Bittersweet Farm

We just returned from Canada yesterday and we leave today on a trip that will take us through Texas to Mexico. We spent the weekend enjoying the hospitality of the Olsen family from Tilbury, Ontario. Their daughters have served faithfully here at the Character Inn in the kitchen on and off for over three years. We sang and I told stories at their church on Saturday night and Sunday morning we sang again and I preached. This was our first time to sing and preach in Canada.

Today we will travel to participate in our ATI Regional Training Conference in Big Sandy, Texas. I will speak in parent and in student sessions and on Saturday our group of about fifty will leave for Dallas where we will have two or three days for a briefing before we go into Mexico. We will minister in Monterrey and Guadalajara for three weeks and bring a report back to the Institute in Basic Life Principles/Advanced Training Institute Regional Training Seminar in Nashville. In Nashville I will speak to parent and student sessions again.

We will try to send up-dates and “blog” our way along. You can follow the trip by watching my site: www.kenpierpont.com. Once in Mexico we are not sure how difficult it will be to get Internet access, so the Stonebridge Newsletter could be interrupted, but as soon as possible we will send out the issues that we missed. We would appreciate your prayers.

In June the Stonebridge Newsletter will be six years old. Thanks for being a part of it. If you know anyone who would be interested please send it along. We would like to more than double the circulation to 10,000 people. You can subscribe to the Stonebridge Newsletter by clicking the tab above and sending your e-mail address.

Watch the kenpierpont.com website as we “blog” our way to Guadalajara and back.

When I was a little boy my Dad had a great idea. He conducted what he called “Ushers School” every Sunday night an hour before church. The Ushers School was for children ages 8-12 or teens. In the “school” Dad taught us to dress properly, to greet people, and how to shake hands. Dad said, “Extend your hand to other men, firm grip, look ‘em in the eye, smile. Don’t extend your hand to a woman unless she extends your hand first.”

Dad would say things like; “When you reach the head of the isle pick up the offering plates and if the pastor calls on you to pray for the offering, turn, face the people, and project your voice. When you collect the offering pass the plate down the isle but don’t look directly at the people when they give.”

At the end of the training we all lined up in the front of the church and received our graduation certificate as a graduate of the usher’s school. It was a great idea. It was just one of the many ways we were immersed in ministry when we were kids. It was our life. I thank God for my parents every day. It is their joy and their life to serve the Lord. Their enthusiasm and their conviction influenced both of my little brothers and my sister to invest their lives in Christian service, too.

Last week I stood in front of our building and watched my oldest son drive off with his wife. She has a new life within her, our first grandchild. In a little over a month they will be in full-time Christian service at Camp Barakel, one of the finest Christian ministries I have ever been associated with. Before we parted we held hands and prayed for each other. We are headed for Mexico for a month, Kyle and Elizabeth will be going north up the lower peninsula of Michigan.

I will speak at Barakel this summer but not until near the end of June. We may not see them until then, but my heart is glad. They are serving the Lord. We are serving the Lord. Even though we will be a continent apart it is like looking on the same moon at the same time, we are united in service to Christ. We are all serving the Lord with gladness.

Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
May 1, 2006

Amy Carmichael founded the Donavour Fellowship in India. The purpose of Donavour was to shelter little girls from shameful abuse. The work was taxing, round-the-clock labor in a hot climate. She was bed-ridden for the last twenty years of her life. During that time she began to write. Before her injury she had been too active to write. Though she spent her entire missionary career of fifty-four years in India and was buried there under a simple bird bath for a grave marker, her writing and influence have traveled around the world and her books are continually reprinted.

In the crucible of ministry and suffering she wrote about the content of the heart. She wrote:

“If a sudden jar can cause me to speak an impatient, unloving word, than I know nothing of Calvary love, for a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water however suddenly jolted.”

When I first read that I felt compelled to call my Grandma Shipley and read it to her. When I read it she said; “What made you think of me when you read that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “It just seemed like something you would like.”

She said; “I read that to you when you were small and I wrote those words in the flyleaf of the Bible I gave your mom when she graduated from high school.

Grandma has been with the Lord now for eight years, but when I remember her, my heart smiles. I picture the little green house on Auten Road in South Bend, I remember the smell of coffee, and grandma’s ready eagerness to talk about the things of the Lord right up until a few hours before she met the Lord face to face.

Father fill my heart full of things that are good today because I know that soon again I will be “bumped” and when it happens I want to spill “sweet water.”

Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
April 24, 2006