MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 12-08-2005

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Greetings! We had a great meeting in Heritage Baptist Church in Lawrence, KS with Pastor Scott Hanks. They put us up in this great prophet's apartment, so we got good rest, and were able to get to church in the morning in seconds. Sunday school went well. I taught the Teen Boys (9th – 12th grade), from Acts 17 and Paul on Mars Hill, and we talked about strategies for reaching the unchurched in an increasingly pagan culture. The services went well, and our presentation was well received. Pray for Heritage Baptist Church. They're trying to expand their main building, but some obstinate (translation: crooked) county inspectors are making them engage in all manner of bureaucratic gymnastics, and, every time they think they've achieved compliance, they move the finish line. So, be in prayer that God will move the heart of the king to stop this foolishness and let them build. They also have a growing printing ministry, and a bunch of books printed that need to be sold, so pray that those will sell.

Our Christmas break has begun, so no more meetings 'til 2006. Good thing, too, because a big snowstorm moved in on our heels in Topeka, KS, and has made its way to St. Louis today, so the snow is falling here and the kids are loving it. We've decorated for Christmas and are busy enjoying the holidays. The kids are learning their Christmas parts for Sunday and our church's Christmas program. We've started some of our Christmas shopping, and have already lined out the presents we'll be giving the kids. Everything is going great. Pray for next year that the schedule will fill, that Pastors will be willing to have us in for meetings, and that I'll be able to get in touch with them (not their answering machines – a useless device, since no one responds to its messages, and not their secretaries) in a relatively timely manner. Pray that our support will come up in the new year. It's trending that way at the moment, but pray that the trend will continue and we'll have the support we need to, you know, live and all. Pray that I'll be able to get a laptop soon, and that the money will be there to start buying the language tutorials I need to be prepared for when we get to the field. I need to get some Sign Language materials from Silent Word ministries, a French language tutorial from Rosetta Stone, and a host of Hebrew and Greek tools and books to help me polish my skill with those languages to prepare for language training at BBTI in Fall, 2007. The laptop is for running these, and so I can work on them on the road. Thanks for all your prayers!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-28-2005

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Our LORD's day went great yesterday. We were in Faith Baptist Church in Bridgeton, MO (Pastor Dan Gonnerman). The Adult Sunday School and morning service went very well. I enjoy teaching and preaching, and it's always a privilege to get to do it. We're winding down for 2005. Next week, we'll be in Heritage Baptist Church in Lawrence, KS (Pastor Scott Hanks). Then, it's time for Christmas break. I'll still be making phone calls and what not, but we'll be home, and attending our home church for the month of December. Our kids will get to be in the Christmas program, and we'll be home to visit with family around the holidays. Continue to pray for me as I schedule meetings, that I'll be able to get in touch with the Pastors I'm trying to reach, and that they'll schedule us, and that their churches will eventually support us. Pray that the churches where we've been will also be able to eventually support us, and that God will prosper them to that end. Pray that our support will come up dramatically in the next fewmonths, and that the money will be there for Christmas. Thanks for all your prayers, and for your kind concern.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-21-2005

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Howdy! Our LORD's Day went well yesterday. Our meeting in Winfield, MO was in the evening, so we got to be in our home church. Yesterday was Heritage Sunday, where folks can wear old-fashioned clothes if they like (or jeans, if they like 😉 ). Afterwards, we had a pre-Thanksgiving meal, which was excellent as always. We sat and socialized with an Englishman who's been coming to our church for a bit, and it dawned on me as I asked about English holidays how unique America is in this respect: we celebrate everything! England has bank holidays, and Christmas and Easter, but with the exception of Remembrance Day (their version of Veteran's Day), they have no nationalistic holidays. We have multiple holidays that commemorate different aspects of being American. Thanksgiving reminds us of our ancestors and how they almost didn't make it through the first winter, but how, with some assistance from the Indians, and God's providence, they lived to have the first Thanksgiving, where they took the time to give thanks to God for His provision and care. We do likewise today, and have since Lincoln formally inaugurated the holiday back in 1863. We have the Fourth of July, where we put up patriotic decorations, have parades, barbecues (wouldn't be a holiday without food, right?), set off fireworks, and just generally glory in being an American. We have Veteran's Day to honor our soldiers. We have Father's and Mother's Day to honor our parents. We have President's Day, to honor our founding fathers. We have all these traditional, and uniquely American days of celebration, where we simply take pleasure in this great country in which God blessed us to let us be born, or become citizens. It really struck home to me how great we have it here, and how very thankful to God I am to be a citizen of the United States of America.

We drove about 45 minutes away to Winfield, MO to Mid-America Baptist Church with Pastor Rick Koonce. It's a young, but growing church, about 14 miles from Troy. It's always a blessing to have meetings in these young, church plants, and an encouragement to know that there are still Baptist churches being planted around America. If there's one thing America needs these days, it's New Testament churches where sound doctrine is preached. We had some more food after church (yeehaw), and got to spend some time with the folks at church. Great day, indeed.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-18-2005

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Greetings! We had a great week last week. To begin with, we were in Blessed Hope Baptist Church in Farmington, MO, with Pastor Jeff Brady. Their missions conference went great. We had some great fellowship with them, and with the missionaries who were with us in the conference. R.J. Saladin, to Mexico, and Lanelle Smith, to Cote D'Ivoire, Africa we've met, and also Angel Parrish with Rock of Ages to the Women's Prisons in Missouri. We went out to Lafayette Bible Baptist Church on Friday for their Revival Fires meetings. Great preaching, particularly from Pastor Bob Smith. Praise the LORD, Blessed Hope Baptist Church voted to take us on for support! On Sunday morning, we had a meeting in Larry Croy's church, New Testament Baptist Church in Waterloo, IL. For some reason, in the course of the meeting, I opted to preach a different message than I normally preach. The short of it is, six people prayed to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior! Now I know what the LORD had in mind. They had been witnessing to, and praying for, these people for some time, and I got to play a small part, and be present for the harvest. What a blessing!

Things are going well. Keep praying about meetings. I have several I'm trying to nail down, but am having trouble getting the Pastors on the phone. Pray that they'll be willing to have us in, and that their churches will be moved to support us. Pray about February. January is full, and March and April are almost, but I have only one conference in February and need to get the month filled up. The summer needs to fill up, however, I have a Pastor's Conference in April in North Carolina that I've been invited to by Jimmy Rose, the Brazilian Director with BIMI, so pray that it will go well, and will yield some meetings out East. Pray for the rest of the year, and that the money will be there for Christmas. Pray for our health, that it will remain good, and our travels, that they will remain safe. Pray that our support will come up significantly in November and December, to put us on good footing to begin 2006.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-09-2005

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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.