PowerWeekEnd!

Had a great weekend last week. On Saturday we had Powerhouse United here at the Fire Centre. For those of you who don't know, Cornerstone Church started our Powerhouse ministries in November 2005 when a team from Scotland came out. One of the team members was my brother David who started Powerhouse Ministries in Fraserburgh in 1996. Our Children's Pastor (Alexandro) went to Scotland for 6 weeks in 2005 to study what David was doing there and to be trained.


So on the first Saturday of every month we have Powerhouse United. We bus kids in from all the areas where we are ministering and they have a great time - songs, dances, quizzes, games, stories ... and they get a good snack at the end! They love it. We get between 200-400 kids every month, depending on weather, holidays etc. The team do a great job and I have to thank the Lord for people like David and Gillian Saunders who have done an amazing job training our team and developing the programme. We have over 30 Cornerstone members in our team, and they have learned so much.

On the First Sunday of the month we also have 'Cornerstone United'. We started off with one church in August 2004, but now we have six churches who are at different stages in their development. Maybe in another blog I will let you know all about them. Anyway, on the first Sunday we all meet together. This is a really good day when we can say hello to old friends and meet new ones.

Last Sunday we had around 320 people there. We have a full kids and toddlers programme .. so everyone is catered for. I was so blessed last week when I saw our band - all teenagers (see pic)! All have been trained in the last 2 years from scratch and now they are doing so well. The 'old' worship band (our Pastors!) are now happily redundant ... although I have bought a new guitar and rumours are flying about a return for 'Mark and the Old Guys'!

I preached about 'Don't Let the Devil Steal Your Song' and many responded for prayer. The end of the service was really nice. Brenda Chua is a young lady from our mother church in Cornerstone Singapore and she has been here for 6 months. She has done a great job and we had a wee presentation for her. We had 'words of encouragement' from the various ministries at Sefton, and also many dances and singing items. Really nice. The highlight was a group of parents from the KMGLC who sang a beautiful Christian song - 'Worthy is the Lamb' (above). They had never been to Cornerstone before and we were delighted to see them. A great morning ....

Keep praying for us. Many great things are happening and we ask that you keep our family close to your heart in prayer. Josiah is doing great and loves Pepito so much. They walk around Sefton hand in hand most of the time! Lydia is struggling a wee bit. She spoke fluent Tagalog before but she has not spoken any since she came back. She was very eager to go to school but this week she has shown some reluctance - we think it is because of the language and because she is a bit behind her classmates because of her time in Scotland. Pray for her as she tries to fit back in here. She misses her cousin Bethany so much and she has tasted tow different lives in two very different countries. Very hard, but I am sure she will fit back in.

Can you spot Lydia from her school photo below? I am a mug. I told Mary three years ago that the school photographer did a really bad job and that even I could do much better ... so she told me that from then on I would have to! Nightmare! What they didn't teach you at Bible School!

Pray also for Mary & I. It has also been very difficult for us as there have been hard decisions to make and issues to tackle. There are different pressures here to handle and we would value your prayers. Sorry for the short blog the other day. It was a tough day and I was exhausted. That's about all I could muster!

Keep praying for us and all at Sefton Village. Thousands of lives are being touched weekly .. so be encouraged!

Goodnight ...