Archive - February 13, 2010

Happy Valentine’s Day to my Valentines

February 13, 2010 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

God has blessed me in unreal ways. Today, I want to wish all of my Valentines a very special and Happy Valentines day!
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This young lady has been my Valentine for 37 years now. On Valentines Day in 1973 she gave me a large poster heart covered with candy bars and other sweets. She wrote me a sweet note. Never known another woman like her. Betty, you are the greatest and I thank you for being my Valentine, friend, lover, coworker, and wife for all these years.
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I loved you since I met you. I can’t imagine life without you. God through you has brought other little Valentines into my life that I love very much. Thank you for being their mother and the mother to young preachers and missionaries all over the world.

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God blessed us with 4 more Valentines. Stephanie, our oldest daughter, Joy, our youngest daughter, Andria, who married our oldest son, and Katie, who married our youngest son. I do not have words to tell these young ladies how much I love them and how proud of them I am.

Stephanie is the mother of 6 soon to be 7. She has been a special gift from God. I didn’t know how I would love a second child or a girl but one look at Stephanie was all I needed to fall in love. Thank you for being the blessing you have been. Thank you for being a super caring, wonderful help to everyone that you are.

Joy is the mother of 2. She has lived up to her name ever since she was born. I kidded her mom the night before she was born that suffering endures for the night but Joy comes in the morning. I could never explain how much this little lady has brought me joy. She is one of the most capable people that I have ever met. Thanks for being my joy!

Then along came Andria, mother of 3. She married Chris. They met at a Valentines banquet. Andria has been a great wife, a great mother and a tremendous blessing to our family. Truthfully one of the happiest days I had in Peru was when I first heard Andria on the phone call me, dad. Might not seem big to you but it was to me.

Katie soon to be the mother of 1 married David. She is so full of life and fun and the perfect match for David. I scared her to death the first time I met her. David had asked me to talk to her and so I did. I asked her about her spiritual life, her devotional life, etc. She had never had anyone do something so blunt and bold. Katie has been a wonderful wife, a great friend, and a big blessing to all of us

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Just thought I would let you see 3 generations of Betty. Amazing how God has God blessed me with all three. The littlest Valentine here is Lelia, named for her grandmother–that is Betty’s first name. We call her Ojos Lindos because of her beautiful eyes.

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This is my little Hannah. She has to be one of the sweetest little ladies on the planet. She makes me about has happy as anyone ever has.

So to all of my dear girls I want to take this opportunity to tell you that I love you and that I am proud of all of you. I wish there was some way that I could tell you how much I love each of you. Have a wonderful day.

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Betty, you are the sweetest thing that ever happened to me. You are a gift of the grace of God to me. I love you and want you to have your best day ever. I love you!

Pray for Chris Waye

February 13, 2010 in missions with 0 Comments

Chris and Sherry Waye are on their way to Peru for a 6 month period. I hope you will also add them to your prayer list. They are out of Victory Baptist Church in Loganville, Georgia where Derik Lawrence is the pastor.

They are a tremendous family. Subscribe to their blog and pray for them!

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We are down to our last three weeks before we leave for our six month stay in Arequipa, Peru. We are getting very excited about our trip and cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store for us. We are really asking God to do a great work in our lives while we are there.

We have all of our passports, the bags are ready to be packed, we have most of our support raised and saved up and we are ready to go. All that is left to do is move out of the house we are in and pack our bags. The Lord has really blessed us with such a great opportunity to take our family to the mission field to get the best on-the-job-training that we could get in preparation for missions work. It has been such a tremendous blessing to be a part of the Victory Baptist Training Center for the last six months, and I have learned so much from my Pastor, Derik Lawrence and his staff.

I would ask that you would continue to pray for us in several areas as we are gone:

1. Pray that we would allow God to work in our hearts

2. Pray that we would be a blessing and not a burden to those we will be with

3. Pray that we adapt to the culture and do not allow new things to distract us from our mission

4. Pray that we would get a greater burden for the world

5. Pray that we would learn the language quickly

6. Pray for our children…or maybe you should pray for those who will be watching our children during the day

7. Pray that we would be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our lives

8. Pray that we would gain a greater knowledge of what it means to be a missionary

9. Pray that we would remain teachable and leave our Americanisms at the airport

10. Pray that we would grow closer to God than ever before

Pray for Pastor Rick Groover and Celebration Baptist

February 13, 2010 in Ministry with 0 Comments

I got a note from Pastor Rick Groover asking us to pray for him and Celebration Baptist Church.

