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
Ooltewah Seventh-day Adventist Church 