ddeford's blog

November began for us with a much anticipated service with the Yavapai/Apache Baptist Church in Camp Verde. Pastor Gary Messick has been faithfully teaching the congregation and going through their statement of faith. They organized their assembly and opened their charter membership November 2. It was a blessing to be a part of that service.

Dear Prayer Partners,                                                                                                                     November 2008 update

Last month in our update letter we asked that you be in prayer for two men, a young Navajo man and the young man saved in July waiting to be baptized. The Lord has worked in the young man’s heart that had earlier expressed his desire to be baptized. He has been faithful this past month in most all the services. Sometimes his work schedule keeps him away. We wanted to bring this to your attention to encourage your faithfulness in prayer for these folks. God wants our prayers, He delights in our prayers and He answers our prayers!

Dear Prayer Partners

We are deeply indebted to you faithful ones that pray for us regularly. We are reminded again of the necessity of those who stand with us in prayer.  September is the month we will remember as being without electricity.  Over Labor Day weekend we spent the annual church camp out at Point of Pines, between six and seven thousand feet elevation on the San Carlos Apache Reservation.  Upon our arrival we learned we had no electricity and that the water supply was limited.  Those facts did not deter a wonderful retreat time for the church folks with Evangelist Chuck Crabtree from Denver.  We had wonderful meetings and with a bit of improvising managed three meals a day, a camp fire that lasted the entire weekend amidst some pretty terrific wind and rain, and the fellowship in the Lord that only He can supply.

There is much to update you with this month. We begin first with news of IBIMI. In January 2007 we wrote of our intentions of establishing a scholarship fund of some kind to assist our missionary families’ children as well as qualified native young people in their quest of biblical Christian college studies. There have been several memorial gifts given to the Mission that we wanted to use in this way. At our annual board meeting this year we were excited to see this idea come to fruition. Three of IBIMI families have Bible college freshmen eligible for this fund. It was a blessing to be able to designate each of these young people a $500 scholarship for their second semester studies. We are trusting this can be multiplied over and over again as the Lord provides the finances. Dr. Jerry Tetreau, chancellor of International Baptist College in Tempe, did an outstanding job as our principle speaker this year at the retreat.