Sunday, May 7, 2023 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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00:01

Good evening everybody. Thank you for coming back. It is good to be together again

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Tonight we're going to have a fairly normal Schedule we're going to start off with Thanksgiving.

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So be thinking about what you're thankful for And we will have a hymn to sing and a scripture reading and instead of having our normal 15 minutes of fellowship time we're just going to go ahead and directly hand it over to our brother

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Jonathan to come share with us about how things are going and That will give him enough time to share with us

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Let us know how we can be praying for them and what we can rejoice with them about And also some opportunity for Q &A time.

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We're trying to get as much Q &A time as we can because Norm is here Yeah We'll let you know when it start

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Jonathan. Let you know when there's time for questions. Okay, Norm, okay And then after that, hopefully we will just translate fellowship time after It's all said and done.

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Okay, so that is the plan tonight. So what are we thankful for tonight? And we are too

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Good to see Norman Loretta with us. Very thankful anybody else Yes Yeah, I bet you are.

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Yeah quality of life is much better with your parents It is thankful the geezers and the gulets made it back from Mexico Yes It was an encouragement to all of us

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Nobody else Yes Friends and family and grandkids.

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Yes Very thankful anybody else.

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Yes Anybody else

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I'm sorry. Yes Thankful for God's mercies in our travel that Jay and Chris are back.

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Yes Thankful for the

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Wilcox family. Yes, indeed Well, let's go to the

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Lord together with Thanksgiving Heavenly Father we do. Thank you For all these many blessings that we've mentioned here tonight.

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We thank you that you are such a generous and loving Heavenly Father Giving to us all these many blessings all because of your son

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Jesus Christ And we rejoice in these blessings and give our

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Adoration to you and ask that you would help us as we sing together and read your word together

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And Lord, we pray that you would bless Jonathan as he comes and shares with us

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How things are going and how it is that Christ's kingdom is on the advance and expanding in parts

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Beyond here and we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen I love that.

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We count our blessings on Sunday nights and talk about what we're grateful for and What better way than coming to the fount of our many blessings?

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So there's a handout in the back. If not, it's Psalm or hymn 2 in your hymnal come now fount of every blessing

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Come Every blessing to my heart

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To sing thy grace streams of mercy

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Never ceasing Calls for songs of loudest praise

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Teach me some Melody a sonnet sung by flaming tongues above Praise his name

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Fixed up on it name of God Hither to thy love has blessed me thou hast brought

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Me to this place And I know

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Thy hand will bring me Safely home

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Jesus saw me when a stranger

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Wandering from the fold of God He to rescue me from danger

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Brought me with his precious Oh to grace how great a debtor

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Daily I'm constrained to be

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Let thy goodness Like a feather

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Bind my wandering heart to thee

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Prone to Wander Lord I feel it prone to leave

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God I love He is my heart

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They can see Seal it for Okay, so tonight's reading is going to be from second

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Kings 2nd

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Kings chapter 3 verses 1 Through 14. I saw

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James running in to read but Dylan asked me on a different Social media, so I don't you know, you know

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I didn't sorry James Wasn't trying to take away his blessings.

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I just got oh, he's crying. Okay, I'm sorry Never offend the man that makes the coffee

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All right second Kings chapter 3 we're gonna be reading verses 1 through 14

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Now Jehoram the son of Ahab became king over Israel at Samaria in the 18th year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah and reigned 12 years and He did evil in the sight of the

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Lord But not like his father and mother For he put away the sacred pillar of Baal that his father had made

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Nevertheless, he persisted in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who had made

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Israel sin for he did not depart from them Now Misha king of Moab was a sheep breeder and he regularly paid the king of Israel 100 ,000 lambs and the wool of 100 ,000 rams

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But it happened when Ahab died that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel So King Jehoram went out of Samaria at that time and mustered all

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Israel Then he went and sent to Jehoshaphat king of Judah saying the king of Moab has rebelled against me

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Will you go with me to fight against Moab? And he said I will go up.

