At the beginning of May, Reseeding America Ministries travelled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to assist the Mike Clark family in the launching of Legacy Baptist Church. The Clarks are sent out of Grace Baptist Church in South Charlotte, North Carolina (a new church plant), and are partnering with BIMI and the Reseeding America Ministry.

Moving to Pittsburgh at the end of last year, Brother Clark and his family went right to work preparing to start the new church. Printed materials were ordered, a meeting place secured, advertising was purchased, church groups were contacted and recruited to help in the distribution of door hanger packets, distribution areas were selected and maps were made of each area. In addition, this church planting family went out and together hung several thousand door hangers announcing the launch of the church. At the same time they also continued to hold deputation meetings as they prepared to start the new work.

With much of the preliminary work already taken care of, it was an enjoyable and exciting new church start. We couldn’t help but be impressed with the cooperation and assistance from many churches in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. With a group of over three hundred volunteers coming in on the weekends, over twenty-two thousand door hanger packets of Roman booklets and church information were distributed. Reseeding America Ministries spent three weeks working on distribution and assisting the Clarks as they prepared for the start of Legacy. On Grand Opening Sunday God was so gracious. Ninety-three people were present for the first Sunday! It was encouraging to meet and see forty-two people from the community who had come to learn more about the new church!

We thank the Lord for His blessings, and we would ask that you pray for the Legacy Baptist Church and the Clark family as this new church is established in Pittsburgh.

Churches from several states help with distribution work Grand Opening Sunday – Pastor Mike Clark Mike Clark Family Terri, Mike, Nick and Jenice

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Lighthouse Baptist Church, Johnson City, New York

By Pastor Don Hughes

“The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Job 1:21

The First Flood – In June of 2006, Broome County, New York, was devastated with what they were calling a hundred year flood. This was the kind of storm that only happens every 100 years. The effects it had on the Lighthouse Baptist Church was horrific. Although the water completely filled the basement, it never entered the auditorium. The force of the waters moved the church off of the front foundation and left it sitting on only two inches of the foundation blocks.

Because of the discouragement of the people and the danger of the mold in the church, many families left the church. There were only nine people in the church when they asked me to come in 2007 and help them rebuild the church. What held these people together was their love of their missionaries and the fact there were only two other fundamental churches in the area and those were miles away. When I first arrived in Johnson City, these nine people were giving $12,000 a year in faith promise to missions. I knew right away that if this church was to continue two things had to take place. The church had to be rebuilt and souls had to be won to replace those who had left.

The biggest problem I faced was a personal lack of knowledge on making these repairs. I am an expert “go-fer” and I soon found that God had already taken care of putting someone in the church who knew enough to tell me where to go and what to do. Brother Ed Button is a preacher who loves the Lord, loves his pastor, loves souls and loves his church. We immediately became a team.

The Rebuilding – We began to build and watch God perform miracle after miracle. The first thing to get done was the foundation. The bids came in at $1,300 to $4,000. Ed had a brother-in-law in North Carolina who has a brother in this area and is in the cement contracting business. He contacted his brother and he came out with his whole crew and did the whole job for just the price of the cement. The final cost was $500—what a miracle! Ed and I sprayed for the mold and had insulation blown on the basement walls. The price for this job took most of the money we had in our building fund. That building fund had already replaced the heating and hot water systems.

Our gutters were a mess and a sister church from Rochester came down in the snow to replace them and even paid for the materials. Then, it was time to start rebuilding the fellowship hall, kitchen, Sunday school rooms and rest rooms—all downstairs.

A crew from North Carolina came up and put in our drop ceilings, lights, Sunday school rooms and the downstairs restrooms. We only had the up-flush commodes to put in. We received bids upward to $9,000 to put these in. We paid for the commodes ($750 each) and had a son of one or our members come from Pennsylvania and put these in at no cost and he even paid for all the fittings.

Before we could get the flooring in we had to put in a basement drying system to take care of any water seepage. The quote we received for this job was $5,000. Then the roof began to leak. The quote for this work came to $4,500. The miracles continued! We signed both contracts with full payment due on completion of the work. We had just over $2,000 left in our general fund and found that a newly started independent Baptist church had an opportunity to buy an old church. I asked our men if we should help this church. They asked me how much I wanted to send them. I told them $100, but they said they would prefer to send them $500, which was great for me. $2,000 left and we were sending away $500. No wonder faith never makes sense to the world; but for God’s people it always works. We sent the $500 and the very next week we learned that an older lady, who was a former piano player of our church, had died and left the church $10,000. A day later we received a check for $1,000 from a former member who was living in a nursing home. We gave $500 and God gave us $11,000. Work done, contracts paid and the miracle keeps going on. I have never written all this down, so I hope you do not mind if I take a moment to wipe some tears of joy away.

