Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Prayer Letter - August 2017

If I could sum up my life in just 4 words, they would be, “I have been blessed.” And I’m sure you could say the same about yours. The past two months have been busy, challenging, and rewarding. Since I can’t decide which of my blessings has been the most rewarding, I’ll just tell you about them in the order in which they occurred.

On June 8, I returned from Israel with my daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Ulises and their three children. They continued their deputation, raising support to return to that little country to serve the Lord there.

The next day, I flew to Jackson, Mississippi, where my daughter, Sarah, her husband, Jason Knabb, and my 6 precious grandchildren met me at the airport. My 10-day visit there was filled with their new ministry activities. I was over-joyed to see how God is opening up very unique doors of ministry to the hundreds of Hispanics in that area. We drove through an entire neighborhood occupied by Hispanic families who are in need of the Gospel. Sarah had her first ladies’ meeting while I was there, and invited me to be the speaker.  Please pray for the Knabb’s and this exciting new ministry.

From there, I flew to Chicago, and once again, as I have for the past ten years, was honored to speak to 9 different ladies’ sessions in the annual Fires of Evangelism Family Conference hosted in the Bethel Baptist Church, Pastor Elmer Fernandez. I do not take this, or any of my invitations for granted. I go to be a blessing, but always leave having been the one blessed.

I returned home on June 23, and began a series of lessons on Israel to the ladies here, from the countless things I learned during my three-week visit there. At our Ladies’ Prayer Breakfast on the 28th of June, we had eleven ladies from the police force present, and one of those ladies was saved. Two more ladies were saved the following Sunday.

One of the highlights of my year is getting to be in charge of Vacation Bible School. However, I have very little to do with it. My part is organizing, preparing my lesson to teach every morning in the general assembly, leading the songs while playing my accordion, and supervising. The people here do the hard work…they prepare the promotional material, the material for the crafts, and deal one on one with the children. This year we had a record attendance of 219, and there were 23 children saved, and 2 mothers. One little boy who was saved, was getting ready for Bible School one morning when he said to his mother, “Mom, I’m saved and you need to do the same.” To which she responded, “And how do you do that?” “Well, you bow your head and ask the Lord to forgive you and save you.” She answered, “Can you help me?” So he prayed simply, “Now Lord, here’s this lady that knows she’s a sinner and wants to get saved.” He led her through the prayer and the following Sunday morning she was present for the graduation exercise.  One of the teachers asked her if she got saved. “Yes,” she said, wiping the tears. Please pray that God would use Dario’s life in a very unique way to lead many others to Him.

See what I mean by being blessed?

Your friend,
Billie Sloan
Nahum 1:7

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