"It's never to late to be who you might have been" Geroge Eliot (1890-1880)

This coming Sunday is my birthday, I will be 52 years old. As a young man I had thought to divide my life into three parts: Preparation (college + basic work experience), Application (work) and Transmission (passing on what I have learned).

In general terms, I have followed this outline and am happy with it. At 52 years old, I would like to have accomplished more. But even so, the Lord has been good to us, and we have been blessed to have seen fruit in our ministry.

I am still church planting and have a Bible College ministry. I have not left the one to do the other. Church planting is our ministry. The Bible college is secondary, but it is not something ‘extra” we are doing that is unrelated to church planting. The Bible college ministry is directly related to our church planting, because it is through our college that we train the men who we will bring in as the future pastors of the churches we plant.

To sustain the college, we have begun work on establishing a Seminary. I have posted my first class online and hope to develop an entire distance learning option for those who cannot attend in person.

Our vision is to have on the island of Puerto Rico everything that the church needs to complete its mission. That included a place where our Bible college graduates can get further training and then come back as professors and help us expand the Bible College, and so provide more men and better trained men for the work of church planting, missions and evangelism.

So, in spite of wishing I had more to show for my 52 years, I am content to have been part of something important and to have seen the Lord bless. I have many reasons to rejoice.

No matter how you look at it, the future looks good when God is in it!

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Here are a few Thanksgiving verses I used in a service last week:

Joel 2:25 …I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. 26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.

Habakkuk 3 17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.