While all this work was being done, we were busy doing the most important work, telling folk about the Lord and inviting them to our church. In the months that followed we saw many make professions of faith and many visitors come to our church. I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to see this church grow. Recently we began to see fruit in our visitation program. The baptistry has been in use, folks are joining the church and the spirit of the church is on a high plane.

I have learned something in over forty-four years of missions. Satan does not give up his territory easily. With every blessing and every miracle comes the attack of Satan and the test that God allows us to go through. On Monday, September 5, I was with one of our men finishing the wiring of the up-flush commodes. This would allow us to get the rest of the plumbing done so we could have an up and running kitchen. We did not foresee what would happen two days later.

The Second Flood - The following Wednesday tropical storm Lee became stuck in the Atlantic and began to pull moisture from the Great Lakes. Flash flood warnings began to be broadcast, but we still did not expect what would be happening. The rains began and in a little over an hour we had a foot of rain and it was still falling. After flood warnings were given, one of our men and I began to bring things in the basement up into the auditorium. We thought this would save these items. The ‘06 flood never made it to the auditorium, so we felt safe.

After moving many things upstairs, we were told to get out of the area our church is in and we just made it out before the roads were flooded. A few hours later there was over six feet of water in our auditorium and it would take four days before we could get back to our church.

The church is beyond repair and I am sure will be condemned. As a church we are looking at finding a piece of land in a higher location. We have met in my home and the Best Western Motel. We needed something more permanent. This coming Sunday we will sign a contract with the local Hampton Inn for two meeting rooms each Sunday. The cost of these rooms will be from $800 to $1,000 each month.

The spirit of our people is high. Their motto is “The LORD Gave, and the LORD Hath Taken Away; Blessed Be the Name of the LORD.” Are the miracles finished? We do not believe they are. We met in my home the Sunday after the flood and had 28 in a packed living room. We met in the Best Western Hotel the following Sunday and the young lady that was arranging the room for us began to talk to my wife. In a few minutes Helen took her into the back room and won her to Christ. Is that worth a wooden building? You bet your life it is—and the miracles go on.

We do not have Brother Ed Button to direct us in building our next meeting place. He was in the hospital since last May and in the last few days has gone on to Heaven. We wondered why the Lord had allowed him to stay and suffer this long, but in reading his Bible to him every day, I have had the door opened to win two people to the Lord in the CCU. The miracle goes on!

What will happen next? We are not sure but we believe that the miracles will go on. We do not have a church building, chairs, tables, Bibles, song books, key board, tracts, etc., but we have a miracle producing God—Blessed Be the Name of the LORD!

Editor’s note: Lighthouse Baptist Church needs God’s help to be able to restart their church again. You can be part of another miracle to this missionary pastor and his people. To help, call pastor Hughes at 607–222–1875 or send contributions to BIMI for NY Flood Relief Acount #91.

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By Pastor Kent McBay

Back in May, even before we made our move from Alabama, we began to see God’s blessing upon this ministry. We were able to secure a rental house within our budget in a very competitive market. After settling in our next task was to secure a suitable meeting place for the new church. After hearing horror stories about trying to locate a meeting place in a metro city, I wanted to get well ahead of the game. This proved to be a wise decision. My thoughts were that we would simply rent a space in one of the nearly thirty schools in our target area. But after we finally received the information on rental costs, it was about $3,500 a month for just three hours a week. Realizing that was more than we could pay, we continued the search. After looking at countless buildings and store fronts and driving for weeks, we finally found a place that we thought would work. We issued a request for a change of use permit from the city and it was denied for lack of parking, two spaces short. We kept searching. The following day, I was talking to a local resident about our challenge in finding a meeting place and this person told me to try the convention center downtown. The space was very nice and it had plenty of room and great parking. After praying about the space and making calls and getting counsel about the location and price, we were able to secure the location with a three month contract. With my family settled in and our meeting place secured we had three months to get our promotion material printed, advertising designed, purchase equipment for the church and rally help with distribution of door hangers from other churches. During this time we also continued traveling on deputation meetings seeking to raise the remainder of our needed support.

