Friends,

Over the past few years God has truly done some amazing things in my life!  Before going into the ministry I had rarely traveled out of the state of Florida.  God has literally opened up the world to me a small town boy from Lake City, Florida.  Since giving my life to ministry God has sent me to Guatemala, Kenya, and Israel.  God was gracious to me last year and enabled my wife to join me in traveling to Kenya to minister to pastors in the Nakuru area.  This was truly a gift because my wife got to see why making these mission trips are so important.  She got to experience firsthand the love of the pastors and their wives they expressed to us for coming.

Over the past few years I have been praying that God would allow me to have a year in which my entire family could go both to Guatemala and Kenya with me.  I know it is hard on my two little girls to give up their daddy for two to three weeks at a time.  My prayer has been that they would get to see and meet the people I am serving and see their need first hand.  It’s hard to teach a child about the concept of hunger in America where we are surrounded by food.  I want my girls to see what real need looks like.  I want them to grow up with a gospel perspective about every aspect of life including the food they eat. 

While this has been my prayer, at times the financial reality of what this would cost has overwhelmed me to the point of not even asking people for help because the amounts seemed insurmountable.   God patiently and lovingly has grown my faith in him and what He can do on my behalf to get me to today.  Because God knew my heart, He began to work without me.  Through some very gracious people in my life, some of whom I have known a long time and others I have only recently met, he has provided enough to cover the airfare for my family to go to Guatemala this November.  This truly overwhelmed me last week and I am still in awe of how he works.  Keep in mind I had not asked directly anyone to help and yet He works it out so that $1,628 worth of plane tickets can be purchased. 

But God also knows something else about my heart.  He knows that I still wrestle with pride when it comes to asking for help for anything for me or my family. 

So why this year?  Two reasons the first is the way in which God has provided for the airfare to Guatemala.  The Second is the purpose of the Africa trip this year.  Our friends the Thomas’s are going to be moving their family to Nakuru to begin a life of missionary service.  The trip this year will include us going and helping them move in to their new home and ministry as well as allowing me to travel to Uganda to teach in the Ugandan Baptist Seminary.  Because of teaching in the seminary it is likely that I will be gone for a little over a month and would rather not be away from my family for that long.

So why I am I telling you all of this? Two reasons, first I need people that will pray for my family as we travel to these places.   It is my hope that I will get multiple opportunities to create gospel memories for my two daughters that will make a lasting impact on their lives.  The second reason is because this dream is far beyond our financial capacity.  To make this happen I will need some friends to partner with my family to make this dream a reality.

So if my family or I have been a help to you, would you consider helping my family?  If so click here to find out the details of how. 

You’re Friend,

Dale 

Well it has been a busy few months.  Much busier than usual!  God has provided us with a new home and we have been busy making the changes needed to have services on Sundays!  I apologize for the delay in communicating but working late at the building on top of my other responsibilities has left little time for sharing unfortunately.  The building is coming along quite nicely.  I have been so blessed by all the people that have given of their time to come and serve and help us make this building a home.  We have also been blessed by the people that have without asking or prompting donated materials and supplies to help get this project going.  God has truly been going before us on so many occasions to make this building happen.

It started with the building itself.  First we pick up the property and house behind the building for only $7k at that point not realizing that we would one day by the property on the front of the block.  The owner just decided we were going to get the building and he was willing to wait for us to buy it.  Then he helped us out with the purchasing of the building by being as flexible as we needed him to be.  We needed to raise 25k for the down payment and in less than two months we were able to gather all the money we needed.  It was pretty clear this is where God wanted us to be.

From there we have been working trying to get the building to the point of having services.  Again so many guys from the church have stepped up in such big ways to give up their afternoons and their Saturdays for the past several weeks to get the job done.  I have been humbled by their service and devotion to the gospel in this way.  In a short period of time the building has transformed so much!  Each time I go in I can hardly believe all the changes I see.  Here are some pictures of the progress.

Now we are working on going from a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy to a permanent one.  We have approximately 100 days to get the changes made to the building.  This involves several more structural modifications to the building that are quite costly.  If you or your church may be interested in helping with one of these items you can see a list here of what remains(look at Item #1).  I believe even in these needs God is going before us and making a way for all of these things to get accomplished. 

