Isemingerfamily@juno.com

Phone:  814-777-4231

Dear Praying Friends,

At the Close of my last letter I mentioned that our schedule of letters would probably be altered because of the lateness of my April letter.  However the Potter family was able to have the letters in the mail just days after I got it to them so we thought we would stick with the normal schedule.

It is officially summer in central GA.  If you like Hot and Humid this is the place to be.  Unfortunately, that is not our  favorite type of weather so we just do  the best we can.  At least it is better   than snow.

As is the norm, we have much to tell you about and there is much going on.

News From Macon

 Just last week I received a solicitation through the mail to attend a conference to learn how to take a church from where it is to a modern, seeker sensitive, Power Point driven contemporary church.  Needless to say I won’t be attending.  But the introductory sentence in the letter said this “Every year almost 6,000 churches close their doors.”  Even with what we have been involved in for the last 11 plus years, that number blows my mind. 

I guess the big news from Macon is God has chosen to not put Ayers Road Baptist Church  among that 6,000.  Clearly God is preserving this church and using your prayers and financial support to accomplish His Goals.  We are continuing to work on a number of things that are needed.  We are still passing out door hanger packages and making visits as well as doing what work we can on the building.  We are also praying seriously that God will get this church on a solid foundation.  We are seeing progress to that end but at times it seems to be moving at a snails pace.

In April our Pastor came down from MI to preach a 4 day revival here.  Everyone had a great time and God met with us in a major way.  Pastor camped out in the church with us on an air mattress and we got to spend some good quality time with him.  The church folks responded well to his preaching and singing, we had several visitors through the week and all in all it was a great time. 

Everyone here is grateful that pastor Tharp left his church and family (especially his new grandson) to drive nearly 2,000 miles round trip to spend the time here.  The way it worked out he was able to be here to go with us to the doctor to find out the results of  Carmen’s biopsy.  We were relieved that we did not need him to help us through bad news, but to join us in Praising God for his continuous Grace.

Please continue to pray for all that is going on here and for all that needs to be going on as well.

Family Prayer Requests and Health Update

If you remember from our last letter we had several things going on health wise that we had asked you to pray about.  Let me update you on what I mentioned in the last letter and add a few other things into the mix.  Please note, if you get our e- mail updates you are probably up to date on most if not all of this information:

¨ Carmen: I mentioned in the last letter that Carmen had something show up on her mammogram that they looked at with an ultrasound and then decided to biopsy.  They did that and determined that the lump was a benign tumor.  They are going to look at it again in 6 months  and if it has grown or changed, consider removing it.  We seem to have hit a brick wall with her fybromialgia Dr.  His answer seems to be “Take more pills”  So because of that she started seeing a new chiropractor, but we have hit a snag there as well.

¨ Lena Since our last letter Lena has undergone an EKG, EEG and a CAT Scan all of those tests came back normal. Her Dr. said it was probably just a strange fluke thing and we should return to business as usual. Which we did.  The next week while doing school, Lena lost the majority of the vision in her left eye for several hours.  We got her to the Eye Dr. and he determined that her eye and optic nerve are fine and that this “episode” for lack of a better word was directly related to her seizure.  He called her regular Dr. who said he would contact us right away BUT he didn’t contact us or return any of our phone calls, so we have found  another Dr. and also a pediatric neurologist, we hope to have    appointments with them the first part of June.

¨ David II  Minor in comparison, but last week we discovered he had a Deer tick on his side.   We tried all we knew to get it off and it just wouldn’t let go, so we had to take him to have it removed.  They put him on antibiotics and drew some blood to check for lyme’s disease.  They will retest in 4 weeks to make sure things are ok.

¨ David  Again minor in comparison, but in April I had to have oral surgery to remove a broken tooth, they had to cut into the bone to get it out so they had to knock me out while they did it.  I recovered quickly and all is well now.

