2:24
I almost wanted to do that again. It's that good. Yes. By the power of the blood. Yes.
2:29
Amen. Isn't that awesome that Jesus Christ died for our sins? He paid for our sins, and just because we believe that, that's where the power comes from. Amen? Amen.
6:28
Amen. You sit.
6:34
Good morning. A couple of quick announcements. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Michael Demetrius. I'm the youth director here. And as far as youth group, this week, we are gonna be meeting on Tuesday night from 06:30 to eight for both youth group, middle and high school.
6:51
And here's my contact information up above on both sides, (307) 690-4090. If you wanna write that down, if you have any questions about youth group or know anyone that wants to get involved with the youth group, have them either email me or text me at that number. And also for Guatemala stuff, you know anyone that wants to go to Guatemala or if you have any service projects that you would like the Guatemala mission team to do, we're doing fundraisers. We're going around. We split a bunch of wood and stacked a bunch of wood this past week.
7:25
So if if we can help out in any way like that, just, zip me a text or an email, and we will get that lined up. Discovery class is, excuse me, is next week in Ray's office in between services. So 10AM in Ray's office, and that would be about joining the church, becoming a member of First Baptist. So, the nursery is downstairs. If you have any little ones that would like to be in the nursery, that is available during this service.
7:54
And we've got Monday nights starting at 6PM tomorrow night down the hall. That's a meal, music, and message. Nick Stern will actually be speaking this week, so he's gonna have a great message for us. And that goes on at the same time as Awana. Awana will be right here in this room.
8:08
So if you know any kids that want to be in Awana. Yesterday was Veterans Day. Do we have any any people who have served in the armed forces here in this church? If you could go ahead and stand for us. We just wanna kinda honor you and and thank you for your service.
8:23
Can we just give them a round of applause? Thank you, guys, for your service. Yes. Thank you, fellas. Thank you.
8:30
Thank you. For for all the other announcements, please check your bulletins. That'll have all the info and the prayer request. If you guys wanna stand up and greet one another, we'll bring you back together with some song. Let's sing together Amazing Grace.
9:02
Just have to remember.
9:03
We're not doing that one. I don't
10:58
amen. I would like to pray. Heavenly father, thank you so much for the privilege that we have together in your name, worship your name. Thank you for the salvation that you provide to Jesus Christ, our our saviors. We believe in you.
11:10
We love you. We wanna worship you, and we wanna walk with you. Would you please bless us as a family? Help us to understand the world. Help us to understand the sermon.
11:21
Would you please speak to us today? Help us to always feel the Holy Spirit in our heart. In Jesus name I pray, amen.
13:09
I've got a red microphone here. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. It is good to see you all. Hey, thank you for your prayers and your support as Ray and I took our a little road trip, and we got Melissa safely to Florida where she is we're missing her.
13:28
She usually sits right back there, and we are very grateful that she has found a new home. I I wanted to say, as we move into the worship through giving, we I want you to know there are two offerings this morning. The the first is now. The second will be for Ken and Lori, and that will be right after Ken and Lori speak. As always, if you brought one offering, we do strongly encourage you to to to give to our missionaries.
13:59
They really are important to us. But that being said, I'd like to to to give thanks and and pray for this first offering for the general fund. God, I I do thank you as we sang that song where the spirit of the Lord is. There's life, there's freedom, there's power, there's forgiveness. Thank you, God, for that spirit, your spirit living inside of us, leading us, guiding us.
14:22
Thank you, God, for being generous. Every good and and perfect gift, it comes from you. And so we wanna just pause. And, as we we give here, may it be with an open open hand and and a and a grateful heart, because everything that we have, it comes from you. So it's it's an honor.
14:42
It's a privilege to give to you. And, would you accept these these offerings of ours, as we give grateful. In Jesus' name, amen.
17:54
Thank you, Judy. Thank you. Thank you.
17:57
So I would like to if you don't know them yet, I'd like to introduce Ken and Laurie McEwen this morning. I think Ken's gonna come up first and Laurie too. Well, you'll you'll hear from both of them today. Oh, you got a tail. Yep.
18:09
If if you know Wes and Katie Clark, they usually come to the first service. They are Lori's mom and dad. So, anyway, their their role is sorry. Katie's. What did I say?
