Mission Update with Thom & Sherry Cahill

We have a privilege of welcoming Tom and Sherry Cahill to us this morning.

They're going to give us a little bit of a snapshot of their work in Asia and other places.

Before they entered into the mission field, they actually had served as our

pastor at the Fitchburg Free Methodist Church over in Madison.

They have then entered into the mission field, first in Africa and then four years ago in Asia.

Welcome you up. Good morning.

I see a lot of smiles out there. That's a good thing. Everybody's happy.

Spring's around the corner. We're happy to be here with you today.

We just want to say it's an honor to be here, and we're privileged to give you

an update and share with you what's happening on the other side of the world,

and just thanking you for your continued support to us.

We know that we represent you on the field, and this is your ministry,

if you want to think of it that way.

And so this scripture that we have in Proverbs 43, 19 is a new scripture for us this year.

And God is just showing us all kinds of new things that are happening around the world.

It says, see, I am doing a new thing.

Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

And we see that happening all across Asia. Hopefully we'll give you a snapshot

of some of that this morning as we share that with you.

We're going to start off first with a video.

Many people are coming to Christ these days in Nepal. I'm thankful to God that

God is moving people's hearts.

I'm going to share about one story. Mrs.

Anita Nika, she's just 13 years old. She was sick for a long time.

She had wounds from head to toes.

She did treatment, several hospitals she went, but nothing was happening.

When she came to one of our prayer

meetings, our pastor touched and prayed for her. And she got healed.

Because of this, Anita became Christian. and because of this his situation,

all his villagers come into faith.

Now small churches started at his house.

Stories like what you've just heard happen repeatedly, not only over all of

Nepal, but all over Asia.

And when you partner with our leaders like Abraham, you have an opportunity,

as Paul says in the book of Philippians, to partner in the gospel and really make a kingdom impact.

Would you consider coming alongside them through prayer and through giving?

Your support, your gospel partnership will mean so much. Thank you so much.

Music.

Abraham is our superintendent in what we will call, you heard the name up there,

but I will say Creative Access NP.

Whenever we're live on something, we try to, we work, Sherry and I work with

a number of creative access places.

Creative access just basically means there's sensitivities there in the country,

and we want to do our best to kind of protect people there.

And so that we don't say something that goes out digitally that may come back

on them or hinder us to be able to go in and work with them.

But Abraham is our superintendent in Nepal. He's doing great work.

I'm going to talk a little bit more about him a little bit later.

Right now, I want to kind of talk to us about where we work.

So you see you have the 1040 window.

You see that up there. You see how big it is. I don't know how many here know

how big the continent of Africa is.

Okay. You can put at least three of the United States in the continent of Africa, maybe four.

Okay. It was interesting when I would come back from Africa when we're working

in Africa and someone would say, hey, I know someone over there.

Do you think you can take something to them?

And I would say, oh, okay, where do they live? Oh, they live here.

And it's like on the northeast or west side of Africa.

And here I was in the middle of Africa in Kenya, which is in the center on the east side.

And I'm like, well, I can't quite. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for them.

But it's the same with Asia. Asia is huge.

It's a huge area. And often when we think about it, we think about it as being

small because all we focus on is the United States and we think it's big.

And some of the maps used to show the United States real big,

but it would show other areas of the world small.

But Asia is the largest continent that we have or area that we have in the world.

And so it's important for us to understand that the 1040 window,

how many know what that is?

Anybody tell me what the 1040 window? Pastor Tim.

That's true. It's also the designated areas of longitude and latitude, right?

But also in that area is the highest population of unreached groups with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And we're going to share some of that information with you in just a little bit.

And we work in part of that window. We work mostly in Southeast Asia and some in South Asia.

So the snapshot of a 1040 window, there's 3.31 billion people that need Jesus.

And there's 6,007 unreached people groups that are currently in that area.

That's a lot of people that have yet to know Jesus.

The need in Asia, there are 7,482 people groups in Asia.

There are 5,403 unreached people groups.

That number is a little different than one before, but that there's two different

sites that that came from, and they look at it differently.

There's two in every five Christians are persecuted, two in every five,

that go through some level of persecution.

