NEWSHEET 2020

Saturday 15th August

THE CORONA VIRUS RESTRICTIONS HAVE LED TO ALL PUBLIC CHURCH GATHERINGS BEING CANCELLED
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DURING THIS PERIOD WE WILL PRODUCE A NEWSSHEET EACH SATURDAY TO
HELP PEOPLE KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THE CHURCH COMMUNITY.

Sunday Service
This week we turn back with Alan Packer to the Songs of Ascent in the
Book of Psalms, and. We will also share communion at this service.

Please note that the new zoom link for all church activities is
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7881518854?pwd=Zmx4Ni9zR2tqMEMvQ
nBaNTBvWDFudz09 Meeting ID 788-151-8854. Password: 123456.

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The Week Ahead
16 – 22 AUGUST

SUNDAY
11.00 worship

MONDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation

TUESDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation

WEDNESDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation
3.00 tea @ 3

THURSDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation
7.00 Building Group meeting

FRIDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation
3.30 Diaconate

SATURDAY
9.00 prayer meeting

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Ian writes…

Lindsey and I are off on holiday from Monday

18th for a couple of weeks – travelling up to
the North of Scotland with Cara (our
Sprocker Spaniel if you haven’t met her yet)
for some rest and relaxation and a change of
scene. We are very much looking forward to
our new family addition, coming to us mid-
September, in the form of a small brown
cocker pup called Rhu! She’s from a litter of
pups bred by Mary and Alan’s daughter Ellie
who is a vet in Edinburgh – Bumble, Ellie’s
lovely cocker spaniel is a fantastic mum, currently dealing with 7
offspring who are growing up fast.

What are you looking forward to right now? As I write this, I reflect on
the fact that feeling positive and having things to look forward to
might be a struggle – I certainly have been noticing my motivation and
energy levels going down as these strange isolated times continue. Are
you experiencing this drop in motivation as we continue to live
differently?

A friendly welcome and loving care for the church family is very much
one of our identifying features at Peebles Baptist Church. In recent
months however, meeting up and living that out together has been a
huge miss. As followers of Jesus we know in our heads and hearts that
He is Lord, and that we can seek his presence and that of the Holy
Spirit daily - and that He is the same yesterday, today and forever
(Hebrews 13: 8). However, the lack of meeting up is beginning to take
its toll on my morale, and I wonder if you identify with this in how you
are feeling? (It occurs to me that Psalm 103 we read in today’s
Lectio365 was very encouraging too!)

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We have set up some online Zoom ways to encourage one another – the
daily meeting for devotions using the Lectio365 materials at noon has
been a great encouragement to many (although we’re considering
whether we should continue with that at a different time or form). We
meet to pray from 9.00-9.30 on a Saturday morning also on Zoom, and
we have our Sunday morning Zoom gathering at 11 with coffee and
chat afterwards. A couple of Bible study groups still carry on via Zoom,
and there is ‘Tea at 3’ which is hosted by Christine on Zoom on
Wednesdays. Our Prayer WhatsApp is a way of asking for prayer and
praying immediately for things, and we also have a ‘What’s on in PBC’
WhatsApp group.

But as encouraging as all that has been, it’s missing something. Having
Daniel and Elle’s wedding in the King’s Meadow a couple of weeks ago
was a reminder of just how good it is to be together physically, even if
that can’t be all together on a Sunday morning for the foreseeable
future.

Are there any other ways we could be meeting up physically for prayer,
refreshments or just to be together? We absolutely do need to observe
Scottish Government guidelines regarding numbers, face covering, and
social distancing, but these do increasingly give some flexibility for
small groups to meet. Does anybody have any bright ideas?

Could we meet in small groups to prayer walk, or have coffee in the

King’s Meadow?

Would anyone like to offer their garden occasionally for a few to

gather for socially distanced tea? How about a small bible study at
someone’s house, or meeting up with a couple of people to do some
weeding in the community garden?

Please don’t feel you have to wait for “permission” to do any of those
things – and If you’ve got a good idea, please don’t keep it to yourself!

I’m looking forward to seeing you again (hopefully in the flesh!) when
we get back from holiday.

