Isemingerfamily@juno.com

Phone:  814-777-4231

Dear Praying Friends,

Greetings from Florida in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Five. We trust that your year has started well and you are planning a busy year of serving the Lord God with all of your might. 

New Things

Over the last several letters we have been talking about new things and changes that were on the horizon.  As of January 2005 I am no longer the Executive Director of Shepherd’s Staff World Baptist Missions, nor are we working through that agency any longer.  We are now quite simply “Local Church Missionaries serving America's Local Churches” working through our home church, Lincoln Ave. Baptist in Ionia, MI.  We are also   transferring our car plates and drivers licenses to MI in an effort to simplify our lives and ministry for us and everyone else involved.

We have contacted all of our supporters and explained the change and all  but one of them have been supportive and many to the point of telling us what a positive move they think this is.  The move is slow in coming but necessary after dealing with countless questions and negative comments about why we are members of a church here, a mission board there, our mail going somewhere else, mission board mail go to even yet another address, and phone here there and everywhere.  Trust us, it was just as confusing to us as it was all of you. Lord willing our lives will be totally based in Michigan by years end with our pastor being able to over see all that we do. 

Financial Update

We have been waiting to see exactly how the above mentioned change would effect our support.  It appears as of this writing that we have lost two churches for a total of $105 a month.  I would assume this is due to the changes. 

We have gained support from one new family and a Pastor & his Family in NY are now supporting us monthly as well. 

We are jumping into some of the longer term church helps that we have been praying about and working towards.  In fact the first half of this year we will spend more time in Long Term helps than in Short Term meetings.

Unfortunately we are not where we wanted to be support wise when we jumped into this, but the need is there so we are forging ahead and trusting God to work it all out and meet our needs.  We covet your prayers for this area of our ministry.

Family News

All is well with the family praise the Lord.  We had a great Christmas break which timed nicely with the kids finishing their school year, so they had a bit of vacation from school as well.  They are now back at it with Lena, David II and Emilee working in 8th, 6th & 4th grades respectively.  They all seem to be growing up so quick it is amazing. The girls got new bikes for Christmas that we added to David II on the bike rack.  With the warm weather they have been able to ride the new bikes and enjoy some fresh air.

I guess the biggest family news of the present is that Dylan has changed his name.  Since he was about 4 years old he has talked about wanting a bible name and after pondering and praying for some time he decided on David over Micah.  David is his favorite person in the bible he says, “except for that whole Bathsheba thing!”  He would really like to be David II so the end of November we filed the appropriate court documents to facilitate the name change.  We started using it in December ( he wanted to see if anyone would notice) but to this point have not offered an explanation, so there you have it.

Carmen really needed the down time, but we were hoping that it would be more of a benefit to her than it was.  She struggles to do everything         including deal with the pain that she has on a daily basis.  We are still    praying about getting her to Brownsville, TX to see Dr. Rogers.  The trip and treatments will take 3 weeks and $2600 dollars.  At this point we have $1450 for the trip and have had a three week hole in our schedule open with a meeting in Texas on the end of it.  It seems like the ideal time to go, so we are praying that if it is God’s will, all will work out for us to go in March.  Please pray with us about this.

I am doing pretty well I guess,  I got to play golf a few times over Christmas with a couple different preachers which is always a pleasant day.  I am pretty much now getting myself refocused for the year ahead and what needs to be done and which of those things the Lord is wanting us to do first. 

News From the Road

As I mentioned in our last letter,  December and January generally seem to be a slow time for us, which came at just the right time physically for all of us.  117 churches and over 100,000 miles in the last 2 years had us all bordering on exhaustion.

 We spent some time in Florida where it is warm and was even able to do some constructive things.  We spent a little time at Calvary Baptist in Avon Park, FL,  which is one of our supporting churches.  We were actually parked there on 2 different occasions and able to pitch in and help in Junior Church, preach in several services, provide some special music, and spend some time on visitation.

We also wound up at Calvary Baptist in Marathon, FL for a little better than 2 weeks.  When we arrived Pastor Wolvin was ill and I was thrilled to be able to fill his pulpit for him and take one less worry from him mind.   But it was great to see him better and back in his pulpit and to be able to do some visiting with him before we left.  We enjoyed our time in Marathon and made some great new friends in the church.  It is arguably one of the prettiest places we have been and we look forward to going back there at some point in the future.

We have had a few minor problems with the trailer that have been taken care of under warranty and the truck has been trouble free for the last several months.

We are really praying about being able to get into a newer truck this year as our current truck is approaching 180,000 miles.  In order for that to work out we must sell our van which is still in our possession.   It continues to be an area in great need of your prayers.

 Our Itinerary

Click here for our current schedule. We believe that God would have us to jump into longer term church helps and our schedule reflects that.  Because of that it is formatted a bit differently than it has been in the past.

Other Longer Term Church Helps on the way

We have been in contact with several other churches and are trying to work them into the schedule as soon as possible.   Please pray for wisdom in this.

 .Prayer Requests

“...The effectual

fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

James 5:16

As always we have many things that you can pray about as you pray for us.   Some of the more important ones can be found below:

God’s Power, Wisdom and Grace in the Meetings

Our family’s health and

wellbeing

Safety as we travel

Our second half 2005 and

first half 2006 Schedule

God’s wisdom & Provision for an updated truck when needed

The Sale of our Van

(financially we need this van to sell as soon as possible)

Wisdom in scheduling  church helps

Carmen’s health        (especially the  trip to Mexico for her to see the Dr.)

The faithfulness of our Supporters as we begin spending time in church helps

The continued good performance of our truck and trailer

Our next scheduled prayer letter is April.  By which time we hope to have been to the doctor and in the middle of a missions conference in Longview, TX. We will look forward to updating you then.