18:31
Lori's mom and dad. Lori's yeah. Let me move on. Their role their role is church planting and cross cultural discipleship. They have planted churches in Jackson, Driggs, Big Piney.
18:46
Currently, they're planting a church in Pinedale. Moved by the call to reach locally and spread God's kingdom right here in The US. So can we give them a warm first bee welcome, please?
19:02
I'm hiding the music over here because it'll get mixed in with my slideshow. Can I sing? Sorry, this thing is, I will promise not to do that, hopefully. Love you guys. You guys have been a part of our ministry for many years and, Laurie and I, a minister right now, we're living out in Big Piney, Wyoming.
19:25
But interesting that people ask me, what about this immigration thing? What do guys think about that? So I wanna take this morning, my time, and Lori's gonna explain a little bit about what we do. But just to share something that a missionary named, Kirk McKeith over in Western Idaho shared with me and really was a blessing to my heart to look at a one of the perspectives that we could have about the whole immigration thing. And, since we've we've been ministering cross culturally for forty one years now, and so people think we are experts.
19:53
Well, I'm still learning too what to think. So, what does the world look like to you out there? We look think of the big world, and so the world in in 10 people, only one out of that 10 would say that he loves the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart, mind, and soul, and he has absolutely insurance of his personal salvation. A couple people out there
20:11
say, oh, yeah, Jesus is
20:13
a great teacher. You know? I appreciate him. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a Christian, but they do their own thing. Then, there'd be about four people say, yeah, I've heard this gospel thing.
20:23
Yeah, I have my own religion or no religion or whatever, and I'm not interested. And then there is, three people that would say, never heard of him. Never don't know anything about that. They've never been exposed to the gospel. Well, let's look quick.
20:37
I'm, just going to read. It's the first time in my life I've ever preached without a Bible, but I wanted to keep moving here today. And say, speaking of the after the flood of Noah, what God's commandment was to the peoples of the earth. And so, these are the families of the sons of Noah according to their generations, in their nations and from these nations were divided on the earth after the flood. Well, this word divided or the word in, Matthew 13 scattered.
21:03
Remember the sower, he scattered the seeds. Some fell in good places, hard places, all that. But he said the the word people were scattered after the flood, and that's what's God's plan. It's the or something like that. I don't know, fancy Greek word, but I can never say it right because they mix it with Spanish.
21:20
But the people really didn't like that idea. They wanted to all pack up and stay together. And they said, hey, let them make a name for ourselves. We'll hang here together. We don't want to be scattered over the face of the earth.
21:33
And so the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth and they ceased building the city. What city were they talking about? Well, this was the Tower Of Babel that they said we're going to make this city and I think it was actually a religious thing where they were going to replace God with some better idea of a religious city. And, they were God did not allow them to continue on that. He said, therefore, this place is called Babylon.
22:02
Because that, the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there, the Lord scattered them abronting the face of the earth. He chased them out by changing their language. You change language, then you change cultures, you change values, and people become extremely different in the way their worldview and every other way, and even religiously. It was God's design to scatter people out over the whole earth.
22:29
Genesis there says, and God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. That's one of the first mandates for humans. And the Lord will scatter you among the people and you'll be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. This is a warning to the people of Israel when God gave them the promised land.
22:51
Remember Moses took them out of slavery to cross the desert, and they ended up in this promised land. But He gave them a warning and said, listen, this is a blessing for you. I will give you these lands of other people, but I will can drive you out too. And actually he did. And the Lord will scatter you among all peoples from one place of the earth to the other, and there you'll serve other gods that you have not known wood and stone.
23:17
In other words, say, you guys wanna make idols? You wanna abandon me? I'll let you see how you like it after some time of serving idols. You'll you will seek me then. And then they shall know that I am the Lord, and I will scatter them when I scatter them among the nations and disperse them throughout all the countries.
23:37
Not only did God say that if you were to abandon him to his own people, the people he loved, the Jews, but also he he it was a warning to other nations, said, you offend me to a certain point. This is the way I'm gonna judge you. I'm gonna just poof. You lose your culture. You lose your identity.
