February 2023

Meetings

In this last year I preached 156 times in Virginia, New York, California, Michigan, Ohio, Washington, Arizona, Tennessee, Montana, North Carolina and Idaho. The meetings have been well attended and seemed to be a help to the churches.

We drove to some of them and flew to others. I literally flew all the way across the country twice in Nov/Dec. But God has greatly blessed us and the traveling is no special burden.

The Bible Institute

Along with preaching across the country I have been active in the work of Treasure Valley Baptist Bible Institute. I teach one hour following the Wednesday night service and three hours on Thursday evening. That way I can fly out and do meetings that go from Fri-Sun, or Sun-Tues and fly back in to teach. Kathy has a class for ladies one hour before the Wednesday night service.

My Thursday night classes are for all full time students. Last year those classes had 24 students. This year we have 31. There are also some part-time students who don’t attend those classes.

Presently we have students from New Zealand, Columbia and Ukraine this year who came to us from missionary families. We have another missionary’s son coming from Japan this month.

We had our Students’ Bible Conference this year at Still Waters BC, Lewiston, ID. It truly went well. Everyone in attendance, including the speakers, were blessed by the preaching.

Kathy & I

My voice has improved. It takes a bit more effort just to talk but it sounds OK and no one really notices. It doesn’t like to be stressed but I get the job done and that’s all that matters.

The neck is not going to improve, but the Lord has been so very kind. It hasn’t stopped me from carrying on with the ministry.

Kathy works with her bad eye to keep it in check and is suffering a bit from the maladies of age.

Regardless of all this we both love the Lord and have no plans on cutting back until such a time when we simply can no longer carry on physically.

Books

I am still hammering away on five new books. Two of them require very detailed and time consuming research which is a joy to me. I call it “looking under rocks” and I love it! It’s amazing the new information you gather along the way that may not go into the book but does go into the brain.

I have no perspective dates for the publishing of any of these works.

DayStar Publishing has a few new books to offer at daystarpublishing.com. You might find something of value if you check out the website.

Your Kindness

As always Kathy & I are both blessed and amazed at the kindness of our friends in Christ. When Covid hit in 2020 I lost every meeting from March to October. It was the grace of our church and of our giving friends that kept us afloat. God is so good.

Money is nice but the fact is that we simply could not go on if it were not for the prayers sent to God on our behalf. I have said it many times, “If everybody praying for me stopped today I would not be in the ministry a week from now.” That is not an overstatement. You folks so bless us with your kindness asking God to bless us and keep us going. It is ever appreciated and never taken for granted or undervalued. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

I pray for all of you everyday in return. I hope God greatly blesses you all! No one but the Lord knows what’s in store for all of us this year but I know that prayer is our greatest resource for anything we face in the future! God bless you all!

In Christ’s Service,

Samuel C. Gipp