We had a wonderful time last Friday night taking the teens out to look at Christmas lights. Several of our regulars were unable to make it, but those that came had a great time. We love having the opportunity to work with these kids. To be a part of our youth group at LBC you have to faithfully attend all services, attend Thursday night soul winning, and be faithful to attend young fundamentalist on Sunday evening before the service. These young people are all soul winners and are responsible for leading over three hundred people to Christ this past year. Praise God for a soul winning youth department. This past Sunday we had a great crowd both Sunday morning and Sunday night. We also had one baptized and very good offerings. I am thankful for our church and look forward to the future.

Wew, I have been so busy I haven't hardly had time to blog. Pictured here are my parents along with Brother Gaiser at our class Sunday school Christmas party last Friday night. It was at Valentino's and we had a great time. We had 30 class members attend and everyone of them had the time of their life. We always enjoy our class Christmas parties. Last Sunday the attendance was down, but the offerings were very good and we had one baptized. Also had a member get saved Sunday night that should be getting baptized this next Sunday. Thank God for Jesus during this holiday season.

This past week we battled more snow. It is supposed to be a hard winter here and we have been facing it early and often so far this month. Thursday night we went soul winning in the snow. It was snowing about 2 inches when we went, but I am not sorry we went. Only 17 folks came out, but we did have 12 people saved. Then we had our first "State of the Church" banquet this past Friday evening and the even went very well. We had a wonderful meal made by my wife and then we had a presentation give about the future of our church for the year 2012. It was very exciting for all who attended. Then on Saturday, I received a call from a lady who quit attending our church last October. She had said she was unsure about her salvation and that she wanted to start attending our church again. So I met with her and had the privilege of leading her to Christ. Miss Elle is that lady (pictured) and she got baptized on Sunday morning. Thank God for great victories.

To God be the glory! These three preacher boys were called upon for popcorn preaching during young fundamentalist. I gave them a verse and about a minutes notice to come to the pulpit and preach a three minute sermon. I do it differently at different times, but tonight this caught them by surprise. All three of them did perform well under the pressure of having this springed upon them. "In season and out of season," amen! Overall we had a wonderful day. God crowd of about 115 in Sunday school and one baptized during the morning service. Good crowd tonight and a great spirit. Praise God for preacher boys, they help make our church exciting.

This Chonz Roman who was led to Christ by one of our faithful members, Miss Erika Merida. Chonz got saved on Saturday and had been a member of upstarch type church in town for a long time. Upon his acceptance of Christ on Saturday he gladly followed the Lord in baptism on Sunday and has now become a member of Lincoln Baptist Church. Chonz really enjoyed hearing me preach my sermon on "How I Know the Bible is True" on Sunday morning. He enjoyed it so much that he returned Sunday night and heard me preach "How Thou Oughtest to Behave Thyself in the House of God." He went nuts over that sermon and ask me where I was two years ago when he came to Lincoln. I told I have been here 9 1/2 years. It is a real joy to find someone who gets excited about the things of God. Overall we had a good morning with 126 in Sunday school and 1 baptized. Had a good crowd on Sunday night with an enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner after the service. Thank God for all His everlasting mercies that He extends to all of us!

This is Mrs. Miller and Jennifer Yuma pictured with their converts from Thursday night soul winning. They came to church this morning and their parents are suppose to come next Sunday. They are from Iraq and are of Kurdish descent, but were not Muslims. The older four in this picture all trusted Christ. What a great blessing to see converts winning converts. Mrs. Miller was led to Christ by my wife several years ago and is now one of our Sunday school teachers. Jennifer is one of my converts from several years ago and her family is from Congo. So now you have someone from Congo being used of God to reach someone from Iraq to Christ in Lincoln, Nebraska. WHAT A SAVIOUR! Someone had better say AMEN! Overall we had five professions and one baptized this morning with 120 in Sunday school.

