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Hello all,
We have decided to postpone the trip to India until Februaury/March of 2010.
Everything was looking good except for one tiny but very important detail. Mitch did not have his Indian visa stamped on his passport. In order to get it, you either have to apply in person or through the mail at the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. The mail would definitely take too long, and applying in person does not neccessarily guarantee approval. Even though they told us that most likely he would get it, it is just too big of a risk to set up events across the globe and pay for airfare and find out his visa was delayed or that he couldn’t get into the country.
After much prayerful deliberation, it all came down to this one thing, and it looks like it will just be better to wait and build a bigger team and go in the spring.
Already, we have several solid believers who have committed to joining us on that trip.
We will be holding various fundraisers throughout the winter.
Once I get in touch with our contacts in India, I will get some real dates so we can be prepared well ahead of time. Many of you receiving this e-mail have offered to contribute funds for the mission, and many of you have said you would love to give more if given more time. This will give us all plenty of time to be ready. Thank you very much for your kind and generous support. You’re support is absolutely essential for these kinds of things to happen and you can be sure you are building treasures in heaven for your generosity and love.
Also, I have spoken with most of you about becoming a part of the team that actually goes to India. Please prayerfully consider doing so. I would love to have you. If that’s you, contact me ASAP so we can begin the process of (1) getting a passport if you don’t have one already, (2) getting your Indian visa, (3) getting an estimated cost for travel expenses so you can save and raise money, (4) making sure you get the right immunizations before going into the country. If you leave these things on the back burner and decide within 2 months of the trip, you may experience troubles and in the worst case scenario, not be able to go.
Without naming names, I believe we have 7 people who have given verbal confirmation that they WILL go in the spring. If you have not told me specifically that you are IN, please contact me and I will fill you in on a more detailed itinerary so you can make a decision.
One last thing.. We could all glean from the wisdom of a great man of God. Another reason we delayed the trip, (which I wasn’t going to tell you about, but I think it’s appropriate), is that Mitch wanted to be SURE that he spent hours and hours preparing to speak to the believers in India. When I told him that they were ready to have a pastor’s conference with 200 pastors attending, he told me that he wasn’t willing to use some old recycled messages out of his closet to get by with, and that he needed serious time to prepare what the Lord has for them. That is great love and wisdom. It demonstrates to me that he really cares about the people he will be ministering to. May we all follow his example if we intend to come along.
Thanks again for your prayer and support. This is a worthy ministry.
Blessings,
Billy

So I called Walmart today to get scheduled in for later this week to set up the prayer/Bible/tract table, but the manager gave me a whole bunch of trouble about last time we were there.
Apparently, some customers complained to him about the Obama Trillions. I guess they found them very offensive and “racist”. I was so shocked I didn’t know how to respond. The manager actually sided with the customer and said that the drawing of Obama’s lips were too big, “like and African American” as well as other features of his face.
Its a good thing we were on the phone because I was laughing so hard. I am still blown away.
Anyhow, at the end of the day, I dodged being shut out of Walmart altogether by being very apologetic about my poor taste and insensitivity. And, of course, we will NOT be handing out Obama $$ at Walmart anymore.
Thought you all might get a good laugh out of this story.
Blessings,
Billy

The Central Washington State Fair kicked off on Saturday the 26th, and we were on hand to make the most out of the opportunity.
A great couple and I headed down to Yakima to share the gospel with as many peopel as we could. We wanted to keep kind of a low profile, so we wouldn’t get kicked out, because we are taking another team down to the fair this coming weekend.
So we started out slow, by walking the grounds once to get a feel for the place. then we split up and began our evangelism. After about an hour, I met up with Dan and Kay, who told me they had been confronted almost immediately by the crowd management services and were told to stop handing out tracts. At least they hadn’t been given the boot! This kind of confrontation would ordinarily put a lid on the whole day, if an evangelist were all alone, but together, we resolved not to be silenced! So we decided we would just lay low with the tracts and just do a lot of one-on-one witnessing.
Things went really well, and we each got to share the gospel with a lot of people. We met up at the exit, and waxed bold just before we were leaving. We began to aggressively hand out as many tracts as we could to the passers-by and gave out a few hundred without the police or the CMS approaching us even once.
Its always great to enjoy great fellowship with like-minded people, and to draw from each others’ strength when the winds of persecution blow. It was a real blessing to meet Dan and Kay, and we are looking forward to bringing an even bigger team this weekend!

