Missions to Indonesia

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over years and he shared with us in the past the things that he has done.
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He's going to come today and share a little bit more.
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And I want to remind you that we are taking a special offering today for Scott and for their ministry.
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In your bulletins there is a special offering envelope.
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This is different than your regular offering.
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If you want to give to Scott and to his ministry, please use this envelope.
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That way when the ladies count the money later they'll know what is for what.
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And so please separate out your offerings and what you want to give to Scott would go in the purple envelope.
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Alright Scott.
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Yes sir.
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I just have to tell you guys I've been really looking forward to sharing here today.
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And we'll share wherever we get invited to.
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You know, wherever we're invited to come and share about what God's done.
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And most of the churches we share at don't stand behind us in the way that this church has for a number of years now.
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So I just want to say thank you right off the bat for the way you guys faithfully stood behind us for a number of years now.
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And I want to say also that a main reason I've been looking forward to sharing here this morning is because I know that this church, because with the name Sovereign Grace Family Church and with some of the guys that I've talked to within this church, Pastor Keith and Brother Collier and different guys, that I know that we have the same view of God's sovereignty in relation to salvation and missions.
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And I can't say that about every church I go to.
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Some of the things that I share at churches that I go to cause a lot of conversation, some of which ends up being negative.
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And it's because I believe that if God hadn't prepared the Tao people the way that he did, nobody would have gotten saved.
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If God wouldn't have done what only he can do.
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And I love talking about that.
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And so it's neat to be in a place this morning to be able to talk about that and know that there's people leading this church that are on board and that understand that from the scriptures.
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So it's really neat.
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I'm going to share a little bit just from some stuff the Lord has been teaching me in the Psalms.
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And then in the main service, I hope to share from John chapter 10, something from the word that God's been teaching me in my own life this past week.
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But I also hoped that if we have time, we can do a little bit of question and answer in the Sunday school too.
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Because I know a lot of the guys in the Sunday school class are people that may have questions and the people that know our ministry and know what's been going on over there.
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But just to do a recap for the visitors, if there are some visitors, my wife, her name is Jenny.
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We've got six children.
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Their names are Moses, Job, Lazarus, Boaz, Jedediah.
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And then our little girl is named Maranatha.
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The five boys all have reformer middle names.
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I don't know if you knew that.
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It's Moses Calvin after John Calvin.
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Job Luther after Martin Luther.
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We've got Lazarus Tyndale after the reformed translator.
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We've got Boaz Augustine after the church father Augustine.
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And then Jedediah Knox after John Knox, the Scottish reformer.
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So yeah, I'm excited to share this morning.
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It's neat.
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But yeah, we've been working in Indonesia for 17 years now.
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The way that things have progressed is that when we first went in there, we found out shortly after we moved in there that, and I'm going to share more about this in the main service, but that it was an unwritten alphabet and that nobody in the tribe could read or write.
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So as we learned their language, we formed an alphabet for them.
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We put one symbol with every sound that we heard.
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We made them an alphabet with the goal of them someday being able to read God's translated word in their own language after we had translated it.
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So we taught them how to read and write their own alphabet.
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When we had the language well enough, we started translating.
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My wife is the Bible translator and I take what she translates and teach it.
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Jenny, right now you're in Deuteronomy 30.
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Is that it? Deuteronomy 28.
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So this week we're in Deuteronomy 28.
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That might enable us to finish the book of Deuteronomy in the next week.
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And that's where we're at right now.
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We finished our New Testament about two years ago.
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It says, Ebeatame me kapoge.
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In their language, Ebeatame is the creator, me is his, and kapoge can be broken down kapoie.
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Kapo is white, ie is leaves.
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And they hadn't seen books before we came in there.
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So they thought that looks like a bunch of white leaves.
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So they call it the white leaves of the creator.
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And this is their Bible.
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So now we're translating through the Old Testament.
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And our goal is, of course, to finish the Old Testament as well in their language.
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There's over 700 languages on our island alone.
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And we will be, if the Lord gives us the life and the strength to finish this job, we will be only the second full Bible translation on that island of 700 plus languages.
