Thank you for your prayers over these past few months, specifically for Alyse’s pregnancy. Our baby girl, Raelynn, was born on October 18. Both are in good health and it was evident that friends around the world were in prayer through several direct answers to prayer that we had. During our hospital stay, one Christian nurse was particularly interesting to talk to, as she grew up in Minnesota and has family within driving distance of our sending church in Elgin.
A local nursing home requested our pastor to provide a church service, to which he gladly agreed. Our first service was held in October with twenty residents attending.
In the past month, we have begun discipleship with a new family who have been saved recently and began attending church. There is also a saved young man who visited our church several weeks ago and has been eager to go soul winning and get involved.
We ordered a pallet of hymnals and Bibles from the States, as those resources are in short supply locally. The church has outgrown our current hymnal supply and has used up all of the Bibles gifted to visitors! It is a good problem to have shortages of these on occasion and to see growth in the church family!
Several Saturdays this month were dedicated to outreach in a neighboring town, Katikati. We are the closest gospel-preaching church and consider it our responsibility to reach that community with the gospel as well. We are praying for people to be saved from these efforts.
In the past few months, the youth group has had steady attendance in the twenties, with the new need to rent a hall to accommodate the size of the group. It has been quite typical to have a minimum of one new teen each time to hear the gospel.
Pastor Fraser has begun a series of messages intended to relay the vision of church planting and raising up the next generation of preachers to our church family. As you can see by this abbreviated record of the past few months, the vision of church planting is a definite pursuit in our church. It is not hard to see the Providence of God in planting us in a church with this mission!
We are strengthened by the extra communication surrounding the arrival of our daughter. We appreciate your support. Thank you for praying,
Josh, Alyse, Bentlee and Raelynn Szwarga
