It has been good to have been back for some big life events. Our family will soon be returning home. God has been very good in all of our travels. Katie and I traveled to Virginia Beach on Wednesday to attend Tabernacle Baptist and see where our "kids" will be serving the Lord. Please pray for Kay Lee and John as they move their on Monday.

Meanwhile, we are enjoying some good family time and some refreshing down time. Our flight leaves late Sunday afternoon which will allow us to be back home on Monday. Our furlough replacement, Brother James Sechrest, is flying out Monday morning. We needed to be back as our dog, Duchess, will need someone to care for her. :)

Big Praise: The Lord has provided for our baptistry need. We received a quote that is much more affordable. Also, 1 church and 2 individuals gave to help us with our building project. Two of the gifts were designated to the need. The other one was given on a day where we prayed for God's provision for the baptistry and saw the building fund gift as a direct answer to that prayer. The 3 gifts added together are almost exactly the amount of the quote we were given. (2500 pounds) Praise the Lord for His goodness.

Thank you for all of your prayers for our family time and our travels. God has given us a great time away.

Thank you for your prayers for this past week. God blessed tremendously. The wedding was beautiful and God was glorified. God held off the rain until the Bride and Groom were ready to depart the premises. They left in a memorable downpour.  The attendance was great at the wedding. There was seating for around 230 and we were adding chairs and had a few people who watched from the lobby.

Katie's parents rented a large house in Asheville for them and their three children's families. We praise the Lord for the relationship we have in Christ as well as by heritage. We made many wonderful memories. This house was built in the early 1900's and has a ton of character. Most of the wedding photography took place there before the wedding. Also, a bear nearly crashed the photos. It walked through the property while we were enjoying our lunch on the patio. It would have been about 15 feet from where we took most of the photo's.

I enjoyed preaching Sunday PM at Temple Baptist in Asheville where the wedding took place. We also enjoyed getting to know John's church family.

We now have two weeks before our return to Scotland. There are some errands to do and some down time to be had after very busy life experiences. 

In church news; Tim, a believer from England, as of yesterday has now installed the sound and video equipment. We are one step closer to finishing the sanctuary part of the project. Please pray for Tim's surgery for muscular distrophy this coming Thursday. He will be in a body cast for 3 months. We really appreciate him pushing to get our project done before he endures this trial. Thank you for praying for him.

Thank you for praying for my father's, Pastor Mark Shore's, funeral. My dad loved the Lord and that was well presented at the funeral. It was a special time with family and God was glorified. 

My mom is doing well. She was able to travel down for our daugher's wedding. I just put the following on our church facebook page - We welcome your attendance online for Kay Lee Shore and John Owenby's wedding on Saturday, 18 May. The live stream will begin around 1:30 PM EST and the wedding will officially begin at 2:00 PM. Here is a link to the livestream. https://www.youtube.com/@TBSAshville/streams

We appreciate your prayers as . we give our daughter away. John traveled with us to my father's funeral We love him and are very excited to add him to our family. We also have been able to get to know his family and are very thankful that Kay Lee is going to have great inlaws.

These have been very full days and your intercession for our family has been a tremendous blessing. Thank you for helping hold the ropes for our family and also for our church family in Scotland

Our family safely arrive in Lattimore NC around 12:00 (5AM Scotland time) Monday night or Tuesday morning. We thank the Lord for journey mercies and grace.

This has been a fun week of meeting the friends and teachers of our children. We also enjoyed meeting the parents of our future son in law. Last night Kay Lee graduated with her Bachelor's degree. We are very proud of her hard work and what the Lord has helped her to accomplish. The service and ceremony were a tremendous blessing. God's hand has been very evident this week.

One of the ways, God has shown Himself is by not taking my father to glory until this week was over. Dad entered into glory this morning around 9:00 AM local time. My father had alzheimers and the last 6 months he steeply declined. God brought me home last November which was about a month before dad became mostly non sensical. Isn't God good? He also had us with my sister's family as we watched this week for the news of his passing.

We appreciate your prayers for our family. We are praying about funeral plans. Please pray for the power of God and the leading of God. I'm sure my father's greatest desire would be that God would be glorified on that day. 

Kay Lee's wedding plans are coming along. Her wedding is on the 18th. Katie and I are feeling older.... or at least we should be. This is the beginning of seeing our kids enter adulthood and it's great! Kay Lee and John will be moving to Virginia Beach after their wedding and honeymoon. John will be joining the pastoral staff at Tabernacle Baptist Church as the new youth pastor. Please pray for Pastor Baker as he leads that ministry. The Bakers are very close friends and this opportunity will only make them more dear to our hearts. Thank you for praying for "our kids" as they venture into full time ministry for the Lord.

Your thoughts and prayers for these upcoming special events are much appreciated. May God be glorified.

God has again blessed us with the opportunity to help someone come to faith in Jesus Christ. Praise God for the power of the Gospel to set men free from their sin and give them God's gift of everlasting life. They have been faithfully attending church. Please pray for this couple to grow in grace and in the knowledge of their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Our family is in countdown mode for our departure. Today we are packing up as our replacements (Pastor James Seacrest and his wife, Joyce) arrive at our home tomorrow. It will be fun having a few days to introduce them to our people and ministry. Our departure is Monday morning.

Since I gave a numeric update on Sunday AM, let me further express God's goodness on Sunday. Sunday night was also well attended and we were blessed by Pastor Clough's challenge from God's Word. He shared verses that show scientific foresight. It encouraged our faith. (The circle of the earth, paths in the seas, hangeth the earth on nothing, etc.) We had 6 adults out who were not with us in the morning service but who are a part of our church family. Many who were out in the AM were back Sunday night. So, praise the Lord!

