Lord's Day July 12 2015

We had a gratifyingly full church Sunday morning and a decent number Sunday evening too. I preached on Psalm 103 in the morning. It is a wonderful psalm of praise and sort of preaches itself, if you know what I mean. We had a few visitors, including and Iranian man I'd never met before. All our student types are back too now before they scatter to the four winds on camps and beach missions, etc. It was good to have Liz Rajo and her children with us from Madagascar. I did a little interview with her over tea in the afternoon just to update us all on the needs there. I preached in the evening on false prophets and true, a warning message. Preaching is not easy. I found myself wondering at the end of the day if there was enough of Christ in it all. It's easy to miss the main thing.

Farewell Service

On Saturday I courageously went south of the river to be at Summers Town Mission Evangelical Church in Tooting for a farewell service for Ravaka and Liz Rajo and their children Anna and Jonathan. The family do not actually return to Madagascar until September but this was a good time to hold such a meeting especially as veteran medical missionary to Madagascar, Dr David Mann, was able to preach (from Acts 13 and 14). David works at the Good News Hospital in Mandritsara. The meeting was chaired by the pastor Peter Bines. Summerstown is Liz's sending church. During language training she met Ravaka and for the last five years have been based here while Ravaka pursued theological studies. On their return Ravaka will become pastor of the church in Antsirabe with duties also in the nearby Baptist Seminary. It has been our privilege at Childs Hill to have them under our wing and we are going to greatly miss them on their return. Ravaka gave a presentation regarding the work both at Summerstown and then on Sunday evening at Childs Hill.