The Plunder and The Prisoner

Welcome to church, and today is the official kickoff of Missions, our missions

series we heard from Thailand last week. Did you enjoy that? Yeah?

That was fun. If you miss that one, you might want to watch

that show, watch that service. It's online somewhere. I don't know what

to tell you. Anyway, We're gonna have a great day to day.

Are you ready for a fun, fun day? I have so much excitement

to share with you here today. So the first thing I want to do,

though, is I want to read to you the verse that I read

at the little passage that I read to last week to kind of kick us

off to seed bed our Missions series. And this is where I want all

of our hearts to be just foundationed upon. I want your feet stuck in

this verse. Okay, So are you ready? This is This is Matthew

twenty two versus thirty seven, following out of the Passion translation, and it's

when the man comes to Jesus and says, Jesus, what is the most

important commandment? He was going to trick him, because you know there's hundreds

of you know, they had so many commandments that they had to follow.

And this man comes to Jesus. He said what is the most important commandment?

Is it? Don't lie? Is it? Don't steal? Is it?

Don't commit adultery? Is it? What don't? Is it that is

the most important don't? So I'm sure to make sure that I don't do

the things I'm not supposed to do, right, And Jesus said, no,

it's none of the don'ts, And it's really not any of the dues.

It is to love the Lord, your God. And the Passion translation

puts it like this, with every passion of your heart, with all the

energy of your being, and every thought within you. That's a lot.

So the greatest commandment is to love God in that manner that he described,

it said, and also to love your neighbor. And that word love is

the same word. It's the same description, love your neighbor with all of

your strength, with all of the passions of your heart, all the energy.

And it's gonna be amazing. They've been packing up their house and we

are going to pray them out. Are you ready? So let's stand this

quite well. Be it might well be our last time to see them.

So the next time they come back, they come back with stories and they're

gonna preach and they're gonna tell us all of the cool stuff they've done are

So let's just reach our hands towards them and let's just set them apart.

Father and Jesus Name, God, I think you right now that your Holy

spirit is just drawing. We have come to such a time as this,

Oh Father. We have spoken about this for eleven years with these people.

Lord, and I thank you right now that you have brought your promise to

fruition, your calling to reality. And Lord God, I thank you right

now that you're going to go before them. You're going to provide all their

needs. Lord Jesus you have. You have paths for them to walk in,

you have things for them to attend to, people to help. God,

I thank you right now for salvations, for miracles, signs and wonders

and great things to come from them in Jesus Name. And everybody said,

amen, hallelujah, Thank you so much. Spencer. Do you want to

say a quick word. I've haven't really heard much. We've had Patty's share

and various ones. Would you like to just share? Yeah, I can

say a little bit here. We're just so thankful for this body for the

last Yeah, sit down, please, for the last eleven years. I

mean, this one was like a new board when we came walking in those

doors, and we kind of just got stuck, like in a good way.

It got stuck here because we weren't looking, we weren't looking for a

place to really get involved. We were kind of ready to take a break.

And it lasted like a week when we walked in this door. But

I just want to say thank you to everybody and to this church, and

we're just really excited for the adventure that awaits. A thank you so much.

All right, Silas is going to take up residence here. All right,

God is good? Amen, alrighty, God is so good to us.

While they're going off stage, I want to bring your attention to this.

Do you all have one of these in your hand? This is our

newest missions magazine here, So if you need one of these, I want

you to raise your hand. I've got a whole crew of ushers that are

coming right now to make sure that you get one of our newest missions magazines.