We continue to work on the property. We're trying to get the sound room ready for equipment this Saturday. The skirting boards (trim) were cut yesterday. I also dropped our recently acquired antique pulpit off for refurbishments. Lord willing, I am going to put down a carpet tile floor this evening. We hope to hang speakers and be ready for the wiring to be attached this weekend.

I also spoke to a company called baptistry UK. They gave us a quote on finishing the baptistry. We're speaking with them to see what we can do to keep those costs down. Please pray for wisdom and God's provision as needed. 

Some days are more encouraging than others.... this is one of those. We had wonderful attendance today and some of our guests are becoming regulars. This is a tremendous blessing. One of the neat things about today is our good SS attendance. We have been praying for children to come and God gave us 5 children in that class this morning. Praise the Lord. We also had good attedance in the adult teen SS with 7 adults and 3 teens. 5 others joined us for the morning service. There were several who were not with us this morning who are a regular part of our church. This is great! (Not that they were absent, but that they are an additional part of our church family.) Praise God. We're excited about His goodness. This is HIS work.

Tonight Pastor Don Clough is going to be preaching. His family is staying with us tonight as they fly tomorrow to Germany. The Cloughs have planted a Baptist Church up in Elgin. It will be a fun evening of fellowship.

I preached this morning from Ecclesiasted 4 on Meaningful Living. I shared a 9 question quiz with our church to help us evaluate if we are living purposefully or vainly. If "Christ, His Work, His church" are the answer to these 9 questions that we are living life purposefully. If other things fill the blanks, then we are sadly doing what Solmon observed and living life vainly. It was a helpfu study for myself and I believe to our church.

We are in the final push before our departure to the USA for our daughter's wedding on 18 May. John and Kay Lee are currently at a Baptist Church on the East Coast as they prayerfully seek God's leading for youth ministry. Please pray for God's clear leading regarding His will. Our family is leaving one week on Monday. The Seacrest's will be with us starting this Wednesday PM and will get to see all of  our ministry nights before they began their replacement ministry. Thank you for praying for God's watchare over all of the above.

It's good to have a normal outreach week going. With building works and weather, this has not always been possible in recent weeks. I street preached yesterday morning and it was a lovely morning with no chance of rain. We've had rain every day for weeks and almost months. It's not raining all day, but frequently most days. So, the change in weather right now is a breath of fresh (and dry) air.

Today I put out Gospel flyers and had asked the Lord for a divine appointment. He gave me two. One was with a vere nice middle aged Muslim man. He enjoyed the conversation as we spoke about Islam and Christianity. I'd love to have further opportunity and invited him to visit our church. The second was with a very fit 73 year old man who was working in his garden. Although it wasn't raining, it was mid 40's with a steady 20 plus mile an hour wind. I saw the Lord's hand in giving these conversations despite the cold.

Lord willing, we will do door to door on Saturday to finish up our evangelism this week. That is the plan. Thanks for your prayers for our outreach and ministry.

We've also advanced the building works by finishing the walls in the sound room and shower room. Finishing work takes a lot of time, but we are getting there. We've also begun redecorating our handicapped toilet (restroom.) This room was damaged by a leak which has now been sorted. The Lord actually helped Nelson and I to find it and fix it. Many of your were praying for it to be fixed and we praise the Lord for His help in identifying the source of the problem.

I was able to get out this morning and put out some literature. The weather forecast was for storms, but they missed us. I put out a couple hundred leaflets with invitations to our church on one side and the Gospel on the other.

In our church project, last week and this week we have been working on finishing the sound room. Today we were able to get the first coat of paint on it. My family all pitched in and we also; painted the shower room, plastered where the water damage happened in the handicapped toilet, mowed the grass, cleaned up the commercial kitchen....

Meanwhile, on the USA home front, my father is not doing well. He's falling daily or several times a day. Please pray for grace for Him and for my mom. It's hard to know what to do when it would be impossible for him to be monitored 24/7.

THANK YOU for your prayers. They are much appreciated!

It was good to be back in church at Southside this morning. We had the encouragement of a young girl who attends on Wednesday nights, coming for her first time to Sunday School and the AM service. That was a special blessing. It was a lovely morning outside after weeks of rainy weather. There will be some small showers today, but it was nice to see the sunshine.

I preached a message this morning which I shared at men's camp. It had to do with our theme for the year, "Thou Art Worthy." The message was, "Worthy of First Place." Tonight we will observe the Lord's table, have a Bible study on Mark and share some testimonies from men's camp. Thank you for praying for God's work in our church ministry.

We have had a LOT of rainy weather over the last several weeks. Anyone that's here would give their agreement to that. So, when it wasn't raining this morning and it was calm, I decided to go into Edinburgh. My weather app called for rain, but I thought I'd get some preaching in before it came. I think it started raining just a minute or two into my opportunity and so I preached half an hour in the rain. I had a jacket with me and put that on my speaker. Please pray for the power of God's Word to open the hearts of those who passed by. 

Meanwhile, in the rain we can still work on the property. William, a man in our church, helped me yesterday to mud and tape the sound room. We need to get it sorted so that our sound equipment will have a home. The sound room is the old back bar of the dance hall. God had it all ready for our purposes and we thank Him for His good provision.

We had good attendance at our church on Sunday even though I and the boys were absent. God even sent a visitor who is planning to come again. We also had return visitors. So, praise the Lord! Thank you for praying for our attendance.