The last week in July we started our door to door canvassing. In August groups from churches in Arizona came and were a tremendous help as we canvassed over 14,000 homes. By the last week of September, we had placed a door hanger with information about the North Mesa Baptist Church on over 30,000 homes in the surrounding area where the church was to be planted. Then came the Grand Opening Sunday on October 3 as we anxiously greeted people coming to attend that first service. God gave us a total of forty-six in attendance with 34 of those from the local area and 2 adults were saved. We were impressed with the interest shown by all those who attended. There is a real air of excitement about what God is doing and what He will do in the future. We are so thankful for those who have partnered with us in prayer and financial support as well as those who came to assist us with this new church start. We especially want to thank our pastor and the group he brought with him from Sweet Springs Baptist to help us and be there for the opening service.

Mr. and Mrs Mike Gardner, Dr. John and Sandy Bailes and members of Sweet Springs Baptist Church, located in Ardmore, Alabama (the McBays sending church), put out literature door to door and were there to help in the the Grand Opening service.

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By Richard Hurst

In 1991 Anna and I were the first missionaries approved with Baptist International Missions Inc., to go to the country of Ecuador. After raising necessary funds we left our jobs, friends and family behind and went to Guayaquil, Ecuador, stopping in Costa Rica for a year to learn the language. In the fifteen years of ministry there, we began two churches and a Bible college. Today all three ministries are going strong and God is continuing to bless the work! God has also blessed our family with three wonderful children: Melissa, who is currently a junior in college studying pre-med, Alena, who is currently a senior in high school making plans to be a missionary’s wife and hoping to study at Pensacola Christian College next year, and David, who is a sophomore in high school and is making plans to go into the ministry, hoping to study at West Coast Baptist College in the future.

While visiting our supporting churches in 2009/2010, God impressed upon me the need here in the United States for Hispanic pastors to go into already established churches and begin Hispanic ministries. While my heart was still in Ecuador, I could not get over the burden to see the Hispanic communities here in the US reached with the Gospel. I continued to pray that God would raise up someone to fill the need and He answered that prayer by sending me. That prayer, coupled with circumstances beyond our control in the country of Ecuador, paved the way for us to come back to work with the needy Hispanic community here in the USA. That decision was confirmed when I recently spoke to a man in St. Petersburg, Florida, named Juan who was almost in tears as he told me, “In Cuba I was raised in a Baptist church but here I can’t find any that have services in Spanish so now I go to a Pentecostal church!” That same story is being repeated all over America because the adult Hispanics will never totally assimilate into the American culture! We need to reach them now before it is eternally too late!

This need, along with circumstances in Ecuador, led us to go to Florida to begin a survey of the needs there. The result of that was to start a church in St. Petersburg with the goal of training another Hispanic leader to become the pastor and then repeat this process of planting Hispanic churches along the southwest coast of Florida and reaching into the Miami area. So on July 24, 2011, the Iglesia Bautista de la Communidad was born as we held the first service using the facilities of an existing church. God blessed with 15 people in attendance in that service. Pray with us that God will continue to bless with the salvation of souls and that He would raise up leadership for this new church.

Call 571–294–2526 for a free DVD.

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Editor’s Note: Mark Sage and wife Stephanie have been serving with the BIMI Military Ministry for 12 years before returning to the USA to work with the Reseeding America Ministry and restart the Maineville Baptist Church. This article written by Pastor Sage.

In July when 8 people voted for me to be their pastor at Maineville Baptist Church in Maineville, Ohio, located just outside of Cincinnati, the church was averaging 13–15 in attendance, including the 5 in my family.

We have worked hard at making preparation for a complete restart of the church while still trying to get our family settled and our oldest daughter off to college for her freshman year. I knew that I didn’t have the time, money; or energy to give everything strictly to the ministry these last 2 months; however, we gave as much as we could and God has blessed. We were able to put out 10,000 information packets on the doors of the community the past 2 months. The week of September 4, we saw 11 people saved while we were out soul winning and 3 walked the aisle on that Sunday to receive Christ. There were 38 in the service to our amazement as well. Then on September11, our official Restart Sunday, we saw those same 3 who were saved on September 4 get baptized. The Lord also gave us 63 people in that same morning service. Oh, how God has blessed and we are trusting that many will return. Our goal is to make much of Jesus in our community and ultimately around the world. Pray for us as we move forward and start to train these newcomers and new converts for the glory of God.

Pray also for our daughter Hannah Sage in college and away from home for the first time. She is finding that after 12 years of home schooling with 2 former Marines for parents that college is a breeze.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Jennifer R Scarfi -  VANUATU
Michael & Christine Schrimshire -  ENGLAND
Andrew & Jill Schultz -  ZAMBIA