Tending Sheep Ministries

It’s been almost a year since I’ve updated this blog. I can’t cover everything we’ve experienced, but I’ll try to hit a few high points.

Ministry

We’re still serving in a small rural church in our area. I’ve gravitated into the role of teaching elder/co-pastor. Whatever your tradition may call it, the role I’m talking about is called an overseer (1 Timothy 3:1) or elder (Titus 1:5) in the New Testament. When it comes to titles though, I prefer “unworthy/unprofitable servant” (Luke 17:10), or just “brother”.

Our church building now has walls! It has doors too, in spite of how it looks in the slightly dated picture below. We’re excited to be able to keep dry when it rains, and hope to be able to purchase windows at some point in the future.

I’m most excited to share what’s happened among the church body though. Since my last post, we’ve seen two baptisms, two professions of faith from our youth group, celebrated the Lord’s Supper for the first time, and held a vigil service late into the night. The baptisms were held outdoors and we couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful site or weather. It was an amazing experience.

Other stuff

After over a year of construction, we’ve been able to move in to our house. It is off grid, and all of our energy needs are supplied by a solar system. All of the water we use is collected rainwater. We do have to monitor our usage and make certain accommodations, but we are now wonderfully connected to the resources we use. We view every hot shower as a gift provided by God (via the sun) as opposed to something the electric company owes us because we paid last month’s bill. It took a while, but we also how have reasonably good internet service at our house, which is such a relief after months of struggling with very spotty 3G cellular service and wishing we could have dial-up modem speeds again. We continue to plant things too in hopes of being able to provide for more and more of our food needs.

I hope, dear reader, that this finds you well. If you are a fellow believer, I encourage you to keep living out your faith. Whether you are called to serve in foreign lands or to witness in your local grocery store parking lot, anything you do in the Lord is worthwhile.