My Samaria

This past weekend, Harmony and I, along with some others from our church attended the Northern Plains District conference in Minot. The main speaker was Dr. Bill Hammel, President of the EFCA. He spoke about the need to minister to our Samarias, "the places you don't want to go but the people you need to reach." Just as Jesus could have avoided traveling through Samaria (as most during His day would have), He chose to enter Samaria because He had a divine appointment with a Samaritan woman at a well. I was challenged to consider who the "Samaritans" are in my community and to be willing to go to them instead of expecting them to "clean up their lives" and come to the church. I hope in the near future you will hear about me seeking to engage those who are often difficult to be around and easy to discard.

In addition, we voted on a new District Superintendent, Daryl Thompson, the pastor of Liberty Free Church in Williston. He has an unbelievable passion for evangelism, helping pastors and making sure our ministry fits our context. I really appreciated hearing his ideas and passions and am excited to get to know him better and have someone to go to for ideas and help. One of the convictions he shared that resonated with me is that "our Message and Mission must always stay the same but our Ministry must change to meet the need of our community."

In between events at the district conference I also had the district basketball tournament. The conference was in Minot (60 miles north of Underwood) and the tournament was in Garrison (20 miles north of Underwood), so on Friday night and then again Saturday afternoon, Harmony and I commuted between Minot and Garrison. We lost our opening round game to Wilton but the boys played tough and we encouraged them that if they continued to play that well we'd have a chance in the next couple games. On Saturday we played Sheridan County who we lost to by a couple points in the regular season. Utilizing a 2-man zone defense, we shut them down offensively and scored just enough oursevles to pull off the victory, 38-29. On monday night we met up with Washburn who we had just lost to a couple weeks ago. The boys played them really tough. We outscored them in two of the four quarters and were within a basket a couple times in the fourth quarter but just didn't have enough bounces go our way and lost 56-50. The one nice thing (beyond the season being finally over!) is that the assistant coach for Washburn and his son (who plays for them) attend our church. As I told my wife when she asked if she could root for Keir during our game, "No, but if they win you can root for him the whole rest of the season."

Sunday I preached on Ezra 8 and we saw that "God Helps those...who rely on Him." This was my longest sermon yet, so if you've got a spare forty minutes, check it out here. I also taught the second to last Sunday School lesson on the EFCA Statement of Faith "What We Believe & Why", which I believe has been a good series to take the church through, in spite of the fact that the statement will probably be changed at the upcoming national conference.

Please pray for me to work hard in the work God's given me to do and to pursue keeping my way pure by guarding it according to His Word (Ps 119:9). Please pray for Harmony to find someone to help out in the library as her working three evenings every week is taking its toll.

By God's Grace, Jeff