{"id":2695,"date":"2026-05-02T20:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/?p=2695"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:51:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:51:27","slug":"de-ford-feb-may-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/?p=2695","title":{"rendered":"De Ford Feb-May 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it\u2026.\u201d Rev. 3:8b<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greetings from Arizona! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last three months have been filled with blessings to report. The ministry of the Hualapai Baptist Church continues. Some of our members have been bringing visitors, which is an encouragement to us.

We had Super Sundays to celebrate Presidents\u2019 Day and Resurrection Sunday. This year, Resurrection Sunday followed a week-long revival with Evangelist Will Geisemen. It was a wonderful culmination to a great week. Since revival, we have seen one new couple attending regularly nearly every service. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our teens attended a youth conference in California in April. During testimony time a week later, one of our young ladies spoke up about how God had used the conference to convict her about having Christ at the center of her life. Most of our young people are quite shy and don’t speak up at all. For this young lady to acknowledge her decision publicly is quite something!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, during April, our men attended an overnight men\u2019s conference. Steve was honored to speak for one of the breakout sessions on the topic of \u201cReaching the World\u201d with a missions emphasis. As the Lord would have it, Steve had just returned from Thailand with one of our young men on a mission trip HBC takes every two years (more on that later). The conference was refreshing to all the men who attended, with a couple of the guys giving testimonies of God\u2019s use of the messages in their own lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have also done some traveling over the last few months. Some for ministry and some for personal reasons. Our children gifted us a cruise for our 60th birthdays. We set sail late February for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and returned the day before Sherry\u2019s actual birthday, March 5th. It was our first cruise, and we really enjoyed it! After returning home, Sherry visited Indiana to assist our son and daughter-in-law after the birth of our seventh grandchild! Juliet was born on March 3. She is the second daughter of our son, Manny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned earlier, Steve went on a trip to Thailand. We have supported a missionary there for several years. One of the young men who had grown up in our church, graduated from our home-school co-op, and gone on to get a diploma from Bill Rice Bible College, accompanied Steve on the trip. They learned a great deal about Thai culture, Buddhism, and the ministry in northern Thailand. Missions trips really open the eyes to the needs of the world and the challenges missionaries face cross-culturally. We pray that we were a blessing to our missionaries there. So many who have come to visit us on mission trips have been a tremendous blessing to us over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are looking forward to hosting two groups this summer and have already had folks reach out to us about visiting Arizona in the future.

Thank you for praying for the ministry among the Native Americans and our family,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For God\u2019s Glory,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Steve De Ford family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it\u2026.\u201d Rev. 3:8b Greetings from Arizona! The last three months have been filled with blessings to report. The ministry of the Hualapai Baptist Church continues. Some of our members have been bringing visitors, which is an encouragement to us. We had Super […]<\/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":[73,7,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-73","category-missionary-letters","category-steve-sherry-deford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2695","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=2695"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2705,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2695\/revisions\/2705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ibimi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}