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The Robinsons’ Herald
e·mail version for March 2005
Greetings from ‘Next to Heaven’
in Carriacou, Grenada, West Indies!
Greetings
from the Southern Caribbean! We are now entering the height of our “dry
season.” Yet, the ponds are still nearly full and the island is still green
in many places. Even better, most peoples’ cistern still have a good supply
of water to hopefully last until the rainy season (also known as the
“Hurricane Season”) begins the first of June.
Please remember to pray that our water will hold up. We have
about 60% of our ~14,000 gallons left. We have been having some unusually
good showers for this time of the year. Pray that we will get more.
There are
still some relief efforts underway to help the people of Carriacou and those
on the mainland recover from Hurricane Ivan. In my previous prayer letter, I
mentioned the Pastor of North Gautier Baptist Church (Independent) in
Mississippi, Brother Coy Rice. He contacted me after finding our website
back in October. He is scheduled to arrive on the mainland of Grenada this
Friday, March 25 to prepare for the arrival of a team of twenty to
twenty-five skilled workers that are due to arrive on Monday, March 28. As
of the writing of this prayer letter, their forty-foot container has arrived
on the mainland that contains enough materials to erect ten 12’ X 16’
houses. Pastor Rice is planning to build eight on the mainland and two on
Carriacou. The houses are simple and pre-cut, and should be able to be
assembled in a few hours by each team. However, for many that lost
everything these buildings would be much better than living in shelters, in
someone else’s home, or in tents that are sitting on the ground.
Brother Rice
had wanted to build twenty-five houses, but enough donations came in to
erect only ten instead. As of today, March 22, 2005, they could use some
more funds to help them do the job and ship the materials to build the two
on Carriacou. I estimate the shipping to Carriacou and the trucking of the
materials to the two sites will cost about $400.00 (US$). If any wish to
help with this need, they should contact Pastor Rice right away and inform
him of their intentions to help. If you wish to help, you may contact him
using the following information. Please tell him that you got your contact
information from
Walter Robinson II
on Carriacou:
Tel:
Church (228) 497-2373; Cell (228) 217-2333
Address:
2323 Callie Road, Gautier, Mississippi 39553
Email:
candkrice@aol.com
Website for
more info:
www.northgautierbaptist.org
Please
pray much for Pastor Coy Rice and his team, as they will be traveling on the
dates stated above. Please pray for their safety as they build the homes and
also pray for them as they witness, visit, and hold special meetings on the
mainland during their very busy week of work.
Thanks for
praying about the repairs that our home in Meldrum needs in Hurricane Ivan’s
wake. By God’s grace, I finally got the last leak stopped by patching it
with “flash band.” Yet, the roof still needs the covering replaced,
which was supposed to be done this month. I just hope that it is done before
the 2005 hurricane and rainy season arrives in a little over two months from
now.
Jeshua’s
room is still not safe for him to move back into because of the bat
droppings that mixed with the rain that ran down his walls. A gracious
couple sent us a check to cover the cost of the paint for when we can paint
it. But, we hesitate to do it until the roofing has been replaced. The rest
of the house is in good shape. As I mention in my previous “Robinson’s
Herald,” from what some climatologists and meteorologists are saying, I
suspect that this year could possibly be much like last year’s because of
the trend that has been taking place for the last five years or so. Thus, we
are very eager to get a strong roof installed before hurricane season
returns next June.
Please pray for the repairs of our home to be
completed quickly.
Things at
Windward Bible Church are going okay. As we have, since the fall of 1992,
the folks of Windward Bible Church remembered the often forgotten folks in
the two nursing homes and the hospital on Carriacou on this past Christmas
Eve. We presented some of our Christmas program, shared a gospel message
about the true theme of Christmas, and we left gift baskets stuffed with
fruits, special treats, and a Bible tract.
Please pray
for the patrons that heard the messages that they would serve as seeds that
will eventually lead to new shoots of the “Tree of Life” growing up in the
hearts of each.
On another
note, another missionary family (with 9 children) had been attending and
helping us since the latter part of 2001. The man had helped transport
people, helped with the music and prayer in our services, filled the pulpit
in my absence from time to time, and taught teen Sunday School. One of his
daughters and their local hired family helper also helped with our
children’s classes on Wednesday nights on a rotational basis with Linda.
However, this family is now attending and helping with another independent
church here on Carriacou that needed their help. We appreciated their help
while we had it and now wish the best for the other church.
Attendance
at Windward Bible Church has been good. This past Sunday our attendance was
down due the other family no longer being with us and transporting others to
our services. Yet, we had good services and the attendance was good, all
things considered. Three of our older women are not able to attend as they
did last year. Two of them have severe arthritis that makes it very
difficult for them to get around and sit in services. Another is in the
states and has had eye surgery recently. We do not know when she will be
back.
Likewise, an
older gentleman has been in
New York
for over a year. He has been helping his son, and is now working and saving
to purchase tools and getting experience so that he can reopen his auto
repair business when he returns to Carriacou sometime in the future. We have
seen some of our young people grow up and move to Grenada where the work had
been better until the hurricane hit last year. One went to Texas to begin
attending college this past January. Another is hoping to get a job in
Grenada. Thus, we now have more children attending that anyone else, though
there are a few adults and some that have just entered adulthood.
Pray for us as we sometimes struggle with
discouragement and the seemingly overwhelming job that lies before us.
We are
planning special services this coming “Resurrection Sunday.” We are planning
a special time of singing and message, followed up with a fellowship meal
after the service. Sunday night we are planning to show the first in a
series of movies about end time themes that we hope will draw several
visitors from the village of Windward. We plan to give a brief message of
explanation and present the gospel after each over the next few Sunday
nights. Though many have promised to visit our services over the years, not
many from this community have done so to date. We hope the Lord will use
these special services to bring many in from the dark.
Please
remember to pray for the Lord to open the heart s of those enslaved in
tradition in the Village of Windward. Pray that the Lord and His heavenly
host will help us in “Piercing the Darkness” as the” Pierced One” is
presented in the Light of God’s Word.
As I
mentioned in my previous prayer letter, our 1987, 4WD Dodge Colt Vista
Station wagon stopped running back in November. We now need it more than
ever since we are down to one vehicle. I have procured the parts and we hope
they will be shipped to us before this week is out. We not only need to pay
for the parts, we will likely need to pay duties (~67% of their value and
shipping) on them to get them into the country. They cost about $150.00,
thus the duties could amount to $80.00 to $90.00 (US$)
Please pray
for the parts to arrive quickly and that we will have the funds to pay the
customs and brokerage fees when they arrive. Also pray that the Lord will
help me to get all parts back into the engine and transmission and get it
reassembled and running SOON!
As I also
mentioned in my last prayer letter, one of our supporting churches sent us a
special gift to start a vehicle fund. The balance in that fund is still at
$1,000.00. We will likely need around $10,000.00 (US$) to get a used bus
that should be reliable and safe that would give us trouble free service for
a few years. We hesitate to reach out to other communities because we can
barely carry those currently coming in our 18 passenger bus. Our car, when
running, carries only four adult passengers and maybe two small children.
When the Lord provides for the replacement of the bus, I plan to sell one of
the ones we have (probably the car) to get as much as possible out of it.
Please pray for the tremendous need of our vehicles to be replaced SOON.
My stats show that my
websites are still getting many visitors each day. I expect the number to
drop off a bit as the weather in the US and Europe begins to warm up as
spring approaches. Even so, the home page of my primary domain (www.LastChanceMinistries.com)
is now sporting a Google PageRank of “5,” and an Alexa Ranking of 158,000 as
of March 22, 2005. That is “decent” for a “religious” website that
does not sell or advertise anything. Interestingly, Alexa states that may
website has a daily reach of five to ten per million. Global statistics came
out back in January that shows that one billion people around the
world now have access to the internet. I believe that means that my
website has a daily reach of 5,000 to 10,000 each day.
Granted, it ain’t Google, Ebay, or MSNCB, but it ain’t hay or something to
sneeze at – unless you have hay fever. In more simple terms, it means that
5,000 to 10,000 have the gospel in thirty languages within their reach
through my website each day whenever they go online!
My stats show that my website gets a solid
6,000 visitors each month, and on average, each visitor looks at two pages.
Each page has links to the gospel in thirty languages. This does not include
the tens of thousands that come to my website but backs out before they can
be counted as a visitor, or they go to no other page until they leave,
regardless of how much time they spend on that page. My web server stats
show that the site had 2.6 million hits over the last year. I believe that
at least 50% (perhaps up to 70%) were hits generated by genuine visitors as
defined immediately above. (The other hits were generated internally within
my site or by search engine web-bots that crawl my site often to keep their
indexes up to date.) In any case, that means that over 100,000 people each
month, or over 3,000 each day hit my site. Again, the links to the gospel
are presented on each page, and thirty of my 200 plus pages has nothing but
the gospel on them. They get several visits each day from many countries
around the world – including communist and Islamic ones.
Strangely, even though I
have not made any changes to my website in nearly three months, my server
bandwidth, and other stats also show that some four hundred audio Bible
teaching messages are listened to or download each month. If some of these
were only partially listened to then it means that portions of more than
400 are listened to or downloaded each month. That is like having 400
one-hour long Bible studies in homes around the world each month. These are
people that found us and invited us in instead of us finding them and
convincing them to let us come in. I only wish I had the resources and
equipment to do more in this area.
I had not made any
changes or uploaded any more messages recently simply because I have not had
the time. The ministry at
Windward
Bible
Church comes first. Normally, the work on both goes hand in hand, but I got
behind in editing and posting the messages when I had to go the states for
two surgeries last year. Once I got back, we were clobbered by two tropical
storms and a hurricane and I got even further behind. I am hoping that I
will be able to get caught up by the middle of the year. There are some
things in the making that should help make that possible, Lord willing.
In any case, please pray for the power and
effectiveness of the Word of God being broadcasted through
LastChanceMinistries .com and .org, and also WindwardBibleChurch.org.
With the Lord’s help, I
have been giving messages that have kept me very busy the last three months.
After the Christmas and New Years holidays, I began a topical series on
Sunday Mornings entitled, The Myths of Modern Christianity. The
foundational theme has been 2 Timothy, 4:1-4. Sunday nights we have been
going through another topical series entitled, Comparing Contemporary
Christianity with First Century Christianity. Both have been very
challenging, informative, and rewarding for me personally. In Sunday School
we have been going verse by verse through the book of Jude. On Wednesday
nights we have been going through the Book of Revelation. I was astounded
when I realized that the “Nicolaitans,” that are mentioned in Revelation in
the letters to the church in Ephesus (2:6) and the church of Pergamos (2:15)
are likely similar to if not the same as the Gnostics that many scholars
believe that Jude wrote against in his epistle. What was even more eye
opening for me was seeing how the beliefs and philosophies of the Gnostics
and Nicolaitans are nearly mirror perfect to that of the current “New” Age
cult. Just as Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun after all.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9) I may share some of it in a separate prayer letter, or
you can write and ask me to let you know when I have uploaded the messages
to the web later this year.
A young man in his
senior year at
Bob Jones University is scheduled to do his internship by helping us
for a couple of months beginning in June. His name is Matt Templeton, and he
is from our home church,
Cross
Lanes Bible Church, in Charleston, West Virginia. Lord willing, he will be
staying with us in our home here on Carriacou. We anticipate that he will be
preaching regularly in at least one of our weekly services, teaching our
teens in Sunday School, and helping with visitation. We expect that he will
also be doing many other things and I am looking forward to his help. I
believe his being here and helping us will give me more time to get caught
up on some other things that need my attention. Matt had been on Carriacou
back in 2002 when he came with a team from
Cross
Lanes Bible Church. He was a blessing then, and I am looking forward to him
being a blessing again. I am looking eagerly for his arrival.
Please pray for Matt Templeton as he makes his final
arrangements and finishes this semester at BJU in preparing to come and work
with us in the ministry of Windward Bible Church.
We are also looking
forward to the arrival of another team from Cross Lanes the middle of June.
The team will consist of around fifteen, and about ten will be teens. The
rest will be adult sponsors or counselors. I believe this will be our fifth
team since the inception of
Windward
Bible
Church in the fall of 1992. Please pray for
the team from Cross Lanes as they solidify their plans in the weeks ahead in
hopes of being here on Carriacou this coming July.
We have many prayer
requests to share and they are presented as follows:
1.
We desperately need the roofing on our home replaced before
the rainy and hurricane season begins in June. Also, pray that we would not
get showers or rain while the roof in the process of being replaced whenever
that takes place.
2.
We need to get our old car back on the road. It has been down
since late November. I need to pay for the parts, have then shipped down to
us, and pay duties to get them into the country.
3.
We desperately need to replace the radiator in our bus. We
must constantly watch the temperature gauge and add water to it. It must be
replaced soon or we could lose the engine. It will likely cost about $400.00
(US)
4.
The purchase of welding tanks so that I can make several
needed repairs to our bus, car, and the bars on our church building.
5.
We need to have a sign made for our meeting place in Windward
for Windward
Bible Church.
6.
Purchase of several sheets of decorative plywood to replace
paneling on the walls that was damaged in our meeting place during the storm
and subsequent rain.
7.
Completion of electrical wiring for our meeting place so that
we can get our own power meter.
8.
A small desk and chair for my office in our meeting place.
9.
Paint to repaint the concrete floor of our meeting place.
10.
Funds to pay for the purchase of and the duties on two small
window air conditioners and a closet shelving organizer that are due to
arrive in the container sometime this week with the materials to be used by
the team from Mississippi. We must keep one room in our house with
controlled humidity to protect precious books, electronic equipment, and
recorded media from the salt air and constantly high humidity. We are
currently using my office in our home for this. I estimate the total cost at
$250.00 (US$).
11.
Funds to build a restroom attached to our meeting place. We
need a toilet, sink, pump, and other plumbing necessities, construction of a
septic tank, and a small cistern (or tank) to store water caught from the
roof.
12.
We need funds to ship 100 hymnbooks that have been provided by
CLBC after they got new ones. Many of ours were damaged or destroyed by
Hurricane Ivan.
13.
For a few additional churches or individuals to begin to
support us until we take furlough next year or in 2007. We would rather take
furlough in 2007, but may have to do it in 2006 because of the pressing need
of additional support.
14.
We desperately need another family to come and work
permanently with us in the work here. We need a man to work as both an
assistant pastor and youth pastor. A woman is needed to help in the ministry
to young children and help Linda with ministering to the ladies
15.
We will also need one or two families to take over for us when
we do take furlough in 2006 or 2007. We will likely be on furlough for six
to twelve months. I cannot see how we can take furlough unless we have
someone to take over in our absence.
16.
Ongoing health and continued improvement for me (Walter). I
have been doing much, much better. Linda and Jeshua have also been doing
well.
17.
For guidance and provision as Jeshua seeks to learn the Lord’s
will for his life as he plans to further his education. He is due to finish
his twelfth year this year.
Lastly, and as I just mentioned in our prayer requests,
we would still like to
take furlough in 2006 or 2007 – if the Lord has not returned by then.
We really do need more support to bring us up to our set support level.
Perhaps you know of a church or pastor that is looking for, or is open to
taking on the support of new missionaries – even if it is only temporary –
until we take our next furlough. If so, please send me their contact
information. Even better, you could put in a good word and recommend us to
them. They can find all the information about us they would need at
www.windwardbiblechurch.org. In the mean
time, please pray for new churches and individuals to be led to support us
to meet our current needs.
The
Robinsons on Carriacou extend out deep thanks to each of you that are
constantly touching our lives with yours through your prayers and support.
We are constantly aware that your regular support and special gifts are
often sacrifices made by those who remain faithful in increasingly difficult
economic times. We thank God for each of you.
Still looking up for Him,
Walter Robinson II
(For all the Robinsons on Carriacou)
Visitors have viewed this page since
December 24, 2004
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Revised: September 09, 2006.
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