Welcome to Les's Blog

    Good morning to you on this blessed Sunday morning!   May God bless you and keep you and give you His peace on this new day! A day that the Lord has made. I may be a little short winded today. Today is a big day which the Lord has blessed us with. My husband will take over as pastor of a new church today. It sort of happened at the last minute. But we are praising God for His grace and mercy.   And we know that He has great things in store for us and this new church. May God be glorified and honored and praised in this new place. Please pray for us as the transition takes place.   We will sorely miss our friends at our home church but I also know that we will see them on special occasions.     Now that we are home and this year's mission trip is over, I will be spending a few months on paperwork and photo DVDs in order to button it up. But I will never forget the way God worked and blessed us and the new friends th...

Good morning on this great Saturday morning! All is well that ends well! I haven't heard that saying in years. It just came to me. But it is true. The mission trip ended great except for saying goodbye to the Choctaw people and to our team mates. That is always sad and hard. We will see some of both again and some we will never see again. Some people won't be back as team mates. It may be too hot for them or too much work for them or too many bugs for them. But I will pray for them all. That God has touched them this week and changed their lives forever. Maybe through the faces of the children or from the children seeking their love with the hugs and such. However there is a change, I do hope it is for the good.  And maybe some of the children won't be back. Sometimes if they get in trouble they get moved to another family members home. Or in one case years ago, someone was moved to the OBCI (Oklahoma Band of Choctaw Indians). Or they get moved to another commu...

  Hi and good morning! What an awesome blessing last night was. We had 107 come to VBS last night. It was a great night but a sad night. The sad part is always saying goodbye to our Choctaw friends. When you come for 17 years, they become your friends. We always look so forward to going and seeing them again each year. The kids remember us after all these years. They have grown up with us for one week each year. They have learned about Jesus with us for one week each year. Quite a few kids received Jesus this year. I know for sure of 2 youth boys who did. Not sure of the count from the other classes yet. I am already thinking of things to do and plan for next year. I am also going to miss our team after breakfast. We will all go our separate ways and to our homes and back to our routines. And this week will be turned into wonderful God moments and memories. And as we tell the team each year, our team will never be the same again. God has put us together to lov...

  Good morning on this special day! This is the last day of VBS. But last night was awesome. Oh my! We had about 91 but it was a great night of ministry. The song in the music part of assembly that was new tonight is a worship song. It was called Worthy. Wow! It was beautiful and everyone was so quiet and then I kind of gave a short sermon. Well not really a sermon but I tried to talk a bit about living for Jesus and that He was worthy. And then in the classes everyone talked about salvation and what it means to live for Jesus. We had the privilege of praying with a teenage girl about difficulties in her life. We also have had quite of few kids that God has saved. Praise the Lord! Please pray for them that they will learn how to live for Jesus. We are only here for a week. And when there are salvation decisions made, there is no discipleship for them. Some may go to church. So, pray that that will be something that can be remedied.  Ever...

Good morning to you! I pray that you are as blessed as I am. Last night was amazing. Right before we drove into the driveway at Great Spirit Church it started raining, I mean pouring. The drops were like 50 cent pieces. And it poured and poured buckets for about 20 minutes and the sun was out part of the time. We were there a little early in order to take our team picture outside by the brick church sign. Well, we ended up taking it in the sanctuary. It was pretty wild. Then the whole outside was mud and wet grass and standing water and we have two outside classrooms. Well, it dried up pretty fast and a bit of mud was tracked inside but the Bible school itself was really good. We had 117 tonight with 17 of those in the adult class. What amazed me the most is the youth boys class. We have 11 Choctaw teenage boys who are the best behaved and sweet and artistic and want to be there. When I asked about stickball practice one boy said that he would rather be at Vacati...

Good morning to you this fine day!   The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him. Exodus 15:2 What a great day here in Choctaw! We really have a hard working team. The youth on the team are really having a good time this year together. They are laughing and having a great time. Such a great time that the rest of us can’t even hear each other talking. It is really kind of comical. But I praise God for our young people. They are the future of the church. At VBS tonight we had about 115 in attendance. I’m actually not for sure because my husband was counting the classes for refreshments and I never saw the total number. Now this is not even including our team of 24.   Some of the kids were a little rowdy last night. But we usually have that when the numbers go up. One of the things that happened the night before last was that there was no air condition...

Good morning on this fine day! God is so good, God is so good, He’s so good to me. (To us.)   But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. 2 Thessalonians 3:3 Well, last night was the first night of VBS on the Choctaw Reservation. It has been rather chaotic but then the first day usually is. The evil one has been very busy working on us but Jesus has the victory. All kinds of things happened which I won’t get into. But as I said God is so good. He is in control and we will resist the devil and he will flee from us. May God be glorified. Last night at VBS we started our first night with 89 Choctaw kids and adults. There were 9 adults. That is a great first night. The kids were so good. That is very unusual. Pastor Daniel and Sybil from this church where we have VBS, Great Spirit Methodist Church, gave them a talking to and they mostly listened. Praise the Lord! Only a few wayward children. It was really great. I can’...

