Prayer Request for Bro. Marty Millikin

Bro. Marty Millikin did not receive the a good report from the doctor concerning the cancer he is battling. He was told yesterday that he still has cancer in his body and that he will need treatment to fight it. Bro. Marty is not feeling well today at all and he has found  some lumps that were not there previously.

Would you please pray now for Bro. Marty Millikin, his parents and for Bro. Jimmy and his family. They urgently need a touch from the Lord. Ask God to heal Bro. Marty's body and to give them peace of mind. We need God to give them a space of victory and to back off the enemy. They are overwhelmed with the fight right now.

Thank you for praying and for asking others to pray. We know that God hears and answers prayer.

Davy

Going Into Business

Evidently Kelly Jo and I have went into business in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and we did not even know it. Look what we saw just down the road from the RV Park. This building has four stores and two of them have our names on them.

KJ's Boutique. KJ is what I call Kelly Jo a big part of the time.

Two doors down you will find Davy's Tattoos!

Odie has Smokin' Odie's BBQ in Miami, Oklahoma and we have these businesses here in Tuscaloosa. Either we are not making any money or somebody is holding back on us because we are not receiving any checks!

The wind was pretty strong over night and the rain was hard but we survived. The storm did cool things off pretty good though. It was upper 80's yesterday and it is 49 at 9:30 this morning. That is a big drop.

Revival is going good. Last night we had several visitors again. We had visitors from local churches and we had several folks that needed to be saved. God reached for them during the service but none of them publicly prayed. You never know what is going on in people's lives and hearts.

I pray that God will continue to deal with them and they will reach for God. He is the only hope in this world at all. So many are struggling to survive but all we really need is God. You can live without more money. You can live without more stuff. But you can not live abundantly without God. You can not live eternally without God.

Thanks for praying for us.

Davy

Refuge Holiness Tabernacle

We began revival last night for Pastor Larry West at Refuge Holiness Tabernacle near Tuscaloosa. It is our first time here and we are excited to be with them these few nights. Bro. and Sis. West came to Tuscaloosa a little over two years ago to pioneer a holiness church and they are putting everything into the effort. I pray that we can be an encouragement and help to them.

They are having church in a rented building a little east of town. It is a great place to start out and we are looking for God to do big things for these folks as they reach for souls in the Tuscaloosa area. Help us pray for Pastor Larry West and the Refuge Holiness Tabernacle.

After two revivals under the tent, it is a little different going back inside the church. I was wanting to look outside for people sitting in their cars and when I got hot I was wishing for a cool breeze to blow through. Lol. I am sure that before it is over we will feel the wind of the Holy Ghost and that is good enough for me.

The weather here is absolutely beautiful. It is about the warmest temperatures we have had so far this year in the places we have been. They are expecting storms to blow through tonight and the temperature will be considerably cooler the next couple of days. 

The threat of a severe storm makes folks a little nervous around here since the huge tornado that ripped through the area in April of 2011. I can not say that I blame them one ounce. This whole part of the state took a huge hit with over 200 lives lost in Alabama that day. You can not help but view dark skies with a wary eye after that.

Kelly Jo is hard at work on practicing for our new recording. I need to take some pictures of her piano set up in the bus. There is not much room for anything else!

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy the pictures from church last night. There are a few special ones in there.

Davy

This is baby Carrington in the picture below. She is Bro. and Sis. West's very first grandchild. Last night was her first night at church. She was the star attraction and is going to be for quite a while. That is just as it should be. She is beautiful and very well behaved.

When Carrington is there does it really matter that Casey and Christiane are also there?

That's a proud grandmother peaking over Mama's shoulder below.



They let Odie hold her in spite of my dire warnings about her dropping other babies...

And Kelly Jo found a big bug in the parking lot of Huddle House after church. Yes that is a cigarette laying in the gutter but it is not KJ's cigarette. Lol. It happened to be laying there and it was a good tool to help you see the size of the bug.

How Do You Survive?