I was just going through some old blogs that I sent out from Billy’s Tackle Box, before we switched over to Sowing the Seed, and found one that I wanted to share once again. Hope this is an encouragement…

Every one of us who belongs to Christ is perpetually engaged in a battle for control of our mind. Our flesh is constantly waging war with our spirit to influence whether or not we will succumb to sin or walk away. We all know this, and we all have experienced victory as well as defeat in different areas. Aside from the fact that our flesh is drawn like a moth to the flame to various sinful pleasures, there are other ways in which the Adamic nature rears his ugly head.
One specific area is in the realm of personal witnessing. All too often, I find that I have much more important things going on than to spend my precious time sharing the gospel with a bunch of people who don’t want to hear it anyway. There are fish to be caught, birds to be shot at, sporting events to attend, good TV shows that I can’t miss, etc. And on top of all that, there is some really good fellowship to be had with my hunting budd- Ahem- christian brothers. What am I describing? Evangelical laziness. We just don’t give it the time.
There is nothing in me that wants to go out and speak to people about the things of God. I would much rather stay home and surf the web or watch television. There is an old adamic nature in me that needs to be continually denied its appetite if I want to serve Jesus and glorify him. I have been in situations where I have gone to certain public places, determining ahead of time that I was going specifically to witness to people, and when I arrived, began looking immediately for some excuse to blow it off and do something else. Have you been there?
If you’ve ever gone out and done any personal work, then I’m sure you have. Sometimes it is the result of fear, and sometimes it is the result of plain old laziness. We couldn’t be bothered to share the words of everlasting life with people because we are so busy doing our own thing, living our own lives. But the Bible says that we should be “in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom we shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life..”
The next time you are confronted with a witnessing opportunity and you are feeling too lazy or too scared to open your mouth, just take a moment and imagine the tables were turned. Imagine that you were on your way to hell and didn’t know it, and this person couldn’t be bothered to take a moment and share the words of eternal life with you. How would you feel about that? Wouldn’t you want to have been told?
Or what would you think of a doctor, who discovered a cure to cancer, but didn’t share the cure with the world because he was going on to further studies as a doctor? Obviously, just the thought is enough to give us a sense of indignation. How much more then, is the gift of everlasting life in comparison with a cure to cancer? And how often do you keep it to yourself when you could be sharing it with those who still sit in the shadow of death?
The world is going to hell. One by one they are falling into an abyss of eternal torment. You and I have been entrusted witht the word of reconciliation by our Lord. We must reckon the old man to be dead, and we must be dead indeed to sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The enemy within will come up with all sorts of things for us to be doing other than what we are supposed to be doing, but we must be diligent, continually denying our flesh of its desires and being filled with the Spirit of God.
So be on your guard, and look out for the attitude of laziness and complacency. Determine to ask the Lord to fill you with compassion for the lost, and go out with boldness and power to lead men and women to the source of life, Jesus Christ.
See you on the streets!

Do you make every effort to share the truth with your lost friends and relatives? If not, why? Can you seriously think of any good reason? The following quote should put things in perspective for you. Which one of these are your reasons? To be honest, I don’t really think that either reason is in fact the truth, but what else could we expect them to think? How do you suppose the Judge will treat our laziness on the Day of Judgement? What kind of grand explanation will hold up when all our feeble excuses are laid bare before the eyes of the God of the universe?
This quote is not from a contemporary Christian leader. It may surprise you…

Listen to what Nobel prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said in a recent PBS interview regarding religion: “I have very good friends who belong to religious denominations whose teaching is that since I don’t accept their teaching, I am damned for all eternity. And you would think that these friends would try to convert me. But they never do. Now, you could explain this in various ways. It may be that they really don’t like me very much and are just as glad to see me damned for all eternity-that’s a possible explanation. But another explanation which I tend to think is more likely is that although they know what their church teaches, they give lip service to it.” Our unconcern for the lost shows that we merely give God’s threat of Hell mere lip service. Shame on us. There goes another minute. Gone forever. Go share your faith while you still have time.

I was shut down by the authorities today. I hate it when that happens. So here’s the story…

I have never gone to the Sausage Festival until today. I thought it would be nothing more than a bunch of guys and gals at booths selling their grandma’s secret summer sausage recipe. But, because there were no other events going on that I knew of, I packed up my gear and headed down to case the place out and hit it hard with the gospel. To my surprise, this was no ordinary Sausage Festival, but the atmosphere was almost like that of a carnival. There were games, booths, a stage with live performers, a beer garden, and most importantly, lots of people.

