MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-09-2005
Greetings! It's been awhile since the last letter, and I apologize. It's been crazy busy around here, and, to be honest, I'm worn out and just haven't felt like writing. However, whether I feel like it or not, it needs to be done, and you good people deserve to know what's going on in our lives. October is the season of missions conferences amongst American, Independent Baptist Churches. I scheduled four in a row, and filled our month with meetings. We had just had a baby, and when he was a week old, we were in our home church's conference, then we went up to Rhode Island, then Connecticut, and then Fort Dodge, IA (Harvest Baptist Church, Pastor Marvin Smith).
It was more of a convention than a conference in Fort Dodge, with missionaries in attendance from all over the world. They bring in all the missionaries who have contacted them for the year to the church for a single conference. What a conference it was. We had some excellent preaching from Gil Anger, Pastor Doug Fisher (Lighthouse Baptist Church, Lemon Grove, CA) and Pastor Jim Green (Bible Baptist Church, Charlevoix, MI). It was a great conference. Pray that God will provide the funds to fix up the building He's provided for them in downtown Fort Dodge. Get this, they have been given, for the cost of $40,000 in back taxes, a 325,000 square foot building (that's three times the size of most Super Wal-Marts), which used to be an 8 story luxury hotel built back in 1917 (both JFK and Al Capone stayed there). It's a city block long, and a half a city block wide, and will house more than adequately all their ministries under one roof. God has big plans for Fort Dodge, it would seem. Pray for Bro. Smith, and Harvest Baptist, as they work to realize God's vision.
By the time we got home, we are all pretty thoroughly wiped out. Gaelin had it the hardest, I think. Infants really need routine, and it's hard to give it to them when you're on the road. We had planned to have the next week and a half off before beginning our November meetings, but I got a call from Pastor Jay Matlock, of Fellowship Baptist Church in Selmer, TN. He said they had a problem. They'd just had a conference and had lots of missions money, but not enough missionaries. Would that more churches would suffer from such difficulties! So, since October 30 was all I had left open this year, we agreed to come down there. It's a six hour drive, which is really not that bad, but after all the driving we'd been doing for the past month, we really hated to make another drive. So, we bucked up and went anyway, had a great meeting, and get this, they'll be supporting us for a $100 a month, starting in November! How great is that? The other cool thing about it, is that Selmer, TN is my Dad's hometown. He went to school there, grew up there, and we used to, when I was a kid, drive there all the time to visit Grandma Huckabee. My Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Tom came to the service, and my Aunt Ann. They got to meet their Great Niece and Nephews, and we had a great visit. What a small world!
We got back from that trip, feeling like butter spread over too much toast, and promptly got colds, all of us except Anna. I managed to get myself healed up enough to be in condition to preach on Sunday for our meeting in Michael Richter's church in O'Fallon, MO (Gospel Light Baptist Church). It was a great meeting. I went soulwinning with them on Saturday, and had some good conversations with some of the folks living nearby. Pray for them, that they'll decide to come to church, and read the tracts I left, and believe on Jesus and be saved. Sunday services were wonderful, as God really worked, and I had great liberty to teach in Sunday School, and preach in the evening service. Bro. Richter is serving the LORD in one of the fasting growing communities in Missouri. Pray that they'll get the new building they need. They're outgrowing the building they're in now, and need the larger structure in which to meet. Pray that the owners will come down in price, and agree to sell to them.
Tonight, we'll be kicking off a conference in Farmington, MO (Pastor Jeff Brady, Blessed Hope Baptist Church). I have a Sunday morning meeting with Larry Croy in Waterloo, IL (New Testament Baptist Church), and then we'll wrap up the conference in Farmington on Sunday night. Pray for us. We're still pretty tired, and Anna is a little overwhelmed by all the backlogged housework and what not that accumulated in our absence. I have a fair amount of scheduling left to do for next year (I'm still trying to nail down some conferences. Sometimes, it takes months to get a hold of Pastor to schedule a meeting). Our meetings for the rest of this year are close to home. I anticipated that we'd all be pretty tired by this point, so I tried to minimize the travel for that reason. Already, our baby, who has spent nearly half his life on the road by now, is showing marked improvement. He's much more even tempered, is sleeping during the day at nap times, and is sleeping all night. By January, he'll be a pro and will tolerate the travel much better. Pray for our travelling, and the busy-ness we have to engage in to successfully finish out the year. We have doctor's appointments coming up, family pictures, and a Christmas prayer letter to get out. I have to get our slides and prayer cards updated to accommodate the new young'un. I have a calender to fill, and meetings yet to attend. After that, however, in December we rest, and boy are we looking forward to it! Anyhow, I should stay on top of the email from here on out, so the future editions shouldn't be so long. Thanks for praying for us.