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I am as you are my people as your people my horses as your horses Then he said which way shall we go up and he answered by the way of the wilderness of Edom so the king of Israel went with the king of Judah and the king of Edom and They marched on that roundabout route seven days and there was no water for the army

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Nor for the animals that followed them and the king of Israel said alas

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For the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab But Jehoshaphat said is there no prophet of the

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Lord here that we may inquire of the Lord by him so one of the servants of the king of Israel answered and said

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Elisha the son of Shaphat is here who poured water on the hands of Elijah and Jehoshaphat said the word of the

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Lord is with him So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him

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Then Elisha said to the king of Israel What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother

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But the king of Israel said to him no for the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab and Elisha said as the

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Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand Surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah.

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I would not look at you Nor see you. Well, we can praise the

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Lord. We have a king Lord looks with Oh Superb regard

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God would not have anything to do with us And would not give us his word if it weren't for our

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King Praise be to God. Let's pray father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the word.

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We thank you for The way in which you shepherd history into the fold of your glory

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And we pray that you would help us recognize our place in this your history

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And I pray that you would help us to be aware and praying and Laboring and the work that you give us to do

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Now we pray for our brother Jonathan as he comes to share with us that you would give him Great encouragement and know help him to know how much he is loved and appreciated here at Sunnyside We pray these things in Jesus name.

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Amen Jonathan good evening

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Hopefully we're gonna get a PowerPoint up there Okay, there you go So I'm gonna try and make sure that we leave enough time for question

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You know questions and answers Especially for Norman. He traveled a long way Not as far as I did though Norman say

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I'm gonna give you a whistletop stir stir through what we've done in the last few months And then a few thoughts from the book of Revelation before Before we get to the

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Q &A So a lot has happened and I could stop on probably on any one of these pictures that I'm going to show and spend half an hour talking about it

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But I'm not going to I'm gonna try not to at least But there's you know, there's a lot of different things happening.

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So we began the year With a new grandbaby That's grandbaby number nine.

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That's Hannah with her two boys Caleb What did we know

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Caleb Luis? It's his name. He was born December the 21st. So technically that was last year

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But you know, we saw the new year coming that way. So that was a lot of fun to be able to see To see him

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You know fairly early on Then I started traveling

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I went to Colombia and I was there for several weeks

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I'm part of the Colombian field leadership, even though I don't live there I'm also part of the regional leadership.

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And so my role in Colombia is is discipling the leaders that are there during the time there we had our field conference and This couple

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Wayne and Patsy Gibson Retired after 50 years on the field 46 years working with the

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Pia Poco Indians in Colombia out on the Eastern Plains and There are now

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I don't know how many churches amongst the Pia Poco I mean lots we're talking

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Maybe a hundred or so. It's a big tribe goes from Colombia into Venezuela and They've they've finished up and they're the

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Pia Poco that they've just moved back to Sanford Rachel And I saw them last week And they had actually like zoomed with their disciples in Puerto Anirida, which is a village right on the border with between Colombia and Venezuela and The Disciples are showing them they were printing books.

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They were preparing materials They're doing all sorts of stuff. So it's really exciting to see so it was great to actually recognize them and give them

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You know just that Send off from the field and for what they they've been doing there

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They're good friends of ours And I've spent a lot of time with Wayne learning a lot from him from His 50 years of experience on the field

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So then after the field conference, I went to FUSA or FUSA Gasuga, which is where we got the training program in Colombia So we're training missionaries, you know

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Columbia we have Colombians Panamanians and Ecuadorians Peruvians Venezuelans all training in that training center and So I've been working with all of the

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Latin American training programs over the last two or three years Basically since Kovac we've been meeting online months a week and so I spent some time with the guys in Colombia and working with their curriculum working with their staff handbook they've been functioning there for over 30 years without the staff handbook and So it's all by kind of word -of -mouth and It is you know

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The ideas of what you should do and shouldn't do kind of gets bloated After that long and so we spent some time and I couldn't continue to work with them online

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Now that's one of the one of the challenges and one of the blessings of this new technological age is

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I can be any anywhere in the world and I can be meeting with people anywhere else in the world

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It's a blessing, but it's a challenge when they're on a different time zone and You really don't want a meeting at 2 o 'clock in the morning

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It has happened but not very often I'm glad to say Okay, so I went to Los Angeles But not the

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Los Angeles you're thinking of This is a Los Angeles a very small village

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Los Angeles in the Amazon Basin And this is again. This is in Colombia This is me with Jordan Keefe.

