God is Faithful!

Much has transpired since our last update. Some incredibly encouraging things have happened over the last few months. Some incredibly discouraging things have happened as well. The last several weeks of ministry have been some of the most difficult weeks in ministry that we have ever experienced. We have an enemy (Satan) and he doesn’t fight fair. However, God is faithful and we trust Him. Please pray for wisdom for handling a number of challenging circumstances. 

I have found that whenever things get difficult, it is important to look back and see all that the Lord has done. It is easy to get ourselves in a downward spiral of complaint and discouragement when we focus on the difficulty of our challenges rather than the faithfulness of our God. God is faithful when things are going well, but He is also faithful when things are not going so well. So, in this update, I’m going to focus on God’s faithful blessings over the last couple of months and simply ask you to pray for us that we will trust Him and follow His leading in the difficulties.

At the end of May a group from People’s Baptist Church in Penn Laird, VA came and helped our church with some projects around the building and distributed about 3,000 pieces of gospel literature. This was a huge encouragement to our church. In one Sunday afternoon, we were able to hand out about 600 tracts at the local park in about an hour. Please pray that the Lord would continue to use the seed that was sown. 

Lindsey was able to attend a Spanish ladies’ conference in the NYC area with two of our Spanish-speaking ladies. Lindsey had the opportunity to speak to the teen girls and got a lot of practice speaking and listening in Spanish. 

In July, I spent 12 days preaching at a youth camp in Arequipa, Peru. Our Spanish teacher was my host. He felt that this would be a great help to my language acquisition and it certainly was. Over 12 days I preached 7 times in Spanish. This was a stretching time and way out of my comfort zone. It was incredibly humbling to be used of the Lord to minister to young people in Peru and to watch the Lord use His Word although my words were far from perfect. 

The trip really was a huge help. My Spanish seems to flow better when I am preaching and I am following conversations much more easily. We still have a long way to go in our language acquisition but the opportunity to travel to Peru allowed me to take several steps forward. Two weeks after returning from Peru I was able to direct our Sunday morning service bi-lingually for the first time. I have been preaching on Wednesday nights bi-lingually for about a year, but preaching bi-lingually on Sunday morning was a big step and we hope to be able to do this more regularly moving forward. 

Massachusetts has a program in which they weatherize (insulate) old buildings to make them more energy efficient. This summer I came in contact with a man that is involved in helping churches obtain these resources. In August, our entire church building was insulated at no cost to us. Our church building had no insulation before, so we can already feel a difference. We are hopeful that this will bring down the astronomical cost of heating and cooling our church building. 

This was a great blessing but it also meant a lot of work. Insulating our building meant drilling holes every 10 inches on the inside of all the exterior walls in the building. This meant that we had a ton of drywall patching and painting to do (two of everyone’s most favorite jobs). Thankfully we had an incredible family from Pennsylvania that used their family vacation to work 12+ hour days and help us do 90% of this work. Through their hard work, the McDowell family saved us months of work and frustration and our building looks more beautiful than ever. Thank’s again, guys! 

Just last week we received an offering from the VBS of Fellowship Baptist Church in Mount Joy, PA to have a permanent church sign installed. I am excited to share pictures once it is installed. After 4 years in our building I still have people come by and ask what we are planning to do with the building. We hope that a permanent sign will point people to our church so that we can point them to Christ and let the community know that Community Baptist Church is here to stay. 

We continue to have visitors and new believers are growing in their faith. God is good, and we are so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to serve Him. He has promised to build His church and He is doing just that. 

Please continue to pray for us to have wisdom in ministering to the people of Lawrence. At the end of this month we will begin having a monthly Bible study with the men of the church looking at what it means to be a godly man. In October, my brother in-law, Ryan will be teaching a class on Monday nights on basic Bible interpretation. This is such an important topic for new believers, especially those who were saved out of other religions and denominations. Please pray that the Bible studies would be well-attended and impactful for our church. 

Thank you again for your faithfulness in praying for and supporting our ministry here in Lawrence.