Gill Burley shares about God’s dealings with her and Tony:
I was not brought up in a Christian home and although my Mum was very strict in teaching my sister and me right from wrong morally, the only time we went to church was for weddings.
When I was 12 or 13, our friends invited my sister and me to go to Denne Road Sunday school, being picked up and dropped off by Ian Topalian in his minibus. Over the next 4 years I was taught by Ian and (amongst others) Andrew and Wendy Smith. There was also a weekday evening club which David Ansell helped to run and, from about the age of 15, a Sunday evening after church group held in the homes of various church members.
From all the teaching and interaction with those church members during this time, God opened my eyes to see that I was a sinner needing forgiveness and that Jesus’ death on the cross was the only way of salvation but I kept putting off taking that final step of asking Jesus to be my personal Saviour until I was 16. Isn’t it great that God knows our human condition and is very patient?
I was baptised when I was 17 and started to help out with the youngest Sunday School class, something that I have continued to do to this day, some 35+ years later (although currently I have a small group of 10 year olds). This can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, especially when we don’t often see any obvious result that shows God is working in these young lives, but I know that so long as we persevere, God in his perfect timing can open the eyes to see, just as he did mine.
I met Tony through an old school friend and after a couple of dates he asked me to go on a day out one Sunday. After telling him I could not as I went to church on a Sunday I assumed that this would be the end of our friendship. Happily for me he accepted that this was an important part of my life and he even started to come along to the Sunday evening services with me.
Following our marriage two years later we started to attend the services at Rehoboth as there were many more people “our age” (Denne Road members being about 90% of retirement age). Tony later also accepted Jesus as is personal Saviour and was baptised at Rehoboth in 1998.
Though a relatively shy person (not finding it easy to approach people to start up a conversation) I enjoy the fellowship and friendship at Rehoboth and, knowing that I need to be challenged, feel blessed to be able to help out at Little Verse where we get to talk to the parents/carers after the session.
To me Rehoboth has been our second family and I would like to express my grateful thanks to the Elders and leadership teams for maintaining that family atmosphere and for the faithful Bible based preach-ing and teaching of God’s word. I pray God continues to bless his church at Rehoboth.
Gill
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