Western Travels

 For almost 2 weeks now, we have been in the Oklahom/Texas region. We are extremely grateful to Pastor Wayne Hardy and the people of Bible Baptist Church (Stillwater, OK) for allowing us to park our RV at the church property and travel to our meetings from there.  They have been beyond gracious to our family!

It was a pleasure to meet Pastor and Mrs. Jerry Remington and the people at Bible Baptist of (Owasso, OK) on the 6th.  We had a blessed Sunday getting to know the people and ministering through music and preaching.

This past weekend, we arrived to Weatherford, TX, to preach a family emphasis Sunday for Pastor Josh Merrell and the folks of South Side Baptist Church.  The people were very receptive to the Sunday school, morning, and evening sessions.  What a privilege and blessing it always is to see what God's Word says regarding our homes and seeing how we can practically apply those truths to those God has entrusted to us.

 We just arrived at Eastland Baptist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma,  where Tim will preach to the youth tonight. We look forward to getting back to our western base at Bible Baptist Church (Stillwater, OK) tomorrow.

Canadian Times

Hello from Ajax, Ontario, where we are in our last day of revival meetings at Faithway Baptist Church and College of Canada.  We have had a wonderful week with the people of Faithway!   Tim has preached daily in college, high school, and elementary chapels and to the church folks in the evening.  What a tremendous attendance of around 350 we've seen each night, as folks hurry from their jobs in the city of Toronto to catch the bus just in time for the 7 o'clock evening service.  The "city life" of Toronto is fascinating to observe, but the people of the city are even more of a fascination with so many ethnic backgrounds, stories of their coming to Canada and the conversations about loved ones and memories that remain still in their homelands.  It has been a humbling experience, once again, to become reacquainted and to minister with this precious church family and to meet newcomers since our last time here 4 years ago.

We are praying for a strong ending to tonight's meeting, that the unsaved (most, who are hearing the gospel in their second language, English) would clearly understand the truths of Scripture and see their need for Christ and that believers would continually be drawn to a closer walk with the Lord.  We wish we could teleport you, our friends, to this place.  We love the people of Faithway, and we know that you would fall in love with them just the same!

We leave Canada tomorrow and travel to Virginia where we will begin another week of meetings this coming Sunday in Rice, VA.  Thank you so much for keeping up with our clan and for praying for the Lord's hand on our lives and ministry.

"Friend Days" and Days with Friends

We are just now picking up our blog again since the busy summer camp schedule and will do our best to keep you informed on our whereabouts and happenings in travels.  On August 14, we arrived to Kings Mills Baptist Church to host a Choir Clinic and Friend Day for the weekend.  The two-hour clinic was well attended, and all seemed to enjoy the concentrated time of music practice and instruction.  Sunday morning service was the highlight of the weekend, since members had been purposefully seeking out folks who needed Christ for the last several months in order to invite them for this special day.  Praise the Lord for a father and son who realized their need and both trusted Christ that day!   After the service, members headed over to the local park to host a "block party" for the surrounding neighbors.  A shaved ice truck, an inflatable, and free hot dogs were just some of the highlights of this time for KMBC members to reach out to their community.  Despite intermittent rain, it was a great time of fellowship with friends and neighbors.

The next weekend, we arrived at Harvest Baptist Church of Louisville, KY, where friends Dusty and Hope Brian have just celebrated their first year of ministry there.  We met Bro. Dusty at Bethany Baptist of Lubbock, TX, where he had served as assistant pastor, so it was truly an honor to be with them in this new church for the weekend endeavor.   Again, the choir clinic was very well attended, and members worked diligently to prepare music for the special "Friend Day" service.  Many guests arrived for the special day, and at least seven indicated that they had prayed to receive Christ!  We praise the Lord for the wonderful response!  After a delicious lunch, Tim preached an afternoon service to conclude our Friend Day at Harvest.

We just arrived back to southeast Georgia (where Brittany hails from) after a super Sunday with Harvest Baptist Church of Jacksonville, FL.  Pastor Bryan Samms asked if our family could come while he was out of town preaching, so the Thompson crew provided special music while Tim preached both the morning and evening services.  We are eager to see what the Lord will do in and through Harvest of Jax as Pastor Samms has just assumed the pastorate there and is tenaciously seeking to lead his people to win their community.  Stay tuned!

And as for friends....we are so grateful for the opportunities that the Lord gave us to spend time with special friends.  Whether in their home or at their church, we were refreshed and encouraged to spend time, enjoy fellowship, and share our hearts with dear friends from Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida.  Truly, godly friendships are a gift from the Lord!

As I mentioned above, we'll be in touch more often now that we're back on the road.  Keep in touch, and thanks so much for your prayers for our family and the ministry to which He has called us.

