We are grateful the Lord has blessed us with another new quarter at Brown Trail. We are in the second week of our Fall Quarter, and I am in Lubbock, Texas, writing this report and teaching on Zoom. I am here attending the Southside Lectures, which is in its 25th year, and I was privileged to speak on Sunday on the topic, “I Will Build My Church.” Though I planned to be on Zoom this week, unfortunately, the entire English program went on Zoom because we had another COVID outbreak with students and a staff member or two. Please keep those ill amongst us in your prayers as they battle COVID-19. But, also, please remember the students as they are just beginning this new quarter.

This quarter is my light quarter as I only have one class, Jeremiah and Lamentations. Last year, I taught it for the first time in chronological order. If you have ever studied Jeremiah, you know he organized his writings in themes, often not found in chronological order the way our Western cultured minds are accustomed to reading historical books. I liked the flow of last year’s class, so I will continue to teach this book chronologically.

Students Preparing To Knock Doors
2023

Spanish Program

Our Spanish program is entering the final quarter. We will have three young men graduating from this program and moving on to preach God’s word. We are also working with eight young men from Tennessee, Texas, Mexico, Costa Rica, and El Salvador to raise the funds necessary for them to start school in early January. We have been blessed to raise quite a bit of their support so far, and with hard work and prayer, the Lord will provide. We always have a more difficult time raising funds for the Spanish Students simply because they don’t have the contacts many of our American students do, who often were raised in the church.

New Students

Two of our new students are Robert and Cash Orren. Robert, a self-trained preacher, was recently preaching for the Cullendale congregation in Camden, Arkansas, for the last nine years. In the previous year or two, he realized that he lacked the education and training to become the best preacher and minister he could be. At 49 years old, leaving a position of nine years for our two-year program is a considerable jump. Believing it was best for him and his son Cash, they started training last quarter.

Robert is married to Sharla, and they have two sons, Cash and Keyton. Cash is now 20 and graduated with an Electrical and Instrumentation Degree from Southern Arkansas University Tech.

We are grateful for everyone who is helping to support this family.

L-R – Cash, Keyton, Sharla, and Robert
The Ark Experience – Kentucky

Graduate Updates

Lannie Parhm

Lannie Parhm is a 2008 graduate of Brown Trail. Since graduation, he and his family remained in Fort Worth until 2013, when he served as an Elder of the Airport Freeway congregation in Euless. Then, in 2013, he and his family moved to Texarkana, Texas, where they labored with small congregations of five to twenty members around Texarkana for nine years. They helped the Union Grove congregation in Doddridge, Arkansas. Along with the Emmerson St and Pittman St congregations in Magnolia, Arkansas. As well as the Beverly Heights congregation in Hooks, Texas, and the Atlanta and Water St congregations in Texarkana. After spending nine years trying to strengthen and encourage these works, they moved to Mead, Kansas, to work with the church there. At Mead, he recently started a Prison Ministry, and they were recently blessed to have their first baptism. In speaking to Brother Parhm, they hope to, one day soon, return to the Texarkana area and continue their ministry in working with the above congregations, hoping to strengthen their spiritual and numerical growth.

Jack Phillips

We do our best to keep track of our graduates as they move around the country and world after graduation. This is much easier today due to social media, but before that technology, it was challenging to keep track of them all, and over the years, we lost touch with many. Jack Phillips, a 1982 graduate, reached out to me last week because he heard I would send graduates an annual report of the school, and he knew why he wasn’t receiving them because we didn’t know where he ended up. Since then, he and I have called back and forth a few times and exchanged several emails.

Our 1982 class was the largest graduating class in the school’s history; most are still active in serving the Lord 41 years later. Jack was raised in Watauga, Texas, just north of Fort Worth, and attended the Watauga and Birdville congregations. After graduating from BTSOP, he worked for the Lord’s church in Chico, Texas, about an hour northwest of Fort Worth, for one year. After that year, the church in Birdville offered to support him financially if he and his family moved to Wisconsin and worked with a small congregation there. After some discussion, he and his family left the only home they ever knew for frigid temperatures to work with the church in St. Crouix Falls, Wisconsin. His goal was to work and build them up to where they could afford a full-time preacher. He accomplished that and then moved on to New Richmond, Wisconsin, and labored with them for 12 years until they were large enough to hire a full-time preacher. He is 67 years old, with over 30 years of experience building up small congregations in a challenging religious atmosphere.

It has been a pleasure to communicate with him. He has expressed his love for the training program here, and he and I have spent some time catching him up with his fellow graduates and talking doctrine as well. I appreciate that he left his home to make a new one up north and his love for truth. After just a few minutes of speaking with him, one can clearly see how much he loves the truth and has never strayed from teaching God’s word as it is written. It is great that we can lose touch with a graduate for forty years and find out he never stopped doing what he was trained to do! May God be glorified!

Conclusion

Please keep the school in your prayers. Also, this is the end of the year, and congregations will start looking at their budgets for 2024. The school has been blessed to break even yearly since I started raising funds for the program six years ago. It takes a brotherhood to keep works like these going and growing! Men like Brother Parhm and Phillips are evidence that God has blessed this great program over the years, and we pray that our students and graduates all have successful ministries like his.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if the congregation where you attend or serve would like me to present the work or if you have any questions.

Brotherly,
heath w stapleton