And when we talk about persecution, we're not talking about like here in the

States when someone gets mad at me and calls me a holy roller or calls me something else.

We're talking about that level of persecution is the potential of being thrown

in prison for speaking your faith, okay?

Or more so.

All right. 26 out of the 50 hardest countries in the world to follow Jesus are in Asia.

So a little over half of the hardest countries to be able to follow Jesus freely are in Asia.

So some of the countries we work with, Thailand, 0.76% evangelical Christian.

Buddhism is 95, depending on what site you go to, 95 or above Buddhist in Thailand.

Cambodia, 1.5% Evangelical Christian.

Creative Access VN, 2.16 Evangelical Christian.

Creative Access LO, 2.54 Evangelical Christian.

Now, if you take all those, not even including Christians, you may bump that up 1%.

To kind of give you an idea of anybody that calls himself Christian,

no matter what their theological background is.

But you're not going to get it much higher than 1% or 2% in any of those contexts.

And other cultures, other countries are the same.

Some of the countries we'll work in, the predominant religion is Buddhism.

Some of the countries we'll work in, it's Hinduism. Some of the countries we

work with are Islamic or Islam.

And all those countries you're looking at 90% or higher or 95% or higher in

those predominant religions.

Asia 2024.

So while we see the need, God's at work. God's at work.

It's interesting to note that we believe that God is a transforming God. Do we not?

We believe that he is on a mission.

In fact, his mission is already active. Our role is to connect to his mission.

Oftentimes we say the church has a mission.

The reality is the church's mission is not the church's mission.

The church's vision comes out of God's mission for the church. Does that make sense?

God's at work. He calls the church to engage him in the work that he's doing.

You see the emphasis there? If we say it's a church's mission,

where does the emphasis come on?

Us. And Satan can get in there and skew that real good.

So we want to say it is God's mission. So the mission we have in Asia is not our mission.

It's God's mission. And he is calling us to join him in a specific way and do specific things.

And the FM, the World Missions Asia team has many, many arms.

And Sherry and I are only involved with part of that.

But we see that what arm we're involved in is leadership development.

So Sherry had the opportunity to put together statistics for Dr.

Eric Spangler, our area director for 2024.

And here are some of those numbers. We have 1,213 conference ministerial candidates

right now with the Free Methodist World Mission Asia.

We have new youth ministries that are beginning, and I'll share a little bit

about that in just a moment.

We have new emerging leaders that are taking place coming out of these new youth

ministries and I'll share a little bit about that in just a moment.

So new emerging leaders. Currently, we have 4,780 key leaders across the board,

not just emerging leaders, but across the board working with us.

These four that you see here are four of our young emerging leaders.

And I'm not going to give you their names, but the one on your left is from C-A-B-N.

The one in the middle is from C-A-P-N.

You want to know these acronyms? Come see me later.

The one in the middle is from Thailand. I can say that one on the next one over.

And then the far one is from the Philippines. I can say that one too.

So these are some of our young men, and we have young women who are being called

into service and ministry with the church.

Somehow I skipped over my scripture, so I'm going to have to get back to that eventually.

And then here's some more pictures of our emerging leaders. So you see Chai.

Chai works with the youth.

Matter of fact, they just finished their second youth camp for the ministry

in Thailand. This is the second year they're doing a youth camp. He's our youth leader.

They had over 100. Last year, they had a 70.

They had over 100 this year. And many of them that come are non-believers,

and they get exposed to the gospel of Christ.

The picture just above Chai there is a picture of Hugh and our GLT,

Gethsemane Leadership Training GLT coordinator for CAVN, and then another pastor and leader from CAVN.

That's in our home when they came this past year.

We invited them to our home after what we call BTC, Better Together Converge,

where we bring all the leadership into Thailand. land. And we had over 100,

wasn't it, this year? 180 this year.

And so we invited the CAVN group to come to our home after it was all done to join us for pizza.

And they filled up every spot in our little apartment, sitting on the floor

and everything else. But we had fun with them.

You see some of the others in the bottom right corner are some of our leaders

that are in Cambodia and then one on top.

I think that's, is that Cambodia too? Yeah, it's Cambodia as well.

So, God is at work. He's transforming lives and he's calling people into service.