23:52
You lose this, synergy of being together, and I'll just scatter you out in other countries. I said, and then you'll be looking for me. Scattering has spiritual importance. It could be punitive. Like we say, we see that a lot over the world, and we see that that Moses went into the promised land, but they drove the other people out.
24:14
That scattering of the of the, Israelites pushed other nations out. It actually was punitive for them, but at the same time, it was a purpose of mercy and it was God's promise for the Israelites. So, we look around the world, we see people being pushed out or pulled in. Syria, Nigeria, all these people, people being pushed out by terrorism, by just horrible evil violence and everything, and they're going to Europe right now, looking for a place of peace and safety and a place to work where they won't be shot all the time. So there's always a pulling in like in The United States.
24:49
We have good economy. We're we're very nice, generous people by and large, and people are drawn to us. But if people in other nations are being pushed out by by violence, it can have both punitive side and a side of mercy. That the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord had your God had scattered you. To the Israelites, they had offended God and ended up being scattered over the face of the earth and said, hey, seek me.
25:20
And he he did that various times in the Old Testament where he brought them back to a land and let them have corporate worship again, let them have an identity as a people, let them prosper and have a time of peace. Unfortunately, there was always a circle of complacency, and then they wandered off from from the pursuit of God. Scattering is under God's control and has sovereign and redemptive purpose. It means He He uses it for His own purpose and He can save people through this purpose. Every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined their pre appointed times and boundaries of their dwellings so that they might seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, even though He's not very far from each of us.
26:07
A missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Mexico really encouraged Laurie and I said, you guys keep preaching with people. You keep working with people up there in The States. Because basically, we kind of calculate about half of the people that we've worked with over the last twenty two years in this area have gone back to their homelands. And this Wickliffe lady said, some of those guys that come back here, wow, they have passion. They know the word of God.
26:28
They're ready to serve. Oftentimes, we send our youth, they go up to The States and they get lost, and we've seen that too. But it has redemptive purposes sometimes being up here in The States, and we want to be part of that. Remember in the New Testament there in the time of Jesus that, the Jewish dispersion under the Roman Empire, they were sent out and they went all over all these dots you see on the map, were places where they had synagogues and their little cultural centers there. Well, it's interesting that that is where the gospel first went to, to those people first.
27:05
You know, the Lord says, John one twelve said, and God sent His son to His people, the Jewish people, which said they rejected Him. And he said, but to everyone who believes, everyone who calls in the name of Jesus will be saved and he'll have the rights to be called a son of God and born with blood of your culture, but born again of the spirit of God in you. And therefore, those who are scattered went everywhere preaching the word. We know that the disciples of, notably, Paul went and preached the word to these Jews that were in the Diasporo, the scattered peoples. And at that time, there was a great persecution against the church and it was at Jerusalem and there were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, and some of the apostles stayed back behind too.
27:59
So, in other words, as the new church was being formed in the New Testament, they went out and they spread the word all around. And a lot of that was because of persecution, and they went everywhere and preached the word. Now, those that were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen, remember Stephen, he inflamed the Jews by proclaiming Jesus Christ to them, and they stoned him, and that started a wave of persecution against the early church. But, they went out from there and all these heathen places and preached the word. They were pushed out of their homelands for the sake of the gospel.
28:38
James went out, excuse me, I'm a I'm a bond servant of God, and that's my job is to go out and minister those who are scattered. Peter was one of Jesus' apostles, and he said, I consider myself a pilgrim. I go and I find these people and all over the known earth at that time. What do we do? How do we respond to those people that are being scattered in the earth today?
29:00
It's a very emotional issue. It's not a clean, easy thing that we can, it brings all sorts of emotions about. I used the word how. That's both an attitude of my heart and then in actions that we do as a Christian people. What do we do with these people?
29:17
If you feel emotions and you see the emotions in The United States as people get pushed and pulled around and come in and do all that stuff, it's nothing new. Philadelphia, 1851, all the Germans were fleeing the things that were going on in Germany. They came in and they had a riot trying to say, they don't want any more Germans in our area. I'm a Scotch Irish guy, but my family was here a couple hundred years before that, but the Irish kept coming in. They were pushed out because of poverty, the potato famine, and the English wouldn't help them.
