Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I got back from Missouri last Saturday and had a great time there with 3 young men being saved and three others being baptized who were saved before I arrived. I preached all week from the book of James and really enjoyed the study on that book. I also got a lot of other work done while there and am now just looking forward to spending Christmas with the family on Saturday.
I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and that the next year will be a great year for you and your family. Thank you for being there and let me hear from you. I will send out another blog next week so until then, be good!

Busy, busy, busy!

I will be leaving this Saturday (December 11th) for Stockton, Missouri to preach at Agape Baptist Church and boarding school. I will be there for a week and always love going there. I will have the opportunity to preach at least 9 times and I have a ton of other work to do while there.

There are about 160 boys at the boarding school with around 25 staff families and the week there is just a wonderful opportunity. I try to spend a lot of time around the boys during the week in the dining hall, in the school and outside and really love preaching to them. For the most part they are very respectful and we also pick on each other a lot and have some fun doing so. Anyway, it is just a great place to go and I am thankful that we have a great relationship with the staff and that I get to go there two times per year.

This week will be a little different in the amount of work I will have while there. I am going to have to spend at least 5 to 6 hours per day on different tasks and make many calls while there. I guess I will have to get up earlier and go to bed later than usual especially since some of the work must be done before I come home. I will be working on my introduction DVD for preachers and what I will say and how I want it done. This will be sent out to preachers who do not know me to help me get into more churches. Pastor Gray here at the home church said we can make it here at the church in Longview.  I need to work on a one week preaching and teaching series for colleges and churches on church planting that I will introduce to my pastor and then actually preach and teach at the college for a week. We are also thinking about making it all into a DVD and I will have my Church Planting Around the World Manual done to make available for these meetings. I also need to finish this while at Agape. I will be working more on how I will start churches here in the East Texas area and am looking forward to starting the first one after the new year. Then, I need to work on my New Testament and Old Testament Survey manuals. The Old Testament manual is almost finished and will be ready by the end of the year. The New Testament manual will be done early next year. I will be working on my first of the year pamphlets which will be on the subject, "Who Tempts Us?" This will be the first of a monthly series of pamphlets I will be publishing from now on. All this and some minor tasks that I will be working on. And they say that preachers do not work. Ha!

Please pray for my time at Agape. There are always new boys there and many who have never trusted Christ for their salvation. Please pray that we will see some more good results there and that I will be able to get home safely on the 18th and that I will not catch the sickness that is running through the folks there.

I will not be able to blog until after I get back but will as soon as I can. Have a great week!

Dr. Gary L. Mann

2 Corinthians 4:1-7

Merry Christmas

Sherry and I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. There are a lot of great things about to happen in my ministry that I will share with you as they come about. Missions trips, written material becoming available, church planting, revivals and much more. So, keep on reading the weekly blogs and again, Merry Christmas!