Let it snow!

We just got blasted by a once-in-a-decade snowstorm here in the Virginia Beach area!  Our family enjoyed the snow, especially the two little Davies’ boys who played outside for many many hours.  It was a fun diversion for the weekend but it is back to the real world now!  Thank you for stopping by to see our postings from deputation.  We are looking forward to the Lord opening doors for us in churches in and around the Blacksburg area to present the ministry that He has laid on us.  At the end of February, we have been asked to speak at a Youth Retreat for 7th-12th graders.  We pray that it will be good preparation for our time with college students in the near future, as well as a spiritually beneficial time for the young people attending the retreat.  As the retreat approaches, we will try to post some of the topics for the different sessions that we will teach, as the topics apply not just to teens but to all of us where ever God has placed us.  Looking forward to seeing what God will do this month!  In Christ, Andy

Looking forward…

Well, finally get to post in the new year 2010! (Who knew three kids took so much time?!)  A brief sketch of what is coming up for deputation and preparation for our road to Virginia Tech.  Obviously, scheduling meetings is our biggest prayer request.  The past year, God has been so gracious to us in this way that it gives us great confidence in Him and what He will do for His glory in this area.  Please continue to pray for churches to partner with us.  Second is that God will continue to bring individual supporters to see what He can do (and has done) through CBF at VT!  It is always exciting to see individuals/families get energized with the vision of reaching young men and women with the Gospel.  Third, that we can go full-time deputation within 6 months (Lord willing sooner)!  Time is such a precious commodity that even the few weeks of this new year make us realize the “need for speed”–to get to VT as quickly and God-honoring as possible.  There are students who may not be back, or may not be open again to the Gospel!  Thank you as always for praying for us, for thinking of us, for supporting us in what God has called us to do.  In Christ, Andy

Support continuing to rise! To God be the Glory!

The summer was a good one, and we saw our support level rise from 19% in the spring to 25% in July.  The Lord did an amazing thing, and brought in more support in the last month of the summer!  We reached 35%!  This truly is not something for which we can take any credit.  The summer was extremely busy, not just deputation, but family, work, and beginning school for Caleb.  What has constantly encouraged us is the faithfulness of God to continue His good work in us.  Since we went on hiatus in September, the Lord has added another 5% to our support, bringing the total to 40%!  It is hard to imagine that a year ago, we had no idea what to expect, what would happen, even what churches or individuals would partner with us in what God was calling us to do for His glory at Tech!  And here we are, after a year of deputation, to see what He has done is amazing!  It truly is not our abilities that have raised support, or our force of personalities, or our good behavior, or any other man-centered accomplishment.  Only God can raise the support, and so we praise Him for doing this for us, but more importantly for His glory so that the Gospel can reach those in need on the VT campus.  Thank you for your prayers, for your support, for your encouragement!  In Christ, Andy

Gobblerfest 2009

Andy explaining CBF to a student

Today was the Gobblerfest for the kick off of the ‘09-’10 school year here at Virginia Tech.  We drove the five and one half hours this morning to arrive around noon in time for the 1:30 p.m. start.  Gobblerfest is a chance for the new/returning students to see all the campus organizations, student groups, community groups, and various other groups around Viriginia Tech.  All at one time!!!  We had half a table on ‘religious row’ to pass out information and meet-and-greet students.  It was a good introduction to the ministry here, a great chance to meet students, and a perfect chance to see God work even in 30 second conversations. (see more pictures in the gallery) One young co-ed signed up for the free things, took a flier, and when Marilyn Clark asked if she ‘was religious’ the young lady answered, “No, but I would like to be.”  She went further and asked for one of the free New Testaments, which Marilyn gladly gave her!  What a neat time to see what God has been doing in one individual’s life and how He was pleased to allow us to see that for a moment.  In Christ, Andy

1/4 of the Way There!

What an exciting thing to open our Baptist Mid-Missions account and see that two more donors have been added to the list of monthly supporters!  This newest addition puts us at the 25% mark, and 1/4 of the way to reaching our goal.  Thank you for your support financially, and for your continued prayer support!  We cannot wait to see what the Lord will do in the last half of the year.  What a thrill to serve our God!  In Christ, Andy

Visit to Hiawasee

Still trying to catch up on our first few church visits with these posts…

We went to Snowville Baptist Church in Hiawasee way back on January 25!  It was our first chance to present to a church in the immediate Blacksburg area.  I think we were both rather nervous.  One of the ‘different’ things about presenting to Snowville was not needing to tell them what Virginia Tech and Blacksburg was like!  They were such a wonderful church, very welcoming, and encouraging, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with them.  A family from the church had us over from lunch, and we enjoyed fellowship with their family for the afternoon.