With the price of diesel so high, How Do You Survive? It is a question that we are asked all of the time. We have been asked by friends, family, pastors, church members, other evangelists and often by the truck driver, RVer or regular Joe filling up in the fuel lane next to me. No, the question does not bother me at all.

With the stranger at the diesel pump next to me the conversation goes something like this? 

You live in that thing? Actually, yes. This is our home.

Really? Really. I work on the road.

What do you do for a living? I am an evangelist. I travel from city to city singing and preaching revivals in churches. (Depending on how open the person is, I try to turn the conversation to Christ and salvation right here if I am able.)

Do you have an organization that schedules all of that for you? No

How do you know where to go? We go to churches that asked us to come and preach a revival usually from  Sunday to Friday and travel on Saturday.

(I do not resent their curiosity or nosiness  Some of them may be in their first conversation with a preacher and I am looking for any opening I can find to tell them about Jesus. But strangers never cease to amaze me with their boldness. I know the next question before they ask.)

How much do you charge?

or

How do you make money?

or

Do they pay you?

or 

Are you on a salary? We do not charge anything at all. We operate completely on a freewill offering basis. The church people give us what they can and wish. We do not set a price.

With the price of diesel so high, how do you survive? Well, there is a lot that goes into it, but it all boils down to trusting God. (The answer is complex but I try to keep it simple, especially if I am trying to be a witness to someone who is not a Christian. The answer above gives me a final chance to share my Christ before we finish our transactions and go our separate ways.)

You know, the answer really does boil down to God. God knows exactly what we need when we need it. God is our paymaster and has always provided for our needs when we trusted him. Is it scary sometimes? Oh Yes! It is scary most of the time, but faith in God is like that.

I will not take time to preach it now but many of you have heard me preach the things I learned about trusting God through our 1984 Plymouth Reliant station wagon. We traveled 50,000 miles in it for about ten months in 1990 and 1991 when we first evangelized full time. I should probably preach a whole sermon on it some time.

God taught us to trust Him even when we could not trace Him. He taught us that He is in control when EVERYTHING else seems out of control. He taught us that He is still God even when we do not understand what He is doing. He taught us that where He guides, He will also provide!

How do we survive when diesel is over $4 a gallon and that gallon moves us 6-8 miles down the road depending on what we are pulling? We survive the same way we did when gas was 90 cents a gallon and buying enough of it seemed just as impossible. We do our part and allow God to do His part.

What is our part? 

1. We live on a budget. Yes, it can be done even when you do not have a fixed amount of income.

2. We have no debt but the BoggsMobile. 

3.  We are very frugal in many areas. We try to be as careful as we can in areas where we can.

4. We realize that what God gives us is not ours, but His and we give back all we can. We tithe, we give a 2nd ten percent to other ministries, we give offerings to churches, individuals and missions.

5. We schedule as wisely as we can. 

This last one is not always possible, but take this last tour through the south for an example. We left Nashville on February 8 and filled up with diesel near McCalla, Alabama that evening. The BoggsMobile has been to Waynesboro, MS, Richton, MS, Ellisville, MS, Conehatta, MS, Semmes, AL, Moss Point, MS, Mobile, AL, Fairhope, AL, Richton, MS, Citronelle, AL, Millry, AL and St. Stephens, AL since then.

Yesterday, April 15, we put about 175 gallons of diesel in the BoggsMobile in Tuscaloosa less than 30 miles from where we filled up on February 8. That is 9 weeks and 3 days between fill-ups if I counted correctly. That is a tremendous blessing, especially considering that I had filled up the bus 3 times in the first 5 weeks of the year.

In that time we were in over 60 services in at least 11 churches and 2 tent revivals.

When Pastors that asked up to come and then allow us to come when it is best for us it really, really helps. In fact all of the Pastors that we preach for are mindful of the expense of getting there and are willing to work with us on the scheduling. Now, some meeting have set dates and we either have to make a special trip, plan meetings around them or decline the invitation. 

We do our part and God does the rest. I can not even describe God's part. He comes through right on time, just in time and every time. Without God all of our efforts would be in vain. Surviving is impossible for us, but not with God!