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I don't know if you guys realized it this morning, but in round numbers, there have been 7,300 spoken languages on this planet, 6,300 of those languages are still spoken today.
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2,000 of those languages right now, today either have the Bible or they have it in the process of translation.
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And then the remaining 4,300 languages don't have a single verse of scripture translated into their language.
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That is wild to think about.
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When you think about all that our people group has, how we've got new versions of the Bible coming out all the time in English.
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But what about those 4,300 people groups that don't have a single verse of scripture translated into their language? And I know you guys have a passion for that and to think about that.
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But I'm going to share more about the Tao people as well in the main service.
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But just to read some verses that I've been thinking about in my own life.
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I love reading through the Psalms, don't you? The book of Psalms.
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Can you imagine life without the book of Psalms? The Tao people still don't have it.
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We're going to translate it, Lord willing, in the near future after we're done with the Pentateuch, which we're finishing up right now and move on to other things.
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But I was thinking about the Psalms because Psalms has a lot about missions in it.
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Did you know that? I didn't really think about this until recently, but even though it's in the Old Testament, Psalms talks over and over and over again about God's passion that the whole world will one day worship him.
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Listen to some of these verses from the book of Psalms.
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Psalms 22,27 says, all of the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations will bow down before him.
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Psalm 33,8, it says, let all the earth fear the Lord.
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Let all the people of the world revere him.
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Psalm 47,1 says, clap your hands, all you nations shout to God with cries of joy.
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Psalm 67,2 and 3 says, may your ways be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.
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Psalm 86,9 says, all the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord.
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They will bring glory to your name.
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Psalm 96,3 says, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
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Psalm 100,1 through 2 says, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
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And then Psalm 117, the shortest chapter in the Bible.
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David only writes a couple verses in this chapter, but he makes it a point again to mention all the nations.
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Psalm 117,1 says, praise the Lord, all you nations extol him, all you peoples.
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It's been God's intent since before the foundation of the world that every nation, all nations, people from every language should and will one day worship him.
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That's a powerful thing to think about.
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It really is.
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You can see it in Revelation chapter 7, where it paints that beautiful scene of people from, again, from every tongue, tribe, nation, and language singing out in unison, saying, worthy is the Lamb who was slain, praising God like that.
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It talks about it in Romans 15, verses 20 through 22, where Paul lays out where he goes and why he goes there.
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He says, it is my ambition, my goal to preach the gospel in the places that meet two criteria.
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He says, where the name of Jesus has not been named and where there is no foundation laid.
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In other words, no church is established.
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And he says, the reason he focused on those places is because of Isaiah 52, which says, every eye should see and every ear should hear.
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So this thing called missions, it's not just something that was introduced with Jesus telling us to go.
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It was from the Old Testament, from the very beginning, from before the foundation of the world.
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And that's a beautiful thing to think about.
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It really is.
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It's an amazing thing to think about.
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And that right there, that really, that's our hope.
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It's our hope in missions, is that God's had a plan and that it won't fail.
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That it won't fail.
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That every nation will one day worship before him.
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So I hope that encourages you this morning, just to think about that, just to think about, to dwell on the fact that God's got a plan for this world, that he laid it out before the foundation of the world and that it will not fail.
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And we see evidence of that over and over again as we work with the Dao people.
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One of the stories that I believe I've told here before is about how God prepared the people before we got there.
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And I mentioned it earlier, but specifically the way we found that out.
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You know, when we went into the Dao tribe, we went with three families.
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And the other two families quit in the first year.
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One of them quit because in the Dao tribe, their culture is such that when they ask for a bride, when they are looking for a wife or a future wife, they start the negotiations very, very young.
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And they buy their wives with shell money.
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I believe I've talked about that here before as well.
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But one of our other families that came in had about a three-year-old girl they brought with her.
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And of course, all the young Dao men, they saw her as eligible.
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You know, of course she wasn't married.
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So they started going to the father and approaching him, asking if they could put the first down payment down for this little girl.
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And the father, he just, he couldn't get over it.
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He got so scared that his daughter was going to be taken.
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So he, for a while, for months, he actually sat in the doorway of his house with bows and arrows, trying to guard his family.
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And eventually they said, we're calling the helicopter, we're leaving.
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And we knew they weren't coming back.
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And they took off.
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The other family, the wife had a very high concern with cleanliness and making sure that germs and so on aren't brought into the home.
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When you work with a people group with no running water, no bathrooms, they don't wash their hands before they make food and you're sharing food with them regularly.
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Cleanliness is not a very, very common thing.
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In fact, we get Giardia and Amoeba on a regular basis when we're over there because of the way things are.
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But that eventually got the best of the wife and they had to, they had to leave too.
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But anyways, we ended up staying and there came a point about six months after those families had quit that we were considering quitting too.
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We were thinking we're getting sick over and over and over again.
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We were getting malaria over and over and over again.
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We thought we can't stay here much longer.
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We're, you know, we're just too sick all the time.
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And then I've told you about how there was a guy named Apiawogi.
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And when we'd moved there, Apiawogi had built a house right next to ours and he wasn't going anywhere and he was staying.
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And it was weird for the Dao people because they're semi-nomadic, they're always moving.
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And one day when we were, Jenny and I were talking about how much longer can we stay here, it was early in the morning and I heard someone clearing their throat and it was Apiawogi.
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He was coming up to our house and I was thinking to myself, I've got to think of a question to ask him to get him talking because when I talk they laugh at me because I'm not very good at their language.
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And this is just the thought that was in my head.
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He walked up on the porch and we did the morning greeting, which is nimu me aba aba aba, and we snap knuckles, nimu me aba, we say.
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And then he said, oh, good morning, friends, Degapia.
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I don't know if you remember, but they named me Degapia.
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It means tall white tree.
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And they named my wife Ugitawo, which means stream in a dry barren land, Ugitawo.
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He walked up on the porch and I said, friends, good morning.
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And in my limited language ability, I said, friend, I have a question for you.
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I said, why have you built a house right next to us? Why are you staying here? Because it was unusual.
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He said to me, he said, he got kind of a half smile and he said, Degapia, tall white tree, I need to tell you a story.
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And I said, okay, go ahead.
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And he went on and he told us the story.
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He said, when I was this high, I woke up in the men's hut one morning because nobody knows their age is there.
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That's how they describe their age.
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They don't know the concept of years.
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He said, I woke up one morning when I was this high in the Thad Shrufa house.
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He said, all the other men were waking up.
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My father was in the room.
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He woke up.
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He sat last.
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He sat straight up.
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His eyes were huge.
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And he said, I've had a strange dream.
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And we said to him, tell us your dream.
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And he said to us, it was the strangest dream.
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I dreamed that there was these strange looking people, pale skinned people.
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They hiked into our, our village.
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They are our system of, of valleys.
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And they hiked up our valley and they told us they had a great message for us.
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And in that dream, I saw that somehow they could speak our language.
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They told us this great message.
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And then after we heard it, we became so close with these strange looking outsiders that we were like family.
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He said, and then my father, he, he said, and then I woke up.
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And that was it.
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He said, when I was this high, all those years ago, he said, we all sat in that room that morning.
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And we thought, wow, that's really weird.
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He said, now all these years later, my father's dead.
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He said, my father died a long time ago.
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He said, but look, here you are.
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He said, you've got that strange look.
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You've told us you're here to give us a great message.
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He said, Degapia, tall white tree, the reason I've built my house right next to yours, the reason I'm not going anywhere is because I'm waiting to hear your message.
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And then I thought I'd heard him wrong.
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Cause it was so strange.
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And I said, tell me the story again.
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He told me the same thing again.
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But then as we met other people from two different Valley systems, it turned out that different men, they're all, their fathers had all had the same dream in multiple villages.
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And then when we taught for the first time, we didn't start with Jesus.
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We started at creation.
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We started in Genesis.
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We didn't start with Jesus because they believed everything was controlled by spirits and specifically evil spirits.
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They didn't even have a word in their language for a spirit that was good in nature.
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So we had to lay a correct foundation for a God that's good in nature and then build off that foundation.
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Otherwise they would have assumed that Jesus also was evil in nature and we would have made them twice the sons of hell.
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Like Jesus accused the Pharisees.
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I've given them a false religion and we didn't want to do that.
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But we talked for three months through all the stories, the key stories, the old Testament, the prophecies to come and redeem her.
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And then through the life of Christ.
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And then nearly the whole village came to Christ.
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And I don't believe that would have happened unless God did what he did, unless he prepared them.
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Right.
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That blew me away.
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You know, before that point, I don't think I believed fully in the sovereignty of God and salvation.
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God used that to turn my attention to, to, to change my view.
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I used to view God really as someone that was, that was nervous, that was sitting there thinking, I hope these missionaries don't fail me or my plans ruined for the Dow people.
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That's the way I used to view God.
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And I don't view him that way anymore.
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I think that he has a plan.
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I know that he has a plan for every tongue-traveling nation.
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It will not fail.
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And that he will see to it that his bride is made complete.
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But I hope that encourages you this morning.
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When I think about this, when I think about God's plan, I think about all these verses.
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That's our hope.
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That's our hope as missionaries, is that God has a plan.
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And as we go out, we can hope in the fact that God will not let his plan fail, that he will accomplish it.
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Right? He will, he'll accomplish it.
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And even that the trials that God brings into our lives, he only brings them into our lives, I believe, to make himself look all that glorious and to teach us also.
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I used to go over there.
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We used to go to the Dow tribe.
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I, I, I don't know what else to call it except for a savior complex.
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We looked at ourselves as if we were heroes going over to save a tribe.
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Now I look back on it and I think God took us over there, not only to, to, to for us to have a part in reaching those people, but to change us.
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He brought us through trial after trial after trial.
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Man, when we had malaria six months in a row and we were about to give up, you know, at first the Dow people, they didn't even believe that we were fully human.
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They thought maybe, maybe we didn't die.
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One of the first questions I understood from the Dow people, an old guy named Dow Cuggy.
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I put his picture with my announcement on Facebook for speaking at this church.
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That's Dow Cuggy.
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Dow Cuggy, he said, hey, hey, hey, dig up here.
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I've got a question for you.
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Cause we were asking them questions all the time.
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And he said, my question is this.
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He said, do your people die? And I said, of course we die.
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Why would you ask that? And he said, well, he said, is your, is your, is your father still alive? And I said, well, yeah.
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Well, over there, the life expectancy is about 35.
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We only, we only saw two people with gray hair the first couple of years we were there.
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Even in this room this morning, they would look at all the gray hair and they would be amazed.
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People don't live that long.
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And he said, your father's still alive.
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I said, well, yeah.
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And he said, what about your grandfather? I said, oh, yeah, he's alive.
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And I could see him just nodding like, yeah, right.
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Your people die.
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He said, what about your great grandfather? And at that time, my great grandfather was still alive.
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I said, yes, he's still alive.
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And he, he's, he's just shaking his head like, yeah, right.
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Your people don't die.
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But you know what happened? We started getting that malaria month after month after month.
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And when you get sick in the Dao tribe, they don't leave you alone and let you rest.
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They actually gather around your house, and they yell into your house all day.
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You just hear this all day.
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Love, friends, love to you, love to you, get better, love to you.
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So there's no chance of sleeping, right, when you're sick.
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So we're just laying there, you know, sweating profusely, get the cold feet and all this that you get with malaria, throwing up over and over again.
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And we're hearing this, but eventually we came through it.
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And after this happened month after month, eventually Kogi Pia, another guy, and Daokagi, they came out, and they said, Daga Pia, they said, friend, what do you do when you get malaria in your country? I said, we don't get it in my country.
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And they said, what about dinghy fever? What do you do when you get dinghy fever in your country? I said, friends, we don't get dinghy fever in my country.
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And then they said, well, what about Giardia and amoeba, all these things you keep getting here? I said, well, they have them in my country, but it's rare.
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We don't get it there either.
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And eventually they said, well, then why are you staying here? Why don't you go back to your own country? You won't be sick all the time.
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And that's an awesome question, because that question asks for an amazing and powerful answer.
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And the answer is that the reason we're staying here is because our message that we've got to bring to you is so great and our God so wonderful that we are staying despite these things, because you need to know about it.
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You need to know about it.
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And I think that through that, they saw that our message is worth something.
