July 2012

Hi, Everybody!!

Wow! What a great month... and what a GREAT GOD!! As the mercury soars here in Brownwood (it's 104 outside right now!), so does our faith in God and our expectation in the plan He has for us all. We have truly had an amazing Summer so far and we have truly met God along the way!

As soon as the kids got out of school, we headed West. Just a few days before leaving, we discovered that Couy Griffin was now pastoring a cowboy church in Alamogordo, New Mexico. He invited us to speak for him on Sunday morning and organized a place to stay with some friends of his. Joe and Alisa turned out to be some of the most wonderful people in the world! They have a little guest house up the canyon overlooking the White Sands National Monument and away from the heat of the high desert floor. It was awesome! Our kids were the same age and Matthew and Abbey made life-long friends. Also, we found the church to be so precious and had a powerful ministry time there with them. From there we headed to the Grand Canyon! My kids have never seen America before. The desert was breathtaking... the Grand Canyon was mind-boggling. Then we headed to LA where Heather's wonderful cousins hosted my entire family at Disneyland and we got to catch up with them after being so many years abroad... they are Pastors in Lomita. Heather and I preached a weekend in one the most amazing churches in the world. My head usher from Nicaragua, Marvin De La Rocha, has helped to build a powerful innercity church in San Bernardino. This great church has grown to well over 2000 members in eight years. It is a HOT CHURCH!! It was an honor to speak there again and Heather and I enjoyed powerful services where the Holy Ghost flowed mightily! We then attended a minister's conference we had been invited to and were encouraged tremendously. We stayed with a Philipino couple who Pastor in San Diego and blessed our family so much. My children were also at every service, loved the church there, got to help with the kids there and were treated like little princes and princesses! After the conference we headed back East but went to Yuma, AZ to preach for some minister's we had met at the meeting that week. Wow!! We had such a powerful Sunday morning service... we didn't finish ministering until 2:30. Then drove on to Phoenix where it was 113. OMG! I'm sure glad I'm going to Heaven!! Then back to Alamogordo where we picked up some friends from Ireland that had flown in to meet us there, a precious lady from our church in Galway and her daughter, Hannah's bestest friend. We made a day trip out to White Sands to witness one of the wonders of the world: the mineral gypsum comes up out of the ground to the tune of about 300 square miles in dunes that you can sled down. Very cool!

Something truly amazing happened on this trip, though. And I couldn't wait to share this with you all. About an hour out of Alamogordo on the way back home, the engine light came on in the car. It was after midnight. I ran the little diagnostic button our car has and everything looked fine. I decided to keep going and get my family back to Joe and Alisa's house for the night. It was uneventful. The next morning, however, as I was driving down into town, the engine light came back on... this time the temp gauge pegged HOT. I pulled over. Repeat. I inched our way into town and phoned AAA. They towed our car to mechanic. I got a free day rental and we continued our little holiday, having planned to spend a few days there anyway. Here's where I get to tell you about God! When I got the bill for the car, it was a LOT of money. We were in the desert. We had no help but God! But God is a great Helper! The lady from Ireland brought over an envelope from the church folks and friends back there. It was an offering for Father's Day! Guess what? It was just enough for the car! My point is that God met us in the desert! More than that, we left Texas with only $110 and $54 on a Wal-Mart card and God blessed us with the best family vacation, conference and ministry we have ever had! Ps 78:19 shows Israel questioning wether God could furnish a table in the wilderness. The answer is YES, He can! Yes, He did!

Love, The Sanfords

June 2012

Hello Everybody,

I’m writing this month’s newsletter from the road… and I’m reminded what a wonderful country God has blessed us with! After the kids got out of school, we headed to Dallas to spend Memorial Day with Heather’s Mom and Step-Father, Tom. Hannah and Abbey got to spend the night at Lake Texoma with a ministry friend and was blessed to go out tubing the next morning. The younger guys went to the local pool there in Flower Mound. We all met up for dinner at the house for hamburgers which turned into an unexpected and glorious evening. Tom, a Vietnam Vet and a winner of two Silver Stars (that is the third highest honor the country can bestow on a citizen) was coaxed by me and the kids into sharing some of his war stories. It was the very first Memorial Day our family has ever spent in America. And it was forever immortalised in our hearts as we sat with tears in our eyes around the table and listened to a hero speak of other heroes and the sacrifices made by men to make us free. We sat amazed hearing the gut-wrenching horrors and glories Tom shared from his experience as an infantry commander who led three companies into battle. It brought the saying home: War is Hell. Thank God for Heaven! And thank God for this great Gospel nation and the men that have made it so.

I was so proud for my kids to hear first-hand experiences and the price paid by many! And you never know what kids are thinking. We were talking about the National Cemeteries where veterans can be buried and telling of how America honors it dead. We told them about the 21 gun salute as we conjured up proud images in our minds of uniformed men responding to the call of: Ready, Aim, Fire. We were abruptly interrupted by a question from Matthew who looked horrified. He said, “Dad, why would they be allowed to shoot the man over and over again?” Funny, he had never seen a 21 gun salute, had no idea what we were talking about and why we were misty-eyed at the thought of somebody shooting a to-be-buried soldier for 21 extra times just for fun! Hahaha!

We then loaded up the car and headed West. I’m sitting on the front porch of a guest house in New Mexico looking down an arroyo and across Alamogordo at White Sands National Monument. We were so blessed to get the minister this morning for a friend of ours who is now a pastor here. His name is Couy Griffin. You may remember Couy from previous letters. He is the cowboy we met years ago that had a vision to ride a HORSE from the Golden Gate of San Francisco, CA to the East Gate in Jerusalem… and DID IT!!!! Our church in Ireland was privileged to help in in the journey and it was a joy to see him doing so well. He took a church about a year ago of around 25 people and has by the grace of God grown it to about 80 (adults) in that short time. It’s a cowboy church! We had such a terrific time with everybody. We had a pot-luck dinner afterwards and are about to take the kids horseback riding with the family we are staying with. After twenty years on the mission field, we feel as if God is blessing us with a family break to see our own nation. Praise God! We are headed to the Grand Canyon tomorrow on the way to California where we have a pretty busy schedule with meetings, conferences and such. What a thrill to get to show my children this country by car… and to get to preach and meet God’s people along the way is simply “cooler than the other side of the pillow”!

This is such an important time in the course of events of this amazing country. As the French diplomat said to his countrymen after returning from visiting America for the sole purpose of finding what made America great, “America is great because America is good. If she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great”. As we travel through our beloved country after twenty years of missionary service, we see the desperate need in our own nation for revival. Remember that Jesus said, “There is none good but God”. If we are to retain our goodness, we must return to our God. Pray for America! Pray like never before. I believe her best days are not behind, but before her. Heather and I are so very excited to see what God has planned for us here and feel privileged to get to serve God in the greatest nation in the world, at the greatest hour in human history. God Bless! Semper Fi!

Much love,
The Sanfords

May 2012

Hi Everyone!!

We hope that you have been blessed this Spring and that you are preparing for a Summer of harvesting the presence and the blessing of the Lord! We have been privileged to host some wonderful Irish folks here in Brownwood over the past month and have been so very happy to introduce them to a Central Texas. And what a beautiful Spring Central Texas has had! It has been amazing. Bluebonnets were everywhere and just driving through the country was like walking through a flower shop. Beautiful!

So much has happened to our family it is hard to know where to begin this month. Along with enjoying our Irish visitors, we were blessed to enjoy the first Easter in hundreds of years that coincided with Passover. For us it felt like a re-syncing with the timing and the blessing of God. We have felt out of sync for a while but now we feel as though God has ‘reset our clock’. We feel returned to God’s timing. I pray you are, as well.

We have truly been seeking the blessing of the Lord together as a family as never before. As we all know, God blesses unity like no other thing in the world. Through our children’s enormous transition of coming to a “foreign country” (Heather and I are coming home, they are leaving home), we have tried to encourage them to develop a much greater closeness with one another, with us and most importantly with God. Our purpose is to draw God’s pleasure and blessing toward our family. As Psalm 133 states, ‘…it is as the dew of Hermon, like the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing’. When talking about how the blessing comes ‘down from above’, Matthew noted that its like Jesus coming down in the cloud to ‘kiss the mountain’. Indeed, and we are the mountain! Our family has truly needed God’s help in this season of change. We have been using these principles of unity within the family to help the kids focus on God and press for His blessing. To teach this truth and provide faith and encouragement for the effort, we have used the story of David bringing the Ark back to Jerusalem to help guide us. As the scripture shows, the Ark of the Covenant had been in Abinadab’s house for twenty years. His sons, Uzzah and Ahio, were driving the new cart with the Ark on it when the ox stumbled. In Uzzah’s attempt to stay the Ark, he touched it and was struck dead. The parade of 30,000 dancers and singers stopped abruptly and the Ark was taken to a man’s house named Obededom. David was discouraged. However three short months later David began to hear that God had blessed Obededom’s house tremendously! Obededom’s house hold so honoured the presence of the Lord that it brought His blessing. David became newly encouraged and this time went to get the Ark using proper protocol with the priests carried it. He had better results. Our lesson here was simple. Abinadab and his children obviously never learned how to draw a blessing from God even though God literally dwelt in their house for twenty years. Obededom was different! He lived in such a way with his family that pleased God so much that He totally transformed their house in only three months. This blessing was so great that the King became jealous enough for the blessing that he overcame his fear, learned what to do and when to get the Ark! I don’t know about you, but I am believing for three months of total transformation in my house and situation…and we are making steps to learn, as did Obededom and his family, how to draw God’s blessing toward us!

Updating the ministry, we have had a VERY exciting month. Heather has been on TV, Local news in Abilene, newspapers in the region, radio stations all over including her hometown here in Brownwood! This past Saturday she did a book-signing for her book How to Love Your Life here after a week of radio and newspaper interviews and had a wonderful time. Many folks from her past came out to support her. It was so very fun for the rest of the family to see people like her 12th grade English teacher, Mrs. Stovall. Heather looked beautiful and was all smiles and really enjoyed the day. As for me, I have been ministering out and was in the San Saba prison unit the day prior to Heather’s signing preaching to a fairly large group of hungry men. God was moving in extraordinary ways….I will fill you in next month along with some of the big projects we have lined up for Honduras and Nicaragua.

Thanks for your love and support during this time. As always, we love and appreciate you all!
Kevin and Family