Reverend Randy

Sunday glorious night, January 16...phew!!! What a whirlwind of a day! We started out this morning with the goal of being able to Skype with all of you at FH during the morning service. After much frustration on both ends, the forces of technology were not in our favor today! We'll try to win this war another time--hopefully by the time we come back down for our missions trip in the fall!
The morning service started at 11am with sunshine, singing, and prayer. Then we were blessed with Communion. Pastor Luis introduced all of us from the U.S. (we were "special guests"), and thanked us for the keyboard...profusely, I might add. It was very humbling, and to all of you who were able to donate towards that purchase, please know that God is pleased. It sounded great and they were very happy with it! Pastor Luis had asked me to preach, so I spoke, and guess what? I only spoke for twenty minutes!! Now, don't be getting any ideas...my interpreter (Pastor Luis) took twenty minutes interpreting, so I guess my whole message was about forty minutes. ha.
We prayed for several people after service; again, we felt very honored and blessed to be a blessing to these good people.
At about 1:30, we went to the director of the school's home for lunch--wow, what a spread! I think we needed to go back to church to repent of gluttony. Honest. Then we walked a couple of blocks away for dessert at the French Riviera--very chic and modern. (Please note previous blog about spin bike.) During dessert, we were asked if we would like to join in helping at another kitchen in another colony, so we left from that restaurant, went to a grocery store to help purchase food, and traveled to the colony. Pastor Luis & I went down the streets inviting people to eat and to come to a church service (the "kitchen" is there just outside the church) while Ray, Sherrill, and Sheila helped make ham sandwiches. Eliana was there working like crazy, too. She's an Energizer Bunny if I've ever seen one! She and Pastor Luis are amazing people--they truly love God and want to see people's lives transformed.
About 100 people showed up for the service and meal. We were back at our hotel around 7:30pm, happy and tired. We can't really figure out why we're so tired, but we are. :)
Although I'm having a great time with plenty of ministry opportunities, my heart was with you in Bend today as well, thinking about all of my friends worshipping together, and then the sharing that I'm sure happened in Home Groups.
I've already had reports that everything went well today, as I knew it would. We have a wonderful, hard-working group of people. We brag about you all the time, even if it's just to the Lord sometimes in prayer! Thank you for being the church that I miss so much when I'm gone.
I refuse to even mention the card game tonight.