May the Lord find us faithful,
Tim and Brittany

Homeward Bound

It's a beautiful day as we bound down I-71 south towards HOME!!!  This year's travel schedule has kept us on the road longer than years before, but we woudn' t trade the opportunities God gave us for anything!  From SC to OH, we have benefited from fellowship with dear friends, have enjoyed making new friends, have experienced spiritual growth in our own lives and seen it taking shape in the lives of believers around the country.  God is at work!

This morning, we left First Baptist Church of Milford, OH, home of Bearing Precious Seed and Master's Club ministries.  We are beyond grateful for our friendship with Pastor and Mrs. Bill Duttry and the growing friendships we've made with the people there.  We arrived to the church's gorgeous property on Tuesday evening and enjoyed a trip to the Creation Museum, getting some much needed work accomplished, and our boys took advantage of the spacious play area and fishing in the church's well-stocked pond.  It was a little boy's paradise!  Our 3-year-old Samuel even learned to ride his bicycle (no training wheels) this week.  Churches around the country hold many special memories for us regarding our boy's growth and development, because we park our RV home on the property for the week of meetings.  FBC Milford will now be remembered, among other things, as the place where Samuel learned to ride his bike! :)

We had a fantastic Sunday with Pastor Duttry and his people!  Tim preached to the youth group for Sunday School regarding the importance of their deciding NOW to live by faith from Colossians 2:6-10 and to the congregation from Psalm 46 in the evening service.  Praise the Lord for HIS working in hearts and meeting needs during the preaching. Our time together ended with the observance of the Lord's Supper.  What a blessed time it was!

In the next few weeks, we would greatly appreciate your prayers as we prepare to make a new family recording, settle back into our house, and begin music prep for summer camp.  Tim and I are squeezing in a 3-day getaway to St. Simon's Island, GA, for our 15th wedding anniversary as well.  It's exciting times, for sure!

May the Lord richly bless you and use you in your Jerusalem today!

Perspective

“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.  It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.  They are new every morning:  great is thy faithfulness.”  (Lamentations 3:21-23)

Perspective is paramount!  It is the filter on the camera lens of life thru which we sieve every circumstance that comes our way.  Often, we meet dear people in churches who, with sincerity and concern, say something along the lines of, “I appreciate so much the sacrifice your family makes for the Lord.  I can’t imagine moving from place to place on a weekly basis and living in…a RV!  How do your children cope with the traveling and being in church almost every night???”  {insert smile and sigh}  While I appreciate the thoughtfulness, this is the truth of which I must remind our new-found friends and myself on a regular basis:  God has called my husband to be an evangelist, a preacher of the gospel.  We are so grateful that the Lord has provided so that we can travel together as a family.  Our family loves what we do!  How many children have been to Niagra Falls, the Grand Canyon, from Canada to the Bahamas and many other exciting destinations in between, by age 5??!!  How many wonderful people around the country have invested their time and expertise into our children, adding to the “fabric” of our boys’ lives?   Of course, these things are fringe benefits to the greater fact that we get to be a part of God’s great work of drawing people to Himself!  Now, that’s something worth living for!  

…I’ve just shared with you my “sieve”…

But, here’s the question:  do I always consider my day-to-day situations through this filter?  Do I regularly “call to mind, and therefore..have hope”?  Looking back over the last two weeks, we’ve had tremendous services at both Cleveland Baptist Church with Pastor Kevin Folger and Bethel Baptist Church of West Carrollton, OH, with Pastor Jim Shihady.  What a privilege to meet the folks at Cleveland for the first time and to minister to them in music and in preaching!  We definitely left this super-friendly church family with new friendships and the satisfaction that the Lord had worked in hearts.   At Bethel, families were first challenged through the weekend’s Bill Rice Ranch Conference on Marriage and the Home and then our family continued at Bethel with a 4-day revival meeting.  We participated in preaching in the elementary and high school chapels, in providing special music in services, and in my conducting children’s meetings during the nightly services while Tim preached to the church folks.  Our time at Bethel was truly a blessed time!  

During these last couple of weeks though, we’ve also had some…shall we say…”inconveniences”.   We’ve experienced some equipment issues, some sickness, some lack of sleep due to a teething baby and a 3-yr. old’s nightmares…yes, our travels have been mingled with some adversities.  BUT, the Lord has been at work, and He has allowed us to be a small part of the work!  In the thick of the inconvenient times, God HAS been faithful, providing grace, strength, wisdom, people with knowledge and expertise, and the list could go on.  Praise God that He has allowed us to be a part of what He is doing in churches around the country, and praise Him just the same that His mercies are constant and new.  Truly, as Jeremiah reminds himself, great is our God and His faithfulness! -BT

Friendships and Fuel-ups

Today, we are traveling along Interstate 90W in New York, headed from the Albany area toward Cleveland Baptist Church for this coming Sunday and reflecting on the last several weeks with joy and gratitude. We have been able to partner with ministries in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, and in each of these places,  it has been evident that God was working on behalf of specific situations. For instance, in North Carolina, a 13-year-old boy saw direct answer to prayer as his mother and grandmother attended two of the revival services that week when, previously, they had only attended three times in the last five years.  God is at work in this young man's life and in the life of his family,  and we are eager to see how He will continue working in this situation in the future.   This week at Victory Baptist Church in Scotia, New York, we were able to see several unsaved and unchurched people come out for the Resurrection Sunday services, and one trusted Christ as her Savior that morning.   God has also given Pastor Jason Wampler good favor with his neighbors, and many of them attended faithfully during our Sunday through Wednesday services. We are confident that this is just the beginning of great things to come for Victory!

