Prayer Request for Saints in Fayetteville, North Carolina

I was going to write about Labor Day happenings but I can do that another day. I received word late last night of a tragedy in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We are going to hold City Reach there October 14-21 at the invitation of Pastor Lavern Hayden and other Pastors and churches.

These churches work together several times a week ministering on the streets to the people of their city. They obviously have a burden for the lost and hurting and have been actively striving to be the hands and feet of Christ. We are honored that they believe that City Reach can be a small part of their overall ministry thrust there.

One of the men that is instrumental in helping them work with the homeless and addicts and other disadvantaged folks is Mike Mansfield. He is a local business man that was gloriously saved many years ago from a very hard and sinful life. He has dedicated the last several years to reaching people that are just as lost as he was.

Mike was murdered over the weekend and it has left the community in shock. I was not acquainted with Mike Mansfield. In fact I have never personally met any of the folks from Fayetteville, but my heart is broken for them. It is almost unbelievable. They need God's help.

Help me pray for the community of Fayetteville, the churches, the Pastors and all the folks Mike was actively helping on a weekly basis. This a a huge blow to all of them. I do not know how long the link will stay active but this is a link to the local news story.

God bless you and thank you for reading.

Davy

#36 Weekend Woundup and Weview

We have had a great weekend in Ohio. The weather was perfect, the time with family and friends was superb and the church services were excellent. You can not ask for much better than that!

Kelly Jo's parents came and spent the whole day with us Thursday and it was a wonderful day. We worked around the barn, ate a great lunch and enjoyed their company very much. They were a great help to us and even came back and spent some more time with us Saturday evening.

I mentioned the weather has been perfect and it has indeed. Friday morning I was up early to mow and it was almost too chilly on the tractor. Wow! That is my kind of summer weather.

The inside of an RV is like the inside of a car. The sun will bake you pretty fast without AC so our roof airs are blowing constantly all spring, summer and fall. This week we were able to turn the AC off for 4 nights including one 40 hour stretch that covered two nights. That is what I am talking about!

We did turn the air off a few nights in August while in Vermont but we were 15 miles from Canada so that was cheating. This is great for Ohio at the end of August and first of September. Have I told you I love this weather?

Friday about noon my great uncle Ed Mays and his wife Nettie stopped by for a visit. Uncle Ed is my Dad's uncle but they are actually the same age. We had a great visit with them and I appreciate them dropping in.

Sunday was a great day too. Bro. Gary Lee preached at Dryden Rd. Sunday morning and we were all under conviction by the time he was through. May God help us to be true to God and His calling. We really enjoyed being at home church.

Sunday night we sang and preached at Sure Foundation Church in Harveysburg, Ohio for Pastor Jimmy Lamb and his folks. It has been several years since we have been there. Bro. Lamb had invited us several times and I am glad we finally made it over there to be with them. They embraced us so well and responded great to the singing and preaching. We had a wonderful night.

That wraps up our weekend. Wednesday we travel back to West Harrison, Indiana to preach their Homecoming Revival. We are looking forward to that.

Thanks for reading.

Davy

View Out The Front Window September 4, 2016

Check out our posts from the last week at the links below. 

Odie's Saturday Post

City Reach Nashville

Update On City Reach

Marking Time

Weekend Woundup and Weview

We have not rolled the bus this week so this is still our view not out the front window at the Lazy OD Ranch.

And the view out the front door.

We are preaching and singing tonight for Pastor Jimmy Lamb in Harveysburg, Ohio. I hope you have a great Sunday.

Davy

New Music From The Isaacs

Hey it is Odie, I just wanted to share some exciting news with my fellow Isaacs fans. The long awaited new project, "NATURE'S SYMPHONY IN 432 - A Journey from Pain to Praise" from the Isaacs was released nationally yesterday. Click the link above to read more about this CD and the story behind it. 

 

The Tennessean did an article about my cousin Sonya Isaacs, her husband, Jimmy Yeary and the Isaacs new project. You can read it here

Order your copy now at the Isaacs site by clicking here. It is also available on iTunes or Amazon. 

Isaacs fans have been waiting over a year for this recording to be released. This project is fantastic!!  They just keep making incredible music! It gets my five stars rating, not that my rating means anything in the music industry. 

We have only been able to cross paths with the Isaacs to attend a concert once this year.  I am going through major Isaacs withdrawals. I keep a close eye on the Isaacs schedule! Hopefully I will be able to see them at least one more time before years end. I am looking forward to seeing them perform some of the new songs from the new project along with all my favorites. I love listening to the CD's but there is nothing like sitting in the front row and listening live!

We did get to see Ben for a few hours in February. We met him in Nashville to pick up some awesome equipment for City Reach. It has been a huge help and blessing! We are loving the equipment but we loved seeing Ben for a few hours just as much!

 

Thanks for reading and do not forget to add this album to your collection. 