Ah, here's my scripture. Here we go. So,

Acts 1.8, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you

will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of

the earth. Now, you've heard that many times, haven't you?

And one thing I like to remind people, I have taught a class called Global Missions

slash Global Evangelism slash Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally slash slash,

it changed its names over the past 20 years, with Nazarene Bible College.

And I teach it online. And every year, I at least have one student that comes

in And it says, I don't believe we should give to global missions.

I think we just need to focus locally.

Hmm. Okay.

Now, over that time, only one

started that way and then ended that way at the end of the class, sadly.

But this passage and many other passages in Scripture tells us that it's not a choice.

It's a command, and it's a command to engage with God's mission everywhere.

Now, some specifically are called to be foot soldiers, as I like to say, in specific areas.

You're called to be foot soldiers in Richland Center.

Some are called to be foot soldiers, maybe in some other part of another part of America.

But then you have those that are called to be foot soldiers that go over into

other cultures, other lands, other languages and do the work.

Now, I don't know what you understand about economy, but everywhere I have gone

around the world, and I have been in Europe, I have been in Asia,

I have been in Australia. I have been in America.

I have been in South America and Central America, and I've yet to go to any

place that didn't require money to do something.

It used to be many years, many, many, many years ago, you could barter,

but it's still, I give something for a value so you can have that and I get

something in value back.

It costs money to do ministry. It costs money to do ministry right here in Richmond Center.

It costs money to do ministry regionally. It costs money to do ministry overseas.

And so while you may not be called to be a foot soldier somewhere,

maybe God is calling you to help support a ministry and work in another place.

Because the scripture here in Acts, if you go back to the Greek,

it reminds us that it says, first of all, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

So who enables us to do the work that God's calling us to do?

The Holy Spirit. Are we relying on the Holy Spirit? Matter of fact,

I like to use the word, are we trusting the Holy Spirit?

Because many times we say we rely, but we don't really trust.

And then it says, you will be my witnesses. Now in the Greek,

you go back to the Greek, the phrase that is used there is not a suggestive phrase.

They're not suggesting, will you be? You notice it's not even written that way.

It's not saying, will you be my witnesses?

It is, you will be. And in the Greek, it is emphatic.

It's like shouting. It's like exclamation points.

You ever see those cartoons where the word comes up and there's all kinds of

these exclamation points behind it?

That's what that word in Greek, when we translate it, you will be,

is really saying in the Greek. That's what Luke is saying here.

Jesus is saying it, Luke's recording it. You will be emphatic.

It's not suggestive.

Many times we want to take God's word and make it suggestive.

What I like, I grab. what I don't like I leave behind.

Prideful of us. It's also pretty human of us.

We have that tendency to want to do those things.

But this passage reminds us, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem.

Now, for that context, that's what? Local.

You will be my witnesses in Judea, in that context, regional,

in Samaria, regional, and then to the ends of the earth.

And I often want to remind us, and I have to often remind myself when I get

tired and I get worn down. Do you ever get tired and worn down?

You know, I get tired and worn down. I've been taking naps lately.

She's not a napper. But me, I would take naps before I had surgery. Now I really take naps.

I get tired. I get worn down. we all do.

And this passage reminds us that it's not my strength, it's the Holy Spirit's strength.

But I want us to look at four applications on this passage just for consideration.

First of all, I already mentioned receiving power. Believers today are invited

to acknowledge the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is living in us when we accept Jesus Christ. Do we acknowledge that?

Do we allow the Holy Spirit to empower us?

You see, just as the apostles were empowered at Pentecost, we can tap into that same divine power.

We have that opportunity.

The Holy Spirit was the same then and is the same today. Does that make sense?

He hasn't changed. It's only been us that have changed in how we think about

and how we relate to the Holy Spirit.

Requires a posture of humility and surrender, inviting the Holy Spirit to guide

our actions, our decisions, and our speech in everyday lives.

How's your walk going today? How we doing?

Secondly, expand our horizons. In Jerusalem, in and all Judea and Samaria and

to the ends of the earth echoes a call for working together,

for unity, and for outreach.

While our immediate surroundings often become our comfort zones,

Jesus urges us to step beyond our cultural and our geographical boundaries and

beyond any of our comfort zones that we have.

