We Care Ministries on the
March!
By Larry West
I spent some time sharing our We Care Training with
students in the Sunset International Bible Institute
(formerly known as the Sunset School of Preaching) in
Lubbock, Texas. Goodness, they all treated me like I
were really somebody. So warm and courteous! Wonderful Christians! Director
Truitt Adair and I spent much time in private planning meetings. Truitt used the
term “Intentional Evangelism.” That is, he is concerned, as we too have been for
many years, that too many of our missionaries maybe have been misguided in their
training, that their definition of evangelism, both on fields foreign and domestic, is
more of a “make-friends-and-wait-for-them-to-ask-you-something” lifestyle. And
that is NOT INTENTIONAL EVANGELISM! How many of our missionaries
have been in the field for years and their mission churches have not grown, all
because of this kind of mentality. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars
have we poured into areas of the world, and yet too many churches remain the
same sizes as they were ten years ago! I know that for years we in WCM have
emphasized, “You will not convert until you confront!” I like
his term: INTENTIONAL EVANGELISM! When he heard
our stats, he was reaffirmed we are INTENTIONAL in this
ministry! I told him we just throw the numbers into the
computer and learn that overall we are
presenting the Gospel of Jesus to every 5th
person we meet in a We Care Campaign. And
of those, we are baptizing one out of every
four. And those are our numbers from the
inner city to the country side,from Hollywood
to Cottonwood. But you don’t see those
numbers unless you are INTENTIONAL with
your EVANGELISM! I tell you, I saw
something at Sunset that made me fall in love
with them all the more! They are noble brothers concerned deeply about souls!
I met also with Sunset’s new evangelism director, Jerry Tallman. For two hours
and more we explored one another’s hearts and approaches. And WE ARE ON
THE SAME PAGE! We got so excited
we were beside ourselves! So, we (1)
prayed together, we (2) dreamed
together, and we began to (3) formulate
some plans together! Please pray God
joins our hands with Sunset with firm
clasps to train together MORE SOUL
WINNERS!
We completed a We Care Campaign in
Indiana! Aw! I wish every church in
the brotherhood had the heart of what we saw there! I guess 95% of the small
church there was involved in the campaign! Warm, loving, accepting … well, how
about the fruits of the Spirit that would describe them best: Love, joy, peace,
patient, faithful! The church there was struggling to have 38-to-40 in attendance
on Sunday morning. They had only one child in class. “We’re going to die, Larry,
if we don’t get some help,” elder Ray Nasser told me when he invited us to come.
So, we gladly went. We took 17 of our Cadre members from nine states into
Covington and in six days brought 14 souls to the Lord. Another has obeyed since
we closed. And we were able to rescue husbands and wives, grandparents and
grandchildren. And they brought in their own children to “noisy up” the place!
Ha! A JOYOUS noise! That gave them more solid growth! More than 60 were
there Victory Sunday morning.
And more than conversion numbers describe the success of a campaign. We can
report that one out of every five people met during the week, whether it be at their
home, on the street, in a store, wherever, resulted in a Gospel Presentation. That
means, every fifth person whom we met in town was greeted by a loving, friendly
face from the Church of Christ; and then they heard verbally a caring explanation
of the Gospel News of Jesus Christ! Then, one out of every five of those who
heard it resulted in his obeying the Gospel to be saved. Translated, that means the
Campaign is still going to have positive effects on down the road. In the past we
have seen people up to FIVE YEARS after a campaign come to the church
building, tell that someone friendly had knocked on their door and told them the
Gospel, and they hadn’t been able to get it off their minds! Then, they became
Christians!
Something else here: A young adult named Celestia Wohlford from the other side
of Indiana placed on her Face book page these encouraging words: “The Gospel
presentation that We Care Ministries put together is what changed my life and
brought me into the Lord’s church. These guys don’t just preach and talk about
soul winning. They do hands-on training, hitting the streets, helping Christians
win others in their city to the Lord….” Then, Celestia drove to Covington and
gave us a chance to meet her.
