This year, the Cookstown Go Team began by meeting at the church on Thursday morning to get leaflets and invitations ready for local door-to-door distribution. However, before we had seriously begun our work, we found it our joy and obligation to begin the team by dedicating it to Him with a time of prayer. This pattern of prayer each morning occurred throughout the duration of the Go Team, along with breakfast and leaflet distribution. Each night, the team had family worship and a time of prayer to close each day.
Throughout our time at Cookstown, various events took place in order to reach out to the community. The first of these events included the community café which was held at the church on Thursday. Encouragingly, we had around 13 local people in for the lunch; some of which come regularly to the monthly community café and some who were in for the first time.
While a team were in the kitchen, preparing for the community lunch, our first outreach began on Thursday morning and continued throughout the day in the form of handing out leaflets to the first evening of a ‘Hope Explored’ course, which was to be held later that evening at Cookstown Community Centre. This course was to run on three consecutive Thursday evenings and on this first evening, we had four locals in.
We visited two nursing homes on Friday and Saturday, where we sang some psalms and a short epilogue was given to the residents, after which we had time to chat to them. Many of us had encouraging chats with these folks, having the opportunity to discuss eternal things with them. All these activities encouraged our rather small team of only seven young people to genuinely dive into the community of Cookstown, in order to advance the kingdom of Christ.
On the Friday and Saturday, we spent more time doing door-to-door work, handing out Gospels. We are so thankful to God for the opportunities He gave to engage in gospel conversations with the people of Cookstown and the neighbouring towns. We pray that God would use these opportunities to advance His Kingdom.
There were other activities for the team that focused less on the surrounding community and more on practical service. Some of these activities were preparing food for the community café, and the notorious fence painting. After roughly thirty minutes, the fence appeared to never end; the only motivation seemed to be the outstanding toasted waffles which we were graciously given by our wonderful kitchen staff.
On the Friday evening, we enjoyed a lovely BBQ (and various games of competitive Kubb) with the Church Family and on Saturday, the team were treated to a fun outing at Splash (an inflatable park over water).
While there were certainly a blend of favourite times and important takeaways, there are a few highlights from my own experience with the Cookstown RP church:
- First, the genuine love that this congregation has for Christ’s Gospel and the passion with which they share it with others is truly a mark of the infinite grace and power that God has bestowed upon His bride, the church.
- Second, there is a great need for prayer on behalf of the many unbelieving souls in Cookstown as well as the surrounding towns of Dungannon, Moneymore, and especially Magherafelt (when doing outreach work of various kinds in each of these towns, Magherafelt clearly displayed a particular level of disinterest in the Gospel).
- Finally, prayer is needed for the souls in each of the aforementioned towns that displayed an interest in the Gospel, of whom there were a great many. We are reminded in Philippians 1:6 that “He who began a good work in [us] will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus”; therefore, let us pray that the interest in the Gospel that people showed would indeed have been the signs of God’s Spirit beginning a good work in them.
Ethan Whitla