This is Juan Rivera who got baptized this past Sunday. Juan is in a wheel chair because of a lame leg. I met Juan about a week ago and was able to lead him to Christ. When Juan was talked to about being baptized, he could hardly wait to get into the baptistery tank. He almost crawled into the tank he was so excited. We had a couple of guys helping him, but he wasn't going to be detoured from getting in. It was a great blessing to see someone so excited about obeying the Lord's command of believer's baptism. His wife and oldest son also got baptized today. James Chuol was baptized that morning as well. James is not pictured, but he is a man who my wife met last Summer and had the privilege of leading him to Christ. Then I came by the house and met his eight year old son and lead him to Christ. That was last July. At that time his eight year old son was in and out of the hospital because of a battle with cancer. Unfortunately, his son passed away on October 7th of this year. I was glad to see the entire family come to church for the first time today. Then Sunday night we had a wonderful addition to our church in the way of the Gaiser family. They joined by a transfer of membership from another church of like faith and practice. I am excited to see what the Lord will do with this wonderful family in our church. Praise God for families that love Christ.

This is Brother Zlomke's nephew Eddie. He was led to Christ by Mrs. Zlomke on Saturday and was one of two baptisms today at church. Over all we had a great service. There were several visitors and I had a convert of mine come and get baptized that I met over six months ago. The critics always say, "where are they all?" My answer is always, "they are somewhere!" Praise God for a soul winning church!

Today we had a decent crowd in both the morning and evening services. We also had one baptized in the morning service and one baptized in the evening service. This is Justin who got baptized in the evening service. I met Justin on Saturday morning while making a visit. I witnessed to him and he very nicely told me, he just does not believe Christ died for him. I left him with a tract and told him that "faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God." I was surprised to see him come to services Sunday morning. One of our altar workers talked to him, but he told them the same thing he told me on Saturday. After services let out and most everybody left, Justin came back and asked one of the men if he could talk to me. I visited with Justin in my office. He asked me what convinced me about Christ and how to be saved. I told him my testimony and challenged him to trust Christ. However, he said he was still unsure and I did not try and force him at all. I did give him a little booklet called Grow in Grace. The first chapter is on salvation. I told him to work the first chapter of the booklet. He came back Sunday night and said he did the whole booklet and spent about 2 hours on it. I preached and gave the invitation. He raised his hand saying he was lost. I went to him at the invitation and he said he was ready to trust Christ! Praise God! Thank God for soul winning. I knew God was working on his heart, because he kept coming back and coming back. I prayed for the Holy Ghost to convict him several times before he got saved. I sure am glad that he did!

Today I took the missionaries on a tour of one of our three Buddist temples here in town. This is one of their incense altars pictured to the right. Many that I have spoken with think the pictures I show them are from Thailand or some other Asian country. I always tell them, "Nope, they are from Lincoln." This temple we were at today is an impressive building; definitely a lot of money was spent on having it here. However, it is nothing more than an abomination to God Almighty. What a shame that our independent Baptist churches in this town aren't built as big and grand, when we have the truth of the King James Bible in our hand. Missionary Andrew Long told me that he has never been soulwinning in a such a diverse city in all his life. It truly is amazing that God has put our church here. Instead of Lincoln Baptist going to the world, God is bringing the world to us. May we take advantage of this opportunity to reach the world from our own backyard. The service Monday night was fantastic, both missionaries preached and Missionary Philip Jordan preached the final message from Ezekiel 37. He did a great job! If you are looking for soul winning missionaries, these two men would be the ones you want! Thank God for missionaries!

This past Sunday was the start of our missions conference. We had two missionaries here with us. From right Brother Philip Jordan (Spain) and Brother Andy Long (India). Brother Jordan did a great job during Sunday school and Brother Long preached a powerful message on Sunday night. Overall it was a record week for soul winning with 95 trusting Christ as Saviour. We also had three follow the Lord in believer's baptism. Two Sunday morning and one Sunday night. We are looking forward to hearing from both of these men of God tonight as we continue our conference.

This is Blaise Rashidi preaching in the Young Fundamentalist Sunday evening before church. He did a good job as one of our preacher boys. We have three of them here in our church and they are a great blessing to us. Overall the crowds were not as large as I would have liked on Sunday morning, but we did have one baptized. We had good offerings and a very good service on Sunday night with several visitors. Anytime it is the Lord's Day it is a good day! Somebody say, AMEN!

It was a good day at LBC for baptisms. There were six professions total with four getting baptized. There were three baptisms on Sunday morning and another one on Sunday night. This is Aman Santino one of our Sunday morning baptisms. Praise God for a church that baptizes converts right away! Sunday night I encouraged the people to have a revival the next three weeks building up to our Big Day which is also the start of our missions conference! Praise God for missions and missionaries too!

