First Baptist Church

The Bible says, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14a) I usually take that fact for granted until something goes wrong in my body.

My mother used to say. “I don’t mind getting old, except the parts wear out.” I’m beginning to understand what she meant. As I write this, I am preparing to have arthroscopic surgery on my right shoulder. After a series of tests, x-rays and an MRI scan, they determined that I have torn the rotator cuff in my shoulder almost all the way through. People ask me, “How did you do that?” I wish I could point to some manly injury, but the truth is I don’t know how I did it. I guess the parts just wore out.

I didn’t even know what a rotator cuff was until I started having shoulder pain. Among other things, it hurt to lift my arm. For a while I tried to follow the advice of the doctor on the old Hee Haw show: “If it hurts when you do that, don’t do that!” But the pain kept getting worse. So I started reading about the shoulder.Read More

Three and a half years ago, young pastor Saeed Abedini was unjustly arrested while visiting his native Iran.

Saeed was born in Iran, but converted from Islam to Christianity and moved to the United States. He married a girl named Nagmeh, whose family was also from Iran. Nagmeh was a Christian, too. Eventually Saeed became a U. S. citizen and a pastor. He and Nagmeh settled in Boise, Idaho, and a daughter, Rebekka, and a son, Jacob, were born to them.

But Saeed was burdened for his own Iranian people, and would periodically return to Iran to help establish house churches and tell Iranians about Jesus Christ. The government of Iran took a dim view of this and warned him to stop.Read More