Please join us for a post-wedding celebration in honor of Vini & Sophia.
This Sunday immediately following the service in the garden.
Drinks and Light refreshments will be served.
To help, contact Julia Pickard.
Rebecca and Christopher shared last Sunday.
Rebecca:
Last year I had the privilege of attending our church's ladies retreat. I'm a mother of young children. There's never an easy time to get away. However, Christopher encouraged me to go and in God's kindness the timing was right.
I was going through a difficult situation and many of the ladies, especially some with more life experience, ministered to me. They prayed for me and even followed up after the retreat.
Retreats give us time to spend encouraging one another towards love and good works. Life is busy. I'm usually racing out of the meeting to care for my children. Please join us so we can take time to strengthen our faith together.
Christopher:
Married guys. Here's the deal. Full disclosure...I don't remember last year's retreat. I have no idea when it was or what they ladies talked about. What I do remember is my wife telling me how glad she was she went. She'll give you all sorts of excuses. It's hard to leave.
Your job is to make her go.
Your wife needs to get away from time to time. Convince her, she'll be glad you did. And so will you.
Jason and Alma are heading "home" to help plant a church. This is what they shared on Sunday...
6 years ago.
Alma was accepted to UCI for a doctoral program. I was beginning to tour more and we were looking for a church that understood our unique family nuances. And could shepherd us through our first years of marriage,
We also knew it was temporary by nature because, we were only in OC because of school. But after school was done and it was time to move on; we couldn't do it!
We actually fell in love with our church family and not only liked but craved the body life.
Then we were faced with a dilemma that if we were gonna do body life well, we had to choose where heart and calling actually was. We felt that given the gifts and bends that god gave us, we knew we were called to LB due to its diversity and spiritual needs. And to stay in Orange was just dividing our time and heart and we weren't serving Orange or Long Beach very well.
2 years ago.
A friend contacted Jason about being called to plant in Long Beach. Jason had known the pastor for quite some time. He was a chaplain on a tour he did in 2012 and was such an encouragement and blessing to his life. So when he and his family arrived in Long Beach, we were able to invite them to our part of the city and get to know each other’s hearts and goals more. We learned that a lot of what they were praying for for their own marriage and family needs were very similar to what we were praying for and it turned out we were basically answered prayers for each other.
6 months ago.
We joined the church plant last Fall. It's in North Long Beach and made up of about 15-20 families. People from Tennessee to Washington state as well as a few locals.
A good friend here at Sovereign Grace reminded me as we were deciding to leave that we weren't leaving the church...we were part of the expansion of the church. Most of you remember the challenges of church planting and we would love your prayer for our new church as we labor to love God, love each other, and love Long beach.
Nestor shared this past Sunday...
Being new has been both a humbling and encouraging experience here.
Humbling because you haven't built this church around us, for our comfort and for our name to being known. Which honestly is what we have tended to look for when when we visited new churches. Instead, you welcomed us in, pointed us to Jesus and His gospel and allowed Sundays to be day about the Lord. You carefully, with reverence and fear, gather for His glory rather than mine.
This has been so encouraging.
This carefulness has made us appreciate things in new ways. Gospel-centeredness. Service. Hospitality. We appreciate how seriously the church takes the Word and receives it with with glad hearts and with full force. Even the way you sing. You are careful.
Thank you Sovereign Grace. Thank you for what you do. Keep doing it as God keep sending us more and more new people like us.
The 2016 Book Reading Challenge
This past Sunday evening, 14 people enjoyed a steak dinner celebration at Pastor Eric's home. They had successfully completed 12 months of reading assignments, submitting a book report at the end of each month in 2016.
Check out their list of "the best sentence" in every book they read here.
