his is the forty-seventh 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.

Pastor Sprague’s weekly update on the ministry of Trinity Evangelical Free Church of Covington, LA in hurricane relief.

“Amazing Teams

After returning from a Christmas break in Maryland with my family, I got to meet the other night with two large teams of predominately college students. The groups were from Fargo, North Dakota and St. Louis, Missouri. I was reminded what choice people God is sending us and how awesome college students can be.

1. A woman named Dakota illustrates the compassion and zeal volunteers have to serve God in our community. Dakota had to travel quite a distance on Christmas Day to meet with the bus leaving Bethel Church, an EFCA church in Fargo. As she traveled on a (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

This is the forty-eighth 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.

Continuing on with Pastor Sprague’s weekly updates on the ministry of Trinity Evangelical Free Church of Covington, LA in hurricane relief.

“Morbid, yet beneficial…for me

“He is no fool to give up what he can not keep, to gain that which he can not lose.” Jim Elliot
“Only one life, will soon be passed, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”

I have a spiritual practice that I enter into annually on January 1 that propels me into the New Year. It is a bit morbid for some but it is beneficial for me. It is an exercise in counting (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

This is the forty-ninth 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.

The following is this week’s update from Pastor Sprague concerning the ministry of Trinity Evangelical Free Church of Covington, LA and hurricane relief.

“Dying to Live

As each year begins, I usually ask God for a verse to focus on during the New Year. The verse this year is 1 Corinthians 15:31b - “I die daily.” I don’t think I am going to like this verse …Honest…. but I think I’ll like the fruit. I have been meditating on Jesus’ call to die to self.

• Matthew 16:24,25 - “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

This is the fiftieth 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.

This is the final report for Grace Team 4 written by Team Leader, Tom Pflederer.

“January 16, 2006, New Orleans

Lake Pontchartrain is the second largest salt-water lake in the United States, some 600 square miles of water, a small ocean. In the middle of the 24-mile long North Causeway that crosses it, all shore lines pass out of view and the horizon is an unbroken line of water and sky. One night we watch a breath-taking sunset fade to darkness and the light of a full moon dancing on the surface of the churning water, a dazzling display of beauty.

Lake Pontchartrain is also a geographic and topographic nightmare, a doomsday scenario of unfathomable proportions for sub-sea level (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

We all need a moment to relax now and then, and what better way than to take a couple of hours and spend them at the movies.

There is one particular movie that you should see. End of the Spear opened last weekend across the country, and from all I have heard, it is an accurate and true portrayal of the lives and deaths of Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian, who were killed in 1956, while serving as Christian Missionaries in Ecuador.

Jim Elliot wrote the following while a student at Wheaton College:

“[He makes] His ministers a flame of fire, Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this my soul—short life? In me there dwells the spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him.”

Jim Elliot was martyred at the age of twenty-eight along with the others above. But like all martyrs, God used their deaths to raise up thousands of missionaries who have since taken their place.

Hugh Hewitt writes this concerning End of the Spear:

“Fifty years later hundreds of thousands of missionaries still walk into jungles or off into deserts for the benefit of those they seek to meet and in obedience to the Great Commission.”

Take the time this weekend, to go see this wonderful movie.

This is the fifty-first 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.

The following is another weekly update from Pastor Sprague concerning the ministry of Trinity Evangelical Free Church of Covington, LA and hurricane relief.

“Bridge-Building

It is an amazing time to be preaching at Trinity Church to our dear people, guests and teams. Despite so much hardship and heartache, the family of God is so responsive to the Word of God. Last Sunday, I preached from Acts 10 on “Bridge-Building”. In the passage, we encountered the beloved disciple, Peter, with a great big plank in his eye. His blind spot was a deep seeded prejudice against Gentiles. Peter was brought up this way. The lens of the Great Commission to go to the whole world was simply the Jewish world for (Read the rest of the story below the fold...)

Judge Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. has just been confirmed to be the 110th Associate Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Congratulations to you Justice Alito!

It is a great day for conservatives who have fought so long and hard to return the SCOTUS to an Originalist view of the Constitution.

The final vote was 58 for, and 42 against.