Day one started off with us doing our first presentation at our home church, Dawson Street Baptist Church. The kids did great and it was a packed house. After the service, we tore down, loaded the luggage and then ate a great lunch provided by Steve Carroll’s Sunday School class. (Thanks for that lunch and all the snacks that were provided for the trip guys!!!)

Next we headed towards Mobile with a stop at New Beginnings Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. This is where my relatives John (Pastor) and Amanda Pavlus serve. They were gracious enough to not only have us, but they changed their service time an hour later so that we had enough time to get there coming from Thomasville. An added bonus was a great meal they served us afterwards. They also provided a birthday cake for one of our students, Ryn Conger, who was celebrating her 16th birthday. Thank you New Beginnings for your hospitality!

We made it to Redemption Church in Saraland, AL around 9:30 last night. This is where we will be staying for the week as we serve all around Mobile.

Today, we will be serving at Waterfront Rescue Mission doing various projects around their campus. Then this evening, we’ll be going to Missions of Hope for women to present our program to them.

Pray for strength, endurance, and loving hearts as we share about Jesus through work and song.

​Brian

We are getting ready for our 2018 Music Mission Tour to Mobile, AL!  Songs are starting to get memorized, the harmonies are blending better, the band is syncing together better and the students are getting more confident in their singing.  God is preparing to do some amazing things through these students!  

Last Friday, April 20th, our senior adult ministry, JOY Ministries, held a penny auction to raise money for our trip to Mobile.  The average funds raised at these type of auctions usually finish around $200 - $300.  They prayed for $1,000.  God blessed with over $1,800 raised!  We thank our senior adults for an amazing turnout at the auction!  

In the past few days, clues were given to try and guess where this year's Four12 trip will be held.  On Sunday January 21st, the reveal of the city we are going was revealed.  We are going to Mobile, AL!  We'll leave on Sunday June 3rd and arrive back home on Friday June 8th.  

Four12 got to be involved in our church's multi-generational Christmas musical entitled "Wonder and Glory".  Those involved were the 1st - 6th Children's Choirs, Four12, Sanctuary Choir and the Praise Band.  

Today we started traveling back towards Thomasville. We left at 9:30 am and then ate lunch around 1:00 pm in Shreveport, LA. After lunch, we headed towards Duck Commander in West Monroe, LA. We went in the store to do some shopping and most us went on a tour in the warehouse and saw the duck call room where the show, Duck Dynasty, was filmed. Those who toured, made a duck call, received a hat and a bobble head. After we were done at Duck Commander, we headed towards Star, MS.

Tammy Sharpe's mom, her name is Phyllis, who lives near Star, invited us to eat with her church, Antioch Baptist Church. They fixed spaghetti, bread, salad, and a whole lot of desserts. Wow, that was very good! After we ate, we sang three songs from our program to them. Josh and Zach, who are grandkids of Phyllis, got to sing their solo parts for their 'granna'. Today is also one of our student's birthday, Bryce. The people of Antioch Baptist Church also fixed a birthday cake for Bryce. That made his day! Thank you Antioch Baptist for your hospitality.

After we left Antioch Baptist, we headed to Star Baptist Church in Star, MS which was about 15 minutes away. This is our lodging place for the night.

It has been the longest day of the week as far as traveling goes. Bobby has done a great job driving us. Tomorrow, we head home! We should arrive around 5:30 pm eastern time.

Continue to pray for us tomorrow.

Good night!

​Brian

Day 7 seven started out great with biscuit and gravy, sausage links and fruit. We fixed our lunches and headed back to Mission Arlington.

When we arrived at Mission Arlington, we got our assignment and we headed to Garden Park Apartments to pass out snacks and drinks to the people who lived there. We divided into groups and went door to door passing out food and also letting people know there is a bible study group that meets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the apartment playground. After we finished passing out snacks, we headed back to Mission Arlington.

We unloaded our empty boxes, took our bathroom breaks and headed to Arlington Plaza Senior Retirement Center to present our program to them. On the way there, we ate our lunches we fixed this morning after breakfast.

We arrived at Arlington Plaza and presented our condensed program to about 60 people. One thing that happened was when a lady sitting at a table noticed one of our students, Lane, coming towards her and she said he looked just like her son who was apparently killed in a car wreck years ago when he was Lane's age. She said when she saw him, it was like God speaking to her. Lane went and gave her a hug.

After we were done at Arlington Plaza, we started our site seeing tour with Bobby Miller since he is from this area. He took us to the Fort Worth Stockyards. There are shops, a museum, visitor center and they also do a cattle drive of longhorns down the street. That was pretty cool seeing those animals. After we finished at the stockyards, we went to Coopers BBQ restaurant. Let me tell you, that's some pretty good food! After we ate, we headed back to Oak Grove Baptist Church to finish our free time.

This has been a great week so far and now our traveling starts back in the morning. We will head to Star Baptist Church in Star, MS where we will stay the night.

