Holly Hills' Missionaries & Approach to Missions

Good morning. I have to tell you, well, this is difficult. This is hard for me. But I have to tell you that for many years of our marriage, Nancy endured daily terror from me. And here's why. You see, the home that I grew up in, was one in which, I don't know if all the kids, there were five kids in our family, I don't know if all of them got the same impression.

But the impression that I very clearly came away with was that missionaries are the heroes. Missionaries are the heroes. There's no question about it, that's the message that I got. And I have to of course explain why, and I'll try to be brief. I don't know if I'll succeed, but I'll try. My grandparents on my mom's side, my grandfather was a traveling tent meeting evangelist. He would go around mostly in kind of the central part of the US, east of here, not too far east. and would go around with this traveling evangelistic group.

And we don't have time for the stories for that. Even a miracle or two. My grandmother, she was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji. I could tell you stories about that too, but we don't have time for that. By the way, what's shown here is a cannibal temple. Because the cannibals was not just a convenient way of getting meat, but it was also a religious aspect. And so anyway, she was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji. My dad, though he was not occupied as a missionary full time, would take time off from work to work on missionary radio for the Wycliffe Bible Translators. He worked with the Tarahumara tribe in northern Mexico. It was a tribe, as you see in the picture, a lot of them were cave dwellers in this particular tribe, and so he designed a radio system that worked with cave dwellers, if you can imagine that. No knobs on the radio. They don't understand knobs. No switches. They don't understand switches. You lift the lid, and the little man inside talks. One volume, right? But at any rate, so I remember that from my younger years.

And then another, on December 7th, 1941, Mitsuo Fushida led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Disastrous attack. A few thousand servicemen died in that one day. 360 Japanese aircraft. Mitsuo Fushida was the head of that attack. He was the leader. Later on, in fall of 1949, he became a believer.

My dad used to fly him around because my dad had a plane. My dad used to fly him around to various Christian events and take him to different places, which was kind of extraordinary. By the way, Matsuo Fushida lived into the 1970s and continued in the United States to essentially serve as a missionary to the United States.

But that was another thing that kind of made me think, well, the missionaries are the heroes. I had an aunt and uncle on my mom's side of the family. They were with New Tribes Mission. And my uncle, among various things, built the school for New Tribes Mission that's in Tambo, Bolivia. Interesting connection. Some of you may remember Jim and Rachel Poole. Rachel went to school in that building that my uncle had built.

Another aunt and uncle, Ken and Marsha Finney, were independent missionaries for 40 years after a stint with New Tribes. They were independent missionaries for 40 years in Santa Cruz de Guayape in Honduras. And they would come back from time to time and tell us stories about the missions activities that they would have there. Another fellow that I got to spend time with up until about the early 1970s was Dick Hillis.

He had been a missionary to China when the Communists took over. Some of you may have heard my retelling as he told us of the account where when the Communists came in they were trying to force him to give the names of all the Christians and he refused to do it.

The Chinese lieutenant put a pistol to his head and he says, don't you know I could blow your brains out? And Dick Hillis said, that's all you can do. That's all you can do. Yeah, Dick Hillis is home with the Lord now, but that was a story I remember.

So the missionaries are heroes. I've got to stop here because I could keep going on. I just grew up with the idea that the missionaries were the heroes, and so Nancy had to endure my kind of childhood image that the missionaries are the heroes. And here's why she lived in terror. She had this impression that at any day we might be moving to another continent in the morning. That I was going to be so driven to be this missionary that she would just have to suddenly pack up and You know, go to some other place, maybe Uganda or China or something. Okay.

But amazingly, the Lord shut down every attempt that I made to be an overseas missionary, even short term. 1971, I got prepared with language training and everything. to go to work at HCJB, which is a Christian shortwave radio station centered in Quito, Ecuador. I called up the draft board and they said, you can go, but as soon as you get there, you'll get a draft notice. You won't be going to Quito for very long. You'll be going to Vietnam. Okay, let's shut that down. We had young kids, and we were prepared to go down to Santa Cruz de Guayape, where another aunt and uncle were.

Reports of communist activity ended a planned trip. We got a letter told of all these things going on, and so we didn't go. In 1991, I was turned down by HCJB for a short-term mission in Quito, Ecuador. I had all these qualifications. I sent it to them. Matter of fact, a few years later, Nancy and I talked to missionaries from HCJB. They were absolutely baffled as to why I was turned down. But the Lord knew. The Lord knew. Okay.

So in 2001, finally, finally, I was accepted to a foreign mission post. in distant Denver. So heaven sakes, the Lord finally said, yes, you can go. It wasn't to a different continent, and Nancy wasn't too terrified. But we might ask the question, after learning all my stories here, why missions and missionaries?

Why focus on that? Well, let's answer that question. Here's this passage that we read initially, and it's one I'd like us to take a little closer look at. Matthew 28, 16 through 20. We could look at others certainly, but this is, I think, a key passage for us to examine.

And in this passage here, Christ is, to use an expression, passing the baton to the 11 disciples. He has been with them and he's shortly to ascend and to leave this present earth and to leave these 11 disciples behind with a commission, an assignment if you will. So in this passage Christ is giving these 11 disciples this assignment And the quick outline goes like this.

First, they all came to meet with Christ. That was the beginning part. They all worshipped him before getting the assignment. Christ tells them he has been given both earthly and heavenly authority. Notice not just one or the other, but both. Finally, Christ passes on to the disciples to make and baptize disciples. including a little more detail on what that involves. But let's go back to the beginning. The 11 original disciples went to the top of the mountain where Jesus had said for all of them to meet with him. Perhaps, and maybe even likely, he had met with them there before at different times.

Tradition has it that this is Mount Tabor. Here's a picture of Mount Tabor, which I'll showing a little larger scene. It would be a place where they could find it easily, identify it. You wouldn't get it mixed up with a nearby mountain. There aren't any other, because it kind of rises out of a plane. Once up there, you would have quite a perspective in all directions. And so from that standpoint, it would be a good place to meet.

This, as scripture records it, is the ninth of about 12 recorded times when Christ appeared after his resurrection from in some cases only one person to as many as 500 at one time. Now they worshipped Christ. This is one of the many indications in scripture that Christ is indeed deity. Deity. That means he is fully God. He isn't just an angel as some like to say. or an especially good man, but God himself. Deity.

One of the confirmations of that point is given in Revelation 19.10.

John the Apostle writes, Then I fell at his feet, speaking of an angel, to worship him, but he said, Do not do that. Instantly the angel said, Don't do that. If Christ were not God, would he not have said to the disciples, don't do that? As a matter of fact, that's exactly what we see here. The angel ends up telling John, worship God. Don't worship me, worship God.

The same kind of experience happens again in Revelation 22, 8 and 9. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. When I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. But he said to me, Do not do that. Same words. Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren, the prophets, and of those who heed the words of this book. Same words.

Worship God. Only God is worthy of worship. Now, the people who come to your door two at a time, they want you to take their magazines and that kind of thing. See, they teach that Jesus is just Michael the archangel. And that doesn't fit here, does it? If it's an angel of any rank, that doesn't work. That doesn't fit biblically.

No. Twice, worship God. So Jesus is, in fact, deity. We see here worship and doubt. What's interesting, while saying that some doubted may seem to be a bad thing, in fact, I would suggest to you it's not. And here's why. The witnesses to Christ's resurrection are shown not to be gullible and impressionable. They're not the kind of people that say, I believe in the Tooth Fairy, and I believe in Santa Claus, and I believe in Jesus' resurrection. They're not just going along with the story. They're not just going along with the crowd. They want things verified. So their doubting is actually a good thing.

It means that the resurrection accounts we have are not accounts of people who would just believe anything. people who will go along with the story or go along with the crown. They want to be personally certain and that's a good thing. It means that the resurrection accounts that we have have reliability not gullibility.

In verse 18, Jesus talks about all authority having been given to him by virtue of two things. One, who he was, secondly, what he had done, what he had accomplished. First, by virtue of what he was or who he was, Jesus, that's from the Hebrew Yeshua, meaning Savior, Jesus was in fact the Savior. That's exactly where he was born to be. He was Christ, the Messiah, the one promised. Christ meaning and Messiah meaning both anointed, the anointed one. The Son of God. You notice that you see a pattern in the New Testament. Christ is the Son of God and the Son of Man. That means He is fully God and fully man.

Fully God being one person of the Trinity. That is the Godhead of, and I think this is a key thing for Christians to get soaked into their minds, three personal beings, one essence. Got that? Three personal beings, one essence. Scripture is very, very clear on that point. Some years ago, there was a fellow whose last name was Bickerstaff. who said, you know, what if I take everything that I know and believe about the Trinity and just throw it aside. I'm going to take a look at the Bible and just see what does the Bible say. And he ended up after going through that very thorough study concluding, yep, that's exactly what the Bible teaches.

Three personal beings, one essence. Then also, Christ had authority by virtue of what He had done and what the Father had done in Him. Notice in Ephesians 1.3 where it says, you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. When it says that, the Father is the one who gets the credit. He accomplished it through Christ. And that's the pattern we see real clearly here. Because of what Christ had done and who he was, he had every basis for authority to entrust these men.

He could do so on full authority to entrust these men with the holy assignment that he was about to give. And we're about to take a closer look at here. He wasn't stepping out on a limb. He wasn't taking a leap here. He fully had the authority to do what he did.

Now when we look at verses 19 and 20, we have to ask, where's the imperative? That is, where's the place that says you must do this? Many have taken the traditional translation of verse 19 as a command to go. As a matter of fact, I have no doubt whole sermons have been given on that word go. Go! Go!

Well, that's not what it says. The Greek grammar really says, as you are going. That's not Greek grandma. That's Greek grammar. As you're going. They were assumed to be going, but not commanded to go. Now that doesn't mean that they shouldn't go. Their going was an assumption rather than a command. Sure, you guys will be going, but as you go, here is what you're to do.

So the imperative points to this. The imperative points to their going as an assumption, but make disciples is the imperative. And the two verbs connected with that imperative of making disciples are baptizing in the name and teaching them. Those are connected with that imperative there. They must make disciples. And from that comes the baptizing and the teaching. OK. So we might ask the question, well, what's involved in making disciples? Where do you get a disciple? Do you get them at the disciple factory? Probably not. You probably don't bake them either. That doesn't work so good. Now, of course, in order to be a disciple, they must believe so as to be saved. And there's no question that's an essential beginning step.

But what does it mean to be a disciple? Well, we have a nice little definition here. A disciple is one who has learned certain principles from another, in this case Christ, and maintains them on the authority of the one who taught them. Christ, of course, has all authority. Now, suppose you say that's too many words. Okay, let's make it simple, short and sweet. Believing, learning, and living. Okay? Those three. Believing, learning, and living. That's a disciple. Okay? This word, disciples, is kind of interesting.

The word translated disciple, or the plural, disciples, is found in all four of the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, all four of the Gospels have it. It's also found throughout the book of Acts, all the way to near the very end. And it's even used of those of us who are in the church. In Acts 20, verse 30, Paul refers to those in the church believers who are in the church as disciples as well. So it's certainly a biblical term. It's certainly even a church term.

Here's what's very interesting. It is never, not even once, used after that in the entire New Testament. Isn't that puzzling? But What happens is while the word disciple or disciples drops out completely for the rest of the New Testament, the verb form, that is the action form, is what begins to be used. For example, if you've seen the passage, you have not so learned Christ.

That's the verb or action form of the same word that's disciple. The next thing that shows up in verse 19 is this set of words, all the nations. The ones that Jesus directed the 11 disciples to this time were not just the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Remember in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus sent the disciples out two by two and he said to them, Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Isn't that interesting? Only go to these. Now, what is he saying? All the nations. All the nations. He says, rather, but go to all the nations. The Greek, there is ethnos. We get our word ethnic, ethnicity, from that. And so that means Gentiles, all the nations. Previously, only. Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel now. Go to all the nations, not just even a few, all of them.

What's interesting is it will be about 10 years, about an entire decade, before it would finally dawn, and it was only by God's miraculous work, it would finally dawn on the disciples, these 11 and some others, that they should actually take the message to the Gentiles. That's right. 10 years would go by. They're all of a sudden after a decade goes by go, Wow! I had no idea you really meant Gentiles, these non-Jews out there, right?

So then he says baptizing them. We've spoken before about baptism. It was a word not just used in a kind of a spiritual or religious context, but a word that was used for, as we give an example, dipping a cloth in the dye so as to permanently change its color. dipping a hot sword in the making into water so as to case harden it. Here is a baptism. It was an immersion that made whatever was baptized to be fundamentally changed. It presented on the outside what had already taken place on the inside, spiritual salvation. Notice here the baptizing of the disciples was to be in, now catch this, Not the names of, did you notice that?

Not the names of, but the name, singular. The name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Now, we tend to think of a name as just that sort of a set of letters and a sound that you attach to somebody. My name, for example, is Vern, okay? And the meaning of that name is, well, it starts off with green, so I don't know how I qualify, but green and growing and flourishing. In this case, the name isn't just some sound or set of letters that you attach to somebody, but it's a singular collection of attributes.

That's why the name, the name of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One singular collection of attributes, why that fits perfectly with scripture teaches as the doctrine or the understanding of the Trinity, the triunity of God. Three personal beings, one essence. Three personal beings, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. One essence, the name. that one collection of attributes, are not the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all eternal, all changeless, all love, and all the things that scripture does to describe the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, teaching them to observe. Neither did the disciples when Christ said this, nor the church now were or are ever intended to just get converts and stop there.

I put this example of couches just full of babies to get this point across. I mean, I love kids. I just love little kids. It would have been great if Nancy and I had had more than Nancy could even ponder. But, I love little kids, but as much as I love little kids, you would not want to see anyone just have kids and then just stop. That wouldn't be a good thing, would it be? And so it's the same thing.

We want people to come to know the Lord, to have new birth. But we want them to grow. We want them to be not just brought into the world, but brought up. Teaching is basic, and learning is too. But it's not just so that we can know stuff. It isn't just so that we can fill our heads full of information. We don't want just spiritual data. It's not so that you can pass the test and win on Jeopardy. We're not just teaching so that you can learn for the sake of learning.

Jesus puts it, teaching them to observe. There's application intended. God does not intend that there be egghead Christians. The teaching is always given with an application in view. Even as I mentioned a few times this morning about the Trinity. The Trinity is not just some dusty doctrine. that we say, yeah, we all believe that stuff. It's to be lived. The Trinity is to be lived. It's a teaching we teach, not just so that you have the right data down or you believe like everybody else does, but it's to be lived out and applied. Teaching is to be lived out in real life. That's the intent of teaching.

That's why couple weeks ago we talked about like that elders are told to be shepherding we don't find elders in the new testament with a bunch of titles and we say hey that guy's an elder both paul and peter in their direct address to elders told them to get shepherding it's action the lord wants for every godly role that god calls us to notice In the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter 5, Paul doesn't write to the husbands and say, be a husband. He says, husbands are to do what? To love their wives. Action.

It's application that the teaching is for, not just for packing our heads. And there in verse 20, he says, I am with you. It's a fairly common pattern in scripture to accompany this learning and doing, because we don't just learn to learn, learning and doing and then to follow that or have somewhere wrapped around it God or Christ being with us. It's a fairly common pattern and it's on purpose too. God doesn't ask us to learn about or do anything simply as a delegated assignment. Got that? God doesn't come to us and say, here, do this. Check back with me later. I'll see how you did. That's not the way God wants to work, is it?

He is with us all along the way. Why? Because He wants to do it in and through us. That's why He's with us. It's not just so we'll feel comforted, although that's certainly a good reason. but so that he pulls it off in and through us. We are to be his instrument, not just the one he delegates to. The with, excuse me, the with is not simply accompaniment, his doing everything in and through us. It's his life. That's what he has in mind.

Not too many weeks ago we studied 2 Corinthians 13 11 and it goes like this. Finally brethren rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you. He gives them a bunch of things to do and it's nice that they're all positive statements but he finishes it off with a very important statement. As these things take place God will be with you along the way. It's not God's delegated assignment for you to do these things.

Philippians 4.9 has a similar statement. I'll expand on it a little bit here in order to get the full sense of the original language across. The things that you have actively learned as a disciple and actively received, and actively heard, and actively seen. And I'm not being over emphatic. That's actually built into each word.

Practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. What for? Providing everything in your position, that is, who you are in Christ and who Christ is in you, and your condition each moment along the way to do it all. That's why God's with you. not just so you feel comforted, not just so that you won't feel alone, although certainly that's there, but also so that he's the one that's pulling it off because you're in Christ and Christ is in you.

So how about missions and missionaries here at Holly Hills? Well, Some of you recognize this little place here. It's in the lobby, and there's this little slot. And below it, there's some pieces of paper. We usually don't make a lot of note of it, but I'm going to do that here. And so see right there? You know what's there?

This is the front side of the financial report. Now, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But before you, I know some of you, as soon as I say financial report, are just going to go, oh, my heavens. You know, oh, financial report. Oh, no. Don't talk about financial report. I just, ah! You know? No way can I handle that. No. No, this you can actually read with great interest. It's as simple, so easy a baby could do it. Okay? It's not a problem. Yeah, it's a piece of cake. All I want to point out is this.

On the front side of that piece of paper is a summary of the missions money expended for that month. It's that simple. So that's the front side. We're done with the front side. Doesn't that feel good? This is the back side of that same report. You will also notice that we have portions of this on the bottom of the second page on your handout. So here's the backside. We're going to zero in for now on just a portion of that. And in fact, that beginning balance column, I'm going to scope that out here. So it looks like this. And this is what's on the bottom of page two.

What this does is it lists the missionaries that we are currently supporting. And you'll notice the columns there have budgeted funds. That is, these are funds that regularly, every month, comes out of the Holly Hills Bible Church General Fund. And we send that amount. People are free to give an additional amount to any of these missionaries, and people do. And so you'll see those additional funds that came in last month. And so the sum of those ends up being the funds dispersed. So that's the pattern. See, that wasn't too bad, was it? OK. All right.

Now, there's one other very helpful thing that we have here. And that is back in the, let's see, we don't have a sign on it. It's the coffee room, or some people like to call it the sugar room. But back on the street side wall here, Was that West? Yeah.

The West Wall is a board that says Missionary Outreach, and what happens is These get updated as we get different newsletters and things in. And you can look at that and see what's happening most recently with the various missionaries as the letters come in.

They're posted. A great resource to just kind of get a quick glance. And you can either look at each one of them in fine detail, or you can track a particular missionary if you want. I highly recommend it. And as far as I know, there's not that much in the way of financial reports on it. Okay, here are the missionaries in summary and with pictures. Steve and Natalie Dupuis.

It's actually been a few years since I've seen him. By the way, he has a standing invitation for some of the teachers and leaders around here to go over to Russia and teach over there. You don't even have to know Russian. They have translators, and many of the people understand English a whole lot better than I understand Russian. OK. Paul and Pat Giles were here visiting us just a couple weeks ago.

And they live in the US, but serve in village and town areas up in northern Canada. John and Joan Hobson ministering in the U.S. with Cadence, and they have a boys and camp kind of ministry. Clinton Mahon ministering in the U.S. and internationally. I say internationally because while Hassan was here, he was in Uganda. So real interesting. It was kind of almost traded. And he was in a couple other African countries as well.

Dave and Gwen Ripley, Sudan Interior Mission, they work from the U.S. This is also one of the ways of impacting a strongly Muslim country. And by the way, We hear a lot because of things that are going on in the news. We hear a lot about Muslim activity and whatnot. Do you know that the Muslims, especially in Africa, are very open to hearing the gospel of Christ? Most of the people that I met in Uganda, when I got talking to them, who were Christians, were former Muslims. Former Muslims. including Hassan. Virginia Tannous, that's something very interesting. I had never seen this before, but continuing to support a missionary once they're retired.

And that's the case, she was with Teen. And Terry and Trudy Thompson are actually just up at the Colorado School of Mines. They work with international students. And what's interesting is here we are Colorado, but in some of the schools around here you'll have a significant number of students coming from various places overseas. And so it's a real international opportunity right here.

So certainly our prayer support, our support and funds for these missionaries is something that we ought to do and ought to continue. The approach to missions, however, at Holly Hills is changing. We're taking a careful look, as we always ought to, to be looking at things like, do we have some kind of doctrinal issue with the missionary? And by the way, if we have an individual missionary, we look at the doctrine primarily of the missionary and not the organization. The organization may go in different directions, but we look at the missionary specifically as the one that we support as the primary consideration.

Recently, for example, we dropped out one of the organizations that we had previously been supporting for some time. Reason? Because they were putting a great deal of emphasis on teaching law and legalism. So being unwilling to change that, we said, no, we didn't want to support that. So we stopped supporting them and let them know why.

Nonetheless, one of the things that we're moving towards is increasing personal involvement in missions rather than just simply having sort of checks and newsletters back and forth. And what do I mean by that? You have the same listing of expenditures and the listing of missionaries on the bottom of page two.

And one of them that we've begun just recently is with our own Ruth Smith, who is working with Child Evangelism Fellowship. Child Evangelism Fellowship is an organization that's been around for quite some time. Actually, years ago, over 50 years ago. My mom used to work for them. And so at any rate, this is a super opportunity for us here.

And it's a situation in which we can have some ongoing personal involvement. Ruth, although there are different options, is actually stationed here in the Denver area. So that's one where we can have more personal involvement than we might have with some of the other missionaries that we've worked with in the past. Another area of involvement, and we tend not to think of it necessarily as a missions involvement, but I think it is.

We have at least these five people in the military. who are either from Holly Hills or have an association with Holly Hills. We have Matt Malloy, Matt Kirby, Andrew Gillespie, Matt Harris, and Jack Horner. So all of those are in the military, all of those men are either from Holly Hills or have an association by family relationship with some of the Holly Hills.

We have currently a program set up whereby we send over a once a month box and I think Donna was telling me about maybe speeding up the shipment on one or two of them in order to try to get there before Thanksgiving or by Thanksgiving. And this is a great way for us to carry on a ministry with these guys that are out there in one way or another in battle zones.

And so anyway, that's one. Again, the coffee room or sugar room is the place where you can go look at it. The pictures are posted. Our family album has information just like what I've shown here. And you can be personally involved with that. By the way, aside from just giving them things, you can write personal notes in there. And so feel free to get involved that way. But it's a way that we as a body can be involved. So this is the way that arrangement looks here.

The one for Andrew, you see there's no box under that. It's because it went out this last Wednesday. And the others are going to go out shortly, hopefully to get there by or before Thanksgiving. Now, there's one other that's not listed in the missionary listing and that's why we have it also on the bottom of page two and that's what we have currently under the Uganda fund. Previously we'd set up the Uganda fund for at least to date my travel over there.

Now that's shifted since we had Hassan over there over here this last summer and so you'll find that item. He was with us from June 18th to August 22nd of this year. We sent him home with a range of Bible study and teaching tools. And as a matter of fact, he was just like a little over the top on his weight and the allowances that he had there, but just loaded with all sorts of tools. And just thanks to the generosity of the people in this church body. What is really cool, I've talked to him two or three times in this last few weeks here.

And he's begun an intensive teaching ministry among the villages of eastern Uganda, supported by Holly Hills Bible Church. Through the generosity of the people of Holly Hills, he's got a motorcycle now. You might be wondering, why is that important? Here's why. 80% of the population of Uganda is out in the villages. The villages are out there. When I went to the villages, many of them had no roads to drive on to get there. Many of them, you could only get there on a trail.

And previously, what had been happening is Hassan was going out to these villages And what he was having to do was to hire a motorcycle taxi to take him out there and either wait out there, for which he had to pay, or he would tell them to come back at a certain time, which would cost money. And so he was putting out lots of money just for these motorcycle taxis.

Now that he has this, he's got a schedule. He is going around to all the villages just constantly going from one to the next to the next to the next to the next and just this last week sent an email here's the places I'm going to and here's the people I'm talking to and I'm just I'm amazed at what's going on. What he learned here he is most definitely taking out to the villages. There's one There's one mountain with a ring of villages around it. And he's going out to these villages that are in a ring around the mountain. And just basically, he's a circuit preacher, if you will. And going from one village to the next. Because he says, in these villages, they have churches.

But there's nobody doing any good teaching. And so he's going in there, and he's teaching with depth and significance with these people. The other thing we sent with him is a small printer so he can print things out. So he's printing out some of the materials that we've developed here at Holly Hills to take over there and is using it there. The one little hitch, a lot of the people in the villages don't read and a lot of them don't speak English. So he's having to translate the materials into Lugitsu. It's one of the five languages he knows.

So, isn't it neat, the opportunities the Lord's put in front of us? You talk about making disciples of all the nations. Well, we've got believers working in all sorts of places. And this is a great thing. What a phenomenal privilege the Lord has put before us. And so let's go to the Lord in prayer over these things.

Lord, we thank you that as you gave this initial assignment to these 11 disciples, we can see how that's being carried out even in this church body here. how there is influence right over our back fence all the way to places around the world. And we just thank you that as we support these various missions organizations, it's not just an assignment you'll check back with us on someday, but you are in fact with us and with those that we send. We thank you for that. Thank you for your faithfulness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.