[0:00] Do you all get that all right? That's scriptural tongues, and I'm going to interpret for you. May the gospel of God, my brothers and sisters, and of his dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a privilege and honor to be here tonight.
[0:16] Thank you, Pastor, for giving me the opportunity to be here. And of course, I know the Snodes. I don't know where they're at in the auditorium, but I know them from Ohio. I'm a born and raised Ohioan. I am a fourth-generation gypsy raised here in the United States.
[0:28] My great-grandparents came from different parts of Eastern Europe, no specific country, as they were the wanderers of Eastern Europe. If you were to see my display in the lobby, you'll see an old, old photograph of my great-grandparents, my grandfather, and great-uncles.
[0:42] The photograph was almost destroyed. It was a part of my mother's belongings, and I had it restored, and some of the faces had to be drawn in, had a big crack in it, but that's my ancestry. And I was raised in a traditional gypsy home here in America, married within the gypsy culture.
[0:57] There's no dating amongst the gypsies in America. My late wife, Dolly, was chosen for me by my parents, and I chosen for her, chosen, her chosen by my parents and me chosen by her parents.
[1:09] I always say that my mom and dad did a great job, but I'm not sure about her folks. And we were total strangers, young people, the day before we wed. We never carried a conversation one with another, and we would have celebrated 46 years of marriage had she lived through 2018.
[1:25] But my goal was to be a millionaire. By the time I was 40, at the age of 25, I was on my way to satisfying that goal. For six months of the year, I operated a traveling carnival in the state of Ohio, and my late wife, Dolly, was a fortune teller.
[1:39] And literally at the age of 25, I woke up one day so disillusioned, so disenchanted, so discouraged with life the way I was living it.
[1:50] I was tired of the pretend. I was tired of the fake. I was tired of the phony. I wanted something real. I wanted something genuine. I wanted truth. But truth was foreign to me.
[2:01] From the time I was a small boy, I was raised by my parents to lie, steal, and cheat. If I performed the con, my parents would reward me. If I didn't perform the con, my parents would reprimand me.
[2:13] That'll confuse a 10-year-old boy. And so I set out on a journey, you might say, a trek, an adventure, to try to find the answer to life, the proverbial answer to life of what it's all about.
[2:25] Have you ever heard someone say, I found Jesus? Ever heard someone say that? It's not biblical. Luke 19.10 says, The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.
[2:37] I thought I was looking for truth, but the truth of the matter is truth was looking for me. The gypsy culture in America is a closed culture. It's a closed society.
[2:48] You'll see in the DVD why, as a result of European persecution and the Nazis killing 600,000 of my people, they did not fraternize outside of our own families.
[2:59] And as a result of that, walls went up of protection. Walls are good. It keeps bad things out, but also keeps good things out like the gospel. And so I would never listen to anyone who was not a gypsy to tell me anything about religion, but yet we had no gypsy priests or pastors or anything.
[3:16] But I was part of another society called the carnival world, and that's a whole culture of itself. And I had a childhood friend who had recently became born again. And of course, he was not a gypsy, but his life was so dramatically changed that it caught my attention.
[3:32] This is a man who was on drugs and alcohol. He literally beat his employees. He had a terrible relationship with his wife. He owned all the carnival rides. I owned the concessions. You can't just set up your concessions in the middle of nowhere.
[3:45] You have to have a ride company. But we would never work with him in the past because he was so wicked. But my late wife and I had heard that he'd become a born-again Christian. We didn't know what that was, but we thought that religion might have changed him enough that we could work with him.
[4:00] And so we hooked up with his traveling carnival in the spring of 1980, and we saw that change in his life. And one of the things that impressed me about this man the most was his prayer life.
[4:10] Their teardown night of the carnival is a dangerous night. It's the night we hitch up the trucks and trailers and drive hundreds of miles to the next fair festival. They could be a traffic accident or a piece of equipment could fall on someone.
[4:23] And I'd watch him in the wee hours of the morning go behind a tree, or maybe he'd go behind a concession trailer, and I'd watch him pray. And something said inside of me that he knew something or someone that I did not know, and that I needed to know.
[4:38] He was a young believer and had recently converted to Christ and fumbled through the scriptures to tell me how to be saved. But he said three words to me in the spring of 1980. He said, you need Jesus.
[4:51] Now, I had heard other people tell me that I needed Jesus, but it never came from someone who was living a life like they really knew Jesus. And that made all the difference in the world. And the carnival season is six months long.
[5:03] It starts in the spring. It ends in the fall. The last festival of that season was the Loudonville Street Fair. I'm sure the Snowds know about that one. The Loudonville Street Fair in Loudonville, Ohio.
