Here is the non-youth that helped with the conference: Juana, Onyx, Pastor Mejia, another nice lady, me, Mrs. Mejia, Dorka, Raphael (my translator). Dorka made me the dress I am wearing. The people there are so giving!
I made 3 calls for people to come forward to make a decision for Jesus. The first was on my bday when I preached on the "good news" of Christ's saving grace. What an awesome bday gift to have people accepting Jesus as their saviour. Then I made another call when speaking on baptism, and even though everything went wrong (late at night, and decision cards were a mess), about 10 precious souls still came forward for baptism! Praise the Lord! Then my last call was my very last night of preaching (Fri). I preached on the Holy Spirit's role and how to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Since it was the last meeting, I decided to do another call for baptism, and this time the cards were ready to be distributed correctly. So at the end of the message the audience stood for prayer and I proceeded to ask them to respond to Jesus by coming forward for baptism into the remnant church of Revelation 12. No one came. Then I asked about rebaptism. No one came. Then I asked if anyone wanted special prayer for a specific sin they were struggling with. No one came. Without trying to sound too disappointed I had prayer and invited them all to church the following day. Then walked out to greet everyone as they left. I wanted to cry, but Raphael reminded me that it was okay that no one came forward, that we were doing God's awesome work and planting many seeds. Of course he was right! So I felt much better (I also had a couple people tell me they would've come forward, but didnt for various reasons). Sabbath service went well, but very long! I didnt even start preaching until after 12:30. So kept it short and sweet and to the point. A beautiful sermon on the promise of heaven. I told the people that I had no plans right now to return to the Dominican, so they had better be in heaven so we could see eachother again!
The perfect end to a powerful conference!!! Carmen, Julio, and Juan-Paulo were baptized Sabbath June 24th in the afternoon. It was an amazing experience to watch people that had come out to hear little ol' me preach God's Word make a lifelong (hopefully) commitment to Him. After the 3 were baptized the Pastor called for anyone else that wanted to be baptized...and they came! I dont know why they didnt come the night before, butPraise God they came! I was so excited! I took a picture of them. Most of the children are probably too young for baptism, but praise the Lord they want to follow Him. The Pastor called me up to say something to them, so I told them that they were making the best decision of their lives, one they would never regret! Even though I was leaving my heart is with them, and that the church members have the most important job of loving these people and helping them to keep growing toward Jesus. Then I had prayer for them and shook the hand of each one with an Amen or Gloria a Dios. The woman in white's husband does not want her to get baptized, so pray for her family, please.
This was one of the best days of my life! If you are a Christian, and you have never brought anyone to know Christ, I would ask, "why not?" Christ did everything for you, why don't you go out and share with others the love God has for them?
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