“Exceedingly Abundantly Above All”

Dear Partners in Prayer,

On behalf of our family, I want to thank all of you for your prayers regarding the start of Hope Bible Church this past Sunday.  We witnessed so many specific answers to prayer and our hearts were truly encouraged at the end of the day.  You were all a part of it and I wanted to let you know what happened.
We set out our 72 chairs and God brought 74 people to the first service!  Now, 31 of the attendees were people who traveled in for the day to be an encouragement on our opening Sunday.  We were blessed to have family, friends, long-time supporters and former students in attendance.  Each person that drove in ministered to us in their own unique way.

The other 43 people were from Montpelier and the surrounding communities here in Idaho.  We are praying that each of them will end up being part of the ministry going forward.  We were privileged to meet brand new people from Montpelier who had been invited by friends.

It was a joy to see our new building accommodate a group of that size and to witness it being used for worship after all the hours of preparation and remodeling.

Laura and I were very nervous, but God strengthened us to help with the music portion of the service.  I could tell that people were praying for me as I preached about our “living hope” from 1 Peter 1:3.  I loved watching the other members of our ministry team (including our children) using their unique gifts all through the day to edify those who came.

God did “exceedingly abundantly above all that we asked or thought” on this first day.  Now, we ask for your prayers as we seek to meet in person with the people who attended. We desire to know their spiritual state and how we can minister to them going forward.  We know there will be challenging days ahead and that Satan will seek to stamp out this new work.  Please continue to pray that Hope Bible Church will be Christ-centered, grace-oriented, and used by God to bring hope to this area and beyond.

Many of you sent personal notes and texts or made phone calls to express your support and care for us.  We are truly grateful for your concern for our family, this ministry and for the lost people whom we seek to reach.  We praise God that we have such a wonderful group of prayer partners interceding for us.  We will keep praying for you.  May God bless each of you.  Keep fighting the good fight.

Your Fellow-worker,

Bill, for all the Bagleys