Acts 28:31
“Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness! I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. It is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.” — Lamentations 3:22-26 CSB Thank you so much for your continued prayer and support. There’s a lot of good things I have the opportunity to update you all about. The Lord has been moving in my life personally, and Hope Church. Also, I will be presenting an opportunity that I’m praying through, and am looking for the support to make happen. So by the end of this update my goal is to share an opportunity to pray for, as well as, partnering with. Hope Church NewsTo start with Hope Church, we’re going through some amazing changes, I shared previously about the financial struggles that we’ve had. The Lord has been good to provide funding for us and we have not been without. So to that, I can say God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good. Most recently there has been a presented opportunity that will drastically change the landscape of Hope church. I can’t fully share now on here, but I will update as time goes on. For this opportunity though, I know the Lord is in it, and He is providing. My prayer is for wisdom in Dustin, and the leadership teams involved. The Lord has brought us this far and I know He won’t leave us or lead us astray. We’re in the middle of a sermon series on Ruth. We began at the beginning of May, and just over halfway through it now. I preached a sermon in this series on Ruth 2. It was my first sermon from the Old Testament, and I must say, I enjoyed this sermon prep the most out of the five sermons I’ve preached. I will have the video at the bottom of this section. The point of the sermon is that Jesus is our perfect Redeemer, who gives us everything we need, He is our peace, He gives us protection, and offers us promotion, out of the outer edges of His grace, and into the fellowship and community with Him. We are no longer foreigners, but we are now family to Christ. Summer PlansThe Lord has definitely been providing for our wedding. One measure of God’s grace in this comes in the form of a discounted price for our reception menu. We’ve ordered a food truck voted “Best Food Truck in Calgary,” in 2019. The owner has been very gracious in working with us, serving 100 guests. We were able to pay for the food truck at a discounted price to serve our guest list. We’ve paid for our wedding bands, and almost through paying for my suit. It’s been a very busy season, as we’re getting closer to the wedding day. For me this summer will be split between three things, first obviously wedding planning, second work at Rexall, and lastly a summer job with Hope Church to help coordinate our summer plans. The funding from this job with Hope will come from my MSC account, dedicating a portion of my funds raised to help pay for our wedding and setup ourselves for marriage. However, as I’m working with Hope, there is a level of anticipation and excitement here. What I’m praying through and trying to discern is whither or not the Lord would lead me to consider working for Hope and what it would look like for me to raise support for working for Hope exclusively. The tough thing about this season is that I see that there are too many things that demand a lot of me: from wedding planning, and my relationship with Sara, to Rexall, school, and church. I want to move towards a point where I limit what demands so much. Plus working with Hope will give me experience and opportunities to seeing church planting up close. I haven’t figured what that looks like funding wise and a good timeline to start moving towards that yet, but I will have something more concrete by next post, granted that the Lord provides and answer by then. Semester UpdateThe semester has wrapped up and by God’s grace I survived. If we’re friends on social media, then you’ll see that Sara graduated this year too! Praise the Lord for that, it was a long journey for her and she’s definitely ready to move to the next stage of life, marriage and a career. She currently works from the Canadian National Baptist Convention (CNBC). It is the sister organization to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that partners with the SEND Network and the North American Mission Board(NAMB) leading church planting efforts throughout Canada. She works as the assistant to the Director of Missions/Evangelism/Youth. There are some changes coming to the CNBC we are getting a new President, Jeff Christopherson. As a convention, it’s pretty exciting for him to step in and lead us. Sara is getting an inside scoop on his style and vision for the convention. We also just recently had our Church Planting Assessments with 9 couples all from Alberta, 6 from Edmonton which is about 2 1/2 hours from Calgary, 2 from Calgary and 1 from Airdrie which is about 1 hour from Calgary. I had the opportunity to work the A/V table and see first hand what an assessment looked like. Sara had the opportunity to serve in taking notes for the Assessors for their final report. I was an amazing opportunity to see the vision of the planters, their passion for their cities and their respective communities. As I watched, and gleaned from their experiences it fed fuel to the fire to see God’s kingdom expanding in Calgary and Alberta as a whole. It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait until Sara and I are there together as a couple to be assessed, sure we will be nervous just as our predecessors are/were here, but I’m praying to be ready for the challenge.
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AuthorMy name is Nokomis Gregory. I'm a native of Winston-Salem, NC. After graduating from Piedmont International University I moved Calgary, Alberta as a church planting team member, with the hopes of planting a church in Calgary. Archives
September 2023
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