I started out by using some optical illusion tracts on a group of young people. They were responsive and I was able to give one of them a tract. Then I moved on to a group of young teens, which, as I was approaching, I overheard cussing. I showed them the optical illusion, and they seemed to really like it, so I also offered them some Obama Trillion Dollar Bills, which they absolutely loved, and then I busted out with the giant $100 bills. They were ecstatic. So I became more bold with my approach to the next group, and was having great success. If you haven’t had the opportunity to hand out the giant money in the midst of a large group of young people, you are missing out on an experience. It doesn’t take long before you are literally being mobbed. They were pulling the tracts off of the stack faster than I could hand them out.

I began moving around the event, handing out tracts to young people and old, and didn’t get turned down even once. To be honest, I only had to approach one or two people, because all those young people were doing some free advertising for me. All I had to do was literally stand there with the tracts in hand, and people would come up saying, “there he is!” and ask for the tracts.

Unfortunately, the free advertising backfired, and I was approached by the event coordinators, who politley told me to stop. They said they didn’t allow outside advertising, to which I replied that I wasn’t advertising anything and offered them a giant money tract to see for themselves. Also, I was not pushing the tracts on people, they were mobbing me for them. They said they knew that, and had read the entire tract, but still wanted me to stop. Even as we were having the discussion, I was being approached by people eagerly looking for the money tracts. As I was leaving the event, I was being constantly bombarded by more and more people, especially young people who wanted tracts, but unfortunately, I had told the event staff that I would stop handing them out. I hate it when people are begging for the tracts but you can’t give them one.
The event was being held on private property so there was nothing I could do.

To my shock and horror, I came to find that this event is put on by Christ the King Catholic Church, and is held on their property. I guess it should come as no surprise. On one hand I understand their position, because if Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses showed up at a Calvary Chapel event, I would be one of the first to boot them out. On the other hand it is telling that Catholics, who will claim to be Christian, will stop you from giving out tracts that simply state the gospel with no denominational affiliation. Equally troubling is their willingness to have a beer garden on their property. Some of those people I was witnessing to told me that last night the place was really rocking.

At least I was able to spend about a half-hour there giving out tracts. Something like 100-150 people have the words of everlasting life! Praise the Lord for that! I’ll just continue to look for opportunities to share the gospel. Where there is a crowd, there are people.
In the words of fellow evangelist John Speed, “God is at work on the streets… are you?”
See you on the streets!

Recently I was asked to do a series of teachings on how to share your faith at Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities. Eight weeks of classes on Sunday nights. Of course, I was eager to accept that invitation and began preparing immediately. I was encouraged to see a lot of faces in the room on the first night, especially considering that we were meeting on a Sunday evening in the middle of summer.

One of the most important things I knew I could offer the class was real “hands-on” experience on the streets. Heaven forbid that we would just meet every week for eight weeks and discuss how to witness and never put it into practice. So I emphasised the point at the beginning that we would not only be learning in class, but that we would also be getting real training on the streets as well.

The first of these real-life street evangelism sessions was tonight at Wal-Mart. In case you didn’t know, it is the national corporate policy of Wal-Mart that any non-profit organization may apply and be approved for solicitations at the front doors, up to 14 days per year. So, I went to a local Wal-Mart and got on schedule to set up a prayer/Bible/tract table at the front entrances. Tonight, I took the class to the store for what would be for many of them their first evangelism experience. We had about half the class make it for the trip, which made about 11 or 12 of us.

We split up into three teams. I had a table with Bibles and tracts at each of the two entrances, where we usually had 3-4 people handing out tracts to the customers. The rest would be out in the parking lot near the three exits/entrances, where they were holding big signs that read “Free Money!!”. We had a dollar bill paper-clipped to a gospel tract that we gave to anyone who would take them. The plan was to rotate people through both the free money giveaway and the tracting at the doors, so that everyone would be able to experience both.

To be honest, I didn’t expect things to go near as well as they did. I surmised that we might be able to give away 400-500 tracts on a Sunday night in two hours. Boy, what an underestimation! We gave out at least 1,700 tracts, possibly 2,000. Every person on the team was able to get into a witnessing encounter with someone who asked what we were doing this for. Several of those discussions lasted up to 20 minutes or more. Praise the Lord! People were stopping at the doors with questions and prayer requests, and out in the parking lot, there were many people who were completely disarmed by our generosity and came back ready with an open heart to hear the gospel. I don’t know how things could have gone any better than they did tonight, especially for those who were putting evangelism into practice for the very first time.

Almost every Christian will agree that evangelism is an important and often neglected part of being a believer, and most would say they have the desire to go out and be the witness that God intends for them to be. The hardest part is just getting out there the first time. Once people see how easy and fun it is to evangelize, they will be asking when it is time to go again! It was a huge blessing to see everyone having a great time serving the Lord and others tonight. I am sure they were encouraged to find it was not nearly as difficult as our imaginations might tell us.