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They saw the trials that we went through, and they saw us pushing through those trials for the sake of the message, and they thought these people believe what they say they believe.
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And then they realized also that we do die because we almost died.
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Last time we went over there, four of our kids got dinghy fever.
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And it's still one of those things that is a concern on our minds.
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But you know what we encourage ourselves with over and over again is the sovereignty of God, that God uses our trials to make himself look beautiful, in our sufferings really.
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He makes himself look beautiful to suffering people that we're trying to minister to.
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And we identify with them.
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I think last time we came through here, we just come through the loss of a child.
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And now the Lord's given us two more since then.
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But even the loss of that child, God used it in amazing ways to speak to people in the Dao tribe, because there's almost no family in that tribe that hasn't lost one or multiple children, because the infant death rate is so high there.
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God uses our trials.
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And I hope that's an encouragement to you this morning, that God uses our trials.
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He uses our sicknesses.
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He uses everything he brings us through for his glory, for his glory.
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But yeah, when I think about that last passage, Psalm 117, one, praise the Lord, all you nations extol him, all you peoples.
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And Psalm 117, that shortest chapter, there's only one more verse in that chapter.
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And it says, it says, why his name should be known among the nations.
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David, he says, he says, make his name known, right? Praise the Lord, all nations extol him, all peoples.
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And he says, because great is his steadfast love toward us.
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And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
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And then he says, praise the Lord.
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So why, why should every nation praise him? Why should every nation extol him? According to David, it's because he has a love to offer us that is so steadfast, and so faithful, and so enduring, that it should be praised in every nation.
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Every last one.
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It's that great.
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It's that great.
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Yesterday, man, I could talk forever.
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I could tell more stories about, we were at the skate park yesterday.
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And with my son, Job, he's a skateboarder.
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And he was making friends with other kids.
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And three different times I had guys walk up to me and say, Oh, is that your kid? He had that shirt on.
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No, Jesus, no peace.
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And they started asking about it.
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Awesome witnessing opportunity.
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We're talking to him about the Lord.
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But, but all three of the men I talked to, they said their, their wives had just left them.
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And they were raising children alone with with full custody.
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And just to think about that, the love that our world has to offer right now is a joke.
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It's a joke.
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When you compare it to the steadfast, great, enduring love of the Lord.
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Love in our society does not endure.
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We entertain ourselves with television shows that show people leaving their families and glorifying it.
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We entertain ourselves with unmarried people acting out what only married people should be doing for our entertainment.
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The love that our world has to offer is a joke.
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But the love of the Lord is steadfast, and it's enduring.
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And it's great.
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There's no love like it, right? The whole world should be praising God for it and should know about it.
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I could just keep going.
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But anyways, um, do some of you guys have thoughts? Do you do you have questions for us? I know a lot of you guys have read, read our books, and you've read the different prayer letters that we've been sending out the newsletters.
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We're supposed to be back in Indonesia right now.
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We were supposed to leave a few months ago.
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We got in the country for the birth of Maranatha.
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About a week later, they started showing up, closing flights.
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Some of our friends going the other way got stuck.
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And now the country's closed.
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Indonesia is issuing visas because you have to pay for a visa.
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But then they're not letting you get on the plane to come over.
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So it's a way they're making money without letting anybody in, unfortunately.
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So we had two families that are co-workers of ours that work in other tribes that this happened to last week.
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So we're trying to get back.
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But the cool thing is that these people that didn't even have an alphabet couldn't read and write 10 years ago.
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Now there's a cell tower on the edge of their territory.
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And even this morning, I was texting with them on Facebook Messenger.
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Isn't that wild? So I can talk to our pastors now.
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They just sent me a whole bunch of pictures of their Christmas feast where they got together and prayed.
25:33
They call it the Yesus me onedata nago, which means the day that the cord of Jesus was cut because they don't have a word for Christmas in their language.
25:40
That's what they call it.
25:41
I'll talk about that a little bit later.
25:43
But the message is still going out.
25:48
They're reaching out to the last clan right now called the Moody clan that hadn't been taught previously in our dialect of language.
25:56
And now they're reaching cross-dialect to the next languages over.
26:01
And they're taking with them this church had a part in helping us get these.
26:06
This last time we were over there, we delivered these.
26:08
This is a solar powered audio Bible.
26:10
It's got a solar panel on one side, and then it's chalk proof, waterproof.
26:15
We took these over this last time with the intention of giving them to the older people that never learned how to read.
26:21
Because again, they didn't have a written alphabet.
26:24
And as we tried to teach them to read, a lot of the older people, by the time we started teaching their tribe, their eyes were too far gone, or even their hands were calloused.
26:32
And even learning simple things like holding a pencil was a huge challenge for them.
26:36
So we thought, how can we get these guys access to God's word anytime they want it? And we found these, and we took hundreds of them over there.
26:46
But there were so many people that wanted them that we didn't have enough.
26:50
And they said, you have to bring more of these back.
26:52
And it turned out they not only wanted to give them to the older people, but they wanted to take them to those outreach areas they're doing, where people haven't yet learned how to read and write, and give them to them as well.
27:01
So now we're getting together a bunch more of these, and we're going to take them back as soon as we can get back in Indonesia.
27:08
So that's something you can pray for us about, is just that the Lord will open up the doors and give us wisdom for getting back in that country.
27:14
And you can pray for our family too, as far as the sicknesses that we encounter when we go back.
27:20
Pray for the Tao people, and so on.
27:23
But that's what's going on right now.
27:25
Do any of you guys have questions about what's going on right now, or anything you've read in the book, or anything like that? We do.
27:44
Well, it's been interesting to see the way it unfolded.
27:47
I didn't think it would be easy for them to learn to read, because it was such a foreign concept.
27:53
And even figuring out who could get in the classes, and who could learn, and who couldn't, was a hard thing to figure out.
28:01
Eventually, we used this method.
28:03
We told all the little kids, because all the little, even toddlers, wanted to join the literacy classes, all the way up to old people at first.
28:09
And we said, but we noticed the really young kids were having a hard time.
28:12
So we said, you have to be able to reach over your head, and touch your other ear.
28:17
I don't know if you ever noticed, but little kids like Marinatha, and other kids, they've got short arms.
28:22
So if you can't reach that far, then you got to wait until you get a little bit older to join the class, we told them.
28:28
Because that was our test.
28:30
If you can do that, you can do it.
28:32
But yeah, he can do it.
28:33
I don't think Jed can do it.
28:38
I think maybe Boaz could do it.
28:39
But anyways, we made a system, our literacy program, after we made them an alphabet.
28:46
And again, we had to work interesting things into their alphabet.
28:49
They speak things, they have three tones in their language.
28:52
It's tonal.
28:53
And they speak things in different pitches.
28:54
If they said the sentence, that person eats people, they would say, me, me, me, menugi.
28:59
And they would say that sentence, because there's a cannibalistic tribe in the lowlands, not too far from them.
29:03
And that sentence, me, me, me, menugi.
29:05
All four of those me's have different meanings according to the pitch you speak them at, and how long you hold them out.
29:10
So we had to put forward and backward accent markers on different words in, you know what, I'm going to pass this around, you can see their intestines.
29:21
And then we had to add vowels onto certain words to show different meanings.
29:25
I thought this is going to be hard for these people to learn this.
29:27
But we took a syllable approach, we made four primers, little booklets, and their word, their greeting word, aba.
29:34
We started the very first thing we taught them was a, a, and ba, b, a.
29:41
Well, they memorized those letters, and already they can say aba, aba, aba, their greeting they use every day.
29:46
So we taught a syllable approach, and we built off that foundation.
29:49
And believe it or not, those people were sharp.
29:52
Most kids were learning to read in about six months.
29:57
Now, the ability to write was a lot harder for them.
29:59
They'd have to practice a lot longer before they got good at writing, because they're just not used to doing that, you know.
30:05
But it blew me away how fast they learned how to read.
30:09
They're really, really sharp people.
30:11
And if you think about it, too, you know, we would equate reading letters on the page to reading tracks when you're in the jungle hunting something.
30:18
You look down, you see a pig track, and you know it's a pig.
30:21
You see a bird track, you know it's a bird, and so on and so on.
30:25
A tree kangaroo, couscous tracks, you read the tracks.
