Summer 2006 Edition Ramsden Bellhouse Baptist Church Review

By the time you read this I guess that the church outing on 17th June to Marks Hall and barbeque at Richard and  Marion's will be over. It has been a while since we had a church outing and trust that it was a blessed time.

Our church anniversary and Strawberry tea will be held on 25t" June. The service will be taken by our 'old' friend Alan Edwards and we thank God for Alan & June's witness. The strawberry tea is being organised by Jenni Newton with Sibyl & Jean and will be held in the afternoon at 2.30pm. Please make this known in the villages,

A further date for your diary is July 9th when Rev. Sheila Martin, the new Regional Minister, will be taking our morning service. She has also kindly agreed to take our anniversary service in 2007.

The village of Ramsden Bellhouse does have a Website which includes pages on the Baptist Church. This has been set up by one of the Leaders of the Scouts and shows a good deal of pictures of the Scouts, many taken inside the church. For those of you who have access to the Web the address is www.ramsdenbellhouse.info Our thanks go to Sylvia Searle who is the recipient of all e-mails directed to the church from the site.

So what's been happening in the fellowship over the past three months? As mentioned in the last magazine we celebrated the life of Ian Nicholls in April and Margaret still needs to be upheld in prayer. Geoff Blake also passed away and Derek has written an article on Geoff & Brenda later. We also heard that Jim, Tiny's friend, passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer, our thoughts are with his sister and Sibyl & Jean.

There seem to be many who need the Lord's special healing touch at this time: Janet Jeffree has just commenced chemotherapy treatment and she and Clive need our prayers. Paul and Shirley still need prayer for healing for Paul and Jenny Jacques has recently gone through a very painful time with her spine and this continues to be a major problem.

So often these major crises in peoples' lives seem to dominate our prayers and we come to the Lord with a long list of people for His blessing. Nothing wrong in that, you may say, but we need also to remember that the Lord does answer prayer and to thank Him for that and for all the blessings that He does give. I remember when we had a small prayer group we used to keep a list of things to pray for each week and it was `surprising' (although it shouldn't be), looking back, how much God had answered prayer.

Marion wielded the frying pan again at our drop in brunch on 25th March. Whilst we put the time back from breakfast we still got a flood of people for lunch. I think we may have to give people timed tickets. It was a good event attended by over 70 people

At last the new noticeboard has been erected. This was given as part of the gift in memory of Vera Kidd and it makes a neat facade to the church.

As we approach the holiday season we pray that those who take time away will be refreshed and protected. At the time of writing this I think we have just had the summer!!