Rare Occurence

A couple of days ago I was up in Kota Belud, a town about 70kms from Kota Kinabalu. I was invited to preach on the Sunday service at a village church, one that I had preached Oct 2023 and a couple of times in 1990s when the church structure was built in wood. I was pleasantly surprised that a total of 278 people attended the Sunday service with about 58 kids present as well. The worship was quite short, only about 20 minutes as we started at 9.10am and I went up to preach at 9.30am and I took about 5 or 6 minutes to introduce my 5 books to the congregation. I thank God that the response to my books was fantastic with about 25 books sold.

Even all three copies of Departure Points were sold. Next time I will bring more of my Departure Points as usually there are quite a few who could read English well even in villages. Not a few teachers and also nurses who could speak English. But I preached a 34-minute sermon on John 14:20-27, an expository sermon on 8 verses with a couple of testimonies on my water and Spirit baptism. I felt the anointing flowed as I spoke, and the chairman elder even stood and waited for me to return to my seat and thanked me. 

Many people were blessed and one leader connected with my social media, on Threads and said the people should hear of God's Word. Next time I would preach for 45 minutes. It was a rare feeling and the last I felt that way was in another District level revival meeting in the afternoon in 1997. I preached for 30 minutes as I wanted to conserve energy for the night service but the congregation sat and refused to leave and one deacon went up and said why pastor preached such a short sermon just as one leader said the same on Sunday. 

Then the leaders took me to a nice lunch; in fact they asked me to come early and I had a good breakfast and 7 or 8 leaders accompanied me during breakfast and about 10 leaders during lunch as we occupied two large tables. I think this time I won't have to wait for two years plus but much sooner they will invite me again. It is only one hour and 15 minutes drive and Sunday morning there was less traffic on the way to Kota Belud.