[5:14] And we literally take over the whole town. Our concessions and rides are set up on the streets. We put our trucks and trailers in parking lots. Our RVs are parked in the parking lots of businesses.
[5:26] And it was the last day of the festival, October 4, 1980. And I went to this gentleman. And I said, you told me I need Jesus. Now, how do I get Jesus? And he said, Walter, get alone with God.
[5:39] Get down on your knees. Confess to him that you're a sinner. And ask him to come into your heart and save you. I went back to my travel trailer. It was broad daylight. I knelt beside my bed.
[5:50] And I prayed a prayer something like this. I said, dear Lord Jesus, I don't understand the Bible. I said, Jesus, I don't understand Christianity. And I told him I definitely didn't understand the church.
[6:02] But I also told him that I was a lost sinner on my way to hell without him. And I asked Jesus to come into my heart and save me and forgive me of my sins. I closed that prayer with this phrase.
[6:14] Lord, take me to heaven when I die. And you know what Jesus did at that very moment. He saved my wicked soul. He established my feet upon the rock, the Lord Jesus. And I've never been the same since.
[6:25] Amen. I believe in a gospel that saves a man. I believe in a gospel that keeps a man saved. And I believe in a gospel that changes the way a man lives.
[6:35] And God began to make dramatic changes in my life. The gypsy culture is a male-dominated culture. I wasn't much of a stay-at-home dad or a stay-at-home husband. But after the carnival season was over, I came home.
[6:49] I started washing dishes and changing diapers. And my precious wife said to me, what happened to you? You're not the same. And I told Dolly about Jesus. And she received the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal Savior.
[7:01] And I'll make a longer story shorter. We had a fortune-telling sign on our front lawn. Preacher said he was going to tell you about the fortune-telling, the carnivals, the chainsaw, and Jesus.
[7:11] He had it just a little bit backwards. Jesus came before the chainsaw. But we took a chainsaw to our fortune-telling sign, cut it up in hundreds of pieces. My wife says in her testimony, and when she did that, she would say in her testimony, that a burden was lifted off of her shoulders, couldn't be expressed in words.
[7:27] Parked the carnival equipment and tried to pray where to go to church. You have to understand the med and led me to Christ wasn't churched. And I didn't know where to go to church. And for those of you who remember, Jim Jones had just done his stunt.
[7:40] And I was afraid of getting a hold of some tainted Kool-Aid. And I didn't want to let my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages, for those who remember yellow pages. But we began to pray. And I had several kiddie rides that I would set up in the spring around our home there.
[7:54] And a big, tall, independent Baptist preacher came by to rent my kiddie rides for a bus promotion they were having on the church property. And I was more or less the glorified babysitter is what I was.
[8:05] But on a hot August afternoon, we set up those kiddie rides. And him being a good Baptist preacher, he began to witness to me. And I said, preacher, I'm saved. I'm on my way to heaven. I know that.
[8:15] I just don't know where to go to church. Well, if you know Baptist preachers, that's music to their ears. And so he invited me to set in on the service on that Sunday and was just so impressed to see God's people bringing their Bibles to church.
[8:29] Something we were attending the Catholic church, but we weren't really faithful to it. And people staying for the entirety of the service, for we had learned that the Catholic church slipped out the back door during communion time.
[8:41] And something even more new than that, Christians were staying after the services were over. They were fellowshipping one with another, and we didn't even know what that was. And so we began attending. It was there that we were scripturally baptized.
[8:53] And God just began to bless in our lives. And we grew in the Lord and just thanked the Lord for all that he did. And in the winter of 1985, I answered a call to preach God's word.
[9:04] Now, gypsies take their children out of school very early because they don't want to lose them to the American culture. So I only went to the sixth grade. I'm kind of like Jethro of the Beverly Hillbillies, for those of you who can remember the Beverly Hillbillies.
[9:18] But I went back and got my GED, but I had the privilege of being trained by my local church pastor. And I learned this book at the feet of Dr. Larry M. Spencer, became his assistant youth director, and I was content to be the second man of the Crossroad Baptist Church in New Carlisle, Ohio, the rest of my life.
[9:35] I had told God so. I had no aspirations of becoming a pastor, an evangelist, or a missionary. But there was a problem. 40 million gypsies around the world, virtually unreached with the gospel.
[9:48] And nightly, my wife and I would lift up the gypsy people all over the world. So we'd say, God, send someone to the gypsies of New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and Atlanta and all the major cities of America.
[10:00] Send someone, Lord, for we knew that someone had to be sent. And it wasn't long while we were praying that prayer that the Lord began to speak to my heart and said, what about you? And at first I said to the Holy Spirit, not me. I'm second man of the Crossroad Baptist Church.