This is two of our bus girls, Yom and Anga. I asked them for a picture for our website because of their nice colorful Africa dresses. Their family has been bus riders in our church for many years. Overall we just had 104 today, but our bus was broken down and unable to be used. We picked up as many as we could with our church van. No doubt this gave us a little bit of a down Sunday attendance wise, but the spirit was good. We also had one saved during the morning service and another one baptized! Praise God for the bus ministry and for bus kids.

Josue here is preaching during the young fundamentalist. He is one of our preacher boys that surrendered to the ministry at the teen convention last Summer under the preaching of Dr. Danny Ortiz. I am using the Sunday evening young fundamentalist time as an opportunity to let some of these fellows preach to the other teenagers. He did a great job. Josue is also the bus captain of our A-2 bus route. Praise God for young men willing to be used for the Lord's service. Overall we had 126 in Sunday school for our campaign. However, I look for it to pick up next week. Last week we competed against a holiday weekend. Today we competed against 9/11, which brought to town a memorial airshow starting Sunday morning. Performing were the Blue Angels. I have great respect for them and for 9/11 and it's rememberance. However, I do think it may have hurt our attendance today. We also had one public profession of faith. Praise God for America!

This is the newest member of one of our church families. Her name is Elizabeth Rachel Rashidi. Her mother Masoka is holding her. She was born this past Saturday. Justin (the father) and Masoka are members of our church and attend every week with their four children (will be five now). It is a great blessing to be able to pastor such fine families. This past Sunday was the start of our campaign, overall it was good, although attendance was down for a campaign Sunday. (Probably because of the holiday!) We had 2 professions on Sunday morning with one man following the Lord in baptism who actually got saved from one of our gospel tracts that was left behind last Thursday night. Then on Sunday night we had 55 in attendance with 2 professions being made and one man following the Lord in believer's baptism. Unfortunately, it was my son's last service with us as he left early on Monday to fly back to Texas for college. We will greatly miss him and all that he helped us with around here. One more positive note is the fact that the offerings were outstanding this Sunday. Praise God for all that he does for us and our church families.

The Servants of the Saviour Sunday school class taught by Mrs. Miller (pictured) had a record day of 17 students yesterday. The Itty Bitty Baptist taught by Mrs. Jager had 16 and the Shining Lights taught by Mrs. Lyn Painter had 15. Those were not records for the latter two, but were good attendance days. Our Sunday schools are really booming right now. We had 60 saved this week and set a new monthly record with 267 saved for the month. Praise God for a church that cares about people.

We had a record day on our bus. We had 62 riders! Praise God. We also had 6 public professions of faith made Sunday morning. Sunday night we had 1 profession of faith made and that same individual following the Lord in believer's baptism. Praise God for the bus ministry. There are a lot of people coming to church on it that wouldn't have a ride otherwise.

This is Blaise at our men's fellowship breakfast enjoying some pancakes and eggs. We had a good weekend over all with 108 on Sunday morning and 4 professions with 2 following the Lord in believer's baptism. We also had 50 people saved for the week. Praise God for the fellowship and soul winning. They all go together to make Lincoln Baptist Church and enjoyable church.

This is a picture from our teen soul winning marathon last Thursday afternoon. We had 7 teens come out for it and they had 39 saved in two hours. Praise God for soul winning teenagers who are willing to come out in 95 and 100 degree heat and go soul winning. They had dinner at the church afterward and then jumped on the soul winning bus for our Churchwide Thursday night soul winning. Overall we had a record setting week with 92 people saved. The old record was 69 people in one week. We are finally getting to the place where our church is really starting to take off on this thing of personal soul winning. I know this is true, because out of 92 last week, I personally had only 14. In years past whenever we set some kind of a record, I would have to carry half the load. This is no longer the case now. This is what is needed in our church if we are to reach our city. I thank the Lord for all He has done in these past nine years and I am looking forward to seeing even greater things in the next nine years.

This is Brother Jonathan pictured with a family he met out soul winning. They got saved and the children got baptized. We love families at Lincoln Baptist Church! Overall we had a great Sunday with 112 in Sunday school and 6 professions of faith made and 3 following the Lord in believer's baptism.

