This is Missionary Ben Smith who preached on our last Sunday of "Give Me a Vision" missions month. He did a great job preaching Sunday morning. It was really neat that we had a Sudanese man trust Christ as Saviour since Brother Smith is a missionary to South Sudan. Our Faith Promise commitments were the highest they have ever been. Please pray for Brother Smith as he raises support to get churches started in South Sudan. Gotta love missionaries!

We just finished the new tile floor in our auditorium platform. It looks great. Just needs a little trim board put on the front and it will be ready for Wednesday night service. Special thanks to my family for sacrificing our entire holiday today to help me get this done. Also, special thanks to Brother Looper for working all day today and Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Then I don't want to forget Brother Lorenzo Williams who worked all afternoon carrying buckets of water. Thanks to all these people we will have a great floor. Amen.

Bro. Bud Painter at "I Love America" Sunday 2012

My Father went home to be with the Lord this morning around 6 a.m. Unfortunately, he never fully recovered from the ventricular arrest he suffered in January 2013. He had some other health problems that arose over the last seven months and had been in a hospice unit since June 26th. I want to thank everyone for all of the prayers that were made for us. My dad was a faithful church member to our church. He was more than just a father to me, but also a great friend. Though he will be greatly missed, he is in glory from now on and forever more!

Today's services were good. Although in my grief I struggled inside, I was able to teach my class and preach this morning. In all honesty I do not think most could tell the great grief or sadness that I was suffering from. I am a very duty driven person which I get from both my father and my mother. For example, mom called me at 6:10 a.m. to tell me about dad, then she asked if she could teach her class today. I told her she could if she felt up to it. She said there is no place she would rather be. I felt the same way. Our lives revolve around church and we feel it is our duty to be in our places. My father was the same way!

In our services today we had 8 first time visitors and 3 of those trusted Christ as their Saviour with two following the Lord in baptism. I was excited about it and it felt good having something to do to distract me. I pray that tonight's service will be something special. Thank God for heaven!  

We celebrated our 11 year anniversary as a church this past Sunday. I preached a message called "Anniversary Kisses". Pierre here came forward and got saved at the invitation. He also followed the Lord in believers baptism. It was a great joy to be able to do what we seem to do best. Leading another soul to Christ! That evening the church folks gave me a surprise honoring. It was a great blessing. I look forward to many more anniversaries.

Mrs. Rashidi and Mrs. Painter were both looking very colorful on Mother's day. We had a good Sunday overall with several adult visitors. We had one public profession of faith made with four getting saved in our Junior church. There was good spirit on Sunday night as well. Thank God for mother's. Truly one of the highest callings in this life is that of motherhood.

This is a wonderful story that I would like to tell you about. Ameil here took care of my Dad in the rehab hospital for several months. During that time, my mother led her to Christ. She came for "Half Dead Sunday" which was the final Sunday of our Good Samaritan Sunday school campaign. Her husband Angok who has been working for the United States military in Iraq the last two years came and got saved during the invitation. Both of them got baptized Sunday. We never know why God let's somethings happen to us, just like the tragedy that my dad went through. However, my mother has led a lot of nurses to Christ and several have visited church, because of it. Perhaps he was wanting the Gospel to spread through the medical community a bit more than it has been. I don't know, but I know that God never makes any mistakes. This family will be back next Sunday, thank God for His blessings.

Here is some of my wife's visitors for our Sunday school campaign. All of them led to Christ yesterday. They are also mother's and wives so they attended our home and family class. We had two baptized this morning with eight public professions of faith.   We were able to reach our soul winning goal for the month by having 204 saved. (Goal was 200) Praise God our teenagers helped us meet this goal by making a big push Saturday. Thank God for soul winning teenagers.