Rick Groover Brother Gardner, Please have your folks pray for us as we have the opportunity to get in our first real building. The bank has approved us but we have to raise the $90,000 down payment in the next two weeks. We’re trusting Him who owns it all to come through just like He always has. Thanks and God bless you and the work there.

Brother Groover is a wonderful man that really loves the Lord Jesus. He is very involved in world evangelism and God is greatly using him.

I want to ask all of you to be praying for him and this great need. You can learn more about them and the church by clicking on the link above or here.

The following is from his blog so you can know a little more about his heart!

What a God!
February 12, 2010

I’ve spent the last few days being amazed again by Jesus! Just when you think you’ve seen crazy things, Jesus will one-up Himself and do something even more crazy! Here’s just a little piece of how the Lord is working in us getting a new building for the ministry.

1. We Didn’t Start This Rodeo!

One of the amazing things to me about the ministry here is we didn’t decide to start it. It was and is a total “God thing.” Out of nowhere God invaded our lives and said two things – One – “I want you to start this ministry.” And two – “This is for My glory!” Since February 27th of 2005 God has been changing lives and building disciples. If you have any idea that miracles don’t happen any more then you need to come up for a visit. Somebody greater than us started this thing AND IT IS AWESOME!

2. We Don’t Know What We’re Doing!

When we first started I thought I had a little bit of an idea of what I was doing. (Yes, God had prepared us but as long as you think YOU CAN DO IT it’s not going anywhere!) Now, God has finally got us in the place where we seek Him on every decision and He is leading in different and amazing ways. As soon as we started doing it His way IT TOOK OFF! What are we gonna do next? I have no idea! But Jesus knows AND WE ARE FOLLOWING HIM!

3. We Don’t Have Any Way Of Financing What Is Happening! BUT HE DOES!

This makes me laugh more than anything else. We have nothing! Really! If you were to visit here you would take one look at our small rented building and what little we have and not think much about it UNTIL…UNTIL YOU SAW THE CHANGED LIVES EVERYWHERE. Here’s the deal though – most of our people are young, or ex-addicts, or ex-homeless, or just others struggling to get by. If you look at what we have there’s nothing to it! BUT – OUR GOD IS BIGGGGGG! AND HE IS ALL WE NEED!!!!! AND HE IS ROCKING OUR CITY!!!

Please pray for us as a building we didn’t ask for that we couldn’t have imagined that we don’t deserve and that we don’t have what it takes to get HAS DROPPED IN OUR LAPS AND JESUS IS MOVING!

If we can see the lives changed that we have while trying to work out of a hole in the wall IMAGINE WHAT GOD CAN DO IF WE ACTUALLY HAVE A DECENT PLACE TO MINISTER OUT OF.

Our music is AMAZING! The messages and things our people do are OVER THE TOP, but even with all of that said – IT’S ALL GOD! Nobody ever leaves our services talking about the singers, musicians, or speakers. Everybody leaves every week saying, WHAT A GOD!

Thank You Lord for all YOU ARE DOING! MAY WE STAY OUT OF THE WAY OF YOUR GLORY!

THIS IS CRAZY! WOO HOO!!!!!

No religion – Just Jesus!

Rick

Our goal, get the Word of God to the world

February 13, 2010 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Acts 13:49  And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.

I think it is easy to think of the wrong goals for our ministry. We may think that we need to build big churches or congregations! We may think that we have to do the work of God but this verse makes it seem that their goal was to simply get the Word of God to everyone!

God will do the work. The Holy Spirit will convict. It is our responsibility to plant and water. He will give the increase.

If we preach the Word He will do the Work!

The Demise of World Evangelism?

February 13, 2010 in Reading Notes with 0 Comments

In his book “A Concise History of the Christian World Mission” J. Herbert Kane states “Some timid souls are afraid that we are about to witness the demise of the missionary enterprise, but such is not the case. The Lord of the harvest has promised to be with His missionary servants to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). Dictators come and go; kingdoms rise and fall; civilizations wax and wane; but the world mission of the church will continue to the end of the age in spite of the vicissitudes of human history. Problems will doubtless increase, difficulties will abound, costs will soar, but the mission will go on. The mandate will never be rescinded nor will the mission be aborted………”

In another place Kane states “In the past the national churches were happy to receive missionaries with a meager education; they were better trained than most national pastors. Besides, they represented something for nothing; consequently the churches were glad to have them. But that day is gone. Today church leaders are more interested in quality than quantity.”

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