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| Welcome to: www.GoodTidingsMissions.com! | ||
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| Feel free to click on any of the pictures to enlarge them! | ||
Hello
from Ernie, Bonnie and Buddy,
Thank you for taking the time to visit our new website! I hope it is a blessing
to you, and that it helps you understand what we are about, and what we are
called to do. As full time missionaries my family and I are always following the
leading of the Lord as to what He wants us to do and where He wants us to be. We
are, in a very real sense, World Missionaries.
As the Lord guides us along and opens the doors for us to minister it can mean
that I share my testimony and or a message as the Lord leads me and often it is
for Buddy to put on a concert and share his testimony. He has also been using
the three of us to give counseling and encouragement to many that we come in
contact with according to the gifts that He has imparted to each of us.
Here is a bit of background about us.
Myself and my wife, Bonnie and son Buddy, have been missionaries in Central
America since 1992. We moved there full time as a family in 1998, and were here
in Central America for about 9 and a half years... Primarily in Costa Rica
(about 8 1/2 yrs.) and about 1 year in Panama, this time frame also had us
working in Nicaragua at different times building churches and school rooms along
with much street ministry.
In 2005 the Lord
revealed to all 3 of us that we would be doing a tour throughout Europe.
Although we felt that the timing wasn't right we knew the lord would confirm His
perfect timing to us and, it would have to be the Lord, as we are not funded by
any large ministry and a ministry tour of anywhere in Europe was light years
beyond our financial ability. We have prayed faithfully over the past 2 and a
half years as we have been waiting and trusting on Him to open the door to this
call. In the meantime, during our time ministering in the mountains of Panama,
my wife fell seriously ill, and we had to send her back to the US in a
wheelchair to recover (this was in early 2007). It was at this point that Buddy
and I felt that we needed to close things down on the mission field to fly back
to the U.S. to be with my wife, Bonnie as the finances we were getting simply
couldn't sustain the outreach and the needs of my wife regarding daily expenses
and medications. This turned out to be
what
the Lord used to call us off of that mission field and to begin a new level of
our joint ministries.
Once we arrived in Florida the Lord opened the door for my son and I to do a full length tour of the United States that lasted almost 7 months, we ministered in many churches as He directed us. It was during this time that we were ministering to the churches through our testimonies and what the Holy Spirit would give me and Buddy to share plus Buddy's ministry of music and encouragement that the Lord started to confirm to us that the time to go to Europe was at hand. My son is not only a Master Guitarist but his testimony is a real inspiration for people to seek God's will for their lives and it touched many, both young and old as we traveled from New England to California and other parts of the US during that time.
We received so much confirmation from total strangers in different parts of the country during the last 4 months of this tour that this was the time to go to Europe! It came from Pastors as well as lay people who had a word from the Lord for us. It was as though they had been party to our private prayer time! God is faithful to answer prayer and our few years of prayer that covered this call we got almost 3 years earlier was no exception, He knows our end from our beginning!
So after we finished the stateside tour we, as a family, took it to prayer once again and He faithfully confirmed it with a resounding yes. We immediately took that step of faith and I called and booked tickets to Frankfurt Germany for Buddy and I and also pre-booked a flight for Bonnie to meet us in Europe on the 1st of June 2008. This was all done with the funds we had acquired from the offerings of the churches we had been playing and speaking in, our nest egg so to speak, that I had thought was going to help support the three of us during the next 2 months of my wife's recovery while in the states, God had other plans! This was a difficult step of faith on our part, not only because of the thousands we had to pay for airfare but on top of that we were going as unknowns...no churches waiting for us to speak or play in no pre-booked locations or transportation arranged in advance..... we only had a name from a friend in the states to call on that lived in Frankfurt and after calling him we arranged that he would pick us up at the airport and give us a place to sleep overnight and a warm meal and some direction to head out the next day by faith.
When he picked us up at the airport and asked us where we needed to go the next day I told him that we had no idea where we were going.....He almost drove off the road as he turned to look at me sitting in the back of the van, his words were pretty much; "You don't understand, this is Germany, you need 3 to 6 months prior notice to get on any pulpit here and without any invitations through a known refrence that will never happen! No one will let you in they don't know you! I think I should take you back to the airport so you can go back home", well I let him know that we bought one way tickets so I had no money to get home, God told me to come so I came and I knew He would open any doors that needed to be opened! His response was a repeat of the first statement but with much more emphasis on the fact that we just made a really stupid move by coming to Germany.
The short version is that the next
morning Buddy had an invitation to play a few arrangements during the offertory
and the response he received was incredible...no one had ever seen anyone play
the guitar the way he was playing, ever, and after service we sold a good
quantity of CD's and we then had enough Euros in our pockets to cover our
expenses. Praise the Lord! This was the recurring theme as more doors kept
opening to us and after only 5 weeks we had enough requests to fill our agenda
for up to 2 months in advance all the time that we were in Europe! Had the Lord
not called us
we would have been on the
sidewalk with bags all around us and practically no money and no clue where to
go or how to speak German or how to get anywhere, but the key word here in that
we were CALLED and we chose to trust Him and go.....now that's stepping out in
faith!
The great news is that from
that first step of faith, the Lord opened a Church of the Nazarene for my son to
play at the very next morning, the 13th of April, and it snowballed into the
busiest 9 months we have ever had with over 55 locations that we either put on
concerts at, shared our testimonies and the word of God plus numerous counseling
opportunities, and so far we have only been to 5 Countries! It's awesome how God
works! We have never once had to pay for a B&B or motel, our transportation has
been totally supplied and we have eaten some of the most awesome typically
prepared dishes that we've ever eaten everywhere we've traveled! God has
supplied all our needs even before we stepped on that plane in Florida! Although
we have returned temporarily to Costa Rica we already have a full schedule of
open invitations to return plus 7 new countries that are awaiting our return in
2010, Lord willing!
That was truly a walk of faith for the three of us,
my wife joined us in Ireland 2 months into our trip, on the 1st of June, after
her arrival we ministered as a family throughout both Northern and Southern
Ireland in various places such as: the Christian
Businessmen's meeting in Wexford, where Buddy played and gave his testimony, and
I shared the Word as the Lord led. We ministering in Churches in Ireland, and in
N. Ireland and many places in England, Wales and Germany. You can get a better
idea of the tour on Buddy's website
www.buddyguitar.com and check out his TOUR section...also if you read
his Buddy's Bits section it has many pictures of our travels to date along with
a mini diary of what has happened.
In October we knew we were supposed to return to Costa Rica for a time as the Lord was moving our spirits in that direction. We are presently here in CR and getting settled in....I have already gotten quite busy and have a pretty full itinerary that will keep me quite busy for this next year...it seems as though Buddy will also be busy what with invitations to put on concerts has already started to come in for him as well!
We do not have any agenda other than being available
for His purpose wherever He sends us!
It really is up to God as
to the doors he opens to us anywhere He chooses to send us.
We are presenting ourselves to everyone that will have us as the Lord has
ordained...We are certain that He will open the right doors to us and that
whatever we do in His name will bring Honor and Glory to Him.
For
those of you who need to get confirmation regarding us here are some Pastoral
references:
Pastor Cris Zimmermann, in Frankfurt, Germany:
www.huegelstrasse.nazarener.de
or www.frankfurt.nazarener.de.
Pastor Edgar Fink, and Chuck & Carla Sunberg at Grace Pointe Church of the
Nazarene, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA:
www.gracepointnaz.org
You can also click on any of the included Letters
of Introduction from
Pastor Edgar Fink,
Pastor Jerald D. Johnson and from
the Interim Pastor of the IBC church
in Stuttgart, Germany,
Pastor Charlie Long.
In short, our statement
of faith is this:
"We believe that the Bible
is the inspired word of God, and that from cover to cover it's true! We know
that we are sinners saved by the grace of
God, through the shed blood of his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. We believe
Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and after taking the sins of the world to the
cross was raised on the 3rd day by the power of God. We believe in God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit…three, yet one. And we believe that
without accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord there is no hope of redemption for
the lost."
You can look up my son's
Autobiography page on his website:
www.BuddyGuitar.com
it has his testimony of how God gave him the gift of playing the guitar. You may also find the
Buddy's BITS page to be helpful and informative as well. However,
if you have any questions, please feel free to send me an
e-mail and I'll reply as
quickly as I can. Thank you for visiting, and take care!
In His service,
Ernie,
Bonnie &
Buddy
Tetreault
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