Hi Everybody! What a glorious time it has been for our church since our last newsletter! The Lord is truly blessing our ministry in many wonderful ways. I'm very eager to share this with you.

First, after a long period of low traffic and slow membership enrollment, we are now back on track with more daily traffic than ever before. And, since our last newsletter, we've been blessed with seven new members. Among these new members, I'm pleased to announce, we've gained a new Christian brother in Hungary. This is our church's first progress into Eastern Europe, and it's very exciting. Also, we've gained a new Christian brother in Kuwait. This is our first member in an Islamic country. Oh, Praise God for bringing our church all of these new members, and for making it possible for us to reach even more people around the world!

So, for the record, here are the membership statistics as they now stand. Our church has grown to 88 members. Our membership includes Christians from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Singapore, the Philippines, Hungary, and Kuwait. And remember, it's up to all of us to help spread the Good News around the world. I pray that, as each of you meet other Christians on the internet, you'll tell them about our church and invite them to visit us.

Well, on other business, your pastor has been hard at work renovating our church website. We have a new, brighter look, and I'm gradually updating all the pages to reflect the new look. The server for our search engine, unfortunately, seems to have disappeared, so I'm seeking a replacement for that. Once I find one, I'll announce it on the Bulletin Board, and I hope everyone who had submitted a site to the former search engine will re-submit to the new one. Also, remember we have a Members' Ministries page. If you have a Christian website and it's not on our Members' Ministries page yet, let me know, and I'll be happy to add you to it.

The IRC chat room I announced in the last newsletter didn't work out too well, seemed to cause problems for some members' systems, so I pulled that one and have replaced it with a new java-based chat room, which will serve as our backup in the event the main chat room crashes, which it seems to do sometimes. However, I'm still looking for a non-java chat room for a backup, since many of our members aren't able to use java. So if you know of one that's available and, of course, free, then please let me know.

Finally, let us all be in prayer for the country of Russia. The government there just recently passed new laws restricting the freedom of new churches, and any restriction of religious freedom is a loss to us all. For this reason, I'd like to add a Russian language mirror site to our church. If anyone knows of a free English to Russian translation service for websites, please let me know. I would very much like for our church to be able to reach people in the country of Russia. With the internet, we have the medium, but we need to be able to reach them in their own language, as well.

Well, that's going to do it for this issue of the newsletter. As you can see, our church is entering a very exciting time. Please keep our church in your prayers, that we may continue to grow and reach more people with the Good News of Our Lord Jesus Christ. May God's blessings rain upon each of you abundantly. You remain in my prayers at all times. Until next time, I remain...

Yours in Christ,
Brother Dave Return To The First International Church Of The Web