Ministry

As I’m sure you have been made well aware 2018 has flown by, God has given yet another good year of serving Him. I can honestly say every day, and every year, gets sweeter with Jesus. We appreciate your prayers for us in this previous year, they were sincerely felt, and genuinely needed. I am certainly convinced that God has blessed us so tremendously, in no small part, because of your prayers.
Our church and its ministries have continued to grow, with us having hit a new high attendance of over sixty people; and more people coming to trust Christ as Savior. One interesting milestone we crossed in these past few months, is that we have now seen, in the second year of our church, people come from forty-three different countries. That is exciting, not only because it is a lot of countries, but because in six months we have surpassed our total for the entire first year.
Our soul winning ministry has also increased, with several more men joining me to go door knocking. We still go to the city thirty minutes to our south on Monday, each week, and were blessed to have our first visitor from there recently. We now have four more men who are starting to go on other days, boosting us to be able to go almost every day of the week. Four of the men who go with me, were some of the men baptized this past September, it is exciting to see them sharing the gospel with others. We will actually this week teaching soul winning classes at our church, so that others might start joining us.
I mentioned a building in my last letter, I have spoken with the owner; and seen the property. It is perfect for our needs and in a great location. The building is large enough for our church, for the foreseeable future, and has an apartment attached for our family. The price is very good for this part of the city, but still considerably out of our price range; it is nearly half the price of any building its size. Please pray for us though, we desperately need God’s guidance in whether this property is His will or not.

Ministry

God has been so good to us since our last letter, enough so that one letter can scarcely contain it all, nevertheless we will try. Since our last letter we had the privilege of seeing several saved here in our church. One of those were saved as part of a special service we were able to have with Dr. Roger Baker from our mission board. Dr. Baker was here for the first ever Macedonia World Baptist Missions European Retreat. We had not only the privilege of having him here at our church but also travelling with him to Germany and being a part of that meeting with our Macedonia family. Following on from the meeting with Dr. Baker, we were able to have our first baptism here at Gent Baptist Church. In September we were able to baptize 6 people here in our church: three Dutch men, a Filipino lady, and two Iranian men. I will attach to this letter pictures from the baptism, as well as from our Visitor’s Day service with Dr. Baker. The van that we previously mentioned having purchased, has already been put to excellent use, having been used every week to bring people to our church. Most Sundays we drive to the city of Eeklo and pick up a couple, and then a few people here in our city. I want to especially thank those who gave to help with the cost of this van, your gift is greatly appreciated. We have continued strong in our door knocking ministry and God has even blessed us with another man in the church who meets me on Mondays in the next city to the south of ours. Now we have the blessing of knocking doors in our city on Thursday nights and in Deinze on Mondays. Even more encouragingly though, God seems to have really broken down the barrier for us in this cause. We have suddenly seen a shift in receptiveness as we are having many opportunities to thoroughly share the gospel with people. Please keep us in your prayers as seems to be custom in our street preaching we have faced the same setbacks of the police trying to stop us. Another place we would request your prayers is that we have found a building we have begun praying about but if God wants us to have it, then it will require a few miracles from Him.

Ministry

We just finished our first year with the Gent Baptist Church and all I can say is praise the Lord. The church celebrated its one year anniversary on June 24th, 2018; where we had a very special service with about fifty people in attendance.   Our church worked hard and prayed hard for this day, giving out

10,000 invitations to the service. In Our first year we were able to give out about 50,000 gospel tracts here in Belgium. We were also able to reach a new high attendance of 55 by having a combined service with Lighthouse Baptist Church of Almere, NL. We have kept our street preaching going and added a door knocking time on Thursday evenings. In our church, we were able to preach the gospel to people from 42 different countries and from every inhabited continent. Our student Bible study that we added on Tuesday nights has continued to do well, even having one to come to trust Christ through this. We have also purchased a van in order to help with bringing people to church and for some of the basic needs of our family. With this comes several added costs that we had not previously anticipated. Please pray God will provide in this cause as we used money that is needed elsewhere and are just trusting that God will supply the need. The van is a standard seven passenger van, but because of our location; this is far more practical for the foreseeable future.

I had an incredibly unique opportunity today that I ask you to pray for as well. One of the larger theaters here contacted me about preaching the gospel in a production they are doing in honor of the religious history of our city. This would mean getting to stand on their stage and preach the gospel multiple times to people who have probably never heard. This is something we have only begun discussing, but even today it gave me an opportunity to preach to the crew who are organizing this program.

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Ministry

2017 has ended, and I can now look back and truly say “my what a Savior”. We saw God continue to bless here in Belgium and to grow His church. Since our last letter we have had two more to ask Christ to save them and have had much success in our discipleship courses. It has been amazing to watch Christ work in the hearts of people and see them grow in Him. We had several big days throughout the holiday season, including our own Thanksgiving; where we took the emphasis off the holiday and put our focus on thankfulness to God. This was a great success; having seven first time visitors, many of which it was their first time in church. For Christmas we had several visitors as well; but more encouragingly I saw our people come together in genuine fellowship. On New Year’s Eve in the morning service we had a baby dedication service for Josiah, be sure to see pictures of this on the attached page. In the evening we had a sweet spirited candle light prayer service. It has been an exciting close to the year, it is dizzying to look back on all God has done here this past year. We have averaged in the mid to upper twenties for attendance so far and are steadily seeing new people come in. We have first time visitors most every week. God has brought us new believers, mature Christians, and even some with Bible college education to help build a solid foundation upon which to grow His church. Our Street Ministry has also continued to see God’s blessing; with several already coming as a result of having received some form of literature and another man contacting me this week about coming after having heard me preach in the streets. We also had a gospel blitz where we took several of our men to the City of Charleroi and gave out about 4,000 gospel tracts in one day.

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Ministry

These last month’s God has moved in an incredible way, so much so that I almost need to write two letters just to touch it all. Gent Baptist Church has been open now for about three months and in that time God has already been growing His church. We are averaging over twenty people now and if everyone comes we would have thirty or more; meaning we have tripled in size. We also are seeing first time visitors every week. We have seen two saved already and have started discipleship classes with them. The Church has started a children’s church, where we are running about ten, on Sundays. We are also holding classes with the few teens we have every other Thursday night in hopes to eventually use this to build a teen class. Our Property can only hold about fifty people so we are well on our way to our goal of outgrowing this building. In August, we had a group of college students here who helped us to do a gospel blitz in our city, with street preaching, and giving out around

5,000 tracts in just a few days. I do ask you to pray though as after this we have faced some attacks against our church. The city questioned our legal right to have a church on our property, the volume of our music, and even fined us for putting gospel tracts in the wrong mail box; but the worst of their attacks is that they have temporarily stopped our street preaching while we look at getting a permit. God has answered our other needs and next month we pray to begin street preaching again, so please pray we could resolve the situation properly by then.

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Ministry

All I can say as I sit to write this letter is what a mighty God we serve, since our last letter we have seen the Lord meet many needs and bless richly. Perhaps the most exciting prayer answered is that God has given us a property for the church and it is better than we could have asked for. We held our first services in this property on June the 4th where we had 11 people in each service, 3 of which were visitors. The exciting thing about that is that our grand opening is not until the 25th, we haven’t even started advertising and God is giving us visitors; that is an awesome answer to prayer. Concerning our grand opening please keep us in prayer as we prepare the property and begin really pushing to advertise this special service. I am having 25,000 flyers printed and will go door to door distributing these with gospel tracts as well as giving them during our Saturday street ministry. We are also holding midweek services already in the church where I have chosen to try my hand at preaching in Romanian. This decision was made because currently everyone attending our services speaks Romanian and on Sundays we are translating the messages for those who require it, but in order to move away from the need of a translator I felt the Lord would have me to take the very very little Romanian I know and put it to use beginning on Wednesday nights. There is a high population of Romanian speaking people in Gent and so if we can minister in English and Romanian we will be able to reach most everyone in the city, until I can start Dutch language school in September. In addition to the normal preparation for a church building we were able to partner with a church here in Belgium to help them get pew chairs they were trying to raise money for, allowing them to get theirs cheaper and for us to starts off with nice chairs, which should arrive in August.

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Ministry

Praise the Lord we have arrived in Belgium safely and after two weeks we have already seen enough to write multiple letters. We have had some great opportunities in street ministry, including opportunities to witness one on one with a number of people. One of the more unique occasions we have had was the Saturday before Easter, when the Sikh religious group here in Gent were having a festival and parade in the streets. While we were out giving tracts and preaching the parade actually came right by us and I had the opportunity to preach to the Sikhs as well as a number of others who were just there for the parade, many stopping to listen to the message and several coming afterwards in order to ask questions and let us witness to them. We also had our dear friend Stan Kamps to come from the Nehterlands, where he pastors in Almere, and help us give tracts and preach on the streets. So far we have not located a building yet, but have been holding a Sunday service in our apartment. It has been a blessing to be here with the people we had been preaching to through Skype and hold services face to face with them; but that group alone is enough to fill up the apartment, so we are in need of something larger and more suitable for a church. We have spent almost every day since we arrived looking at properties and speaking with different individuals about our options. Please be in prayer for us to find the building God wants for the ministry, this is our most pressing need.

