Hit hard with Covid.
This month I have combined April and May’s newsletters because Covid had me down for the last two weeks of the former month. As a relatively healthy person, I suspected that if I ever happened to catch COVID-19 that I would recover as many of my friends have—quickly and painlessly. Boy was I wrong! Not only was I out for two weeks, in bed for most of it, but my body ached with serious pain. I’m not one to normally take medicine unless I absolutely need to, but for many days, I lived off of Tylenol and ibuprofen. And if the painkillers wore off, I could tell quickly. I’ve never been sick like this in my life, for this long. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t recovering. I could feel the infection permeate my entire body. I hardly ate for two weeks, and the little I did eat had no taste. And as my sickness lingered on, I got worse and not better. But thanks be to God, when the worst of it finally passed, I began to recover. I don’t know who was happier, me, or my wife, who was ready put me to some household work.
Ministering While Sick
One of the great things about online ministry is that it keeps going when we stop. I wasn’t able to create any more videos while I was down, but people kept watching. Of course, I don’t get near as many views as the big time youtubers (yet), but when I consider how many I reach compared to how many a pastor of a medium size church might reach every week, it becomes a little more significant. A pastor with a congregation of 200 will minister to about 200 each week. I also minister to about 200 people with each video that I put out (I try to make one at least once a week). However, that number does not include those who are continuing to find and watch my older videos. On average, about 7,000 people view my videos each week, with those viewers spending over 600 hours watching. And while I know it is not the same as being a pastor of a church, it is still the word of God being sown into hearts. It is still the word of God encouraging and challenging and convicting. It is reaching many people who might not currently be in church, with encouragement to get back in church. It’s reaching unbelievers, who sometimes scoff, but hear the word of God, nonetheless. I’ve spent a lot of time praying about this format of ministry and whether I should pursue it further. I won’t ever be completely done with street ministry, but, in many ways, this is the street ministry of our time. Pray that the Lord will guide this ministry in the direction that will impact the most people and make the most difference.
Set to Travel
If the Lord wills, and if things go as expected, we are finally set to do some traveling! It was about a year ago that we sold our house and bought and RV with the expectation that we would move about the country. And while almost nothing went as planned, (and after much repair work, frustrations, doubts, and delays) it looks like we might finally get to it. We have plans to go to Boston at the end of the month and to Wyoming in July. And while these particular locations aren’t ministry trips, per se, we are looking to make connections and find opportunities as we go. So if you have any connections with churches that might be willing to receive us, either preaching opportunities or otherwise, please let us know.
Please pray for us as we travel! Our previous trips have all but once landed us on the side of the road and in the repair shop. Once we had to be towed. The amount of times we have broken down led to great discouragement, and our dreams of traveling turned to nightmares. We mulled giving up the whole idea because our desire to travel left us completely. However, that desire is slowly starting to return. We are going to give it another go. Of course, our desire is that the Lord’s will be done, no matter what that might be.
Hal Chaffee Ministries
PO Box 1546
Elkton, MD 21922
Visit halchaffee.com/partnergive to give online.
Hal Chaffee 