in town by tomorrow afternoon. Greg was able to get his passport and will be leaving Detroit early on Tuesday morning.

Good night and God bless.

Larry

Sunday Services

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Another day in Antigua!

Hello to all! We have just gotten back from our evening church service, which was amazing! I love the energy and the spirit of the people on the island. They are on fire for God and want to spread the word of Jesus to everyone that they meet. It was amazing how many "Amens" and "Hallelujahs" I heard tonight...you could not help it not to join in.
As I was talking to my team members the other day I commented on how here in Antigua there is poverty everywhere you look but the Christians in Antigua are so happy and determined to spread the Word of Jesus Christ! But back in the states we have so much and people who are Christians hold back on sharing their faith. Here in Antigua it doesn't matter what you look like what you sound like what matters is how you feel with the presence of God pouring over you! I have learned here in Antigua to be thankful for what I have and not be afraid to show God's love to anyone. Again, it doesn't matter what you look like or what you sound like all that matters are the souls that will be saved to Christ.
I have been so Blessed to be apart of this trip and I thank you all for the opportunity, prayers, and support you have given.
Nicole

The Grays Farm Wesleyan Church

Be sure to add comments, everyone! We love reading them!
From, the team

Peter, in deep meditation

More sightseeing pix

A Frank sighting!

The whole team.

VBS & a bit of Sightseeing

"Where's Greg?"
There's a place for you here!

Additional VBS pix

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Our amazing VBS leader - Nicole Vroman

This is Chris Shaw. I'd like you to know how wonderful Nicole was as our leader for VBS this morning! She organized it, helped us all get the stuff together that all of you donated for VBS and pack it up to take to Grays Farm Wesleyan Church. We started out with four children and by the time we were done, the word had gotten around that something was happening there and we had 14 kids. Nicole helped me lead the singing and we learned some songs from them, too! We hope to sing all of you one of those songs when we get back! Pastor Dennis Curell read the story of David and Goliath right out of the Bible and the children acted it out. Nicole had the children decorate bags that we later filled up with lots of fun goodies and treats. We took the children to the basement to decorate t-shirts. Anyway, there's lots more to tell, but that's it in a nutshell!

From "Chaplin" Dave. The burning question today was "Where's Frank"? Every time we got ready to leave a location Frank would be missing. Usually he was off shooting one of his 300 photos that he took today! At one point we had a person we met take a picture of the whole group only to realize that Frank wasn't in it! We had a great time ministering to the children. In reality I think that they ministered to us more than we did to them. Only one day here and it has been a great experience.