These are so much fun. I was asked the other day what do

you do all day? And I said, well, you're gonna see on

Sunday the missions maga zen is a big deal of what I work on over

the last few weeks. So yeah, grab one of them. Make sure

everybody gets one when you have I want to let you know that when you

have these and you look through these, your pictures that you're seeing and hear

the pictures are all pictures taken either by our mission teams and the people that

are on our mission teams. These are real action shots. There's no stock

photos in here, and they are just so much fun. So take a

look in there, and I want you to open up the first page and

you're gonna see a little flappy there with a magnet on it. I want

you to take that magnet home, and I want you to hang it up

on your refrigerator if you have one of the old fashioned refrigerators. Right,

I have a few more over here, hands up, so stick it on

your refrigerator. And maybe I was sharing with First Service. Maybe we'll have

a prize for whatever family has all of the magnets over the last however many

years, right, so save them. You never know, it might come

in handy. You might get a prize. I don't know what the prize

will be, but you do you just watch out it might come. So

we do a magnet every year. That little picture there of that little girl

there, she is a student, and it kind of looks like she has

one leg. She does have two, okay, so just to let you

know, there are two feet if you look real close and put your glasses

on, so one leg is hidden behind the other. It didn't look like

that one was a big picture, but this little picture kind of looks like

one leg. So we don't need a healing service there. But she is

cute and she is writing on a chalkboard and standing on a floor that you

knew Horizon were so generous to share when we did a huge project on renovating

and actually building quite a bit of this school, and so we were able

to go out there last March when we were there and the school looks beautiful

and the kids, yes, the ground the floors were dirt floors, and

the kids were getting sugars. That's something you just don't ever want your feet,

and so they were having to treat the kids constantly for their feet and

all that. But now they don't. And this lovely young lady has shoes.

Most of the kids did not. So that magnet is for you to

take home. Just to remind you about missions. The back of that flappy

thing right here on the in the back page is a pledge card that is

going to be something very very important to us. Those pledge cards are something

that we're going to collect on May twenty first, the last Sunday of our

series, and that's also International Sunday, So we're gonna have a lot of

fun. Come hungry because we're gonna feed you from all around the sanctuary here

from all the different countries and the different nations that we have represented here at

New Horizon. But that day we're going to collect pledge cards. I cannot

tell you how important missions pledges are. Missions pledges are kind of those boring

things that churches due, and that's you know, it's not near as flashy

as a project that we're doing. Like you know, I'm going to tell

you some more about some of the things that we're going to be doing here

in the near future. But the pledges, they're just like every month you

give a small chunk of money, either it's ten dollars or twenty or fifty

or one hundred or two hundred or whatever the Lord lays on your heart to

be your mission's pledge from June until next June. And this church pledged.

We had our our monthly budget. Mission's budget over this last year, which

is up from the year before, was I think twenty three hundred and twenty

dollars or whatever. And you were very, very faithful. We have received

that all the way through the year. Yea very happy about that. We

have one more month ago. So don't forget. Don't forget. To finish

up may finish strong people, but that those moneies, those pledges actually keep

missionaries off on the ground in their country. It pays for their food,

it pays for their gas in their car, it pays for you know,

having to I don't know, buy a band aid if they scratch, I

don't know what they're doing with it. But they are absolutely they are living

on a very slim budget. Their budgets are always much less than what we

live on here. And so that pledge, even though it's not fancy pants

and we're not going to be you know, oh you know your heart,

it is vital. It is the lifeblood of missions. And so I want

you to take that card and go home, talk to your spouse, talk

to your to yourself, I guess maybe if you're single and just decide what

can you do to keep up, you'd just tell yourself we're gonna give and

because it can happen. And on the twenty first, we're going to collect

all those I'm wanting to add missionaries. I'm wanting to up our budget.

I want to up our budget to about three thousand a month. So that's

my goal. Will you pray with me into that? Will you pray with

me three thousand a month? And let's do that. It's so easy to

do, it's so just consistent. And my goal is that not everybody gives

a million bucks every month, though that would be nice. I would love

to have like one person does that. Then everything's taken care of and we

can all go along life fine. Right. What I would prefer is that

every family is giving something, whether it be five dollars, ten dollars,

twenty. But we have in our hearts and in our souls the giving into

missions. Amen. So I want to show you and introduce you. So

last week we introduce you to Sean and Lindsay, and that was such a

fun service and you got to know them. We support both. We support

three families in Thailand, and so that's the Thailand piece. And so each

week I want to introduce you to some more missionaries that you support. When

you give, I mean literally it is the food on their table. And

so it's awesome. So Devin, you're gonna work with me. Here on

the pictures. I want to show you some pictures of hands on houses.

