Report from Lovington

Hey everybody, I was at Sunset last Thursday to visit one of the AIMer's that was in my Youth group.  Man it was a great encouragement.  I left home early, about 5:30 am so that I could go to chapel.  I find it very ironic that I used to gripe about having to go to chapel every morning when I was a student, but now it is one of the things that I miss the most.  Well, I got to sit down and talk with Charles Speer.  We had a great conversation.  We talked about my ministry here in Lovington, the school and our good friends in New Zealand.  I need to give a shout out to my buds Justin, Jen, Rylee and little Justin (any day now), Lij and Kristen and Skylar and Morgan, you guys are inspirations to us all.  Oh yea, I can"t forget Jonathan.  Hey bigguy.

As Charles and I were talking he encouraged me to write this blog about our ministry here.

Linda and I have been here since we graduated in May of 2005.  When we arrived we inherited a group of about twelve kids. God has blessed us with a good group of evangelistic kids and God has definitely provided an increase.  In our Wednesday evening Bible class we have an attendance of 25-35 kids.  That is awesome, but the really amazing thing is that about 75% of those are "unchurched" kids.  We have 3 evening Bible studies a week with the teens, we feed the High school students lunch every Monday and I take Pizza to the Jr. High students once a month and I am always meeting new kids because our "churched" kids are eager to bring their friends to our youth functions.  I am not some extremely creative Youth Minister so I know it can't be me.  Linda and I give all the glory to God for what He is able to do through us.  We serve an awesome God.  Amen?

All of this certainly has not come easily.  We have had our struggles over the last three and a half years.  You know in Luke 4:24 where Jesus says that "no prophet is accepted in his hometown".  Well I never had given that a second thought until we came here.  You see, my wife grew up here in Lovington and was a bus kid when the bus ministries were big.  As for me, this is where I became a Christian about a year and a half prior to attending SIBI.  So when we came back Linda was still the little girl that would come on the bus and I was still "just a babe in Christ."  So it was very hard to gain respect from the people here.  As far as the ministry was concerned we were doing great but our "supporting cast" was not "supporting" very well.  As a matter of fact we had debated leaving.  But then, things started turning around and the chips started falling into place and now we have great relationships with the members, teens parents, the elders and people in the community.  God has really blest Linda and I.  We are doing well and the kids Calista and Christian are growing like weeds.  I pray that all of you are doing well also.  God bless you all.

Serving HIM

Troy