Friday, July 24, 2020

Dear Church Family,

It is left with us to remedy the defects in our characters, to cleanse the soul temple of every defilement. Then the latter rain will fall upon us as the early rain fell upon the disciples on the Day of Pentecost.—Testimonies for the Church 5:214 (1882).

There is nothing that Satan fears so much as that the people of God shall clear the way by removing every hindrance, so that the Lord can pour out His Spirit upon a languishing church.… Every temptation, every opposing influence, whether open or secret, may be successfully resisted, “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).—Selected Messages 1:124 (1887).

In the news:

This Sabbath we will continue in our series on Elijah with a look at “Fight or Flight or Faith.”
Just a reminder that the only two Sabbath School classes that are not currently gathering are Cradle Roll and Siepman’s class.
We will continue live streaming via Facebook for now. While the audio in our sanctuary isn’t ideal, I am informed by Brad Robinson that our new portable church system that was voted by the board has been purchased and should be here hopefully in a couple weeks. This will be a temporary arrangement until our regular system can be repaired which will take a few months most likely.
We will have an AYA service this Sabbath at 7:30 P.M. at the church. Justina Thomas is a registered nurse and has been serving in the Philippines with Adventist Frontier Missions for the last 3 1/2 years. She will be sharing about the work and miracles God is doing among an animistic tribal group in the Palawano mountain jungles.
Just a reminder that next weekend marks our annual church camp out. Watch next week’s Grapevine for more details regarding the schedule and such. For now, make sure you’ve reserved your site, preferably in the A or B section of the campground. Elder Ashlock will be our guest speaker for Sabbath morning and Chuck Reese will be speaking for the worship service here at church. Due to COVID-19, we will not be able to use a church at Cade’s Cove so we will work out the location when we get there. We will seek to get an all call out next weekend as to where we end up so as to help those who are coming just for the day to know where to meet for worship.
The school yard sale is set for this Sunday from 8-4 P.M. They have requested that we halt donations at this point as they simply have run out of room.
The school board will meet this Monday at 5:30 p.m.
This Monday marks the beginning of a roughly two-week journey through Bible Prophecy for young people. People are already registering from all over the world with over 228 registered as of Thursday. The series is entitled, Exploring the Future. Our church in partnership with South Bay Community Church in Chattanooga has put together this online prophecy series for kids and we want to encourage you to join in and share with others. Children are encouraged to check it out at aplacetodosomething.com/explore. Also, if you and your children plan to participate, visit now the link above to register so you can receive the link to download your materials and cutouts in preparation for this Monday at 6 p.m. Watch the video below for more information.
We will continue our Romans series this coming Wednesday via ZOOM with a look at Romans 6. Our 1hr study time begins at 7 P.M. each Wednesday evening.
Pastor Jared had a great program for the youth last night. The focus of the evening was on communication and we enjoyed learning interesting facts about each other in the process. There were around 25 youth present. Pastor Jared and Pastor Jason are seeking to coordinate some of the youth activities this year so as to foster better collaboration between the churches.
The Pathfinders are raising money for their club by selling fruit. If you would like to pick up some fruit, you can grab an order form in the church foyer and turn it in sometime before the deadline which is July 31st. Here is a copy of that order form if you want to take care of it right now.
Lastly, on a more humorous note, Jordan wanted to celebrate our Goldendoodle’s second Birthday so we had homemade Zucchini Waffles and potatoes last Sunday morning. Ginger was a good sport as she sat at her little table for the birthday picture.