30:28
So we took that concept and, and said, and now these are just like tracks.
30:32
You read the tracks, and then you learn which word it is.
30:36
And it was, it was our approach.
30:37
But they've taken that primer system of those, those four primers, and now they've, they carry those books to different villages, and they teach in different villages.
30:45
And we no longer teach literacy, because they've taken over the teaching of their own program.
30:50
I've, this last time we were back, I met a guy.
30:54
I'd never met him.
30:55
He'd never even seen a foreigner before.
30:58
He lived so far back in the jungle.
31:00
But he came out, and I was holding that book, and he said, let me read it.
31:04
And I said, you know how to read? He said, yeah.
31:06
I said, okay.
31:07
And I handed it to him, and he read perfectly.
31:09
And I said, who taught you? And he said, oh, well, you taught Kogipia.
31:12
Kogipia taught Debatoma.
31:13
Debatoma taught Siras, and Siras came to my village and taught me.
31:18
So, like, fourth-generation reader.
31:20
And he was a believer, too.
31:21
The same thing had happened with Outreaches.
31:24
So, it's amazing.
31:25
That's our goal, isn't, isn't to, to, to be the, the center of everything forever.
31:29
Our goal is to do just like Paul did, to get them standing on their own, teaching their own teachers.
31:34
And then, now, we're doing our translation.
31:36
We're going back and forth and encouraging them as much as we can, teaching new things when we can.
31:42
And we're doing like Paul did, as he, as you see in the New Testament.
31:45
But that's, that's how the literacy unfolded.
31:48
That's how it played out.
31:52
Yes, ma'am? Oh, yeah.
31:59
Yeah.
32:02
No.
32:02
So, when we first went in, first, we had to take a dugout canoe for a few days up a river with a, with a Johnson motor attached on the back of it.
32:14
And we hired a guide that spoke an Abrian dialect.
32:17
We ended up in that standoff that talks about in the book where there's three guys with bows and arrows.
32:21
We ended up showing friendship towards them.
32:23
They showed it back.
32:24
They became our guides into the rest of the tribe.
32:26
And we hiked for two weeks.
32:27
There was everything from vine bridges that we had to cross that were made for little four and a half foot guys, not six foot two guys, that we would hear vines snapping as we were crossing them.
32:37
We've got it on, we got that on video, believe it or not.
32:40
It's, it's on the internet if you want to see us crossing that bridge for the first time over the rapids.
32:45
But yeah, we got in there.
32:48
And we eventually picked that place where we, Jenny and I, we built our house.
32:52
And we made a helicopter pad.
32:55
We also started building an airstrip.
32:57
But we get the airship halfway done.
32:59
And then tribe to the east of us opened the airship for the first time.
33:03
And the first thing that happened was the government sent a lot of Muslim influences in.
33:06
And we thought if that's the way it's going to be, we need to stop this airstrip.
33:11
So we just stopped our airstrip program altogether.
33:13
We quit working on it for that purpose.
33:15
And to this day, it's helicopter access only.
33:18
So we get in by the helicopter with our family.
33:22
If the helicopter was ever to be out of commission or to be down, which happens sometimes, then we, to get to the closest place, we'd have to hike for two weeks to get to the closest city or hospital or anything like that.
33:32
But now we go in by helicopter.
33:34
And I'm going to show a video if it gets lined up in the main service that shows us delivering those New Testaments for the first time, shows the faces of the people as they receive them that you guys have had a part in this.
33:44
So thank you.
33:45
You'll get to see that.
33:46
And you'll see the helicopter that we take in and out of there with our family as well in that video.
33:51
Yeah.
33:53
Does anybody else have a question? Yeah.
34:03
Yeah.
34:08
Yeah.
34:11
Yeah.
34:12
So the wilds are doing the same things we're doing right now.
34:15
They're waiting to get back in Indonesia.
34:16
And we stayed at their headquarters for their group, Beyond the Reef.
34:21
It's in Niceville, Florida, on our way down here and hung out with their four sons.
34:25
They call us Uncle Scott, Aunt Jenny, but they work about three tribes over from us called the Wano.
34:30
And it's actually part of a different language family.