The next few months we will literally be all over the map. Some things we can not plan for and other times we make the decision that it seems like God is leading to go certain places no matter what the distance or the cost or the timing. 

Those times make me even more thankful for periods like the last few months and even more thankful that God is faithful, dependable and in control.

God bless you all.

Davy

Long Day, Great Finish

What should have been an easy day yesterday turned into a rather long day with several twists and turns. We left Midway about 1:30 headed down the curvy road back toward Millry. Within the first few miles I was nearly side swiped by a flying van. I was over as far to the right as I could get but the road was very low on the edge and there was no shoulder. Whew! That was a close one.

Later I had several false readings on the tire pressure monitoring system that I installed on the trailer. Of course I did not know they were false readings so I had to keep stopping on the interstate to manually check the pressure.

The sensor with the faulty reading was on the drivers side so I had to contend with traffic. My nerves were just about shot by the time we pulled into Tuscaloosa. The company we bought the monitoring system from is sending me some new sensors. 

We fueled up at the Pilot truck stop in Tuscaloosa and I parked the BoggsMobile and trailer there and drove the Green Machine to look at some RV Parks.

Pastor Larry West told me about a few different places and I had found some too. There was a pretty RV park about 3 miles from their church but there was an impassible RR track getting into it and some very low trees inside the park. It was a country setting with small lakes and lots of shade. It probably would have been  very peaceful but not if I can not get in.

We ended up about two miles from the Pilot in an annex of another RV park. It is just a gravel parking lot with hook ups which is perfect for us. Especially since it has some center spots big enough for us to pull straight in with the trailer attached to the bus. I usually unhook the trailer while we are parked but I like to have it close so we can keep an eye on it.

Pastor West said we are less than 10 miles from his church so this place will not be inconvenient at all. We are close to restaurants and stores if we need anything as well. Speaking of restaurants, the long and stressful day ended very well. 

We are only about three miles from Ruby Tuesday's and their fresh salad bar and Mini-hamburgers hit the spot last night.  I rave about greasy food so much that I know that some of you are surprised to find out that I eat salad at all. But if you have enough cheese, real bacon bits, ham, greasy pasta salad and blue cheese dressing, ALMOST anything is edible!

Yes, there is lettuce underneath there!

Kelly Jo has her piano out in the bus today and is practicing hard for our recording next week. She and Odie need so much practice that it is not funny!

I need the practice to but I am almost a hopeless case. Maybe everything will come together.

God bless you all.

Davy

Sunday 4/14/13

I put up a short post last night with lots of pictures from the Millry Tent Revival. Make sure you check it out if you missed it.

After we took the tent down on Saturday we moved the BoggsMobile and the tent trailer about 13 miles to Midway Assembly. We finished the revival here with both services on Sunday. What great services we had! The folks were ready to have church and God blessed Sunday morning and Sunday night in a tremendous way. Odie receive a great touch from the Lord Sunday morning. It was awesome.

W sure enjoyed our time here with Pastor Lamar Chapman, his fine family and his church. We all wish we could have spent more time under the tent this week but we are very thankful for the services we had. God saved and blessed in a tremendous way and I think it has put a hunger in folks to do it again. Bro. Lamar and his folks have a desire to win souls to Christ and God will honor that.

We had great meals and fellowship with Bro. Lamar, Sis. Tonya and their family on Sunday. We kept them up too late Sunday night and stayed up too late after we came back to the bus. We had planned on resting this morning and then starting for Tuscaloosa this afternoon. Although the girls rested some, I could not turn my mind off once I woke up. Maybe I will rest later.

We are supposed to start revival Wednesday in Tuscaloosa for Pastor Larry West. Our plan is to leave today and park some where until Wednesday. We do need to rest but we also need to practice for our new recording. We hope to be in the studio next week and we need some work. Practice makes perfect, right? I know we do not have enough years for that much practice!

Here are some pictures from Sunday at Midway Assembly.

Davy

Pastor Lamar and Sis. Tonya Chapman