Ben's Blessing Blog

I can't believe I'm actually doing this, but I am :) I am actually going to Botswana.... and I'm not the only one going. Titus will also be going with me. The decision for Titus to go was only made this past Sunday and wow, I needed to get going then on planning plane tickets and organizing some projects Titus has been helping me on. I just bought the tickets today so now it's official.

As I've said in previous blog posts, I have recently begun to preach for Children's Church. As you all know I really enjoy working with kids and this has been a great opportunity for me to begin preaching practice. Well, Today the energy level had to be recorded at an all time high for my teaching experience. Seriously, I am so exhausted. One kid was bouncing up and down before class and I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Wellll, Today I don't have a soccer game because it's raining so I'm getting all my energy out now!" The way most of the boys were going I would have guess the same was true about all of them :)

Here is Part 2 of Evaluating the Culture

I know most of ya'll use blog readers so you wouldn't notice the change on the blog. It's not like it will revolutionize your look on creativity or something, but hey I thought I would point out the obvious.

I will be putting part three of the getting to the marriage altar message. I just have been a little busy recently and haven't got a copy of the message yet :) Maybe I will post it tomorrow.

As I said before I am reading the book called, "To the Golden Shore". It is about the life of Adoniram Judson. In this chapter Adoniram has about a week or so left before he gets on the long boat to Calcutta India and then to Burma. Adoniram got married during this week (Feb 5, 1812) The preacher, Pastor Allen, married them and the words he concluded the wedding with were to the parents and couple. "My dear children, you are now engaged in the best of causes. It is that cause for which Jesus the Son of God came into the world and suffered and died. You literally forsake father and mother, brothers and sisters, for the sake of Christ and the promotion of His Kingdom." With his voice breaking he said, "To the care of the great Head of the church I now commit them. To His grave I also resign you all. May He gather you together in one. And may you all return and come to Zion with a song, and with shouts of everlasting glory."

I've been blessed to have some great people to work for this past year and one company I work for goes to different conventions and interview people about natural foods and the benefits and then other questions related to the food industry. I do have to say quite a few of their videos are interesting to watch. This video I did today I thought was rather cool. Some of you may have heard of Stevia because it is a good replacement for sugar because it is actually good for you. The only thing is that it could give a bad after taste if not used correctly. This drink uses stevia to replace sugar and and they get it all within the cap.....

During the Emmaus Heritage Day my family got to play some music and it attracted some people over. Some people wanted to know the church we were from so we pointed them to the next tent beside us, lol. It was great, Here are two videos I took on my iPhone.

The book "To the Golden Shore" is great. I love to read about the ambition that Judson had to reach those that were lost. It is so great to see how God worked on his life and in the lives of his friends who also wanted to go to the Orient. In the chapters I read this morning I read about Adoniram's call and when the Lord laid it on his heart. He came back to his parents and he didn't want to share his calling just yet because he knew that it would be hard for them to take. He didn't realize how hard it would be until they revealed their secret to him a couple days after his return. His parents were so excited to tell him that he was asked to be the assistant Pastor of one of the largest churches and his mother added that he would also be close to home. The book said that his Dad had hopes that Adoniram would be the pastor of the Largest church and be like other great preachers of that time. The pressure on Adoniram was so heavy as he shared with them his secret how he felt that the Lord had called him not to be a preacher of a large church, but a missionary, and not just a missionary to a nearby area, but across the world (to Burma) where no missionaries he knew of had gone.

I'm glad to hear that this message has been a blessing to quite a few of you. Here is the most recent message which my Pastor preached this past Sunday Night. It was a powerful message and the picture of Christ's bride was so awesome! It'll send ya chills :D hehe

I hear that there were some difficulties with playing the audio from my previous post so here are two options. 1. You can play it with the embedded flash player below or you can right click on the link above the audio and "save as" to your computer.

My Pastor just preached this past Sunday Night on "The Surest Way to Destroy Your Future Marriage". Though the sermon was quite longer than most the interest was very high. In fact after the message was over, more than 30 people signed up for a copy or more than one copy of the message. I don't think I have to go into any detail at all to explain that marrying the right person is important, so this message was very much a challenge to me, because I want to follow God's will for my life because He knows best. For so many of the choices in life I remind myself of the classic example of Samuel going to choose a King and he thought surely he was looking at the Lord's chosen one, but it wasn't. David's Father and the man of God in their own minds thought that Eliab would be the one. However, God reminded them that men look on the outside and make their decisions that way, but GOD looks right through that all and sees the heart.

BenH