Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Street Ministry Update 3-31-2012

Check out the video of Dave witnessing to a lost man on the street.
I praise the Lord for our faithful men who work the streets of Hartford for the Lord Jesus Christ proclaiming the glorious gospel!
http://street-preach.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

It's been awhile!

It has been awhile since I have made an update here.  I guess you now understand why I call it my "once in awhile blog". Just a few updates.

First the great spiritual news.  We have had two families join the church in the last couple of weeks.  We also have several families who have been attending for the last 2 months and they have commented to my wife and me that they are rejoicing to have found FBBC.  That's always a blessing to hear.  We have also had two adults baptized in the last month.  However, the BEST news of all is that three adults have been saved in the last three weeks!  GLORY TO GOD!  One couple is Adrian and Cindy.  They are both nurses and moved to CT to work on contract with St. Francis hospital for 3 months.  I am praying they will have their contract extended so we can get them both grounded in the scriptures before they have move on down the road.  In fact, it would be great if the Lord left them here with us.  We have fallen in love with them.  Another is a young Mom.  Her name is Amy.  My wife and I met with her in her home and she was gloriously saved! It so wonderful to see the lights go on as the holy Spirit gives them understanding of the gospel.  I love being a Christian and an ambassador for Christ!

The Teens just returned from TEEN THUNDER at Pastor Lake's church, Blessed Hope BC in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.  Five teens were saved from Canada, and all of our teens came back fired up to serve the Lord! Praise the Lord! I am so grateful for Pastor Ken Sparks and the adult workers (the Sturgeon's & the Burhoe's) who sacrifice so much of their time and finances to work with our young people!

Our men handed out over 2500 tracts and did extensive street ministry at the St Partick's Day parade last week.  I am so grateful to Dave Howard for heading up that ministry for us.  He has been so faithful to the street ministry for many years.  I sure do appreciate all the faithful men (Harry, Bert, Herb, Dave, Isaac, and many others) who faithfully go on Saturday's!

Our 28th Church Anniversary will be in just a few weeks (April 9th to 15th).  This year we are blessed to have with us Pastor Doug Fisher from Lighthouse BC in Lemon Grove, CA.,  as well as Evangelist Brian DelGrande. We are looking forward to a wonderful week of preaching and fellowship together!

Camp Meeting will be here before we know it too!  This year it will be July 8 to 15.  Dr Sam Gipp, Evangelist Steve Cowgill, Evangelist Buddy Blunkall, Pastor Eddie Wyatt and others will be preaching this year.  Camp Meeting is always a great time and such spiritual refreshment!

We also had most of our Fellowship hall floor tiled.  We are still needing about 1200 sq ft of ceramic tile to finish the entire floor.  We are grateful to Brother Kaiser from Solid Rock BC in Berlin, NJ for arranging to get the tile for us in the first place!  He and his wife have been such a blessing to us here at FBBC!  I will attempt to attach a few pictures of the tile work. Two of our faithful men, Isaac Raymond and Darren Maynes laid the tile and did the grouting work!  They did a SUPER job!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Spanish Ministry at FBBC

Approximately 4 years ago the Lord began to deal with me about beginning a Spanish ministry here at FBBC.  I have prayed about this truly seeking the Lord's full direction for the initial questions I had...the "who, what, when, where" type of questions.  The Lord began giving me direction and filling in all the blanks I had in my mind and heart.  This past year was really the year the Lord began to completely put all the pieces together.  I praise the Lord for His guiding me in every step of the way.  He has ordered my steps for this entire journey.

Two months ago we began handing out invitations and John and Romans in Spanish in the heavily Spanish speaking areas of Bristol and New Britain.  They were well received.  We also had pocket sized Spanish invitations printed.  During the last several weeks I had run into so many Spanish speaking folks every where I went.  I was able to give the invitations out to very receptive hands.  We were doing all we could to follow the Lords direction for this new ministry.

The start date was last Sunday, January 8th.  We have prayed, we have worked and invited, and now it was the first service.  Saturday, January 7 I received a phone call from a man who received a tract from our church as well as a Spanish invitation tract.  He said he wanted to come to church but he needed a ride. He also said there were several Spanish folks who also wanted a ride to church.  I told him we would pick them up.  I called Harry that Saturday afternoon and he immediately went to visit those folks.  Sunday morning Harry and his wife took one of the church vans and brought those folks to church.  Brother Harry Torres and his wife, Estella were excited, we as a church were excited to see what the Lord was going to do as we began this new ministry.  Well, praise the Lord, we had a class of 9 show up! Each of them were genuinely excited to be in the church for the Spanish Sunday School Class. They came out of that class all smiles.  The man who called me that Saturday also came, brought a friend and they both sat in my Sunday School class (as they both spoke English). They all stayed for the morning service and sat together in the church.  At the conclusion of the service three of them came forward for salvation!  WOO! HOO! GLORY TO GOD!