And this means actively engaging in various different areas of the world that is around us.

Sometimes engaging with those very people who drive us crazy.

You have those type of people around you? I do. My wife has me all the time. Just drive her crazy.

We have people around us, but we're still called to act through the character,

allow the character of Christ to reflect through us into their lives.

The acts of kindness, acts of integrity, acts of love.

We saw a video of a lady just a little bit ago, and there's many,

many, many, many stories that I can share with you if I had time.

Stories that are happening all throughout Asia because of the kind work that.

Into the lives of non-believers that opens up the door to at least a discussion

of who Jesus is and hope in Jesus Christ.

Every religion except for Christianity has some type of, how do I say, works effort.

You have to do these things. And if you do these things, you may enter into paradise.

You may enter into nirvana. You may enter into the heavens of Allah,

but there's no guarantee.

In Christianity, there's hope. As long as we believe and live as Christ has

called us to be and live and have faith in him,

we know we can be with him in heaven. You see the difference?

There's a hope, but people have to see that hope through our kindness,

through our integrity, through our love.

And as we navigate challenges, our reactions and resolutions can point others to the hope found in him.

So may I ask you, in what way are you actively engaging all areas of being a

living witness locally, regionally, and globally.

Anticipating the impact.

Command included a promise that the impact of their witness would resonate beyond

their immediate context.

Thus, believers are encouraged not to underestimate the influence of their seemingly

small acts of faithfulness.

How many times does Satan like to whisper into our ears, you're insignificant, you have no value.

What good would that little thing that you just said, dude, what good is smiling

at someone who's yelling at you and treating them in kindness instead of in spite?

Satan wants to tell you it has no value whatsoever. But God wants to remind

us that the Holy Spirit's at work and he can take the smallest things,

and use them in an impactful way that we could never ever imagine.

I've seen it. I've seen it in people into my life.

I've seen it from my life into people's lives, even when I did not think it would have an impact.

Every conversation, service rendered, or life transformed can reverberate through

history, continuously expanding the reach of the gospel.

How are you embracing the promise given by Jesus?

Do you trust Jesus enough to move forward with anticipation of lives transformed, yours and others?

How do you approach the grace of God? Do you approach it with anticipation?

He's transformed you. Are you allowing him to continually transform you?

And are you allowing him to take those little things that seem insignificant

that we may say, ah, I'm just not going to do that. It's just too insignificant.

Allow him to use that to be transformative in someone's life as well.

It's just some words of encouragement because we're seeing God do these things

through little things to impact and change people's lives.

And yes, we have the big stories too.

We have the big stories where someone with a doctor said, no,

no, no, they'll never be healed.

And they're prayed over and they're healed.

We have those stories. We have the exciting stories that everybody gets all

excited about, and it hits the news, and it hits the newspapers,

and it hits this, and it hits that, and everybody gets excited.

But you know, most of the work that's being done isn't through that.

It's through the everyday little things that seem insignificant that God uses to transform.

Last year, transformed lives, 16,606 throughout the Free Methodist work in Asia.

It's not us missionaries doing it.

We're just trying to be the ones to speak into people's lives,

encourage them through the difficult circumstances that they're in,

to speak through all of that and allow the Holy Spirit to work,

to transform lives in their lives as well as the lives that they connect to.

Yes, we do have the opportunity to share our faith as well.

Church plants, 559 church plants throughout the Free Methodist work that are

connected specifically.

We're not adding in, well, we do add in the general conferences to you.

So this is 559 in 2024. for.

One of my opportunities I get to do is my new role.

I used to do Gethsemane leadership training. I coordinated that.

That was the ordination arm, training arm for those called to ministry throughout

Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Just this past year, we turned it over to a new international couple.

He's from the Philippines. She's from CABN.

Got married a couple of years ago.

Wonderful, wonderful young people, wonderful leaders for Jesus Christ.

We just love him to death.

And he's taken over my role as GLT coordinator.

I'm now moving into a role of strategic planning and coaching and mentoring

with some of our country leaders and our emerging leaders.

So I get to work with them more directly in some of the work going on there in their countries.

