November 2006

We have had some wonderful corporate worship services since we began meeting in June, but this past Sunday was extremely special. A few weeks ago a woman in our church asked if she could speak to the church and share her story of how Jesus recently healed her. This was perfect because the sermon I was preaching in our sermon series “Let Me Tell You About Jesusâ€? was about “Jesus: The Healer.” I asked her if she would share her story of healing during that night. She agreed.

That Sunday night she was obviously nervous, but she spoke a pure and emotional message of the Father’s love that moved everyone in attendance. Our friend had been addicted to prescription drugs following several surgeries. This summer she had begun to commit prescription fraud in order to feed her addiction. Not only was she involved in this, but her marriage was struggling, and she was feeling miserable. She felt like she had no hope.

On a Monday in July she was arrested because of this fraud. She sat in jail until her husband could come up with enough money to get her out on bond. Of course, this did not help the marriage relationship or her attitude. The hole was just getting deeper and deeper.

And then a knock on the door changed everything. That week we had our youth mission team in from Oklahoma. Their primary ministry was knocking on doors in our area and handing out “Announcement Bags.” This was to help our church get a foot into the community. We had four groups of teens and youth leaders blanketing the area with prayer and these bags. On their last day, I moved one of the groups from the area they had been going, to another area in our target community. Guess whose door they came to!

Our friend tells the story that her husband answered the door and the teens told him they were from a local church and would like to give him one of these bags. They also asked how they could be praying for the family. The husband couldn’t believe this. His family had fallen away from church and were now at rock bottom. He ran to his wife and simply said, “God has knocked on our door.” The couple invited the mission team in and began to pour their souls out to them. And this began a relationship between this family and Whispering Pines Community Church.

Our friend is now recovering from her addiction. She is receiving help with this and some other issues. Her marriage is getting stronger and they are very, very involved with our church. Her husband attends our Men’s Hot Spot on Wednesdays and their 14 year old son runs our multi-media. We are going to begin meeting in a local home early next year before we publicly launch and this son told his parents that we are supposed to use their home.

This is church. This is why we are here.

If you have been praying for us, sending cards/e-mails of encouragement, and/or giving financially, you had a significant hand in this testimony.

Thank you all!!

Life is good,
Billy

Praise One-
A week ago, Tuesday night, our new church plant put on our very first large community event. We held a “Trunk or Treat” on halloween night at the local park. I have to admit that I had no idea how the community would respond to the event. We did not have a very large budget, so I had limited means for getting the word out about the event. A friend of ours did volunteer his time, talent, and equipment to make us some profession flyers to hand out. These flyers were basically the bulk of our adverstising. I had no idea how many parents would bring their kids to a safe alternative for trick-or-treating on halloween based on a flyer.

To make matters worse, it rained all day on halloween. Even as I was driving to the park to set up for the event rain was hitting my vehicle pretty hard. The drive from my house to the park is not very far, but God and I had a pretty heated talk during that brief drive. I was not happy about the rain and I let Him know about it. (Like I could’ve hidden that from Him anyway). About 5 minutes after I arrived at the park and began setting up, the rain stopped and the weather for the evening was very nice.

We ended up having 21 trunks for the kids to come and get candy out of. My goal had been 20 trunks from the beginning. We also had to start the event 30 minutes early because of all the people there who were ready to go. We ended up hosting this event for somewhere between 500-700 people. It was really hard to tell how many people were there. We also had about 70 cards filled out from people who wished to know more about the church. Who knows what God is going to do through these contacts. Please pray that some families come to Christ through this event and through contact with the church. Please pray that some of the future leadership of Whispering Pines Community Church will be brought out from these contacts.

Praise two-
Monday morning Ellie called me (I was in Jacksonville) and told me that our refrigerator had stopped working and she didn’t know what to do. Being 3 1/2 hours away in Jacksonville, it was a little difficult for me to help her with this. She called some repair men and they came and looked at the fridge and told her it would cost about $900 to fix it. This is a lot considering we received the fridge for free from some friends and it is probably worth less than half of that.

I returned home Monday night and didn’t really have a plan for replacing the fridge. The only thing I could think of was after a morning meeting with some local pastors, I was going to begin calling some Christian men in the area and see if anyone had an old fridge in their garages they could spare or maybe they knew someone who did. During the local pastors meeting on Tuesday, they asked for prayer requests. I guess I was trying to think of a great spiritual way of expressing this problem, but I finally just blurted out “We need a refrigerator.” That kind of got everyone’s attention. I told them the situation and they prayed for it right then.

About an hour later I received a phone call from one of these pastors and he told me that the pastors had pooled some money together and were at a local appliance store and would like to know what kind of refrigerator we wanted. The only thing I could think of was “something that works.” At 3:30PM Tuesday, an applicance truck pulled up to our house and delivered the most beautiful refrigerator I’ve ever seen! I thank God for giving this to us, but I also thank these men for their willingness to be obedient to do what God told them to do.

Dad always comes through, but most often its through my brothers and sisters.

Life is so good,
Billy