There are no accidents! I am amazed how God orchestrates His will in my life. From my perspective, I see that my best efforts seem to make a mess of things and my strongest attempts to obey His will are often followed by my weakest attempts. Somehow even in my mistakes and shortcomings of attempting to obey Him, He uses my little faith as part of His big plan.
One such incident was when I was transitioning into a different system of how I record meetings and calls. I did everything I could to make sure that a single piece of information was not missed. However, there was one small piece of information that didn’t get recorded into my new system of recordkeeping. It happened to be a four-day Missions Conference at a big church where I was to be the keynote speaker. Because of this minor detail that was left out, I happened to schedule a different conference across the country on the same dates. After months of complete ignorance, I received a call from a pastor I did not know, preparing me for the coming conference. I wrote down all the details and, after the phone call, immediately searched my records for any information about this conference. I could not find anything! When I looked at my calendar and saw that the dates were already scheduled with a different Missions Conference, terror, anguish, and panic were some of the many feelings I was experiencing at that moment. I hesitantly grabbed my phone to call the pastor back, which only made my imagination of the worst a reality. Sitting in the midst of the fallout from my cataclysmic mistake, I had the thought to call the Missions Conference that I had scheduled in place of the one I had missed. I found out that the church where I’d scheduled the second conference had lost my information and had already filled their conference with other missionaries. I was actually HAPPY to hear this news! I called the first pastor back, and he graciously re-invited us to the conference! Now they are one of our supporting churches!
Another event was when I was calling a list of churches in Ohio, and one of the contact numbers was not updated. When I talked with the pastor, I set up a conference, thinking it was in Ohio. After two weeks, I discovered that the conference was in Florida . . . in February! Praise God! As I write this letter, most of you reading this are probably freezing right now with this unusually cold weather. Likewise, I am suffering from weather just below 60 degrees—almost too cold for just a T-shirt. Isn’t God good?!
Please pray as I continue to schedule meetings for this year. Three more churches are now supporting us. I will be taking my wife and daughter to the country where we will be serving on March 16 through April 1. Our family will be in Arizona and California in the months of May and June. I led more people to Christ on the weekdays this time than on the weekends. Andrya was a temporarily homeless lady whom my wife and I met going out of Dollar Tree. Once she knew I was a Christian, she was quick to ask if her baby who died would be in Heaven. After sharing the Gospel, she soon called on Christ to save her and received the knowledge that one day she will meet her baby in Heaven. She was overjoyed with tears at the news that she will get to see her baby one day.
Thank you for your prayers and support! The will of God is ALWAYS GOOD! ACCEPTABLE! and PERFECT!
Missionary #6506