MID WEEK MOTIVATION - February 11, 2026 (Barry Wilson "Pops")

You're listening to the Midweek Motivation Podcast from DeSoto Hills Baptist Church in South Haven, Mississippi.

Here's your host, Mark Lewis, David Burgess, Laura Ulrich, and Pastor Grant Stiegel.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for February the 11th, 2026, here at DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

I'm Mark Lewis.

We hope this programming can encourage folks throughout DeSoto County and beyond.

Be sure to subscribe and share our link on social media.

So you have missed uh a few weeks of production.

Well, technically one week of production.

Last week we did not have a show.

Due to all of the ice and the snow, it really put uh a wrench in our production schedule because we always produce these things several days out ahead of time.

And we did not have a regular scheduled um recording session for today as well.

And but I didn't want to to uh leave our listeners out there hanging.

And so I went back and found a Sunday night uh worship night that we had back in 2024, actually.

It was several, about a year and a half ago now, where we had Mr.

Barry Wilson, who works with the FCA students at Northwest, and he has a really special testimony and he has a really passionate heart about helping the student athletes in North Mississippi.

And so I'm gonna replay that session where he spoke to several of our adults.

And uh, if you have a passion for working with young adults, maybe this spark of hearing his message will ignite something in you.

Uh and if you're interested in that, you can certainly meet with David Burgess or Grant Stiegall.

All right, let's get straight to it.

Here it is.

My name's Barry Wilson.

I'm now now I want to tell you what my real name is, because everybody at Northwest does not know me as Barry Wilson.

Nobody at Northwest knows me as Barry Wilson.

I'm Pops.

When I first got on campus, this was three years ago, when I first got on campus there, uh I was introduced to the uh athletic director that was there at the time, his name is Brian Oaks.

And Brian's a good Christian man and really wanted something going on to the point where he said, Hey, where'd you get that FCH sticker?

And I said, Well, I've got another one.

He said, Good, stick it on my door.

So I ended up sticking the sticker on his door, and he and I became best friends.

I became a counselor to him, a pastor to him, helped him and encouraged him.

But let me explain to you that what happened for me was he opened the door for me to be able to do whatever I wanted at Northwest and gave me an open door.

Then I met with Dr.

Michael Heindel, the president.

Dr.

Heindel was sort of crazy.

I didn't really know if the man was a believer or not, didn't know anything about him.

And before I even got started in the meeting with him, when I met him the first time, he said, let's start this with prayer.

Okay, we can do that.

That's not a problem for me.

So we started that meeting with prayer, and I found out real quickly that this was a man that was saved and knew Jesus and wanted his school.

Him and his wife now have been praying for four and a half years that God would sweep across the campus of Northwest Mississippi Community College and bring revival.

Did y'all hear me?

Come on now.

You gotta start getting happy, folks, or I'm gonna be here for a long time.

Y'all ain't gonna have no business meeting.

I'm gonna take care of that.

Okay?

Some of you probably don't want a businessman.

I grew up Southern Baptist.

I got my cradle roll Bible, y'all.

Come on, man.

Look, it's been amazing to watch what God has done over the past three years that I've been involved.

Now I'll start my fourth school year at Northwest this year.

And to see what God has done, absolutely watch.

But to tell you the real story, I need to go back because you sort of need to understand.

I grew up in a coach's home.

My dad was a football coach, and I grew up in that.

So I've been around it all my life, been around sports.

I played sports in high school, played works in college.

I was a tennis player.

I went to Union, uh University in Jackson, played tennis there.

Uh, played tennis because there wasn't a football team.

But if there had been a football team, I'd probably play that.

But that's okay.

But I made my way through school, and athletics has always been a big part of who I am.

Even once I got out of school, it still became a part.

Because what God did when I was an 18-year-old boy was not only did He did He tap me on the shoulder to get my attention, but He said, I need you.

I need you to do this for me.

I need you to serve me, and this is how.

Now He didn't call me to be a pastor.

God bless.

Because I see y'all, now that's not that funny.

Come on.

That's just wrong.

Right from the start, they knew I wasn't supposed to be a pastor.

God never called me to be a pastor.

I'd have never made it.

Or the church wouldn't.

I don't know which one it would have happened, but we'd have never made it.

But I did do youth and recreation work and loved every minute of it.

Now, life did some funny twists for me for several years.

And in those twists, my life changed a lot.

There were things that started to be that way but couldn't be that way anymore.

And so I was no longer on staff.

I wasn't doing that.

But God had me with people like Jack and Donna Hewling, and I was on a church, I was working at a church, just wasn't getting paid for it anymore.

And we did, we worked just like a staff member, we were for years.

And God used me in those years, and I was grateful because I just wanted to serve him however I could.

Little did I know that the full circle would come in the way that it came.

Ten years ago, and it's almost to the day, as a matter of fact, it sort of bothers me a little bit.

You'll excuse me if I tear up for a minute here because it's it's close.

Uh, ten years ago, uh I'm I'm a guy that was that took his wife to the doctor and got the news that she had cancer.

And about 22 months after we got that news, then she passed away.

Eight years ago, be August the 1st, be eight years, my wife passed away.

And man, I'll tell you what, I didn't understand.

I still don't understand.

Don't don't try to, if if anybody tells you they've got it figured out, run.

Because about the time that somebody says they got it figured out, they're fixing to get slapped, and you don't want to be anywhere near it when they get when it happens.

Because that's just not the case.

We don't understand all this stuff.

The Bible says Paul wrote to the church at Corinth and said, now we see through a glass dimly.

Then face to face.

I'll I'll understand it when I need to.

Grant, I'll get it, I'll get it all figured out when I need to, but it's not now.

And that's sort of how it works.

Now that you think, okay, there's there's there's number one, your wife passes away.

That's a that's a big change.

Because I'm like most of those a lot of you in this room that look a lot like me.

God bless you, I'm sorry, but you do.

We're that age, and whether we like it or not, that's who we are.

You're ready to, you know, I was I was getting close.

I was thinking, hey, it's time to chill back, slow down, and get to sit down for a little while.

Well, that wasn't exactly going to happen, was it?

All these plans, and it was funny, I God's got a great sense of humor.

He really does.

Because all these plans that I've made, He just sort of, okay, make them.

That ain't the way it's gonna work, but it's okay.

Make them.

There's nothing wrong with planning, nothing wrong with being prepared, but just don't be surprised when it doesn't work that way.

But let me explain to you what God had had for me in store with the death of my wife.

Two weeks prior to my wife passing away on August the 1st, uh, eight years ago, my dad passed away.

And my dad was a man that I dearly loved.

And I I won't say that I worshiped him, but he was an awesome guy.

And I constantly was talking to him.

He's where I got a lot of my counsel from, was from him because all those years that he was a coach, he was also a deacon in the Southern Baptist Church.

And we didn't miss church.

We went all the time.

It was, I was, I grew up knowing that how important that was.

But guys, the reason why I'm telling you this backstory is so you understand.

I had to learn a principle, and I need you to help me with this principle, and we just show it to you, okay?

So, everybody ready?

Here's a principle.

I need you to take both your hands, stick them out in front of yourself, palms up, turn it like this, both of them.

And make sure they're open.

Hold them there for a second.

Guys, do y'all understand the position you're in right now?

This is the position that we have to be in when we when we work with God.

Palms up and open.

You know what this means?

Nothing that you have is yours.

You need to be in a position where when God says, I need that, he can get that without a fight.

And he can take that.

Not that he's being mean, not that he's being bad.

But guys, now you want, I want you to, as you're holding those hands there for that second and look at it, imagine a group of 18, 19, 20-year-old kids sitting in a room.

And I explained to them, and some of them have never heard, understood, palms up and open.

And so for the first time, I've got about a hundred kids at Northwest that are sitting there going, you know what?

I've not really ever surrendered everything to God the way that it needs to be surrendered.

Life starts changing.

Because when we recognize that nothing that we have is ours, that it comes from God, that nothing that we have that we own is not ours.

And can and God can take it because he's the one that gave it.

So at any point in time that he wants it, it's his.

It's crazy.

My wife passed away.

It was tough.

It was not fun, you know.

It was not an easy thing.

Okay, y'all can relax on the hands, okay?

God bless y'all.

Some of y'all were really on it.

Because I didn't say hands down.

So some of y'all are teachers, aren't you?

That's what it is.

Because I didn't say hands down, so you had to keep them up.

Um God taught me so many things in that, in that experience.

But then, but the crazy part, the one thing that he did teach me was in 20 in the 22 months from the time that we got the diagnosis.

And I talked to the doctor and pretty much knew what was going to happen because he was playing.

He underheed plain, this is not a good situation.

Over the next 22 months, I grieved.

I cried.

The shower was my friend.

I love taking a shower.

You know why?

You cry in a shower, nobody knows.

They can't tell, they don't see it.

Nobody much is in there if there's ever anybody in there, but they sure can't tell because your face is wet too.

And I could cry in that shower all I wanted to.

And God helped me in those 22 months get to the place to where when Christy was ready to step that step into heaven, it was home going for us.

She wasn't but 60, she wasn't but 60 years old.

But it was home going.

It was a home going because you couldn't have pulled her back down here if you wanted to.

I couldn't held on to her with anything I got, I couldn't have.

Now, why am I telling you all this?

Because this gets me to the place where I you understand.

I thought I had my life mapped out.

I was working for South Group Insurance with Rex Haynes right down the street down here.

I was working with Rex.

Pretty much had it figured out that I could stay there, keep making my money, didn't have to do anything.

We had our life figured out and all done.

And guess what?

All that changed.

Everything changed.

And then a few years later, about three days before my 65th birthday, I got the bad news that I wasn't even going to be able to be an agent working there anymore.

They were going to have to let me go.

Wasn't anybody's fault.

It just was a situation within the company that created that.

But here I am again.

Now I'm 64.99999 years old.

And now I gotta make, I got something got to happen.

And now I'm 68 years old, and I'm telling you that I wouldn't go back to what I was doing.

And I thought the minute that it that they told me in that office and told me what was going to happen, I thought it tore my life apart.

But can I tell you that my life has now come full circle?

Because now I'm again a minister of youth and recreation.

I'm just doing that for FCA on a college campus, and nobody's stopping me.

I get the privilege of doing stuff that some pastors never get the chance to do.

They just never have the door that are open.

I I sit in an office with coach, and Grant sent me a message.

God bless him, I love him.

Grant and I are buddies.

Grant sent me a message and said, Hey, I'm just so you'll know, I'm wearing blue jeans and a and a polo tonight.

I said, Okay, then I'll put my blue jeans and my polo on because normally I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

You know, but that's what I wear.

Why do I wear shorts and a t-shirt?

Who am I seeing all day long?

I'm talking to a bunch of athletes and a bunch of coaches.

Guess what they've got on?

Shorts and a t-shirt.

That's what I do.

I love this.

I worked at Dillard's for 10 years, guys, part-time, helping try to make money for my daughter to get to go to college.

Which she ended up not needing all of it, and I'm grateful that she didn't, but God bless her.

I still did it anyway.

I got so many, I worked in the suit department.

I got so many suits, I don't know what to do with all of them.

Yeah, I do now.

I gave them away.

I've been giving suits away for the last three years, just handing them out.

Here, you need a suit?

Take one.

Dude, these are hard shaft and mark suits.

Y'all know what I'm talking about, don't you?

These ain't play suits, these are the real deal.

And I was giving them away.

I don't wear that stuff anymore.

Don't need it.

I got one, I got a black one.

Isn't that the one we're supposed to keep?

I got a black one.

So if we need it, I got a black one.

So I can do the Marion and a Barian.

If I need them, I'm good.

Now, why am I telling you all this stuff?

Because God works in ways that we do not see and do not understand.

He handles things before we even have a clue.

He already has the answer before the need even comes up.

He's already got it figured out.

You just have to step up and say, palms up and open.

There's two things because we talked about the giving away part because if God wants to tell you, he can.

But also, if you haven't got your palms up and open, you can't receive what God has for you.

