I want to share a little story with you that I find interesting. It has to do with the way God has worked in some coincidental ways in my life. I have to take you back to the time right after I became a Christian in1976. I had just moved to a new apartment building in Birmingham, Alabama. It was an old brick building but I enjoyed living there. My apartment was located on the second floor just over the landlady's. I came home from work one day and she was talking to the owner of the building. I met the gentleman. He seemed like a nice fellow, kinda soft-spoken but dignified looking. I ran into him on a later occasion when I attended a gospel meeting at a sister congregation in Birmingham. Brother B was an elder at that congregation. Ironic that I would be living in this man's apartment building just after I became a Christian. It would take on greater significance later in my life.
Fast forward to 1989 – 13 years later. I was now married to Robin. We had three children and I had finally graduated from Freed-Hardeman College and was searching for support to move to Argentina to work with a missions team there. It took about eight months for us to find a supporting church and get our total support. Can you guess where we got it? The brother mentioned above was key for his congregation becoming our sponsoring church and supplying almost all our support. Interesting how God worked that out isn't it?
We had a good two years in Argentina but God decided we were not to return. We spent a year in Wilkesboro, North Carolina working with a very mission-minded congregation while we wondered where God would take us next. The preacher there was Ernest Stewart, who lived and worked several years in Israel. One of the other people at that congregation was C* (name protected for security reasons), who is now a long term missionary in India. Our paths have crossed on several occasions.
Toward the end of our year at Wilkesboro, I went to the Freed-Hardeman lectureship. The Elvis Huffard family invited me over one evening. I knew the Huffards because their son, Henry, had been the song leader when I attended the Woodlawn congregation where I was baptized back in 1976. I can still remember the day he announced he was taking his family to Nigeria to do mission work. I was amazed that someone would do such a thing. Henry's sister, Kathy, was a student at FHC when I was there eleven years earlier and was in fact the first person I met on campus when I arrived. Henry had given her a heads-up to look for me and she did. I remember her taking me to a friend's apartment and introducing me to several girls, one of whom was Lisa Lipford. I would cross paths with both these young ladies very soon.
During that evening at the Huffards, I was talking to Emily Huffard about Robin's and my dilemma as to where to go next. She invited me to go with her husband to Nigeria. Elvis was taking his annual trip there and said I could accompany him if I would teach a week-long class to the preachers who would be attending the annual Huffard Seminar. I went and fell in love with the place. Fortunately, someone had let me borrow a movie camera and I was able to record several things including a tour through Kathy Huffard's home. Of course, her name was now Kathy Cox and she and Jerry had three children about the same age as ours. Lisa Lipford also was living there. She and her husband, David Carter, had two boys a little younger than our three children. When I returned to the states and showed the movie to Robin and the children, they were ready to go. But where would we get the support?
Henry invited us over to Nashville to talk with the folks at African Christian Schools who oversaw the work at Nigerian Christian Bible College. We took our camping equipment and spent the night at a state park in North Carolina. That's where I came face-to-face with a black bear but that's another story for another time. We had a good meeting with the ACS people and brainstormed as to how to raise the support. On the way back to North Carolina we planned to camp out again but when we stopped at a rest area close to Knoxville, I noticed a serious-looking bunch of clouds forming. I remembered that a couple from our FHC days that we knew lived close to Knoxville, so I called information and somehow got their number even though they lived in Maryville not Knoxville. Pete and Tammy invited us to stay with them so we wouldn't get soaked out in the rain. They had just moved there themselves and they had the cutest twins – a boy and girl. The next day Pete invited me to go down to the church building with him. They were holding a VBS and he wanted to introduce me to one of the elders, Joe D. Well, within a couple of months this congregation would be our sponsoring church and our sole supporter as we went to Nigeria for two years. All because of a thunderstorm and a couple of Freedies (Freed-Hardeman College alumni).
Five years later Henry would help us get support from Brentwood Hills in Nashville to do another three-year stint in Nigeria. I won't share any unusual “coincidences” in that situation but the brothers and sisters at BHCC were absolutely wonderful to us just as the brethren at Maryville had been years before.
Now we are getting ready for our next adventure in missions. I was talking to Robin on Tuesday a short time back about how frustrated I was staying off the mission field for so long (its been since May 2000). She received a message via Facebook the next day that Marc Tindall was trying to get in touch with us. On Thursday Marc invited us to “come over to Honduras and help us.” Robin and I and our children have been on several two-week campaigns there over the last seven years. He knows us. Robin and Marc's wife, Terri, are “bestest” friends. They even have grandchildren due almost the same day in July. Well Marc and I do, too but you know how it is with grandmothers. So, we want to return to the mission field ASAP and it seems God's choice is Honduras. Three of our children are grown and away from home (one is in Ukraine). Jacob, our fifteen year old, will be going with us. Robin will not go before that granddaughter is born, of course.
I mentioned this early the following week to a few of my Facebook friends and one sent me a nice message saying that he and his wife had just received an unexpected amount of money and they were pondering what to do with it. So they decided to pay our rent in Honduras for a year. - three thousand dollars. Imagine the “coincidence” of my message arriving just when they were pondering. God is already working this out for us. Someone else replied to my message and reminded me that the economy is not so good right now. I replied to him that I believe I read somewhere that my Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If He wants us to go to Honduras, He will have a cattle auction. All we need are a few more of God's “coincidences.” Lord willing, this rejoicing redeemed one is going to Honduras.
