Where’s Brady – Update 3

The Lord has done so much in such a small amount of time…

Pastor Brady has been busy preparing to share the Gospel with all those who are working for them as well as their families. Part of the way he is doing this is by making it part of their payday. The men have been encouraged to bring their families with them, then after arriving to receive their money the Gospel is shared with them by a local pastor before they are paid. God is moving!

The Lord is also using Pastor Brady to change individual lives.

One such life is that of little Angelo. As you may have seen on his facebook post, Pastor Brady met a little boy with a a cleft pallet… after meeting him and taking a picture of him to remember to pray for him he logged into facebook one day and saw that a girl he went to high school with was working for an NGO in MANILLA and had posted a picture of a young boy who had just had a successful cleft pallet surgery. He then contacted her to find out if she had “room for one more?” She checked and found a way to get him in which meant Brady needed to find this random little boy again. He returned to where he had found him and the first boy he asked if he knew him was… HIS BROTHER!! The next day they had a five hour journey to Tacloban and would then fly Angelo and his Mother to Manila for his surgery… all expenses paid!

There is another man who walks for miles using sandals on them and he farms on his hands, picking up coconuts for a living… he is very poor and is unable to afford a wheelchair.

God provided a wheelchair for this guy!!! A wheel-chair bike with room for a cooler on the back so he can sell stuff from his chair!!! For this guy! Now, just have to find him!!

“I can’t do everything…but I can do something.” – Jerry Harding

Pastor Brady’s prayer request:

Please pray for some of the little boys that follow me everywhere back at my base.

Please pray for Angelo, pray for a strong and good recovery!!! He’ll be in Manila for a few weeks following his surgery to heal up.

Pray for the group I hired (all 55 of them). Pray that the seeds that have been planted in them would grow and God would continue to draw them!!!

Pray as I wrap things up here in our pay outs. Gotta move all our stuff 6 hours down the road to Tacloban. Pray that my exit would be honoring to the Lord and a blessing to everyone here. Pray I could bless all the staff and expats of Samaritans Purse as I go.

Desiring God – Pastor’s Conference 2015

Each year the Oasis Pastors take the time to travel to a Pastor’s Conference, this year they traveled to Minnesota to attend the Desiring God conference. Here an inside look at why the trip is an important one and what the Lord had for our Pastoral Team.

Pastor Bubba, why do Oasis Pastors take the venture out to Minnesota each year to attend the Desiring God conference?

Every year the Oasis pastors look forward to sharing together  a time of fellowship, prayer, brain storming, vision casting and in/depth teaching from the Scriptures with other visionary pastors and church planters from across the across the country and around the world.  It is always a time of much needed spiritual refreshment, encouragement and rest…..A Time for Refueling for our mission in Amherst County and Central Virginia!

Pastor Brady, what was the focus of this year’s Desiring God conference? And how did it impact your time there?

Where sin increased; the rebellion of man; & the abundance of grace. It addressed false teachings in churches in American today and encouraged us to realize we are more sinful that we could ever imagine and more loved than we could ever fathom.

Pastor Jonathan, what session impacted you the most? Who was the speaker and how can you apply his message?

Dr. John Piper’s session Make War: The Pastor and His People in the Battle Against Sin was the most impactful message of the conference for me. One quote in particular stuck out to me:

All human suffering, especially the suffering of the Son of God, is meant by God to portray, for dull souls like ours, the unimaginable ugliness and offensiveness of sin — That’s why God subjected the world to this horrible futility (Romans 8:20) — to make plain how ugly and offensive sin is.

I was reminded of how dim my view of sin is. Each day is given to allow us to see the wretchedness and insanity of sin specifically in our hearts. We cannot take sin seriously until we see it for what it is and we can only see it for what it is when we see it in light of God’s holiness. We cannot go into the violent war against sin without a proper view of God’s holiness. Without this view we are blind. In fact, without this view of the holiness of God we are not even fighting. I left with a renewed desperation for God to show me the ugliness and offensiveness of my sin. May the slightest bend of my heart towards self be repulsive to me as it is to God.

Pastor Steve, what was the most memorable moment of this trip?

The friendship we developed with the taxi drive who picked us up from the airport who we found out was a fellow brother in Christ. We called him later and invited him to dinner where he shared his testimony with us.

Jared, why would you consider conferences like these vital to church pastors?

Even Jesus needed times of silence and aloneness with God the Father away from the crowds and chaos. “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone” Matthew 14:23. My natural rhythm as a man is to be constantly on the go, constantly doing. Pastors especially need to “be still and know that he is God”. We must acknowledge our desperate need for him in life and ministry. Conferences and retreats are vital for pastors to deliberately carve out multiple days throughout the year to seek the face of God for vision and clarity amongst the chaos that comes with ministry.

Kameish, while the Pastoral Team was out, what did you do to get renewed and revived??

We had some much needed time of fun (nails!), relaxation (movie night!), bonding (Barnes & Noble), AND digging into the Word! Nedra took us through an introspective study on the Book of James, especially viewing ministry life through the lens of Biblical truth. I most significantly recall the correlation made between James 1:11 and 1 Corinthians 3:13-15, a reminder that any works not done purely for Christ will be burned. It was certainly a time that allowed me to refocus my energies and the priorities of my heart.”