The Ray Workman Family: Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

It's travelin' time again! Our destination? Vienna, West Virginia. That's right....Wild and Wonderful West Virginia. Some claim it's almost heaven, and looking at the beauty everywhere you almost have to believe them.

Our long rides are rather enjoyable, packed full of the things we love to do the most but don't always have time for: reading, crocheting, knitting, taking lots of pictures, and........sleeping! (boy! that's a no-brainer! : )

It was such a blessing to fellowship with the dear people at The Independent Baptist church during their Sunday services. The Lord allowed us to minister to them with our music, and Ray, Sr. had the opportunity to preach and share the burden God has placed on our hearts for Bladen County, NC.

For lunch, Pastor May and his wife took us to Tim's Old-Fashioned Rootbeer Restaurant. It was a neat little place with all kinds of old rootbeer signs hanging on the walls and the good food a chain restaurant just can't seem to match.

As a general rule for the past couple of years, we have been in West Virginia for the first and last snowfall of the year, and this trip didn't disappoint us. IT SNOWED!!!!

...and snowed, and snowed, and snowed. : ) Sadly, we had to leave before it could accumulate too much.

Hmmmm....I wonder if it snows in heaven -- or is that why West Virginia is only almost heaven...?

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"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

James 1:17

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Ray was born into a very poor family. His father was a drunkard and went to prison when Ray was a young boy. When he was 8 years old, his family was torn apart, and the children were separated and sent to different foster homes. It was just a few months after this transition in his life, that he trusted Christ as his Savior. At the age of 16, he was taken out of the foster home, and sent to a boy's home. There, he was required to attend the church across the road from the home. He met Wanda at this church, and they were married the day before his 18th birthday. They continued in that same church for 23 more years. In 1992, the Lord used circumstances to begin moving them out of that church, and they began attending a church where the Gospel was preached. Ray started growing in the Lord, and realized the need to surrender his whole life to the Lord. In May of 1993, God called him to preach, and he completed his training at Ambassador Baptist College in May, 2002.
Wanda was raised in a well respected family. She was in church all of her life, but never heard that you must trust Christ and His shed blood ONLY or the consequence would be to spend an eternity in Hell when you die. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." (Romans 3:23-28) When she heard the Gospel preached, it was much different than what she had been taught all of her life. The Lord was faithful, and continued to convict her heart and show her she could never "earn" salvation (baptism, Catechism, communion, church membership, or good works). After about two months of hearing the Gospel, she trusted Christ as her Savior.

"...old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

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God has burdened our hearts to plant churches in Bladen County, NC. Our highest aim in life is to glorify our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to point others to a saving knowledge of Him by grace through faith: "and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)