And so this is right. Joe and Dina introduced us to these wonderful people.

Don and Margie cook. Don and Margie retired eleven years ago. I

believe it was. She was a teacher, he was a professor of physics

and an engineer. They retired, and when they retired, instead of kicking

back, putting their feet up and beginning to sip lemonade by the pool side,

they chose to take a whole different life. And he invented away to

build a house, a small house, tip up walls and quick enough in

one week. And so he began to build. He began to build houses

for for widows in India. So I have a few pictures of some of

the faces of the widows that he built these houses for. So go to

the next picture. There's one. Go to the next one. There's another

one. Go to the next one. There's another one. Go to the

next one. There's another one. Look at her? Joy? Is there

another one? I think there's another? Yep, there you go. There's

there's a whole host of women who are raising children in India that are the

castaways because they have no husbands, that now have a home walls around them.

They're small, they're they're pretty small. And in fact, Joel Beatty

went and helped build one, him and Chase. Both of you guys,

did there two? You built two houses. Two guys built two houses in

a week. Wow, you guys are good. So that is those people

are being supported by you. And isn't that awesome? So your your giving

does that? Your giving is also going to do we have Oh so Steph

and John Soulier. How many of you know Steph and John Soulier. Yes,

they worked here. Uh, she was on staff here for for quite

some time. And they ended up having leaving and going into the mission field.

They are missionaries. And guess where their mission field is, pew wallop.

That's right. They are now the house parents for I believe it's called

new Beginnings. Right, all of a sudden, I just kind of rattled

in my head, they are the house parents at New Beginnings. So what

the deal is? And you all know, over the last couple of years

we've had breakthroughs as far as abortion is concerned. But I will tell you

what. We cannot go and pass laws and walk away and say we did

our righteous duty. I'll tell you it's only the beginning. Our righteous duty

starts the next day when those moms or those young girls with those unwanted pregnancies

need help and need support, and we are going to do that through these

people right here. They are living in puallup in this huge house and they

can have I believe up to eight or ten young ladies living with them at

any given time. If you would like to volunteer and come and help,

you can. It's close by. You can go. You can help her

organize, you can help her drive these ladies to their appointments. There's so

much that you can do. And they're right here, and they are such

fun people. So I was they were here for first service, and so

apparently they had to leave. But when you see them here in the church,

you're going to see them coming with young ladies. I want you to

go up to those young ladies and give them the biggest hug you ever have

given. Amen. Aren't we just excited for what they do? So if

we are able to, if as our pledges go, we will expand our

pledge giving will give to the Jeffreys. And we're going to add these two

because he has quit his job and they've gone full time. Because what more

do these young ladies need than a solid man in their life to teach them?

And that's John. You all, you and I both know John Soulier.

He is top top notch as far as that's concerned. Amen. So

that is a little bit about your pledges. And on May twenty first,

we're going to collect those those cards. It's going to be a lot of

fun. So our project our project right now for oh and Nitro. Nitro's

doing stuff back in the back. So I gave I bought them all pringle

cans. Raise your hand. If you have a Nitro kid at an age

kindergarten through fifth grade, okay, So your child is going to come home

with a pringle can. And if you don't want them to eat the pringles,

you can just dump them out. If your child will let me,

that's fine. But they've wrapped it with paper. They have a letter to

you, and they have little cards and they're to go around to their friends

and their family and everybody outside of the church, and we're gonna have them

collect money and they are going to pay for some shoes with my three sixty

project. If you're familiar to all with that, Sandy was gonna bring those

shoes in. I haven't seen them yet, so they're gonna be raising money

for that. So that is so cool, Junior said. They had a

great time. I don't have time right now. Sorry. Actually, last

week, remember I told you that your kids are gonna want to come home

and be missionaries. Well apparently one did. One came home and I got

a text from one of the moms saying, Mommy, guess what I get

to go around the world share the good news about Jesus and that mama said,

yes you do. She said the right answer, right, Okay,

So that is kind of what's going on back there with Nitro and our project.