Please keep praying for us as we work to be missionaries in the downtown area.  If you are interested in being a downtown missionary for events that will be happening in the downtown area please email me and I will get you an application to fill out so we can see which events you would be best suited for given your unique gifts.  This also includes volunteers at the café if you are interested in serving in that outreach to the community.

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement! 

^{Genesis 15:13}Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.

This verse has special significance to me given my experience thus far at Church on The Way.  In many ways this describes the last few years of our existence.  Many might look from the outside and think that we are not sojourners.  I have already been approached by a pastor from a downtown church looking for a job wanting me to hire him because of the wealth he perceives we have.  People see the café or our office suite and for some even our new building downtown and assume we have arrived in the promise land.  What they don’t realize is that we are really just sojourners in our city in lands that are not ours.

I have been wondering for the last few months why He has allowed us to be in this position.  Why do we have so many things for the church yet not really own any of it.  We have had to learn to take care of other people’s land as if it was our own.  In many ways we are slaves to our various masters.  While I know ultimately God owns it all and these people are simply stewards of it for God, I still feel it is our responsibility to serve them to the best of our ability so that He gets the most glory.  We are called to do things that we would normally never do if we owned these properties.  

I first thought this was to teach us to be humble and to trust daily in the Lord.  When you serve at other people’s pleasure at any moment we may no longer be in their pleasure.  Any moment I can get a phone call and one of the resources may be taken from us without any recourse on our part.  Because of this, we have to wait and trust God to provide not only our daily bread but also our daily ministries.  I have learned that this is not all God wanted to teach us.  God wanted us to have the heart of sojourners. 

Sojourners know that this world is temporary.  Sojourners do not place too much emphasis on buildings and possessions.  Sojourners can pick up and move with God without being handicapped at the thought of what is left behind.  Sojourners live their lives trusting God completely for every element of their life.  God loves the Sojourners.  His chosen people were sojourners.  He sent His son to sojourn among man.  His son was willing to give up everything this world had to offer to follow and glorify his father.  Likewise those that follow Jesus are called to be sojourners.  Christians are called aliens living in a world that is not their own.

Lord please help us to see that it is you that owns everything.  Help us to see that we are just stewards of what you have given us.  Help us to see that what you have allowed us to possess does not define us.  Help us to see that our buildings don’t define who we are.  Help us to see that our current ministries do not define who we are.   Help us to see that it is only you that defines who we are.

When God first gave me the vision to go downtown as a missionary I had no idea what to expect.  I knew what downtown represented in my mind.  Spiritually speaking downtown was a desert I might find myself wandering through for forty years like the nation of Israel.  This however has not been the case.  God has been showing me that it is more like the Promised Land.  Like the Promise land in the Bible it is occupied by giants.  These giants are economic, criminal and educational in nature.  Economically speaking the downtown area has an unemployment rate of 30% compared to the county average of 13%.  That is twice the unemployment in one neighborhood of the county.  In addition 40% of the people that live in the downtown area are below poverty.  This neighborhood represents half of all the people in Lake City that are below poverty.  Criminally speaking 22% of all the calls made to the police department come from this one neighborhood.  These rates are forecasted to keep increasing unless something changes downtown.  Educationally speaking, 10% of the people in the downtown area have less than a ninth grade education level.  These giants caused me to have unbelief just like the Israelites.  God has been growing my faith through this process and helping me overcome unbelief.

Let me share one way God has helped me in this area of unbelief.  I knew when we moved downtown we needed to avoid making one of two mistakes often made.  The first is to completely ignore the city’s agenda and simply pursue our own agenda.  The second is to try to go in a direction opposite of the city’s agenda.  Hoping to avoid both of those directions we have sought from the beginning to support the city and its agenda wherever and whenever possible.  This included in helping with all the major events that happen in the downtown area.  This has lead to an amazing opportunity.  The church has been approached by the City of Lake City and the Chamber of Commerce to partner with them on all the major events that happen downtown.  It will be our role to staff the events with the human resources to make the events a success.   This is definitely God at work!  God has allowed us to be able to serve our community in a whole new way!  We will be sending our more info on this as well as a way you can all get involved in the coming year.

Finally I would just like to praise God for allowing us to raise $23,000 dollars toward our down payment.  We need to get another $2,000 to have the money needed to close on our building downtown.  God has been amazing in his provision and I am so thankful that I get to sit in a position every week and see him work.