We have been in Ireland for all of the time between our two ministry days, Wednesday night and this Sunday morning. My boys and I met Tommy at the airport at 4:00AM Thursday to get our flight. We got back last night (Saturday) at 11PM.

Pastor Craig Ledbetter organises a men's camp in Ireland. He does a great job and we commend him and his church men.  I had the privilige of preaching one of the service as we studied the life of Job. My assignment was to preach on, "Why do the righteous suffer?" This morning I enjoyed sharing that message with our church. 

We had the special blessing this morning of having twin girls in their 20's visit who are believers. Please pray for wisdom for them as they seek God's leading for a church family. We enjoyed having them with us.

Thank you for praying for us. God is blessing in answer to your prayers.

Happy Resurrection Sunday! We rejoice today in our Resurrected Lord and His victory over sin, death and the devil. We thank Him for being the Man of Sorrows who took our damnation from the hand of God and drank it completely to purchase our salvation.

God blessed us with a good morning. Our SS attendance was down, but our Sunday AM was pretty good. We had a visitor for whom we have often prayed. It was great to have them in church this morning with us. 

I teasingly said to Katie this week, "I think I'll preach on the resurrection." She thought that would be a pretty original message for Easter Sunday. The actual text I preached from was Acts 13 as I preached Paul's message which was originally preached in the synagogue. The heart of the Gospel AND the great proof of the Messiah's identity, is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. 

We enjoyed our time in God's Word this morning. We also enjoyed a fellowship meal following the service. This past Monday, was our monthly ladies' meeting. It went very well with a visitor joing that meeting as well. Thank you for praying for our family and ministry. May God bless your time with your church and your family on this special day.

This is our busy weekend of ministry as we had our care home ministry yesterday afternoon and tonight was our monthly ladies' meeting. Both events went well.

A teenage girl, a lady from our church and our family ministered at the care home. I preached on Zacchaeus and we sang three hymns together. We started this ministry last month and so, it was good to reconnect with the residents. We'll enjoy going even more once we begin to remember names and faces.

The Lord gave us a good Sunday. A lady whom we have been praying for was able to attend for her fist time. She enjoyed coming and we hope to see her out again in the near future. 

I preached on Isaiah 53 with an introduction and conclusion from Acts 8, the Ethiopean Eunuch. On Sunday evenings we are doing a verse by verse study through 1 Corinthians and were in chapter 4 last night.

Katie just returned from the ladies' meeting and said that it went very well with a total of 8 ladies' present with one visitor. Thank you for praying for this ministry.

Well, it's always a blessing when you have beautiful weather on the Lord's day and we did. On top of that, the flowers are looking wonderful in the flower bed as people enter into the church property. 

We enjoyed in SS looking at the story of Peter and Cornelious. He was defending himself before his Jewish brethren from their accusation that he ate with the Gentiles. Praise God, they agreed with Him after he shared how God had opened the door of the Gospel to the Gentiles.

In the Sunday AM, I enjoyed going back to our theme, "Crucified with Him" and preaching on "Living for Christ" from Colossians 3:1-4. Interestingly, we can think we are living for Christ, because we know that is the right answer. But, if we evaluate our life, the facts may contradict our conclusion. We had a good time in God's Word.

It was a joy to have a Christian family of 4 visit. The young couple in this group will be married in July. Please pray for God's leading for them as to a local church and also His guidance as they prepare for marriage.

It was also our joy to add a young family to our membership. They have come for a couple of years, but it was good to see them take this important step. They have two young children. 

Thanks for praying for Southside Free Baptist Church, God is working in answer to your prayers.

God has blessed us with a great building and has allowed us to build in quality sound and video. However, until today, we have not been able to use it. We're still working through bugs, BUT we livestreamed today to our church sermon audio account. Lord willing, we'll be multi casting (sending the live feed simultaniously to our facebook: freebaptistlothian and our youtube page: @southsidefreebaptistchurch) in the very near future. We're working on it.

We used amplification today for the first time in several months, which also allows us to have sound to our baby cry space, cre'che (nursery) and directly into our video feed. Praise the Lord. I'm very thankful as this increases the ability of other's to tune in to what God is doing at our church and to do so conveniently. (We've had an echo on our video's because we didn't have a direct line in for our sound.)

It's mother's day in Scotland and I enjoyed preaching a message on Abigail, "Of Good Understanding." (1 Samuel 25) If' you'd like to hear and see the progress, please click on the link above. Today was also the beginning of British Summer Time. I'd like them to change this to Saturdays instead of Sundays and for our mother's sake, chose and earlier date. Mum's ought to get a "lie in" on Mother's day. 

