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01. CAMDEN VALLEY CHURCH PLANT FLOURISHES BY PR ANDERS SVENSSON

Camden Valley Church members meeting in their larger space

Some of you may have heard news in the last couples of years of a church plant beginning down in the South West of Sydney in the area of Camden/Narellan. In this article I wanted to share some of the ways God has been blessing the mission field down in the Camden Valley region and how faithful God is in His equipping, calling and guidance.

We began in 2018 by running a mission rally in the centre of Narellan. The object of this rally was to gauge the community interest in planting a church. I was expecting around a hundred people to turn out with at least fifty people signing up! In actuality, we had around twenty people turn up, four of which were our conference leaders. Out of the mission rally we had five people sign up.

We then began meeting every week in my house to pray and seek God's guidance. Eventually we decided to start house church twice a month. After some months the group outgrew our living room so we decided we needed to find another venue.

I pretty much door-knocked every school, church and hall in the Camden Valley area. Every single place had said no. Just when I thought the situation was hopeless, the last place on my list of places—an old primary school down the road from my house in Elderslie— gave us a two big thumbs up.

There was, however, one catch. He was very adamant that we were only allowed to use the school hall and none of the classrooms were to be used. This was a big problem for us because we decided from the beginning that we wanted to be a church that had a focus on families and kids ministry. If we didn’t have any facilities for the kids ministry then our plans would not work.

We decided to commit this as a church to prayer for the next few hours. Straight after our time of prayer the principle called me and said, “it’s your lucky day. The librarian has just agreed to give you the whole library for your kids club”.

What a blessing that news had been for us as a church. Now we could have a hall and a library to have church and kids club. God didn’t stop there with the blessings of this school. He also provided us a sound system, air-conditioning, a screen and projector, a stage, playground, signage space, storage, and even a space where we can have our baptisms!

The church now has a flourishing kids ministry with around twenty kids. We’ve had four baptisms and are continuing our regular church service. At the end of this year we’re looking to run our first seminar reaping event. It’s been two years since we first began meeting in our house as a small group to pray. Two years of challenges and blessings, seeing God at work, and at times wondering where He is moving. But, the greatest lesson from this church planting experience that I’ve learnt so far is that if we have a deep faith in Him, we will see Him work in deeper ways.

Pr Anders Svensson baptising new member, Milena

02. BLACKTOWN PATHFINDERS CELEBRATE 2019 BY VIONE BEYERS

The 2020 Pathfinder club at Blacktown. The group received the 2019 Gloria Kench Award.

Last year, 2019 the Blacktown Pathfinderclub received the Gloria Kench Awardwhich was also received many years agowhen this award was first introduced.

Along with this award, the Pathfinder of the Year award was also presented to the club. Both awards were gladly and excitedly received. The recognition certainly encouraged many tired teachers and staff to continue in this rewarding ministry.

All that was accomplished during thePathfinder year was all to the Glory of God. Without God, our dedicated teachers, humble Director and patient parents, we could not have accomplished what we did in 2019. With Him, all things were possible.

Today we thank God for his patience, strengths, and constant mercy especially when we fell short many times. For 2020 we request of God to be before us in our meetings, in our understandings and our planning.