Entries by James

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 06-06-2005

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Greetings from Chattanooga! We'll be at BIMI headquarters for our second week of Candidate School this week. The missions conference at Gethsemane Baptist Church in Walnut Ridge, AR (Pastor Derek Collins) went extremely well. They're a great bunch of folks and really make you feel like family. We stayed with Bob and Nedra Guimon (Kyle's parents), and had some real good fellowship with them. The ladies in the church set about their usual conspiracy of trying to feed us to death :). There's just nothing like southern, country cooking. Their associate pastor, Randy Bailey, is real talented, and played some classic bluegrass for us while we were there (good stuff). It's a soul winning church, and we saw ten saved all told during the conference. I preached on Wednesday night on "Where Can I Get a Drink?" from John 4, and two Jehovah's Witnesses got saved! They were baptized on Sunday. Glory! Then, I preached on 2 Timothy 2:1-2, on "Where Are the Faithful Men?", and a fella who had been teetering for awhile surrendered to preach. What a blessing, to get to be used of God to call others to full-time Christian ministry. We visited the jail on Thursday, and two got saved there, and three were saved on soul winning on Saturday, with the rest coming for salvation during the services. The one image that really stands out the most is on Sunday, when a fella came to be saved, and was baptized the same day. His wife stood up front during the baptism, just weeping for him, because she was saved, and he was not, until recently. He got saved, and she had no doubt been praying and yearning for that for some time. That's what it's all about, folks.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-31-2005

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Greetings, once again! We're back from Kansas City, and poised to head out again on Wednesday for a missions conference in Walnut Ridge, AK (Gethsemene Baptist Church, Pastor Derek Collins). The missions conference in Trinity Independent Baptist Church went very well. They're a soulwinning church, and Pastor Boos has a real heart for his city and his people. On Saturday, I was able to lead a 15 year old guy to Christ. All told, three were saved that day. To date, they have seen 73 saved in outreach alone. It's great to see a church so concerned for the lost. The preaching went well for both me and Bro. Roverosa, missionary to Cuba, and you could tell God was really working in folks' hearts.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-26-2005

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Howdy, everybody! Can you believe it's already almost Memorial Day? Our meeting in Vinton, IA went well last weekend went great. We were able to challenge folks with the needs of worldwide evangelism, and be an encouragement to Pastor Collins and his family as well. Vinton is a beautiful little town, in the heart of Iowa corn country. In fact, their county is the number one producer per acre of sweet corn in the world. I'm glad there's a Baptist church here. One item of note here: Vinton is home to a school for the blind, the same school for the blind where Laura Ingalls Wilder's older sister intended after she lost her eyesight. Pretty cool, eh?

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-20-2005

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Hello, all! Bit late with the email this week, but better late than never, eh? Our meetings last weekend in St. Louis and Columbia went well. To start the day off, we were at Victory Independent Baptist Church in St. Louis, MO. John Kuykendall is pastoring a church on Virginia Ave. in the heart of the city. The building is a turn of the century, ex-Vaudville theatre, built by Anheuser-Busch. Now it's a Baptist church. People, that's what church planting is all about. You go in where others might fear to, you claim structures and areas that used to be maybe used for evil, and like a conquering horde, you ride in with the Gospel and do battle with the Enemy on his turf, and prevail. I love St. Louis, and it's very heartening to know that there's guys like John Kuykendall planting churches here and aggressively pursuing revival in the city of St. Louis. Pray for this church, and it's pastor, as they try to reach souls with the Gospel in an area that has traditionally been resistant to such, and therefore needs a Baptist church all the more.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-12-2005

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Greetings, all! I've got some good news about the van, which you're all no doubt sick of hearing about by now. Anyway, I just found out that someone sent us another $1000 for the van, for a total of $2000 so far. The van we're going to get is a 2000 Pontiac Montana with 82,000 miles. We're buying it from Mission Auto Connection, a dealer in Ohio, that helps missionaries obtain vehicles for deputation and furlough. It has dual air (great for those summer months), front wheel drive (great for those winter months), and the extended wheelbase on this particular model gives us an additional foot-and-a-half of cargo space in the back, great for those longer voyages where more luggage is needed, in addition to the display and assorted paraphernalia required by the on-the-go missionary. We've sent them the $1000 we had to put a deposit down, and they're holding it for thirty days, so pray that the rest we need will come in this month. The total cost will be $7400, so we only have $5400 to go. It's great to see our prayers being answered, and to know that we'll be in a more spacious and comfortable vehicle soon, especially with the really hot weather coming up, and the extensive travelling we'll be doing this summer.