Sunday, Eddie put his latest song out on YouTube.  It is his testimony based on Exodus 14.  I put a link below to his song.

 

 The Crossing

Bonnie Young

Prayer Request

Pray for the Millers and the Wahiawa Church of the Nazarene.  Pastor John has been working night and day for at least the last two months.  He prepared for our team in early July.  After we left he invested in finishing the roofing and then he spent the next two weeks being “Mr. Mom” while Carla visited her parents in Florida.  Since Carla returned home, Pastor John and their son Hunter tried to take down the twelve foot long  2 X 10s that the men had put up to stop roofing materials from falling off the roof during  construction.  The pieces of wood are too large for two people to handle.  The board Pastor John and Hunter tried to remove fell and almost hit their car.  They need help but the men that were involved when we were there are not able or have not helped.  Ryan is assigned to weekend duty.  Scott shipped out to sea.  Eddie was told that he would work every Sunday and take a cut in pay.  He turned in his resignation.  Other men are experiencing difficult attacks against their spiritual lives.

Bonnie Young

Rooted

The July roof construction on the second side of the church required that the steel roofing material be pulled up from the parsonage side of the church.  Carla loves plants and had planted a small tree by the walkway.  Because the lanai extended to within three feet of the church for most of that side, the little tree was in the way.  It had to be cut down.  Carla was not happy but submitted to the needs of the construction crew.  When the work was finished, they dug a hole and stuck the tree into the ground hoping the it would root and grow again.  This week Pastor John sent a picture of the tree alive and growing.

  

Without application, this is just another story.  When we look into God’s Word, we see ourselves as a chopped off tree.  We are dead in sin.  Cut off from God.  Job said there was hope for a tree.

Job 14:7   At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.

 But, for us there is no hope apart from Christ.

Colossians 2:6-7   Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than on Christ.

Colossians 2:13   When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

Bonnie Young

Time of Storm

On July 27, twenty men came to complete the roof of the Wahiawa church.  They finished all of the roofing and attached the roof cap with adhesive.

Monday July 29 when hurricane Flossie hit the island one end of the roof cap whipped loose.  Pastor John knew that he had to save the church from rain damage and the steel ridge from ripping entirely off.  He tried to reach someone for help but could not.  He went up alone.  He tied himself off from their house and worked with his weight harnessed over the peak of the church roof.  Cold rain was falling at 4 inches per hour.  Thunder and lightning filled the fast moving clouds and wind whipped the steel around like a flag.  Pastor John managed to safely get the ridge screwed down, but as he headed off the roof, he slipped on the wet surface.  The safety rope attached to his harness broke his fall.  But he hung upside down suspended from the rope screaming for help in the rain for 15 minutes before a neighbor boy saw him and came to his rescue.

Pastor John said, “God is faithful.  I am unharmed.”

This past Saturday Pastor John and Ryan, a lay member of the church finished the job of screwing down the remaining roof cap.  Praise the Lord, the roof is completed.

Next week a commercial company is coming to put up the gutters.

God timed our trip to get the roof on before the storm.

Psalm 32:7 For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory.

These lyrics was written by a British pastor, Vernon John Charlesworth 1880:

The Lord’s our Rock, in Him we hide,
A Shelter in the time of storm;
Secure whatever ill betide,
A Shelter in the time of storm.
The raging storms may round us beat,
A Shelter in the time of storm
We’ll never leave our safe retreat,
A Shelter in the time of storm

Bonnie Young

Completed Roof

Pastor John emailed that the two local church congregations came together on Saturday after we left.  Twenty  volunteers showed up at the church to work.  Several of the volunteers were not part of the workers when our team was there or members of either congregation. Together, they complete the roof  including the ridge cap. 

Workers for the Harvest

Matthew 9:35-38   Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

The Wahiawa Church of the Nazarene asked God to send workers.  After about 10 months of planning, the team arrived.  Now, all too soon, our team’s work is over but we pray that the church has an abundant harvest and that their harvest continues for the pastor’s family, the people of the church, and the community.

 

God's Love In Action

Sunday afternoon we served a meal and gave clothing to the homeless in the Wahiawa city park.  The woman in the picture with the aqua shirt had had one leg amputated.  She and her dog are homeless.  She gets around with a very worn wheel chair.  Can you image being homeless and unable to walk?

 

Another woman told me that her father brought her and her mother to Hawaii when he was transferred here on a military assignment.  When he went to his next assignment, he abandoned the two of them.  They had no way to return to the mainland.  Another man needed a pair of size 10 shoes.  We only had size 9 1/2.  He tried the shoes on and they fit.  I told him that God made the shoes fit.

He looked baffled and replied, “I used to wear size 9 1/2.”

 

I sat with another man as we ate.  He said, I always say a prayer before I eat.”  Then he folded his hands like a small child and began to pray.  His brother, who ate lunch with us, said that he goes to three Celebrate Recovery sessions and two church services each week to enable his sobriety.

Jesus told us to care for those in poverty.  When we care for their physical needs, they may see Christ’s love for them through our concern.