Last March, 2007, we were invited to Valley Bible Church, in Hercules California near San Francisco. We had had contact with the church initially through their senior pastor Phil Howard, who came down to Mexico and spoke at one of our CAM Mexico Fellowship Conferences probably 7 or 8 years ago. He then spoke in 2001 at a CAM event, CAM Convocation 2001 in Dallas. He later re-visited the field here and spoke again at our fellowship conference.
Paul Johnson, a fellow CAM missionary who formerly ministered here in Mexico, was supported by his church. In 2003 (I think), Valley Bible wanted to send a team down, and Paul asked me if I could host them. We met Ted Montoya, the youth leader at the time, and hosted a very diverse, very enjoyable team. Anyway…since that time we’ve maintained contact, which led to the invitation last year.
Normally when a church like Valley (1200-1500 members) invites you to be the Sunday speaker at the end of their missions conference, that’s a fairly good indication that you will probably take you on for some support. We needed support in March…we started 2007 with a $3,200 deficit. But we didn’t really have a whole lot of contact after last March, and I started to wonder if I preached heresy over the pulpit…or maybe shouldn’t have beat Pastor Phil at ping-pong (I think I only beat him once…he beat me probably 10 times, something that doesn’t happen often!).
But Wednesday night Ted (now the Global missions guy) called and let us know that the church had decided to take us on, as well as give us a generous one-time offering. This was GOOD news in the midst of a week of not-so-good news.
Check out Valley Bible Church at www.valleybible.org