Greetings from the road from the Robelen family! As I write this, we are at a missions conference at First Baptist Church in Webster, Massachusetts.
Last week, we were at three churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and next week, we will be at another missions conference in West Haven, Connecticut. We have been on the road non-stop since the middle of July and are having a blessed time. We have put 19,000 miles on the car since God put Providence on our hearts in March, and we are not slowing down.
At this point, we have presented the ministry in 18 churches. Seven of these churches have already committed to support, and six more have indicated that they will probably be taking us on but have not yet voted to do so. It has been a joyful experience to be part of their ministries as we pass through. Two people have been saved in the services I preached in the last couple of months. When we paused to spend a week helping our sending church with their fair outreach, we were able to lead 29 people to professing faith in Christ!
It has also been a joy to meet so many likeminded pastors and wonderful Christians as we visit so many churches. Repeatedly, people we barely know or haven’t even met before opened up their prophet’s chambers and their wallets to us because of their enthusiasm to see the Gospel reach into Providence and their desire to be a blessing to God’s servants. One pastor, who we hadn’t even met, when he heard that we needed a place to stay, called another church where we had never been and arranged for us to use their prophet’s chamber!
We are heading into the busiest time in our schedule, with 14 meetings
in the next two months. The great majority of these are in New England, where we have found tremendous enthusiasm for supporting a church plant in Providence. We will also be driving out to Missouri for a Church Planting Conference in October. Please pray for our safety as we travel so much, and please pray that God will use us to be a help and a blessing at all the churches where we stop. Please also pray that through these travels, God will provide for us to reach our destination of Providence soon and start bearing much fruit for Him there!
Betsy also needs your prayers. Traveling while pregnant is never easy, and a few months ago, a large dog pounced on her while she was sleeping and tore a muscle in her abdomen. That tear keeps growing as her belly is stretched by the pregnancy, and it is causing her severe pain at times. To make matters worse, Betsy’s foot was injured when a can of coffee jumped off a bureau and landed on it just wrong. All this is in addition to just getting over kidney stones and dealing with a previous back injury. None of these things are ever pleasant but being pregnant means that most of the things that doctors might be able to do to help are restricted because they would risk harm to the baby. Betsy is brave and tough about all this, but she needs prayers for grace to get through. Pray for health for the baby, for healing that doctors can’t accomplish while she’s pregnant, and for protection that nothing else will happen to add to her difficulty.
We appreciate all your prayers and eagerly look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the Fall Save New England Conference on October 21-22.