Monday September 14

Today starts the second week of my work in Albany and to this point it's been terrific!

On Friday evening, Larry Bailey from Sidney, NY came over for his bi-weekly study. The title/purpose of Larry's class is "How to make the local church stronger" based on the book of Philippians. So we looked Friday night at chapter 2 and how we must have the same mind as Christ.."Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Phil 2:4. The study was something that I needed to hear and sure the brethren up here needed it as well.

Larry was trying to convince me to stay an extra week, since mom and dad will be up the week after I leave. But as I explained to him, I have a prior preaching engagement in Gettysburg, PA on October 4 so unfortunately that isn't going to work out. Mom and dad will also be in Gettysburg on October 11, so I am a week early from meeting up with them.

Yesterday's service went well. But there is one member who has not been since the congregation moved to the apartment complex. The brethren are worried about her, but are not having a lot of luck getting in contact with her. Several of the members have offered to go pick her and her son up, but she has not expressed the willingness to accept that offer. The brethren are doing their best to help her along. So pray for them and the young lady.

After services, I was invited over to Granville's house to watch some football. Needless to say, we didn't watch a lot of football. We talked for about 5.5 hours about spiritual things. It was a great encouragement for me and I believe for he and his family as well. It's always great to hear how people get to where they are in their faith. I was thankful to spend time with them.

I almost forgot, Tim's grandmother is better than last week, but still has many problems. But he felt better after going and visiting her. Please continue to remember her in your prayers.

Well, it's time to get started on Hebrews material and the weekly sermon. Thanks for all your kind of words.

God bless,

Wes

Friday September 11

Where has the time gone? I had intended to get to the UAlbany campus yesterday, but did not have the time...I dropped Tim off at the airport so he could fly down to Tampa to sit with his grandmother. She is in very poor health. The last couple weeks have been rough. Dimensia has set in from her parkinsan's disease and has been hallucinating very frequently. To compound the problem a little more a few weeks ago she caught a blood infection and things don't seem to be able to get any better. This is Tim and Danny's grandmother so pray for all of them.

My sermon for Sunday is called "Suffering Like Christ" from 1 Peter 2:18-25--it's almost in final form. The reason for the sermon is because last week we noted that because we are born again we must rejoice in our sufferings. So we want to know how to fulfill this statement by Peter "But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings." (1 Peter 4:13) And in order to do that we have to understand how and why Christ suffered.

Tonight I will be going to a Bible study at the Mallory's house taught by Larry Bailey. Larry will be driving up from Sidney, NY which is about an 1 1/2 hours away. He teaches a study every other Friday evening with the bretheren here in the Mohawk Valley.

I am even more excited than normal because I have known Larry and his family for almost my entire life. And it's been probably 6 plus years since I last saw Larry. I think we will be studying the great book of Philippians.

Tim flies back in town tomorrow--and until then he has left me his dogs =\ but that's part of free room and board.

Hope all is well wherever you are at.

God bless,

Wes

Wednesday September 9

What a night last night!

The group had their first mid-week study and I would call it a large success. We had 3 visitors! Tim's co-worker Brittany, Tim's mother Betty, and STUART SHANNON!

Tim had been inviting Brittany for several weeks and when I saw her yesterday morning she confirmed that she was going to come. She came and participated thankful for the opportunities that have presented themselves and the work of Tim to invite them to services.

But Stuart is a completely different story...He had told me before I left ATL that he needed to get up to Albany to do some business, but he didn't know when. Well it was last night. Tim had told him the general area it was in as Stuart was driving to his hotel which is less than a mile from the apartment complex he spotted the Alexander and thought, "that's probably Tim's place." Well, he pulls in and sits in the parking lot for a moment and Tim comes walking out the door looking for a visitor. They notice one another and came upstairs for Bible Study. When Stuart walked in I was already teaching the class on Hebrews and I was so shocked I froze mid-sentence. It was great! I thought Tim was just keeping a secret from me, but then I found out after that it was a total fluke that Stuart was there. But we were so glad to see him, especially the members of Mohawk Valley.

We started a study on the book of Hebrews. I introduced the book and covered through chapter 2:5. They were pretty excited when the study ended because they saw how the Hebrew writer is goin to make his arguments that Jesus is better than anything else. I'm looking forward to covering as much ground as possible in the class. And leave them some material if they want it to finish out the book.