Planning Leadership Meetings. Every couple of times a year, our area director,

Eric Spangler, has leadership meetings.

Sherry and I are now starting to join those meetings, meeting with our leaders

and being part of that process to talk about strategic planning.

One example with that, this year, CANP will be celebrating their 10th anniversary in May.

10 years ago, they had five ministry points.

Today, they have over 350 ministry points.

Some of that reaches into one area, one country neighboring them.

Some of that reaches into another country neighboring them and another country

neighboring them, and I will not name them publicly, but they are not only reaching

the people in their own culture and their own country.

They have vision of God transforming lives in these other countries surrounding

them, and they're reaching out to those countries as well.

I can say the same for CAVN. I can say the same for Thailand.

Sherry and I had the opportunity just this past year to travel up to C-A-L-O

to visit a church plant planted by the Thailand Free Methodist Church Conference.

They're not a conference yet, but they're working on it.

But they have a vision to reach out, not only locally, but to reach out to the other countries.

It's exciting to see what God's doing. And I get a chance to come alongside

and talk with them and see what they're doing and give them some insight.

Many of them come from an entrepreneurial church planning or an evangelist type mentality.

So now that as things grow like it is in C-A-N-P, what do you do with 350 ministry points?

Well, we got to be strategic about it and we got to put some structure to it

and put some things in place.

And so that's what I've been working with them on. We now have seven districts,

mission districts, we're calling them, with seven leaders that work underneath our superintendent.

And I continue to work with superintendent, provide material and provide coaching

with him as he works with them.

And our hope is that some of those mission districts will continue to grow and

become conferences. Amen?

God's in the business of transforming lives. He's in the business of doing it here, too.

Mentioned earlier, the Gethsemane Leadership Training, or GLT,

is the ordination arm of the Free Methodist Church across Asia.

So when we said earlier we have 1,200 CMCs, these are people who are in training

to be pastors and leaders in the church or some other NGO or an organization

where the church is connected as well.

And so we have been trying to get all this training.

We have 12 core modules. We've been trying to get it all on video format so

that we can reach out to even more remote areas and more training can be done

in places that we cannot go.

And so, as I said, there's 12 modules.

Just this last year, we finished getting all 12 filmed, which is quite a costly project.

I believe it was around $3,000 for the filming of itself and then around $3,000

for editing for each of those modules.

And so we have all 12 filmed, but they're filmed in English.

And what we're going to do is translate the English then into the local languages

so that we can have these videos in all of our countries across Asia there that

we work with that we're allowed to do this in.

And we have these directors and people on the field we can send the videos to,

they'll meet with the people or they'll download them on their phones or however

we decide to do it and they will get this training on how to be a pastor or

leader or a better pastor and a leader.

And so we had the opportunity, Tom and I had the opportunity to be part of that

filming early on, and that was a lot of fun.

But yeah, we know this is not going to be just a temporary thing or a short-term

thing. This is a long-term thing.

It's going to impact very many people's lives as these new leaders.

God calls them, they obey, they listen, and they want to be trained to be leaders.

So it's really neat to see the progress in that. We hope to have

rest of that edited soon so that we can finalize this.

We did do a run with this in Cambodia not too long ago, and then just recently

CANP, where we played the videos.

They were translated into the local language, and then we had facilitators that

would come along and pull out the main points and do some further teaching on the subjects.

Yeah, and Tom will be using history and polity History and Polity module in August.

Also, the videos while he teaches that.

So GLT is quite a big project. It has been ongoing since the time we got on

the field in Asia about four years ago, and we're excited to see these next steps.

So pray for the people working with this project as all this translation continues,

the editing continues, the money needs to be there so that we can get the rest

of the editing done and so forth.

Yeah. Okay, I want to share with you some more personal things.

One of my good friends, Kaori, she lives in Thailand. She's from Japan.

And when we first moved to Thailand, we were praying, Lord, just place us where

we could be used and where we can be helpful to the people around us.

And we happened to meet Kaori one day in our condominium. And we're up on the

15th floor and she was down on the fifth floor.

But we met downstairs and we got to talking and she said, hey,

won't you come go shopping with me and my friends tomorrow?