[10:12] Youth department's growing, souls are being saved. And the Holy Spirit whispered back and said, no, I have made you, I have molded you to reach your own people. And the hardest thing I've ever done in my Christian life, and I say without exaggeration, was when I went to my pastor's office to tell him that God was calling us away to the mission field.
[10:31] You say, preacher, why was that so hard? This is the preacher who taught us this book. This is the preacher who taught us how to pray. This is the preacher who taught us how to give. This is the preacher who taught us how to win souls. And if you can teach a man how to preach, this is the preacher who taught me how to preach.
[10:44] This is the preacher that would visit our home in broad daylight with a fortune-telling sign on the front lawn. How that impressed me. What if his people had seen him come? Maybe he's coming to get next Sunday's message, you know?
[10:58] But he came and loved us in spite of our sin, just like Jesus loves us. And as I told him that God was calling us away to the mission field, he began to weep. I began to weep. We began to pray.
[11:08] And it was new amongst the independent Baptists. No one was working with gypsies. Our first ministry in Cleveland, Ohio in 1990 was the first ministry amongst gypsies and Baptists anywhere in the world.
[11:20] And I've been saying that for over 30 years. And by the way, we're 33 flavors of Baptists. We're like Baskin-Robbins ice cream, you know? And so it was new. When I would call pastors 30, 40 years ago for meetings, I'd say, I'm going to reach gypsies.
[11:34] And they'd say, you're going to reach who? You won't reach out to a people group you don't believe exists. This doesn't make sense. And so part of my ministry is educating the body of Christ about a race of people who need to hear the gospel.
[11:46] And you'll see that in the presentation. He and I began to pray. And the first person that we met with was Dr. Charles King, a spiritual Baptist church in Milford, Ohio. He'll be in the conference on Tuesday. So he and I have great affinity.
[11:58] And he directed us to a mission board out of Jacksonville. We raised our support and then started our first ministry in Cleveland, Ohio. Spent 12 years in Eastern Europe until my wife's cancer metastasized to her lungs.
[12:10] That brought us back to the United States. She passed in 2017. And I tried my best to be a widower. I really did. I worked at it. But there's a verse in the Bible that says, it's not good that the man is alone.
[12:22] And I began to pray for God to bring a godly woman into my life. But 60 plus years old, independent, fundamental KJV preacher, the field is very narrow. And I'm an itinerant speaker, of course.
[12:37] And as I was going to these meetings, it was like a conflict of interest. Am I there to preach God's word? Am I there to look for the widows without a wedding band on their left hand? So I literally gave up. I say without exaggeration, preacher, I gave up.
[12:48] It was just too hard. And remember, I never dated. I didn't know what it was. And I did everything wrong, but there's a wedding band on my left hand. But I moved from the west coast of Florida to the east coast of Florida because my son's an assistant pastor there.
[13:02] And moved in with some grandkids. I was getting some grandkid therapy. And I have three supporting churches in Melbourne, Florida. And I would alternate these churches. And one Wednesday night, I was at the Heritage Baptist Church in Melbourne when Ryland Millett, my dear friend, is the pastor.
[13:16] And a beautiful, gorgeous, knockout redhead was singing. And she's a gospel singer, a southern gospel singer, matter of fact. And she sang a song that night entitled, Hello. And they don't usually have special music on Wednesday nights.
[13:29] But she sang a song called, Hello. And the song is about when you get to heaven, you see Jesus, you greet him, you say hello. See your family that went before you, say hello. And I noticed that there wasn't a wedding band on her left hand.
[13:40] And so after the service, I walked up to her and I said, Hello. And we began dating. And the Lord put us together. And we just thank the Lord for the marriage that he has given us.
[13:52] She has been working in the prison system of Florida for 20 years, going in from the outside. She doesn't go in from the inside. And so the preacher she was going in with, he moved out of the area.
[14:06] And she didn't have a preacher to go in. And she said, Would you volunteer for the Florida Corrections chaplaincy opportunity? And here I am. I'm a former con man. I never got arrested. But I don't know what's out there, you know?
[14:17] And so I applied and they accepted me. Now we go into the prison system and preach the first Friday of every month she sings I preach. And I thank the Lord for her. She can't travel with me.
[14:28] Her mother has turned very ill. She's in her mid-80s. And she can't leave mom alone. But God has just blessed our marriage. We now have a gypsy ministry in Kissimmee, Florida.
[14:38] We have five churches in Eastern Europe turned over to nationals. We have five churches in Romania, three in Hungary, all turned over to nationals. We've been working in the Ukraine ever since the war broke out. We raised $80,000 and sending our group in, we've made 30 trips into Southern Ukraine, taking humanitarian aid, but taking the gospel to them.