For being the first church in the Blacksburg area, we were very grateful to the Lord that it was Snowville.  It also provided a funny moment on Sunday morning when we got lost on our way to the church.  While getting lost is definitely not a mistake I want to repeat, it did provide us the chance to see the country around Blacksburg.  It truly is beautiful, rural America.  And to think that in the middle of all of that, there are 30,000 students from 112 different countries in the middle of rural Virginia.  I pray that our vision will not become clouded with affairs of this world to distract us from the priority of eternity!  In Christ, Andy

50 Individual Supporters

I think every church we have been in to this point, the question has come from an individual, “How does support work?”  Well, this is how it works: we cannot move to Blacksburg until we reach a support level of 100%.  Our percentage raises when Baptist Mid-Missions receives an “Intention to Support” form (with all “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed!).  Support for missionaries exists to allow a individual/church to send out missionaries to a field so that the missionary can spread the gospel in place of the donor.  That is why the process of raising support is called ‘deputation’.  When the sherriff in the Old West wanted to round up the ‘low down, no good, cattle rustlin’ varmints” he called together a group of citizens, administered an oath, and for the length of the chase each individual in that posse became a deputy.  The deputy had the power and authority of the sherriff, and is a ‘in-place-of’ sherriff when the real sherriff would have been elsewhere.  That is what missionaries are…they are ‘in-place-of’ Christians, so that donors can participate in the work of the ministry without moving there themselves.  Support also allows the missionary to work for the furtherance of the gospel, unencumbered by a second job.  Ministry is the job of the missionary–and it is a full time enterprise.  Think of the people who led you to the Lod? or discipled you?  How involved were they in your life?  My parents led me to Christ, as did Davina’s parents for her.  Parenting is a full time job–just ask a parent!   The narrow window that is available to us at Virginia Tech, either a semester or even eight semesters, requires us to be in the position of being available full time to the students to most effectively do what God is calling us to do–see lives changed by the gospel for His Glory!  If we could see 50 Individual Supporters take us on to be their missionary by the end of 2009, we would be nearly at our goal of 100% support.

What is God prompting you to do concerning CBF@VT?  If you are visiting this site, I will assume you know a little about the burden God has placed on our hearts concerning the students at Virginia Tech.  To accomplish this goal we need to raise support, and the means for doing this is through local churches and through individual supporters.  When I say ‘individual’, I mean families as well as individuals.  I must confess that I personally had not realized that this method of support was an option until we became more involved with CBF and BMM.  What does this do for your family?  Well, (1) it invests your family directly into the lives of missionaries!  (2) It makes prayer by your family for our family a joy as you are in essence praying that your giving would see fruit on the VT campus through our family!  (3) It excites your children to pay more attention to “their” missionary, and in the process allows them to think of what God would have them do.  I’m sure there are many more ways, but these are some ways it has even helped our family to think of missions.

I trust the long lay off from updating this website have not hindered your prayers.  We are seeing God answer your prayers through more meetings and unexpected individual supporters being raised up around us.  What a absolute joy it has been these past six months travelling to different churches to share what God has burdened us to do for the sake of the Gospel at Virginia Tech!  Please continue to pray!  I am so thankful for all who have and continue to do so on our behalf!  In Christ, Andy

Grace Baptist of Labelle, FL

Our final stop in our swing through Florida was at Grace Baptist of Labelle.  I had only met Pastor Jeff Zimmerman by telephone, so it was a new experience seeing how God would unite us with them when we had never met!  What we found was a small church filled with people who loved the Lord and were determined to be a blessing to us.  I think we learned more from them than they learned from us.  Each person who stopped to talk was so gracious, encouraging, and genuine that we felt Barnabas in Acts when he “saw the grace of God” in the church at Antioch (Acts 11:23).  How do you see ‘grace’?!  At Grace Baptist it was through the singing, the fellowship, and the prayers.  We loved our time there, and thank God for using Pastor Zimmerman and his congregation to be a blessing to us! In Christ, Andy

Our time in Naples…Florida

Our second stop in our trip to Florida was Faith Bible Church of Naples.  My father, Dr. Ken Davies, is the pastor at Faith and so it was a mini-reunion with our family.  It was also our first experience with a missions conference format.  Davina and I had been to Faith many times before–Davina while resident advisor for the girls’ dorms at Clearwater Christian College, and myself as a student at CCC and then when I taught P.E. at a Christian school in Naples, and then together when Dad and Mom moved to Naples.  However, as familiar as we were with the church, it was still a new experience to be presenting to them.  We also had the opportunity to present to three different age groups: children, teens, and adults.  This was a truly stretching experience…how do you hold the attention of a group of squirming, talkative, energetic kids?  (The answer we found is c-a-n-d-y!)  It was a great experience being with the church there.

Missions conferences also afford time for missionaries to meet other missionaries.  Sometimes we would never have met them otherwise, and it was great fun meeting the two couples at Faith: Nate and Chereth Logan and Dr. Eric and Melissa Miller.   It also happened that they both were at Starkey Road Baptist the day before coming to Faith, and introduced themselves after our presentation at SRBC on Wednesday night!  (I am glad I did not know until afterward, or I would have been even more nervous the first time presenting!)  Both couples were great witnesses to God’s grace in their lives personally and in their respective missionary journies.  They were a great encouragement to us as we started our deputation process.

The church family at Faith Bible was very gracious in their own ways.  Each time we were together at services, meals, or prayer meeting, their love for the Word, their heart for missions, and their enjoyment of the Body of Christ was evident.  By this point, it is probably obvious that we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.  We arrived with nervous anticipation and left with many great memories and excitement about what God was doing there at Faith.  Thank you to all who were part of the missions conference there!  In Christ, Andy

2nd anniversary of the VT shooting

VT memorial

I have no personal stories to relate, nor will I rehash the stories of others.  There was great tragedy on this date two years ago, and there was great testimony for Jesus Christ also.  In my own life, I was confronted with the question of evil some months before the shooting at VT, and I came away with these thoughts.  (1) God is good, all-powerful, and sovereign. The God of the Bible is consistently portrayed this way.  From the first chapter of Genesis to the final chapter of Revelation, God is good.  Jesus states this clearly in Matt. 19:17, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but one and that is God.”  God also is all powerful: from calling the world into being, to raising the dead to life, to healing the lame…God does super-human actions.  And He is sovereign.  He moved the events of Joseph’s life to not only save Joseph but to save all his family.  He chose and named a pagan ruler, Cyrus, 400 years before his birth to accomplish His own will.  (2) Evil truly exists in this world. I know that my tendency is to rest so securely on the first point that I minimize the true nature of evil.  “God will use bad things to accomplish good things, so we shouldn’t look at them as all bad,” may sum up my thoughts.  However, this minimizes the reality of evil.  Rape, murder, suicide bombings, pornography, slavery…these are evil.  Maybe I should define ‘evil’ this way: anything that is contrary to the character, attributes, or will of God.  If you have experienced something evil, it is untruthful to pretend it to be good because God will use it for your benefit and His glory.  The biblical authors did not shy away from calling evil by its proper name,as in the story of Joseph: “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. (Gen. 50:20)”.  This brings up the final point (for which I paraphrase Dr. Carson) (3) God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, but He is not required to explain Himself to you. This is a hard one to swallow, and I am not saying I have all the answers, or any of the answers for your specific situation.  But if I can I would direct your attention to the greatest evil ever committed in heaven or earth and show you what God has done.  Nearly 2,000 years ago, an angry mob coerced and cajoled a reluctant despot to execute a truly innocent man by the most excruciating means allowable under the system of laws at the time.  But it was even worse than that: this mob was executing not just a man, but the incarnation of God Himself.  Man killed God!  And yet, Peter preaches 50 days later, “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death…Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:23;36).  What was done was evil.  What was accomplished was God’s good will.  But think of the day of the crucifixion, and the two days after, as the disciples despaired of having seen Jesus killed, and wondering why God could allow evil to exist.  God did not reveal His plan until He determined.  When we go through evil days (and they are evil), I ask, “Why God? Why is this happening to me?”  I want my question answered based on my assessment of the situation.  I want God to explain Himself to me, so that I can judge whether or not He has done right.  You see…I want to replace God and become the one to whom He must answer.  Instead, I must wait on Him, trust in the first precept, pray that I will be spared the experience of the second precept, and humbly submit to the third precept.  So how does this mesh with the tragedy at VT?  The God of the Bible is truly good, all-powerful, and sovereign.  The shooting on campus was truly an evil event from which people are still hurting and lives were ruined.  But, God sent His own Son, to die on the cross, to experience the most evil moment in all of history, so that we can experience the most good for all of eternity.  I pray that God will shine the light of the gospel into the lives of those who still deal with the evil of two years ago, that they may turn in faith to Him, and experience His goodness in their lives now and forevermore.  In Christ, Andy