Lately, every time I get ready to write a House of Blessing Update, I wonder if the Mideast will erupt into a large scale war before I can even finish the update. War has been expected in the region for several years. The Middle East became embroiled in the so-called Arab Spring and Syria’s civil war which has now gone […]
URGENT PRAYER REQUEST August 17, 2018
URGENT I received an urgent request for prayer this morning that I want to pass on to you. In order to get this out quickly, I will write the regular Mideast Update in a second posting to the blog site. It wasn’t all that long ago when an urgent request was sent out for special prayer for Pastor R concerning […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 7/14/2018 “…and they did not love their lives to the death”
It goes without saying that for most of us, it is nearly impossible to picture for ourselves what the conditions really are where many missionaries serve in today’s world. This is certainly the case with the House of Blessing missionaries. The circumstances vary from place to place across the Middle East, but there are some constants. Every day is filled […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 7/3/2018
In today’s update I would like to reprint an older episode as I sometimes do so that we don’t forget the great things God has done in the past in response to the prayers of God’s people. This story involves a number of House of Blessing missionaries, one of them being a man named Omar. This Omar however is not […]
MIDEAST UPDATE Pastor R…3/9/2018
Today’s Mideast Update will concern itself mainly with Pastor R. I am amazed at all of the things that have happened in the past six years since, by way of a divine appointment, our paths crossed. None of us could have imagined what would unfold. In early April 2013 Pastor R and two other men, Rami and Jameal, were brutally […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 1/20/2018
The situation in the Middle East continues to be desperate, both with the weather this time of the year and of course the much worse problem of dealing with all the missile and bomb attacks. The loss of life among the civilians continues unabated. In the last few days at least 120 adult believers and 35 children from the House […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 1/6/2017
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints. Psalm 116:15 I received several phone calls this week from Pastor R, the third one giving me the tragic news that the three House of Blessing teachers who had recently been arrested by the Syrian government for preaching about Jesus Christ, have paid the ultimate price for […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 11/28/2017
As I was looking over notes that I had taken from my phone call with Pastor R this week, my mind went to stories that many of us have read in the Book of Acts. Stories of the seedling Church on the Day of Pentecost which grew into a force that has not been stopped for 2,000 years. In those […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 9/22/2017
As I sit here at my laptop and begin this update, I think about today’s date and all that is happening in the world and I am astounded that I am witnessing all that I am seeing coming to pass. A couple days ago while my wife, Anne, was spending time alone with the Lord, she wrote down some of […]
MIDEAST UPDATE 7/20/ 2017
This week’s update is in two parts, the second part being a story that comes directly from people in Mosul who are experiencing the reality of the civil war battleground that is both Iraq and Syria today. This story will be on line in a couple days. Many people hear little or no news about what is actually happening in […]