Greetings in the Name of the Lord from Margaret & Ray Dunn
In the Beddgelert area of Snowdonia, some Christians from the Church in Wales, Evangelical Fellowship, Roman Catholic Church and the Welsh Chapel now meet together twice weekly for prayer, fellowship and Bible Study. Numbers are still sometimes low, and visitors on holiday also join with us. We have also joined with the Roman Catholic afternoons of fellowship. Some of us also go to an interdenominational monthly Ladies' Prayer Breakfast, and some are attending the Anglican Lay Readers course. We pray for renewal and revival in our area where these meetings have not been customary. Life in a dispersed rural community means that we all have to travel for fellowship, but we find that we are blessed by the Lord when we do make the effort.
We enclose the testimony of someone who has recently moved to our community.
FROM GUINNESS TO GOSPEL
I was eighteen and just getting a taste for Guinness, when my sister became a Christian and started telling us about Jesus Christ. We were totally unaware that her friends at church were praying for our family, but within a short time they began to see results - my mum gave her heart to Jesus as she too became a Christian. This success must have sparked off some encouragement among her praying friends, and they set about more earnestly praying for the two remaining members of our family - me and my dad. Within a few weeks my sister handed me a book, a friend had asked her to give it to me. It was called 'The Day Christ Died'. Later I snuggled down in bed and began to read. It was a struggle! It was boring! I found myself skipping pages and only glancing at some chapters. My eyelids grew heavy and I was starting to feel drowsy as I reached the last chapter. Here things were a little different, no history, no life in Roman times, no social traditions, instead it began to explain in a simple way how all men have sinned and are therefore cut off from God and that this is why He seems so far away. My droopy eyelids lifted a little and I read on - God is Holy and He is Just, therefore there is a punishment for every wrong we do and unlike our worldly Law courts, nobody ever gets away with it! At this point I started to get interested and continued to read on as it explained that God loves all of us so much that He prepared a way by which sinful man could be forgiven. When I began to read of just how God achieved this, I felt something begin to change inside me. The resistance to God, the rigid determination to find fault and explain things away, the urgency to push thoughts of God out of my mind and say this isn't for me, all began to fade. What I was reading was a simple truth - God loves me! And that God loves me so much that He went to the trouble to find a way so that I could be forgiven - He offered his own son to take the full punishment instead of me! WOW! Now this really touched my heart, I just melted inside. Although I looked on myself as a tough 18 year old, here I was in tears saying I was sorry to God. I promised that if He came into my heart to help me, I would try to do right from now on. I now know that nobody talks to God like that without it rattling the gates of both Heaven and Hell. And sure enough something happened - I was half under the blankets reading, when I suddenly became aware that somebody was standing at the foot of my bed! I would like to be able to say that I sat up in bed and there was Jesus, or an Angel standing at the foot of my bed. But I confess, I was so scared. I just daren't look! Both me and the book disappeared under the bed covers and stayed there until morning. But I do believe it was an Angel that visited me in my room that night.
Once word got round that I also had become a Christian, then that was it! Faith soared and prayer continued in earnest. It was only a matter of time now before my father, who was an alcoholic and small time crook, would also fall to his knees and say he was sorry to God. He to was about to experience, peace, forgiveness and joy in his life. Sure enough a few weeks later he did just that.
Now I wasn't a particular bad lad, so on the outside there wasn't a great visual difference, but in my dad's case it rocked a few boats, shattered a few plans, shocked relatives and local churches, it also resulted in quite a few miracles and started a mini revival.
This is how my family became Christians. From the moment each of us said we were sorry and we asked God to help us in our lives, things changed and they have never been the same since. So those of you praying for friends and family, let this be encouragement for you, prayer really does work.