June 2010

Heather and I send our love along with some Irish blessings. We’ve had a wonderful month with stellar events and great results! Thanks for all you do to help us do what we do!!

First, the church enjoyed First Communion and Confirmation services. This year was even more special for us than usual as Hannah was in the Confirmation class and graduation… she had the highest grades, too. I spent 5 months with the kids teaching them a “Foundations of Faith” course. It was fantastic! For an hour every Friday we spent our time together working through basic doctrines such as: The Divinity of Jesus, Resurrection of the Dead and Rewards, Baptisms, the Second Coming of Christ, etc. It’s a time of teaching and Q and A that the kids and I all enjoy. Graduation, then, is on a Sunday service with many special invitees. The new teens sit up front, sing special songs and have hands laid on them… very cool! Afterwards, we had a big party at our house for Hannah and our special guests, with BBQ and a huge 50 ft. slide. WOW! Unforgettable!

Also, Heather’s (always) incredible Ladies’ Conference with this year’s guest minister, Judy Jacobs, was amazing! It was such a pleasure to meet Minister Judy and her husband, Jamie Tuttle. They were so humble and down to earth. They were also so very anointed. They sang, prophesied and prayed until the glory came down on every service. On the Friday night service many ladies received the infilling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4). As Judy ministered at the altar, she called out many particular ailments. One such call was for someone who had just received a “bad report” from the doctor. A precious young woman responded to the call, sobbing. She had just been called by her doctor to come in immediately to the hospital as her blood results were sooo bad following kidney failure. After just a minute or so of prayer, you should have seen her face! It was as if she walked out of darkness into the light! Her countenance was lit up like one of the chandeliers in the room… WOW. She was smiling and testifying that God’s healing power had just gone through her and she knew she was healed. She came back the next morning saying that she had just gone running! Later she sent our office an email explaining how she had nearly died in November and that she and her husband had explained to their three daughters of 13, 10 and 8 years that she could go to heaven at any time. They were going to have to move out of their two bedroom flat in order to accommodate the massive dialysis machine they were going to have to put in the room. Now she was shouting from the roof top that she would “…live and not die, and declare the works of the Lord!” (Psalm 118: 17). It was truly an amazing weekend, and an amazing month!

May 2010

Our church is currently on a 21-day fast. We are desperate to see God move in this land, that the church would grow, and that we would see real and lasting breakthroughs financially. This has been our hardest year ever. Though the work is strong, as any visitor can attest, we have been stretched ‘beyond measure’ on the financial front. I know that many of you have also been struggling. But we truly believe that if you provide for the ministry out of your scarcity, God will make sure that your barrel doesn’t run dry and your oil will not fail (1 Kings 17: 9-16). We believe we can make a difference! We believe you can, too!

April 2010

Heather and I hope you had a great March! It’s always a wonderful season for us in Ireland. After a long, cold and usually wet winter, hope of spring is in the air. All the daffodils are bright yellow trumpets telling of the arrival of the new season. This year we’ve a little extra expectation around the Sanford home. The kids and I planted six hundred bulbs of tulips and daffodils in the garden for Heather’s Christmas present while she was away. She doesn’t know where they are, so every sprout is a surprise… and they’re sprouting everywhere! We wanted to give her a big bouquet of flowers every spring for the rest of her life! We can’t wait till they start to come up so we can pick a bunch to have in the house. These blooms always remind us, too, of the trumpet of the Lord for which we patiently wait. We know that Jesus will return some day “with a shout, the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God” (1 Thess. 4:16).

As for March and ministry, we always have St. Pat’s, and St. Pat’s is always great! This year was no exception. Plus for the second year in a row, we had a team from Texas to help us out for the big event. And this team was AWESOME. They worked so hard, did everything we asked, and went the second mile for every single assignment. Along with all of the preparations for the parade and float, this team was tremendously helpful on several other very important projects.

First, our church set up a door-to-door survey to find out what people in the surrounding areas thought about religion, God, and what they want in a church. A church member went with each team member to the surrounding neighborhoods. The survey results were fascinating and will help us formulate the future plans we have for targeting the area with certain classes. We then sent them back out to put 5,000 postcards (invitations to the church) through the mailboxes of every house in all the neighborhoods. In addition, they helped us distribute thousands of tracts to the crowds before and during the parade while the rest of the team, and the rest of the church, were in the parade.

As for the parade, we had a FANTASTIC FLOAT!!! Every year for St. Patrick’s Day we choose between creating a church float or a float for our children’s camp. Last year’s float was for the church. This year, since our children’s camp theme was so great, we chose to do a float for our camp. The theme: WILD WEST. The float had a “jail” pulled by a REAL horse. The entire team, dressed as cowboys, line-danced all the way down the route. The music was loud and fun. The dance was so neat, and all the kids were singing along, “…zig zag, ‘cross the floor, shuffle in diagonal…Pop it! Lock it! Polka-Dot-it! Countrify it! Hip-Hop it! Put your hawk in the sky, move side to side, step to the left, stick it and glide!” Each time the wagon stopped, the “baddies” would break out of jail and run through the crowd until the sheriff caught ‘em and stuck ‘em back in the jail. It was terrific! Usually the “powers that be” don’t like anyone to stop in front of the grandstand due to time constraints. However as we were passing, the mayor sent a runner to ask us to stop for them and do our ‘skit.’ Wow, what a privilege! It made me feel so proud knowing our group’s reputation precedes us.

The float was a lot of fun. It was also a blessing to see my beautiful wife in her boots and hat, carrying my baby in her hat, holding my son’s hand (who looked like a real Texan boy, just before his sixth birthday)! Hannah and Abbey, my two bigger girls, looked so cute in their jeans, hat and boots, too! I was a proud dad… and a proud pastor.

Thanks for everything! Love from Ireland,
Kevin and Heather Sanford and Family

March 2010

Hope all is well with you. We’re readying for St. Pat’s big day here.

I thought I’d fill you in on a couple of very wonderful events we’re doing right now. In our church, we’ve started a terrific course that is streaming live on our web site: www.abundantlife.ie. It’s Experiencing God by a gentleman named Henry Blackaby. We’re so excited about it. We started on Feb 18th. I preach the course every Thursday at 8pm, Irish time. If you’d like to watch, just go to our site and you should find the link there, (if your computer experiences any buffering or sound problems, simply watch it the following day). If you need the notes to catch up, just contact the office and they’ll get the first few weeks to you straight away. We obviously can’t do more than that because of copyright infringement laws. By then you can pick up a copy of the book for yourself if you’re interested. The study is truly amazing. It’s about “finding and doing the will of God for your life.” The class is a little less preaching and a little more interactive with the congregation. WOW! It’s really terrific, and we’d love it if you’d tune in. Even though you will have missed some of it, the services will all be archived on our page so you can start at the beginning… it wouldn’t make as much sense, otherwise. Check it out and give us some feedback, too. Thanks!

Also, I’m now on FACEBOOK!! Yea! I resisted for as long as I could, then one of our staff convinced me of the benefits. Well, I’ve been running down the stairs every morning since Friday to see how many new ‘friends’ I have! I’m beginning to realize how interesting it is catching up with old friends and acquaintances. People I haven’t seen in years are all over the place. So, I’m proud to say, I have 129 “friends” as of this morning on my personal page, and 80 “fans” on my ministry page! I’ve never had a fan before and feel very popular all of the sudden! Hopefully I will be able to keep in touch with all our friends and family as well as reaching some old ones for the Lord!

Now, here is just a thought from our special Valentine’s services: what you believe will influence your behavior. To illustrate this point, Heather and I showed a video clip from a marriage ministry DVD to our singles. The ministry couple on this DVD tell a story, which is set in a beautiful old church, with a beautiful bride, on a perfect day, complete with a little boy carrying a pillow with the rings on it. This little boy was normally perfectly behaved but, while he carried the pillow down the aisle, going and coming, he would stop at alternate steps and growl at the congregation. Everyone thought this was such strange behavior from an otherwise perfect little kid. It wasn’t until later when they asked him what he was doing that it became clearer to all present. He was doing his utmost to be the very best ‘Ring Bear’ possible. Funny! But when we have a false understanding on something, like marriage, our behavior will follow our understanding, not protocol or reality. The point is that we must have a Biblical understanding of what marriage is so that correct behavior will naturally follow. Marriage was never designed to be the “source” of happiness. As one preacher said, “God would never give you something to replace Himself in your life.” Happiness is, however a beautiful “consequence” of the God-given gift of marriage. Marriage was given to complete you! That’s why man was not the crown of creation -marriage was! That’s why God said it was “very good” (Gen. 1:31).