Odie 

Marking Time

Note:
This post was originally supposed to go live early on the morning of September 2nd. At some point it disapeared but I did not notice until September 8th. Here it is again. Maybe it will stay put this time.

______________________

Marking Time

Well, I have been pretty bummed about the difficulties concerning Nashville City Reach but we have had some highlights along the way. God is so very good to us even if we do not understand everything He is doing in our lives or in the lives of others. I am content to trust Him. He is definitely trustworthy.

One of the highlights has been all the encouraging phone calls and texts that I have received. Thank you all for rallying around us with kind words fitly spoken. May God bless you for being such a blessing to us.

Another one of the highlights was visiting Eastern Indiana Pentecostal Campground this week. They are having a youth revival at the tabernacle and I am glad we went. It has been years since we have visited their campmeeting and although we see most of the folks at other meetings, it was good to be back.

Kelly Jo and I were both reminded of a previous visit probably 20 years ago. Their campmeeting is in mid June and it is usually scorching hot that time of year. One night the temperature dropped during service and we and 200-300 of our closest friends thought we were going to freeze to death in the middle of the sermon.

At that time the platform was on the end of the tabernacle and had three walls. The preachers were completely shielded from the wind and had no idea that the rest of the congregation was in Antarctica. The night speaker was preaching a very serious message and everyone was pretty much scared to make a move for the exits.

He took a very long time inviting us all to the altar and almost daring anyone to go the other direction. Once the altar call was completed and a few "wicked" souls timidly made their way to the altar, 75% of the crowd bolted for the warmth of their cars. If the preacher closed his eyes for ten seconds at the wrong time, he probably thought we had all be raptured away.

There was no cold this time and that made the service much more enjoyable. We enjoyed the service, the fellowship and Bro. Jeremy Spurlock's preaching.

Bro. Spurlock was planning to be with us for all of City Reach Nashville and was going to bring some families from Hodgenville, Kentucky with him. I wanted to personally tell him of the disappointing change in plans. That made the trip to Connersville of dual purpose. I would say we killed two birds with one stone but I did not throw a stone and there were no birds harmed in the writing of this post.

I hope you all have a great weekend. Thank you for reading.

Davy

City Reach Nashville

I mentioned in Monday's post that City Reach Nashville was on the cancellation bubble due to location issues. I shared the details which I will paste below for those that might have missed it. I have been hoping the other location would open up but nothing has changed. We are now at the point where getting the proper permits in time would be nearly impossible even if a great tent location magically appeared out of thin air.

So I am sadly canceling City Reach Nashville. It hate it so bad. I am trying my very best to hang on to the words that Pastor Israel Sanders sent to me. "God always knows when to open and when to close the right doors. So keep your hand on the knob and when He turns it, push and when He has it locked, be content!"

God knows that Kelly Jo and I have tried our very best to follow through on our desire to hold a City Reach campaign in Nashville. We have made three separate multi-day trips to Nashville, trying to twist the door knob. We have walked the streets, driven for miles on those city streets, prayed, talked to people and met with leaders of churches and ministries. We have done everything but beat the door down and we pushed it hard a time or two. It is locked for now so we are asking God to help us be content.

I have contacted Pastors, churches, evangelists and individuals that I know wanted to come to Nashville. Could you help me pass the word to someone that may have made plans to join us in Nashville? I would appreciate the help very much.

I would also appreciate you praying for us. We need to know what direction to go now. There are open doors but we really want the correct open doors. I would really like to be under the tent this month but I realize it would be difficult for anyone to pull something like that together on very short notice. Please ask God to guide us.

Thank you very much for reading and for praying. May God bless you for it.

Davy

Part of Monday's Post:

We are coming down to the wire on our City Reach Nashville and we have hit a pretty severe snag in the planning. During our last trip to Nashville for scouting purposes we settled on one of the city parks that is situated in a great neighborhood for tent revival.

It was not our first choice site but it was very obviously a good location and the best available choice we had. We filed an application before we left town and the metro parks folks followed up with us right away. They have been very kind, very helpful and very accommodating through the whole process.

They gave us a tentative green light and started the formal approval process. All looked good at each communication. They did ask us to adjust our date 2-3 days later because of an annual street festival in the same park and we were glad to do it.

Late in the process the manager (Also very nice and kind to us) expressed worries over having two large and loud 3-6 day events with only one day in between them. She has a responsibility to listen and respond to the neighbors surrounding the park and she was concerned they would be fatigued by the time City Reach began and not respond positively to it.

I understood and agreed with her reasoning. It would be very hard to reach folks when they were mad as hornets that we were there. They might be mad at the park. They might be mad at the city. They might be mad at the manager. They might be mad at the street festival. They might not be mad at us at all but they might take their frustration out on us by doing their best to ignore everything we do.

She offered us a time slot a week or two later but it was not workable for us. We could also have started much earlier but that was not good for us or for the churches involved. We would have had to begin two days from now in order to do it. It was not possible.