Welcome to the Crescent City Seventh-day Adventist Church

The Worship service is in the Sanctuary and via Zoom. The Zoom Meeting ID# and Password
are listed below.
Zoom access for Crescent City SDA Church meetings:
Meeting ID #: 993 5770 413
Password: 4642738
You can join by going to Zoom.us, click on join a meeting, and then enter the Meeting ID # and
password; or by dialing 1 669 900 9128, entering the meeting ID# and password as prompted; or
accessing through the Zoom app.

August 21, 2026 – August 28, 2026
Friday 21st Sunset 8:07 pm
Sabbath 22nd Church Worship Leader, Wilmer Hechanova 11:00 – 12:00 pm
Sermon, Rick Finley

Bible Lab – Episode 1 – …Bad People… 12:30 pm
*Fun Night with Bible Games 7:00 – 9:30 pm
Sunset 8:05 pm
Sunday 23rd Women’s Ministry Luncheon 1:00 pm
Tuesday Bible Study (Exodus) 6:00 – 7:00 pm Church
Wednesday Community Services 1:00 – 3:00 pm Dorcas
Prayer Group 5:00 – 6:00 pm Church
Pathfinders Will resume in September
Thursday LLL Ladies’ Group will resume in September 4:00 pm
Friday 28th Sunset 7:56 pm
CALENDAR:
August 29, 2026 – Worship Leader, Courtney Bliss; Speaker Brian Glass
September 5, 2026 – Worship Leader, Ginger Finley; Speaker Eddie Heinrich
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We are excited to welcome Pastor Grant and his family to our church family and
our community. Please keep them in your prayers as they prepare for this
important transition during the month of October.
*You’re invited to Fun Night with Bible Games on Sabbath evenings at 7pm here at
the church gym. So far the dates are August 22 to September 12. Come and enjoy
some fun social time!
Tithes and offerings are being collected during the 11:00 AM Worship service each
Sabbath. Other options include the locked offering box on the rear wall of the
Sanctuary, the link to Adventist Giving on our church website:
https://crescentcityca.adventistchurch.org or you can download the Adventist
Giving app. Tithes and offerings may also be mailed to Crescent City SDA

Church, P.O. Box 1905, Crescent City, CA 95531. Please designate where the
funds are to be deposited: tithe, church budget, Little Red School House (School),
special projects, etc.
Thank you for taking the time to be part of our church family, in person or via media.
Please reply to this email (or ccadventistchurch@gmail.com) if you have specific
prayer requests. The Prayer Ministry team is active and cares about your needs—let us
know!

Here I Raise My Ebenezer

August 21, 2026
Dear Friend,
“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up… and named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the

Lord has helped us.’” — 1 Samuel 7:12

We have sung the well-known hymn for years: “Come, Thou Fount of Every
Blessing.” And we sing the second verse as though we all know exactly what we are
singing: “Here I raise my Ebenezer.” I doubt I ever asked what it meant. I simply sang
it, the way you sing a hymn you’ve known since childhood—the tune carrying the
words past your understanding.
Then I learned what Samuel did. After Israel’s deliverance, he took a stone, stood it up,
and gave it a name that meant “stone of help.” Not a monument to Israel’s courage. A
marker of what God had done. And he didn’t set it in some untouched, ceremonial
spot. He set it near ground Israel already knew—ground associated with one of their
worst defeats, years before, when the Philistines had beaten them badly and even
carried off the Ark of the Covenant. Samuel placed his stone of help near ground that
had once been associated with grief. He wanted Israel to walk past it. To stumble over
the memory on purpose, again and again, until “thus far the Lord has helped us”
became the truer story of that place than the defeat had been.
I have my own stone, though it took me decades to recognize it.
My wife and I served as missionaries in Bolivia for six years. We went knowing the
infant mortality rate there was among the highest in the world, and it was there our
children would be born and raised. We said yes anyway. But knowing a risk in theory
and living inside it are two different things.
A few days after our son was born, he faced a medical crisis that left us afraid we
might lose him. For two days, nothing changed. He was weak, and so were we—worn
down by fear and by nights without real sleep.
On the second night, I was scheduled to preach at a prayer meeting in a nearby town. I
remember asking God, with real anger mixed into the grief, how I was supposed to
stand up and offer people hope when I had none left for my own son. I went anyway. I
don’t remember what I said. I remember the tears.
I rode home alone on a small motorcycle, in the cold, in the dark. Our house had no
light on. I couldn’t see my wife standing there holding our son. As I shut the door
behind me, my jacket caught on it, and it slammed—loud, sudden, jarring the whole
room.

Our son cried out. A real cry. The first strong one since it began.
My wife and I stood there in that dark room and wept, and laughed, and could not stop
saying it to each other: the Lord has healed him.
He had.
That son grew into a gifted musician and, later, a skilled professional—a life full and
thriving, the kind we could not have promised ourselves on that dark night. I don’t
have a literal stone standing in a field. But I have chosen to remember, deliberately, on
purpose, the way Samuel meant for Israel to remember. Every time I think of that
night, I am choosing to stumble over it again: thus far the Lord has helped us. He will
help us through this crisis also.
I wonder what stands as your Ebenezer, and whether you’ve let yourself walk past it
often enough to see it. Not a monument to your own strength getting you through—
Samuel didn’t raise that stone to himself. A marker, placed deliberately in your own
path, of what God did when you had nothing left to offer but tears and an honest
question.
If you don’t have one yet, put one there. Somewhere you’ll have to pass. Somewhere
you’ll stumble over it on purpose.
You don’t need a field or a stone. You only need to remember, on purpose, often
enough that it becomes true for you the way it became true for me: thus far the Lord
has helped us.
And when the next dark night comes, you can look back at your Ebenezer and
remember: the God who helped us thus far will not leave us now.
Blessings to you,
— Verlyn