Though our project is going to be so fun. We are going to

do a water project. There's a small little village in Uganda that I'm going

to show you a video in just a moment. It's a school and a

church and they get water. The whole community gets water from a swamp.

And I want to show you this video. So if the video is ready

to go, I would love it. Took a let I didn't tell you.

I pushed the name Wele Amen. Yes, So if you would join

with me and let's overcome this project. Let's get some water to these kids.

It's not just the kids. So it's in the community. It's right

in between where that they're gonna put the well. They're going to drill the

borehole right between the church and the school, and it's going to be for

the community and the community every day, over a thousand people will come.

I know that sounds crazy. This right here, this picture right here,

this is a well, a borehole that you helped put in in Bakumala.

It's the same kind of situation. It was a school and that's what it

looks like. And we were able to go and visit it and see the

kids pumping that instead of going into the swamps. And then so what the

the exciting thing is is that it provides water for the whole community. So

the whole community comes to the borehole every day, multiple times a day.

This one is going to be placed right at the church, between the church

and the school and so as the community. And what better place to come

to get water than at the church, and then the people of the church

and the people there are able to share the word of the Lord with them

and share living water as well. Amen. Isn't that cool? So for

twelve thousand, five hundred dollars, we're going to be able to put this

well in and I know we're going to be able to knock that out.

These are some of those jerry cans that they carry right here. This is

a diesel can from um what's that place, Harbor Freight. Yeah, well,

the same kind of thing, same kind of thing, same kind of

thing. But we're gonna go ahead, and if you would for me,

I would love for us to take our first offering. We're going to take

an offering each week between now and the twenty first, so today, next

week, the fourteenth, and the twenty first, and we're going to see

what we can do to put a dent in this twelve five hundred Would you

be willing would you be willing to be some of the first to kick this

little project off? I'm hoping that when we go as a team, that

we are able to go and visit this borehole. If we can get them

the finance right away, they're gonna put it in immediately. They're prepared,

They've already done the survey. They are ready to go. And so let's

if you would for me that QR code right there. You can aim your

phone at that, or you can give with the envelope in front of you.

If you're willing, give me five, give me ten, give me

fifty, give me one hundred, and we are going to put this well

in and make a difference. Someday. I want you all to get on

an airplane and come with me and come and see the fruit of all of

the projects here at New Horizon. Amen. So I'm gonna pray and we

will take this Father, thank you so much for the generosity of this house.

Thank you Lord, that we think outside of ourselves, We think outside

of the small little six miles or whatever it is that we run our rat

race within, Lord God, but we think with you in Jesus name.

Amen, hallelujah. Thank you so much for being willing. And if you're

not able to give today, why don't you consider what you can maybe give

next week or even on the twenty first, and we are going to watch

this just add up and we're gonna have us a good time and they're gonna

be so grateful and so thankful. I would love if you are. I

have a missions board and I want to introduce them to you. So Stephanie

please stand, and Sandy please stand. And then we have Karen, and

these three help me make decisions and they help communicate with the missionary. So

would you give them a hand for their willingness to serve absolutely? And then

if you are on my missions team that's about ready to leave for Uganda the

end of August, would you also stand. We have nine of us that

are going. Okay, so we have Dennis and we have Dale. I

don't know where Dale is. He might not be here. Debbie and Connie

McDonald, and then Duanna and Sandy and Joe and Sophia. Sophia's I think

back, Oh there you are. You got out of nursery, didn't shoe?

How'd you do that? Okay? Anyway, be praying for us and

you'll hear more from us. Okay, thank you. These are those little

shoes that the nitro class is going to be raising money to purchase and when

we go to Uganda, we're gonna give away I'm hoping about one hundred or

one hundred and fifty of these. These are expandable shoes. Have you ever

heard of such a thing? They grow with the child. These are the

coolest things. So not only do we use materials that are there and so

we're supporting the local economy because we're buying the stuff from them, we also

hire people to make them, so we're stimulating the economy and helping people.

But these shoes, when we give them away, they expand and they'll go up to