Grace and peace,

Ian
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Diaconate Page

Lockdown Update
Our best judgement in the light of the
information available locally and nationally
is that it will not be possible for us to
meet together in a shared physical space
for at least a number of months. We will
continue in the meantime with a programme of weekly events via
zoom which we week to revise and refresh over the few weeks.

Annual General Meeting 2020/Diaconate Elections

As it remains unclear when we will be able to meet again physically we
have decided that we should reschedule the AGM to take place via
zoom. Members should note therefore that the date of the
rescheduled meeting is Wednesday 30th September.
In tandem with the new arrangements for the AGM, the process for
the election of Deacons has now begun. Nomination forms are now
available to members. All nominations should be submitted no later
than Sunday 30th August. Voting papers will be made available
thereafter and should be returned no later than Sunday 20th
September.

Building Fund
Loan funds have now been received into our church account from the
Baptist Union of Scotland. This week’s Building Project meeting will
consider a report relating to the estimates now received for the cost of
the erection of the frame.

Income for June

General Income for June: £2,734.17
Average monthly Income (last 12 months): £3,555.14
Average monthly Expenditure (last 12 months): £3,219.25.
Building Fund income for June: £2,750
Building Fund Loan repayment income: £534.16

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Memorable People: Charlotte “Lottie” Moon
Iain Gibson
Continuing our Chinese theme from last week (Pastor Hsi), this week
we’re going to take a look at the life of Charlotte "Lottie" Moon (1840 –
1912), a Southern Baptist missionary who spent nearly forty years living
and working in China as a teacher and evangelist. As we’ll find out, she
left quite a legacy, with her stature and impact increasing significantly
after her death. Intelligent, she received one of the first Master of Arts
degrees awarded to a woman by a southern US institution, learning
Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. Later, she would become expert at
Chinese.
Although given a Christian upbringing, it was not until she attended a
series of revival meetings on the college campus that she came to
faith.
In 1873, Lottie was appointed as a missionary to China and joined her
sister Edmonia at the North China Mission Station in the treaty port of
Dengzhou. While she began her ministry by teaching in a boys’ school,
she soon discovered her passion: direct evangelism. But most mission
work at that time was done by men and Lottie soon became frustrated,
convinced that her talent was being wasted and could be better put to
use in evangelism and church planting. She felt chained down and
came to view herself as part of an oppressed class - single women
missionaries.
In 1885, at the age of 45, she gave up teaching and moved into the
interior to evangelize full-time. Her converts numbered in the
hundreds. A prolific writer, she pleaded for more missionaries to come
and help but funds were not available. So she encouraged Southern
Baptist women to organize mission societies in the local churches to
help support additional missionary candidates, and to consider coming
themselves. When she proposed that the week before Christmas be
established as a time of giving to foreign missions this idea caught the
imagination of Southern Baptist women who organized local Women's
Missionary Societies and then, in 1888, Lotte was instrumental in the
founding of The Woman's Missionary Union, an auxiliary to the Southern
Baptist Convention. That same year, the first "Christmas offering for
missions" collected over $3,315, enough to send three new missionaries
to China.

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Throughout her missionary career, Lottie faced plague, famine,
revolution, and war. When she returned from her second furlough in
1904, she was deeply struck by the suffering of the people who were
literally starving to death all around her. She pleaded for more money
and more resources, but the mission board was heavily in debt and
could send nothing. Unknown to her fellow missionaries, she shared
her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her,
severely affecting both her physical and mental health; by 1912, she
weighed only 50 pounds. Alarmed, fellow missionaries arranged for her
to be sent back home to the United States with a missionary
companion but she died en route at the age of 72.
There is much for us to learn from Lottie’s life. The annual Lottie Moon
Christmas Offering for International Missions – which had raised that
sum of $3,315 in its first year of 1888 - has since raised a total of
$1.5 billion for missions. It finances half the international missions
budget of the Southern Baptist Convention every year, providing
support for more than 700 missionaries.
Her persistent messaging that more needed to be done in support of
foreign missions contributed significantly to the Southern Baptist
Convention becoming one of the leading missionary-sending bodies in
the world.

