February 2025 Indonesia, UK
Carelinks workers have been visiting and supporting our sister Emy's outreach in
Indonesia for a long time, and brother John Chol from Queensland Australia has recently visited them. Whilst he was there, there were a number of baptisms. Sister Emy has written the following report:
During the last 6 months and only using small money but lots of time, God has blessed me ( Emy Sugiarto ) and a team of helpers ( Sigit Sugiarto, Peter Sugiarto, Yoyok and Enie) establishing a program to help homeless people. Trying to follow Jesus' example. This involves
1. Meeting and calling homeless people to learn the truth of the Bible. Thursday evening Sigit or Emy teach simple Bible teaching from Jesus and give a meal
2. Giving practical ways for them to be able help themselves, like cleaning, shower, sharing breakfast
3. Building simple shelters using what we have to spare and making a recycling business to let them earn some money, Teaching them skills
4. Teaching them that being helped is for them to then help others
5. On 5 February 2 homeless were baptized by Sigit Sugiarto, Yoyok, Peter Sugiarto, and John Chol who visited Solo in the name of Jesus. The two baptisms were WALJINAH and AGUS
Please Help us in prayer so we can work more and more until Jesus returns.
UK
Our Sunday meetings and midweek "Lunchtime Church" meetings continue. A big big thank you to our amazing "Sister Sis" for all her cooking, singing and constant positive encouragement at our meetings. And not least for cleaning the toilets. As she loves both the Bible and cooking, we got her a popular cooking book, Mary Berry's "Baking Bible" to reflect our deep gratitude:
This Sunday saw another good turnout at the Orchard Pub for Church in a Pub, lots of good interruptions, comments and questions as the talk proceeded on Philippians 4, the answer to anxiety. Afterwards we were so thrilled to baptize ANTHONY who has quietly attended for so long so regularly. He's a chef and works in a well-known restaurant. Such a lovely, quiet guy, for some months we've been praying for him to decide for the Lord, and he did so. Joy and smiles all round reflecting those in Heaven itself as all the Angels rejoiced. Video of it at
https://youtu.be/VO0KkKyOzRA
This week we went to baptize CHRIS who has been following us online and despite living a good clean life, really wanted to connect in spirit and truth with the Lord Jesus. There's such amazing joy at these baptisms, truly our joy is but a reflection of all the Angels in Heaven rejoicing.
Another online follower of Croydon Church in a Pub is REBECCA in Brighton, not too far away. She was raised JW and the bad experiences had made her leery of joining any standard church, but she desperately wanted to connect with Jesus- and found us online. She wanted to be baptized in the sea, despite the freezing temperatures, sleet and hail. She wanted to fellowship something of the Lord's pain. Eventually she gave in and we used her bath tub, watched by her husband Bill. You just couldn't ask for nicer, humbler and more genuine people. We ended up having a bit of a church outing, with several from our Croydon group coming down for the even... and Rebecca and Bill let us all pile into their home, despite having never met any of us, hold the baptism service and baptize Rebecca. The damage done by the JW cult was apparent, and is very deep. Especially all the false guilt taken for leaving them and being baptized into Jesus. The whole event was very emotional. This video is especially well worth watching-
https://youtu.be/gnch_dh-ZzM
Rebecca would absolutely love to repeat Croydon "Church in a Pub" in Brighton. We've encouraged her to work out a good venue and then we will do some kind of feasibility study to see how realistic this would be. Definitely a cause for prayer. But she's just the right local contact to have for such a venture.
We had the shortest and tallest of our happy group present for the wonderful event!
PRAYER POINTS
- For those recently baptized
- For wisdom about opening another "Church in a Pub" location in the UK
- For all those labouring under false guilt put on them by misguided religion
- For our Winter welfare work in Latvia and elsewhere in this the coldest month of the year
With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks