Hello! We are the Pollard* family. Both of us, Adam* and Evelyn*, were born and mostly raised here in Arkansas. We have five children, and four of them were born overseas. We have been serving Southern Baptists since 2010 in East Asia. We are sent out by Parkway Place Baptist Church in Little Rock.
During our service, we have done a little bit of everything. We started out learning language (thankful that’s over) and then began to pursue other areas of service such as: entrance evangelism, building relationships, forming a church, discipling believers, equipping pastors, biblical counseling, teaching seminary, and serving the local church.
We returned from East Asia in the summer of 2020 and have been waiting on borders to open since then. Currently we are in the U.S. but should be heading to Southeast Asia in October of 2021.
I would like Arkansas Baptists to know that we are passionate about God and bringing glory to Christ among the nations. Our entire family works together to serve the people we live among so that we can share not only our doctrine, but our entire life. We work to host as many people as possible into our home weekly to teach, counsel, and disciple. We are passionate about the sufficiency of God’s Word to bring people to faith in Christ and to sustain them to grow in godliness. We spend hours upon hours with locals in other countries helping them to grow in their walks with Christ so that they can thrive once we leave. We feel it is our calling and gifting to spend time equipping believers from other countries on how to not only grow in their faith, but how to establish and lead biblical churches and engage other nations.
After being expelled from our previous country, I was sad because I knew that association with a foreigner would bring scrutiny on the local church. I began to apologize to the pastor about this and he quickly stopped me. He told me that my time was up. He said, “You have made me a better pastor. You have spent time caring for me and my church so I can learn to care for them better. It is time for you to go and it is time for us to continue. Do not be sorry. This is God’s will.” That meant a lot to hear that. They have God’s Word and the Holy Spirit. He will continue to sanctify the members of that church and bring others into their life to push them towards growth and godliness.
We are thankful for so many churches faithfully giving year after year. We are honored to serve. It is a privilege. Thank you for being generous and praying for so many missionaries who are faithfully serving in hard places to get the Gospel out. Continue to pray for us. If you know a missionary, partner well with them because they need churches serving as the anchor for them as they go.
Prayer Points
- Pray we would continue to grow in the knowledge and obedience of God’s word. We do not want to rely on our flesh.
- Pray that we would decrease, and Christ would increase. We want to be humble and weak so that Jesus is made to look really great and strong.
- Pray that we would serve the global church faithfully and never take short cuts. Sometimes teaching and obedience takes the long road. We never want to compromise the Gospel.
*Names changed for security