It was a very good day. Tim Prentice, a believer from England, is up to help us sort all of our sound and video issues. We praise God for all of His help. Please pray that God will help us to get EVERYTHING sorted before Tim heads back home on Tuesday. Thanks for praying.

Thank you for your prayers for our street evangelism. I was down in the heart of Edinburgh preaching this morning. The Lord gave beautiful weather and liberty to preach His Word. Thank you for praying for this ministry.

Here is a link if you are interested in seeing the street preaching.

This morning felt a bit like Mother's day. We had 3 visiting mother's this morning. One was from Africa. One was from Italy. Another was Scottish, but visited with her family, who were visiting her from Canada. It was a blessing to have them there. (Next Sunday is Mother's day in the UK.)

We had good attendance, as the above indicates, and enjoyed a good time of worship and fellowship. I preached this morning from Exodus 17 on being, "Battle Ready." The story is of the first battle Israel faced after the Exodus from Egypt.  Please pray that as individuals, as families and as a church, we would take this message to our heart. God has a path to victory and Moses and Jushua established the way.

Tonight we are going to reminisce a bit as a church family and have a singspiration. Our family moved to Scotland 15 years ago, departing on 23 March and arriving on the 24th. God has done SO MUCH in the past 15 years and I trust His name will be lifted up this evening. Thank you for praying for our church. God IS working in answer to your prayers. (That truth is very consistent with what we studied this morning - Joshua battled physically - Moses with His rod uplifted battled as an intercessor.) Thank you for upholding us before God's throne.

We're thankful for the sun shining outside and the SON shining today at our church. We enjoyed a good time of fellowship and a good time in the Word of God this morning.

God blessed us with a visiting father and two older children from the United States. Another daughter is a student at Crown College and she is currently with their college located in England. It was nice of them to stop by and worship the Lord with us.

This morning I preached on, "Fuflilling God's Purpose." Our text was from the end of Isaiah 43 and into the beginning of chapter 44. Before I preached I sang a solo with a hymn text that I really appreciate, the song is called, "Follow Me." If you'd like to hear it, it is recorded along with the message this morning. You can access it by clicking the link above. (These are always just uploading as I type these updates and may not be available immediately.)

This past week was a great week. Our new monthly care home ministry and ladies' Bible study went really well. On Tuesday I enjoyed a day of prayer with some other ministers. We meet bi-monthly to do this and have done this for many years. Our hearts are definitely knit together from our prayer times. The door-to-door opportunities yesterday were exceptional. Please pray especially for a newly married couple that Mac and I met. We spoke about the Lord with them for 25 minutes and were thankful for their sweet spirit.

God's good. Thank you for your prayers.

God blessed us with a great ministry day. On top of our normal ministries of 3 services, we added an afternoon service today at a Care home. This extra ministry is something we have been praying about and it was exciting to see God open a door for this monthly ministry. We haven't had a care home ministry since 2020 when covid shut everything down. This is primarily for our young people, but we had some adults who also wanted to join us. We had 12 residents and 8 of us. After singing some hymns I shared the story of Naaman.

This morning, the message was on, "Finding Jesus" from Luke 4. The idea was, If you want to find Jesus, you have to look where He can be found.

God blessed this past week. We designed a new sign to go on a corner of our property. This is the corner of a brick wall that was knocked down by a lory. My boys helped me take down a section of the wall and the area will be landscaped with grass. The new window was also installed in our guest room. Also, door to door yesterday was a blessing and we had some great divine appointments.

Tomorrow, our ladies' are excited to begin monthly ladies meetings. Please pray that God will greatly use this in the lives of our ladies. Thank you for your prayers.

Scotland has beautiful Spring flowers and the bulbs are coming up and there are already some beautiful Spring like flower beds. This morning was also sunny and clear which made for a nice ride to church.

We have a church minibus that takes about a 50 minutes circuit to collect some people for church. We're thankful for God's provision as this vehicle allows some to come who otherwise would not be able to do so.

Our Sunday School attendance was pretty strong this morning and the morning service was fairly well attended. This morning we revisited our church theme for 2025 - Crucified with Him. I preached this morning from Romans 12:1-2, "Crucified with Him unto His Likeness." 

Tonight, Brother Tommy from our church will be sharing a challenge and then I will be leading our church in the Lord's table. We observe this ordinance on the first Sunday of each month in our evening service.

This week is somewhat normal, other than some work projects getting going again at the church. (On Wednesday we have a window being replaced.) Next Sunday, we will begin a youth monthly care home ministry with an afternoon service at a local care home. The Monday following, Katie is beginning a monthly ladies' Bible study. Please pray for the power of God as we seek greater opportunitites for our church family to serve the Lord and to serve one another.