Ian and Czarinna Vincent Prayer Letter: Casting All Your Care Upon Him

We were privileged in October to be able to attend the Spiritual Leadership Conference at Lancaster Baptist Church in California. It was the first time in a long time that we were able to attend a national conference like this, and it was truly refreshing, encouraging, and uplifting! What a great ministry that Pastor Paul Chappell is leading in Lancaster, California. He is so kind and gracious to missionaries. While at the registration table, we were surprised to learn that registration for missionaries was free! We then were able to meet and talk with him inside the bookstore, and when he found out that we were missionaries, he immediately told the cashier that our books would be free since we were missionaries. We were shocked that he wanted to do that for us, and especially so because we had $100 worth of books!

This was such a great and unexpected blessing, especially when you take into account what happened before we received the free books. Before we went to the bookstore, we were preparing to attend the closing service of the conference. I had saved our seats with our Bibles and our prayer card, and I was surprised when I came back to see that there was a $50 bill on my Bible. Somebody either placed that $50 bill on my Bible, or somebody lost it. I asked the people around me if they had lost any money, and nobody had. I decided that I was just going to put it in the offering plate to be a blessing to the church for putting on the conference, but then I saw a friend of mine from Bible college who had just started a church plant near San Francisco, and the Lord laid it on my heart to give him the money. I was happy to be a blessing to my friend, and a few hours later, as you already know, the $50 I gave to the Lord became $100 worth of books!

This was a great start to our October, but the rest of the month didn’t turn out so well. Czarinna and I were sick with COVID for two weeks! It was very bad timing, as COVID caused us to miss two Missions Conferences and one Missions Sunday, but the Lord was still good to us. One church still played our video presentation for their Missions Conference, and we were able to reschedule the church with the Missions Sunday two weeks later. We got sick with COVID the day before we were to be at the other church’s Missions Conference, but the church and pastor graciously let us keep our hotel reservation that was supposed be during the 4-day Missions Conference and even extended our hotel room for an extra 16 nights. The pastor even bought and delivered medicine and groceries to us. My sending church in Kentucky helped us out, too, as we were not able to cook any of our meals in our hotel room and had to have all of our meals delivered to us. Thank God for DoorDash! At the beginning of our COVID sickness and quarantine, we felt pretty helpless, but in reality, God took care of our every need!

Casting all our care upon him, for He careth for us,

Ian & Czarinna Vincent