Brother and Mrs. Rashidi listening intently during
the Home and Family Class this past Sunday.

Brother and Mrs. Rashidi after they figured out
my wife was taking their picture.

Praise God for another wonderful Sunday at Lincoln Baptist Church. We live from Sunday to Sunday around here. Enjoying each and everyone of them to the fullest. However, it is what we do in between them that helps make them so enjoyable. We had fourteen in our Home and Family class this past Sunday. We had just recently started it back up after having to stop it for awhile. It was running around 20 to 22 when we had to stop it, so we are working at building it back up to that and of course even higher.

I am very excited about this class because there is such an attack on the home and the family these days that we must have churches with classes like this to help counter attack the enemy. I am also excited about the wonderful job that Brother Jager is doing with my old Sunday school class. He is helping me reach more adults and that is a tremendous blessing. We must reach adults as well as the youth.

This past Sunday we saw four public professions of faith made. I praise God for this. Even though none of them followed the Lord in baptism, we can never underestimate the importance of a soul coming to Christ. I truly believe several of them will get baptized in the next week or two. Praise God for them.

One last thing that excites me is the theme for this next month. "If the Foundations Be Destroyed ..." This is the day and age that we must emphasize doctrine, because it also is under attack. I look forward to teaching on Wednesday nights about the simple doctrines that are being trampled by the Devil. Praise God for the King James Bible and the victory we will have with it by learning true doctrine!

This is Christopher who got saved several weeks ago when I was out soul winning on a Thursday morning.  I was unable to find him at home until this past Saturday morning. When I did, he told me and my partner that he has been so blessed since that day I stopped him on the street. He said, he was without a job and that very day I led him to Christ he got a job. He said, he had lost his license and since that day he got his license back. He said, he had no car and since that day he had a car given to him. He said, God has not stopped blessing him since that day I stopped him on the street. Praise God for personal soul winning! He was so excited that he got baptized in his full suit. I tried to stop him, but he told me that he has a new life now, so he will just get a new suit. He almost dove in he was so excited! We had three baptized total and have more Faith Promise money committed than we have ever had before. We have $200 a week committed so far, which is just fantastic for a church like ours. Praise God for His wonderful blessings. On the lighter side, I wanted to mention a story from this past Thursday night soul winning. Two of our men while out soul winning talked to a lady at the first door they went to who said, "I used to to go to Lincoln Baptist Church, then Pastor Painter said, 'If you don't like the preaching, you can just leave.' So I left!" The two men left and laughed up a storm about it. Yes, I do sometimes make that statement when I preach, I guess someone really took it to heart. Ha! Praise God for this great country we live in that allows us to preach our convictions and stand for truth. I always do so without apology, but sometimes we can get a laugh out of it all too!

 Today we took Brother and Mrs. Gaiser on a trip to the Durham Museum in Omaha. They won our campaign Sunday school contest for bring the most visitors to Sunday school in September. They are pictured below at the train station. I also caught my wife enjoying a soda at the soda fountain shop. (above) It was a fun afternoon. We enjoy having a good family like this one in our church. They do so much for our church. From the nursery to ushering to teaching Sunday school to so much more. It is so refreshing to have faithful dependable people that you can count on as a pastor. I thank the Lord for all of our wonderful families that we have at Lincoln Baptist Church.

We just finished our missions conference and it was an absolutely fantastic time. We got to enjoy great singing and preaching by our guest. Pictured at top is Pastor Richard Haley who was our main conference speaker. He did a fantastic job. Then we had Missionary Jared Zapata pictured below with myself and Brother Haley. Brother Zapata did a wonderful job preaching on Monday night and with his presentations on Sunday. I would highly recommend him to any church looking for a solid missionary to take on for support. On Sunday we had a good crowd of 129 and we had five public professions of faith made. It was a great weekend and conference.

 This Sunday we saw a change up in our Sunday school department. We resumed our Home and Family class which was on a four week break. Then we had Brother Jager (pictured at the top right) teaching the Joint Heirs adult class. Finally we had a brand new teacher in Bro. Gaiser (pictured below) teaching the Overcomers teen class. It is great to have such faithful men like these two that can be used to help teach. Both of these men are of the finest quality and a great blessing to our church. Unfortunately good men and dependable men are hard to find. However, God has blessed us with some. We had a decent attendance with 104 in Sunday school, it is little below our average, but still decent. We also had one convert baptized. Next weekend starts our missions conference with the theme of Regions Beyond. We are excited about our incoming guest and I for one am looking forward to being stirred up about missions.