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First Baptist
Church Telugu Service,
177 Elm Ave Rahway, NJ 07065 USA, Further details:-contact 973-979-3536
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Telugu Vacation Bible Starts This Sunday
Rahway, NJ 07065 USA, Further details:-contact 973-979-3536
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Immigrant Pastors Have Difficulty Obtaining Visa's
Immigration officials balked at renewing the religious worker visa for Daniel Carrillo. They doubted that his sponsoring church had sufficient funds to pay him.
In 2011, the Toronto native moved to San Antonio to help plant a church for the Spanish-speaking Nazarene congregation he had pastored for six years in Kentucky. After serving the new English-speaking congregation for two months, Carillo learned that immigration officials had refused to renew his R-1 (religious worker) visa for another 30 months. They told him he must leave the country within 15 days.
With the help of World Relief immigration attorney Kedri Metzger, Carrillo successfully reapplied for an R-1 visa and moved back to San Antonio in October 2012 with his Honduran-born wife, Carolina, and their 7-year-old son, Joshua. This time, Carillo's visa affirms that he will be paid from the deeper pockets of the Nazarene district, rather than New Vision Community Church, the newly planted San Antonio congregation.
"We were doing everything to the letter of the law," says Carrillo, 34. "We want to make sure churches understand there are a lot of ministers brought in from the outside who are in the same predicament as us, sacrificing so much to work for the Lord."
Monday, July 29, 2013
Who Sends the Most Missionaries? Statistics on Mission
A new study reveals how the missions field continues to become increasingly global—in some surprising ways. One example: South Korea has lost its No. 2 sending spot to four unlikely contenders.
The Center for the Study of Global Christian (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary calculates that Christians sent out approximately 400,000 international missionaries in 2010. And nearly half of the world's top missionary-sending countries are now located in the global South.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
The Unseen Universe
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2
Corinthians 4:18 NIV.
The Sun explodes. It happens more than you think. Massive
amounts of pure energy and energized particles explode out of the surface of
the Sun and race towards the Earth. SOHO, a Sun scanning spacecraft, detects
the explosion and sends a warning to the Earth. Owners of communication
satellite’s scramble to protect their multi-million dollar investments before
the waves of energy smash into them. Most of the powerful wave is deflected by
the Earth’s magnetic field. Some of it gets through and hits our atmosphere,
causing interference on cell phones and other communication devices. Some of
the radiation hits us, but we don’t know it. In fact, we don’t know anything
about the explosions. They all happen in frequencies of light that are outside
of the ability of our eyes to detect them. If it wasn’t for SOHO and other
space observatories we wouldn’t know until the waves of energy did something,
like mess up the signal on our satellite televisions. The explosions on our Sun
happen in the Gamma Ray and X-Ray frequencies, which are part of the unseen
universe.
The universe is full of wonderful objects that we cannot see
with our own eyes. Areas with active star formation are often obscured by
clouds of gas and dust. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is one of these
places. I have a star chart with an x on it marking Sagittarius A, the center
of the galaxy. When I turn my telescope on it, I see a couple of stars. What I
should be seeing is millions of stars! We know that there are millions of stars
there because we have infrared telescopes that can ‘see’ through the obscuring
clouds. Visual frequencies of light are absorbed by the clouds. The infrared
frequency is not. The same goes for the majority of frequencies of light. We
can only see a small fraction of what is going on in the universe. Fortunately
we have marvelous machines that can bring the galaxy to life for us, like the
Hubble Space Telescope.
The Hebrew patriarch Abraham was told by God to leave his
home in the vicinity of Babylon and go to a faraway place. A place flowing with
milk and honey, where his children and his children’s children would flourish
forever. The Bible says that this showed Abraham had faith in God. Joseph, of
the Technicolor dream coat, saw and interpreted dreams that showed he would rise
to a position of power and authority. His brothers scoffed, but Joseph ended up
in a position where he could save his family from famine. The female followers
of Jesus met the risen Lord on Easter Sunday morning. When they told their male
colleagues this, they were laughed at. But the living Jesus soon appeared, much
to the chagrin of the disciples.
These stories from the Bible speak to us of the power of
belief in the unseen among the faithful of God. We people of faith are
convinced that God is present with us all of the time. I can’t prove this, like
modern science can prove that high energy radiation is exploding out of the
Sun. But I believe with all of my heart that I am not alone. God speaks to me,
and I speak to God on a regular basis. And this all happens as a part of the
unseen universe. God has decided that He will operate in such a way as to be
omnipresent, but unseen to our eyes. God’s spiritual presence is everywhere at
all times. And yet, we have to have faith in that unseen presence in order to
access the divine person. God knows all about us, sees our every action, and
hears our every thought. Yet to speak with Him, we need to believe in that which
we cannot see.
The unseen universe is all around us. That means that God is
here and now. We don’t need advanced technology to access Him. We just need to
reach out and He will reach back.
“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though
you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible
and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation
of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8-9 NIV.
God bless you,
Pastor Bill
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