¨ Emilee Normally our medical crisis child.  But,  I am happy to say that Emilee has no broken bones or other medical crisis to report on.

 As you might imagine, with all of this going on the stress levels are extremely high as one issue after another occurs.   Please keep us in prayer as we work through these things, especially with Lena.

Family Update

While I would imagine that we have covered the bulk of things in the previous section, there are at least a few things going on with us that are not medical related. 

Most notably the kids are about done with another year of school, they are all three making good grades and progressing well.  When they start back in the fall Lena will be in 10th grade, David II in 8th and Emilee in 6th.  It is hard to believe how fast they are all growing up.

As part of the program for Landmark Baptist Academy, where they are keeping Lena’s records for high school (as they will for the other 2 when it is time) she had to undergo WRAT 3 testing recently, as a matter a fact it was the week we were getting the results of Carmen’s biopsy and were in revival with Pastor Tharp.  But this is some sort of standardized test in reading, spelling and math.  We just got the test results in today’s mail.  She tested at high school level for math and spelling and beyond high school level in reading, so we were very pleased considering the level of stress we were all at the week she took test.

New Things

We have a number of new things available on the website, under our picture on the main page there are links to the new articles.  There are also new pictures of the kids, the dogs and some pictures from when Pastor Tharp was here on the picture page.

Prayer Requests

As you pray please remember the following needs in several areas:

Ayers Road Baptist Church

Please continue to pray for stability, finances, growth, workers, work on the building and especially for these door hanger packets as we are getting them out and following them up.  Please also pray for laborers.  I realize I am stating the obvious but the more laborers we have the faster the work gets done and the more results we will see, and then the sooner we can be available for another task.  Also, Louise Martin who we buried her husband and daughter last year has left Georgia this past week.  She decided it would be best for her to get away from here so she has moved to New Mexico and will be living just a few minutes away from one of her sons.   The church seems to be getting a little more stable in finances but not in attendance.   Again, I know I already said this, but this church needs people who will be on visitation who will be in church every time the doors are open or be willing to build and teach a Sunday School class.  We need people joining not moving away.   One praise we have,  the church was at a loss for lawn care.  The building sits on a sizable piece of property all of which needs mowed very often.  We got lawn care quotes that were impossible,  and after two people volunteered mowing last year and spent as much time fixing their mowers as actually mowing, they folks decided this year they needed to buy a mower.  So the Lord supplied and the grounds are getting better looking all the time.

The Iseminger Family

Please keep each of us in your prayers, especially everyone’s present health problems, the kids schooling and development and all of our general well being.  Satan would like nothing more than to get us overwhelmed with all of these issues and us be unable to function here as we need to.  It is clear to us with all that is happening, that God wants this church open at this time for a reason and Satan is more than upset about it.

The Needs of the Ministry

Please continue to pray that God will continue to see fit to use us, and that he will meet our needs and bless our efforts.  There are a many small things we are praying about as well as one or two major things,  please pray that God will continue to lead, guide and direct.

Support

All of our supporters continue to be faithful which is a huge piece of the puzzle.  One big benefit to the church here in GA is that we can labor full time because of our supporters.  Someone without support trying to get this back off the ground would certainly have to work a job (most likely full time) Considering that things are progressing at a snails pace I can’t imagine what would be happening if we or someone else only had a few hours a week to put into it.

Anyway, God continues to meet our needs and even the occasional want.  Thank you for praying for us and for investing in this ministry.  I know I say it all the time but we truly couldn’t do it without you.

By the time you get our next letter summer for a large chunk of the country will be about over, Georgia will still be way to hot, and 2006 will be about 3/4 of the way through.  Its hard to believe how time flies. 

On behalf of the folks that are living the struggling week at a time life here at Ayers Road, Thank you for your prayers for them and their church and for allowing us to be here with them.

We will look forward to updating you again with all God is doing.

Because of Calvary,

The Iseminger Family

David & Carmen

Lena, David II & Emilee

Romans 10:13-15