This is my son Jonathan singing a special Sunday night. He has been a real blessing to us this Summer. Over all we had a good day with 126 in Sunday school. We also had 3 public professions of faith made and 1 baptized. Praise God for His wonderful mercies!

This is Curtis, who was one of two baptized this morning at the invitation. Curtis got saved two Thursday night's ago. I was out on the soul winning bus and Curtis waved at us real big, so I pulled the bus over and talked to Curtis. Curtis is a mute and has a lame arm and leg on his left side of his body. I was able to lead him to Christ. He came to church today on the church bus and got baptized. Praise God for a church that will give the Gospel to anyone! I thank God to have th opportunity to work with Curtis.

This is Erika, one of three baptized on Sunday. We had a great day on the buses with 45 on one route. We had great offerings for the week and 38 saved. God has truly blessed our church and I am thankful for all that He has done for us. May we continue to see many saved and baptized!

Today we honored some of our Veterans in my adult Sunday school class. We had from right to left; Brother Edward Fauth ~ W.W. II veteran in the United States Navy. He saw action in the South Pacific. Then we have Brother Paul Lewis ~ served in the United States Army from 1951 to 1954. Then is my father, Brother Hugh Painter ~ served in the United States Marine Corp from 1957 to 1960. Then is Brother James Phillips ~ served in the United States Army and then the National Guard from 1963 to 1999. These men all served over seas answering the call of our nation during times of conflict ranging from Japan to Lebanon. I consider it a great honor to pastor these men and the many other veterans in our church. Over all it was a rather low attendance day with it being a holiday weekend. Several families were out of town, but we still had 101 in Sunday school. We had 19 riders on our van route. We also had 31 soul winners out Thursday night with 35 souls saved. Over all we finished the week with 48 saved! Praise God for our great nation and enjoy your 4th of July.

This is my wife and I pictured with Dr. Danny Ortiz and his wife. Dr. Ortiz and his wife have had a great impact on our family, probably, much more than they actually know. They were both mentors to my wife and I when we were in Bible college at Texas Baptist College. He was one of the main speakers for the teen convention we attended in Longview, Texas last week. He preached an absolutely fantastic message on Wednesday night called "I Sought for a Man Among Them." It was powerful! We had nine of our teenagers surrender to a call from God to go into full-time service. Praise God for His wonderful workings in the lives of young people.

We are giving our new baptistry a good workout by using it every service. Praise God we baptized Janelle here Sunday morning and another one Sunday night. Might I say thanks one more time to Brother Dos Rossouw for making this all possible. We had a good weekend having 21 saved just on Saturday morning. We had a total of 39 saved for the week. We had 114 Sunday morning and 67 Sunday night. We had very good offerings as well. God has richly blessed us time and time again. We are excited about all the things God is doing in our church. Thank God for His wonderful workings!

Three of our winning father's today that were awarded the book, "The Steps of a Good Man." From left to right it is Brother Jager, Brother Zlomke, and Brother Rashidi. Overall the crowd was down this father's day, but we did have 103 in Sunday school and one saved and baptized on Sunday night. Praise God for godly father's!

We finished the platform this week. It is a totally new look up there and I believe everyone that saw it was very pleased. God has been very good to our little church lately. We also had 30 out for soul winning Thursday night and finished the night having 24 come to Christ. Praise God for soul winning and soul winning churches!

This is Blaise Rashidi, a young man in our church, who surrender to give his life to full time service for God this past week during our revival meeting. Blaise and his family are from Congo, Africa. He has lived in America for about 1 1/2 years. I met them a few weeks after they came to America. A few months later the whole family had become baptized members of our church. Blaise speaks several languages and is becoming a very good soul winner. He has two years of high school left and then wants to attend Bible college. Please pray for Blaise and he seeks God's perfect will for his life. He is a faithful young man that gave up many things that the public school he attends was offering in order to be faithful to the house of God. Praise God that he continues to call young men into His service! There is still hope for this world!

This is Adbia Guyo and her children. They are from Ethopia, Three of them got baptized this past Sunday in our new baptistry. Praise God, I felt like Philip from Acts 8! We had 110 in the morning service and three baptized. We had only 43 Sunday night, but did have another one baptized! It was pretty good weekend considering we had some regulars out of town and it was following a Big Day. God has been good to us. I preached on Sunday night a message called, "The Chambers of his Imagery," out of Ezekiel chapter 8. I had at least three people tell me after the service that they were going home to throw somethings out of their house! Praise God for the moving of the Holy Spirit.