Till next time, we send our love from Ireland.
Kevin, Heather and family

February 2010

Blessings to you all!

By the time you receive this, you will be well into the New Year and I trust that 2010 will prove to be a remarkable year for us all. One of the ‘Words’ that God gave us for 2010 was “a fresh start”! Isaiah 1:18 says, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Imagine! When the snow falls, you have a fresh, clean and beautiful covering over the ground. You can’t tell what yesterday looked like because it covers all the tracks, the footsteps - even a bloody battlefield would look new and clean. What a blessing that only Heaven can bestow: a New Start!!

Well, as for our church in Ireland, we are taking that literally!! We’re starting the New Year off in a brand new place. Due to circumstances out of our control we’ve had to leave our facility (one of the finest in the country) and move to a hotel for our services. We were believing to find a new location and were so concerned about the effect of the transition on the church. WOW! The whole church became so excited about the change and simply rose to the challenge. Last Sunday was one of the largest services we’ve ever had… and with no advertisement. Everyone was just happy to ‘move’ out and trust the Lord to be with us, guide us and provide for us. We’ve found the new start already working for us in a beautiful way. God has said that even despite our own failures and sins, He would wipe them away and help us start again with a clean slate. What a great God! I’m truly excited to see what 2010 brings. We have solidly placed ourselves into the mighty Hand of God. We have found Him to be carrying us forward! Praise the Lord, for He is good. He is faithful! He alone is God, our God! Amen!

January 2010

Well, what a year! We closed it out it in a wonderful way with so many wonderful parties and events. Christmas choirs, the ladies’ party, youth party, staff party, young professionals’ party, etc. December is always packed with joy and purpose, and this December was no different…except it was the best we’ve ever had! Somehow, though we actually gave fewer gifts than ever, we enjoyed much more of Christmas than we ever have. It was terrific! As the pictures attest, smiles abounded at every special event. Heather was in the middle of a real, live hair-pulling at the ladies’ Christmas party with Noreen Kenny (the card-carrying instigator at all such functions). Heather always has a great crowd for the yearly teaching and gift exchange, but this year, they enjoyed more fun and guests than normal. Even the waitresses hung around to enjoy the spectacle and to hear the Word of God!

The yearly street choir was great as well. We raised about $5,000 for the Galway Hospice, a favorite local charity that is privately and locally funded. The rockin’ choir sent cool vibes down the main street with terrific, lively tunes. We also use the opportunity to pass out thousands of tracts that remind everyone of the Reason for the Season. The incarnation is, of course, central to the gospel message. So many, especially here, know about the story of Christmas, but few know why it is so very important. As Jesus said, God is a spirit. But a spirit does not have blood, and since blood was required for man’s redemption, the Spirit of God need to be housed in a flesh body. As the book of Hebrews teaches:
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. (Heb. 10:4-7, KJV)

You see, all the bulls, goats, and sheep sacrificed from the dawn of time were never God’s pleasure…only the birth of Christ would do. Verse five says that when He came into the world He said something. What did He say when He came into the world? He said that sacrifices and offerings for sin were not the desire of God, but a BODY was prepared for Him. Why a body? Because He needed the precious blood that would be poured out for our sins, and THAT was the will of God: the offering of the life of the sinless Son of God. And that is what makes Christmas soooo special—Heaven-sent blood that would soon be exchanged for our souls. Hallelujah!

On that same vein, God really spoke to us about 2010! We believe that it will be a year of fresh starts: “Though your sins were as scarlet, they shall be white as snow” (Is. 1:18). No matter the past, God’s mercy offers newness through Christ, even for the most horrible mistakes of yesterday. When there is a new snow fall, all the old tracks are covered. Everything becomes clean, white, fresh. In Isaiah 55:10-11, it tells us that the rain and the snow come from heaven and water the earth, making it spring forth and bud…and so shall His Word be that comes from Heaven and prospers in the earth! The difference, of course, between rain and snow is the season in which they fall. And God is changing the season! Those Words, promises, prophecies that have been spoken over you that haven’t come to pass yet, seemingly frozen in time, are beginning to melt and provide fresh spring water for the seeds you’ve sown! It’s going to be a great 2010!!

Much love and God bless,
Kevin, Heather and family