Hope you all are doing well. We are so blessed to serve here in Canada; thank you for allowing us to be here! It was a busy spring for us here as we prepared for several things to happen. First was the preparation for the extension of our teen IMPACT program into the spring and summer months. Prior to this year, we ended our midweek IMPACT program as spring rolled in, but since people have been coming more faithfully to our midweek discipleship, ladies’ Christian book studies, Kids’ Club, and soul winning, Pastor Johnston prayerfully decided to keep a good thing going! I’m excited to be able to have even more time to teach and influence our teenagers. Second was the preparation for our annual Soul-Winning and Faithfulness Rally at the beginning of April. The turnout for this meeting was excellent, with a church full of people (some from our church and some from churches in the surrounding area) who heard great messages about soul winning. We all went out in our area to go soul winning. Praise God, in about 90 minutes, almost 3,000 Gospel tracts were distributed!
A particularly special highlight for me was our Easter program with the youth. Pastor asked if I would take part in and work with our teenagers on a Scripture recitation, where we would retell the Resurrection story using only Scripture from Mark 14, 15, & 16. Each person was supposed to quote a verse or two, and then another would do the same, until the whole account was quoted. Some of the teens, a lady worker, one of our grade schoolers, and I took six weeks and collectively memorized 74 verses. We practiced like crazy, and everyone put in a lot of effort on their own. By the time Easter Sunday came, we were able to pull off the Scripture recitation of the Resurrection story with only a minor misstep or two. I am so pleased with their efforts. They’ll certainly never convince me that God can’t use them! I believe God was glorified that day as we clearly presented the death, burial, and resurrection as Scripture records it.
I also had the opportunity to spend some time with a Sri Lankan man, who was a childhood friend of one of our church members. Pastor Johnston asked if I would take the time to meet him and see how I could help him. I spent a few hours listening to him, letting him ask questions, and trying my best to give him some Biblical counsel about some of his issues. His main problem was his uncertainty about eternity and whether God loved him because of all the sins of the past. He had been exposed to so much bad doctrine mixed in with truth that his salvation was very much in question for me. I felt led to witness to him as if he had never heard the Gospel before. Praise the Lord, he prayed with me to receive Jesus! Please pray for others I’ve also been able to meet. Pray for the salvation of Babak and Arezoo and their daughter Nikki; they’re an Iranian family that I’ve invited to church a few times. Pray that Hamid, another Iranian man, will visit our church with his family and that he and his family will be saved. Pray for the salvation of Joben and that I’ll get another opportunity to visit him; he heard me witnessing to his atheist dad and asked if we could meet sometime so that he could ask me some questions.
Please keep praying for the youth ministry here. We recently got to take the teenagers to a Youth Conference in Barrie, Ontario. One of our newer teenage young men came and was taking a lot of notes as the speaker preached about overcoming bitterness. We talked about it afterward, and he said he was thinking about his friends at public school and how he could help them. Pray that this young man and the rest of our youth will give their hearts to Jesus and serve Him wholly. This world has such a draw that it can suck all the zeal out of a teenager in no time at all. I need wisdom, strength, and a whole lot of grace. Lastly, pray for me, as I am looking forward to taking some online classes regarding Biblical counselling. This has been on my heart for a while now, and we are finally able to make it happen. I will be doing courses once a week, three hours per session, for six months.
Pressing toward the mark,
Brian Hebert