 Another highlight of our week with Pastor Wampler was the Pastor's fellowship on Tuesday hosted by Victory.  What a joy it was to see these men come together for the common cause of being encouraged in the Word and seeking to win their area with the gospel of Christ! It was a blessing to see our good friends, Pastor and Mrs. Steve Harness, from Wilton Baptist Church, and his assistant Jason Betts at the fellowship. We enjoyed a profitable week of meetings with them this past fall and look forward to being back with these men in 2019.

 The fellowship with pastors and their wives over this last month has been such a refreshing opportunity!  To see the burden they have for the folks in their congregation is both sobering and encouraging--sobering, because of the reality of spiritual battles taking place and yet encouraging, because "greater is He that is in [them] than he that is in the world." (I Jn. 4:4).  It is been a sincere privilege to partner with them over these last several weeks for the sake of the gospel and for the edifying of the body of Christ.  We have definitely left a part of our hearts at each of these ministries!

 Just briefly as we wrap up this update, we thought we'd give you glimpse into a travel day with the Thompson family. :).  We have found that when we plan a route to our next destination, that whatever drive time is estimated, we can tack on an extra two hours to the travel time for munchkins and equipment details.   Our habit for the last month has been to leave around 8 AM, just after everyone has had a light breakfast, so that we can get as much drive time in before noon.   Our little men are wonderful travelers! Seth (8 yrs.) stays busy with school during the morning drive time, Samuel (3 yrs.)  enjoys books, plays with matchbox cars, and eats snacks along the way, and Asher (10 mos.) keeps us all entertained with his sweet babblings until he drifts off for his morning nap.   Around noon, we typically stop at a truck stop in order to prepare lunch and allow Tim to fuel up and take care of any other equipment issues.   Not many a travel day goes by where I am not filled with amazement and gratitude to the Lord for how comfortable we are able to travel!  While Tim is fueling up,  I can start up the RV generator and warm up leftovers, make a pot of coffee, or just make sandwiches while boys wrestle and get the wiggles out in their room.  Typically, we make it to our destination church by mid-afternoon. We love sharing the gospel and ministering together as a family, and we are extremely grateful to the Lord for how He takes such good care of us and for how He makes this all possible!

New Year happenings

 We have been leaving updates on our Facebook ministry page (Tim Thompson Evangelistic Ministries) and just recently realized that we have neglected to update you here on our ministry website. Please forgive us, we're not bloggers by any stretch, and we will try to be more diligent to consistently leave updates on the website so that we keep YOU better informed. 

 So what has been going on in the ministry? Well, in December, we announced that we will be moving in August from our home on the Bill Rice Ranch and will be in our RV full time.  The last 15 years at the Ranch have been a tremendous blessing and experience for us. We will be continuing in the ministry of evangelism to which God has called us and are sent out of our home church, Nolensville Road Baptist Church in Nashville. 

 During the months of November and December, we served at Faith Baptist Church in Silver Springs, Florida, where we assisted Pastor Roger Walton during his time of recovery from cancer.   After that time, we joined Dr. Bill Rice III and his wife Mary for our annual Florida trip in which we raise awareness and money for the deaf ministry of the Bill Rice Ranch. 

 Since our last meeting in Florida at the end of February, we partnered with Dr. Bill and Bro. Wil Rice for a family conference with Pastor Greg Powell at Victory Baptist Church (Charleston, South Carolina). After that, we traveled to Tarboro, North Carolina, for a weeklong meeting at New Grace Baptist Church where the Lord definitely worked in the midst of that small congregation led by Pastor Michael Barnett.  Several folks attended the meetings that we are pretty confident needed to trust Christ. Their attendance was a direct answer to prayer for the church family.  We are praying with the Barnetts that these folks will attend the services on Resurrection Sunday and accept Christ as they hear the glorious message of the gospel again.

 We are currently traveling on interstate 81 north in Virginia, headed for Romola Bible Church in Howard, Pennsylvania, after a fantastic week with Pastor Larry Wright and Marlbrook Baptist Church.  The week began with a wild game dinner evangelistic outreach on Saturday evening.  Folks enjoyed an array of shooting galleries, exotic foods and fellowship with people in the community. As Tim shared the gospel at the end of the dinner, several raised their hands indicating that they wanted to trust Christ as Savior. We are grateful for these decisions and pray that these people will continue to grow in their newfound faith. 

Thank you for your continued interest in and support of the gospel ministry God has entrusted to us. May the Lord richly bless you!