May 2023 Bible Companion app, Australia, Germany, UK, Ukraine
Hi dear all
As I think you're aware, we have a huge number of people using this app every day, > 7000 / day. I'm thinking of adding a "
Chat now!" button. So that users can chat live with one of "
us". It'd ideally need someone somewhere online live to chat with them. You don't need super Bible knowledge, I'd send you a list of common questions and links to answers them with. If e.g. they ask about some question to do with "Jesus is God" then there'd be a link you could send them. Your side, you'd access the live chat from a website, you'd log in as a member of the team, and can either use your real name or a screen name, your personal details wouldn't be shared with the person wanting to chat. Of course if you want to chat by audio with them, there'd be the chance to do that, but you needn't do that. This'd be a great way to preach from your own armchair and interact with people who have proven interest.
Ideally I'd ask you to try to be online at a specific time each day or once /week but in reality whenever you have a free half hour you could log in and see who wants to chat. No pressure, spend as much or as little time on it as you can spare. Before going ahead with getting the developers to add this feature, I thought I'd reach out and see who'd be willing to participate in this. It could be anything from half an hour / week to a few hours / day. Just let me know if you're able to help, and a rough idea of how much time you could give to it / week. And let's pray for guidance on it. It wouldn't be difficult to use technically. You could do it from your phone or from your computer.
So do get in touch with me if you think you could help and of course, pray for our efforts
Duncan AUSTRALIA This week, brother Mark was able to baptize RICKI in his swimming pool in Perth. Ricki had had a very long journey to baptism, and was a totally fresh convert to the Lord Jesus. He had downloaded the
Bible Companion app after coming across our websites in his search for Truth. And having looked through our presentation of the Gospel, decided to be baptized. The baptism happened at Mark's home but others were present online from Europe and from Queensland. It was a lovely service, and the video at
https://youtu.be/it8iaNNIK6w also includes a very lengthy account of Ricki's long journey to this. We marvel at how the Lord patiently works in human lives, and wish brother Mark every blessing as he continues to spread the Truth in Western Australia.
GERMANY We baptized online this week sister S from Iran. And we're heading out there to try to assist another 2 in very difficult circumstances, do pray for our mission to them, to His glory.
UK We had a full house at Croydon
Church in a Pub last week, the sermon on Numbers 22 Balaam and his donkey is at
https://youtu.be/MwOC9NZ2rV4 . Then afterwards we had folks back home to witness the baptism of the lovely PAMELA who's been coming to our meetings for many months. A lovely baptism, a lovely prayer afterwards from brother Sean, and nice chats around the table as Pam dried her hair with Evia's hair dryer.
And the progress of the Lord's work in south London continued unabated with the baptism of MARIA, a truly lovely seeker for the Lord originally from South Africa who had been decades with the Salvation Army, and had become persuaded of the need for baptism. But after going through various churches, hadn't found anywhere that felt like "home" until she encountered us, meeting in a pub walking distance from her home. It was a well attended, happy occasion, with our friend Jonathan dropping by with his guitar to get our songs going far better than they usually do a cappella. Video of our singing and the service and joy and emotion afterwards at
https://youtu.be/yHUhFS7GBhs 
We went street preaching in Croydon with new sisters Maria and Samantha, both recently baptized, inviting people in to
Lunchtime Church. Maria was 30 years in the Salvation Army and is quite a natural at street preaching. She got one lady to come in to
Lunchtime Church, she stayed for the meeting and the meal afterwards, you can see Maria chatting with her in the hall in the video at
https://youtu.be/f4eT8lqd6uk This is the way it's done. Come and join us.
And then we had a small miracle at our
Lunchtime Church and feeding scheme on Monday. Sister Evia had ordered the KFC and she and Shay were dishing it up.... when they realized they'd been given the wrong order, just a few chicken wings and loads of coleslaw. Not enough. Evia says she prayed as the line was still there and the few wings were disappearing. And then KFC brought us three 10 piece buckets of chicken and chips [and didn't demand the first order back]. And we took up some basketfuls of leftovers from all that chicken after everyone was fed abundantly. Brief video at
https://youtu.be/eeqgY0NeS2Y and in the photo you can see Evia and Shay briefly high-5'ing behind the bar as the crisis was resolved.
We're going to be making a major appeal for financial support to continue our work in London at its present tempo... do pray about that and think what you or your ecclesia might be able to do to support it. UKRAINE
The overnight bombardment of the town of Pavlograd made front page of the BBC News. There is a fair sized ecclesia here comprised largely of brother Maxim's family. Brother Maxim reports [from Poland] that he's spoken to them, they were all preserved although the experience was terrifying for them and many smashed windows from the blasts, and they are all very shaky as death came rather close to them.
PRAYER POINTS
- For those recently baptized
- For our work with Iranians in Germany
- For wisdom following up with our contacts from the Bible Companion app
- For continued safety and blessing for all our dear ones in Ukraine
With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks