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[0:00] And if I took even a minute on each one, you'd all be like, what happened? You know, the pot roast burned up, right? Okay, so I'm just going to move right through it. So some of the things that we're trying to do right in our community.

[0:13] First of all, our local Moncure School. We go there every year when school's opening, and we give away around $900 worth of school supplies to families and children.

[0:25] And then every month we have some folks who go and take snacks for the staff and leave it there with, you know, we love you, Moncure Baptist Church. And so it's just one of the fun things we get to do in our community.

[0:39] You have a chance to help out with that anytime you want to. We also have a ministry to a retirement home in Sanford. It was called Bayberry Retirement Inn for a real long time.

[0:53] Now it's called Silver Treasures. We have some people in our church who go there every month. In fact, I'll name them. I don't know. Yeah, there's the Parkers. Teresa Parker, Susan Douglas, Brenda Keller, and some others.

[1:07] I know Phil has been some. I know I think Pat has been some. Maybe goes regularly. I occasionally have been. And on this particular occasion in this picture, last December we took the children of the church to sing Christmas hymns with the residents there.

[1:24] So it's an ongoing ministry of our church in our community. Our church also are the ones who put together, and we keep it running, this get-together every fifth Sunday night with all the churches around here.

[1:40] And we'll usually have six or eight churches that are involved, and we meet in different churches each time. And frankly, if we quit promoting it, it'll probably die on the vine.

[1:50] It's something that our church does to bring the community together. Now I'm going to say hallelujah for those of you that attend that, and shame on you for those who have never been.

[2:01] You have missed an incredible thing. When the body of Christ, from all these different churches and denominations and races and whatever, we come together and we sing the praises of the Lord, it's a neat thing.

[2:16] So you'll have an opportunity to do that in the future. Come and see what you think. We also, for about three years now, we have a men's breakfast that I think we originally thought this would be our church men's breakfast, but it really is something we sponsor for the community.

[2:34] We met yesterday. This particular picture is about four or five months old. Yesterday we had about 30 guys. I looked around the room and counted, and there were 11 churches present.

[2:46] And so it really is an outreach into our community that we do. Men and boys, sons of men, whatever, come every first Saturday.

[2:57] It's always a wonderful time of fellowship and encouragement. We also lend a hand a lot in practical ways. I lost count of how many times we helped Janet Carpenter move.

[3:09] And that's Janet's niece, Jennifer, saying thank you all.

[3:21] Thank you all. But we help in all kinds of ways. It might be helping to build a wheelchair ramp or take somebody to a doctor's appointment or just practical ways.

[3:34] It's an important outreach in our community. And if you know of somebody with a need like that in the community and you think we could help, talk to us about it, we'll try to do it.

[3:45] We've also had a couple guys, Mark Mathis and Sandy Hooks, who have fairly frequently gone to travel team baseball and between games been permitted to share a sermon, a message for about 10, 15 minutes.

[4:04] And, you know, that's another way that our church reaches out in the community. We've just recently started having this Bible study for men, a breakfast at the Dario restaurant every Wednesday, 8 o'clock free breakfast.

[4:19] If you don't have to work, you ought to be there. So anyway, it's a great thing. And our church was very involved in helping get that started. And this one doesn't happen to cost us anything except a little time because the Dario pays for all that.

[4:36] And last May, we will be doing this from time to time. We've, it's been many a year we didn't have at least one mission trip sometime during the year.

[4:46] And so this year in the spring, we went up and did disaster relief up there in Boone, and there are some pictures of that. So those are things that we do in the state and in our community.

[4:58] We're very involved in those things. And I'm sitting here thinking, yeah, and like Becky's on the board for Reach Out Pregnancy Center.

[5:08] And others of you are involved in other things that are slipping my mind right now. But in every way that we're able to reach out and minister and help, whether it's volunteering in the schools or whatever you can do, go and do it in the name of the Lord.

[5:25] But then beyond that, how are we involved in international missions? Well, two I'm not going to mention to you because they've already been here and given a report in person this year. John Adams, who does all of the ministry missionary work in Haiti, and we know him well, and he's been here this year and given us a report.

[5:45] Our own Courtney Mathis, who grew up here, who today is a missionary in Bolivia, South America. She's been here this year. She's given us a report. We know what she's doing.

[5:55] So we have a lot of missionaries that we personally know that we send money every month. We send them $150 to $200 a month to help support them in the work that they're doing.

[6:09] And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that. But maybe one question somebody might ask is, well, why are we giving money for that? Well, only because, remember, everything we do in the church, what do we base it on?

[6:22] Well, that's it. We do it for the love of God, the love of people, and based upon the Word of God. So we go because the Bible said, Jesus said go.

[6:34] We also give money because in the Bible it says, in the same way the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

[6:46] So those of us that are not called to be on mission in another country away from family and friends and everything that's comfortable and familiar, we should be sending money to help the ones who are willing to go and do that.

[7:04] And I often feel that way about the Adams family, that while I got to stay in North Carolina and have a very good life, we were newlyweds in their church. When they first got married, they answered the call to go to Haiti.

[7:19] And so today they have very little money and their health is broken. They gave 40 years of their lives to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. And so that, Becky and I feel, a great sense of responsibility to be helping them.

[7:35] Okay, well, moving right along. So I'm going to give you reports from about eight different people very quickly that we send money to sponsor. The first one is going to be in Venezuela, right in, she lives in Merida, the city there in red, kind of right in the middle of the screen.

[7:53] And her name is Bibi or Bibiana Pena. She lives and she has these two daughters, Issa and Liseth. And she and Liseth live and work in Venezuela.

[8:06] The daughter on the far left there, Issa, is now grown up and she's a missionary on her own, married in South Africa.

[8:17] And this year she had a baby, she and her husband. She met a man there who was also a missionary. They got married. And so now Bibi has a little granddaughter named Eliana.

[8:29] And I'll mention this. Bibi would have loved to have gotten married, but God never had that in plan for her. I guess it could still happen. But so she ended up adopting two children who were basically abandoned on the streets and raised them.

[8:47] And that's these two children. And now they're both in the Lord's work. And so what does Bibi do there? Well, this is a picture of her church on a Sunday morning. The name of the church, The Great Campaign of Faith.

[9:00] They have about 1,000 people who attend. They have five services every Sunday. They're having a tremendous revival, a great outpouring of God in Venezuela, partly because of all the hardship that Venezuela has been through.

[9:15] What does Bibi do there? She's in charge of all the small groups. They have 130 plus small groups that meet during the week. She makes sure that every group has a leader who's going to be there, who knows a lesson plan, who has a place to meet.

[9:31] She's constantly keeping up with that. And, you know, we only have two small groups. And I think, good man, how could you keep up with 130? Wow. She also oversees all of the women's ministries.

[9:45] So every kind of women's meeting, women's retreats, etc., etc. Bibi's the one doing that. And her church this past year baptized over 100 new converts into the faith.

[9:58] Here's pictures of two of those baptism groups. And, wow, it's just wonderful how God's working there. Bibi's also involved with the team that goes to the stores and tries to buy food as inexpensively as possible to be able to give away food to those in need in the community.

[10:20] You remember that Venezuela had a terrible earthquake this year. It was on the news, a lot of terrible earthquake. So her church was not affected. They were outside that earthquake zone.

[10:31] But Bibi was in charge of getting people to round up the supplies. And on two different occasions, they filled a big truck and then the men of the church drove to where the earthquake was near the capital city of Caracas and distributed the food, blankets, medicines, water, whatever they had, supplies to the people there.

[10:53] And like our church does, they give away book bags and school supplies to children in the schools that are in their city. One of the things they do with that food that they purchase, they have a program in their church where they feed 130 children three times a week, a hot meal.

[11:16] And so what a wonderful thing that they're doing there. And now we'll talk some about what we're doing. I'm going to back up in just a second. To me, this is saying that the $150, $200 a month that we send to Bibi, my land, look how it's getting multiplied.

[11:34] Look how many ways God is using it. How wonderful is that? To think that when you put a dollar in that offering plate, you're helping feed a hungry child in Venezuela.

[11:45] And that just blesses you, doesn't it? Okay. Now, you know that our church took a lot of mission trips back between 2012, 2023, 29 mission trips to Colombia, South America.

[12:00] Colombia is the country right beside Venezuela, right to the left. And the areas circled are places that we personally went, visited, worked some, those strange names.

[12:13] There's like 64 Indian tribes, indigenous people groups that live on reservations all around in Colombia. And these are mostly the groups that we went and worked with.

[12:26] And these are the groups that our missionaries there normally work with. And as we were there, we got to meet a lot of local pastors and men.

[12:36] And this is the only picture I've got where all of them were together in the same picture. So I'm going to tell you about each of these folks. And these guys are local Colombians born and reared in Colombia, and they've become pastors.

[12:51] But unlike America, it's a rare church there that kind of has a lot of people attending with a lot of money and can pay the preacher. So they have jobs that they work full time, and they pastor their church and help their churches, you know, as they're able.

[13:08] They're by vocation or two vocations. So it's good that we're able to send money down to help them. So let me tell you about these folks. And I'm skipping over Jillian a little bit, but the picture of Jillian there, third from the left, she's from Virginia, and she's been here and spoken in our church a couple times, and she is a Baptist missionary there.

[13:31] So we don't need to send money to her. Through the Lottie Moon Christmas offering that we'll be doing in December, you give money to support about 4,000 missionaries all around the world.

[13:45] And so Jillian is taken care of through all the Baptist churches cooperating together. Here's Hermann. We would say German, but that's how they say it in Spanish.

[13:59] And these are pictures of his church, a very active church. And so they do a lot with youth. They do a lot with children. They have also a feeding program for the hungry.

[14:10] They have this program. We were there one day when they were handing out clothing to in a very poor neighborhood. And boy, people were just coming like crazy, and they were giving away clothes and shoes and so forth.

[14:21] This is a picture from this year. In fact, I think every picture I'm going to show you today, with few exceptions, came pictures I got from these people this year. This is a mission church that Hermann's church helps sponsors, helps to sponsor.

[14:40] And the church has a funny name. December 24. Why they named it Christmas Eve Church, I have no idea. Maybe that's the, well, that's the name of the community. The neighborhood is called, we would say, hey, that's Christmas Eve.

[14:54] That's the name of the neighborhood. So anyway, there's a picture of the folks of that church gathered in front. Hermann is right there in the middle. But now the pastor of that church we also sent support to, and his name is Manuel, and that's him over there.

[15:09] Now he and Hermann worked very closely together because Manuel used to be a member in Hermann's church. And Hermann, I think, led him to Christ, trained him, worked with him, discipled him, and then he finally became the pastor of this mission church.

[15:26] Here they are together on the left, baptizing a guy. And now here's some more of your money at work. This past year, Manuel in the little mission church, that's a picture, the top right picture, they wanted to build a platform like we have here so that the speaker could be above the people a little bit, and they needed some money.

[15:49] So money goes a lot further in Colombia than it does in America. And so we sent them about $650 or so, if I remember correctly. And there is a picture afterwards of the platform almost finished.

[16:05] And some folks might ask about, Matt, how do you really know if you're sending money to these people? How are they accountable? Well, one way is that probably every five or six or seven weeks, they send me some pictures of what they're doing and give me little short reports like text messages.

[16:24] But also, in that particular case, I said, I want to see the receipts of what you're doing with the money. They sent me receipts of all the money we sent them. Those are pictures of the receipts they sent me.

[16:36] And so, yeah, they are very accountable. And here you see the children in the mission church standing in front of the finished platform, and they're having some kind of a program.

[16:46] So the church is active in doing the Lord's will. Another church down there that we help, this Pastor Roberto and his family, that's a picture of their church, their upper right meeting.

[17:00] And even though it's a very small building, it's about the size of this one section right here. Notice how big that speaker is. You know, they've got to have a sound system.

[17:12] They don't need a sound system. But I'm telling you, they can blast you out of there. And they get very happy when they're worshiping. Meaning there's lots of clapping and just wonderful singing.

[17:24] And these people rejoice in the Lord. They serve in a very poor neighborhood. And they have a lot of outreach to the children in the community. And then our good friend Demas, who was our translator for, we went 29 times.

[17:40] The only time he didn't translate for us was on the first trip. We hadn't met him yet. And after that, he was there and always translated with us, for us.

[17:51] And so, I'm just going to show you pictures of Demas. He has such a heart to help people. These are pictures I got from him this year at different times. Demas, a lot of days, gets up and makes a thermos of coffee and gathers some snacks and goes to a park.

[18:08] And there are just so many folks in Colombia that are poor and homeless and whatever. And he just goes and gives people something to eat and a cup of coffee. And he's got gospel pamphlets in his pocket.

[18:23] He's got some New Testaments. And he shares Jesus with them. And like this young man here in this middle picture, I remember in particular, he said, this young guy received Christ as I talked with him.

[18:35] and now I'm going to meet with him once a week and we're going to do Bible studies together. So Demas is just a true evangelist and it's nice to know that we're helping support the work of the Lord through him.

[18:47] Here he is telling a Bible story and here he is with our missionaries, Brian and Rhonda Massey. And there's just a picture of a crew.

[18:59] For those of you that went to some of those mission trips down there, I had to put the crew up here because you'll remember a lot of them. Demas, Rhonda, Jillian, Brian, and Omar there.

[19:11] Oh my goodness. Our church, I won't say who, but someone in our church really was moved by. Omar is a, I'll tell you a story first. He's an indigenous Saynu Indian.

[19:24] He came to Christ, led to Christ by Brian. Brian worked with him, ministered to him, discipled him, and he finally became a pastor pastor in his community, his Indian reservation community.

[19:39] And now he's the pastor and I think he's got 20 or 30 of his people that worship with him and he leads them. And when we were there on one occasion, you couldn't help but notice that one of his front teeth was gone.

[19:52] So he had a big smile, but it looked kind of weird. And somebody in our church was moved by that and sent money for him to go to a dentist and get an implant or something, a partial, a bridge, something.

[20:08] And now he has a beautiful smile. So, in many ways, we've been involved there and with Demas. This is a church that we don't regularly support, but we were in this town of Chigurudo, and I wasn't on the trip that they actually went and worshipped in his church.

[20:26] It was like a two-hour Sunday morning worship service. Yeah. Go sit for two hours of preaching and singing and it's all in Spanish and you don't know a word they're saying and you've got to stay awake, you know.

[20:40] And it's hot. There's no air conditioning anyway. So, some of our folks went and did that one. And then, they were meeting in a little rented place and they wanted, they had a chance to buy this land.

[20:52] So we sent them $600. Land there is kind of cheap. They had to come up with some to add to that. They bought this lot and here you see after they've dug the foundation. In 26, this year, we sent them another $600 to finish the building.

[21:08] I don't have a picture of the finished building. I need to get one. But you might say, well now, is that money doing any good really? So what? They got a building. Here's a picture this year of the people from that new church that are getting baptized.

[21:23] And so there's the pastor Francisco. He's kind of the stout gentleman. And there's Leonel that we're going to talk about next in the dark shirt. And there they are getting baptized.

[21:35] It'd be kind of, it'd be neat to be getting baptized in a creek with rushing water and all that. That's pretty cool. So that new building, that $1,200 we've sent, what's the value of a soul saved?

[21:48] What's the value of a soul? And so, some of the best $1,200 we've ever spent in my opinion. So now, let's talk about Leonel. Leonel is kind of the, he doesn't have any official authority, but he's kind of a lead pastor down there.

[22:04] He's a little bit like an associational missionary director. He checks in on all the pastors. He helps them. He coordinates a lot of things. And he sent me this Happy New Year greeting in January.

[22:20] So I stuck it in here so you can see his family. A lot of you will remember the young lady there in the orange dress. What's her name? Suri. Suri came about a year and a half ago and spent three or four months living with us.

[22:36] And a lot of you, if you did something with her while she was here, would you raise your hand? You did something with her. There you go. I remember at the time it was like half the people in the church took her somewhere, did something with her.

[22:48] It was really special. So anyway, she's in college now. Her big sister just graduated, who's the girl in the white dress. And Leonel had a big graduation this year.

[22:59] He finished up a master's degree in biblical studies. So good for him. And now what does Leonel do? Well, right now, among other things, he does lots of mission trips, I should say, back into the jungles working among the Indians.

[23:15] but he's also planting a church in a place called San Pedro where we went and worked for a year. And so that's a beautiful thing he's doing there.

[23:26] And now here's one of the houses out in the jungles they go to. So him and his pretty wife, Piedad. Piedad, by the way, that's Spanish for piety.

[23:37] Her name is Piety. And she is a very pious young woman. And she's kind of a real girly girl, sissy. If you've ever wanted to meet her super sissy girl, she is it.

[23:48] But she'll go into the jungle and live with no bathroom and cook over an open fire and sleep in a hammock and go back in a dugout canoe to get there through swamps.

[24:01] But she's quite a surprising person. But they go into these areas and they start churches. They minister to people there. Now, what Leonel does for a living, he's a farmer.

[24:16] And this is his banana farm. And he gave this lot, this section of his banana farm to build a mission training center for indigenous people.

[24:28] And here they were working on the foundation. And he sent me these pictures in April. They had finished it. And so there is the training center. You know, down there you don't ever have air conditioning or heating.

[24:41] You sure don't need heat. And so all the buildings are kind of open air pretty much. You know, you get a little breeze. And normally, yeah, there's ceiling fans. You normally see a few fans around.

[24:52] So they meet there. Now, to me, what really blessed me, I think I shared this with y'all earlier when it happened, but they sent me a picture of this plaque that they put on the wall of that new building.

[25:05] And you can't read it, and it's in Spanish anyway, but here's what it says. I translated it for you. The name of it is The Way, a missionary training center. This center is the fruit of faith, generosity, and commitment to God's work.

[25:21] Special thanks to Tennessee Baptist Association, Mind Cure Baptist Church, the International Mission Board, excuse me for misspelling mission.

[25:32] how beautiful in this scripture, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach peace and the good news. How beautiful.

[25:43] Are your feet beautiful? Well, when you give to support these people, you're helping to send those. It improves the looks of your feet. Okay.

[25:55] I also thought it was really cool on this plaque. Do you see what I circled down there in the corner? That is our church's logo that Glenn Hawk designed.

[26:06] So Glenn, you're now an international graphic artist. You can put that on your resume. Wow. But it just blesses me. I feel like we didn't do anything to deserve that.

[26:18] You know, we, I think we sent about $600 or $700 to help with that building. But the Tennessee Baptist and the International Mission Board really did the heavy work on that one.

[26:33] But we've just been friends down there. And they blessed us for being their friends. Let me keep moving on. What else? Oh, this is something neat that Leonel sent me of something they were doing with the building.

[26:45] He decided in September, it was kind of when they do their Valentine's Day, that he was going to host in that new building, that facility, that says Cena de Parejas, a dinner for couples.

[27:01] And so he invited all of these couples to come from these indigenous people. And most of them never marry, and their marriages, their families are very unstable.

[27:14] And so he really spent that evening talking to them. You know, they were entertained, they had a beautiful meal, they had some singers and stuff, and a lot of sweet fellowship and all.

[27:27] But then he talked to them about Jesus and that Jesus had died for them. And he talked to them about God wants you to make a commitment in a marriage so your children have a stable family all their lives.

[27:39] And that's the kind of guy Leonel is. He just works hard at everything he does. Now I'm going to insert for a minute something from my daughter, also missionaries that we support.

[27:53] My daughter Emily, her husband Julio, and as you can read there, they travel the world teaching about relationships. Today they're in Colombia. They're down there leading some kind of conference on something.

[28:07] But I can tell you that no matter where they are, when they're here in the States, when they're in South America, Europe, they're in New Zealand, wherever they are, they've got their laptops and they're doing counseling through Zoom with people all over the world.

[28:22] They just are constantly doing counseling. And they asked if we could put out a special request and I said, honey, don't ask me because I've never asked this church to give money to Emily because I feel like I'm too biased.

[28:40] That's my daughter. So Renee's not here today but you tell her that Matt remembered. She was the first one 15 or 16 years ago who said, why aren't we helping support Emily?

[28:53] She's out of our own church. And since then you have supported my daughter and our family thanks you for that. So anyway, I told her I'm not going to do that but you call John Howard and discuss it with John.

[29:08] And so John said, yeah, you can ask for some additional help with this project. So I'm doing this with John's encouragement.

[29:19] They want to spend some months recording short videos that answer the frequently asked questions they get about trauma, abuse, parenting, relationships, divorce, marriage, sexual abuse.

[29:36] They get all of these things coming. Now you might say, well how many of these do they get? Julio has on his, I don't know if it's a website or just whatever.

[29:49] He has over 100,000 followers that are, what? It's Instagram. See, you can tell a guy that's so old, you know.

[30:02] I don't know Instagram from graham crackers, you know. It's all the same to me. Anyway, so he's got over 100,000 followers and they're constantly asking him, can you help us with this?

[30:17] Because his postings are all about relationships and being hurt and broken and you need help and counseling. And he counsels people about eight hours a day, more than eight hours.

[30:33] He counsels about eight people or couples every day. Now if you've ever done any helping people with problems, it wears you out. How he does that day after day, it's a work of God to use him for that.

[30:49] And so he says, I can't afford to stop doing that because the people will pay for that. Some of them only give him two dollars or whatever they can afford, but people do pay him for doing that.

[31:03] And he says, I can't afford to stop doing that to make videos that could answer these questions so that this hundred thousand people who are asking me for the hundredth time the same question, they could just click on me videoed giving that answer.

[31:21] And so they're asking for special support, either a one-time gift or some monthly giving to help him to stop counseling as much, maybe cut back to half time and spend half of his time developing videos, and he thinks it would take a few months to do it.

[31:42] And they have asked that I would hand out an envelope with information about that to each of you. So I'm going to ask if, Phil, could you help hand some of these out?

[31:54] One per household? One per family, one per family, and any left over, just leave them on the table back there. And Glenn, if you could help us. I'll keep going while they're distributing those.

[32:06] that'll tell you everything about what Julio and Emily are doing. It's more information than I could do. And Julio is Bibi's brother. Yeah, that's a connection. Thank you.

[32:17] Bibiana that we support in Venezuela is the sister of Julio, and that's how Emily and Julio met each other. She was in Colombia doing mission work with Bibi, and Bibi's brother came to visit.

[32:33] And that's how they met each other and ended up getting married. Okay, let me have a quick drink of water, and we're almost finished. Today I want to talk to you something about Brian Massey.

[32:52] That's Brian doing one of his favorite things. This guy is from Texas. He's a Southern Baptist missionary, been in Colombia for over 30 years. One of his favorite things.

[33:04] Let him get in a dugout canoe and go back through rivers in the middle of jungles where it takes three and four days in a dugout canoe to get somewhere, and then you have to get out and hike all day to get to some village where, I mean, we're talking remote.

[33:25] He loves to do that kind of stuff. And here's a picture of him. 30 plus years in Colombia. If he wasn't in a canoe at the time, I don't think I ever saw him without one of these hats.

[33:39] These hats are made by the, say, new Indians, hand-woven, and they're very popular in Colombia, and all the tourists like to buy them and stuff. Phil, you got one?

[33:52] Who else? He's got two. John's got one. I think I've got one. Yeah. So anyway, those are very popular hats. And here he is wearing his Colombian hat, picking orchids.

[34:06] Everywhere I was ever with Brian, if he saw an orchid anywhere, they were wild there. He wanted to go and look at it, and if it was not one he had already, he would rip it off the tree or whatever and take it back home.

[34:19] He had a collection at his house, and he was always helping, helping, working, helping. And so I'm bringing this up because if y'all have followed the messages we've sent, this may be the last week of his life.

[34:35] Brian is somewhere in his early to mid-60s. He went, he was a minister of music in Texas when he felt God calling to be a missionary.

[34:48] And so he went to Colombia with his family, raised his family, and has worked and never retired, has worked to 60-some years old, and then became very sick this year.

[35:01] And in the last few months, they've done everything they could. He's back in Texas in a hospital there, and this week the family decided that he didn't want any more treatment.

[35:14] He just wanted comfort care. And so basically it's a case of hospice is working with him. And such a special guy, how often have we sat at a table with him and shared a meal and heard him talk with such zeal about reaching these indigenous people with the message of Jesus.

[35:36] He spent his life, he gave his life for this. And he had told me the last time I saw him, he said, well, I'm not sure when I'm going to retire, but I want to stay here, but Rhonda says we need to retire and go back to Texas and be with the grandchildren.

[35:53] Well, unless he has a miracle, it's not going to happen for him. He gave his life for his work. And so let's just take a moment.

[36:04] And I know before I do that, I actually have two short videos of Brian at work, and we're going to see if it works for us to see it or not. Thank you.

[36:20] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[36:32] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. In the name of the Father, we are in the name of the Father.

[37:05] Hold that right there for a moment. The church at work in another part of the world. I mean, that is so Brian Massey right there, baptizing somebody in a muddy creek somewhere.

[37:18] We'll change our baptismal part. Yeah, yeah. We're going to add a little muddy water to ours, yeah. And, of course, it was interesting. If you know any Spanish, you heard him say, we're baptizing you in the name of el Padre, the Father, el Hijo, the Son, y el Espíritu Santo, the Holy Spirit.

[37:38] So, you know, it's just wonderful, the church at work. Now, here's another thing. I told you he had been a minister of music. If he could, he took his guitar with him. And we got one more video of him with some indigenous people in a worship time.

[37:54] Wow. Wow.

[38:23] So anyway, great guy. And did you notice the very first Indian girl there with the black markings on her face? Many of these tribes, they will do tattooing and coloring and stuff of their faces and all.

[38:40] It's a part of their culture. So, you know, let's take just a moment and pray for Brian and his family. Lord, thank you for people.

[38:51] Lord, thank you for people like Brian who will give their lives to serve you in what we would consider to be a God-forsaken backside of nowhere that we don't want to live in.

[39:10] And, Lord, he went there and loved and helped and served in the name of Jesus. Now, Lord, be with him.

[39:22] We pray even for a miracle of healing, how wonderful it would be. And you could do that, Lord. But, Father, if you're taking him home, we pray you take him home gently and let him enjoy his eternal reward and bless his wife, Rhonda, their daughters, their grandchildren, and give them all your peace and comfort.

[39:41] And, Lord, continue the work, even though the leader of all of it won't be there. He's trained so many others who know how to carry on the work. Bless the work and let the gospel go forward.

[39:53] In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Let's see. Do I have anything else to add to this? Just that. Next month, we'll start asking for a Lottie Moon Christmas offering.

[40:08] If you're new to our church, that is named after a missionary lady named Lottie Moon way back in the early 1900s or late 1800s who gave her life in China as a missionary.

[40:22] And so last year, nationwide, and at the end of, I said, 2026. It was actually 2025.

[40:33] $213 million were raised by all the Baptist churches. Our church gave 1,900 last year. And then the Andy Armstrong offering will come up at Easter time.

[40:44] That's just for missionary support in North America. And last year, all the churches gave 74 million. And so may God bless the continuing work and help us to continue to do the same kinds of things we've been doing.

[41:02] And I didn't share this today as a brag or a boast. We boast only in what Christ has enabled us to do. I shared it just to encourage us to let's keep doing it.

[41:14] Let's don't slow down. Let's don't say, well, we did that. No, this is what we're called to do. And I'd much rather see us spend a dollar out there than a dollar in here.

[41:27] You know, we got to pay for the lights, okay? So we got to spend some dollars in here. But as much as we can, let's take your offerings in God's money and put it to work somewhere, helping somebody that needs some help.

[41:41] Okay. Now, if the musicians will come forward and we will, I'm going to lead in another prayer while they're coming. Lord, we pray for all this mission work.

[41:55] And we thank you for a chance to be involved in it. Lord, just pour it on. Help us not to tire out, but help us to just give ourselves constantly until you call us home.

[42:07] Let us follow the good example of Brian Massey and the Adamses and others who have given their all in your service. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

[42:37] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[42:47]  Amen. Amen.