I know that I am going to cram together a bunch of somewhat un-related topics here today but it is the only way that I can even begin to get caught up with the things that I need to be blogging about. I have so may pictures and there are so many exciting things to tell. This entire post today is just a bunch of random things that I have been doing or wanting to tell the world about for awhile now and they are just piling up in my head and I need to get them on here and off of my mind. I am putting together many more things to write on here but in the mean time here are a few tidbits to keep everyone occupied and reading fresh material about HMA and our ministries. Please read, enjoy and share them at your convenience. Here are a few from just the past little while.
This first picture is of all the original members of what was then called Sloggett Family Ministries which later became Holiness Missions to America, now generally referred to as HMA Inc. This is myself with my wife and our four children at our home church on Christmas Sunday 2012. Our oldest is Justin, in the dark maroon shirt, he is 22 and has always worked with the mission group and still works full time for our ministry today. Next is Sean, in the suit and tie. He is 20 and worked for the mission group up until last year. Sean has been very valuable to our ministries over the years. He still does things with the ministry from time to time but he holds down a full time job at the bank and goes to college as well. Our youngest son's name is Branden. He is the one in the pink shirt. Most people that know him do not even know that is his name because he has been called Ducky his entire life and to this day that is all most of us ever refer to him as. Ducky has had many different forms of schooling but he is basically a junior in high school now and should graduate next year from Bethany Christian Academy. He also works part time at the mission. Our daughter's name is Tirzah. It is like saying tears and then uh at the end. Tears uh. She is a lovely young lady and very dedicated to the Lord. Tirzah works for the mission group also. My wife works keeps our home, keeps our family budget, keeps the books at The Saving Place, which is the furniture thrift store owned by our mission group, keeps the master books for HMA, teaches 5th and 6th grade at our K-12 school at our home church, keeps me in line and somehow keeps from going insane. She is a marvelous lady. We had her entire family come to Oklahoma from Idaho and Virginia for Christmas this year. My wife, Niki, has an older brother that has spent most of his adulst life in the army and he and his family live in Virginia and drove out. Niki also has a younger sister that still lives near where we were all raised in Nyssa, Oregon and her and her husband and children drove out. Also my mother and father-in-law flew out. It was an outstanding time of family and fun. Some stayed in our home with us while others stayed in a hotel. We had many big meals together at our home and opened gifts, shot guns at the gun range, played with the children and had long conversations over multiple cups of coffee. I was sick for most of the time and that by itself was not a lot of fun but altogether I was glad that it worked out as well as it did.
The next few pictures are of what is now fondly referred to as "The Victory Wall". This is something that was started in the first HMA building a several years back. My original office was a small room that faced the highway off to the side of the first official HMA sanctuary. Doing the type of outreach that we do is so amazing that we feel the need to take a lot of pictures. Pictures of drug addicts all messed up from years of abuse. Pictures of some of us passing out tracts or preaching on the garbage strewn streets of inner cities. Pictures of all the pills that were turned in at the altar calls before we flush them down the toilet. And especially pictures of people that God has saved, healed, delivered and put back together. After years of doing this type of work and taking tens of thousands of pictures we began to receive notes, letters, cards and all sorts of trinkets and paraphernalia. Each of these things were very special to me and I would look at them, touch them and read them over and over. But they were beginning to really pile up in my office and I was afraid of losing them. I had stuck a couple of letters, notes and pictures on the wall that were extra special to me one day and then I began to realize that they were all so special it was hard to categorize them. One day I just started putting them all up on my wall with tacks, nails and tape. It became a huge undertaking and it consumed weeks and weeks of my spare time. People that visited the mission always wanted to come in and see "The Wall", as it was referred to back then. When we moved to our new, much larger building, several ladies that work with one of our affiliated asked if they could donate their time to move "The Wall" to the new location. The wall had actually become the walls. Almost my entire office had been completely papers in pictures, letters, cards, stories and things given to the mission by our converts. Things to remember them and their stories by. Thankfully my new office was much larger and the wall quickly expanded. As the wall was expanding so was the new store and the mission projects. We eventually had to move my office again and take that large spacious area that was my office in as show room space for our new line of mattresses that we were making money for the mission group with. When we did, I almost had the wall taken down and moved again but I decided not to. And I am so glad that i didn't. Our mattresses are out most popular product and one end of the mattress gallery is completely coved with the "Victory Wall" as it is now called. People look at it every day. People have come from other states and other denominations and walked in the front door and when we ask if we can help them find anything, they say, "We came to see the victory wall." It is nothing these days to be shopping through our store and get to the back showroom and see 25 different mattress sets on display and a person or two standing in the back crying, looking at the victory wall. People ask me questions about it almost every day. I have actually seen people get saved from reading the letters and being told the stories. And yes, we still add to it almost every week.
The pictures of the dinning hall and the cake are one of the great highlights of my ministry. I would have to say that preaching on the exact spot where Christ taught the sermon on the mount is my fondest preaching memory but preaching and teaching the first annual South Georgia Minister's Conference rank right up toward the top as well. The idea of ministering, (speaking for God), keeps me very awe struck and humbled, but to preach to preachers was almost more than I could take. Each and everyone of them was so kind, considerate and respectful to me that I literally would go back to the place where I was staying and cry and ask God to help me not to mess the meeting up. We had great fellowship and worship together and to top it off they already asked me to do it again! I was in my car driving back to Oklahoma from Georgia and I was crying and thanking God for letting someone like me have anything to do with these wonderful people and for the once in a lifetime chance to preach my burden to these pastors and preachers and my cell phone rang in Fort Payne, Alabama and a great man of God was on the other end and asked me if there was anyway that I could preach the day services of their Missions Conference this year. Are you kidding me?! Preaching my burden to a bunch more ministers? Missionary ministers? Do fish swim? Of course I will come!!! Wow, God........you adore you, and I am amazed at what you will allow me to do. Everyone join in with my prayers and ask Him to help me not to mess this one up either. Love and Prayers, more to come.
Your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett
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