On November 13, Haikou Road Church in Changchun, Jilin Province held a Thanksgiving meeting to celebrate the fall harvest.
A pastor shared a sermon “To Offer With a Grateful Heart" using the story of the offering of a poor widow from Mark 12:41. After the sermon, believers continued to sing and dance to praise and thank God in performances.
The church also held activities to respect and honor the elderly for believers over the age of 70 through singing, prayers, and blessings. They even prepared a gift - blankets for everyone.
Last Friday, the church also organized a prayer meeting online with the theme of "The Boundless Love of the Lord Year after Year".
Ever since the "Thanksgiving month", under the leadership of Senior Pastor Yan Peng, the pastoral staff have used a positive sentence to express gratitude every day to encourage more members and inquirers to be grateful.
The sentences are as follows: "Where there is gratitude, there is heaven”; “those who do not hesitate to be grateful hold the key to blessing in their hands.”; “a grateful heart contains happiness, and "a happy heart grows gratitude"... These "gratitude" sentences have been passed on to each other in their friend circles and are also forwarded and spread by believers' families and even non-Christians.
Most of the students once taught by Pastor Yan have graduated and work in their own mission fields, but they have not forgotten their mentor. Over the past year, they have participated in the daily intercessory prayer program of the church. Pastor Yan also sent gifts to them on this special day with a writing of blessings for each of them.
- Translated by Tracy Ye