Please be in pray for the Torres' and for FBBC as we go forward in this ministry reaching the Spanish speaking community here in our Jerusalem for the Lord.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Zambia, Africa... November 8 - 23, 2011


















Well, on Sunday night , November 7th, at midnight 23 of us left VIA a bus to drive through the night and early morning hours to head to Washington, DC Dulles airport. We arrived at 7:00 am in DC and at 11:00 AM we were aboard an Ethiopian airplane heading to Zambia, Africa.

We flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, had a 2 hour layover then departed for Lusaka with a short stop to refuel in Zimbabwe.

We arrived safely in Lusaka and were greeted by John Sarra, Yohannes Getaneh, Joseph (John Sarra's right hand man), Pastor Douglas Sakawaka and a few others. We were so warmly greeted and hugged and loved. I have been to Zambia several times since 1993 when I first took John Sarra there to view the work and get God's direction for his life and ministry these last 18 years. It was so wonderful to see many of the men I knew from previous trips still serving the Lord faithfully! Joy flooded my soul!

We then split up to spend the first night in two different locations to sleep that first night. The next morning we split the group into two groups of 8 and 15. Eight of us stayed in Lusaka and preached and taught several times for the next 6 days at a Bible conference run by 9 pastors from the area of Lusaka, teens and adult services and also ministering to the deaf at Brother Yohannes Getaneh's ministries. The remaining 15 went on to John and Lorna Sarra's mission station in the copper belt area of Luanshya (about 5 hours drive away from Lusaka).

Those who stayed with me in Lusaka for those first 6 days were blessed to minister in the deaf church and school, the deaf Bible college, a bible study group at the Intercontinental Hotel (where there met about 18 hotel staff who have been faithfully meeting each week), and also at the Bible conference in a compound area of Lusaka. Pastor Drummond, George Kie, Cameron Prewitt and myself preached and preached, and Cam drew chalk drawings and preached. It was an amazing week there because in the 6 short day while we were there we saw 46 deaf folks, 5 teenagers, and 18 adults saved at the Bible conference during that first week. The group that went on to the mission station saw 28 saved. All together we were aware of 97 souls who were born into the family of God through repentance of sin and faith in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary! There was also a plowing, and planting of the seed of corn as Ed Young, George Kie and Cameron prepared about 10 acres of fallow ground to plans corn for the mission station. Physical seed and spiritual seed planted in order to see a harvest of souls and nutrition for the body. GLORY TO GOD!

I want to say that I was blessed to have such a great bunch of young people and "ol goomers" go on this missions trip. There was a GREAT spirit during the entire trip. THANKS FOR GOING! You ALL blessed my heart and filled me with wonderful memories as we worked together for the Lord Jesus Christ . I sure do love you all!

Below is a web site to view some of the video and pictures taken by Brent Burhoe who was at the Mission station. I have also attached a few more pictures at the beginning of this post. They were taken in the area of Lusaka with our group of 8 so you can get a brief glimpse of the deaf work and services at the compound in Lusaka.

Go to this site to see the video of our trip to Zambia, Africa:
Thanks Brent! Great job putting the video together!


Saturday, September 10, 2011

Ministry Updates: Some food for thought...and comment:

Ministry Updates: Some food for thought...and comment:

Some food for thought...and comment:

I read the following from Oswald Chambers. Insightful. Let me hear your comments. When you were under the fig tree, I saw you —John 1:48

Worshiping in Everyday Occasions. We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us— it simply reveals what we are made of already. Do you find yourself saying, “If God calls me to battle, of course I will rise to the occasion”? Yet you won’t rise to the occasion unless you have done so on God’s training ground. If you are not doing the task that is closest to you now, which God has engineered into your life, when the crisis comes, instead of being fit for battle, you will be revealed as being unfit. Crises always reveal a person’s true character.

A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness. The time will come, as Nathanael experienced in this passage, that a private “fig-tree” life will no longer be possible. Everything will be out in the open, and you will find yourself to be of no value there if you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions in your own home. If your worship is right in your private relationship with God, then when He sets you free, you will be ready. It is in the unseen life, which only God saw, that you have become perfectly fit. And when the strain of the crisis comes, you can be relied upon by God.

Are you saying, “But I can’t be expected to live a sanctified life in my present circumstances; I have no time for prayer or Bible study right now; besides, my opportunity for battle hasn’t come yet, but when it does, of course I will be ready”? No, you will not. If you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions, when you get involved in God’s work, you will not only be useless yourself but also a hindrance to those around you.

God’s training ground, where the missionary weapons are found, is the hidden, personal, worshiping life of the saint.