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Ministry

It is truly exciting to say we are at the end of our deputation and praise the Lord for that. We have had a wonderful experience meeting so many of God’s people across this country but it is time for us to go home to Belgium and get to work. We were held back a little while because we had to wait on Lory’s green card to be approved by the United States or else she would have forfeited any right to come back to the U.S. without having to go through this headache again. Lory doesn’t have her greencard but we have gotten permission to travel and we have deiced by faith to purchase tickets to leave for Belgium April 4th. The only issue we might have, according to the lawyer, would be if the U.S. government decided to call us in for an interview on a date after that, so please pray that if they want an interview they schedule it before we leave or even better that they don’t require an interview at all and just issue the green card without it. We have had our departure interview and my ordination service, Macedonia had previously asked us to increase our support goal a little and even with that increase we are back over 90% of our needed support and have been approved to go to the field. We request your prayers for the rest of our support to come in, for the legal documents needed, and wisdom needed for such a move. God has a foundation for our work already laid in Gent, Belgium and we thank all of you who have been a part of this journey to get there.

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Ministry

Praise the Lord it seems that the ministry only gets busier and busier. It seems like yesterday I wrote the last letter and now here I am much to my embarrassment a month behind on the current one. I promised not to be long winded anymore so let me keep that promise but, my how can I condense all of God’s multitude of blessings into one letter. Since Loredana has arrived we have had opportunity to be with many of the churches that will be receiving this letter and she has shared her testimony on various occasions. God has greatly used her in encouraging churches for the cause of missions. I have also had the opportunity to preach several missions conferences and even a revival. In the 3.5 months Lory has been here we have been to 15 different states and I even had to go to Canada without her. We have been in different churches every service presenting the ministry and God has brought our support level to about 85%. Most excitingly is the opportunities we have had to witness and have part in leading others to Christ, specifically a young lady who was adopted from Romania as a child.

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Ministry

How  can I even begin to say all God has done this past quarter? This has been one of the most eventful periods of ministry in the entirety of my 13 years of preaching. Here in the States God blessed us to reach almost to 75% of our needed support just in time for the one year mark since we began full time deputation. We had the privilege of helping lead a few lost souls to Christ and counsel some young men praying about serving God. Of course we travelled and preached a lot too; as far west as Kansas, as far north as South Dakota, and now as far south as Florida. While in Belgium we had some awesome opportunities in street ministry and a tremendous response to the preaching of God’s word. We had the chance to work one on one with several people who want me to call them and meet to discuss the gospel more when I return. Thousands of gospel tracts were distributed and are still being given even in my absence. Most excitingly a young lady from Romania joined our group there and has began to attend our skype services and help in the distribution of the gospel. In Romania we had one of our greatest blessings, not only were we allowed to preach and visit some churches there, but we also had the privilege of baptizing two of the young believers my wife had lead to the Lord years ago, her two youngest siblings, they have been my most faithful in coming to the skype services we have done each week for the past two years. It was our privilege to partner with Bro. Patrick Boyle who was their pastor and my wife’s for several years while he served in Romania and with Bro. Jim Morgan the local missionary who had led my wife and most of her family to the Lord. Bro. Boyle now pastors here in the states and was there to perform the wedding for my wife and I, due to his past relationship with them and my ordination service being soon but not yet happened at that point he performed the baptism as well, under the authority of Bro. Morgan’s church. I believe in doing all things decent and in order so I just share this so you can see how God brings all things together, the three men who have served like pastors to them all had a hand in the baptism and my wife who led them to the Lord was present as well. It is exciting to me to see young people asking to follow the Lord and make their faith public. Look for pictures of the baptism attached to this letter. Due to all of the exciting things God has done this letter will be two pages long with the personal section on the next page. We have a full schedule with only a few services open between now and the end of the year, mostly near Thanksgiving and Christmas. I mention this incase any pastor around home wants to do a special service in that time before we head off to Belgium at the end of January. If interested the dates are November 23rd, December  21st, 25th, and 28th.

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