Greater Portland Baptist Church

Keith and Donna South: December 2005

Praises: Praises, it’s a great word isn’t?  We love it around here and use it multiple times every day!  The Lord is so good that you can’t know Him and not use it.  “Praise the Lord,” is one of our most used statements.  Jeff uses it constantly in wrestling as do his brothers, mother and I, and now the coach and several players are using it!  PTL!  One of the boys (Chandler) Jeff wrestles with went home and told his dad, “Jeff is always saying, ‘Praise the Lord.’  Don’t you think we should be saying that more often?”  Chandler comes from a very devout Mormon family, but they are starting to see a difference.  The other day I was talking to Chandler’s dad, Lyndon.  He must have thanked me a dozen times for Jeff letting Chandler stay in his hotel room during an overnight stay for a tournament (Jeff is a captain this year so is put in charge of a room).  He and Chandler both knew that nothing inappropriate would be watched in Jeff’s room, and they would go to bed at a decent time with no immoral behavior or talk.  His words to me were, “Now I want you to take this as a compliment of the highest sort.  It is very irritating for my boy to have to go to a room headed up by a boy of another faith for him to have a decent night with no funny business!”  This is just one of 4700 reasons God has us in Nephi, UT!  We also have built great relationships with teammates from polygamist homes.  They stay in our home overnight between long tournaments.  God has really used our family to show them a difference.  One of these boys lost his mother to cancer in December.  What a blessing to attend her funeral & be greeted with, “I know who you are.  You’re Jeff’s parents.”  Please pray for Stewart, Justin, Levi, Lorenzo, Michael, Joe, & Sean.  We praise God for the good testimonies of Jeff, Brad, & Doug to their teammates & coaches.—Please know that we thank the Lord for each of you almost daily.  We know that we could never endure the challenges of the ministry here if it were not for your faithful prayers and support.  We are praising the Lord for another banner year for First Baptist Church.  We grew both spiritually and in numbers again this year.  We get closer each month in starting a building program.  Bart (the man who donated the land) will be meeting with the various committees of the city and county in order to get us released for construction.  Please pray for this and the finances still needed.  Bart is a “hometown boy” that has gotten saved and now attends the BAPTIST church.—The Lord has saved several folks this year as a result of our various efforts in the different ministries He has given: Master’s Kids, Jail, Care Center, Teens, Young Adults, Newspaper articles, Newsletters, Summer Bible Time, Camp UTIBACA, along with our Sunday and Wednesday services.  We saw increases in every ministry.  We continue to praise the Lord for Steve & Jacque Frazee.  These two are bearing a huge load as God blesses them with ministry opportunities.  We see close to 30 kids in Master’s Kids each week.  We now run about 20 in Teens.  We’ve started a Teen Sunday school and have had 5-7 teens attending and loving the time together in that context.  We have gone from the high 30s on Sunday morning to close to 60!  Our Sunday school attendance has increased to the low to middle 20s.  Even our Wednesday night services have increased from about 12-15 to now it is not unusual for us to see 20!  I know that this might not seem too staggering to some of you, but that’s because you haven’t been here.  After almost 12 years of labor, these numbers cause me to weep for joy and praise my Lord.  We had 21 folks show up for caroling at the Care Center this Christmas!  Folks, I was so effected that it was hard to sing at times.  I just looked around at all of our folks and listened, and it was some of the sweetest music I’ve ever heard.  We had 38 attend our annual Watch Night in our home on New Year’s Eve.  God is blessing with so many wonderful challenges:  not enough room in the auditorium, we don’t have enough room for Sunday school or fellowships!  Our ability to minister is hindered due to what God is doing, but I don’t think it bothers Him as long as we continue to minister.

Prayers: Don’t let me lead you to believe all is victory.  We have had our disappointments, struggles, and heartaches, but God is always faithful.  Please uphold our boys before the Lord.  They are Satan’s targets to try to make stumble.  Please ask God to bring Glenn & Jennifer back into fellowship with Him.  Please continue to pray for the above mentioned ministries.  Pray that our folks will continue to be open to the Spirit’s moving in their lives.  Pray that more will desire to serve their Savior through our local ministries and allow God to grow them.  Pray for the souls of Nephi and Juab County.  People attract people, and more can be done with our folks than could ever be done with just us and the Frazees.  Now as you pray for more and more to get saved, baptized, and added to the church, pray for me and our leadership because that will create new challenges for us.  There are at least six home Bible studies that need to get underway after the first of the year.  I currently have started three.  The building team will need to be more active.  There is a desire from our ladies to begin a Missions group.  We have families struggling with finances & family issues.  There are at least 3 families that I haven’t even been able to visit yet!  So you see, your prayers are very much needed as God answers your prayers for souls.  We love every minute of this.  Some minutes we love more than others, but nevertheless when God is working, we love it!  Pray for Charlotte, Justin, Amee, Abass, Nick, Jessie, Mary, Tim, Jenna, Jack, & Bailey to be saved.  There are several that are ready to be baptized.  Pray that we can get with all of them and they will submit to a Biblical Believer’s Baptism.  This can be a huge step for the folks out here.  We not only run into complications with the individuals who are to be baptized, but family pressure plays a huge role in this.  Many times we need to really encourage people to trust Christ in regards to baptism just like they did for salvation.  The social and economic pressures that are applied by family and community are rigorous to say the least.  Please pray.

Personal: How can I close down a year without thinking back over all the crazy and wonderful things that God has done and allowed with our family?  It just can’t be done.  I remember with a bounty of emotions as I think back over 2005.  My memories bring with them the emotions of love, tenderness, excitement, frustration, anger, awe, and yes, fear!  My scariest memories usually involve my wife with a chain saw!  The hair is standing up on my neck right now just thinking about her revving that baby up and the look in her eyes!  Now I’m convinced that the smartest one in our family is Buck, our dog.  When he hears the chain saw start, he goes out on visitation!  That’s right; he’ll go as far as 6-8 blocks to visit some of his friends.  He doesn’t bother saying goodbye; it’s understood with that first pull.  I made the mistake this year of suggesting that I trim the trees and she go back in and do the laundry.  When the boys ran out of underwear and clean towels, (understand this takes awhile with boys) I began to feel like David when he returned to Ziklag and his men wanted to stone him!  Believe you me, I encouraged myself in the Lord my God and then I hurried and got the laundry caught up!  There are some lines that the boys and I don’t cross.  You would think that after all these years, (28 this past October 1st) I would know all of them so I could save the boys more often. But it is obvious to them and me that I haven’t got them all down yet.  Like the time, (and I should’ve seen this coming one day and warned them), when Donna was talking to the boys about  getting old and how they should take care of her.  They said something like, “Dad can do that, even though he’s older, he’s in a lot better shape.”  I knew something was up when I pulled up and saw Buck leaving on visitation!  I approached the door cautiously, and listened for any sounds of the chain saw.  No chain saw sounds, but what I did hear was the sounds of a human buzz saw!  She was after those boys, (in Christian love of course), and she was in the “instructing mode.”  Now mind you, I could’ve stepped in and exercised my God-given position as “head of the household.”  I could’ve played the referee and performed some type of godly counseling.  I could’ve done a lot of things, but my survival instincts kicked in!  I whistled and the boys came running.  When we were a few blocks away, the boys asked me why we were running.  That’s when I taught them the all important husband lesson:  there are times when you must run away to settle, negotiate, or just plain survive another day.  You don’t go out and fix up the yard in the middle of a tornado.  You find somewhere safe and wait until the storm is past.  THEN you go out and pick up the pieces and put things back together.  They all nodded, but I’m not sure they bought it.