Unbeknownst to me....

Yesterday morning, as I was leading worship in Willoughby-Heights, there were three ministers among the congregation. One I saw right away, Rev. J. Van Spronsen who has been called by the Surrey congregation as a missionary to Brazil. I knew what he looked like because I had met him at the classis contracta earlier this week where all the paperwork for the move from Smithers to Surrey was checked. A family walked into church a little late, and it turned out to be Rev. W. Bredenhof from Langley, but I didn't recognize him (I thought he looked like him, but wasn't sure) because he had very short hair, and last time I saw him, it was longer. Apparently he and his family were going to go to Lynden, but the border wait-time was too long, so they came to Willoughby instead. And there was another person in the congregation that looked familiar, and it turned out to be Rev. Vermuelen from Elora, on his way to Australia, I think. There was also one of my high school teachers in the congregation as well, visiting family. But as the service started, the only one I saw was Rev. Van Spronsen.

Yesterday afternoon my mentor, Rev. Van Vliet was also in the congregation in Surrey. As well as my mom, dad, younger brother Piet, Uncle Ben and Aunt Hannah, and Uncle Piet. But I was more nervous in the morning than in the afternoon. Although there were times when I got a little nervous in the afternoon service: when I couldn't find Haggai 2:5--I had the bible opened to the right page, but I couldn't find verse 5--and when I lost my spot in my sermon--I couldn't find where I was on my page. But at least I didn't forget any songs or announce the wrong song like I did before.

Now I am beginning to work on the third sermon in my Haggai series. This will be the last one that I speak out here, but when I get home, I will write a fourth as there are some verses that I don't have time to get into here, as I am doing a 2 sermon series on Philemon for my last two Sundays out West.

I must say, I really like doing series-preaching. You get to look deeper into a book, go through it relatively systematically, and for preparation work, you only have to do the canonical work once, which saves up a bit of time each week for focusing on the passage itself.

Only 3 1/2 weeks, and we will be home again! And only 6 1/2 weeks until the baby's estimated due date. In fact, 43 days, 15 hours and 33 minutes, roughly.