Month: May 2015

SABBATH MORNING MESSAGE. This Sabbath morning I invite you to study Nehemiah 4. The work on the city wall renovation could not continue because of “too much rubbish”. It would do Nehemiah no good to clear away the physical rubbish if the spiritual rubbish that led to it was ignored. Judah did not go into Babylonian captivity because the actual walls of Jerusalem were breached. Long before the Lord allowed those walls to come down, far more important “walls” had already been breached. Unless we understand this, we have no hope of standing against this same creeping encroachment in our day.

BAPTISM. Lauren Anderson will be baptized during the second service. Ron Malloch studied with Lauren for the last several months. Tomorrow will be a big day for Lauren as she is making a public statement of accepting Jesus as her Lord and Savior. Come to celebrate Lauren’s baptism.

CHURCH FELLOWSHIP MEAL. Everyone is invited to join our church potluck after the second service. This will also be the time when we express our appreciation to Rosa Lee for her service as OAKS principal for the last three years. I hope you’ll not miss this occasion.

OAKS PRINCIPAL. Shelly Turkenkopf, Vice Principal/K-8Curriculum Director/Teacher, A.W. Spalding Elementary School (AWS), accepted the call to be OAKS new Principal. I have no doubts that God has been leading us through the search process. We had great candidates for this position and eventually got the best! Welcome, Shelly! We are looking forward to your official introduction in the next few weeks.

SLAVIC NIGHT. It was good to see so many of you for the Odessa Mission event. At a certain point I was concerned that we’ll not have enough room for everyone. I was very happy to see many visitors who are not even members of the Adventist church. Sorry if it was too loud 🙂 and too happy, but over the last weekend close to $7,000 were contributed towards the upcoming evangelism event in Odessa. A good portion of the received funds came from the Light of Hope supporters across the USA. Praise God! Thank you, dear Ooltewah church family for your mission oriented spirit. Jesus is coming soon. Everyone needs to hear this wonderful message. Here are a few pictures taken by Daniel Benoit and Dasha Crawford:

THE BRIDGE.  A huge Thank You to the Bremner family for leading out in the first Sabbath service to THE BRIDGE retirement center residence. Here is a short report from our head elder Steve:

“The Bridge at Ooltewah requests that the OSDA church conduct services every Sabbath at their activity room from 2:00–3:00 p.m. and serve ice cream for their Ice Cream Social from 3:00–4:00 pm. The activities coordinator would like us to develop a relationship with the residents. My family went this past Sabbath to the Bridge at Ooltewah. My girls led the song service, I asked for prayer requests, and then I had a short devotional. Afterwards we served ice cream for the residents. Sharon and I scooped the ice cream, while my girls served the residents. Not only was this a blessing to the residents, this was a blessing to my family also. We are asking that each Elder volunteer for 1 Sabbath each quarter. Please reply with which Sabbath you can cover.”

JESUS IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION. Wednesday night Prayer and Study seminar is well attended every Wednesday night. I thoroughly enjoyed our study of Revelation ch 1 this week. Pastor David Bissell will lead the study every Wednesday night while I am preaching in Odessa. Don’t miss the blessing!

HEALTH SEMINAR. Tonight is the first presentation of the GREAT HEALTH CONTROVERSY seminar. The program starts at 7 PM. It will continue all Sabbath afternoon and on Sunday morning. Don’t we all want to feel healthy and happy? I am sure that this seminar will be very helpful to many of us.

Let this be a blessed Sabbath day for ya’ll, my friends! 🙂

Your friend and pastor,

Peter

TO OUR MOMS:

“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell “MOTHER,”
A word that means the world to me.

(by H.J.)

“Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
    The woman to be admired and praised
    is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God.
Give her everything she deserves!
    Festoon her life with praises!”

(Proverbs 31:30-31)

As we honor our mothers this weekend let us remember that what they need the most is our time. Call them, visit them. Sixty minutes of your time will mean more to them than an expensive present in a fancy box. Our mothers is a gift of heaven. Treasure this gift.

I’ll put my “Life Renovations” sermon series on hold and will preach tomorrow morning from 1 Samuel 1:15-18. Please, find time to read the whole chapter.

OAKS. After Rosa Lee announced her plans to retire the school board and the school personnel committee started the processes of a new principle search. Principle position opening was posted on the North American Division website. OAKS staff, teachers and Board members prayerfully interviewed several candidates. The process is not yet completed, but we may know the new principle’s name early next week. We all want God’s will to be done in this important matter. We have a wonderful school and we all want it to prosper. I’ll send you a message as soon as the new principle’s position is officially filled.