So it's quite normal for the women to get out and to walk to the local markets. And so we did that.

And as we're walking through, we had to go sort of pass through a temple area.

And one of the other ladies, she said, well, I'm not a Buddhist, are you?

And Kaori said, no, not really. Sort of a different religion.

And similar to Buddhists.

And they looked at me, and I'm like, okay, here we are in the middle of the

temple. What am I going to say? I said, well, I'm a Christian. And they're like, okay.

So surprised, you know, here we are in this temple. And I say that,

well, we continued our conversations. We got to build this relationship.

And now it's been four years since Kaori and I have been friends.

And she has two boys there. You see in the picture, we get together every year

to make sugar cookies or Christmas cookies and pass them around to people.

And this is one of the things that we do as an outreach. But I'm praying for

Kaori because she needs Jesus and her family are hungry for Jesus.

And we've had times where we've sat and talked over tea, where I've shared about

God, and she'll share with me something about her religion, and I'll share with

her, you know, how God is so much greater.

And he, like she was saying, well, we pray to the river.

And I said, well, how do you know if the river responds to you?

And she said, well, we really don't.

And so I said, well, when we pray to God, we know he hears us,

and he answers, and he's personal to us.

He's personable with us, and we can have that one-on-one relationship.

So pray for me, pray for Kaori, pray for me as well, that I can use the right words.

Now, she lived, like I said, she lived in our condominium. You know,

recently there was this earthquake across the border, and it was very strong

there, and a lot of people lost their lives.

But there was some damage and stuff also in Thailand and Bangkok.

And then our condominium, which

is around 277 miles from the border over there, had some damage to it.

We were here. We were not in the earthquake when that happened.

But we've had a lot of people ask us, did it affect you, the people around you?

I have a friend that lives just on the 13th floor. We're on the 15th of the condominium.

And she was there, of course, when it happened. And she said it was so noisy.

And she heard things cracking and she thought the whole building was gonna come down.

And well, the end result of our building was there's a lot of cracks and stuff in it, but it's safe.

Of damage now where my friend Kaori lives. And so the company that her husband

and several other Japanese families work for relocated her and them,

19 families, to another condo.

So anyway, just to say that she was like really afraid to even go back into

the apartment her alone.

And my other friend, she's like, well, I sleep with the bag packed by the door

because of the stress and the post-traumatic stress of that event.

So pray for these people as they've gone through the earthquake.

Both countries, all the countries involved in that, and pray for Kaori that

we can find some time to continue to give her more of the good news.

I just found out very sadly about a month ago that she will be headed back to

Japan to live in Japan in August.

Now, we will head back to the field in July. The 12th of July,

we'll head back, and so I will have probably about three weeks where we can be in person together.

I know we'll always be friends, but I want to share Jesus. I want to share more of Jesus with her.

So pray for her, pray for her boys, pray for her family, and pray that God will

give me wisdom, and when the timing is right for that as well.

Just a brief, before we head on, I just want to mention a couple years ago,

it's been since we were here last, I did have the opportunity to share the faith

with a young lady in CAVN.

We were there for GLT training, and after the training, all the teachers were

leaving, and I was sort of there alone.

He was supposed to be there, but I think you weren't there for,

I think you went to Cambodia. His visa didn't go through.

So he went to Cambodia. I went to the other place. And so we were there.

I had this free day and they're like, come down to this one lady that's a leader.

She said, come down to my coffee shop. I want you to come.

And I said, okay, I can do that. And I tried to get a taxi ride there and it

just kept canceling. And she tried and it canceled. And finally, I got there.

And then she's like, well, can our friends, can my friend join us? And I'm like, sure.

And so he came along and sat with us, another good leader of the church.

And then he said, can I invite my other friend here? And I said,

sure, you know, no problem.

So as soon as she sat down in her chair, though, he said, would you share the

gospel with my friend? And I said, absolutely.

So I wasn't sure, you know, how is what to say.

I wanted to didn't want to say the wrong things, and I was just praying for

God to lead me, and so I just presented the gospel to her, and she said,

well, I said, would you like to receive Christ as your Savior?

And she said, yes, I do, but I'm so afraid with the plow.

Of our country. I'm not sure I want to go through torture or persecution and things.