34:33
We're part of the Whistle Lakes language family, and they're part of the Donny language family.
34:37
There's a bunch of languages that have related areas over there.
34:43
But, yeah, the wilds are great people.
34:48
Mike just spent two months in jail this last year under false accusations from Muslim government people that didn't like what he was doing.
34:58
And his wife and his four kids waited for him in the city while he went through trial after trial trying to get out of jail.
35:04
So keep praying for them.
35:06
But was that your question is how closely close we are to them? Different language, yep.
35:15
We're going through to if they're not able to get back in, which they won't be able to, we're going back through to spend some more time within about two weeks to brainstorm about how we can get long-term visas in the midst of all this to get back in.
35:27
So, yeah, pray for them and pray for us as well.
35:33
Yes, sir.
35:41
Well, the way we got those Bibles in was half of them we got in through a flight organization with things from that flight organization so that they could kind of get mixed in with that stuff and get in.
35:56
And the other half, just in case those were to get taken for some reason, we put into our children's luggage and in our luggage, because you get a lot of bags with a lot of kids, right? And so we just wrapped them in our clothes and everything else.
36:08
And what ended up happening is both made it in.
36:12
So that was awesome.
36:14
When we took the solar audio Bibles in, we did a similar approach.
36:19
Half of them got confiscated.
36:21
The other half, they could see the lithium ion batteries in our luggage.
36:26
And they called me around to look at the machine and kind of detained us for a few minutes and asked us about it.
36:33
And I didn't lie at all and tell them that they weren't something that you can put audio files on and give to people.
36:42
But also, I didn't make it clear that they were Bibles necessarily, because, you know, what happens? Anyways, without saying too much, we got in with them, but the other half got taken.
36:59
So if they want to, they can detain us, they can fine us, they can put us in jail.
37:04
It's illegal to proselytize in that country, which is to convert someone from a two different religion from what religion they already are.
37:12
So if they wanted to, they could get us in a lot of trouble.
37:15
And there have been people that have spent a long time in jail over it.
37:19
But that's just the way it is.
37:21
You know, it's part of it.
37:26
Does anybody else have a question? Yeah.
37:35
So with the transportation and all, because the helicopter is about $500 an hour to use it, and it takes multiple flights back and forth to get these things in.
37:46
With the transportation and all, they end up at about $20 per unit.
37:50
So it's not that bad.
37:52
Yeah.
37:53
And man, the people, they love these things.
37:56
So I'm excited to take back more.
37:58
It'll be neat.
37:59
How many are you taking back? We're hoping to get back in another 500 to 1,000.
38:03
We're going to take the same approach as before.
38:05
We'll see what makes it and what doesn't.
38:10
Yeah.
38:14
Yep.
38:15
Where are we at on time? I think we need to go ahead and draw this to a close.
38:19
Okay.
38:20
And our big seat.
38:24
So we may be one or two minutes late starting our normal service, because I've got to run Chris out.
38:32
Yeah, that'd be great.
38:34
God, we thank you for your word.
38:36
We thank you, first of all, that we have it in our language, that we enjoy it every day, whenever we want to.
38:43
What a privilege that is.
38:45
We didn't choose where we were born.
38:46
You chose that for us.
38:48
So even the fact that you had each one in this room born where we were born, with access to your word, it's just an act of your mercy and of your grace.
38:56
And we thank you for that, Lord.
38:58
And I pray that you would grow our understanding and our passion, first of all, for you and just to love you and to know you deeper, but not only to know you ourselves, but to make you known.
39:10
And every last nation and people group, as you tell us from your word, is your plan, since the very beginning, to have your bride made up of people from every tongue, tribe, nation, and language.
39:20
Lord, break our hearts for the things that break your heart that you would have us to be a part of, Lord.
39:28
And we know that you would have us to be a part of seeing your word spread.
39:30
Thank you, Lord.
39:31
Thank you for this group of people that has so faithfully stood behind us.
39:34
And I pray that you would take every trial, Lord, that you bring into their lives as well, and every victory, and just use it to make your name and yourself look absolutely amazing and glorious to a watching world, both saved and unsaved.
39:50
Thank you, Lord.
39:51
Amen.