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She had a down to earth approach to evangelism. She acted and
dressed as the Chinese did and, as a way to earn the trust of the
people, made tea cakes for the children in her village. She would then
be invited into homes where she could share the gospel with their
mothers. The children began calling Lottie “the cookie lady.” [You can
find her cookie recipe here, https://www.imb.org/who-was-lottie-
moon/.]
“I am more and more impressed by the belief that to win these people
to God, we must first win them to ourselves. We need to go out and
live among them, manifesting the gentle and loving spirit of our
Lord…We need to make friends before we can make converts.”
Her approach was effective. The church she established grew and by
the time of her death over 1,400 people had been baptized and it had
emerged as one of the greatest evangelistic centres the Southern
Baptists had in all of China.
WHAT DOES LOTTIE’S LIFE TEACH US?
• Clearly Lottie had no qualms about sharing her faith; rather, it
was her raison d’etre and she went to great lengths and endured
much suffering to be able to do it.
• She challenged the practices and perceived wisdom of the day in
order to further the Gospel and use her gifts, which cannot have
been easy. But think what would have been lost if she had not
done so!
• In the pursuit of spreading the Gospel she was persistent and
innovative; she knew that funding was needed to provide more
missionaries and stuck at it. God has blessed that endeavour in
such a huge way.
• She loved the people to whom God had sent her, to the point of
endangering her own life.
• “We need to make friends before we can make converts”. How
true!

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Keeping in touch

Contact Points During Lockdown

• pastoral matters should be referred to the pastor, Ian Gray

o 01721 729101/07881 518854
o pastor@peeblesbaptistchurch.org
o 97Whitehaugh Park, Peebles, EH45 9DB
• we can post news updates on our facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/PeeblesBaptistChurch/
• we can continue to use our two PBC what’s app groups: PBC Prayer
Group and What’s On in PBC.

Preaching Calendar
• 16 Aug Alan Packer
• 23 Aug Mo Gibbs
Acts 14
• 30 Aug Lionel Gibbs
Acts 15:1-35
• 06 Sept Ian Gray
Acts 15:36–16:40
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The A-Z of Recipes for Restricted Times
Quite when the first quinquereme was sighted in Clydesdale upstream
at Quothquan is lost in the mists of time. Querulous historians have
disputed the point in countless periodicals over the years, but there is
now little doubt that those disembarking from the alien warship
brought with them a peace offering in the form of the Quesadilla – a
Mexican staple the men of Nineveh had stumbled upon on a night out
in the Nigeria enclave of Nando.
The first local person to codify the dish was a certain Brenda
“Queenie” Brown, an interloper from Libberton, yet adopted, within
the decade, as one of Quothquan’s own - her speedy embrace by the
community aided in no small measure by her publication of the recipe
in question. “Accurately quantifying the cost of the ingredients was
my greatest challenge,” quoth she, in a famous address to the
Thankerton women’s guild, “but I could not bring myself to judge the
forfeit of flavour for cost a reasonable quid pro quo.”

ingredients
• Large flour tortillas
• Grated cheese - either mild or
sharp cheddar, or Monterey
Jack
• Olive oil or butter
• Sliced mushrooms
• Green onions
• Black olives, sliced
• Fresh tomatoes, diced
• Chicken pieces
• Avocado
• Lettuce
• Apple cider vinegar
• Salt

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Method
1 Heat the tortillas until air pockets form: Heat a large skillet (cast
iron works great) on medium high heat. Add a small amount of oil
(about 1/2 teaspoon) and spread it around the bottom of the pan with
a spatula (you could use butter as well).
Take one large flour tortilla and place it in the pan. Flip the tortilla
over a few times, 10 seconds between flips. Air pockets should begin
to form within the tortilla.
2 Add cheese and other ingredients: When pockets of air begin to
form, take a handful of grated cheese, sprinkle over the top of the
tortilla, making sure that the cheese does not land on the pan itself.
Add whatever additional ingredients you choose - green onion, sliced
mushrooms, olives, tomatoes, etc. If you would like your quesadilla to
be a chicken quesadilla, add some diced cooked chicken.
Take care not to layer on the ingredients to thickly - this is a
quesadilla, not a quiche!
3 Lower heat and cover pan: Reduce the heat to low and cover the
pan. The pan should be hot enough by now to have plenty of residual
heat to melt the cheese and brown the tortilla. If the quesadilla begins
to smoke too much, remove from the heat.
After a minute, check to see if the cheese is melted. If not, return the
cover and keep checking every minute until the cheese is melted.
4 Fold tortilla over: When the cheese is sufficiently melted, use a
spatula to lift up one side of the quesadilla and flip over the other
side, as if you were making an omelette.
The tortilla should by now be browned slightly. If it is not browned,
turn the heat up to high and flip the quesadilla over every 10 seconds
or so until it gets browned.
5 Remove quesadilla from pan and cut into wedges.
To make the lettuce to accompany the quesadilla, thinly slice some
iceberg lettuce. Sprinkle some cider vinegar on it and some salt.
Serve with the lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole.

