We already miss you guys very much, and we wanted to send you a message to encourage you and let you know what’s going on in our lives. We are coming near the end of our time at orientation and very soon we will be going overseas. We just got back from New York where we were getting some first-hand experience with doing ministry in a big city. Please pray for Ervin, a man from the Dominican Republic that M got to share the gospel with. He claims to be Catholic, but his beliefs are more in line with animism and his lifestyle is more in line with paganism. Pray that the gospel would take roots in his life.
David Platt, the new IMB president, has cast the vision for the Southern Baptist Convention of having a great movement of people to the mission field like what we saw a long time ago with the Moravian church. The Moravians sent one person out of every 92 people to take the gospel to the nations. What would it look like to have that kind of movement among Southern Baptists? Well, for one thing, it would look a lot like Red Village Church! We are a small church by numbers, but we have already sent out several people and we are in the process of sending more! I thank God for this church.
But let us not become content with this. Let us strive all the more to support our missionaries (including my family) with prayer and fasting. Missionaries like us cannot do our work without your prayers and encouragement. And let us squeeze every resource that we have at our disposal to see how we can send more people. Do any of you have a skill that could get you a job overseas? Have you thought about moving to our country so you could join our team as a layperson? Think about it. Also, how can we be an encouragement to other churches to mobilize them for missions? These are some of the things that have been on my (M’s) mind lately.