[14:57] I just returned from Eastern Europe. I was there about a month ago and I preached in a gypsy church on a Saturday night. They don't usually have Saturday night service. There was over 500 gypsies in that service. And God just blessed with many receiving the Lord.
[15:10] I work with the gypsies of Pakistan every Friday morning. I have a Bible study with the gypsies of Pakistan. Those are the original gypsies. They came from India and Pakistan. And we just had a graduation service this past Friday where we graduated 20 from our institute, raised $48,000 and bought them a building.
[15:27] Our national pastor, Brother David John, is doing a great job. And then our executive director, Tim Clark, that was here is now working with the gypsies of India via the internet with a missionary there by the name of Ravender.
[15:38] And God is just blessing the ministry amongst the gypsy people. Part of the video is almost like a documentary educating the body of Christ of who the gypsy people are.
[15:48] But the second half will tell you what God is doing amongst the gypsy people. And I hope the video will be a blessing to you. Thank you. Gypsies.
[16:17] Gypsies. Who are they? Where are they? What are they? Are they just a figment of grandma's imagination?
[16:30] You know, the grandma that used to warn you that the gypsies might kidnap you? Are they mythical characters of werewolf and vampire movies? Are they, as Webster describes, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, nomadic people?
[16:46] Well, yes. They are people. Human lives with ever-living, never-dying souls existing in their own very secretive and private worlds.
[16:59] They are moms, dads, sons, daughters, grandmas, grandpas. They are people who are very much like you and me, but yet very different.
[17:14] They are a people who have not blended into any society in which they live. A people who have become a culture within a culture worldwide. An ethnic group who have preserved their language and speak it in almost every country of their sojourn.
[17:30] A closed society who only married those of their own race with very few exceptions. Gypsies, or as they are properly called, the Roma people, originated in India.
[17:44] India. It is believed that they began to migrate westward to other countries way back in the 10th century. Some experts teach that they possibly left India due to the fact that they were the lowest of the low of the Hindi caste system of religious belief, where they were known as the untouchables, the pariahs, the dogs, the outcasts.
[18:09] But not only were they the outcasts of India, they soon began to find that wherever they went in the world, they came to be rejected as outcasts there as well.
[18:22] As they wandered from country to country, their plight only worsened. Throughout Europe, they were hated and shunned. They were Romania's Zigan, Germany's Zigenur, Greece's Giftos, and Spain's Kitanos, all variations of the same word, outcasts.
[18:45] They were enslaved in many Eastern European countries for several centuries. Yet even with their emancipation in the mid-1800s, their situation only worsened as gypsy persecution escalated.
[19:00] Under Hitler in World War II Germany, they were considered to be pollution to the Aryan race, to be treated as rodents, pests, and parasites that needed to be exterminated from the fatherland.
[19:13] It has been estimated that some 600,000 gypsies were slaughtered in Hitler's death camps. The Nazis would use the long, dark, beautiful hair of the gypsy women to stuff the mattresses of their military, and they would rip the silver and gold from gypsy mouths to fuel the Third Reich's war machine.
[19:34] And even today in Europe, little has changed for the Roma people. Though they are the so-called poster children of human rights violations for the European Union, the persecution and hatred is still about the same.
[19:51] In many former communist countries, they were given parcels of land, but always on the outskirts of town. Under the socialist regimes, they received welfare checks in a feeble attempt to solve the so-called Roma problem.
[20:08] Since the supposed fall of communism, they are now even more destitute. There is still the same old hatred and discrimination against them. Most businesses and industries will not employ them.
[20:21] Thus, they resort to begging or stealing or conning for their survival. Of course, as you can well imagine, such behaviors make their reputation among the indigenous people among whom they live only worse.
[20:38] The physical condition of Roma people is heartbreaking to say the least. Yet, they endure something more terrible than all of this. Far worse than the hatred and poverty is the spiritual condition of their souls.
[20:55] Imagine the horror of living out the wretched history of ostracized existence that the Roma have experienced only to end up spending eternity in hell separated from God himself and his people forever.
[21:11] This is a situation far too intolerable to believe or accept. Yet, tragically, because the gypsies have been one of the most hated people groups in the world, they have also been one of the least evangelized ethnic groups in existence today.
[21:27] How then do we reach these folks? A people that Satan has held in his clutches for centuries. People who are lost and entangled in a web of sin, fortune-telling, thievery, idol worship, tradition, superstition, and hatred toward all other races.
[21:47] God has to do a remarkable work of grace in reaching a handful of gypsies and then burdening and equipping them to reach back into their culture with the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ.
[22:00] I could wish that myself were a curse from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.
[22:19] Introducing Roma Outreach Missions Association. As the church faces perilous times in these last days, we must consider that the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is imminent.
[22:34] With a burning passion and love for God and His Son, being led by the Holy Spirit and energized with a sense of urgency, we endeavor to create an organization that reaches out to the unreached and overlooked people groups of the world with the gospel.
[22:50] We consider the Roma people to be the prime example of these un-evangelized, and while we will focus primarily on the gypsies of the world, we will also include all forgotten and marginalized people groups.
[23:03] By God's grace, we will accomplish these goals by educating the body of Christ, making sure that these neglected people are exposed to the church and no longer kept secret, and we will do so for the specific purposes of raising up manpower and finances to evangelize, plant churches, train preachers, and call forth an army of saints to do the same.
[23:26] the gospel of Luke, chapter 15.
[23:51] Gospel of Luke, chapter 15. Let me remind you of my display out front there, and one of the regrets I have being in a church is the short amount of time that I'm here, so I'm not going to run off.
[24:03] You stop by the display, and anything you might like to ask about, the gypsy, our prior life, whatever the case may be, please pick up a prayer card and pray for us. We covet your prayers. I know what you're thinking.
[24:14] I know you have a lot of missionaries in here. They pray this platform, and they ask for prayer, and you think, well, missionaries are looking for a lot of people to pray for them because God is impressed when a lot of people pray.
[24:24] No, missionaries are looking for the right people to pray for them, those who know how to touch the hem of the garment of the Lord Jesus, and the devil's roaring mad. He hates us. He hates our ministry because we're reaching these people that have been in his clutches for centuries, if not millennia.
[24:37] So pray for us, please. We know the second closest thing to a Baptist heart, and that's why we put a recipe on the backside. Amen? This is Simone's recipe for gypsy cabbage rolls. They're absolutely delicious.
[24:49] They're awesome, but they can be spicy, so should you decide to prepare them, don't bother calling us for Tums or Olai. You're on your own. Amen? Luke chapter 15, I'm just going to read a few verses. I don't know if it's a custom in your church to stand for the reading of God's Word, but would you accommodate me and stand for the reading of God's Word?
[25:05] I work with primitive people, and we try to teach them the importance of this book by having them stand to give reverence to God's Word. I'm just going to read a few verses in Luke chapter 15, beginning at verse 8.
[25:17] Let's pray.
[25:43] Father in heaven, bless now the reading and the preaching of your Word. Help me to be a blessing, Lord, a challenge, an encouragement, and if necessary, to bring conviction in some area of life.
[25:54] Father, we want to glorify Jesus in all that we do. We love you, and we pray in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. I'm preaching on this subject tonight, finding lost gypsies, or you could just call it finding lost sinners.
[26:09] In our chapter, we call Luke chapter 15 the chapter of the lost and found. We know it talks about a lost sheep, and of course, we talked about the lost coin.
[26:19] It also talks about a lost son, and it's all about Christ seeking to find that which is lost, just like he says about the coin in verse 10. Likewise, I say to you, it's not about the coin.
[26:31] It's about finding lost souls, about finding that which Jesus has been looking for. It's about Jesus celebrating for finding what he's been looking for. Verse 7 says, I say to you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents more than over 99 unjust persons which need no repentance.
[26:50] In our text verses, we read in verse 10, Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents. When a sinner gets saved, there's a celebration in heaven, and the first one who celebrates is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
[27:05] And when Jesus celebrates, all of heaven celebrates. And our goal, our desire, what we're called to do is give Jesus the joy for which he died for by reaching the lost with the gospel.
[27:18] Saved lost sinners are the ultimate joy for Christ. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2 says, Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
[27:34] The joy that he died for was the joy of lost sinners being saved. The joy of me being saved, you being saved, all those in your community, and all those around the world. That's the joy of Christ, and it should be our joy as well.
[27:48] But as I read the story about the lost coin, I see some similarities between the coin and my lost gypsy people, and I want to draw some thoughts out concerning the lost coin and my people.
[28:01] Number one, like the coin, the gypsies are lost, but dear. And what I mean by that, they're lost, but precious. They're lost, but of great value. Yes, the gypsies are lost, wicked sinners.
[28:13] They steal. They lie. They cheat. Sometimes they're adulterers and prostitutes. In Eastern Europe, they're dirty, and they smell. Sometimes they're lazy, and they're beggars, and they're of no value to the world, but they are of great value to the Lord Jesus Christ because He died for them.
[28:30] So valuable that God sent His Son. So valuable that Jesus shed His blood for them. Romans 5, 6 says, In due time, Christ died for the ungodly. And some people say, Brother Stevens, you have a dynamic testimony.
[28:43] God really had to reach down to the gutter of this world to save your wicked soul. May I remind you, church, that we all come from the same gutter. It's called plowded earth. Didn't take holier blood to save me than it did to save you.
[28:55] My Bible still says that if you offend in one area of the law, you're guilty of it all. Same Jesus for us all. Jesus loves lost sinners. He loves the precious gypsy.
[29:06] They're lost, but they're dear. When we read this story about the woman looking for the coin, we wonder why was it so important for her to find that coin. And you say, well, Brother Stevens, it was silver.
[29:16] It had monetary value. And that's true. But to understand the real value and the real importance of this coin, you have to understand Eastern cultures and even the gypsy culture. Many times in Eastern cultures, a woman's head covering would be to you and I what a wedding band is.
[29:32] It would show that they belong to someone. They're married. And many times in Eastern cultures, the gypsy cultures, they'd weave coins into those head coverings. An affluent family would have gold coins.
[29:44] A middle class family, probably what she was, would have silver coins. Right now, the gypsy women in Eastern Europe still wear those head coverings to show that they're married, but they're so poor there aren't any coins.
[29:55] Matter of fact, a gypsy woman's head covering in the gypsy language is called the declo. And within the word declo is the word deke. And the word deke means to look, see, or show. She's saying, look, I'm married.
[30:06] I belong to someone. So her losing this coin, ladies, would be like you losing your wedding band. She's diligently looking for this coin. So like the coin, like the coin, the gypsies are of great value.
[30:20] They're precious. They're dear. But number two, I want you to look at verse eight again. Either what woman having ten pieces of silver she lose, one piece does not light a candle.
[30:31] Like the coin, the gypsies are lost in the darkness. They love darkness rather than light because the deeds are evil. Satan has blinded the minds of them which believe not.
[30:42] Their darkness is a very dark darkness. The woman in our story had to light a candle to look for the coin. I don't know what time she started looking for the coin, but I know it must started to get dark because she had to light a candle to look for that coin.
[30:56] God lit the light of Christ to look for light lost gypsies. He's the light of the world. He called us to take that light and to save the gypsies out of the darkness that they're living in, the darkness of their sin.
[31:07] He came to look for us in the darkness. The Bible says the light shined in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. Number one, like the coin, the gypsies are lost but dear. Number two, like the coin, the gypsies are lost in the darkness.
[31:21] And number three, like the coin, look with me please at verse eight. Either one woman having ten pieces of silver she lose one piece does not light a candle and watch and sweep the house.
[31:32] I believe she began sweeping in places she wouldn't normally sweep. Would you agree? Help me church. This means say amen. This means really say amen. And these used to be flat.
[31:44] So she's probably sweeping in places she never swept before. I believe she started to move heavy furniture because she's looking for this coin. The husband's not mentioned in the story. I don't know if he's not home. I don't think he is.
[31:56] And I'm afraid that when he comes home and don't find this coin it's going to be like she lost her wedding band. You all with me? Help me. And so she's looking for this coin. She's looking in the darkness. And now she's sweeping and she's looking in the dirt.
[32:09] And like the coin, the gypsies are lost in the dirt and they're lost in the dirt of their sin. Two times a year my precious wife Simone decides she's going to clean the house from the top to the bottom.
[32:20] I try to be elsewhere then. But she needs me to move the heavy appliances. And men, aren't you glad that refrigerators now have wheels? And I saw a refrigerator magnet that said what rolls under the refrigerator stays under the refrigerator.
[32:39] And so she'll have me roll out the refrigerator and man, there's some grapes or some olives or some shredded cheese that's been under with a lot of dust bunnies and Simone will start sweeping. And before you know it, preacher, I'll see a coin that rolled under there.
[32:53] And I'll say, hold on there just a minute, Simone. She'll begin to shovel that dirt up. You know, I said, wait a minute. Now I pick up the coin but you can't make it out. It's full of grease and dirt. But I put that coin in my hand and I lift it up and I begin to rub it and I bring the luster back and you can see the image like the coin.
[33:12] The gypsies are lost in dirt but watch now. The blood of Jesus has cleansed them and brought the luster and the image of God back upon them. Hey, listen, like the coin, the gypsies are lost in the darkness.
[33:23] Like the coin, the gypsies are lost but dear. Like the coin, the gypsies are lost in the dirt of their sin. But God wants to save them and he sent the light of the gospel and he sent his word to cleanse them.
[33:34] While I was in Eastern Europe, I would cross the border from Hungary into Romania every day because of our churches and though those countries are part of the European Union, I'm still not a part of it and I had to show a passport going back and forth.
[33:48] I had to get four stamps totally in a day, two Hungarian, two Romanian. And my dear friend was Dr. Garland Powell who was the president and founder of Baptist Missions to Forgotten Peoples.
[34:00] And he made me promise that wherever I was in the world that I would come home and preach his funeral. And when Dr. Powell passed, the family flew us from Hungary to Jacksonville, Florida where I preached his home going.
[34:12] And when I got there, his wife Analia said that Dr. Powell wanted me to have his presidents and his founders ring. And this ring is very precious to me as Dr. Powell was my hero and cheerleader all wrapped up into one.
[34:24] But when I got back to Eastern Europe, I wore the ring in spite of the fact that it was too big for me. Dr. Powell had much bigger hands than I did. And one day coming back from Romania, I had come into the house and ladies, you really understand this.
[34:37] I had noticed a vacancy on my finger. I had lost Dr. Powell's ring. And my heart was broken. I said, wow. And you know, when you lose something, you start to retrace your steps, you know, you start to, where was I?
[34:49] What was I doing? What was the last time I saw that ring? And I remember the last time I saw is when I crossed the border and came home. I had got some things out of the trunk of my car. And so I went back to the trunk, but I didn't have a trunk light on my trunk.
[35:02] And so I turned on the flashlight. And as soon as I turned on the flashlight, I saw the ring. See, you can't find something of value in the darkness without light. And Jesus is that light.
[35:14] And so I decided I better go to a jeweler. There was a jeweler a few miles away from us that was only open a couple days of the week. And I took the ring to the jeweler to size it. And when I went back to pick it up, the jeweler had decided to clean the ring.
[35:27] I didn't know it was dirty. And the ring was shiny. You see, once the master touches something that's dirty, he can bring the luster that belongs to it to the glory of Jesus Christ.
[35:37] My gypsies are lost. They're lost, but they're dear. They're lost in the darkness. They're lost in the dirt of their sin. But finally, I want you to look at a phrase here in the end of verse 8. Let's read the whole verse.
[35:49] He says, Like the gypsies, the lost coin is lost in the darkness.
[36:06] It's lost in the dirt. It's lost its dear. It's precious. But it's looked for diligently. There's a diligent effort in our story to find this lost coin of value. Just like there is a diligent effort to find lost gypsies and lost sinners all over the world.
[36:22] I'll close with this story. I was pastoring our first gypsy work in Cleveland, Ohio when I received a telephone call from a Romanian national who was pastoring a Romanian Baptist church about 40 miles south of us in Akron, Ohio.
[36:37] He had told me that he had left communist Romania to come to the United States to have the liberty to preach the gospel. But he had made a promise to God that when communism fell or if it fell that he'd go back to Romania and plant churches amongst the gypsies of the part of Romania where he lived.
[36:54] And he was living up to that promise. He invited us to his home. He showed us a homemade video of the gypsies of Think of Romania. And after we saw that video we knew we had to go first hand and see it for ourselves.
[37:07] He raised his support and he got back to Romania in May of 1995. We followed him in in June of 1995. But to our dismay he did not go to those gypsies that were in the video in the rural areas of Romania.
[37:20] He went to the city. We didn't want to go to the city. We wanted to go to the gypsies that were in that video. So we took an airplane. There was direct flights out of Cleveland, Ohio to Budapest, Hungary back then because of the large population of Hungarians in Cleveland.
[37:34] And we took a flight to Budapest to public transportation to a county called Bihor County in Romania. California and we were in a small town called Tinka. And we were staying in an old broken down boarding house.
[37:47] Matter of fact if there was water it was cold the windows were open it was summertime so we had visitors every night in our apartment. There wasn't any restaurants back then. My sister had sent with me two three pound hickory farm beef steaks.
[38:00] You know the ones you get at Christmas time? And I took a case of Raymond chicken noodle soup with me. You know the ones that are a hundred for a dollar? Not really. But I took those because they were light. I took a little collapsible Coleman stove and Sterno.
[38:14] I didn't know you couldn't take Sterno on an airplane and I did. And that's what we ate. We ate beef stick and noodle soup Raymond noodle soup. We got some of the fresh grown tomatoes greatest tomatoes I've ever eaten. Got some of the fresh bread out of the bakeries.
[38:26] But we didn't care about food. And we didn't care about living conditions. We didn't have a car. But every day we'd grab our backpacks and walk off into these different villages. Now there's no such thing as a gypsy village.
[38:37] There's no such thing as a gypsy town. Each village and town has a parcel land that was given to the gypsies always out of mainstream society near the outskirts of town near the railroad tracks or the dumps.
[38:50] And so the small villages it was easy to find those parcel land. But we came to the town of Thinca. And I remember that's the town in the video. We came to the town of Thinca. I think it was the town of 2,500 people.
[39:01] We didn't know where the parcel land was. I spoke no Romanian so I couldn't ask a national. But as we entered the town there was a small gypsy boy about six years old gazing into a storefront window.
[39:13] He was absolutely filthy from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. I saw the soles of his feet. And I walked up to him and said in the gypsy language Kaile Roma or where are the gypsies? He led us by the hand clear across town to a small one room house.
[39:28] And when I say small one room house this house wasn't bigger than 12 foot by 12 foot. He didn't knock on the door but he very quietly pushed the door open and almost tiptoed in.
[39:39] The other mission that was with me I looked at him and said we better walk in the same way. And as soon as we entered this small one room house we saw right away why he was entering quietly. Nobody lived in this house.
[39:50] This is a house where gypsies would meet specifically for prayer. And when we walked in there were 10 or 12 gypsies on their knees in a circle praying.
[40:01] They did not know we had entered the room. One gypsy man was praying out loud in the gypsy language. And I want you to see the sovereignty of God in this. Gypsies are bilingual all over the world. They speak their native tongue but the language of the host nation.
[40:14] Like I speak English in gypsy they would speak Romanian in gypsy. Had this man prayed in the Romanian language I wouldn't have understood a word of his prayer. But the sovereign father had him pray in gypsy.
[40:25] And this is what he prayed. God send us someone. Send us someone to tell us the truth of the gospel for we are very confused. To understand that prayer the year is 1995.
[40:37] Communism had fallen six years prior and in those six years every cult and his brother was coming from the west confusing these primitive people. Telling them that if they ate pork they couldn't go to heaven.
[40:49] That would be a real problem in the south. Telling them that if they didn't worship on Saturday they couldn't go to heaven. If they didn't speak in tongues they couldn't go to heaven. You know the doctrines that go behind those beliefs.
[41:00] He said his amen he stood to his feet he opened his eyes and I standing right in front of him boldly said to him in the gypsy language we are the answer to that prayer.
[41:12] How would you like to get your prayers answered that fast? I presented the gospel to him he and several others fell on their knees and they received the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
[41:25] Gypsies are very emotional people. They laugh hard they cry hard they fight hard and they celebrate hard. And this man was a professional accordion player and he had his accordion by his side he would play Christian songs before they prayed.
[41:38] Well he grabbed this accordion we all went outside he began to play and gypsies were coming out of the woodwork it was like the Pied Piper I think they thought it was a party. And there on the dirt roads of Think of Romania with hundreds there we preached again and many were saved that was July of 1995 we had our first baptism in August of 1995 and the nucleus of the Man of Baptist Church of Think of Romania had been established.
[42:04] The man I heard praying is a man by the name of Giza Feketa he is now the national pastor of five of our churches. Now what's the point? Our story says that she diligently looked for the coin.
[42:18] Those gypsies that day were diligently sought for. By me? Wasn't my idea. the diligence of the Heavenly Father who placed the burden and a desire in my heart to go to those people it is God who is diligently looking for the laws and would to God we would make our diligent effort to do the same.
[42:40] Jesus said work while it is day because the night cometh when no man can work. Preacher I could have said that verse three years ago and it would have meant something but now it means a lot more doesn't it? Help me church as we see the political chaos the confusion in our nation in our world lost people are confused they don't know what's going on it's sad to say Christians are confused but we know what's going on Jesus is about to return and we need to look for lost souls heads about and eyes are closed and no one's looking around who tonight by an uplifted hand would say preacher I'm saved I thank the Lord for it I'm on my way to heaven and I thank the Lord would you put your hand way up high as a testimony yes God bless you many many hands raised you may put them down maybe you're here tonight and God is diligently looking for you and tonight he's found you he's come to seek and to save that which was lost and you want the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart and say preacher I'm lost I need to be saved would you put your hand up so I can pray for you is there one
[43:43] I'm lost and I need to be saved is there one is there one Christian who is it that you need to be diligently looking for who is it that God laid upon your heart how many would raise their hand and say preacher I have lost family lost friends need to be saved would you put your hand up all over the auditorium I'm here to testify to you that you can reach your family with the gospel I and my late wife were the first of our families to be saved we led our entire family to Christ on all sides except for one uncle you can reach your families with the gospel maybe there's someone here that God's tugging upon your heart for full time service God wants to use you you don't understand it and you may be even a little afraid of it but you know God's tugging on your heart string you say preacher God's calling me to serve him would you put your hand up that I could pray for you is there one is there one is there one let's stand and pray and the invitation will begin father in heaven thank you for your word you make things so clear Lord that we need to look for sinners who are lost but precious they're dear they're lost in the darkness and they're lost in the dirt of their sin but you're diligently looking for them may we be as diligent and do the job that you call us to do father there are many hands raised of lost family lost friends maybe those will come to this altar and lift them up one more time and pray and make a diligent effort to reach them bless this invitation we pray in Jesus name and for his sake jan gather