Dear Church,

Greetings once again from the land as far north and west as one can travel in Oregon. We appreciate those who sent cards, e-mails, and texts reminding us of your prayers for us and for the Lord’s work to be done here in Astoria.

Many have inquired about Anchor Baptist Church and our progress toward finding a building so let me begin there. As we applied to rent the store-front location we needed to provide references. I notified the church we were renting from that I listed them as a reference which naturally informed them of our intentions to leave. In response, the church we rent from quickly put their building on the market for 1.5 million dollars. Our lease fell through, and I have several reasons to suspect the property manager went out of her way to stall our application and get someone else in before we could be approved. In a word, the building we are currently renting is up for sale and we have no place to go once the building sells. At this time, we may still rent the building while it is being shown but the Christian Church we rent from has disbanded and they wish to sell the building using the funds to support their Christian Church denomination.

I am completely confident that God has all of these things under control and I am not the least bit worried about it. I know there is a purpose for the struggle and I am certain that God called our family to Astoria to reach people here with the Gospel. Each time some trial like this has come our way, the Lord used it for his glory in ways we could not imagine. We will continue to meet in our current location until the building sells or we find something else. We will also search diligently for a house to purchase and convert to a church, another temporary meeting place, or perhaps even a property that we could put a mobile home on. We looked at a house last week with a wonderful location but there were too many problems and not enough floor space. Thank you for praying about this great need and thank you to the many who acknowledged the last letter and promised to help in some way once we find a place. We will certainly keep you informed.

I have decided we will not hold our annual Old-Fashioned Gospel Tent Meeting this year in July but we will have a revival service during the same week. At this point, we do not even have a certain place for that meeting but trust the Lord will provide. There are too many distractions at this juncture in the church plant to properly host the meeting but we hope to continue the tent outreach in the future.

The last few weeks we have seen some first-time visitors and there is sporadic interest in the church. One man shared with me his need for Christ but has not yet decided to get saved. I suspect he is struggling with the decision, and I take that as a sign of sobering honesty. I hope this is the case and ask you to continue to pray for the souls we minister to. In closing, here is some interesting news! Someone anonymously donated a boat valued at $15,000.00 to Anchor Baptist Church. Pray we can sell it quickly and use that money toward a building. God bless you for your faithfulness!