We enjoyed getting to a nearby village for some family fun on Monday.  After a busy week, it was nice to just lay low for a day.  I've put a new photo album on the website from our day.  Summer has finally arrived in the UK and it was a gorgeous day.  God's good to give us refreshment.

I had one witnessing opportunity last night with a woman at a playground. Her daughter is her life and it is understandable.  She is autistic and her mum is very good with her.  Please pray for God's grace for them and that He will show her His love.

This afternoon (Tuesday) the Vogelpohls are coming over.  Lord willing, Dane and I will do some evangelism/flyers.  There are several fast moving heavy showers out and about in our area today.  So, we'll see.  It will be fun to spend some time with them.  Thanks for your prayers.  Here is one pic from yesterday. (I'll put the rest on the other page.)

John Knox was born in a home just a few hundred yards from where we took this picture.

Thanks for praying for our meeting tonight.  The Lord gave us a great day.

We had good attendance this morning.  Connie has 2 nephews staying with her just now and they visited our church today.  It was good to have them with us. I preached this morning on, "The Grace of Giving" from I Corinthians 8. We had 20 this morning.

Tonight brother Layton Kelly preached on the colt Jesus rode during the triumphal entry.  It was a good message on the sinner (He is bound.  He is untamed.  He is at a cross roads, etc.) It was a blessing.  He also shared his testimony which is one of God's awesome grace.

We had many visitors from out of town this evening.  Pastor Dever's brought 12 in his group. And Pastor Edgar brought 5.  We had 20 from our church.  And the Kelly's have 6 in their family.  So, it was fun to have a church full of people.  Jenny was back with us tonight.  It was great to see her.

Please pray for God to continue to use the Kelly's ministry in our church. God's good.  Thanks for praying.  

Tomorrow night is our first missions service.  The Layton Kelly family from Dublin, Ireland will be with us. The Kelly's run a Reformer's Unanimous ministry in their home church.

We've invited a number of people to attend that service and hope to see some of them come.  We also have sister churches bringing some of their folks to the service. 

Please pray that God will use the Kelly's in a special way. We hope to see many unsaved present tomorrow night. Please pray for the light of the glorious gospel to shine brightly and that our church will catch a vision for missions.  Thanks for your prayers.

Thank you for praying for Logan's appointment. We drove to Glasgow today and spoke with a team of plastic surgeons.  After looking at Logan's CT scan and feeling his head, they do not think surgery is needed.  We were praying for very clear direction and we are confident that is what we have received.  Afterwards we enjoyed going to a very cool museum that was just a block away from the hospital.  It was a fun day.

We had great attendance last night at church. The Hikin family were with us.  And Christine brought her two boys and a visitor. Sky came as well. There was a sweet spirit and it was a refreshing evening.  Thanks for your prayers.

Edinburgh is an international festival city.  So, this month it hosts 7 international festivals which means that there are "loads" of people in the city.  I saw more people on the Royal Mile this morning (the high street that runs between the castle and the palace) than I have ever seen there before.

I had several divine appointments and I will share a few with you.

Andrew (19) is from Lithuania.  He is catholic. He is moving over here as a first year student in university. We spoke for about 10 minutes.

On the bench next to Him was a muslim man from Turkey.  He's been in the UK for 15 years. The Lord guided in our conversation. I took him to Colossians 1 and John 1 and showed him the deity of Christ.  And I showed him in the Gospels where Philip tells Nathaniel that they had found the prophet (Jesus) whom Moses spoke about. Our conversation lasted a half hour and he read and looked at many texts.  He is still strongly against the deity of Christ but God's Spirit has an arsenal of truth that can impact his heart.

Just a few benches further was Joseph (27) and his wife. They are from Los Angeles. She accepted Jesus 6 months ago but Joseph is a Catholic.  The Lord guided in our conversation as we went through verse after verse about salvation by Faith.

A highlight of the day was a group of about 40 Christian young people singing good choruses and holding up a banner that read, "Jesus Christ can change your life."  They were with a good evangelical group from Ireland.

A sad part of the day was a young girl (16) who was very articulate and intelligent.  She was a complete atheist.  I talked to her for about 15 minutes before her dad and sisters arrived.  It wasn't hard to see why she had such strong convictions against God. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools...." God is able to work in their hearts and I trust that He will continue to reach out to them in His mercy.

Thanks for praying for our outreach.

I enjoyed getting out this morning in a village near Loanhead and putting out around 300 flyers. As I walked I listened to two messages by Pastor Anthony Slutz.  Praise the Lord for SermonAudio.com! :)

I had a great witnessing opportunity last night.  Please pray for Michelle.  The Lord's hand was very evident in our discussion. I talked to her for at least 20 minutes.

