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06 Nov

November 6, 2008 |

Ron Ramsey, Bishop
pouring.jpgLast Sunday at our Imagine This church in Grand Ledge, Mich., I was privileged to watch as 12 people were baptized.

Pastor Gordon Kettel baptized three people in the morning service, all from one family (a couple and a child). They were reached through a VBS which Imagine This took to a mobile home park. They set up grills, grilled hotdogs, and fed kids every night for five nights. During the evening service (the larger of the two services), they baptized another nine people.

They used a blow-up pool with maybe 18 inches of water. The water wasn’t heated. The persons being baptized sat down in the pool, and he bent them back. Gordon baptized two persons by pouring water from a pitcher over their heads.

A lot of the people who have become Christians through Imagine This had no church background. For them, tithing is a foreign concept. But in both services, Gordon explained what tithing means. That impressed me. Many times, that’s the last thing you want to talk about in a church plant, but he’s bold about it.

05 Nov

November 5, 2008 |

Ron Ramsey, Bishop
kettel.jpgI spent last Sunday with the Imagine This LLC congregation in Grand Ledge, Mich. Over the next few days, I want to share some of my thoughts and observations about this new United Brethren church.

Grand Ledge is a small bedroom community just east of Lansing. The church started a little over a year ago, on October 21, 2007. The pastor is Gordon Kettel (right, with his wife Lori).

They hold two services–at 10:00 Sunday morning and at 6 p.m. When they started a year ago, sharing a building with three other church groups, the only time available was Sunday night. The evening service attracted a number of people, so when they moved into their own building a few months ago, they decided to keep the evening service.
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05 Nov

November 5, 2008 |

Marilyn Reeck, UB endorsed missionary serving in Honduras, sent this report about the recent flooding:

“Ten days ago, extremely heavy rains began ravaging the Honduran coastline. One area heavily hit was the area around Balfate where our daughter Chrysti (right, with her husband and children) lives. Their house is above town and was not damaged. As the Balfate river became swollen, the waters flooded sections of the town and people had to be rescued from their houses.

“There are two rivers, which must be crossed, to get to Balfate. Sections of the two bridges gave way. At least five people from that area drowned.

“One of the ladies was in a canoe as her family tried to get to safety and fell overboard. Her body was found three days later. Our son-in-law, Rigo, was part of a group of men who walked through the two rivers and many miles down to the beach and then carried the body back the same way.

“The raging rivers swept away many houses near the river’s edge and these families lost everything.

“Chrysti and Rigo have been and still are involved in the relief efforts. Up until now that has meant carrying supplies across the rivers. The bridges are now being worked on and hopefully will be ready to use soon. The rains still continue but not with the same intensity.”

03 Nov

November 3, 2008 |

Jeff Bleijerveld, Director of Global Ministries

We have some exciting news for Mattru Hospital in Sierra Leone!

We’ve been studying how to make Mattru Hospital in Sierra Leone stable, healthy, and financially viable. One great need is equipment.

We put together a list of 150 items for the hospital to accommodate medical teams and do surgery, plus some real basic hospital supplies. One item was more beds. Ron Baker told that the beds at Mattru have never had mattresses. Part of it was more of a wish list.  We began circulating this list to various organizations, including International Aid, Medical World Mission (the medical side of Samaritan’s Purse), and Brother’s Brother.

The first to respond was Brother’s Brother. A hospital had just given them 400 crank-type beds which were only three years old. They said we could have 53 of them, which would fill one shipping container. We would get the beds nicely packed in a shipping container, ready to go. We just had to get the container to Sierra Leone. That’s expensive–up to $13,000 for one container.
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