What about you? Are you afraid to make evangelism a regular part of your life because you are uneasy or nervous? Step out into the waters, murky though they may seem, and you will find that the Holy Spirit will fill your mouth and give you a boldness you have never known. You may walk timidly into it with fear, but you will leave dancing and clicking your heels with joy, knowing that you have just been used by the Lord in ways that may only be measured in eternity.

Todd Friel: 13 Evangelistic Phrases That Produce False Conversions

I came across this on the internet, an article written by Todd Friel called 13 Evangelistic Phrases That Produce False Conversions. This is great stuff, filled with truth. Enjoy.

Churches divide over carpet color, building additions and budgets. In the meantime, our fellow church members are going to hell by the boat load.

A.W. Tozer said, “It is my opinion that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they have not been saved.”

D. James Kennedy said, “The vast majority of people who are members of churches in America today are not Christians. I say that without the slightest contradiction. I base it on empirical evidence of twenty-four years of examining thousands of people.”

Friend, we argue over so many petty things. May I suggest we have lost sight of the most important debate of all, “What is salvation?” My theology teaches that salvation happens when a man repents and places his trust in Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21).

I would like to present thirteen ways that we have re-defined how a person becomes a true convert. Have we done this intentionally? Certainly not. We have simply created lingo that has a grain of truth in Scripture, but it is so open to interpretation that the un-converted understand it in ways that lead to false conversions.

1. Make Jesus your Lord and Savior. We cannot make Jesus our Lord and Savior, He is our Lord and Savior. We are living in rebellion to Him and He commands us to repent and trust Him.

2. Ask Jesus into your heart. Does Jesus come into our hearts? Yes He does. The question is, “How does He get in there?” It is not by simply asking Him in; it is by repentance and faith.

3. Just believe in Jesus. The demons believe and they tremble. We must repent and trust.

4. You have a God-shaped hole in your heart and only Jesus can fill it. We have far more than a hole that needs to be filled so we can feel complete; we have a wretched, deceitful, sinful heart that needs cleansing. Repentance and faith applies the blood of the lamb for that cleansing.

5. Accept Jesus. Whoa. We need to accept Jesus? This is entirely backward. We need Jesus to accept us–and He will, if we repent and trust.

6. Make a decision for Jesus. Decisional regeneration puts man in the driver’s seat of salvation. When we repent and trust, Jesus decides to save us. That puts Him in the driver’s seat…where He demands.

7. It is easy to believe. While the formula of repentance and faith sounds simple, a complete surrendering of self in repentance is anything but easy. It’s hard.

8. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. The only promises for the convert are trials, temptation and persecution. If that is how you define a wonderful life, fine. Otherwise we must command all men everywhere to repent and trust.

9. Come to Jesus just as you are. We should come to Jesus just as the sinners we are, but He also expects a broken heart and contrite spirit demonstrated in repentance and faith.

10. Come to Jesus and you will receive forgiveness of sins and ________________ (fill in the blank with money, health, a healed marriage). Jesus didn’t promise healed marriages; in fact He promised broken homes because we would divide when one member repents and trusts.

11. Come to Jesus and experience love, joy, peace. Do we get the fruit of the Spirit upon conversion? Yes. But if we come seeking the gifts and not the giver, we will receive neither. Instead, we must repent and trust.

12. Jesus is the missing piece. Um, no, the God of the universe is not the missing piece, He demands that He is the center of our lives when we repent and trust.

13. Jesus is better than fame and fortune. That is an understatement, and frankly, it is insulting. Saying Jesus is better than money is like saying that a steak dinner is better than eating a dung hill. He defies comparison and we trivialize the Son of God. Instead, we should be pleading with all men everywhere to repent and trust.

If I showed up at your door with a can of grapefruit juice and a roll of paper towels and offered to change your oil, you would say, “No thanks.” If we wouldn’t let someone mess with our car using the wrong method, why do we allow the Gospel to be presented so ambiguously?

Would you let a doctor operate on your child who was “sort of” accurate? The salvation of men is far more important than an appendix.

I beg you to consider how you share the Gospel. You and I know what we are talking about when we use these phrases, but do the unregenerate? Is it possible that we have so many backsliders today because they never slid forward in the first place? Is it because they were never told that they must repent and trust?

If we are willing to debate shag verse plush in the fellowship hall, shouldn’t we be more concerned about an issue that has eternal consequences?

