11-5-West Jax- I was really encouraged today. The staff did a great job of getting many residents to the services this morning! God blessed us with another visitor from my work place. Ryan is a guitar player and he came to help with the musical dynamics of the services. We sure do appreciate visitors, what an encouragement to us and especially to the residents. Betty, Joan and Teresa were present and as always a tremendous help and blessing to all of us. I brought the devotion of “The Surety of Things” and my prayer is that those who heard the Word of God were blessed and encouraged by it! I had a chance to talk to one of the residents “Myrtle” after the services and she tearfully told me of the many difficulties she has struggled through this year. Myrtle’s last statement really stuck with me; “if it wasn’t for God I don’t know how I would have made it through.” How many times have we heard that? What a tremendous promise, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Christian, maybe you are going through a difficult time today. Meditate and dwell on the eternal promises of God today!

11-12-Cedar Hills- While it seems as if our numbers are declining a little bit, we had a wonderful service with great response. Charles and Doris sang 2 very nice song specials for us and Ryan returned to help me with the guitar playing. Pray for Ryan as he is due to transfer to Virginia in a few weeks and will be attaching to a special (deployable) unit up there Please continue to pray for Roy (our banjo player) as he is still deployed into a war zone! Teresa was there and continues to be a blessing. Pray for Betty as she is sick. One of our residents (Mint) is also in the hospital! We just continue to be amazed at how God works out all the details of our ministry. He is able!!! We are gearing up for Christmas and I will be including an insert in with our monthly newsletters. Please pray about being a part of our special services this year! We are doing something different this year for gifts. For example, for Cedar Hills, they are in need of a 25”-27” color T.V. for their upstairs dining room. We have plans to purchase one (along with a VCR) for them this year. We will get with the other 2 facilities and find out what need they might have and try to meet that need similarly. If you would like to participate, send a card/love gift/prayer etc., our way. Many of you, with craft talents, have made some beautiful gifts for our residents in the past. That would be a tremendous blessing for them because they love hand crafted items. Until next week, God bless and keep you!

11-19-Life Care Center- We had a great service today. Life Care Center has a new Activities Director and we were able to make contact with her. I was asking her if she could suggest something that we (the SOJ Ministries) could purchase that would be beneficial to the residents for Christmas. As I spoke she began to well up a tear and seemed to be shocked that we wanted to do this for the residents. She told me that she has not experienced any other ministry group that has done this. You may be wondering, why is Bro. Dave sharing this with us! I wanted you to know that your prayers, financial and any other type of support is what makes this possible. It is your blessing and it sure does feel GOOD!!! We had a great number of volunteers and I was able to make a few contacts that I pray may benefit this ministry next year. God bless you and we at the SOJ pray that you have/had a nice Thanksgiving Day.

Until next month, God be with and bless you

David, Pat & Rachel