Dear family, friends, and prayer warriors,
Thank you all for your continued prayers for the ministry among the
American Indians. We have been amazed to see all the Lord has done on our
behalf the last two months. Two work crews have come to volunteer time and
materials for work projects at the church and in our home. Major renovations
have been completed on our house in order to provide Becky (Steve\u2019s mom) a
comfortable place to call her own. TICS (Trades In Christ\u2019s Service) came in
February and converted a bedroom and office space into a beautiful mother-in-
law suite for Becky. They also added a car port and patio to the west side of the
house to give her a private entrance.
In March, Fayetteville Baptist Church from Bedford, IN came and made repairs to
our roof and did a wonderful job helping with several projects at the church facility. While
they were here, we celebrated Purim for the first time at Hualapai Baptist. It was one of
the most unusual services we have ever had. Everyone had a great time cheering on
Mordecai and Esther with all sorts of noise makers!
We\u2019ve also had a productive start to the year at HBC.
Evangelist Ben Everson and his family were out for a wonderful
week of special meetings in February. Our church families
enjoyed some special times with the Eversons including some
music and sound equipment lessons. Later in the month, our
teens joined the youth group from a church in Kingman for a
combined youth activity. This was the first such event for the other church and the
first major event for our teens since all the COVID setbacks. We are looking forward to
more great fellowship in the future.
March was full of regular church activities in addition to
the work crews. We bought some desperately needed new
chairs and had a work day to put them together. A couple of our
homeschool families helped with the day-long project. It was fun for everyone to work
together to see this improvement to the church in time for Easter. We were also able to
get a second restroom functioning in the basement of the church. Several attempts had
been made over the years to get this done, but now we actually have working
restrooms for both men and women!
We ended the month with a very well attended Resurrection Sunday. We had
three special days combined into one. Because of the holiday, we had a Super Sunday
schedule including breakfast. It was also the fifth Sunday in a single month. On these
\u201cFifth Sundays\u201d our teens take over most of the adult responsibilities of the service.
Since it was Resurrection Sunday, many of our church folks had donated Easter Lilies in memory of loved ones
who have passed. Our co-op students put on a short dramatic reading including some special songs. It was
exciting to see the building full. It was certainly our largest attendance since COVID.
Thank you again for your continued prayers and support of this ministry. We are blessed to be your
representatives among the Native Americans!
For God\u2019s Glory,
The Steve De Ford family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear family, friends, and prayer warriors,Thank you all for your continued prayers for the ministry among theAmerican Indians. We have been amazed to see all the Lord has done on ourbehalf the last two months. Two work crews have come to volunteer time andmaterials for work projects at the church and in our home. Major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"hide_page_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71,7,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-71","category-missionary-letters","category-steve-sherry-deford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2575,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions\/2575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}