October 2025 Australia, Online Response, Ukraine, UK
AUSTRALIA Prayers for brother Mark who is in the air at the moment as this message goes out, flying over to Europe for a Ukraine trip. But before he left he was able to do a baptism in WA:
Today we were on hand to baptise GREG. Greg was baptised as a baby. But as an adult that has experienced a lot of sins, he started to think a little more seriously about Jesus and his relationship with Jesus. Greg is a FIFO [fly in, fly out] worker on mine sites in Northern Australia. On a day about 2 years ago, Greg had finished his 12 hour shift and was now back at the mine site accommodation, and it just so happened that he saw our YouTube video that was talking about baptism into Jesus. This was a timely "coincidence", for he had been thinking about his life and what sort of relationship he had with God and Jesus. That was 2 years ago. Since that day and from time to time, Greg has been thinking about getting baptised properly. Some months ago Greg contacted us, and we we're blessed to have the opportunity to chat and message each other in conversations about eternal matters; Greg's eternal matters; the Lords eternal matters for Greg. And so 2 years after seeing our videos, Greg asked for baptism at Trigg Beach in Western Australia.
ONLINE RESPONSE
We have to give thanks for the huge interest in our material online. Recently we passed 5 million views on our main Carelinks channel on YouTube; and our Podcast of Croydon Church in a Pub has had nearly 262,000 views. This is huge engagement, especially seeing we are amateurs using outdated equipment, with no professionalism, doors slamming whenever people go to the toilet or go out for a smoke, all manner of odd comments and mutterings from the audience and folks in the bar... maybe that's what makes us attractive. On one hand. But obviously, this is the Lord's blessing. And we thank Him and seek to follow wherever this leads further.
UKRAINE
As this message goes out, Mark and Duncan are en route to Ukraine including to some front line areas and we appreciate your prayers. Especially as we plan our visits in Ukraine, what to risk, what not to. We always end up the calculations by saying "Yes" rather than "No", but yes we do calculate, in faith, we are not reckless nor fatalistic. But as you can see from just one of many chats [most aren't in English, this one is as Natalya knows English] there are risks involved to put it mildly and we do appreciate your prayers. She concludes by quickly writing in Russian that communication is now going off and she hopes to write when the shelling finishes.
UNITED KINGDOM
This week we have been the subject of seriously incorrect and slanderous media items published in the right wing British media. They have grossly misrepresented us and our baptisms, seeking to conflate the fact we baptize people in bath tubs [predominantly local British people] with the fact some asylum seekers have apparently been baptized by other groups in migrant hotel bath tubs and then gone on to commit rape and murder. Nobody we baptized has committed rape nor murder; visitors generally can't enter asylum seeker hotels nor can they immerse residents in bath tubs [most such hotels have showers not bath tubs]. Duncan told a journalist that he was not interested in giving an interview about these matters, and this was twisted into saying we do not care if those we baptize are insincere or criminals. The media reports are untrue and mere sensationalism to get clicks on websites; the thousands of comments on the online articles and videos speak for themselves as they are full of political statements and racism. These media reports misrepresent our work. Sadly the CMPA saw fit to immediately copy and paste these grossly incorrect accusations from the media and forward it to all UK ecclesias, proceeding to then knock down the straw man. Please contact Duncan if you want his side of the story; he has made a video response
at https://youtu.be/mjYdue74w60
This is all a storm in a tea cup and we urge you all to just weather it out, as it will soon pass as the journalists go on to their next attempt to create sensational media that will get mass clicks for them.
Our meetings in Croydon continued this week regardless of the background noise, with some attending who sleep rough or in HMOs with very bad and violent neighbours. Croydon is one of the roughest, socially deprived parts of London and thereby of the UK. Statistically it has been "the worst place in the whole of London for violent crime in the past year", as you can see from the heavy blue shading on the map below. Do pray for the safety of our brothers and sisters, contacts and volunteers.
This week we were able to baptize yet another young lady from south London, SELMA, in a swimming pool in Hull, where she has been temporarily sent by her employer for work. Her contact with us was through the pub church online videos. It was great to have sister Deb and young Zak on the team for this one:
PRAYER POINTS
- For those recently baptized
- Thanksgiving for such major response to the Gospel online
- For the safety of our brothers and sisters, contacts and volunteers in our work in South London
- For Mark and Duncan in Ukraine at this time and their work
- For the problems being created by the right wing media attention in the UK
With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks