Provoked: Italy - How to Evangelize in a Tough Environment

The Purpose of the Podcast and the Post-Roe Fight

Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity. I mean, this is what's wrong with the Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are.

Well, behold, the

Officer, you need to repent of your lawless conduct. You don't know the law, and yet you pretend to represent it. That's not law enforcement, sir. That's being a thug.

We will not stop fighting and bothering you all until this monstrous, barbaric practice of legalized abortion ends, and we are teaching our children to do the same.

God's word says that the shed blood of innocent humans cries out for justice. And mark my words, they will have their day in court.

Nobody gets saved by being treated nicely. They get saved by hearing the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. If we don't open our mouths and commend Christ. We're not loving them, no matter what we're doing with our hands.

Hello, everyone. You are watching another episode of Provoked. We're so thankful that you're here and listening, if you're watching or listening on iTunes. But the purpose of our podcast is to preach the gospel, rescue babies, destroy cultural idols, and defend the faith.

So I'm here with my co-host, my big bearded brother, Zach. How are you today?

Hey, how are you?

Doing well.

Thanks for leading this one.

Yeah, we've had a busy summer, so it's kind of hot here, just a tiny bit.

Oh yeah, it's a little bit.

Yeah.

Roe v. Wade, State Enforcement, and the Abortion Battle

So the last time that we spoke, it was right before Roe, everything went down. Where were you when that happened?

I just started sabbatical, so I went on sabbatical June 23rd. And it was at, I think it was the same day.

Yeah, it was the next day, because we went on our family vacation the same, like we left the same day as you. And so when we found out we were actually in Las Vegas, because we stopped in Las Vegas before we went up to Salt Lake.

Right.

And so it was pretty surreal. I looked at my phone, it was actually John Barrows' post that I saw that alerted me to it. He had a picture of like a plane going down. He was like, goodbye Roe. And I was like, no way.

And then I started searching and it was definitely surreal. It was crazy.

Yeah, it is.

What did you do? Did you just go freak out and start running around the room?

I don't know. I think I was really pessimistic.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm still a little bit, I am leaning on more of the pessimistic side of it. I just, it's such a complex issue.

It is.

It's just like an onion with so many layers. You know, when I'm like right, minutes up until we started recording, I'm dealing with like figuring out what exactly is going on here. Because now we have judges, you know, trying to block what the states are doing.

Because what did the federal government do? They just tossed it to the states and said, now this is a state issue, which it should have always been.

Right.

Now we're going to let the states determine what they're going to do. Of course, in Arizona, we revert back to 120 year old law 13 -3603, which everybody from, listen to Apology, has probably heard so many times.

And that's saying that surgical abortions or pills to kill a baby is punishable by at least two years in prison, max five years. And so now yesterday, well, now we saw Utah have a judge say, no, we're going to block this person that giving the baby in the womb the same rights as a baby or a person outside of the womb.

And then as soon as I saw Utah do that, I'm like domino effect. And so of course, Arizona does it. And then we got our attorney general saying, nope, we're going to enforce it. And then now we have people calling our abortion clinics like within the past five minutes.

And they're saying, nope, we are going to start killing babies. And so I'm going to talk to our attorney general and try to get an appointment just to say, dude, what's going on? You're saying this is punishable.

Are you going to do it? So we'll see what happens. But it's one thing to say, hey, look, this is pushed to the States. It's another thing to enforce it. We always knew enforceability, which is going to take actually law enforcement, going to a clinic, putting an abortionist in shackles, chaining up the door.

And then maybe I'll have a reason to celebrate. But I mean, since then, so many abortion clinics have shut down. So we talked to our friend, Jason Storms, who's the head of Operation Save America. And he's like, hey, he's in Wisconsin, right?

He's like, abortion clinics are shut down, no surgical. So there's a lot to be thankful for. A lot of abortionists are not killing babies right now. Thank God for that. I've just, I don't know. I just, maybe just being on a sidewalk for the past 10 years has hardened me up a little bit.

Well, you know the reality that it's still happening. So it's not like, okay, it's illegal, but it was a big step in the right direction.

Oh, it was, absolutely, yeah.

And now it's back on the States. Now we need good sheriffs and cops and state legislators.

Yeah, and attorney generals that are actually going to enforce it.

So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, we will. It'll definitely be interesting to see kind of how it all unfolds. Of course, it's election season coming up and yeah, it's gonna be interesting, but it's been fun to see just the other side just losing their mind.

I have probably been sinful in my joy that I've taken and just seeing like, okay, it's going back to the States. A lot of the people that are freaking out live in like California or New York. You're like, you realize you can still have an abortion in these places.

It's like, they don't even realize how it works, but yeah, that's been fun. I mean, it was really a victorious just moment, but of course we have a lot of work to do. I don't want to be gloating, but it does feel good to have a win.

It really does. All glory to God. And it gives me hope for our country that perhaps people will be repenting and turning to the Lord. And so I am

It's just in the moment, my blood is just boiling right now because standing outside of Dr. Eunice's clinic, Camelback Family Planning, Planned Parenthood for years, I mean, thousands of hours and preaching thousands of sermons.

And then you're like, they're stopped and it's surreal. And then this judge tries to block it. Now we're calling and they're resuming again. And so you're like, it's deflating, but it's a battle. I mean, it's a war and I think we won a battle but the war is not over.

That's right.

Yeah, we'll just keep pressing on and pressing forward. So onward and upward. Well, if you haven't yet, you got to become an Apologia All Access member where you can get tons of great content and yeah, just hours and hours of lectures.

Thousands. Yeah, so if you haven't done that yet, become an All Access partner with us so we can keep doing what we do here at Apologia and just make Jesus known and bring the gospel all over the world.

Italy, Missions, and the Reality of Roman Catholicism

And speaking of, we have a very special guest with us today. Someone, he actually heard our podcast and wrote us a very nice review. His name's Jesse Schreck. He has a podcast called Missions Incorporated and he is all the way in Italy joining us today.

It's like 1 .30 in the morning and we're super thankful to have him on. He is an Italian missionary with his family and so we're gonna hear about his testimony and the work that God is doing out there in Italy.

I think it's gonna be cool because we talk a lot about evangelism here in America and some of the challenges and frustrations and so I'm very excited to hear about what it's like in Italy and just kind of the different nuances.

I think some of the, he gave us some stats. I think there's 60 million people living in Italy. Somewhere between 70 to 90 are professing Roman Catholic, although he said that many of them don't actually practice.

They just kind of identify as a Roman Catholic.

Jack, Roman Catholics.

And then I think there's less than a 1 evangelical presence in Italy. So that's a lot of people, 60 million people, less than a 1 influence of, you know, an evangelical influence. So there's a lot of, sounds like there's a lot of need there for gospel-driven missionaries.

So, Jesse, hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Yeah, hi, really great to be here. Glad to be able to share some time with you and tell a little bit of my experiences and also the realities of Italy. Truly an honor to be on with you guys. Appreciate you both very much.

Thank you. And thanks for that sweet review you gave us. That was actually right when we had first started and it kind of popped up on my feed and I was like, oh, I was so touched that someone, we joke about, you know, just our parents listening.

So it was really encouraging to hear that somebody all the way in Italy was listening. So thank you for that. And thank you for just taking the time tonight. So we're just gonna start off with that. We just wanna hear about your testimony and what brought you to Italy and you can go as far as you want or as brief as you want.

You just kind of start and we'll just go from there.

Yeah, well, originally I'm from Allentown, Pennsylvania. So up in the Northeast and I grew up not in a Christian home. Parents got divorced, I was only seven years old. And so grew up in not a fruitful environment, we could say that.

And was forced in a lot of ways to have to do things on my own. And I realized at a young age, I believed in God and I would pray to God, right? And I would often have my prayers answered, but it was out of necessity that I would pray on God because I felt like I had to figure things out.

There was really, it felt like there was no one there to kind of guide me and tell me what to do and these kinds of things. But I didn't have a full understanding of the gospel, that's for sure. And when I was a little bit older, just hitting teenage years, actually found my identity, found my meaning and purpose, hanging out with the older crowd.

And so there was a lot of drugs and drug dealing and these kinds of things. And stayed on that path till I was 17 and that's when I began hearing the gospel actually preached and I just surrendered my life.

And for me, it was not some long drawn out process, it was quite instant to the point I could try to continue living as I was before, but it really had no point. Nothing satisfied me anymore. Doing all the things I would normally do, all the different sinful things had no satisfaction and instead, right away I had a real hunger for the word of God.

So I began devouring the Bible, reading different Christian books and could not put the Bible down in a very real sense. So my life was drastically transformed, but I was also saved in a charismatic church where the gospel was not preached very well.

