Recently in this new season of my life I have become more burdened than ever before for the souls of men and women.  I realize that there are many who are praying for my healing and daily sustenance and for that I am humbled beyond words.  My heart though, aches deeply for those who do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Recently, while reading Romans I came across Romans 1:21 “for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.”  It is clear the wisdom of this world would declare that we are more educated, enlightened and enjoying the best time in history, but the word is clear that if we do not honor, praise and prize God as Preeminent Lord of our lives, that we are truly living as lost men and women, with a knowledge of God but not a relationship with Him as Sovereign Lord.  So much of Europe with all their castles speak to the age of kings and castles.  There is no question that in those days the king’s word was law and his seal was the authority of his word.  There can be no in between or half in and half out, either Jesus is King and Lord or He is not.  As I was praying for a dear friend the other day the Lord put a man on my heart who is at our gym, who knows God but has not honored Him as Lord.  He is not his Savior and Lord.  The Spirit of God led me to pray these words, “Lord, before my healing please save this man at the gym.”  Immediately, it became clear that we needed to invite him to lunch to share God’s goodness and grace with him.  He has accepted our invitation and we are looking forward to the opportunity of sharing the gospel with him.  We are each surrounded daily by people who are lost and will one day be separated from God forever.  My prayer is that everyone who reads this blog and prays for me will put as their first priority, to be used by God to pray for and share the good news with those who do not know Jesus as Lord.  What the enemy intended for evil, God can use for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.  Please send me messages of witnessing opportunities the Lord is giving you because of your asking Him to put in your path those who need Him as Lord.  In addition I would be honored to pray for people on your heart who need Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.  If you will send me their names, our BridgeBuilders prayer ministry will join me in praying for their salvation.  It is my joy to know that this cancer can be used to advance the gospel and the gift of eternal life. 

Medically, we went to Dr. Konduri today to get the results of our latest C.T. scan.  Our last scan was done in October.  The scan shows that the bottom tumor in my right lung is basically nondescript or no longer a tumor.  The upper tumor has reduced in size another 20%.  This means that from the beginning of our treatment this tumor has shrunk 90%.  We give God all the praise for this recent report.  The Tarceva will typically work like this for 12-16 months and then the cancer comes back stronger.  We praise God for our treatment in Germany that is boosting my immune system through my own blood and additives that we will be taking for the next 6 months.  It is our prayer that God will use the blood to bring complete healing.  We believe God is able and we commit more than ever to share His good news of His love and healing to anyone who will listen.  We are humbled by the gift of your love and prayers.  Remember – Salvation first.  When you are led to pray for me, ask the Holy Spirit to put someone on your heart who needs the Lord and let us, together, see a harvest of souls that will join us in the work of God and experience the gift of eternal life.  You are a blessing.

We are on our journey back home that has taken us from Germany to Romania then London and Atlanta. The Lord has opened a wide door of opportunity for us. There are few words to express my overwhelming joy at having the chance to return to Romania and the ministry the Lord has prepared for us here.

The people are treasures with a great faith and so few things of the world. We have worked with Pastor Peter from our first trip over 3 years ago where our ministry, H.I.S. BridgeBuilders, was able to give a gift to help construct several small classrooms for the children’s Bible studies. The rooms have been in process for 3 years. Their own men come on the weekend to work on the construction when there is money for supplies. This small, vibrant church voted  not to have air condition or heating so they could invest in their children the Word of God. Their sacrificial, servant hearts humble me every time I am with them.

We were blessed to be able to walk among the people in the Valley of Galati with Bogdon, our city pastor. In the snow and freezing temperatures we were hosted graciously in every house and able to pray with the new believers. As we went in their homes there was no heating and maybe 12 people living in a 2 room home. They opened their doors with no shoes and no socks, but with graciousness and love that only comes from Christ.

By God’s grace we were given funds from several families in Dallas to buy clothing for the children and fire wood for the homes. According to Bogdon, who was once sold drugs and ran a prostitution ring, most of the women in the Valley have been involved in prostitution and the men have stolen and/or dealt drugs. It was amazing though to see how the power of God has changed so many hearts already in the Valley! Now these believers are bringing others to Christ and living a life led by Christ in a sin saturated culture.

Several homes we visited had some very ill people that cannot even see doctors because they do not have papers. A common cold can be their death sentence. I was humbled by God’s undeserved grace of the medical care I have received. I was so moved and we must continue to pray for their healing and restoration. Not only are we going to pray for that, but we are working on enabling these people to receive the testing and care they need. I am grateful for Chris Anderson, our Director of International Missions, and the amazing work that he is doing in Romania as he works with local pastors, businessman, and Serving Him Ministries.

It was a joy to meet up with Allen Hobbs and BJ Woods, who are on the international board, in Bucharest and spend several days with them in the Valley. What a great God we have to allow us the opportunity to go to Romania six months after I was supposed to go, but couldn’t because of the cancer diagnosis! It is evident that God’s timing is perfect as we were able to establish our international foundation, meet the needs of the people in the bitter cold, pray for healing and medical help, and had the opportunity to preach the gospel.

The climax of any day is the opportunity to preach the gospel. Sunday we had the joy of preaching at the Holy Trinity Church in Galati with Pastor Ovi. This is the largest Baptist church in the city and is partnering with us and continues to pray each week for our ministry in the Valley. This is an incredible gift for us to work with this humble pastor and people. When the invitation was given to know Christ there were two older men that came forward to surrender their lives to Christ. A missionary in the worship service said that typically in Romania you will not have older men come forward. So we praise God for He is mighty to save.

Later that day, we went to our house church in the Valley that is hosted by Gina, the wife of the “King of Thieves”. Gina’s husband, one of Bogdon’s friends, is now in prison. This beautiful, heated home that was once the epicenter of drugs in the Valley is now a lighthouse of hope where there Gospel is preached and lives are transformed daily. Truly, by God’s grace we are taking back the Valley one life, family, and house at a time. In every way it is just like the early church in the Book of Acts. When we shared the Gospel at the house church, a lady named Roxanna gave her life to Christ. We challenged the house church to be strong and courageous and believe God for miracles for themselves and their community.

God has clearly opened this door as I was able to go with my sons and this incredible team and once again be used by God. I was humbled and blessed to watch my sons be such a great encouragement to me, the team, and the people of Romania. Thankfully, the ministry in which we serve is not just a city transforming mission, but a generational ministry in which young and old are called together for His glory.  Thank you for all your prayers and love in this season of God’s blessing!

We have been blessed beyond words by your prayers and provision for our medical and ministry needs. There is no way to adequately express our gratitude other than continue to be faithful to the mission God has given us to do. We have been blessed to see this beautiful country of Germany, but there is a great spiritual void among the people. There is an understanding of religion, but not a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and therefore you do not see the joy of knowing Jesus in many of the people.

It was our joy on our first day in Frankfurt to get to witness to Wolde. He is well educated, originally from Ethiopia, and has several children. He shared that he brought his family to Germany so that they could get a good education while he continues to work at the hotel where he is extremely overqualified for the work he does. I loved his servant heart and when he said he was from Ethiopia the Lord kept reminding me of the Ethiopian in the Bible that was traveling and needed the Word of God. We began to talk at length regarding Jesus Christ and the Gospel. When I asked him about why God should let him into heaven, he said, because he has trusted Christ personally as his Lord and Savior.  We rejoiced together that we are brothers in Christ.

The next evening we had dinner at the hotel and our waiter’s name was Mathias. He was recently married and is a young dad with a two year old son. I thanked God for my sons and daughter who know Christ and had a deep burden to share the gospel with Mathias so that he could train his own son up in the ways of the Lord. The next day I returned to the restraunt to see if Mathias was there, but they said he would not be back until Monday. We were leaving Sunday for Heidelberg, so I began to ask God how we could share the gospel with Mathias. The answer to my prayer came quickly. I wrote a note to Mathias with a gospel tract and a small gift for his son and placed it in an envelope. Then I gave it to Wolde to give to Mathias so that he could have the oppurtunity to share the gospel with Mathias. Please pray for Wolde, this amazing Christian servant leader, and for Mathias and his family to come to Christ.

We arrived in Heidelberg on Sunday afternoon and had a wonderful family devotional out of "Streams in the Desert”. It was unbelievable how the Lord was confirming, through our devotional time, every step we have taken to be here in Germany. The clinic and Dr. Kief are wonderful. Monday I went through my first treatment of oxygen/ozone/vitamin C and took my first shots of the vaccine prepared for me using my own blood that I will be taking over the next six months. The shots are filled with antigens and killer cells to work with the Tarceva to help my body naturally kill the cancer. The doctor is very hopeful about our case and shared with us several other cancer patients who are now, by God’s grace, completely cancer free.

