Tag: 2017 Prayer Letters

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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