When I was younger, I always liked to play outside in the fields and woods on the farm where I grew up. There was something about being out side with he plants and trees. Now, I hated having to mow our yard, but loved to play out in it. When I got a little older, I liked landscaping, and even took it upon myself to do the landscaping around our house and pool. After I dug the grass up, I put down some black material to help keep the grass from growing and then the rocks and plants. After a few weeks I noticed that little sprouts of grass started pushing their way through the black material that I put down, in spite of the fact that I thought that I had dug it all up. The problem was that I didn’t get all the way down to the root, and as long as the roots were still there, the grass would keep growing.
It is much the same way in our spiritual lives, in that if we want to grow we have to be rooted and abiding in the Lord, because it is only through Him that we have life and can bring forth fruit. That was our focus this year in our anual youth conference called, “Abide in Me”. It was truly a blessed time and we saw the Lord work in a great way. This year we had a group of seventeen that came from the US to visit and help in the conference. From the first day the group began decorating and was able to make the whole church look like a vineyard, complete with two life-size trees on the platform. One of the most exciting things about the conference was to see how all three churches worked together and each one was in charge of a different night, coordinating the music, games etc. Each night we had over a hundred people come with several professions of faith and many decisions for the Lord. While the group was here we were able to take them to visit the different churches for service and see many of the sites. One of the days we took everyone to the statue of Jesus that overlooks our city and talked to them about the great harvest and lack of laborers and the need to pray for laborers. By the end of their time here they didn’t want to leave because they had become so attached to people and helping in the ministry. We also praise the Lord for our mission’s director Bro. Jeff Bush who came to preach the conference for us with two of his daughters. He is a great encouragement both to us and the people here. Please pray for all the decisions that were made and that the Lord will continue to raise up servants that will abide in Him and bring forth fruit.