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 as told to @JimmyFer1077650, and Iain Gibson

My wife said to me 'I can't think of the name of that movie

company with a mountain in its logo'?
I said 'Is it Paramount'?
She said, 'Not really, it’s just annoying me'.

My vegan neighbours got mugged by thieves dressed as

paramedics.
They took their pulses.

I was arrested for stealing helium balloons.

Police held me for a while then let me go.

A man was driving along the road within the speed limit when he
passed a traffic camera and thought he saw a flash in his rear-view
mirror. Just to be sure that he was mistaken, he went around the
block and passed the same spot, driving even more slowly this time.
But again the camera flashed! Thinking this was pretty funny and
wondering how slow he would have to go for it not to flash, he
drove past three more times, getting slower every time. But the
camera snapped away each time. Two weeks later, he got five
tickets in the mail for driving without a seatbelt.

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Jonah (part three)1
by Bill Speirs
The story so far. Our narrator has set the scene by telling us about
and old Peterhead fishing boat, “The Peggy”, owned by Dooey
Strachan. He then takes us back to a time when he was a student
minister and due to go out for a night’s fishing with his friend Jim in
the “The Bluebell”. Jim has a change of heart at the last minute,
however, because, it seems, the narrator, as a townsman and a
divinity student, is viewed as an unlucky omen – a bit of Jonah.
Nonetheless he is directed towards another vessel, “The Bounty”,
owned by auld Steenie………
Steenie was a rigid Brethren and was about to spend a night at sea
with a man of the established Kirk for which he had no sympathy.
Moreover, Bounty was a “twa table” boat where Brethren ate apart
from outsiders, which included the engineer, a paid man, not one of
the family, and now me too! Not that I was bothered by his “twa
tables”; I had plenty in my haversack from the bakehouse where I
lived. And even a “chew” of tobacco for Jim – but I stuffed that out of
sight.
And as they pressed me, “Fit ye ca’d then?” it began to dawn on me
that I was part of what local people called a “baur”, a joke at someone
else’s expense. “Well,” I said to myself, ‘I can play the daft Jock too’.
“Just you call me Jonah”.
We’d turned through the big harbour and into the sea and set west into
the setting sun, with a hundred other drifters from along the coast.
They all knew each other, and Davie the lad, the Master’s son, when
rope was coiled and the net brought from the forward holdand set with
floats and sinking rope, came aft to tell me about them and to ask me
about the big city and all its excitement. We had a cup of tea and
shared my bag from the bakehouse.

1
Margaret Blyth noticed a reference to Jonah in a recent newsletter (Lionel’s sermon) and sent us for our
enjoyment, a copy of a story written by her dad, and former member of our church, the late Rev. Bill Speirs. It
is serialised here in four parts.

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Against the evening sun the quiet open sea enchanted a townsman as it
lay in a vast sheet of burning gold. The crew did not look: the Master
was setting course for his planned fishing, the engineer was redding up
his engines, the deckhands were setting the lug sail and clearing the
decks ready to fish and setting the light. And I watched the lights of
the other drifters coming on like evening stars. Davie told me all
about them, where they came from, their names, their crews, their
home ports, “I see them every day,” he replied, simply, to my
question, and asked his own about city life. The older men in their
turn discussed politics and markets and controls and subsidies.
So the sun set, the herring began to come up, and we hove to and shot
the nets, checking the buoys and sinkers to get an even secure spread.
And we sang, both the herring and, as one would expect, to God in
Sunday hymns, especially Sunday hymns, and I helped them.

https://peeblesbaptistchurch.org/

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