Barb Totterdell October 14th 2018 ~ Pray for Flinders Bay Family Festival

The end of the year is fast approaching and for me this year one of the things that means is that the Augusta (Flinders Bay) Family Festival is not that long away. For the first ten days of each year a group of Christians go and camp in the Flinders Bay Caravan Park in Augusta, form a missional community and aim to share God’s love and the good news of Jesus in word and deed through presence, relationships and activities. This year I again have the privilege and responsibility of co-leading this team. This weekend those of us who will be forming this missional community in January will have our first full team meeting.A couple of weeks ago we had a core group goal-setting and program-planning meeting. This was a fantastic time of each of us bringing to the table what we have to offer and our perspectives - thinking and working hard, seeking God together, aiming to love the people who will be in Flinders Bay this January and seeing the Spirit of God weave things together. Being clear about our desire to share the gospel in word and deed, we asked contextual questions about who will be the people in the caravan park while we are there, who God is calling us to particularly focus our attention on, what we see as the best way of doing that and what the good news might look like for those people. We’ve begun to reshape and tweak what we will do this January around the answers to those questions. I’m excited about the fruit that this may bear and looking forward to seeing how God will be at work in Flinders Bay this January. I’d love you to join us in prayer as we continue our planning.It’s also made me wonder about each of us - who God is calling us to be particularly present with. Who has God put in our path and our lives? Who are the ‘people of peace’ in our lives, the ones who like us, listen to us, welcome us and serve us? (These are good clues as to who God might be particularly calling us to.) How is God already at work in their lives? How might we love, serve and share the good news of Jesus with them? Have we thought what aspects of the good news of Jesus might be particularly pertinent for them? I’d love to chat with anyone as they ponder these questions.It would also be fantastic to ponder them with others from our church community who you regularly meet to share and pray with. There’s such a diverse range of places that God has us as a community, such a wide variety of places He has for us to be salt and light in and people to share the good news of Jesus with.I pray for us to have eyes to see and hearts that are willing to engage with God where He is at work; for ears to listen and the wisdom to know how to respond to the promptings of the Spirit; and for courage to step into all of this. Our own deep conviction and experience of God’s love and grace expressed in Jesus is the source of this. I pray too for an ever-deepening knowledge and experience of this for each of us. It’s from that place that we have something to share with those around us. Blessings,Barb