The month of March was an incredible time of missions conferences or Missions-Emphasis Sundays. In responses to our February prayer update, the word WOW was used as the opening word on two separate occasions. This word is probably the best word to use to describe how we have been living. All we can say is, “WOW!”
While we were participating in a wonderful Faith Promise Missions Conference in North Carolina, we had a divine appointment out soul winning, for which we are truly thankful. We were out soul winning in an apartment complex when the gentlemen who was visiting with me and I came across a lady to whom we were not able to adequately witness. At that very moment, I heard my wife’s voice downstairs. I ran to get her and brought her upstairs. She was not only invited into the home but was also able to share the Gospel of God’s marvelous saving grace with the woman, whose name was Mary. As they knelt together, she trusted Christ as her personal Saviour. Please pray with us that Mary would grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We had the awesome opportunity in another church to teach the youth class during Sunday school, use our Tanzanian puppets in Junior Church, share about the door of opportunity God has opened to our family in Tabora, Tanzania, and preach about God’s grace. As usual, we were some of the last ones to leave the church that night. The Lord provided this opportunity in a miraculous way. We had visited this church by faith on a Wednesday evening. We really sensed the Spirit of God in all aspects of the service and in the fellowship with the pastor after the service. We did not schedule anything that first visit. A few weeks later, we stopped by again due to some extenuating circumstances. After the service the pastor took us into his office and told us this story. That very morning, he had picked up our prayer card and realized that we had not scheduled a meeting, even though he had wanted to do so. When we walked in that night, he was excited about the opportunity to talk to us again and try to “fit” us into the schedule. When we looked at his calendar, he asked us what date would be good for us. We told him the second week of March would be best. He looked on his calendar and realized that just the day before a missionary had canceled for that very Sunday. Praise the Lord! Please pray we will be so sensitive to the Spirit’s leading that we could not possibly mistake the churches to which God is leading us.
Another weekend saw us participating in a missions conference in Detroit on Saturday night and teaching or preaching all three services in a church forty minutes away on Sunday. We scheduled the missions conference at a fellowship meeting in Ohio, and the pastor encouraged us to schedule another church for Sunday. We had not been able to do this, so we were going to just visit a new church by faith. God had other ideas. A few weeks before the meeting, we received a call from a church about forty minutes away. They were looking for missionaries to come to their church and had heard about us from the pastor of a church that we had previously visited by faith. Even though he was not able to schedule us, he passed on our information. Praise the Lord!
The last week of March saw us, along with many other missionaries, at the First Annual Missions Conference at First Baptist Church of Hammond, which was held in conjunction with the “Great Commission Days” at Hyles-Anderson College. We are thankful for the many people who expressed their desire to pray for our family and the open door in Tabora, Tanzania. Lord willing, we will be walking through that open door this November. Please pray with us as we continue to travel.
In completely miraculous ways, God has opened up an opportunity to preach and record messages in Swahili. Please pray with us that we would be completely yielded to God and that He, by His grace, would be able to use us to accomplish His will through this.
