In just a few hours David Lundy, Scott Lance, and I will get on a plane headed for Burkina Faso. We will be there to work with Missionary Keith Shumaker. I will be keeping you up to date on what is happening on my personal blog. I would like to invite you to follow along and see what God has in store for us.
We will fly from Atlanta to Paris, France, then on to Tripoli, Libya, and finally to Ougadougou, Burkina Faso. We should arrive on Tuesday evening late.
Here is some what of the plan for our work there. This is from an email that Keith sent me:
Wed — Morning at church with the leaders Night service – Bro. Gardner preaching
Thurs – Morning with the leaders
Leave for Game Park at 11:30
Friday – Return from Game Park
Go to Roungou (village)
Scott Lance or David Lundy do a service with the kids. Bro. Gardner Preach
Saturday – Return from Roungou
Sat. night starts Family conference with Bro. Gardner – two messages on the family
Bro. Lundy testimony.
Sunday – Saonré – New work –
Living Water Baptist Church – Bro. Gardner preaching
Scott Lance or David Lundy children’s church
Night service – family conference cont.
Bro. Scott lance — testimony
Monday – Crocodiles if we want to
Buy souvenirs
Night service – Family conference cont.
Leave Burkina
I think you can see that it will be a busy time. I would ask you to pray for me.
I am very excited that we are a Bible church. We go from verse to verse. Today we will see the need to be always praying. Prayer is a great spiritual weapon. We desperately need the power of God and His working in all of our lives. I hope you will search your heart today and grow in your prayer life. Consider the following points with me today in the message:
Prayer causes Satan to fear
Satan does not fear our eloquence or perseverance
Satan does not fear our understanding of prayer
He fears the fact that a needy child of God comes to the mighty throne of God
Notice the use of the three words all, all prayer, all perseverance, all saints
Notice that we are to be praying always
This letter is being written from prison but notice that Paul does not ask that they pray that God get him out of prison
Notice that he does not ask for more comfortable circumstances
His instruction is that they pray for all saints not just him
Their prayer for him is to be that he will have boldness and know what to pray
Could it be that our prayers are too selfish?
How much do we pray for all saints more than for ourselves?
How many of our prayers are for our comfort and physical needs more than spiritual needs?
Notice that in the model prayer there is only one line of the entire prayer that had to do with this physical world Matthew 6:11
Notice how closely these instructions to prayer are related to spiritual warfare
Notice that getting the gospel out correctly and with boldness was the main emphasis of this instruction
Prayer is getting alone with God no matter where you are Matthew 6:6
Prayer is spiritual warfare and Satan will hinder your prayers every way that he can
Causing your mind to wander
Causing you to doubt that prayer works
Causing you to be discouraged
Causing you to focus on yourself
Causing you to focus on physical rather than spiritual causes
Don’t miss tonight’s service as we have our Quarterly Youth Led service.
Betty and I will still be in Tennessee tomorrow. We are at the hospital with my dad, Charles Gardner.
I will not be able to be at church on Thursday evening nor in my class on Friday morning. I appreciate your understanding that I need to be with my family at this moment.
Lord willing, we will take Dad home to hospice care. We will try to make him comfortable until the Lord takes him home. Thank you for your prayers.
Betty and I have had a wonderful time in Arequipa, Peru with the family and being part of the Pastor’s School.
We leave later this afternoon to return home. We will be excited to be back where we belong. I love Peru and miss it but I know that God has me a place at Vision.
I can’t wait to be back in the Vision Pulpit this Sunday. Pray that God will use me.
If you would like to know more about our trip or personal things going on in our lives check out the new blog, www.austingardner.net.
We are seated in the waiting area in Beijing, China ready to board a plane that will take us back to Newark, New Jersey and then on to Atlanta. It will take about 24 hours to get home. That counts the time since we left the hotel, spend 13 hours and 45 minutes on the Beijing to Newark flight, lay overs, flight to Atlanta and then ride to the house.
The body gets a real work out because it was noon when we left the hotel to come to the airport and will be midnight when we get home but then you add in the 12 hour time change going back and you get a 24 hour day from leaving to arriving. I hope that several of you will make the trip over the next few years. If members of our church are serving here I hope that many of you will make the trip to see them, love them, and bless them.
God is doing great things here. Jake and Steph are being greatly used as you have seen from following me on twitter or facebook and this blog. God has blessed and souls are getting saved. Two churches are started and each have 2 week end services.
Mark and Natasha are working very hard on deputation. God is greatly using them too. They will be here Lord willing within a year. They need our prayers. They need our help financially. I want to get them to $500 a month from our church before they leave. I want to get money together to help them greatly with their set up fund. I want to be a real blessing to them.
They will have great hurdles to cross. They must learn the language and the culture. They must learn to adapt to a foreign country. I know that they can and will. I ask you to really love them and pray for them.
Spend time with them now before they leave. Take them out to eat. Have them over to your house. Get close to them so that you will have a major investment in them when they are gone. God will use you in their lives.
They take off their shoes as they enter the church building and put on slippers. If you want to know how many are there count the shoes and divide by 2. They ran out of slippers and had to use plastic slip ons for the extras. That is after they bought 30 new slippers yesterday.
There were over 130 in attendance all under the age of 30 except me! God is doing a work here.
God bless each one of you very much today. I am here in China with Mark and Natasha Tolson. God is doing wonderful things here through Jake and Stephanie. It is so exciting to see Chinese people being saved and discipled. Those of you that give to missions through our Faith Promise program are making a major difference in the lives of literally hundreds. If you do not know about Faith Promise you can talk to someone in your Sunday School Class and get involved today.
Today is Mother’s Day. I thank God for my mother, my mother in law, my daughters and daughter in laws that are mothers, and especially for Betty. She has been the most precious mom in the world. So from Harbin, China I wish all of you a very Happy Mother’s day.
I am on the largest mission field in the world today and my heart hurts for all those around the world that do not have a gospel preacher. I hope that you will begin praying for the Lord to send forth laborers to His harvest. I hope you will consider how God might want to use you to spread His name and glory around the world.
Here is Mark T preaching in the English service. Not the best picture in the world because I took the picture with my Black Berry camera. The lighting was terrible. Mark did a great job. He and Natasha will do a great job as missionaries and I am very proud of them.
It will be a tough job learning the language and adapting the culture but they were born for it and will do great.
Jake is doing a great job. He speaks the language well. He deals well with the people and the culture and he has not allowed fear to keep him from reaching out to many people. I am excited about what I am seeing here.
I have been blessed to work with some of the greatest young people in the world. I thank God for them and I am asking God for more young men to teach and train to get to the field. All over the world there are countries and millions of people that need the gospel. You could be the next one. Come get some training at the Our Generation Training Center.
I want to wish a very special Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers who read this blog and especially to the moms at Vision. I am in China right now. That is a long ways from all of you and it is already Sunday morning while it is Saturday night there.
Please know that I love all of you and I have left you in very capable hands with our church staff and Tony Howeth preaching today.
I have to express my love to the most important woman in the world to me and that is my wife and the mother of our children Betty. This picture was taken nearly 36 years ago on August 18, 1973.
This next picture is from way back when we were just getting started and had just taken our first baby, Chris, home from the hospital.
First there was one then there were two.
Then we jump straight to four
Then came the grandkids. The mother to a bunch of little mothers that have done a great job with their kids.
Here is the whole gang
Betty I just want to say that I love you and thank God for you. You are the greatest woman in the world and without you I have no idea what life could be like. I miss you and wish that I could be there with you for this day but can’t. Just know that no one loves and respects you more than I do.
Betty has been a mother and grandmother to all of our family plus she has sons and daughters in the ministry all around the globe serving as missionaries. The young guys sometimes just put up with me but they love Betty because who can’t love such a sweet lady and substitute mom.
I also want to thank God for my mom and the way God used her in my life. I thank her for teaching me to study the Bible. I thank God for the discipline she instilled in my life to dig deep into God’s Word.
I thank God for my mother in law who raised the greatest lady in the world. Today I have lots of moms to be thankful for.