Hope all is well where each of you are.

p.s. I'm still at the coffee shop. Maybe we'll have internet tonight at the apartment.

Catching You Guys Up to the Present

I am going to do my best to keep you guys informed on what is happening in the Northeast. I have been all over the place in the first couple of weeks and today I am settling into the work here in Alabany.

At the moment, I can't connect to the internet at the apartment so I'm sitting in the Uncommon Grounds coffee shop uploading facebook pictures and starting this blog.

I arrived in Albany to see Tim on August 28th. I preached that Sunday morning for the brethren (Mohawk Valley church of Christ) at the Days Inn where they had been meeting for almost a year. I didn't get a total count but I think there were 13 people there that Sunday. And they were the most attentive group of 13 I've ever preached to. They were great! But I had to leave immediately after services to get to Watertown, NY for the Northeast Leadership Camp where I was a counselor.

It took about 3 1/2 hours to get to the Camp Clark. When I arrived the wind was RIDICULOUS! I met the guys I did not know and after dinner we looked outside and there as a double rainbow! It was beautiful. The main one was the most vivid I've ever seen. It started the week off right.

The guys had no idea what to expect. The majority were thinking it was going to be like FC camps where there is a lot of sports and free-time. Well, that doesn't happen at these types of camps. The guys have 6 classes a day, 45 minutes each. Have a morning devotion, after lunch have a man give a 45 minute presentation on evangelism. Have an evening devotion and singing for an hour. Cabin devotion at 10 pm for however long that takes =). Giving them about 3 hours of free time a day. The guys really had trouble on Monday, but by Tuesday they had figured it out.

They had the following classes: Gary Fisher (Lessons from Jeremiah), Scott Smelser (Beattitudes), Bob Waldron (Teaching the Bible), Sewell Hall (The Life and Epistles of Paul), Gardner Hall (Public Speaking), and Ed Smith (Song-leading).

The guys really did a great job learning that the culture of the camp was to be spiritually focused. Teachers and counselors and the older campers who had been to the Alabama camp had to help in that regard all week long. The guys followed in suit very well and by the end of the week were leading the other guys.

I always hate to leave, but the guys gave me so much encouragement throughout the week. I am really thankful for Joe Works asking me to be a part of the camp. It gave me an opportunity to get involved in the work in the Northeast. I met a lot of people I had heard about from Fairlawn, NJ and New York City and upstate NY. It's amazing to see brothers from all over the country trying to do the Lord's work.

So I returned to Albany on Friday evening. The Mohawk Valley brethren met for the first time in the apartment complex. I started a series Sunday morning from 1 Peter. The sermon came from 1 Peter 1 entitled "Being Born Again Should Cause Us to..." 1)Rejoice even though we are grieved by various trials 2)Love Him (Jesus) even though we have not seen Him 3) Believe Him even though we do not see Him NOW.

I personally thought it went very well. I will be continuing the series on Sunday going into detail about suffering from the book of 1 Peter.

Sunday afternoon Tim and myself headed to Manchester, NY to spend the night with Jeff Smith and his wife Jean and daughter Carrie. I met Jeff at leadership camp and he invited us to stay with them and go visit Niagara Falls! Well, we took him up on the offer. I did not know Jeff, but his son Nick married one of my friends from high school Erin Smith and so I've met Nick through Erin. Nevertheless it was so good to spend time with them. They lived 2 hours from the falls and made it easy for us to get over yesterday morning. They cooked us dinner on Sunday night. Breakfast on Monday morning and dinner on Monday evening! Not to mention they kept Tim's dogs because for us. They were tremendous. I'm so thankful that they recently moved to upstate NY to do the work of the Lord.

And that gets us to today Tuesday September 8. Tonight will be the first mid-week study of the Mohawk Valley congregation. I will be starting a study of Hebrews this evening. We have hopes that a couple of Tim's co-workers will be present as well as some brethren that worship with the institutional group in Albany.

There are a lot of opportunities in this city. The University at Albany is 2 minutes from the apartment complex! I plan to head over tomorrow and see if we can get some Bible studies set up. The brethren are excited and so am I. Please continue to remember us in your prayers.

God bless,

Wes