February Newsletter 2025

This month proved the importance of long-term missionaries when God opened the door to an unprecedented event in The Gambia. Let us take you back a bit. In 2018, our sending pastor, David Talley, encouraged Patrick to join him in attending valuable pastoral training hosted by Oakridge Baptist Church in Salisbury, MD.

Interestingly, Oakridge at that time was working with local pastors in Togo to host this same conference, but over the years, unbeknownst to us, the partnership in Togo fell apart and they parted ways. Sometimes, plans don’t work out, but God always has a perfect plan in store.

Fast forward to a little over a year ago. During a sermon by Said Usef, the head pastor of Omega Church, God reminded Patrick of that training and felt The Gambia could benefit from the Preaching for Life Change, DREAM seminars. Without missing a beat, Patrick emailed Brian Moss and Gary McGabe, at Oakridge and they excitedly replied as they had been praying about how God might use their church.

Within a few months they were in The Gambia meeting with leaders from the Gambian Pastors Alliance whose initial hope was to gather two hundred pastors and church leaders. Brian and Gary said, “This is a DREAM conference; let’s dream big! What is the largest conference hall, and how many can it hold?”

Pastor Said said, “The Islamic community-built a conference center that holds one thousand.”

Brian immediately said, “Let’s start praying for that.” with Pastor Sylvester Jammeh leading the organizing committee they prayed and served while God opened doors.

Two weeks before the event, Brian called and said the team from Oakridge is ready to go but sadly he could not attend because his wife was still recovering from a stroke. God clearly had other plans. Brian arranged for Pastor Ryan Nunez from Arizona and his youth pastor to join with just nine days’ notice. They were such a blessing to us and the event.

With the help of the Lord, the Pastor’s Alliance Organizing Committee gathered one-thousand people, with an extra two hundred in overflow! We were blown away by how well received and smoothly the training ran. They even set up a DREAM Church backdrop, making the event feel as epic as the Grammys. There is so much more we could add but we will let the responses speak for how impactful the conference was to the Gambian church leaders.