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Will you please bow your heads with me as we go to our Father with the opening prayer.

Dear Father in Heaven, we humbly come before you this evening, to thank you for this day and for the opportunity it provides us to gather together in fellowship, to honor you, to praise you, and to learn more about you and your Blessed and Holy word. Father, we are so grateful to you for we know that everything we are, everything that we have, is because of you and your love for us – a love that is so great that you allowed your only son to be crucified on that cruel cross on Mt. Calvary so that we could have the hope of eternal salvation.

Father, we thank you for the elders and deacons of this church and for the tremendous responsibilities that they assume.  We thank you for Brother Bell and for the instruction he provides to us and we pray that when he speaks this evening, you will be with each of us to help us open our hearts and minds in such a way that we can fully understand and appreciate those things that are said.

Father, we pray on behalf of those listed in today’s Informer who are either hospitalized or suffer from serious or ongoing health problems.  Please be with all of them to support them, comfort them, and return them to us as soon as possible.  Father, we continue to pray for the members of the Jose Cruz family, as well as any others who may have recently lost loved ones, and hope that our prayers will help ease their pain and suffering and enable them to cope with their loss.

Now, Father, as we go forward this evening, we pray that you will be with each of us help to make us strong  - strong in our faith, strong in our works, strong in our love for each other, and strong in our will to always do the right thing.  Most of all Father, we thank you so much for your son and the tremendous sacrifice he made for us on Mt. Calvary.  All these things we pray for in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.