April 2013

Dear friends,

I want to share with you something exciting that happened last weekend. Our 2nd daughter, Alethea Gan (along with 7 others) was baptised into the family of Christ 🙂

On her 7th birthday, she was walking along the beach at our family holiday… And after having had good discussions with her daddy about Christ, the gospel, and salvation prior to this, she decided to ask Jesus to be the Lord of her life. It’s such a joy for us as parents to see another child come to know Christ personally. Please pray for Ally that she will keep growing in her love and knowledge of our Saviour and Lord, and that our youngest, Latimer, will follow Christ one day too.

Above is a picture of CERC when our church was ‘transformed’ into a Good Friday evangelistic dinner venue recently. Robin preached about Christ who was pierced for all of us (Zech 12:10). Praise God! We had about 211 people fill the place, and since then we’ve had an increased number of people come on Sundays too. Over a third of the newcomers who were there had not been to church for a very long time. Please pray that God will bring them back so that they will keep hearing the gospel and be saved.

As a church, we’ll be moving into the book of Acts soon, and to prepare ourselves for that, most of us will be heading off to Word Works (Acts) to discuss and learn together (www.ggf.org.my). It’s quite exciting to see the number of people in our Growth Groups grow as well.

I’m continuing to be involved in overseeing Sunday School, music ministry and Mums Growth group. Recently, we celebrated a few birthdays, including my own mum’s. There’s my mum (see picture below), holding the cake and persevering on in Christ at the age of 76.

Encouragingly, our recent Children’s Little People Evangelistic Outreach brought almost 40 kids to join us, and numbers have grown in Sunday School to almost 20. Starting January this year till the end of next year, we’ll be teaching Biblical Theology to the kids. We praise God for the opportunity to teach these children about how all of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ.

Recently, I had an interesting bout of allergic reactions. I went to A & E four times, had multiple injections, was admitted over for one night, and will be under antihistamines for 2 more weeks… I thank God for that ordeal really taught me dependence on Him, and humbled me to be reminded that He’s in control of all things, including my frailty.

On behalf of the Gan family & CERC, thank you always for your continued prayers and support of  gospel ministry in Malaysia. It means a lot to us here in CERC knowing that we have prayer partners and friends who share in this gospel work that God began more than 5 years ago.

Please pray for our senior apprentice, Jerome, as he waits to go to theological college next year, God willing. Please pray that enough funds can be raised so that we can train up more pastors for the work here. If you’d like to help, please let us know.

Lastly, do pray for our family to continue to be united and to serve Christ together.

With much love,
Robin, Joy, Ilona, Ally and Latimer