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He is a third -generation missionary And so both his parents actually are second -generation missionaries

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And So he works with the tikkunah people Sorry, that's not true.

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He works with the tukano people the tikkunah another group The tukano people it's there's a whole language group language family related to tukano and So in this village

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Which we'll see pictures of it in a minute in this village there are at least four or five different tribal

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Cultures and languages Present in the village Okay, so we'll see a picture of the pastor in that village in a minute

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Fulvio he is Tujuka he's not tukano at all.

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He's a Tujuka Indian. His wife is tukano and a lot of the

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Marriages are that way that they they're intermarried between different Different cultures and it presents a whole different way of doing things a whole different challenge

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Which we'll talk about a little bit bit of that in a minute So we flew out to the the city of Mito in over on the edge of the

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Amazon Basin This is there you go. So before we went we had to get the important supplies and This is one of those things that's going on is

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Okay, Jordan had to get doughnuts because there was somebody looking after his house Yeah, and what do you do for somebody who's looking after your house while you're away?

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Well, you have to take them something and this is what the guy asked for Because I want doughnuts so You know you think well, why do they want dunking doughnuts in the middle of the

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Amazon jungle Why not? So so we flew out there so we had the one flight from Bogota to Mito and then we got on a

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Cessna 185 for a short 25 minute flight into the into the jungle

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And so it was you know, it was a it doesn't seem that long

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Half an hour in a small plane, but that same trip

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Takes three and a half days on the river And so you will see a clip in a minute of us going back we couldn't go back

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From the airstrip we landed in because it's too short So we had to go about three and a half hours

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Up river to another strip to be able to get out So the reason we went out there is

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Jordan and I've been talking about doing this Not exactly a workshop, but having totally changed

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So so that was a conversation that we had the reason I put this picture up is it really very interesting because all of the

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Tucano family if you like that family of languages and so on they all believe that they they have a common ancestry and Their common ancestry is this that the their ancestors

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Came up river from the sea on the back of a giant anaconda and The giant anaconda kind of just dropped them off at different points along the river and That's where they come from So we had a quite an interesting discussion with them because I said so what about People that don't live in the

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Amazon Basin You know, which there's lots of people and they know about them now and they were like Never really thought about that So that was if you like that was their world view

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And a lot of people obviously there still believe that way and Just in case we think well, that's kind of silly.

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Why would they think that? Let's just think about what other people think around us here Not it's not any sillier

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So anyway, so that was an interesting discussion The the village of Los Angeles this the

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Evangelical Church was started there about ten years ago And then somewhere

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I think it was five or six years ago the Catholic Church Tried to get the evangelicals thrown out of the village

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Okay, because they said they're not following our traditions They're not following the tradition the tribal traditions which for them included

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Catholicism Interestingly enough, even though the Catholics haven't been there much longer than the evangelicals

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But it's it's interesting again. It's one of those worldview clashes that's going on That those the cat there is no priest all the time

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There there's like a lay reader Whatever they call them something like that From the

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Catholic Church who lives there Doesn't have a good reputation. He joins in all of the parties and so on but he's there and he

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You know rings the bell to get everybody to go to church Sunday morning But so it's a challenging situation there because you have the traditional tribal culture then you have

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Catholicism thrown on top of that and Then you have some people who join the evangelical church and They don't understand any more than the people going to the

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Catholic Church for different reasons Happens here in the state state, doesn't it?

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So so that's that's why we were there talking through some of those things Trying to trying to figure out how to be more effective in Evangelism in discipleship and so on So this is a picture of in the middle there

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You know, we were watching I was out there while the earthquake in Turkey was happening and we were watching some of that They watch, you know

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National Geographic programs we watched something about this vet treating exotic animals here in the in the

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US and The amount of money that people were putting into pets was

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I mean, it was just phenomenal and You know you you look at that and you think who are these crazy people?

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Yeah But this is what they're learning about You know, this is if you like For a lot of people that's now what they're thinking is of a civilization

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Kind of crazy But so so we're there we were there looking for you know ways to help them to address some of those issues

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Not everyone was quite as interested as I was This is one little girl in the church service

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Falling asleep There we go

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So we're gonna go upriver as this Yeah on this it's upriver that way

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But if we went downriver 15 minutes we'd be in Brazil Okay, that's more or less where we were and so just to give you an idea of some of the stuff you all the

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Context of where we were staying So we went the days that we were there when we got there the river was quite low and Had we had it not rained

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We would have had to go through eight sets of rapids to get to the airstrip

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Okay, as it was it had rained and so we only had to go through three Okay, the river goes up and down really quite a lot

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And so the time that I was there it had risen about six feet We you know because We were praying

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I think quite a lot But we didn't have to do eight sets of rapids Anyway, so that's what it was like there so then okay on the left you have

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Yeah, your left on the left you have The airport in we do that's what we would consider an airport on the right we have the airport in the village that we took off from That's our stuff waiting for the plane to arrive

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Bit different Okay There we go

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So I got back from that trip we had some friends who worked with ethnos 360 aviation

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It's a lot easier to say NTMA, but you know they work with the aviation arm

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And they came over to the UK For a missions conference at the training center there

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We knew Juanita from our time in Colombia Years and years ago, and so they came and stayed with us, and we took them around a few of the sites around where we live

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Yeah, and Rachel Did her normal hosting or hostessing thing?

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Which is very good at So we had some fun there, and then of course we had some fun

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Ruben our oldest English grandchild we have seven grandchildren here in the in the

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States and We now have three in In the

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UK and so he's the oldest of the the British contingent Anyway so you can tell he can barbecue plastic food

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Very well oh And I mean, but yeah while I was there when we're back in England we got

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Logan Logan Ezra is our tenth grandchild so So then

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I hit the road again about four just four weeks ago For the astute among you

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It says this time to Bolivia But on the picture it says I was in Panama.

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That's because I was in Panama I Was in Panama on my way to Bolivia.

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That's how I flew But obviously you know that's kind of You know being my life recently is you know figuring out how to get to places?

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And spend time there, I just in Bolivia for just a week and and it was

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Really it was a good time I just there for it was just less than a week and the reason

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I'd gone there is because the field of Bolivia is our oldest field as an organization and They're struggling they don't have very much leadership or very many people in leadership there and They're not sure quite what they should be doing and How to move ahead

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So the reason I say it's an historic moment is because We had the

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Bolivian leadership there we had representatives of the Brazilian leadership there and we had representatives most of the

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Paraguayan field leadership there and they were all talking about how they could work together

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Now you might think well isn't that what we do in theory

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But in practice, you know historically what's happened is that so many fields they

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Think just within the country that they're in and so This is for me.

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This was historic because that we had three fields Talking about how to work together and how to coordinate their efforts in lots of different ways

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So one of the things that we weren't actually talking about during this week, but just to give you an idea is

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Is when we think of the Amazon Basin, which is considered to be one of the one of the least reached areas of the world with the gospel

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Outside of the 1040 window. It is the least reached area of the world.

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Okay So the Amazon Basin It's mainly in the south

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You've got Bolivia. You've got Brazil Yeah, then as you go up you've got

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Peru Yeah, you've got Colombia Yeah, Ecuador Venezuela and so on and So what we're seeing one of the things that I'm seeing because I work at a regional level is that we have works

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Tribal works which we have it in more than one country And so we've got different teams working in different countries doing the same thing

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And so that seems like why are we Doing that.

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We're not actually thinking about how to Coordinate our efforts and so we're actually having opportunities to work in Bolivia Peru Colombia particularly

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To work with either with other organizations or to work with within global partners to train indigenous people as missionaries

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Okay, so that's that's going to be a coordinated effort, which is kind of You know taking slowly taking off But it's very exciting to be involved in anyway,

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I'm not going to keep talking about that. Otherwise, I won't stop Okay, so then I was back to the

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UK for a week for safety training for new missionaries You know

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Rachel and I are involved in doing this every year in the UK this year I'm hoping to help out doing it in Colombia and in the

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States later in the year so We were back there for the week

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And we actually stayed with Rachel's parents. I'll mention them. I think at the end

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So we were there for a week and then There's a week missing in there we went to Germany as well for international security meetings and then last week

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We got we were in Sanford, Florida for international leadership meetings if you look carefully at that picture, which you probably

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Might be able to you'll notice that we're not in those in there. Yeah, you notice that is like did he put the wrong picture up?

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No, because what it is is I'm not on the international ministry team But I work for them and so very often we're invited to be in their meetings

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Because because of what I do I have to represent them and Then I have to report back to them so that's why we were there and You took the picture, oh no,

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I took that one. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I took it. It's good, isn't it? Yeah, okay, so I'll stop there as far as this is what that's what we've done so far

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Just to bring everybody up to date Rachel's mother had a heart attack about four weeks ago something like that She's been operated on she had bypass surgery her dad has

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Alzheimer's and so We are now wrestling with the

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You know the confusion I'm supposed to for the rest of this year. I've got trips planned for Colombia Bolivia Mexico and the

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States We don't know how that's going to work if Rachel can travel with me or not

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So we definitely appreciate your prayers For clarity with that because Rachel's parents really can't be left as long as her mom is

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Still recovering and not full strength. She they really can't be left alone

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And yeah right now Rachel's brother is there Looking after them so that we can be here

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Okay, so Just a few thoughts from the book of Revelation, I don't know

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If you've ever thought about this for some reason I just got stuck on this and It's just one of those things sometimes, you know a bit of a verse or something you start thinking why does it tell me this

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Yeah, and so at the end of verse 1 of Revelation 21 it says and the sea was also gone

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Yeah, it says I saw a new heaven and a new earth the old old earth had passed away and the sea was also gone

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Why Why does he say that? Yeah, what what's the significance in in the sea also having?

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Cleaned up lots of reasons probably a lot more theological than I'm going to tell you now But you know just a few thoughts

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I don't know if you've ever watched the blue planet or any of those Programs where they talk about the all the stuff in the sea.

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Have you ever seen those? Yeah, and and I mean it's kind of fun because Because you hear somebody like David Attenborough or so David Attenborough talking about you know

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I mean, I remember one thing, you know, they're talking about this. There's the events at the bottom of the ocean spewing out boiling

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Sulfuric acid Yeah, you seen that one? Okay, and so and so the the narrator says

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Surely nothing can live there Sulfuric acid boiling water.

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Oh look There's something there There's these snails

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Just sitting there by the edge of these vents and they're they're like somehow not just surviving

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That's where they choose to live Yeah, and then you see these other things you see these dark

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You see creatures that you know when the when those submersibles go down They go all the way down and the pressure on those things.

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It's incredible And they keep finding new new creatures

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Yeah, and so you think about it, you know Let's just say that the earth is 6 ,000 years old.

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Let's say it's 12 ,000 years old, whatever for all of that time things were there

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Yeah, so why did God do it? You know for me it told me one thing it tells me is that he creates things for himself

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Before anything else he does it for himself because he enjoys it. You know

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God creates Firstly because he's a creator That's what he is he does what he is yeah, and And he doesn't do it because you know somebody's telling him to it's just it's just fun

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And I sometimes wonder how much of what we do We do out of drudgery

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You know Instead of just because it's fun so he creates for his own good pleasure and The last point there is that I've got written up is

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God's economy is different from ours So I don't know about you We Some of you are still some of you are old enough to remember

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When we When we lived in Colombia we

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Basically, we lost everything we had Yeah, because we were Out in a budget in Colombia, and then we came out ratio was six.

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She had hepatitis And we could never go back there Because of the guerrilla situation in Colombia, so then we moved to Panama so everything that we owned that we had left in a budget

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Is still there? Probably not anymore Okay, and so you think what a waste

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Yeah, and some of you I know you've you know You've lost homes and so on through tornadoes and so on that type of thing and you think what a waste

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But then you see you think about that verse And it says and the sea was no longer there

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Why did God do that when he knew one day he's just gonna get rid of it all

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Because his economy is so different from ours Yeah, and he's looking forward.

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He's thinking of something else That's going to be so much better So then if we move on in Revelation 21 in verse 6

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We hear this is Jesus speaking and he says it is finished. Does that sound familiar?

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Yeah, where else does Jesus say it is finished On the cross, yeah, but you know what?

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That's what I thought But you're wrong. I mean, it's the same in English, but not in the

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Greek In the Greek what we have in in John 19 30 where Jesus hung on the cross and he says it is finished

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He used this term telio Which in my best Greek accent, of course Okay, and that that term telio, it's the same it has the same root is when we it talks about us being perfect complete

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Yeah Okay, and so he says on the cross he says it is finished.

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It's done and what he's saying is It's a little bit like when you pay your mortgage off.

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Yeah, or your last car payment Yeah, it's done

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What do we leave? salted Yeah, but in Revelation 21 6 the term he uses is this one

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Ginnemey And Ginnemey is different again. It's saying it's like it is finished, but it's like When you're going on a long trip and you have to get your car ready

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You know have you checked the oil check your tire pressures make sure there's water all those things

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Yeah, and at the end would you do say it's done Okay different word and the difference that I mean

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I see here is that it's looking forward Yeah, so So Jesus says

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In John again, he says I'm gonna go Build you a place

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Yeah, I'm gonna get a place ready for you And then here he says It's done

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It's ready So the end the end of the book of Revelation and It's one of those things so when you read a story normally you get to the end of the book you think oh

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I wish there was more if it's a good book You know you think that was so good.

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Yeah This time there is more Yeah, this time basically what we have in the

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Bible is just the first chapter Yeah, so what

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Jesus was saying basically was let the party begin Yeah, you say

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It's done. Everything is done Everything is prepared and from now on We can party we can have fun together

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So for me, that's an encouragement. That's that's what I want people to understand

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Hopefully, that's what you want people to understand, too Okay, I'm done talking well maybe

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I've left some time for Q &A And feel free to ask Rachel questions,

44:14

I know I've said everything so far, but She's told me what to say so you know

44:23

You know if you have questions otherwise, I'll just keep talking Stunned into silence no there you go

45:04

It's gonna be a long long process, but I So I was in Peru when was

45:11

I there last year? And I sat down with a couple of Huni Kuin Indians pastors

45:21

They have I think it's 14 missionaries so indigenous missionaries working around Pucallpa in Peru and then into Brazil.

45:33

They've got like two in Brazil and the rest of them are in in Peru and so The they said to me one of the one of them said to me he says

45:45

Said we've been here obviously a long time. We've seen the foreign missionaries.

45:51

They come and go Yeah, they'll stay for five ten years whatever and then they leave The Peruvians same thing they'll come and then they'll leave

46:02

If this job is going to get done who's going to do it? It's gonna have to be us We live here this is where we're from Plus, you know, they said they recognized that there are places for example in Brazil there are places where Foreigners and by foreigner that means non -indigenous people can't live in an

46:28

Indian community Okay, but if you're indigenous

46:34

The government can't stop you living there So they can just say hey, I'm just visiting my cousins, which is probably true

46:43

And so they can go and they can begin to preach and teach and disciple in those communities

46:52

So so that's that's their vision that they they already have So I was

46:58

I asked them about it I said so how are these churches doing in these communities

47:05

Not very well. They're not really doing very well. So we talked more and I asked well

47:11

Why do you think that is never thing? How much training have these people had the missionaries had and so on this really haven't had any training?

47:20

So these are people going wanting they're excited Because they want people to understand the gospel they want people to be saved

47:32

But they don't have the tools to be able to do it effectively and so they were like can you guys help with that?

47:41

It's like we have an open door. We have that same open door in Bolivia This year when

47:49

I go to Bolivia, I'll go back out to somewhere with Where they're training indigenous people

47:57

For that just for that so we've got that in Paraguay in Bolivia in Peru and Then what we just saw in Colombia.

48:08

So it's it's isolated in a sense of These groups don't necessarily know each other

48:16

Yeah, but obviously God is doing something and beginning, you know to bring something together

48:29

Yeah, any other questions?

48:50

They're indigenous So they're they're not like Americans or Brits or yeah, but they are from there

49:01

They're asking for training. Yeah Yeah, not me particularly but as the organization.

49:13

Yeah Ah Ten Right now we have a ten.

49:32

Elias is ten Isaiah is still seven.

49:38

Jai is gonna be six tomorrow Jocelyn is four Alistair is nine.

49:44

Randy's seven Hadassah is now six Ruben is gonna be three in July.

49:53

Caleb is four months old and Logan is a month Did I pass the grandpa grandpa test

50:10

Norman you had a question Yeah Yeah.

50:22

Yeah, I'm There's no way I can do that on my own In fact, it's quite possible.

50:28

I won't do much of it myself at all There's quite a few people Who are

50:35

Interested and we're getting more people who are interested in in doing You know that kind of work.

50:42

One of the questions that I put to new missionaries when they're looking for somewhere to work is

50:51

Do you want to plant a church? Or do you want to see a church planted?

50:58

Yeah, so in other words, do you want to be the one who everybody

51:05

Everybody says hey, there's a church planter. There's a mission. That's the that's the real missionary Or are you willing to be the person who?

51:15

Helps other people to get there either in a support role in the teaching role at a training role or something like that And if you're willing to do that, then there's no limit, you know to the ways that God can use you

51:57

Every situation is different Every context, you know has its Has its challenges

52:07

When the Catholic Church is involved there's a lot of antagonism In some communities

52:17

And depending where you are, for example, I know there's a there's a community Yaki Indians in northern

52:24

Mexico They are very closed. They don't want any outsiders They don't care it's not just about religion they just don't want outsiders there

52:38

We want to put missionaries there Now when we do that They won't be missionaries

52:46

There'll be something else. They'll have to they'll have to have a profession. They're probably doctors or some sort of a socio -economic

52:55

Platform, you know, and they'll do that But then they'll begin to you know be witnesses

53:05

You know to be witness with their lives long before They can do that through their words

53:13

But yeah in some places in the you know, there are places where the people are open to it very open to it

53:23

You know, I don't know if that answers the question Any other questions, yes

53:52

It varies again on the situation that we're talking about but for for a

54:00

For a church to be healthy then They have to have a

54:06

Bible At least the New Testament preferably the

54:11

Old Testament all the healthiest churches have a whole Bible go figure You know, so that's that and we're talking a

54:21

New Testament project takes a roughly 15 years And so then if you're going to do an

54:28

Old Testament project we're talking a lot longer and at this point

54:37

Translation is very much limited to people who speak English or Either the first language or as a second language

54:46

Because nearly all of the best translation helps are in English or in German funny enough

54:54

But you know, we have everything in English, too You may have heard of mother tongue translators

55:04

And having teams of mother tongue translators That works when you have somebody who understands exegesis

55:12

Who understands how to read what this passage is actually talking about and then how to put that?

55:20

those concepts into the other language and then Having a mother tongue or team of mother tongue translators

55:28

They help to actually word it and craft it so that meaning is clear in In that language in the target language

55:39

So that is that is a massive need Yeah another

55:47

Another need is this idea of worldview of teaching in a way that You're targeting the worldview and you're not just The the illustration that I used we're out in Los Angeles Was I said if you imagine you've got a lemon tree because there was one right there so it's kind of handy so it was imagine you have a lemon tree and If you start talking about baptism if you start talking about Living right now tithing, you know about how you ought to behave and so on I said that's like hanging bananas on a lemon tree

56:28

Yeah, and you don't change anything because eventually the bananas rot and fall off And it's still a lemon tree

56:38

Yeah, if you don't change the roots you're not going to change the tree and so teaching at a worldview level and understanding how to do that and understanding how to Understand somebody else's worldview is again.

56:54

It's one of those things that that They need to learn it could be it could be there are a lot of stories that Kind of look like maybe somewhere along the line they were a flood tradition that got

57:31

Changed in some way it got morphed There are a lot of I know like in in Panama the

57:37

Nassau believe that That they were sent away because God was angry with them and there was sent away and they followed this big eagle

57:47

Which eventually turned into their goddess and it turned into this physical rock

57:53

Which they still do all of their? sacred practices that that rock Okay.

57:59

Well, you can kind of see that link back. Oh, yeah when God got angry with them It's like okay.

58:05

This is the rest of the story, you know type of thing And so it could well be that that way and that's where it came from Yeah Any other questions

58:22

Yes Yeah, it's a good question.

58:42

The simple answer is yes and Just the same as here

58:48

Yeah, just the same as you know, if you witness to your average

58:54

American Sometimes you'll see a dramatic change. Sometimes you won't Like I say, it's the worldview

59:03

Change is where you want to see it first. You don't want somebody to give up smoking

59:09

Just because they think oh well Christians don't smoke Yeah, I mean you want there to be a profound change in okay

59:19

I'm my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? There's implications to that and it's not just about smoking.

59:27

You know, it's about exercise. It's about diet. It's about lots of things so so That worldview change is then going to prove, you know provoke if that's the right word that sounds very

59:39

Spanish Bet is not here. She'd defend me You know, but it's going to cause

59:46

Behavioral changes, but that's not going to be that shouldn't be the first thing that we look for but sometimes the you know, the they will change very

59:56

Quickly and very dramatically a lot of it depends on how they're taught if they're taught

01:00:03

Through the Bible before they're saved and they understand the story. They understand that God Created them for a purpose that was to know him and to glorify him and the sin entered the world and that destroyed if you like that Twisted that out the image of God in us and so God now brings it, you know, you look at the story and you see

01:00:30

Jesus coming and he dies on the cross and he pays for our sin and He gives us an opportunity now to do what we were supposed to do at the beginning

01:00:40

Which is to know him and to glorify him and then we see all the way through this like we're just talking about in Revelation Where we're with him forever and we get to glorify him forever if they understand that flow of the story

01:00:56

Before they get saved when they get saved then you tend to see a much more dramatic change

01:01:05

Yeah, because all of those things the pieces were in place, oh I'm supposed to live a way that is worthy

01:01:13

Of the person who saved me. Okay, my time has gone any other questions?

01:01:38

What if the global partners? average age Around 60,

01:01:46

I would guess Yeah, there's some I know there's one guy that just had his 50th birthday

01:01:53

And there's others who are Getting close to 70 But it's kind of in that rage range

01:02:04

Yeah, because of the experience that they've had and so on and what they've done where they've been working and so on.

01:02:11

Yeah Yeah woke influence.

01:02:24

I don't think so. No Yeah Yeah, I wouldn't say so Well Jonathan Rachel, I know y 'all didn't come

01:02:50

Primarily for us when you know, the grandkids are in the area and we appreciate you making a pit stop

01:02:57

Coming by and spending time with us That was encouraging to hear what the

01:03:03

Lord is doing very encouraging to hear about the indigenous leadership training others and Realizing Their own

01:03:15

Ability and responsibility to cooperate with one another really like to see these generation after generation of Christianity spreading

01:03:27

There was a report not so long ago that encouraged me I think it was a missionary team out of Venezuela that went to North Africa and when we've got

01:03:38

We've got missionary teams going from Venezuela to North Africa to evangelize the the Muslims Praise God, you know praise the

01:03:46

Lord. So that's these are good signs of what the Lord is building and I want to close us now with specially praying for Jonathan and Rachel And for the work that they're doing okay, and it'll be dismissed

01:03:59

Heavenly Father I thank you for the time that we've had tonight And we thank you that you indeed

01:04:06

Do what you do in accordance with your own character all for your own pleasure and we rejoice in The testimony that we've heard tonight to be once again assured that that Jesus is building his church upon the rock of his gospel and the gates of Hades cannot prevail against it and Though there are many challenges and many difficulties

01:04:33

Lord. We know that you are Faithful to your promises and bringing these things to pass and so we pray for Jonathan and Rachel and pray that she would give them encouragement and wisdom and health opportunity and blessing

01:04:45

I pray especially for Rachel's parents that she would bring healing and stability and Everything that they need as you would bless those who are taking care of them and that you would

01:05:03

Help their children to honor their parents in this needy time already do thank you for Jonathan and Rachel pray a special blessing upon their work as They continue to train others that they would be effective in The work that they've been called to do well

01:05:23

We thank you for this time that we've had together tonight. We pray these things in Jesus name Amen All right, we are dismissed