What’s Been Happening?
2017 has been a busy year for Yarra Valley Church as they have served their local community with a regular friendship group, health seminars, Happy Hearts club and bible studies. Every one of their activities is underpinned by prayer.
Yarra Valley Church is a busy one, with meetings on most nights of the week, where prayer is raised to God.
The Friendship Group held a special day on the 30th April for those in the Community who have family members suffering from Autism. A special speaker presented a program to a group of people affected by this most debilitating problem. It causes untold suffering as Mark Modra and his wife Ellen attested to. They were made very welcome as they presented this program, and afterwards lunch was provided for everyone. We had invited members from the community to attend and a number of people came. In total, including church members, about forty people enjoyed the program, and there were many questions asked later which was very informative for us all. It was wonderful to see God’s leading in this program and His Divine touch giving people answers to where they can go to for help in the various associations who deal with Autism.
In early June there was much rejoicing as Kara Fox was baptised and joined the membership at Yarra Valley Church. A beautiful emotional service was held at Warburton Church with most of the Church family in attendance, as well as her friends and relatives. Stephanie Fox, an accomplished music teacher, presented items on her violin. So it was a wonderful day to see a young sixteen year old commit her life to Jesus.
On the 18th June the Friendship Group organised for Dr David Bird to present on “Handling the Blues”. It was an informative program both for the community and the church members. He spoke on grief and depression and two ladies stood from our congregation to share their testimonies, adding weight to the presentation. A meal was provided with an abundance of delicious vegetarian food. God opens doors and hearts in response to these programs. A number of those who attended were keen to hear more and showed interest in our Health lecture series, where Dr Bird would talk more on this topic.
The Friendship Group endeavours to hold meetings which will interest our community every three months, but in addition to that, we have our outreach programs, such as the Health lecture series.
This nine week series of Health meetings was held each Saturday night from June, with many interested people coming along to hear a well presented message, watch a cooking demonstration and enjoy the meal that followed.
A lot of willing workers help out with presenting these meetings, with the catering and with the numerous other duties which go into making these meetings successful. We have many interested people from the community having Bible Studies and it’s our fervent hope and prayer that people will make a committed stand for Jesus.
We also hold a “Happy Hearts” program for children from one to five on a Tuesday morning, which is well attended and a great blessing not only to the children, but to the Mothers as well. Again, this program takes a group effort for it to run smoothly and everyone has a happy time, and the children all go home with some craft work which they’ve accomplished during the time there.
All the contacts we make from our programs are added to an ever growing prayer list, which we pray over on a regular basis. We’ve seen many wonderful answers to prayer and thank God for his wonderful leading in our lives.
Nola Robins