While there the first day, I was preoccupied with giving myself the first shot and the treatments and did not pray with the staff. I was very burdened for them and Monday night I asked God to open the door for me to talk with them about the Lord.

This Tuesday morning while receiving my treatments Maya, Dr. Kief’s daughter who manages the clinic, walked into the room and said, “I am very encouraged by you”. I didn’t quite know what she was talking about. She said that she had looked up our website (hisbridgebuilders.com) from a business card that I had dropped when leaving the clinic the day before. She said in Germany we are all either Protestant or Catholic, but that is only on Sunday and other than that there is no Spirit led living through the week. She said that she felt as though she and others were trapped in a Golden Cage in the churches. This struck me as I go to magnificent churches in every town, but there is so little effect on the surrounding community. This is the country of the great reformer, Martin Luther, and now the churches are “golden cages” that have a form of religion inside their walls, but no demonstration of God’s power and grace in the culture. We must all be on guard or during the next generation our own churches may become golden cages unless we break out of our comfort zones and share the hope of Christ with the least and the lost around us. Comfort is a deadly enemy of the Christian, and the prettier and more magnificent the cage the happier we are to stay in it and watch the world around us decay. I am encouraged to pray more now than ever for my own faith to be God’s light and salt to the culture in which I live. Gratefully we had the opportunity to share the gospel with my nurse Christa and Maya and they both shared that they are already Christians. I asked them to prayerfully consider ways that they could use their clinic to help serve the least. Maya told me the next time we meet would be to visit, as she believes the treatments will be used by God in a positive way, and to discuss ways that she could serve in ministry. We thank God for the opportunity to spur one another on in good works.

I feel great and thank God for your prayers. Pray for us as we go back to witness to several shop owners in Heidelberg that we have met over the last couple of days. Pray that we will never be content to just live in our golden cages, but to live by the golden rule to love others more than ourselves. You are in our prayers of thanksgiving.

This year, I am confident, more now than ever, that our circumstances should not dictate our outlook on life.  I am prayerful that we will not look ou,t but up to a loving Creator and Sustainer, who is faithful to meet us at our every point of need.  Interestingly, in our culture of worldliness within the Christian life, we gauge our lives by worldly measures: i.e. money, success, academics, health, relationships and popularity.  These artificial indicators are just like the many tests I went through that said I was healthy, just months before a C.T. scan found the cancer.  The cancer had been there for months and there were still no noticeable signs.  Prayerfully, we will all abandon the artificial diagnosis of spiritual health and ask God to search, try, and show us the true condition of our hearts.  The Apostle Paul amazes me because he continues to go from city to city to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the full knowledge that he would probably be beaten, stoned, thrown in jail, or killed.  Yet, in all these circumstances he counted it all joy that he could serve God and then stay up all night making tents to provide for his physical needs.  Paul was an ordinary man who lived an expectant and exciting life.  This can be ours as we train our minds and hearts, as Paul did, to love God and others more than ourselves.  Even at the height of his ministry, his goal was that he might know God and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering and dying to self.  There are those that would preach simply to know God and His power.  Let me speak from my heart; there can be no resurrection power until we die to self and surrender completely to the Lordship of Christ.  The battle rages daily and can be measured by our responses to difficult circumstances.  When the Lord is leading and I am following,  I am grateful that I only have digestive issues and not a feeding tube, that my hair is thinning and not completely gone, that my skin is dry and burning and not covered in sores, that my cancer is being used by God to advance His kingdom and not my own.  How great is our God!  Let us not waste the difficult circumstance of our life. Let us rejoice like Paul who when he was imprisoned, saw the Lord use that to bring the Imperial Guard to Christ and ultimately those in the house of Caesar.  He is working for our good and the advancement of the Gospel. God’s character never changes!  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 

As we depart for Germany, I am expectant and excited about every door the Lord will open for us to be a witness for Him, whether in the airport, on the planes, in the hotels, or in the clinics.  Thank You God for allowing me to be sent out with two of my sons as Your ambassadors.  We rejoice that we will be able to join Bogdan in the streets of Galati, Romania and minister to some of the poorest people in Europe.  We thank God that we will be able to preach in Pastor Ovi’s church about our God who is able to save you, heal you, and help you.  What a great privilege it is to be used by God.  We are expectant and excited about all that God has planned for us as we keep our eyes, our hearts, our minds, and our very lives focused , captivated and surrendered to Jesus Christ.  We love each of you and thank you for your prayers and partnering with us in our ministry.  We thank God for every remembrance of you.