Lakeshore 2013!

Here begins another week at Lakeshore Baptist Church. Since arriving Saturday we have been praying for good weather during the week and after an intense downpour yesterday the Lord has blessed us with a bright and sunny morning as our start to the week.

There will probably be several people posting this week, but I'll be doing a lot of the writing. Since this is my first year at Lakeshore, let me introduce myself. I am Savannah Liston, from Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Rockford Illinois. After hearing about Lakeshore for a few years, I was finally persuaded to participate. I'm very excited about being on the media team as I love blogging and this is pretty much the best job I could have here! 

The construction goals for this week: 

• Finish demolishing the remains of one of the quonset huts, the first part of this deconstruction apparently done by Hurricane Isaac. 
• Begin the foundation of the new church building. I'll be writing more on this later. 
• Continue working on a house donated to the church. The home is being rebuilt by volunteers and then will be sold and the funds will support LBC. The goal for this week is to install all the electrical wiring and then finish the walls, at least to some extent. 

The ministry teams are going out this week to reach the community and invite people to the evangelistic service on Friday night. Apparently there will be a gigantic pot of jambalaya, so I'm excited to try a new Southern food! 

There is also a team working at the Mercy House/distribution center sorting through all the items that have been donated. They are also hosting a luncheon on Thursday for seniors in the community. 

We have heard some wonderful messages during the worship services, and I'm hoping to get the audio recordings up here sometime this week. Pastor Mitch has been giving us daily Scripture verses to ponder and hopefully memorize by the end of the week. The verses so far have been: 

"Abide in me, and I in you." - John 15:4

"Apart from me you can do nothing." - John 15:5

In the type of situation here at Lakeshore each person can be extraordinarily blessed and encouraged by working together with fellow believers, but on the other hand there is a great temptation to rely on ourselves or allow selfish ambitions or desires to interfere with the purpose we have--to glorify God. So there has been a very real emphasis on the importance of remembering we must rely on Christ in every moment for everything we have and that no matter what task we have, we need to rejoice and praise the Lord. 

- SL