Less than 2 weeks away!

Hello everyone, we hope you and yours are doing well. in less than 2 weeks Melissa and I will be flying out. 

Our first stop will be Ukraine to meet up with a team from Calvary Chapel Lynchburg. We will be in Ukraine for right around two weeks. When we leave Ukraine we will be heading to Tbilisi , Georgia and will also be there for roughly 2 weeks and then after that we will be heading to Manila Philippines to meet another team from Calvary Chapel Lynchburg and we’ll be there for approximately three weeks.

As with all of our trips, there was always a period of second-guessing. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Is this where God is leading? 

But as usual, God is provided in ways that it’s undeniable that this is where he’s leading us to go. With the funding for the trip, the coverage and funding for our street ministry in Roanoke, all those things are just falling into a place in ways that can only be God. 

Speaking of the street ministry, which we call Rest For Your Soul, we are so thankful for the team that God has put together for this ministry. We are thankful for the people who are stepping in while Melissa and I are gone to make sure that the team has enough people and thankful for all of you and everybody else who has donated to both the street ministry and to our trip. 

We know that all these things come from God, but they come through people like you people who are obedient to God‘s leading in donating and praying and supporting Ministries like ours. 

We know some of you have concerns about the fact that Ukraine is still very much an active war zone and that we will be flying through the Middle East, which is also an active war zone and we appreciate those concerns, we do. But we firmly believe that there’s no safer place to be than in the will of God. 

We are so looking forward to reconnecting with friends and family in all three of these locations. Over the years Melissa and I have made connections in all three of these locations and it’ll be a blessing just to get to catch up and to minister too and help minister with these people. 

The Rest For Your Soul ministry has been going well. I have been focusing mire on praying with people and street preaching. Recently we have been able to pray with people that wouldn’t have normally asked for prayer a few months ago. We are blessed with the opportunities to speak to people who are at their worst and their lowest points, people that a lot of our society wants nothing to do with, they would rather gather them up and ship them off someplace else. But that’s not what Jesus would have us do. He would have us speak truth to them, He would have us love them.m, He would have us minister to them and not just look at them and say be warm and be filled and send them on their way without anything, but to give them a meal,  to give them hygiene items  a few other supplies. Not enough to make them comfortable in the life that they’ve chosen on the streets, but enough to show that you care, enough to show them that they are loved, enough to show them that they are seen.

But we also do not pull any punches when it comes to God‘s truth. We call sin sin, we lovingly call people to repentance. We do our best to correct the false teachings that they’ve been taught. We do our best to combat the lies that they have been told about themselves, about Christianity and about Jesus.

The next two weeks will most likely be pretty hectic for us. Getting packed up and taking care of last-minute details before we leave on April 15. I will try to get another update out before then but if not, I will most likely be posting updates either every day or every other day, as I usually do when we’re on trips like this. 

We greatly appreciate all of your support and all of your prayer and we just ask that you continue, we asked that you continue to pray for us whether it’s the international trips or the street ministry, pray for our team, pray for our family, pray for the people that we minister to, that our team ministers too. Pray for doors to be open for a building for the Rest For Your Soul ministry, if that’s God‘s will, so we can expand that ministry to make a bigger impact in the southeast community for God. But again, that’s all in His hands. That’s all his will. I don’t want my will to be done only God’s.

We still need approximately $1200 for the trip but I have no doubt what so ever that God will provide.