Invitations

I started writing out my story (Testimony) for my Baptism. I had begun to keep a record (scribbles!) of my feelings and thoughts since God showed Himself to me and I was using these. I became aware of a bad and evil presence around me some nights while I was trying to sleep and this worried me. I also found it hard to pray and I eventually told my Pastor. He prayed with me, the bad presence went away and my prayer life went back to normal. During the two weeks running up to my Baptism, I got two different summonses to go to court. Sean’s grandmother wanted access to Sean, something I was totally against. Stephen was there when one of them came in the post and pointed out to me the significance of the timing of these summonses, as they could be a distraction to me. I received an invitation to go on a nice foreign holiday with somebody. Needless to say, the offer wasn’t made with the most innocent of intentions so I declined. I felt that, spiritually, these things, among others, were attempts to try to trip me up. I was very glad that there was a week of special meetings coming up and that I got to go to them all.

Clarke and Sheila Lowery are a couple from Mississippi. Clarke was the Pastor of a Church in Wiggins. The whole family had lived in Dundalk for about five years, six years ago, and had been very involved in the life of the Baptist Church. They came back to Ireland because Clarke was guest speaker at the week of special meetings.

The question of whom to invite to my Baptism arose. I was still not on great terms with some of my sisters, but I went ahead and invited them all anyway. My father was another matter. I think it would be fair to say that we hadn’t spoken to one another more than five times during the past twenty years and I didn’t want to invite him and for him to refuse/reject me. I spoke to Stephen about it and he suggested that I invite him and leave it up to God because the Bible does say that we must honour our father and mother, so I invited him.