Now, let me tell you about a new Christian, Nicki. We baptized Nicki at our
Lampasas, Texas, Campaign the first of LAST year. To reduce the length of this
wonderful story, Nicki sadly had been used by men, passed around, and used and
abused by others; that was her lifestyle! After we found her in our campaign and
baptized her into Christ, the church in Lampasas reached out to her, got her located
into a brotherhood children’s home now helping unwed mothers, and are so
impressed with her that they are now helping her get her G.E.D. And they have
promised to help her get into college! Think of it! Nicki wants now to get into
social work to help other girls OVERCOME who end up in her same sad state of
affairs. But she would have had no such future if someone hadn’t sat her down and
taught her the Gospel!
Then, just before the holidays, we baptized 14 in our short WC Campaign in
Midland, Texas, and the church there continues to win more souls. By the way, the
other congregation in Midland, the Fairmont Park congregation, is STILL running
on the WC Campaign momentum and winning souls; they have won more than 40
souls since our Campaign with them LAST April! Others in our Cadre continue to
win souls. I mean, Reggie Gardner sends me texts regularly, telling me of new
one’s he is converting as well as Christians in Texas and Florida he is training. As
I write this letter, in fact, he just “dinged” in another one! Wow! What a life! 
Then, here are a couple of incidents of “later fruit” of
YOUR work in us! We just learned that a gentleman
we converted OUT OF MORMONISM eight years
ago in one of our WC Campaigns has just been
installed as one of the elders in the Lord’s church in
Ft. Worth, Texas! Here is his picture, Santiago with
is sweet family, including two sons and a daughter
(Right). Then, you might remember my telling you
that two of our Cadre members, Steven Prine of
Turlock, California, and Angela, and two more went
to the Philippines last year to teach our We Care Approach to two schools and two
congregations there. Well, the torch is still being carried there! Those brethren
fell in love with the approach and really went to work! Before the end of the year,
which was last month, those brethren took it and won 85 to Christ!
You know, in spite of our constant “encouragement reports” … I mean,
encouraging brethren is part of our urgent work … but in spite of our efforts we
still hear some say, “It doesn’t work.” Good Grecian Groceries, it does too! A
young adult named Briianne Bell Tomas tuned in one day to an internet site run by
one of our We Care Cadre members, Robert Wagnon. Robert both studies on line
with people, using our We Care Approach and then sends people to our We Care
web site, www.wecareministries.com, to watch our presentation of the Gospel.
Well, Briianne watched our Gospel presentation and was baptized into Christ.
Now, does it work? Well, let me allow her to tell you here IN HER OWN
WORDS (with her own spelling) the story of her spiritual growth and how she has
won others to Christ. Briiane says,
“We were having to walk to the store and do our laundry in the bath tub. The Lord
was still providing for us with the help of our friends, Mike and Sara. We were
given help with food. Even got our car fixed. Things were falling down around us
but the Lord still kept us standing. Things were also not going very good with my
friends and Alex’s brother, (Alex is Briiane’s husband) so we moved in with our
friends Melissa and Cale. Although we ran into some issues with them, we always
made it. Our friends were lost and didn’t have Jesus like I do and I was having a
hard time accepting their ways. I was able to get
them to go to church with us. I also started a
Bible study with Melissa and she started to
change and that also made her husband change a
little. So, things were starting to look better. At
Thanksgiving it was AWESOME! For the first
time ever I felt we belonged to a family. Then, in
December my nephew Dominic Nilo was
baptized and that same night Melissa and Cale
heard the Gospel from our great friend, Robert
Wagnon on Pal talk, and were baptized by my
husband Alex Tomas. That same Friday we
started a series for New Christians. It’s been
successful! It’s 2013 today. I’m gonna make
this year MY YEAR. I’m gonna be a better Christian, so thankful and blessed!”
Well, if you’ve stayed with me this far, I KNOW you are excited! Success stories
always inspire all of us! 