Life @ Montrose, August 28

This Sabbath our worship focus is on what Jesus taught about the second coming (based on Mt. 24:36-25:13). Are you ready to meet Jesus? Is Jesus your friend? Then you will want to come this Sabbath as we talk about how we can be ready for Jesus to come again.

This Sunday afternoon the ABC Bookmobile will be at our church. Since the closest Adventist Book Center is in Denver, this is a great opportunity to pick up Adventist literature or vegetarian food. See the advertisements on the bulletin board in the church for more information.

On Sunday, Sept. 7, we are going to have a work bee at the church. Many of you participated in the work bee this spring where we cleaned inside our church, but now it is time to do some work on the outside as well. With thanks to W. D. Hess, Joan Cooper, and Tammi Brown we are going to prune back hedges, trim trees, and even remove a few overgrown specimens that need to just be gone. This is a team effort as we seek to beautify our church grounds. Contact W. D. Hess for more information (249-5358).

We really enjoyed having our friends, Pastor Jim & Laura Wibberding visit us for a few days. Pastor Jim did the chapel at Spring Creek Adventist School on Friday morning. Later that same day I was glad to see a good turnout for our school bonfire--the inaugural event of the new school year. I'm thankful for each young person at our school and for two dedicated teachers who care about quality Adventist education. I had fun bringing a baby bearded dragon for the students to watch grow (courtesy of Pastor Seth Coridan).

Sabbath was an important day for our church because we had a business meeting in the evening. I gave a presentation about Ellen White as evangelist, and spent some time looking at principles from her writings for evangelism. Our church voted to hold evangelistic meetings in early 2009. I'm excited because I think this is a great opportunity to win souls for Jesus Christ. Other important things from our business meeting: (1) we are starting a taskforce to work on a church mission statement; (2) a grounds committee with further input that should help to revitalize the outside of our church; (3) election of seven individuals to the next conference constituency meeting; and (4) due to a projected shortfall of the school of around $35,000 we voted to utilize up to half of our main savings account (about $13,000) to assist the school.

Sunday was my 30th birthday so we spent the day together as a family. Monday we spent the day canning peaches (I had picked up about 130 pounds of peaches in Palisade last Friday). Canning peaches reminds me of our Christian lives. There are both sweet and sticky spots. We want to focus on being sweet for Jesus, but despite our best efforts we can find ourselves in sticky situations. That is when we need Jesus. We want Jesus to sweeten our lives by making us more loving and lovable Christians.

Last but not least, last night (Wednesday) we went to church for our first Pathfinder meeting. We have 8 Pathfinders and 19 Adventurers. God is blessing in this special outreach of our church. If you are interested in supporting either of our clubs by helping out on Wednesday evenings I know your help would be most appreciated!