Sam Heidenreich Prayer Letter: Thank God for Heaven!

Personal Evangelism, Bible Studies, and Church

During the month of September, our staff and students were busy going places and doing personal witnessing to a lot of people. Through the rain and the heat of the sun, without complaining, they reached out to the lost. We have had a total of 1,862 saved during these past months, with 110 visitors and public professions, and we were able to baptize 8. We also conducted Bible studies in the remote areas. We had to walk through very narrow rice-field dikes in the mud to reach some places. It was hard, but we still managed to smile, sing, and rejoice after we got done seeing people saved and Christians growing in the Lord.

Meeting Our Sending-Church Pastor

September 24-25 was the Pastors’ and Workers’ Conference at Iloilo Baptist Church. We were so glad to see our sending-church pastor, John Wilkerson, and his wife, Mrs. Linda Wilkerson. It was a blessing to hear him preach and be able to spend time with them. He loves to encourage other people around him. He is such a humble man of God! We also got to see Bro. Billy Paugh (our missions director), Dr. Stuart Mason (the president of Hyles-Anderson College), and a few church members from the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana—a bunch of great servants and faithful men of God. They were all a blessing to many of us at the conference!

Thank God for Heaven!

While we were at the conference, a staff member informed me that one of our church members had died. He’d had multiple strokes and was half paralyzed. Despite his health conditions, he remained faithful to church. His life was a blessing to a lot of his family members. Here in the Philippines, family members take the remains to their house and keep them sometimes two weeks or more before they bury them. They had to wait for family members to come home from different places. Five days later his sister, who was 84 years old and already bedridden, died also. The following Saturday we held a funeral service for both of them at the church. People packed the auditorium, and hundreds got saved. We are so thankful that they were both saved and that their lives brought salvation to a lot of their loved ones during the funeral services!

Harvest and Thanksgiving Sunday

Once a year we celebrate this special event in our church. Our church members bring their produce to church and offer it to the Lord. Some brought sacks of rice and other things to give. We also had our birthday offerings. We made a chart with pockets on it, and every member put their offering in the pocket of their birthday month. It was such a blessing seeing even two-year old kids give to the Lord. At the end of the day, we had gathered a good amount, which was enough to cover some of the church’s expenses. I am so thankful for Christians with a heart to give!

Special Prayer Request

Not being able to come home to the States for almost 13 years sometimes is hard. We have had a few churches that have dropped our support due to a change of leadership. Some have said that their missions giving is low and they had to cut back on the missionaries they support. Others have just dropped us for no reason. I would like to ask you to please pray that our supporting churches will be consistent in their mission giving. Our support has been very low some months, and it is hard for us to do things with fewer resources. We are not complaining, for we believe that God is the God of all resources. Thank you so much, and may the Lord richly bless all of us!

Family

First and foremost, I would like to thank all of you who prayed for my dad. Because of your prayers, his kidneys are doing well. He is still having some problems with them, but he is continuing to get better. He has gone back to traveling and preaching around the country. I cannot thank you enough for praying for him! Our family is doing well, by God’s grace. Our children are busy with schoolwork. Please do pray that God will supply the needs for their school materials. A.C.E. PACEs are very expensive, and there are times we just can’t afford to buy them. If any of you could donate old PACEs we could use for them, we would gladly appreciate it!