Had a meeting at William Gillespie’s church, Maranatha Baptist Church in St. Louis, MO last Sunday. He is a missionary sent out of our church, and is planting solid, Biblical, black, Baptist churches in the St. Louis area. Maranatha is the first. They’re great folks, and we’ve been involved in their ministry going back for years. What a privilege! To be a candidate missionary in a mission church started out of our home church. If that’s not how missions should be done, I don’t know what is.
We’ve just finished up our home church’s missions conference. J.B. Godfrey, the Far East Director with BIMI was the main speaker, and it was Burdette Burgen (Germany, Baptist Mid Missions), Charles Chandler (King’s Kids), and myself as the regular missionaries. We’ve always been involved in our missons conferences in the past, but now we were in it as an actual missionary couple. On Saturday night, we had our traditional international dinner (fun), and then our question and answer time for the missionaries. Anna and I both felt like complete newbs sitting there alongside these veteran missionaries, when we’ve hardly been anywhere or done anything. It was a great conference, and God really used it to deal with the issue of calling and vision, which is one of the primary things I wish to deal with in my deputation ministry. Our church gave us an exceptional love offering, which greatly helped ease our financial struggles of late, and will make it so we can get the new printer we’ve been needing (Anna’s old Epson just isn’t cutting it).