This is the Dos Rossouw family. They were truly a great blessing to have for our revival meeting. Dr. Rossouw preached five great messages. While they were here we had souls saved, converts baptized, and one surrender to full-time Christian service. We were honored and pleased to have them be a part of our church for the past six days. We finished our revival Wednesday night with 59 in attendance and 2 visitors. One of the visitors was one of Dr. Rossouw's converts from our Saturday soul winning time. We are looking forward to having this family back again! Praise God for families who are surrender to His will!

Jesus was a carpenter! So is Dr. Dos Rossouw! Here he is pictured getting onto our roof and getting ready to fix some leaks. He has done an absolutely fantastic work this week, both on the building and on the people. We had 55 Monday night for our 7 PM service. Last night we had 58. He preached a message called "The Baptism." The message centered around our need for Holy Spirit power in our Christian lives. Many decisions were made at the invitation time. As far as the building, all he has done is a $1500 remolding job on our platform that would have cost us about $5,000 plus had we used local companies. He also fixed several leaks on the roof. Not much, right? Yeah, right! He has done far more than we ever expected! May God bless him.

For the revival meeting Monday night, we had 55 in attendance. There was one decision to surrender to full-time service in the ministry made by one of our teenage young men. Dr. Rossouw, who is the executive vice-president of Texas Baptist College has done a wonderful job. He preached a message called "Believe in the Harvest." Many decisions were made! He has also been doing a wonderful job installing a baptistery into our building, so we can quit using the horse trough. We have baptized over 900 in it, but it is time to say goodbye. He is a man of many talents! We thank God for Dr. Dos Rossouw and all that he has done for us.

Dr. Dos Rossouw preaching at our 9th year anniversary Sunday. He did a great job Sunday morning preaching "This Book is About Jesus." We had 130 in attendance and 9 public professions of faith made with 2 following the Lord in believer's baptism. Dr. Rossouw preached again Sunday night the message "Love First." The altars were full at the invitation time. We had 61 in attendance for the service and 2 professions of faith made with 1 following the Lord in believer's baptism. We finished the day with 67 souls being saved for the week. Praise God for personal soul winning! Dr. Rossouw will be preaching the next three nights at 7 PM for a short revival meeting.

We had a pretty good Sunday overall. It was a good spirit and there were 40 people that got saved through our personal soul winning. We also had Olivia make a public profession of faith and follow the Lord in believer's baptism (pictured to the left). We had 55 on Sunday night which was good considering we had two families out of town. One family has seven people in it, so we definitely considered it to be a good Sunday evening attendance. Praise God for his goodness.

We had a good Sunday overall with great offerings. There was one saved with one profession of faith made in the morning service and 106 in attendance. Below is pictured one of our faithful men, Brother Ed Fauth at his donut post on Sunday morning. Also pictured is my son Jonathan, who is back from Bible college for the Summer. Overall it was a great Sunday with some great people!

This is Dr. Steve Johnson and his wife, Suzanne Johnson. She was our guest speaker for the Mother/daughter banquet this past Friday night. We had 32 out for the banquet and she did a wonderful job speaking. Her husband, the pastor of Metro Baptist Church in Aurora, Colorado, preached for us this past Sunday, there was a great spirit in the church and he preached two poiwerful messages. The response was great. In fact Sunday nights message should be heard by all. It was called "The Enemies of the Church", many decisions were made. If you were not here and want the message, it can be ordered for $3.00 through our booktable. We are now looking forward to our up coming anniversary Sunday and revival meeting in the beginning of June.

This is a picture of me with some of the ladies having a good laugh after the morning service. The lady in orange is Tisafo Deng, a first time visitor who got saved and baptized. She is a cousin to the lady directly to my right Nywal, who is a regular attender at our church. Overall we had a decent crowd considering it was mother's day. We had a smaller crowd on Sunday night, but a great spirit at the invitation after I preached the message "Peculiar Person" from Titus 2:11-15. Somebody say Amen!