Thanks for your prayers. Please continue those prayers for traveling mercies.

Good night!

​Brian

Today started with pancakes, sausage links, and fruit made by our ladies. It was great! Then we headed to work at Mission Arlington.

When we arrived at Mission Arlington, we helped unload a truckload full of potato chips. We formed an assembly line from the truck to inside a storage building. This Mission Arlington place is amazing! They have stuff donated all the time by various places and people. Volunteers everywhere helping people in need.

After we unloaded the truck, we headed back to the office where they had two other projects to do. One project was to take food and drinks to apartment complex's around Arlington. That project consisted of everyone except 3 of our members. The other project consisted of me, Grant, and Zach going in one of their trucks and picking up donations at people's houses and bringing them back. We had a really great time!

After we got done at Mission Arlington, we headed back to Oak Grove Baptist Church where we got ready to do our presentation for the youth group. They fed us before the presentation which helped out a lot. We thank them for doing that!

Tomorrow, we head back to Mission Arlington and then will do our presentation for the last time this week.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

​Brian

We woke up this morning ready to start work with Mission Arlington. We had a great breakfast cooked by our female chaperones, Tanya, Tana, Shannon, and Cile. We had eggs, bacon, biscuits and fruit...yummy! Thank you ladies! Then we took off to Mission Arlington.

We arrived at Mission Arlington and we met one of the founders, Ms. Tilly, who is, I think, around 80 something years old. She greeted us on the bus and explained why we were here and what we were going to do for the morning. Today, we went to an apartment complex and set up a free yard sale on the parking lot. Mission Arlington gets all kinds of donations and one way they help people is to go to the low income apartment complexes and give not only free stuff to people, but to share the love Christ as well. We met and helped several people pick out stuff and helped carry them to their apartments. After the free yard sale was over, we packed everything back on their bus and headed back to Oak Grove Baptist Church to eat lunch and change clothes.

After we ate lunch, we headed to Waco, TX. First, we stopped by Magnolia Market at the Silos. This is the place that's owned by Chip and Joanna Gaines, the ones with the show "Fixer Upper". It was a pretty cool place to see. I think everyone had a good time.

An hour later, we headed to Senior Living at Lakeshore Estates, Waco. We gave a condensed version of the program to the residents. Afterwards, there was a guy who said that Four:12 blessed his heart and it helped him to get through the rest of week, maybe the rest of the month. Everyone was appreciative and bragged on how well the students did.

After we sang, we stopped by a restaurant in Waco named George's Restaurant. The waiter said he has waited on many teenager groups before and he was very impressed with our group. He said they were one of the best mannered and polite group he has seen...praise the Lord! Then he found out who we were and what we were doing in Texas and he was wanting us to sing a song for him. And so, we did! We got to sing "Eye of the Storm". It's a song that talked about trusting in Jesus to about 20 people who were in the same room as we were! Praise God! The kids enjoyed doing that very much!

It has been a great day! This a great group of kiddos!

Well, I'm yawning like crazy and can barely stay awake. This is going to be all for tonight! Thanks for your prayers!

Brian

Today we left Union Valley Baptist Church, Beebe, AR and headed down towards Burleson, TX with a stop in Texarkana, TX to do our presentation at the Randy Sams Shelter....or so we thought.

When we arrived at the shelter, we were ready to get off the bus, unload, set up and present the gospel for the 3rd time this week. I went in to find out where would be a good place park the bus and unload. My contact person was not there. So, I called him and he said that the place was sprayed for bugs and people couldn't be in the building all day. Oh no! At that moment, things were going through my mind like "how could this happen?" Or "I should've called earlier before our arrival" and "what are going to do now?" Just to let you know, I never once blamed God for the mixup. I was then thinking, "well, God has something else planned".

My contact person thought of another place that we could go, but that guy was out of town so we couldn't go there. Then, I was directed to call the Salvation Army and they said "we would love to have you come, but we won't be able to do it until 5:30 pm." We were there at 1:15. Things just didn't work out for us to stay. So, we decided to scratch that and head to Burleson, TX, Bobby's hometown.

We arrived at Bobby's mother's house in Burleson around 6:15 pm (we call his mother Mimi). Mimi wanted to have us at her house for supper and so we ordered Chick-fil-A and had a great time with her. She also volunteered to help wash our Four:12 T-Shirts. Bobby's brother was also there along with his niece. Bobby had such a great time with his family and we did too.

The more I thought about it, if we had done our program at the shelter, it would've been a lot later until we would've arrived at Mimi's house, thus leaving not a lot of time to spend her. Bobby has not seen his family in almost 8 years. It was great that he wasn't rushed and he could spend some quality time with them. So, I think that was the reason that God didn't allow us to do our program at the shelter.

We are staying at Bobby's first church where he served in the ministry at Oak Grove Baptist Church and it's where we'll present our program on Wednesday night. He is excited about seeing everything he hasn't seen in years.

Keep your prayers coming!

​Brian