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Dear Praying Friends,
I come to you in this letter to paint you a picture of a
place that you may think I have dreamt up, but I assure you, that is not
the case. I want to take you on a journey that begins in Kingsport,
Tennessee, as you leave the highway (and your cell phone signal) and
begin a 75 mile trek deep into the Appalachian Mountains of Southern
Virginia.
The further you drive the smaller the towns get and the bigger the
mountains are. You notice a change in life style with houses and
vehicles. The further you go, you begin to notice the churches and the
fact that almost all of them are Free Will Baptist, these folks believe
you can lose your salvation and Baptism is a must for salvation. You
start to realize that you are seeing fewer and fewer chain stores and
restaurants. The mountains are getting really steep and the curves are
taking a longer time to get around due to the sharpness and it doesn’t
help that there doesn’t seem to be an abundance of guard rails. The
beauty of these mountains is overwhelming and the higher you go up you
seem to be able to see forever. The final town you will come to is
Clintwood. It is a very tiny town with a grocery store that has seemed
to corner the market on prices and you are left with a longing for
modern day life but excited to see how much different it can get.
You start this final leg of the drive and the roads have gotten much,
much steeper , more so than you thought was possible. The curves are so
sharp that you are crawling around them, and every person you pass,
seems to be in the middle—if not totally on your side of the road. Seven
miles after leaving Clintwood—but about 20 minutes or so driving—you
approach this little brick church. It is setting atop a hill with a
little cemetery tucked in beside it. It is almost shocking to see the
amount of houses in the area. They seem to be everywhere! Most of which
are stuck on the side of a steep mountainside. It is amazing how people
were able to cut into the side of those hills and build a house up
there.
This little church is amazing in its own right. It was built as a place
that funeral homes could use for viewing bodies. There was apparently a
time when funeral homes did not have parlors and needed separate places
for this. This land was given, and moonshine was ran to raise up enough
money to build the original structure.
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It became a church after a few decades, meeting once a month and even
supplying spit-tunes for the members so they would stay inside during
these infrequent services. Since those days, a new group has come in,
the building has been remodeled, and the new church has struggled with
things like—no “Pastors”. In the mountains, they have “preachers”.
Everyone seems to fancy themselves a preacher. Since there is such an
abundance of these preachers, they do preach all over the mountain. This
Sunday you may have a Pentecostal from the Free Will Baptist, and then a
“Free Will” guy may be at one of the Holiness snake-handling churches,
and so the mixed-up mess goes on and on. But, in the eyes of these
mountain people, it doesn’t matter because they all serve the same God
and these are their own people so “they have to be good”. A lot of these
people believe that if you enter the pulpit and have any kind of notes
you just better sit on down, because God isn’t in that. Education? Now
that is just as bad. God will give you what you need—not a fancy school.
I wondered if some of that mentality was rampant because it is common to
have people of all ages in the pews that cannot read nor write.
This is an area where no one could go in without some form of help from
an insider. This is a church created by a culture and now someone needs
to go in and re-create this church in the eyes of God and according to
Scripture, and pray that the people will accept the changes, and learn
to accept Christ in—what I feel—is a much simpler and easier way than
what they have created.
We begin this work March 13, and our timeline is one year. I would be
lying if I told you we are not anxious, a little afraid, and
overwhelmed. I think I am mostly worried about someone coming into the
church and slapping a big ol’ rattlesnake in my hands. We have a lot of
enormous changes to make. There is no constitution in this church, for
those of you that are familiar with church constitutions you realize
that what will be written in that constitution goes against much that
goes on in the area that I am describing to you. But getting it written
and passed will take care of the majority of the problems in this one
particular church. (Problems like, anyone who wants to come in and
preach anytime they want.) We may have no people left when that happens,
but I recently found a statistic that said 75% of the people in those
mountains have no church affiliation. That means we will have a whole
new group that we can find, win to the Lord and teach the right way. I
cannot begin to tell each and everyone of you how desperately we are
going to need your prayers, every day, as often as you can offer them
up. We are assuming that every situation is going to be a whole new
experience that we are going to have to pray our way through. We have a
man by the name of Bob Phipps who is our inside man. He is a good man
who has a lot of hope and vision for this church. He will be working
closely with us and hopefully keep us from making any stupid mistakes
with these people.
There are people who make moonshine, raise, sell and fight roosters;
raise marijuana; raise and fight dogs—and this is going on in a very
concentrated area, mingled with a way of life that you have only read
about and few have actually experienced. Welcome to the Appalachians—or
rather a land in need of a light house.
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This is what it is all about folks. Mission work at it’s finest. Taking
the Gospel to a people that need to hear it. It is a daunting task, but
it is a task of God’s choosing, not ours.
Like everything else we can’t do it without your help. Please pray and
continue to hold the ropes on your end. I guess you can assume that the
trip west in December did not work out for us. It was very evident to us
that God did not want us out there. A couple things happened in one of
the churches that we feel was the reason for God taking us to that part
of the country and to those churches specifically. We haven’t heard if
our advice was taken, and continue praying for them. We want to thank
each of you that gave for that trip, it was an exhausting time and we
survived, despite the few airplane incidents.
We have been so busy preparing for this move. David II’s birthday was
February 21, and he turned 14 years old!! It is amazing to us to see him
grow, and become the young man that he has. We are proud parents to say
the least. We have been working on the 5th wheel and getting it ready to
call home again. We have two men from a supporting church in Maryland,
Billy Butt and Bob Buckley, moving it to Virginia for us on the 13th.
Without their help that could have been a project costing an exorbitant
amount of money. We are thankful that God has chosen to use them to help
us.
The church here at Ayers Road will be having a candidate from Landmark
Baptist College on our last Sunday here (March 11). I have heard nothing
but good things about him, and we are excited for him to come. I am
praying, and ask you all to pray, that if this is the man that God has
to carry on the work here, God will make it clear to all parties
involved. We have put too much work into this situation to see it go
under now. We are asking you all to keep Ayers Road Baptist church on
your prayer lists and continue to pray that God will build a great work
here. I will make a point of keeping you updated about the work here as
I can. We will continue to keep an eye on the situation and be here for
them if they need us.
Another major prayer request and a request to pastors who do not already
support us—we lost a major supporter the first of the year. It was a
blow and a mental set back for a short time, but God has helped us get a
mental grip on it, and we are continuing on, trusting He will provide as
needed. I ask all of you to pray that God will take care of us and I ask
you pastors, if you have any desire to support us and our ministry,
please consider us for support when you are able.
By the time we write again we will be moved, settled in, and working on
church organization, stabilization, and area evangelization. There
should be some pictures on our website by the end of March.
Thanks again for all that you do, we truly could not do this without
you.
Because of Calvary,
The Iseminger Family
David & Carmen
Lena, David II and Emilee |