And I said, well, look at your friends right here next to you. God has protected them.

He will be with you too. And I said, once again, would you like to receive Jesus

as your Savior? And she said, yes.

So here we are in this creative access country in a coffee shop where it's really

not legal to share your faith.

But this young lady came to Christ that day, and she continues to be and connected

up with me on Facebook, and I've seen her a few other times,

but God is working in her, and now she has this huge burden for her family,

and she's asking us to pray for her family. She wants them to know Christ, too.

Okay, just wanted to share those two stories with you.

All right, so people sometimes get confused, or they're not sure.

They ask questions, and they're like, well, where does your money come from?

You know, sometimes there's been changes over the years with Free Methodist

Missions and stuff, but all of our funding, 100% of our funding comes from churches

like you and individuals, people who support everything that we do.

So just wanted to put that out there. Sometimes we do special projects.

You'll see Tom putting something on Facebook or emails out saying,

hey, we're going to have a training in this country. It's going to cost $5,000.

Now, some of that is in our budget, but not all of it. And depending on how

many trainings we do a year could be a lot more money than what's in our budget.

So we'll put out a plea, say, hey, if you're willing to give a little to this

project, we'd love to have you do that.

And so then that fund can go to that specific training.

And we often are pulled in at the last minute to do a training that we weren't expecting to do.

So just put that out there. And depending on the country, some countries that

are, I mean, most of the countries who work with our creative of access,

but we'll bring all the leaders together.

Often this like $5,000 or whatever it is, $3,000. We'll cover travel of those

pastors and leaders to the location.

It'll cover their lodging and their food and their meals and just things that

they need in that time while they're there.

That sort of thing. So just keep that in mind. If you ever see that out there

and you want to give for a specific country for a project or something like

that, feel free to reach out to us and we can tell you what's coming up and

you can give toward that.

Just like with missionaries, we have to raise our own funding for our ministry.

We also have to raise money for each country. It does not come out of a general fund.

It's money that we have to raise separately. 100% of any money that we have,

what we call CPDs, Church Planning and Development, comes from giving,

churches and individuals giving to those ministries, to those fields.

And so Abraham keeps telling me, I want to do this, I want to do this,

I want to do this. And I have to tell him, is it in our budget? Because,

so much, and they're underfunded. So we have to limit some of the vision of

what can happen because our funding's not there.

So will you pray with us that the Lord will raise up individual churches?

I'm finding that a lot of people, especially churches, don't realize that 100%

of the funding for even our countries that we work with, with our leadership, is raised.

They don't realize that some people still think they get some of that comes

through the system. It doesn't. It's all raised by missionaries and area directors.

On the recent earthquake in Myanmar, in the ministry that has come out of that,

some doors have opened up, even doors like one example. I'm going to just give a quick story.

One example has been one of our pastors in Myanmar kept going to this location

to share the gospel and was constantly resisted.

And even the main Buddhist teacher there would really give them a hard time

and chase them out of the village and chase them out of the area.

When the earthquake hit, they went back in with our superintendent,

went back in with him, and they went with some food and water and other things

because they didn't have anything.

And that very same Buddhist priest was very welcoming to them and started asking

a lot of questions and they were able to talk and share the gospel with him.

So it's amazing how even through tragedy, God opens doors that may not weren't open before.

God is good and we are excited to be serving as your representatives on the

field and thank you so much for being so faithful in your support And that's

just very helpful to us to know that that's going to be there and that that's

part of our budget as we're on the field.

And as God has called us to serve, we want to continue to follow the call that He put before us.

And God's call sometimes changes. You never know. You know, we've been talking

about, you know, do we stay in Thailand or go to Bangkok or what does God have

next for us? Does He want us to stay where we're at? Whatever.

Just pray for us for clarity on that. And we want to talk with you more,

so don't be afraid to talk to us.

Heavenly Father, as we close this time of worship, we give you thanks for the

mission that you are on and that we get to be part of.

We thank you that we can be part of the mission both in Asia and Africa and

South America, but also in Richmond Center.

We ask, Father, that you would reach people through us.

We pray, Father, that we might be your hands and your feet in any way we can. In Jesus' name, amen.