29:47
And they came to The United States. Were pulled here by hopeful they have a new world, but it wasn't easy for them. It wasn't clean. It wasn't pretty. And people said, hey, there's too many of them.
29:57
Let's get them out of here. Oh, the one on the left there is great. And it's, there's a good old wasp, white Anglo Saxon Protestant. He's got a WAP on one hand and he's got a chink on the other, and he wants to throw them back in the ocean. Let them swim back home.
30:09
We don't want them here. And then, that's kind of cut off on that other one there, but it says, come on in, you know, the land of opportunity. And this guy is bringing disease and the Sabbath desecration and poverty and bringing anarchy and all these things. They said that's what these people are going to bring. Wow, 1942, World War II.
30:30
Here is the enemy of our nation, but here in our nation, we had Japanese people. And wow, what do we do with these guys? 1950s, that hasn't been that long ago. And, restaurants says we don't want to serve people. What's going on now?
30:49
What does America look like in these days? Here's kind of a chart shows where people are moving around. They're going all over the the earth these days. Like I say, Africa, you see they're going around to Europe. Laurie and I served for fifteen years in South America, in Peru, and Bolivia.
31:05
A lot of our friends in South America, for some reason, have gone to Europe, and, there's a connection across there, and they've they're in Spain now. The professionals get paid better in Spain, it's a more stable country than Peru. And boom, they one guy goes, and he has a good time, and he invites all his friends, and next thing, there's a there's a little flood of people going through there. That's what's happening all over the earth. Laurie and I went to college in San Diego forty some years ago, and, La Mesa, California was where we went to church, and it was a nice little working class neighborhood, and now you better speak Russian or you won't be able to buy anything in a grocery store in that neighborhood.
31:42
The world has changed. It's uncomfortable. Now, when I was in that Bible college, I went to Christian Heritage College, San Diego Christian College now, and and, in the back there in the seventies, we said, you guys, you young people, you get out there, you find these people, the unreached people of the world, and you go out if they're a tribe or in their city and their language groups, learn those language and love on these people, teach them about Jesus Christ. Interesting now where they're at, they're here, three sixty one different groups that we would consider unreached people live here in The United States. Wow.
32:18
It's interesting, just a note that I'm very thankful that Laurie and I ever since we went out as in our twenty four year old state, we got to be with people. We got to minister to people as missionaries. So many of my missionary friends that have gone to the foreign fields do not get to ministry minister because of terrorism and because of restrictions and all these things and threats and they keep moving from country to country and around, and then they learn another language and change, they're not getting to minister. Laurie and I are recycled people. We burned out old South America missionary, came back toast.
32:54
Then then somebody said, hey, God brought you up here, get your act together and look around. There's all these people around here. There's no at that time, there were no churches with that spoke for Spanish speaking first generation people in this whole area. And Laurie and I started a little church over here that they still meet over here on Sunday nights at CBC. A lot of times there's opportunities and freedom up here that you will not find in the third world is what I'm saying.
33:20
What do things look like right now? Like it or not, The US is the world's largest multicultural country in the world, third largest Spanish speaking country in the world. Two thirds of the population growth here in The United States over the last twenty years has been through immigrants and their children that have come in. 43% of the population growth in The United States in the last fifteen years or so is through Latinos. Since 2050 that this church won't look like this, won't be a racial majority, We'll be mixed.
33:54
Third of all, the students in the school system speak English in other language other than English in the home. There's 150 languages spoken in the public school system. I grew up in Eastern Colorado where everybody spoke English and nobody spoke anything else. We had one Hispanic family in our school, and their family had been in Colorado for four or five generations. Wow.
34:18
How it's been changed now. And the sad part is only 4% of the population in this United States, in this country, in their twenties are going to church. I'm thrilled to see young people come here to First Bee. We're a very diverse nation, and unfortunately, it's not us that's growing, it's the Mormons and Islam that's growing faster in this world. What does Jackson and Driggs, this area look like?
34:44
Well, here's 80 16% Hispanic and just 3% other groups. But you notice from that, that one thing there that it's not the case in The United States. Everywhere you go, it's different, ethnic mixes. How do we respond to this concept that God provoked the diaspora that people would be scattered. What do we do?
35:08
Well, one thing, you know, biblically, think of about it. Here's Abraham. He's the father of our faith. And what did God do? God came to him and says, hey, leave your homeland, your family, and everything.
35:17
Get up and get going. I will lead you out to where I want you to be, and you will be my servant wherever you go. Interesting. He was a told by God to go live the life of a pilgrim and a stranger. Oh, that's right.
35:30
We Christians are supposed to be living lives of pilgrims and strangers here. Where is our citizenship? It's it's been moved. It's been moved to be with the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. And today He is my King.
35:42
He is my governor. And wow. And that's a neat attitude. And Abraham was told to have that attitude. Well, Isaac sort of the same.
35:49
Jacob went to another country, found a wife over there and came back. Joseph, you know, he, his brother sold him into slavery when he was a kid. He went off, was drug off, sold as a slave and everything. But, essentially, God used that for redemptive purpose for the people of Israel. There was a famine, and he saved his family.
36:08
But, essentially, at the same time, there was kind of a negative consequence down the road that the Jews prospered so much that Pharaoh said, hey, got to get control of these guys. We can use them for our purposes, and they became slaves. And, Moses. Moses, raises a little rich kid, went out, had driven out in the desert and lived out there, came back. God brought him back to relieve his people from the burden of slavery.
36:40
He took them to the promised land. Like I said, it was a blessing for people, one people, it was the all of those other heathen peoples were driven out in the front of Moses as they went and crossed the Red Sea or the Jordan River over there. Naomi, the Bible told them not to go to Moab. Had nothing to do with Moab, but they disobeyed and they went trying to get out. They were pushed out by a famine, went to Moab, husband and son died.
37:11
She came back with Ruth. It's interesting, Boaz, even though Ruth wasn't of the Jewish culture, he married her so that his brother's line would have a descendant. Interesting. Daniel, of course, we were taken off as slaves as kids, and he went ended up in, the Babylonian palace over there. But during all that time, as he was taken in scattered, he was still faithful to God, and he main maintained his relationship with the Lord in spite of, sure a lot of temptations and pressures to go with that other culture we've been taken to, which is a problem.
37:47
How do we minister to people in this diaspora thing? This is more of a personal thing, and to me, and that is that we value people. I don't know if you look at the political things, which I have to stay completely away from, is that everybody wants to use folks as a pawn. Some people want to throw money at them, so they'll always vote for them. Other people want to use them as cheap labor so that they can make more money.
38:09
Hey, we're Christians. We're different. The Lord has called us to minister to people, not use them or abuse them or manipulate them. And everybody has a story. And one of the ways that you can get rid of your prejudice and this and that and other is to listen to people and make friends with them.
38:25
Exactly a year ago, a family was down in the Michoacan Mafia down there where, yeah, that's the way they maintain order is that if somebody doesn't fall in line in their drug running activities, they will kill you and your family. That's the threat. They'll kill, they'll go to your grandmother and they'll cut her head off. Well, this family was destined and destined to be killed by this, terrorist group down there. They came up to the border.
38:53
Their kids were all American citizens. They sent the kids up to Big Piney, where we have a church, and the folks turned themselves in to the immigration service as refugees fleeing violence. And your church last Christmas sent those kids gave those kids the best Christmas they're ever gonna have because I hauled a whole carload of gifts for them. And I was at church Friday night, and they're still wearing the clothes that you guys gave them here a year ago. But it's interesting, and, the stories of people, and now the the parents are out of immigration jail.
39:25
They're they're still kind of on hold. They don't have permission to work, so they have to work under the table. I guess she does. The wife does. She works at the gas station.
39:35
Well, she has a chip jar there, and the other day, he was telling me this Friday night that he it was time to go pay his rent at the trailer park for the lot rent. And so they scrounged up all the money they could find, and he had a a ziplock bag with about a $130 or something in there, lots of 0.25 and dimes and stuff that came out of the tip jar. Took it to the owner of the trailer court, and the guy said, what is this? He said, well, sorry. I don't have all the money, but I just wanna give you everything that we have in the whole house and stuff.
40:03
And the guy said, you know, they're Americans. They're they're we're we're gracious people. We're we're he said, take it. Feed your family. Help me split wood Saturday, yesterday, and we're good for this month, you know, and, if I can help find you some work, we'll do that.
40:20
Interesting, those stories, when you listen to people's stories and, you know, this family, I I can see their faith rising. They said, oh, yeah, we were believers before all this that happened to us, but man, we love and depend on the Lord. It's a redemptive thing for them. They're learning to trust the Lord and they're finding that God moves people's hearts to be gracious to them. And in a way, we're thrilled to be kind of part of that.
40:45
Serve in practical ways. Everybody thinks money. Ah, money sometimes is in the way. Yesterday, I was trying to prepare to do a good job in front of you guys. Said, my brakes locked up on my car out here at the oil field, and my wife's over there.
40:56
Could you go over there and work on my car? I thought, oh, boy. There I was. My fingernails are dirty. Be authentic in friendship.
41:06
Try to make friends with people. I know that's hard. We have language barriers and stuff and then that, but it's I think we Christians need to pass our testimony. God has given us something super special with the teaching of the Bible and relationship with the Lord and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We need to show that that we are genuine people.
41:27
However, if in the workplace, you have a filthy mouth and you do all sorts of things that, you hope that over there, they won't relate that to your faith. They watch, they see, they're very observant, and they know your heart. As you, get started, you want to talk to them. I'm sorry. I am no good at this.
41:49
I like with my wife to take over now that I have lifted up and tell all about some of the ministries that we've feel the Lord called us to do.
41:58
I'd like to clarify something that the family he talked about that is in that's in Big Piney. It was his brother that got into that he was actually working for some rich guy who was likely in, narcotrafficante Drug And he was on the phone that our friend was on the phone with his brother, and they killed the brother. And the body or his car have not been recovered because if he's gone, he's just gone. And how are gonna prove you had a brother? So, that's a sad piece of that.
42:47
So this family had to run because he was on the phone with brother when brother was murdered. Right here in your church on Mondays, we have an organization called Immigrant Hope. And Immigrant Hope is a Department of Justice accredited organization. It's also a Christian organization. And I spent about three and a half years working to get accredited by the Department of Justice in order to do legal immigration paperwork, here in the area.
43:26
I will say that we talked to about 10 churches in Sublet, Teton, Teton, and your church was the only one that was willing to let us have an office one day a week and have immigrants in your church. And we thank you for that testimony and for your concern for people. We have seen more people come to Christ in our ministry in Teton County than we did in fifteen years in South America. And why? A lot of it has to do with all that moving, being away from family roots, religious roots, etcetera.
44:13
It opens people's hearts and minds. One day one Monday here in church not very long ago, I actually got to share Christ with eight different people throughout one day on a Monday. God's used us to plant churches around and about and here and there, And we thank you guys because first b and, people in first b have supported us, prayed for us, cared about what we're doing. And so we just are grateful to you guys for all that you do for missions right here in Teton County, Wyoming. We are involved in these things if you this the right side, Ken baptized, three guys this summer.
45:11
The guy in the white shirt is a young man from Mexico who married a girl who is a believer, and he is so wanting to know everything there is to know about God and the word of God. Unfortunately, he does not read very well at all. But Doyle Vaughn right here in your church has been giving us these little messengers. They're like a little radio, but it has preaching and scripture like the whole New Testament is on there plus preaching by Charles Stanley and different ones. And, Pablo lives with this thing in his ear.
45:57
And so thank you to Doyle and Diana and and lots of you who who have really cared about your neighbors. We're trying to train leaders. We do camps. We do biblical counseling. I spend a lot of time at the local gas station in Big Piney drinking coffee and just listening to ladies and encouraging them and showing them in the scriptures where God wants them to do something differently.
46:30
So we are are grateful to all of you guys. The like Ken said, the presence last year were just something that brought actually three different families with young kids came ended up being part of our church after that. So thank you for all you do.
46:56
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people end up going back. The fellow on the right up here and his family were, congregating with us over here at CBC and what we call Iglesia Christiane International. Anyway, he decided to go back home here a couple of years ago. Boom. They started a ministry, kinda like a weekly VBS with kids, and they feed all these poor kids in a neighborhood down in Southern Mexico.