We finished the month of April very strong. We had a good crowd on Easter morning with 4 public professions of faith with 2 being baptized. Then Sunday night we finished our campaign by setting yet, another attendance record for Sunday night. We had 111 people there with 1 saved and baptized! It was very exciting to have all these folks there to hear me preach "Religion or Christ." God has been very good to us by helping us set a new Sunday night attendance record each week. Our previous record for Sunday night attendance was 67 prior to April. Praise God for His help, because it could not have happened without Him!

A new record this Sunday night with 88 people here to hear me preach "Let Him Have the Clay." We also had 5 professions of faith with 2 following the Lord in Believer's Baptism. Somebody say, "Amen!" We keep breaking our Sunday night attendance record each week! These have been exciting times. Great spirit this morning even though we only had 100 in attendance. The offerings were also fantastic! I am excited to see what happens next week!

RBC Pastor's Pen

RBC Pastor's Pen: "Pastor Haley's Blog"

Last week we set a new Sunday night attendance record of at 80. Tonight we said goodbye to that record by having 87. Here is a picture of part of the crowd on one half of the auditorium. Our previous Sunday night record had been 67 before. Someone had asked me what our Sunday morning record has been in the past. The answer to that question is 149. Our Sunday night campaign has definitely been working to help boost our attendance average. Praise God for his wonderful blessings!

As you can see the sides were heating up for the first night of our Sunday night campaign. (This picture was taken about 20 minutes prior to the service.) The theme is family fued and the sides are the McMiller's (McCoy's) versus the Jagerfield's (Hatfield's). We set a new Sunday night attendance record with 80 that night. We also had one saved at the invitation and three baptized. Our previous record was 67 for a Sunday night. The Jagerfield's won tonight, but only by one person. They had 40 and the McMiller's had 39. I am not on a team, because somebody has to referee this feud! I am looking forward to next Sunday night to see how the feud continues. The winning team at the end, feeds a potluck dinner to the winning team! We usually average around 45 to 50 on Sunday night, so this was a big boost. Usually in the Spring time we have Sunday school campaigns, but this year I decided we needed to boost our Sunday night attendance. Praise God for the way He blessed our first night of it!

This is Chris Carpenter and his wife Cara who were visiting our church today. Chris was one of two baptisms today. We had a good crowd this morning and tonight and the offerings were very good as well. We are getting ready to start our Sunday night campaign next week with the Jagerfield's versus the McMiller's. It should be a good contest on who can have the most on their team each Sunday night! Praise God for an old fashioned King James Bible that makes this all possible.

This Marilynn, who was one of five people that got baptized this morning after hearing me preach "Two Sad Suppositions." We had seven professions made overall and it was a great feeling for our little church to have the altars full. Of course, we regularly have people saved and baptized, just not five every Sunday. We had a good spirit Sunday night as I preached, "Our Part, His Part, Our Part, Their Part." Once again the altars were full at invitation time. We also had great offerings today! Praise God for His wonderful blessings.

This is a picture of me and Brother Paul Lewis before church Sunday night. (Unforunately, we forgot to smile for the picture! Ha! It was a happy occasion though!) Brother Lewis has been in our church since we started it. He turns 81 this coming Friday and just lost his wife to cancer a few weeks ago. He has retired from his positions of door greeter and head usher at our church. Though, he will continue to be faithful to our services, we sure do appreciate all his years of faithful service for our Lord. Overall we had a good Sunday (for time change Sunday) with 91 in Sunday school and 3 public professions of faith being made with one following the Lord in believer's baptism! Praise God for once again for faithful servants like Paul Lewis!

This is Yom Kok, who got baptized this past Sunday along with her two kids. Overall we had a very good Sunday. Attendance was only at 100, but the spirit was great. We also had only 46 on Sunday night, but still a great spirit of folks were in attendance to hear me preach "Do You Want a First Century Church or a Twenty-first Century Church?" The offerings were over $2,000 for the day and over $2,400 for the week. That makes six weeks in a row of being over budget. Praise God, things are going very well at Lincoln Baptist Church!

This is Ackot Kok who got saved and baptized this morning. Overall the attendance was down and has been done the past several weeks. This has partly been because of the rash of deaths we have had associated with our church. Three to be exact. Two of them were members. That has been a sad note, though we will celebrate the home going of one tomorrow with about 200 expected to attend. The offering have been at an all time high in the past five weeks. Praise God when things seem a little down somewhere else, God answers by bringing another area up.