One of the hardest things to do in personal witnessing is getting the subject of spiritual things up. How do we go from, “Nice day, isn’t it?” to “Have you been born again?” It is probably the #1 reason many people do not share their faith. They just don’t know how to get started.
I know how frustrating it can be to have the desire to approach someone, but chicken out because I just couldn’t find the right way to open it up. I imagine all sorts of different scenarios in my mind while trying to come up with the best opening line. If I say this, then he might say that, then I could respond with…
The biggest fear is saying something that turns him/her off and turns the whole thing into a disaster and embarrassment. That is why I love to use good gospel tracts. If you get your hands on a good tract, it can open the door up for you and transition a pleasant conversation into a witnessing opportunity smoothly. Once the ice is broken, you are off and running with the gospel.
Today, a dear brother named Shawn and I hit the streets and employed this effective technique. We primarily used the curved illusion tract (pictured) to have a little fun with people before we began to share the gospel with them. We also used some fake money tracts, which are always a great hit, and had a lot of wonderful encounters with men and women where we were able to get into long conversations.
The tracts that people enjoy are great because it helps you earn the right to witness to them. It is awkward to approach people and immediately begin opening up spiritual things to them, and some even find it offensive. We need to make some sort of connection with them first and smoothly go from one subject to the next. The curved illusion is a great example. There are other great tracts you can use that are fun and easy to use at www.livingwaters.com

Scientist have been hailing their latest discovery as the missing link in human evolution which finally will link our ancestry to primates. “Ida” has been dubbed as the 8th wonder of the world by the scientific community. But is this latest fossil really all its cracked up to be in terms its impact on the theory of evolution?

“Scientists Unveil Missing Link In Evolution: Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution. This 95%-complete ‘lemur monkey’ is described as the ‘eighth wonder of the world.’ The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years — but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York. The discovery of the 95%-complete ‘lemur monkey’ — dubbed Ida — is described by experts as the ‘eighth wonder of the world.’ They say its impact on the world of palaeontology will be ‘somewhat like an asteroid falling down to Earth.’ Researchers say proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the then radical, outlandish ideas he came up with during his time aboard the Beagle. Sir David Attenborough said Darwin ‘would have been thrilled’ to have seen the fossil — and says it tells us who we are and where we came from. ‘This is the one that connects us directly with them’ . . . Now people can say ‘okay we are primates, show us the link . . . The link they would have said up to now is missing — well it’s no longer missing’.”

Look at the words used to describe the find. “the search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years” What?! So upon what have they been building the case for evolution up until now? “the link they would have said up to now is missing — well its no longer missing” So if there were no links between humans and the animal kingdom, how in the world has the theory gained so much steam? Does anyone else see a red flag waving?
Even more telling is the following statement, “This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years,” said Dr Jørn Hurum, the paleontologist from Oslo University’s Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team to study the fossil. “It tells a part of our evolution that’s been hidden so far. It’s been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there’s nothing almost to study.”

As one man puts it, drop the word “almost” and you have the truth. So the question becomes, “What in the world has the theory been based upon other than imagination and conjecture up until now? And how can I trust the assessment of a group of scientists who have not been forthcoming in the past? How do we know that “Ida” will not quickly become nothing more than another illustraton of how scientists got it wrong?

Here is some more for you to laugh at….”It’s caught at a really very interesting moment [in the animal’s life] when it fortunately has all its baby teeth and is in the process of forming all its permanent teeth,” said Dr Holly Smith, an expert in primate development at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The article goes on to say,”Crucially though, Ida is not on the lemur line because she lacks two key characteristics shared by lemurs – a grooming claw on her second toe and a fused set of teeth called a tooth comb. Also, a bone in her ankle called the talus is shaped like members of our branch of the primates. So the researchers believe she may be on our evolutionary line dating from just after the split with the lemurs.”
So she hasnt formed her teeth yet but she is pulled from the lemur line because she doesnt have fused teeth? What kind of scientists are working on this? These people believe this fossil connects us to primates because of of a similarity an an ankle bone? An ankle bone? And Ida is hailed as the missing link!
If that isnt enough of a smoking gun for you, wait until you hear this from an msnbc report from May 19, 2009. “The fossil was apparently discovered in 1983 by private collectors who split and eventually sold two parts of the skeleton on separate plates: The lesser part was restored and, in the process, partly fabricated to make it look more complete.”
Do I even need to say anything further?
Never be afraid to ask your evolutionist friends for “proof” of the fairy tale they call Evolution. As scientists have unwittingly confessed, there has been none until now, and even what they think they have has been “fabricated”.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA