Spring is in the air...

Greetings friends.

As always I want you to know up front how much Linda and I appreciate your help in the work here in Conway. I hope you are having a blessed spring. The leaves are finally coming out on the trees here. Along with them comes the black flies and mosquitoes. Oh well, you take the good with the bad. It is really enjoyable living up in New England, as we don’t get the heat some of you down south are already having.

The church has had a fairly quiet April. As far as activities we didn’t do a lot this month. I think people are talking a break from the frantic activity of the last two months with the Youth Rally and Ladies’ Weekend. We’ll be gearing up for more activity here shortly, though. We plan on having a spring cleanup day sometime soon to help spruce up the place. We had a good discussion recently with the church about our direction for future activities and ways we can be more visible and influential in the community. There were a lot of good ideas, some related to serving people by feeding them or helping them with service projects around their homes. Other people mentioned having a Bible Fair for children. One of our members is taking a class on web-site building so hopefully he can be a help in getting our web page updated and functional. I would really like to use that as a tool for the community. Right now we don’t really have a web page to speak of. Also we hope to get some more coverage in our local daily paper.

I’ll be interested in developing these ideas to see which ones the congregation really wants to get behind. I believe that in their hearts, all of our members want to grow, and don’t seek to remain at the level we are right now. I also know they are enjoying this season of peace and joy after the turmoil prior to our coming. I know that sometimes having a small, cozy friendly group is nice since it grows closeness and with less people seem to come less problems. But less people also means a smaller Kingdom of God, and we don’t want that! The Lord will help us with the problems!

I had a “first” last week. One of our members is employed at a popular local pet store that just relocated to another site. At their grand opening (with dozens of pet owners with their dogs present) the owners asked me to start off the grand opening celebration with a prayer of blessing for the new store. It went well, and everyone seemed to enjoy the prayer. It was just another way God has opened a door to be more visible in the community, and to get the name of the Lord’s Church in front of people. Someone told me last night at services that there was a write-up in the paper about the event, mentioning the blessing. (I’ll have to go check that out!)

We are hoping to get some community involvement as well with a “Family Life Series” I have just begun. From now until July 12, my Sunday morning sermons will be on family life (marriage, husbands, wives, roles, parenting, children, etc.) On Sunday evenings we will use our time together to have discussion and answer questions people may have about the morning topic. We put an ad in the paper and in light of the recent focus in the news on the definition of marriage, perhaps a few people might come in to see what God has to say about it all. While the courts may bend their decisions to the will of the people, I want to bend my will to the decisions of God. He knows best. Anyway, that’s it for now. I didn’t take a lot of pictures this month, but I did put a few in of the pet store Grand Opening. Hope you enjoy. Have a great May and I’ll be in touch again next month.

Blessings,
Leland

Going to the dogs...

Can I have one, huh, please can I.

Just one, please, can I?

I just hope people had their eyes closed during the prayer, or they'd see that ever increasing bald spot.

Brian and Kathy, the owners, invited me to come offer a blessing for the business.

Trish, one of our members, is an employee here. She is standing at the far left talking to the guy in the purple shirt.

Linda with a fluffy friend