There’s never a dull moment in the ministry at Port Macquarie! We had another jam-packed month in May. Speaking of jam that’s what we call jelly here in Australia, so we have peanut butter and jam sandwiches, not peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Also, jelly in Australia is what you would call Jell-O in the States, and that would be a very messy sandwich! All that to say, we had a great month!
Our Bible studies have been very steady. We have five families that are faithful each week. We’re blessed to have each of them, as they were all brought up in a solid, independent Baptist church. Our goal at the moment is to build a core group of Christians who would like to join us in this great endeavour. This month, we’ve been busy getting the word out by distributing as many tracts as we can in Port Macquarie. We’ve been able to distribute over 1,000 tracts this past month! Port Macquarie is a very hilly city and has been proven to be quite challenging . . . but it is great exercise! Speaking of exercising, Port Macquarie hosts an “Ironman” challenge each year in the month of May, and we have the privilege of living on part of the cycling leg of the course. It’s a triathlon race, and this year it brought in over 2,700 athletes from all around the world! We made some yard signs with motivating Bible verses to put along the road in front of our house; they also have our church’s website on the back. Please pray that the athletes would gain an interest in God!
We try to find creative ways to reach people here. Our city is very community-driven, and whenever I find a community noticeboard, I pin one of our tracts on it. We’re also part of a Port Macquarie community group on Facebook, and we promote our church there often. Here, people are very friendly, and we talk about our church very often. Each month, we have a special Sunday that we push and promote hard. This past month, we had “John 3:16 Sunday.” We’ve been going through the Gospel of John and have reached this very famous chapter of the Bible, so we wanted to bring as many visitors as we could. Praise the Lord, we had 8 first-time visitors that Sunday. One man came because he received a tract in his letterbox!
The Lord has been good to us this past month, but we couldn’t do it without your prayers and continued support! We’ve been on the field for almost two years. There has been a lot of adjusting for our family, but His grace is sufficient for us!
Your servant in Christ,
Garry Tingson
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- Our tract on the Port Macquarie community noticeboard
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- Sunday school is always fun!
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- Our special Sunday for the month of May, “John 3:16 Sunday”
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- Panom, age 75, got saved!
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- Preaching on John 3:16 on our “John 3:16 Sunday”
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- Verse signs for the 2,700-plus athletes who came to participate in Port Macquarie’s “Ironman” triathalon
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- Organising tract distribution
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- Visitor from one of our tract distributions