by Erin Claassen

As always, it was wonderful to see the children of God from Anderson and Cottonwood gather together to worship as the larger body of Christ.

 Despite the heat, the turnout was great on Sunday,     August 24th for Church in the Park held in the KC Grove at Anderson River Park. 

 About 750 people attended representing 10 churches as well as some other members of the community not affiliated with a church.

 The service was led off by the  WeR1 Band, a group comprised of seven people from seven different local churches.  The singing was lively accompanied by   violin, trumpet, guitars and drums. 

 Wayne Knifton, from Neighborhood Church, shared his testimony of how God has transformed his life. He said that he is      happier now than he ever has been before. 

 Even though the circumstances of his life may not be what the world would consider joyful, he has the inexplicable joy of God.

 The main speaker was Jim Price, a pastor from Folsom.  He used the parable of the hidden treasure to convey the irreplaceable treasure God is to all of us.  It was a message that spoke to non-Christians about what they are missing, and challenged Christians to keep Christ as the most  important thing in our lives.

 After the service, many people stayed to fellowship  together over picnic lunches, swinging on the play equipment, and enjoying the park.

by Nick Braito & Erin Claassen

Someone once said, “Prayer needs no passport, visa, or work permit. There is no such thing as a ‘closed country’ as far as prayer is concerned…much of the history of mission could be written in terms of God moving in response to    persistent prayer.” 

 Even if we have not yet  been blessed with the     opportunity to serve among an unreached people group in another part of the world, we can still be a part of God’s work to bring  people of all nations to Himself through prayer.

 Now that Fall is here, we will once again be joining together once again to join for Prayer for the Nations.

 We meet in the Student Center during the second service (now 11:00am-12:15pm) on the second Sunday of each month to pray for God’s work in the world and for the international workers with whom we partner. This month we’ll meet September 14th.

 As we had last year, this year we’ll also be offering an additional prayer meeting for kids that will meet at the same time in Room E.   All kids are welcome at this meeting, though this    meeting would be most appropriate for third through sixth graders.

 “Prayer for the Nations” is a great way to stay connected to what is happening in our world, to hear about our brothers and sisters in Christ across the globe, and to be a part of what God is doing among all peoples.

Here’s some interesting facts about what God has created:

 Reindeer like to eat bananas.

 Almonds are members of the peach family.

 A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. 

 An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. 

 A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. 

 Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

 The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world. 

 Porcupines float in water.

 Giraffes have no vocal cords.

 A zebra is white with black stripes.

 Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

 Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.

by Dave Sottana

This year eight children were given scholarships from the church for a total of $595.00. 

 The scholarship funds came from the fire wood that was sold through the church. 

 The fire wood was cut, split, hauled, and stacked by many different volunteers in the body. 

 We are currently processing more fire wood for this year and again the proceeds will be used to sponsor different children’s church activities.   

 We are always looking for volunteers willing to cut, split, haul, and stack fire wood. 

 If anyone is interested in helping with this  ministry, please call Dave Sottana 347-4665 or Wayne Knifton at 347-7235.

by Molly Frame

 I asked each of the team members who went to Uganda to give me a sentence or two summarizing their thoughts and experiences while we were in Uganda.  Some are overall impressions, some random images.  All of us have much more to share.  We encourage you to come to the Adult  Sunday School hour on     September 7th, when our team and the Mission Team from Mexico will be sharing more of how we saw God changing us and using us.  Or you can invite one of us to come to your house church or Bible Study to share further (and even bring pictures!).

 From Rich and Mary McEachen: “We were really blessed by the trip to be able to renew friendships from three years ago as well as to make many new friends in the Hope Alive! project.  It was also amazing to see how God has worked in expanding Hope Alive since our last visit.”

 Ron Pennington had thoughts along the same line: “It was wonderful to see smiling faces from three years ago, breaking bread with friends and glorifying God together, keeping God in the center of our conversations and       seeing  how God-centered and focused the people were.”

 To Dale Welch, “it was amazing to see the family of faithful believing children on the other side of the world who greeted our team with such love, honor and respect. This was evidence of years of work and commitment from Catharine Coon.  I was amazed at what God’s spirit and love can do through one committed believer.”