47:14
And the guy on the left was up here. He worked for Roland Kerr over here at NatureScape Design for a bunch of years, came up here on work visas. And and, finally, they said, hey, I wanna be a pastor. And he said, he's always thanking me. He said, boy, we we appreciate your friendships, encouragement, and everything.
47:30
When he was up here working on his work visa, if it wasn't for you guys, I probably would have fallen in sin. I probably would have, I just needed you. And besides that, I learned more about the word of God there because so many, pastors do not teach the word of God to people. They do not they just kind of, every week is some random thing. And he said, you gave me a model of how to do that.
47:54
Yeah, because many of them are not prepared for education. It's not easy to minister to third world peoples. Okay, the number one up there are people that were born in a country. They only speak one language, and they're up here. Over there at CBC, that's we have this at night.
48:08
Sunday nights, they meet over there. They do really good ministering to that bunch that come over there. The 1.5 is kids that were brought up here young, and but they've been educated in the American system. They are bilingual, but they're kinda stuck between two cultures. Your church is good at that, inviting them in, getting them involved in things.
48:26
You guys are really good at that. The second, the number twos there are kids that were born here and they speak Spanish. They love they're part of the Spanish culture, but they also they're they don't know anything about their past and they it's going to be different ministering to them. So, we appreciate prayers for how to minister to these different generations of people so that we don't become irrelevant, in their desire to find the Lord. Well, wrapping it all up.
48:54
What is the ministry to the Diaspora? Remembering that accepting that God moves people around, but He does it for redemptive purposes. He can do it for grace. He can do it to help people. People have been praying.
49:09
Boom. It could come up, and we could be a real blessing to them because we realize that they need the Lord Jesus Christ. They need the work of the Holy Spirit in their life to get rid of old cultural habits and and make new ones. We need to accept that and commit to it and just say, what can I do to help? And that's it.
49:27
Thank you. Appreciate the the time.
49:34
Alright. Thank you, Ken and Lori. I would like to invite up the the frontline team here. I'd also like to invite up Judy to play a little something on the piano. And, Steve Landis, he's one of our elders and any of the, other elders.
49:48
And Ken and Lori, could you come on up here? We just like to to pray for for them. And I'm gonna hand the the microphone over to Steve.
49:56
Any other elders here today serving or not serving? K. I don't know if any of you know Katie and Wes Clark. That's, Katie is their daughter, and their kids come here to, well, they all come here to church, but they believe they come to Awana and different things, so you might have seen them around. And so we're grateful for these guys.
50:16
We've known them a long time, and, we just wanna pray a blessing over them. We ask that you join us. Our father, we thank you so much for Ken and Lori and the giftedness that you've given them. Lord, really, they've just touched on a few of the things that they do, but, Lord, you have used them from everything from airplanes to cars to immigration. And, Lord, with it, wherever they go, they take the gospel with them, and they share the good news that Jesus has died for our sins, that he's risen again, and that, Lord, through faith in him, we can have hope of eternal life.
50:51
And I just thank you so much for their hearts. Lord, we wanna bless them. We wanna bless them with your with gifts that you will we ask that you would multiply. We ask that you would attach the gospel to every penny that goes out and that, Lord, that many, many people would hear that good news, and we ask for the hearts to be prepared that roots would go down and that these folks would come to know you, Jesus, as their lord and savior. And, lord, we just thank you for them.
51:18
We thank you for their ministry. Thank you for their family. Bless them and, provide for them, lord, their needs for this next year. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.
53:28
Would you guys all stand up with me? We're gonna sing one more song together, and I'll get Florine and and Bob to to lead us in that song.
55:18
Let's pray. Our father, we're thankful for the many blessings that you have provided us. We're thankful, father, that you are the almighty God, the creator of all things, the holder together of all things. We're thankful for the son of God who willing to hang on the cross to pay the righteous price for the unrighteousness that is in us. That he has he is the one who has accomplished your plan.
55:56
Your plan of redemption. We're thankful father that we can project this gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you for Ken Moore that there are the boots on the ground even if it's in our ground here in this country. We're thankful for the incredible work that you are doing in the hearts and lives of your people. We have to understand how that is done, how you accomplish it through the content of your work.
56:35
Thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.
56:43
Have a good Sunday.
