New Directions

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Acts 16:6-7 says, “ Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia,  After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.” 

My wife, Diane, married a U. S. Navy musician in June of 1960 and then became the wife of an A. T. and T. security/budget/cookbook engineer and then a pastor’s wife and after that a missionary in Spain.  Her first airplane ride was from Washington, D.C. to New York and then to Madrid, Spain.  We then went to a children’s home for three months, caring for ten girls who had emotional problems of one sort or another and then off to a small church in Gloucester County and then to Parkersburg, West Virginia.  After the problems of old age began to sit in, we retired to Roanoke, Virginia but I took yet another position at Our Lady of the Valley as Pastoral Counselor.  She has been faithful and by my side through many trials and certainly many different positions.  We are now in an assisted living facility and it looks like new things are about to happen as God is closing this door and opening another.

The above passage is one of my favorites as it shows how Paul and Silas wanted to go back to those churches that they had established to see how they were doing but the Holy Spirit closed the door on them twice.  We don’t always know how God is going to move us from one place to another, but He certainly has His ways and sometimes uses other people to get us going in another direction.  When we went to Spain, we were challenged by a man named Harold Stevens  who said that America spends more money on dog food than they do in reaching the lost with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Then, Carlos Gomez reminded us that the town of Mostoles, Spain, just 20 kilometers from Madrid, had 200,000 people and only one protestant church of about 150 members.  Christiansburg, in 1978 had over 40 fundamental churches preaching the gospel for only 20,000 people in Montgomery County.  He said, “Come over and help us.”  That what Paul and Silas heard when the Macedonian call was issued to Paul.  The gospel then went from Asia Minor to Europe.  I am sure glad Paul obeyed the call.  Last time I checked, I still had the freedom of free speech guaranteed by the constitution and the words that I say are the truth and for the most part from he Word of God.   So, again, new ministries are on the horizon and the means might be different but the audience is the same in that they need to hear what God says for these days and for the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  Praise God for His leading in all of our lives.