Good morning to you! We are here in Choctaw, MS! Praise the Lord! God is here with us. Saturday was a very busy day for us but today will be even busier. We have so much to do today. But God is with us and will help us every step of the way. I am looking forward to that. We have a great team of 24. A bunch of our team went to the stick ball tournament last night. It is really something to watch. It was the tournament before the World Tournament at the fair in a few weeks. It is a really different game but it is very big in the Native American culture. It started out as a way to settle disagreements between tribes back in the beginning. But now it is just a game, a very big game. A very important game. God is so great and we look very forward to what He will do this week. I pray that lives would be changed forever. And that God would be glorified. I praise His holy name. Bless the Lord oh my soul, worship His holy name. I will write tomorrow after our VBS of tonight. ...

Well, good morning! This will be an awesome day. We leave for Mississippi for the mission trip. Much to do yet and my alarm didn't go off so I am running late. Pray for us. The evil one is attacking so we need to come against him in the precious Name of Jesus. God is in control and He knows our every need. May He only be glorified and honored and worshiped and loved. The victory is HIS! We will do that. We look forward to the awesome and wonderful things God is doing and going to do. We  pray for each team member and each child and adult that comes to our VBS, God would be lifted up, and that people would come to know Jesus and believe and then live their lives totally for Him. It is hard to do in some other cultures because it is not the thing to do. What is so awesome is the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Chief is a Christian and a member of one of our mission churches. So, now being a Christian is kind of the thing to do. What a ministry she could have with th...

  Good morning to you on this great new day! God is great! God is good! And God is mighty! And His mercy endures forever! “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.” Psalm 147:5   You, Lord, are forgiving and good,      abounding in love to all who call to you. Psalm 86:5   For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of l ords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. Deuteronomy 10:17 Oh, give thanks to the Lord , for He is good!      For His mercy endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the God of gods!      For His mercy endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords!      For His mercy endures forever: Psalm 136:1-3 Read through Psalm 136 and see that God's love or mercy endures forever. In every verse in that chapter it says that:    For His mercy endures foreve...

  Good morning to you this great new day that the Lord has given us!   Is all well with you?   May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who is the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 134:3   He, our great God, is Maker of heaven and earth. We didn't make the heavens and earth. There wasn't an explosion. The apes didn't just appear from a glob of something. God made everything and saw that it was good. And for God good is great.   It was Adam and Eve's fall that made things on earth not so great. Then, there were weeds in the ground, bad weather sometime thereafter, sin, unlikeable people, war, anger, and all those things that are not pleasing to God. The fall is where all things not so good started. And they continue to this day and will continue to spiral out of control and downhill. Lord have mercy on us!   I am definitely not perfect, very far from it. But God in His great mercy for me, for all of us, did what He needed to d...

  Good morning to you on this fine day! I am waiting on the sunshine. Again another several days of clouds and rain. But I think the sun is going to shine today. Praise the Lord!   Should we depend on the Lord? Oh, yes, we should! I can tell you that. This mission trip, thinking about it for a year, praying for it for a year, preparing for it for a year, putting it all together for a year, is tiring. If I didn't have Jesus, I wouldn't be able to do it. I am so thankful that He is my King and my Lord and He tells me and shows me what to do. By the time I get to Mississippi, I am already worn out both mentally and physically. But you know what? I can do it with God's help and He will give me peace and His love and His everything else so that I can do it. He is so good and great and amazing. His love endures for ever. And because of that, it is worth every second of it. Great is Thy faithfulness!   So, what am I trying to say? God will he...

Good morning this rainy Tuesday morning! Heard that we are going to have a lot of rain and cooler weather this whole summer. That will be a nice change as far as summers go. Praise the Lord! This is via the farmer's almanac someone told me.  I had mentioned awhile back that I would be using this blog for another purpose instead of writing two blogs. While on the Choctaw mission trip, starting Sunday I will be blogging about the mission trip. I will post pictures as I can. It is a very, very busy week so I will do my best to share what is happening in Choctaw, MS. We leave on Saturday but my mission posts will start on Sunday morning. I will try to post by 10 AM.  Like I mentioned before, my husband and I are the team leaders so being extremely busy and tired are what happens. I tried to write a blog last year while on the trip but after just a few days, I didn't have the time. Since I have this engrained in me everyday already it should be much easier. I will tell...

Good morning to you on this blessed Monday! I pray that all is well with you. I also hope that you had a wonderful weekend and for all the Dad's a wonderful Father's Day. Yesterday was also my daughter and son-in-law's 6th anniversary as well as a friend of mine. What a blessed day! I am afraid that I had a melt-down yesterday afternoon. I was just so tired and a little stressed. I should know better than to work on something important when I am tired. And my poor husband gets the awful experience. We have been married 37 years last month and how the man puts up with me is a miracle. And for both my husband and myself: Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is  impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  Matthew 19:26 It is only by the grace of God that we get through life and all its ups and downs. During the downs, I get down and can get negative. It seems to be when I am really tired. I certainly don't want to be that way. ...

Good morning! And especially to our fathers. May God fill you up with His love and blessings! HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, DAD! A father is a person who loves and respects you. He is honest and he never neglects you. He is the greatest that your eyes will ever see. No other man like him will there ever be. When you are in your bedroom and scared at night; A father comes in to let you know that everything is alright. A father is like no other man around Another man like him can never be found. by Sally B. Williams Oh, my father is the best. Even though I make mistakes, he loves me anyway. My favorite memories with him were when we were fishing together. I love that so much. Not a lot of words have to be said but being side by side is the best. I know that sounds like something a father and son would do but my father didn't have any sons, just two daughters who love him very much.  You are the best Dad, and we are so blessed to still have you in our lives. Even i...