Christmas Blessings from Our Home to Yours!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past few months four black squirrels have decided to fling\nthemselves boldly from one of our evergreens in our backyard to another, a span\nof about eight feet. I gasp every time I\nsee them take on this dare devil fete as I am sure one of them will hit the\nground unexpectedly. Maybe they are\ntrying to be like their cousin, the flying squirrel. Do you know about this nocturnal rodent that glides\nwith its furry membranes stretched between its wrists and ankles from one tree\nto the next? There are two kinds of species in North America \u2013 northern flying\nsquirrels and southern flying squirrels. We learned about them when we resided\nin Timmins a few years ago. God\u2019s world\nof nature is so interesting!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hope is a precocious, eight-year old black girl who was baptized a\ncouple of weeks ago in the church Gary and I were visiting. \nWe don\u2019t know about her background but there is a story there to tell as\nshe is being raised by her white grandparents and aunt. When the pastor asked her why she wanted to\nbe baptized, she quickly retorted, \u201cI want to be baptized because I love Jesus!\u201d Hankies and cameras appeared all over the\ncongregation (about 80 in attendance) as they witnessed this little girl\u2019s keen\ndesire to be obedient to her Friend. She\nreminds me of those bold squirrels in our backyard. She, no doubt, will fling herself into many a\nchallenge she faces throughout her life with courage and fearlessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gary continues to work on his course for baptism (baptismbooster.com)\nwhich he is creating to encourage pastors and churches to become more focused\non this command of Christ. Often young\nfollowers are too fearful to take this step in their Christian maturity. Before\nthey know it, the years have piled up and it becomes much harder to obey. We\nwere able to come up with 52 benefits of baptism \u2013 one to be mentioned every\nSunday in the church calendar year. For instance, baptism presents an example\nfor all ages to follow and it defines a specific time to look back upon as a\nmarker for tough times of doubt, discouragement or crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Please pray for the ongoing outreach program for Hillside Church\nparticularly in the upcoming new year. Any new church plant requires lots of hours\nspent in this activity to help it become well established and flourishing. It takes much determination to fling oneself\nout one\u2019s own front door to \u201cget it done\u201d; but then the sense of fulfillment is\nunexplainable. There are so many hurting\npeople out there that we need to attract for them to hear about the hope that\nis found in the Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May we all prepare to fling ourselves into the new year facing us\nwith gusto like our \u201cflying\u201d squirrels, Hope and the apostle Paul who \u201c\u2026 entered\nthe synagogue and spoke boldly there \u2026\u201d (Acts 19:8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have a super time with your family and friends during one more\nChristmas season!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wendy<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wendy.carter@kainos.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christmas Blessings from Our Home to Yours! Over the past few months four black squirrels have decided to fling themselves boldly from one of our evergreens in our backyard to another, a span of about eight feet. I gasp every time I see them take on this dare devil fete as I am sure one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendycarter.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}