-----Original Message-----
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 21:00:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Greeting from HCM city!Dear Brethren,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.All our kids send to you all their greeting. Last Sunday, there were 55 of us. We had ten more kids from the district 8. Some of them never go to school, some others drop out of school and sell lottery tickets on the street because they cannot pay the schools fees. Now they are back on track again thanks to J. Canfield. They also invited their neighborhood to come and worship with us last Sunday. E_ was supposed to speak on that day. After praising God with a few songs, I announced to the kids the name of the speaker. E__ told me he asked his cousin to speak in his place. Probably he forgot to prepare his lesson for the week. Anyway, whatever the reason, we let his cousin do the preaching. His lesson was about Cain and Abel in Gen. 4:1-15. He did a pretty good job. Everything went well after one hour of worship.
When we dismissed our kids, we went to eat together. During a conversation with E_s cousin, I said to him : So, you are from the same congregation as E_ back home then? His answer was spontaneous: No, I was from the Baptist church back home. I discovered by chance that he is from the denomination group. When we walked home, I informed T__ about E__s cousin background.
T__ was a bit upset, and wanted to straighten things right away. So he summoned three of us for a discussion about that matter. He scolded E__ for awhile and rebuked him by saying: You are so conservative, you always rebuked us when our boys reversed the order of the Lords supper. You are so stiff at some points, and now you let your cousin do the preaching despite hes not a member of the Church of Christ.
E__ was sorry, and he repented right away. T__ said bluntly to him: If you dont prepare your lesson, just ask one of us to speak in your stead. And here is our rule, if we have a guest speaker, if he is not a member of the Church of Christ, then he wont speak. After this small incident, were all reconciled and even joked around toward each other.
Tomorrow will be Sunday, 9th April, 2006. T__ will be speaking.
I include here the photo of the 18-year-old girl who was baptized by T__ last two weeks.
See you all again in the next report.
In His Service, Love all.
ST___
