“Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come,” Acts 26:22.
Today, I look back to this date in 1968. It was a Saturday and I was ordained to the Christian ministry by the Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and installed as minister of Lisbellaw Free Presbyterian Church (later to become Bethel FPC) in the tin hut in Lisbellaw which had served the fledgling congregation as a meeting house since February 1967.
The congregation had been constituted in March 1967, a little over a month after the first meeting in the hall.
By August 1972, a site had been purchased in the the county town, Enniskillen, just four miles away, and a new church building opened.
By that date, a congregation has been formed in the Clogher Valley, just east of Fivemiletown and another across the border in the Republic of Ireland, in Coragarry, Co Monaghan. The beginnings of the witness in Kilskeery, County Tyrone, some ten miles from Enniskillen.
They were busy times for there was an ear for the gospel and souls were being saved.
I can but humbly thank the Lord for being allowed to have a small part in those blessed days.
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A report on the Ordination of Rev. Ivan Foster, published May 1968 in The Revivalist
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