Thank you for all the prayers and support. We feel so blessed to be your missionaries! Since the weather has been warming up, we’ve been doing a lot of door knocking, and even though it seems to take a lot of planting and watering to see souls saved, God has blessed both my wife and me with souls saved this month. While we were out for our midweek soul-winning time, I was able to meet a man named Robert Campagna. This story blesses and convicts me all at the same time. As I was approaching his door, which was a huge door attached to a grand house, I instinctively had my guard ready for another wealthy person who would run me off his doorstep; moreover, it didn’t help my stereotyping when he opened his door looking slightly irritated at our presence. I invited him to church anyway and then felt the Lord’s prodding to witness to him. After taking several minutes to show him God’s plan for salvation, he—to my shameful amazement—got saved. You just never know who’s going to get saved or not, do you?!
My wife saw someone saved not long after on what we thought was just a meet-up with some missionary friends we met on deputation. The irony is so awesome on this one! These friends we met, Zach and India, are missionaries in India. As we were visiting and catching up, an Indian lady with her little son joined us in the park. As he was playing in the park, my wife and India gave the lady a tract. Liz proceeded to witness to her, and not long after, Sheila trusted Christ as her Saviour. The most Toronto-like thing about all of this was that Sheila was of Indian descent, raised in New Zealand, and now lived in Canada. I love our mission field!
Either because we’re half crazy, there’s such a great need, or both, we planned three teen activities in May. We’ve seen some new teens join our youth group and seen some spiritual needs arise in others, so I wanted to make a point to try to reach out to them in a few different ways. We did a get-to-know-you type of activity, where we took time to learn things about our teenagers that helped all of us learn some things about each other. We even dared to look Father Time in the eye and participate in a full-blown Nerf War with the teens. Hey, we’ll try anything to get a chance to encourage our teenagers to live for God—even if it means pulling a muscle. Please pray for our teen ministry. There’s so much still to do. There are bright spots of growth in some, while we’re begging God for wisdom in how to help others. Colin, one of our young men, took a wonderful step up in leadership recently when, of his own accord, he pulled two of our new teenagers aside to witness to them. Praise God! They both got saved. It’s been an encouragement to see him take initiative to sit with them and encourage spiritual growth in their lives. I have begun doing discipleship meetings with both of them, which is going very well.
As you may have heard if you’re an NBA fan, the Toronto Raptors are world champions of basketball. I don’t say that to keep
you up-to-date on the latest sports news; I tell you that because the Raptors helped me win a man to Christ! After a nail-biter of a Game 4 victory, spirits were high here in Canada. As Liz and I returned from church one Sunday afternoon, another one of our upstairs neighbours named Josh came up to me and asked if I had seen the big Raptors’ win. I told him I had, and then I invited him to church. Ultimately, the conversation turned further to spiritual things, and after a while, Josh called upon Jesus right in our driveway!
This past month, we’ve been concentrating on inviting people to the church’s 16th anniversary celebration, which we called a Community Day Barbecue. With an incredible team effort, Liz and I, Pastor Johnston’s family, many wonderful people in our church, and a special group from Grace Baptist Church in Lockport, Illinois, managed to get out thousands of Gospel tracts and flyers to our community. During this push, we met so many people from all over the world (Russia, England, the Philippines, Dubai, China, Mexico, Iran, St. Vincent, and many others) who need Jesus. I was personally able to share the Gospel with a Catholic Filipino lady named Melissa a couple of days before the big day, and she got saved.
All that God has done or is preparing to do through the efforts of this sweet team of people is not entirely clear yet, but one thing is clear—God is doing something. We have a new lady in our church who is on fire for God and is weekly bringing new Chinese friends to church. Teens are stepping up in growth to reach out to see others saved. Others are inviting coworkers who are now attending church. Folks are visiting the church, and we can’t seem to remember who invited them. As the quote goes, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” So much hope has been injected into the work through this missions team called Gospel Light Baptist Church, and all of the glory belongs to Jesus.
We just had our big Community Day Barbecue, with several visitors. Would you start praying now that we’d connect with all of them and get to introduce them to Jesus? Most likely, many of them heard the Gospel for the first time from the pulpit, so would you pray that the seed planted would germinate into precious families coming to know Jesus? Others who visited know Jesus already, and we’d like to see them join this international, multilingual missions team. Would you pray for this? July is going to be a big month as well, with many soul-winning opportunities, as well as spiritual-growth opportunities for us all. Please pray for special grace on me and my wife as we try to do our part here in Canada to see the work grow. We want to be a blessing to our pastor, Bro. Johnston, in helping the work grow by adding the spiritual gifts that God has given us to the ministry. Would you pray that we would accomplish our God-given purpose here? We love you all. Thank you for reading my very long letter. There was much more to write, but I realize you also have things to do. God be with you till we meet again!
Pressing toward the mark,
Brian Hebert