Join us in honoring Ms. Rosa Lee Tubbs as we celebrate her retirement at potluck next week (May 16). On behalf of the church and school, we would like thank her for all the hard work and dedication that she has displayed during her leadership at OAKS. She will be greatly missed! May God bless her in the journeys to come.

OAKS 7 and 8 grades students spent a few days in DC. This was a great trip. They safely returned back

BAPTISM. Last Sabbath afternoon we had a wonderful baptism on the lake. Ryan and Alyssa Gibson, Eduard Smirnov, David and Connie King accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and expressed their desire to be baptized like Jesus. After our Bible prophecy seminar several more individuals asked for Bible studies and for a baptism. Jesus is coming back soon and they want to be ready to meet Him. Praise God for their decisions.

9 SIGNS OF CHRIST SOON RETURN. Tonight is the 8th night of our Bible Prophecy seminar. I am thankful to God for the wonderful turn out that we had every night. It was so good to see visitors from the Ooltewah/Collegedale community. The music was exceptional! Thank you, Larry and your team. As a pleasant addition to the scheduled music program was Snezhana Kushnir, a singer from Ukraine. She helped us remember that we belong to the world-wide family of God’s children.

Tonight the “Voices of Worship” will sing before the sermon. Remember the seven men group that sang the first night? They are back tonight! Sabbath night “The Emmanuel Quartet” will beautify our program with two songs before the message! Lots to look forward to!

Our audio/visual team will try to provide this seminar in DVD format for anyone who would want to share it with their family or friends.

BAPTISM. Tomorrow afternoon I am inviting you to a baptism on the lake in the Harrison Bay park (same place where the Pathfinders had their baptism two weeks ago). The baptism will take place at 4 P.M. Our candidates are Alyssia and Ryan Gibson and a Southern student, Eduard Smirnov. I hope many of you will want to join their celebration. It looks like the weather will be perfect for the occasion.

CHURCH MINISTRY. Tomorrow at 2:30 P.M. church Board members are invited to meet in the Fellowship Hall for a meeting with pastor Rick Greve, regional ministerial director of the GCC. Rick will introduce a potential candidate for the Ooltewah church assistant pastor’s position. Our church has a great need in an assistant pastor. Among many responsibilities the assistant pastor will provid spiritual guidance to the OAKS students, church Young Adults, Youth and lower SS classes. Please, keep this pastoral placement process in your prayers.

NEHEMIAH PROJECT. Because of the Bible seminar we kept our church renovations on hold. In a week or two the work will resume on the roof (facia boards, gutters, siding, etc). New windows will be ordered along with new glass doors. The building committee is finalizing the pews order. All these wonderful renovations became possible because of the exceptionally generous support of the Nehemiah project fund. We have received $196,000 toward the $200,000 goal! All this humbles me. God’s Spirit is truly at work in our church.

SLAVIC NIGHT. On May 9 you are invited to a Slavic night from 5 to 7 P.M. at our church Fellowship Hall. You’ll hear Russian and Ukrainian music. There will be lots of delicious Eastern European dishes to try. There will be a brief update on the upcoming mission trip to Odessa, Ukraine. People across the US send their donations to support Odessa evangelism. Some of you approached me asking how you can donate towards this mission. A donation can be made in the tithe envelope marked for the LIGHT OF HOPE Ministry mission. This will be a tax deductible donation handled by our church treasurer. Every penny will go for the Three Angels message proclamation in war-torn Ukraine.

CHURCH FAMILY. This afternoon I talked to Ed Pino, who had lost his mother a couple of weeks ago. Ed is deeply touched by your kind messages, cards and phone calls. He asked me to relate to you his sincere words of appreciation. Your prayers and caring support helped him go through this trial time of loss. Ed will be coming back later this summer after he takes care of his mother’s property.

Julia Easter is having back surgery today. Please, pray that it goes well.

SABBATH MESSAGE. Tomorrow morning I continue my “Life Renovations” series. We’ll study Nehemiah chapter 3. “The Walls of Salvation”. Isaiah 60:18 is the key verse of my message:

“Violence shall no longer be heard in your land,
Neither wasting nor destruction within your borders;
But you shall call your walls Salvation,
And your gates Praise.

NEW RUSSIAN TRANSLATION BIBLES. I could not hold my tears yesterday as I received word that 10,000 copies of the new Bible Translation Bible were delivered to the Publishing House in Zaoksky, Russia. This is the exact location where my father started the work on the Bible translation 25 years ago. I wish he could live to this day to this the results of his hard work and many prayers. Eastern Europe needs this new translation like air. I pray that many find Jesus as their Savior when they read this Bible in the language that they can understand.