 Shirley Welch loved “seeing how much God loves His children … I was so excited to know that each sponsor’s gift not only pays for school     tuition, uniforms, and for necessary food and medical     expenses, but provides each child with a mentor that loves and cares about them, visiting them each week.  Hope Alive is unique in providing mentors to keep weekly tabs on each child’s family and school situation.  Meeting these mentors and seeing their dedication was seeing the Hope come Alive for each of the children that are          supported.”

 My own return “culture shock” included … Toilets with seats, hot water in the shower,     potable water out of the tap, KNOWING For Sure what the meat is on the buffet, and   being able to go outside without mosquito spray on exposed skin. Home again! No more white       welcoming smiles everywhere we go…young girls shaking my hand and curtseying out of respect…giving out of love without counting the cost, and being welcomed as part of Christ’s body without questions or reservations. Knowing your small gift was changing lives…grateful parents thanking us for making school available to their children…children GLAD for the opportunity to go to school, and sending love and greetings to fellow Christians here in the US. Yes, I shall miss Uganda and the wonderful people we met there who so willingly shared their lives with us.

 Nick Braito said, “One reason we went to Uganda was to see God at work in new ways, and we all felt this happened.  We saw Him at work in and through our team as our different gifts were expressed. We also saw Him working in Uganda as the Church strove to bring Hope to the hopeless.”

 Ruth Brown summed it up for all of us with: “If you’ve    always wondered what you could do for the Lord’s work, try a short trip to one of our mission fields. It will wake you up about what is going on in the world.”

from www.creeds.net

 In the first three centuries, the church found itself in a hostile environment. On the one hand, it grappled with the challenge of relating the language of the gospel,   developed in a Hebraic and Jewish-Christian context, to a Greco-Roman world. On the other hand, it was threatened not only by persecution, but also by ideas that were in conflict with the biblical witness.

 In A.D. 312, Constantine won control of the Roman Empire in the battle of   Milvian Bridge. Attributing his victory to the intervention of Jesus Christ, he   elevated Christianity to  favored status in the empire. “One God, one Lord, one faith, one church, one empire, one emperor” became his motto.

 The new emperor soon   discovered that “one faith and one church” were fractured by theological        disputes, especially conflicting understandings of the nature of Christ, long a point of controversy. Arius, a priest of the church in  Alexandria, asserted that the divine Christ, the Word through whom all things have their existence, was created by God before the beginning of time. Therefore, the divinity of Christ was similar to the divinity of God, but not of the same essence. Arius was opposed by the bishop, Alexander, together with his associate and successor, Athanasius. They affirmed that the    divinity of Christ, the Son, is of the same substance as the divinity of God, the  Father. To hold otherwise, they said, was to open the possibility of polytheism, and to imply that knowledge of God in Christ was not final knowledge of God.

 To counter a widening rift within the church, Constantine convened a council in Nicaea in A.D. 325. A creed reflecting the position of Alexander and Athanasius was written and signed by a majority of the bishops. Nevertheless, the two     parties continued to battle each other. In A.D. 381, a second council met in   Constantinople. It adopted a revised and expanded form of the A.D. 325 creed, now known as the Nicene Creed. 

 The Nicene Creed:

 We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

 And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God,  begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under     Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again   according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

 And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is  worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

by Erin Claassen

Luke wrote in Acts 1:8 that Jesus told his followers  to “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

 Four times a year at NCAC, we devote an  entire Sunday to learning more about missions and the specific missions that we as a church body have supported. 

 The first Sunday in    September, we will be hearing from two short- term mission teams and a family of career missionaries. 

 During the Sunday School hour, we will not have the normal Adult Sunday School classes. Instead we will be meeting in the auditorium to hear from those who went with the youth group to San Vincente, Mexico and from those who went to Uganda.

 High School students and Junior High School     students will be joining us in the auditorium    during that Sunday School hour, so they will not be having their own classes that day.

 Our first and second worship services will include a time of sharing from the Habegers.

 The Habegers, Otto, April and their four girls, serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Sudan. The Habegers just moved to Anderson this summer for a furlough.

 Please join us as we hear about the great things God is doing through his people in Mexico, Uganda, and Sudan. You won’t want to miss it, Sunday, September 7th!