God gave us a special blessing today.  My driver's side mirror was hit by a car on Friday in Dundee.  The mirror was knocked out of the casing and I wasn't able to put it back in correctly.  A garage in Loanhead put it back in for me for no charge. (Isn't God good?)

Thanks for your prayers for us.  We are especially praying for this Sunday PM as Layton Kelly and his family will be with us.  This will be our first missions service.  We are also hoping that many lost will be present.  Please pray.  Thanks.

It was good to have the Hikins and Alec back with us.  We enjoyed a good Sunday School and morning service.  The spirit was excellent.

I preached this morning on "A Story of Regret" from Genesis 4, the story of Cain and Abel.

This has been a bit of an unusual week for us.  After church Thursday night we headed to Dundee to assist Katie's brother and his wife as they moved flats.  The Lord blessed with good weather and gave us a fun time helping them. Please pray for them as they assist the Edgar family in starting a church in Dundee.

This morning Kirk and I visited a book shop just down the road from their new home.  There was a pile of theological books on the floor that was recently acquired by the shop owner.  Another man came in and was digging through the stack and so I asked if he was a Christian.  He was not but enjoys collecting books.  He asked about me and I told him that I was a Baptist minister which led into how we ended up in Scotland. I told about the influx of liberalism in the late 1800's and the current moral decline to illustrate the need for missionaries to come to the UK.  I also told him that we preach the Bible and shared Roman's 1 position on "marriage." He got upset and soon left.  Afterwards I was able to witness to the owner Alan. He was thinking and asked one good question regarding Catholicism and something that he viewed as wrong. Please pray for future opportunities for us to follow up with him.

I had an interesting follow up appointment tonight with a young teenager.  He was with a large group of friends.  I greeted them and he said, "Hey aren't you that guy from Loanhead." It wasn't a great witnessing opportunity but it was good that he remembered talking to me over a year ago.  Please pray for God's power to shake these kids hearts with his truth.  Thanks for praying.

It is a beautiful day! I think we may have reached 70 degrees today.  It's a heat wave! (You may think I'm joking, but I'm not.)  We've had very few days in the 60's.  So, 70 is awesome.

The Lord gave some encouraging opportunities today.  I had a witnessing opportunity while walking this morning. Graeme (70') believes in God but does not attend church.  I shared some Gospel verses with him and he kindly took a tract.

We had lunch with the Vogelpohls in Dunfermline after which Dane and I put out flyers in their area.  God gave us one very unusual divine appointment.  Please pray for Rees and Scott. We witnessed to them for close to half an hour. Dane was talking with Rees while I was talking to Scott (19). Rees showed prior knowledge of the Gospel.  He gave Dane his contact information and said that he would definitely attend the Bible study. Please pray that he would.  The Vogelpohls are just getting started.  This appears to be the best contact thus far.

I was praying about what to do this morning and thinking about going into Edinburgh.  As I was praying about it, I opened my Bible and read Jonah 1:2   "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me."  That seemed pretty clear to me and so I spent the day giving out flyers in the great city of Edinburgh.

The Lord gave me several neat divine appointments.  The first was before I left.  I had witnessed to Jamie (girl) once before.  She remembered our chat and said that she had read the tract.  I talked to her again about the Lord.  Please pray that God will encourage her heart to faith in Him.  

Then, while I was waiting for my bus, I started a conversation with a man who had come to the bus stop.  As it turned out, he is a Baptist pastor in the city near where we live.  I had never met him before.  We sat together on the bus and enjoyed getting to know one another.

When I got off the bus, I Immediately witnessed to an Atheist for about 10 minutes, a catholic girl, Sarah, from Romania for about 10 minutes, a Catholic/atheist German young man (Marcus) and his girl friend for about 15 minutes.

The next young man, Marco, was from Portugal. He said that he only believes in what he can see but he talked with me for about 15 minutes.

The next conversation was with two atheists.  The interesting part of this conversation is that another man nearby was listening and I spoke with him next.  His name was also Marcus. We chatted for another 10 minutes.

Soon after that an American couple declined the flyer saying that they were leaving today.  I took about 10 steps and turned around because of their accent and asked where they were from.  They were a sweet Christian couple from Orlando.  It was refreshing to talk to believers.

I won't share all the opportunities because they are similar.  Most of those I spoke to today were atheists.  There were however two more interesting opportunities today.

Several months ago Ben and I chatted for an hour at the museum in Edinburgh. The Lord put us together again today as I was handing out flyers.  He looked at me and said, "We've met before" and it all came back. Please pray that God will work in his heart.  

I also gave a flyer to a tall athletic looking man in a professional looking team USA jacket. As I handed it to him I asked if he was on team USA and he said yes.  Unfortunately he kept going.  So, I have no clue who he was.  Thanks for praying for these opportunities.  Edinburgh is packed with people right now as it is the festival season.  (There are 7 international festivals taking place in the city this month.)