Lucayan Presbyterian Kirk

Before we left the Bahamas in June, I was asked to fill the pulpit for Pastor Kirkland. Scott was returning to Scotland to bid farewell to the Church of Scotland (as the Bahamian churches just left the Church of Scotland and joined themselves to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church).  I felt the responsibility was great, as Scott Kirkland is a faithful minister of the Gospel; to have him entrust me with his pulpit was an honour. 

That week’s sermon is posted below:

Click HERE to listen to or download sermon. 

Kidney Stones

 

While we were away in the Bahamas, Sue began to suffer from a Kidney Stone.  This landed her in the ER twice and eventually five-days admitted to the hospital.  Bahamian hospitals are a mite different from Canadian ones; the nurses rule with a rod of iron here.  They have restricted visiting hours and young children are never allowed on the ward.  Interestingly enough, they have huge respect for the Man of God, so when our pastor Scott Kirkland came to visit her at the close of visiting hours, they left him alone, while they normally would have ejected anyone else.

It took some time (and visits to a U.S. Hospital and a Canadian doctor) but Sue seems to have recovered.

Gospel in Haitian Creole

We were privileged to once again spend some time in the Bahamas late this spring.  Though I did spend some time preaching at the downtown bus terminal as used to be my habit here; we spent quite a bit of time working at a local community largely populated by Haitian refugees.  Quite a few of the men have been deported back to Haiti, leaving the women and children to fend for themselves.  Fending for yourself is quite difficult when you are not legally allowed to work. 

Among other things that we were involved in doing, we felt it was important to focus on the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Every day, we took a time to gather people together and simply the Gospel.  Online at Biblegateway.com there is a Haitian Creole Bible; so were were able to make huge posters of the scripture I preached on each day, in both English and Haitian Creole.  Sometimes Sue would help me in French to bring an understanding of what we were trying to explain. 

Our last day, we surprised them by acting out a skit; Sue walked in the room as were gathered for our ‘devotional’ and as she walked to the front, Ben held out his hand like he was holding a gun and yelled “bang, bang, bang”.  Sue fell to the floor yelling for help; that she was scared of Hell, how can she get to Heaven?  I coaxed the ladies to help her, tell her the way of salvation.  We were frustrated to find that only one could (finally) after some coaxing.  We felt the language barrier was a bit of a problem with our skit.  J

At the end, we believe that there were a couple who seemed to understand the Gospel and seemed to be trusting in Christ.