Dear friends,
We send you greetings in the Name of our Lord.
Keswick Conference
It was great to be able to attend one week of the Keswick Convention meetings in Keswick. The main venue holds about 4,000 people and that was not large enough to seat all the people who came to the morning and evening sessions. Hundreds more were in overflow venues and it was possible to watch the meetings live on the Internet. The main teaching was well handled by Alistair Begg who spoke from several of the Psalms. Debbie and I had a small part to play in one of the missions seminars led by Steve Smith (the SIM UK director). Thank you for praying and we thank the Lord also for the couple who let us share their home for the week. On one sunny afternoon we managed to climb one of the hills overlooking Keswick and Derwent Water.
Teaching and preaching
The missions course we will teach at the Irish Baptist College starts in September so we are doing some work for that. Debbie is still taking a small group through the Discipleship Explored course on Monday evenings. I have been asked to teach four Bible studies on Thursday evenings in September and will be working on material for those this month. On 20th August, I will be taking the services at the Ballynahinch Congregational Church and on 3rd September the Sunday services at Coagh Baptist Church. We have already started taking some prayer meetings for SIM. Pray that on all these occasions our Lord will be honoured (Col. 3:23). Thanks.
Other ministry opportunities
Though we are not at Kagoro, we are still doing some things for the Seminary and keep in touch with the teachers there. I am finishing off the supervision of a student’s thesis this month, for example. We have been asked to help review some doctrinal assessments written by people wanting to join SIM as missionaries and Mike Ewan (SIM Director for Ireland) asked us to represent SIM at New Horizon in Coleraine on Wednesday next week.
Settling in
We are still settling into life at Moneymore. It has taken weeks to get our broadband connected. I thought that would be a simple thing to reactivate but BT really let us down. We are with a different company now but still have the same land line number 02886746484. As mentioned in our recent prayer letter, our mobile numbers are now David 07729077954 and Debbie 07803477992. It is easier to get us on those.
Pensions
We have some funds in pension schemes which, according to SIM UK, are designed only for people working abroad so we have to change that. We need someone who can help us with professional advice on pensions and tax issues since the SIM finance people say they are not ‘registered’ to give that kind of advice. Does anyone have any suggestions?
As always, thanks for your prayers.
In Christ,
David and Debbie