And looking back, I see it was actually, it was more of a prosperity gospel at that time, what I was buying into. I was actually born again, I'm convinced of that for sure, but the gospel was more of say yes to Jesus, do what he says and your life will be better and that kind of Christianity, I guess we could call it.

But then it was when I did a semester abroad when I was 23 years old, so a few years have gone by. 23 years old, I did a semester abroad at Saints Bible Institute here in Italy and it's a small institute that was run by missionaries.

And it was there that I first encountered the doctrines of grace, began studying things like predestination, God's election, and light bulbs just started going off. For a few weeks, I actually wrestled with that and then all of a sudden, all these light bulbs went off in my mind and I found great relief and great comfort in the actual gospel and what it means to be chosen by God and how he loves us and he pursues us and we didn't pursue him, it was him first transforming our heart, giving us new desires and that's why we don't like our sin anymore, that's why we want Jesus Christ, we can understand who he is, want him for who he is and come after him.

So that semester really transformed my life. Number one, the doctrines of grace were clearly taught to me and that just transformed me completely. Everything became alive, the gospel really became alive, the Bible really became alive for me.

It was like I was reading the Bible with whole new eyes. And shortly after that, I was given an opportunity as well to come back and serve in Italy. So I had also learned about the realities of Italy, I met other missionaries for the first time in my life and in addition, we studied missions, we studied evangelism and then got to do that.

We got to actually go on the streets, do mimes and dramas, draw in a crowd, preach the gospel, present the gospel, engage people in conversation and I think it was just made clear to me that it kind of came a little more naturally for me to do that than for other students that were there at that time and I found something that I was good at, something that God enabled me to do and actually ultimately called me to do and I began after that moment just pursuing that semester abroad, pursuing a career in missions and my plan was to go to Costa Rica with the Christian Missionary Alliance, they had it all set up for me, they wanted me to go do a year of training there and but I was just so indebted and so grateful to the missionaries there at Saints Bible Institute and to all how my life was changed that they gave me an offer to come back and serve for six months and I wanted to do that just to show my thanks, right?

Just to let them know, I'm thankful for all that I got from my experience with you guys but that six months then turned into, it's going on 15 years now, or just over 15 years I believe so it's become a career, a lifetime thing and that's in short my testimony, how I got saved and then how I got to Italy, learned about the reality of Italy and then I was actually trained in apostolic church planning by a veteran Italian church planning missionary that at that time was here already 35 years doing the work quite successfully and he took me alongside of him and trained me in that task.

Calling, Evangelism, and the Doctrines of Grace

Okay.

Wow, so 15 years has gone by so tell us what's it like just everyday life there in Italy, what's it like going out and doing public evangelism? How does it differ in your opinion than here in the States?

Yeah, maybe real quick before I go there, I should probably mention that I also got married here in Italy, I met my wife in Italy, she's an important part of my life and also the ministry here. My wife actually comes from the Philippines so she grew up in the Philippines when she was 17 years old, she came with her mother over to Italy and then we met here when I was already here maybe seven years or so in Italy.

Okay.

She came, the founder of the mission I was with previously started a Filipino church by accident, in the sense he was not intending to start a Filipino church but a bunch of Filipinos got saved when they were evangelizing down in the south of Italy in a town called Reggio Calabria which is actually in the Bible as well.

In the book of Acts, Paul passed through there going on his way to Rome on the boat.

And he talks about Italian cohorts, right?

Yeah, also that's where we got the name. Well, our son then is named, we named him Cornelius and that's how the name came a practical missions cohort as well because Cornelius and then the Italian cohort, those kinds of things, we claimed it as our own because we're missionaries in Italy and the cohorts originally came from here.

So, but yeah, we met at a conference when the Filipino church was started, the first one by now probably 30 years ago or so. And yeah, the missionary at that time he realized these guys are really hungry for the word and they're much more than the average Italian when he gets saved, right?

So they're at a faster pace, they come from a different culture, different background, different experience and you can't really mix Italians and foreigners all that much because it's not like America where we're just a mixed bag, all kinds of different cultures.

Italians are Italians and they tolerate foreigners but it's not like they welcome them and want them really. So when you have Filipinos in that case, growing faster, being discipled quicker and maturing quicker, they would kind of take over the Italian church because there was more of them and this missionary recognized the importance of doing just a separate church just for the Filipinos and then keep the Italian separate.

Long story short, that church is now I think 13 or 14 and they just spread out because they're evangelizing other cities and then on Sunday, they'll do their church service in the morning and then they'll send others out in the afternoon to lead a church service in another town where there's just a few disciples and little by little they can get elders trained, a plurality and then they just continue multiplying like that and they're all over Italy and they would gather every year, here's where I'm getting at, they would gather every year at our facility that we had in the North here of Italy for their conference, a summer camp, all the kids are together, the parents, everybody connecting for a week, they're roasting pig and all that stuff that Filipinos like to do and one year, my wife showed up and I was there and we just, yeah, we met there.

It was like the light was shining on her when I saw her a year and a half later than we were married and now we're together doing the missions work here in Italy.

Praise God.

How many kids?

Two kids at this point.

Wonderful.

Wouldn't mind more. It's a little bit crazy times right now with everything going on in the world but we'd be happy to have as many as we could because it's a great blessing.

I'm going to try to guess your age.

You're 34?

A little higher, yeah.

37.

I'm actually 39.

39. Wow, he's a young, youthful face.

Yeah, yeah, I got the young face which is why I intentionally try to keep a beard because people think you're like a kid, you know, what we're doing over here but the beard helps.

Yeah, Zach's getting gray in his so he's, yeah.

Yeah, I'm real gray. I could pass for a 55, but I'm 43.

Yeah, it is funny though when I see you Zach that I have an uncle and you look very much like my uncle. How I remember him anyway. I don't see him often but he's a big guy, beard and he kind of looks very much like you.

Poor guy. I imagine my uncle maybe one day getting saved as well.

That's funny.

If somebody came to you and just said, hey, what does it really mean to be a biblical evangelist or what does it mean to biblically evangelize? How would you kind of describe that? Maybe in a way that's focusing on the disparity between American evangelism and biblical evangelism.

Are you referring like if an Italian would come to me and ask that or just

Anybody in the world.

Anybody, biblical evangelism.

What does it mean to be a biblical evangelist? What is successful evangelism? What's effective evangelism? Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, well, I think it's a great question. It's a very, very important question that we, as the church needs to be asking a whole lot more, I think. Because my experience, what I've seen a lot happening in America is, number one, evangelism is kind of shunned.

It's like a bad word. It's like something people don't want anything to do with. And I think that's for probably a number of reasons, maybe not a good understanding of the gospel, but also not a good understanding of what evangelism actually is and how salvation works.

It all kind of goes together. But it seems to me in the States, a lot of the times evangelism is reduced to inviting people to church, asking them to say a prayer, letting them see your life that has changed and hoping they'll want to do the same thing.

It's very generic. It's very dumbed down. Whereas opposed to biblical evangelism is actually a presenting of a message, right? Wanting people who are dead in their sins, who are lost, who are actually enemies of God, whether they realize it or not, whether they admit it or not, who are suffocating the truth, whether they want to admit it or not, presenting a message to them, right?

So helping them to see the reality that they fall short of God's glory, that they have sinned, they have transgressed, and there is a holy God that they're accountable to, the one who's giving them breath, the one who brought them into this world, and the one who also judged.

And so helping them to see where they stand before this righteous, holy, just God, and then showing them also the solution that God himself provided, right? That most people attempt to get themselves saved by living a certain way, not doing enough, not doing too much bad stuff, not killing anybody, right?

Which is the common answer you see here in Italy, well, I didn't kill anybody, you know, try to do my best, and I hope one day God will let me in. But then they have this whole purgatory thing over here, which is a whole nother discussion.

But yeah, so you want to clearly, biblical evangelism would be clearly making these facts known, just presenting it, letting the message go out, but then lovingly, passionately persuading people to come to a conclusion.

You have to decide to do something with this Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords, the King of kings. We're commanded to come to him. He invites us to come to him, he commands us to come to him, and we're to bow the knee, to surrender all to the one who is actually worthy.

And we could talk about the importance of the new birth, these kinds of things, all essential elements of biblical evangelism. But ultimately, yeah, it comes to that, and helping people to understand also the consequences if they don't come to Jesus Christ, if they refuse Jesus Christ, if they turn their back to Jesus Christ, if they never bow the knee to the King, that there are consequences.

So I think if all those elements are there, you have pretty close to what we could probably call fruitful evangelism, that the evangelist has done his job. He's gotten the message out, he's, with all his heart, with all the energy God has given him, made the message known, persuaded people, let them know the consequences of their actions if they refuse Christ, and then it's out of our hands, right?

We know that. Biblical evangelism, you understand, you can't actually change a heart. You can't convert a person as much as we might like to. Well, it's just out of our abilities. That's God's work, that's what he does.

So we plant, we sow, we pour water, but the growth always comes from the Lord. The actual conversion, the new birth is a work of God. And the beauty of that, though, for the evangelist, knowing that is that we can rest well at night and we can honestly say all glory to God.

If a bunch of people get saved, we can't boast. We didn't do anything different this time. That got a whole bunch of people saved. If nobody gets saved, we can't go into despair either, which is usually what happens.

People either get proud if people get saved because, yeah, I led them to the Lord, I did that, because they don't understand you were just a tool, just a messenger, and God did it. Or they go into despair, which usually happens here in Italy, because not a lot of people do respond right now like they should.

And so you can go into despair thinking you're just not good enough, it's not gonna work, and this might be one of the reasons why a lot of people also give up evangelism. But yeah, when you understand that, then you know God has his timing.

He's sovereign over it all. So yeah, I'm tempted to just keep going on and on, but I'll stop there.

You can, because that was absolutely excellent. We should cut that up. That was a really good explanation. I really, really appreciate that. That was awesome.

Yeah, totally.

What do you think we fail? I mean, where do you see people doing it? How do you see people doing it wrong? I mean, where can we fail as Christians? I think somebody, I think Tony Miano said, we fail to evangelize when we fail to evangelize, and I understand that.

That it's good just to get out there, but where can we go wrong as evangelists in our, maybe with good intentions, but still fail?

Yeah, well, I think at the heart of the issue of evangelism, really, like the course that I took years ago on evangelism, I find it still to be really solid, because it got to the heart of the matter, which was understanding the doctrines of grace, understanding the order of salvation, how it all works.

The average Christian today probably assumes that he caused himself or herself to be born again, because it's not clearly taught, unfortunately, so there's just this big haze, and yeah, I'm a Christian, how did it all happen?

I don't know, I don't care, but when you understand that the person who puts his trust in Jesus Christ, who turns from his sin and is born again, is saved, precisely for that reason is why he put his trust in Jesus Christ and turned from sin, because he was first born again.

So getting the order right, I think, is essential, and for that, once that's understood, then it kind of takes all the pressure off of a person, and then he's more likely to actually go and evangelize, because you know, number one, you understand now how you got saved, and you have nothing to boast about, you should actually be really thankful, right?

Too often, I think what happens, at least in the States, what I see is Christianity, we lose the essential thing, like what it means to be born again, to be made a new creature, and to be walking in newness of life, and to be actually saved, to have eternal life, and to have the promises of God, all these wonderful things, and we get caught up in secondary stuff, right, which is, I think, a lot of what the charismatic movement is, it's like, that's not good enough, so we need to go find something else, prophecies, and visions, and all kinds of other stuff, but when we keep to the essentials, and we understand that well, and we understand he chose us, and he doesn't do it to everyone, who am I that he would love me that way?

That's what really motivated me. So, there's a lot to say about practicalities to evangelism, how we do it, but at the heart of the matter is, when you understand all that, it's just, it should move you to want to say something, to want to be a part, I think, of what God is doing in others' lives, and how he's calling people to himself.

So, the big thing for me is that, and I don't think that's well taught, though, and understood, and I think you guys would agree, in most churches today, where everything is dumbed down, very generic, and there's not a clear understanding of what the gospel is, and consequently, then evangelism doesn't happen, or it does happen bad.

Right, so I think, once, if that can be straightened out, and the gospel can be rightly understood, then the other stuff seems to fall into place. People naturally want to talk about their savior. They realize how privileged they are to be known by God, loved by God, and those verses, like in the Bible, where Paul says, I think maybe to the Galatians, he says, not just that you are loved by God, but that he actually knows who you are, or something to this effect.

It's not just like, we take for granted that we're actually known by God, right, in an intimate way, and he loves us, and cares for us. So, but how it goes wrong, I think, is your initial question, right?

Yeah, so, for me, that's probably the big thing I would say, all that, just that, if the gospel's not well understood, the order of salvation is not well understood, from there, everything kind of goes wrong, because it becomes man-centered, done in the power of man, not trusting in God alone, who does it all, really.

That's good.

Right, yeah, it was just making me think of, if you believe in some synergistic salvation, where you reached out to God, and then he came down, ultimately, you believe that you're superior in some way, because you've made this choice, where some other person didn't.

You had some wisdom that somebody else didn't, or some goodness in you that you chose. And so, I think, if you go into evangelism with that mindset, and you're talking to somebody like that, there's almost going to be some sort of superiority, whether or not you're consciously doing that, but if you're saying, I made this decision, I did that, that's gonna always kind of be there, and so, I think that's where everything can kind of go, not everything, but a lot of times, it can go wonky, is if, like Jesse said, you don't really understand the holiness of God, the order of salvation, the depravity of man, then you would say some weird stuff.

I remember when I was very first saved, not really understanding much, I tried to evangelize, and I know I said some super weird stuff.

I said some crazy stuff. I'm so glad that's not recorded, or they'd tell me to run for the hills.

Yeah, thank God.

That's awesome.

I'm guilty as well, yep.

The Small Reformed Presence in Italy and the Challenge of Catholic Language

So, how many Reformed churches are in Italy? Do you know those stats?

Reformed churches, no, I don't have a statistic for that, but I do know one of the leading evangelical missionaries in the country of Italy. He's been here his whole life, pretty much. His parents were missionaries here, and he knows pretty much everybody, and we're sitting down having a coffee one time, and he told me, so these are his words.

I won't say his name, but he told me that the amount of believers in the entire country of Italy, so we're looking at 60 million people in Italy, but the amount of believers with a biblical understanding of who God is, so understanding even the things that we were just talking about related to the doctrines of grace, for example, these things.

So, people with a biblical view of God, in his estimation, just 2 ,000 in the whole country.

Oh, wow, 2 ,060 million, wow.

Yeah, so, I mean, 2 ,000, we can find that in maybe one or two towns back in the States, right? You can get that many with a good view, understanding of God, and so on. So, that to me was very revealing, and this is a guy, I've been around a little bit in Italy, I know, 15 years, and traveling, helping different churches.

I've seen the churches that are literally, the building is the size of some of the bathrooms in churches where we go back in the States. You walk in, the back door, or the only door you walk in, the pulpit, you can almost reach and touch it with your hand, very, very small, 10, 15 people max can kind of fit in there.

I've seen a number of those, and so, when he tells me there's 2 ,000, I kind of believe it, because of that 1 or so that are evangelical, counted as evangelical, within that, you have anything and everything that's not Roman Catholic, basically.

So, in some estimations, they're counting even Jehovah Witnesses there, Mormons. For sure, they're counting Charismatics, Pentecostals, all kinds of different things with, who may or may not have a good understanding of the gospel.

So, it's really a mixed bag. 1 is just like the number they throw out there.

So, it's probably smaller, if they're counting.

I say it's kind of like Coke Zero, you know? It says it has less than 1 sugar, so they can call it zero. We're less than 1%, and we're pretty much, to me, it just means we're zero. It just means there's a lot of work to be done.

There's a lot of people to be reached.

Yeah, so there's so many believers, and even listening, who will listen to this show, who are in hard environments, right? Like you are, I guess. So, how would you encourage them to evangelize when you go out, and I know that, and we can talk to you about the little bit, just when I want you to explain how you go about evangelism on a weekly or monthly basis, but how would you encourage them in the face of really a lot of, what I'm assuming is apathy, resistance, people not bending the knee to Jesus, how would you encourage them to carry on, or what encourages you, what keeps you going when you see, I don't wanna use the word fruit, because we throw that fruit word around very idiotically, I think, a lot, but just not a lot of results, as far as people coming to the Lord.

Now, the gospel will always produce results, so it hardens one to judgment, softens one towards salvation, but how do you keep going?

Before you start, though, I wanna just have you add, just touch on what it's like, too, to be in a place where it's dominated by Roman Catholics, because they use a lot of the same lingo, a lot of them, I'm sure, as you go into it, have this understanding that they are saved, just like we were in Salt Lake, which is basically, Salt Lake City, which is kind of like Vatican City, but for Mormons, and you go in, and they're saying Jesus, they're saying a lot of the same verbiage, so just as you're explaining that, maybe you could even touch on the challenges that come with approaching somebody who says, oh yeah, I know God, and I'm a Catholic.