This is the forty-second update for the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief fund for the Lake Pontchartrain North Shore. This includes the Covington, Abita Springs, Mandeville, Slidell, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Here is another weekly update from Pastor Sprague of Trinity Evangelical Free Church of Covington, LA. This week his message is on being thankful.

“Thanksgiving

It was Thanksgiving and Snoopy was sitting on his dog house. He was upset because Charlie Brown and his family were in the house celebrating with a huge turkey dinner. Snoopy was stuck in the doghouse with dog food. He reflected upon this and said, It could be worse I could have been born a turkey. What true words. It could be worse.

Robert Hughes, in his book, The Culture of Complaint, writes, “We live in a society where people perceive themselves as entitled to have all desires fulfilled. When that doesn’t happen, we see ourselves as victims. It is the culture of complaint”. It sure is easy to expect more and more and more and experience less and less and less of good old fashioned gratitude and thanksgiving. I don’t want to miss out on this opportunity this special Thanksgiving week.

I love the story of Jesus in Luke 17:11-19. Remember ten lepers got healed, yet only one made a U-turn and went back and expressed gratitude. It made all the difference in the world to Jesus. He said, “Where are the other nine”? Reading between the lines, I think he was saying, I wish they would have come back. Surely they felt thanksgiving but they didn’t express it.

This year I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the amazing grace of God. I cherish my wife Donna, and son Jonathan. I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving for my family and friends. These past three months I have seen miracle after miracle. Here are a few more accounts. You may find it hard to believe so many stories are happening, but I assure you these are true:

1. Last week we had someone contact us at Trinity Church asking if we could use a church organ. That was an incredibly generous offer; however, we are more of a praise team style church and couldn’t use the organ. Following the call, someone walked into our free store. The woman was a pastor’s wife from the little town next to ours. Her husband had died in the aftermath of the hurricane along with two other family members. Their church suffered from Katrina and she casually mentioned what they really needed was … Guess, An organ! That led to a time of praise like you wouldn’t believe. These new friends were praising God just like they did in Acts 2. God is God, and He cannot be stopped or contained.

2. You may remember the dear saint who made $130.00 a week (with no hope for advancement) who sent us a $5.00 gift card. After mentioning this generosity to the Trinity family someone gave me $100 to pass on to this woman. I sent the money to her and in her thank-you letter she indicated that she was totally out of money and this $100 was God’s miraculous supply. This time she sent us a $10 gift card to be used in the relief efforts. I mentioned this to the family at Trinity this past Sunday and after the service people kept putting $20 bills in my hand saying, send it to the $5 lady. By the end of the 2nd service I had $1,040 in my pocket. You can’t out give God. In Genesis 12, we are reminded that God blesses us so we can bless others and the whole world gets blessed in the process. I would love to see the expression on the face of this new friend when she opens up the envelope. I’ll keep you posted on what God does next.

3. At our services we normally have a sharing time before Thanksgiving. What a thrill it was when a member told how she had shared Christ with her Mom for 10 years and she just trusted Christ as her Savior!

4. God continues to provide in other astounding ways. Last week we found out that Family Life ministry will put on their Marriage Conference for free right in our town of Mandeville. I talked to the leader of this ministry and he asked Trinity to help sponsor this early 2006 special conference for hurricane victims. Last Sunday, we had a special concert at Trinity sponsored by Music for the Soul. This team of gifted song writers and musicians out of Nashville sang for us songs written to those who had been through Katrina. A couple of days ago, I found out that Franklin Graham will be in our area in March and would like Trinity to join with other churches to sponsor a crusade. On December 11, Bill Hamel, President of the Evangelical Free Church of America will speak at Trinity. These are all gifts from God.

I trust you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I appreciate your prayers, friendship and partnership with us in New Orleans.

Betting the Farm on God,

Pastor Michael Sprague (6:05 AM CST 11/27/05)”

Grace Team 3 departs from Grace Community Chapel on Wednesday November 30th, and will return on December 4th. Please pray for their safe journey as they travel to and from Covington, LA. Also pray for a great ministry while serving with Trinity Church.

Please contribute to the combined efforts of this blog and Grace Community Chapel of St. Peters, MO, in raising money and volunteers for ministry teams to be sent to Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Covington, LA, to be distributed locally to the Lake Pontchartrain North Shore area, you will find detailed donation information by clicking here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 27th, 2005 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Katrina North Shore Relief. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, New Orleans, North Shore, St. Tammany Parrish