Now, I want to share with you just for a minute what's been going on.

This past summer, we had the chance to take um uh right at 300 student athletes from across the state of Mississippi to a FCA leadership camp at Bell Haven College.

And I'm one of I was one of the instructor kind of people at that camp.

Can I tell y'all what I talked about there?

If you got a Bible with you tonight, you can go ahead and look there.

John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Because in John chat in John chapter 15, there's a word that keeps getting used in John 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

John 15, for those of you that don't automatically just that that passage doesn't be in your brain, that's I'm the vine, you're the branches.

Okay?

There's a word that pops up in there that gets used 11 times.

It gets used 11 times in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

The word is abide.

Abide.

Now, I did a word study on abide because God kept telling me, you're not through.

Don't read into 16 yet.

I need you to stay in 15 because I was doing a Bible study.

And I kept reading and kept reading, and then all of a sudden I found a book that was written 112 years ago.

By, I can't even remember the guy's name right now to tell you the truth, but it was written 112 years ago, and in that book, he describes the word abide in a different way than anything I'd ever heard.

John chapter 15 says, if you'll abide in me and I in you, you'll bear much fruit.

John 15 · chapter mention

Abide means to remain in unison.

Now I want you to put that together.

Now you you do that in your brain for a second.

Remain in unison.

Stay in that position of being in unison with Christ.

Unison is the position or in the picture of, Grant, if you were in the military, and we had to march.

You can be standing next to a guy that saw that's right next to you that's six foot six inches tall.

Now, are y'all gonna be able to march exactly together?

Not normally.

Jesus Christ is perfect.

Are you gonna be able to walk in in unison with Christ?

No.

But how do you do it?

So he tells us to do that.

How do we do that?

If we're gonna remain, then we have to get in lockstep with him.

That's the word that actually gets used.

It was an old military term that goes all the way back to the Roman days.

Lockstep.

A six foot six inch guy just basically cuts his stride down.

And a five foot five guide, he strides a little further than you normally would.

But their steps are exactly together.

And they're not perfect all the time.

Sometimes one of them will foul up, but then you just do that little skip step and get back together and do it again.

Am I describing your life?

I'm describing my life.

I've been walking with Christ since I was 10 years old.

That's 58 years I've been walking with Christ.

There's been a lot of that time.

I have not been in lockstep with him.

But eventually I do that little skip thing, you know, get boop, boop, yep, and I get it back, and then we'd be back in back in stride again together.

You see, you put a bunch of 16 and 17 and 15, 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old kids in a room, and you paint a picture for them of that their life needs to be in lockstep with Christ.

And here's what happens.

They get it.

What takes place and happens with them.

You see these little bracelets that are on my wrist?

That's how you that's if you want me to share the gospel with you, I'd be glad to.

And I can walk you right down through the gospel in the neatest little gospel presentation you have ever heard.

There's a heart on there.

God loves you.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 27.

Genesis 1:27

That God created man in his own image.

Created he them, male and female.

In John 3.16, it says that God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

God loves you.

There's no doubt about it.

The next symbol is a division symbol.

The division symbol basically tells us that we are separated from God.

We're separated by sin.

That sin separates us.

Consider the top dot on there, God, and the bottom dot is you.

And that line is sin.

There is no way you can get across that line.

You can't do it.

You don't have enough, you can't pay enough.

There's nothing that you can do to get across that line.

Only Him.

So, what do we do?

If sin separates us, because in Romans, those those two passages that we all have learned and read in Romans 6.23 and 323, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And the wages of sin is death.

The gift of God, though, is eternal life.

Well, if that gift is eternal life, how do we get it?

Well, that's the third symbol, that's the cross.

Jesus rescues you.

Are y'all getting this?

You see how simple this is?

So when I'm pumping gas at the Cenotabia uh Walmart one day, and there's an older gentleman that was pumping gas right across from me, and he said, Hey, you sort of old to be wearing them rubber bracelets, aren't you?

That's what he said.

Okay.

Okay.

He said, I said, yeah, maybe probably, but he said, that's a kid thing.

Kids wear those things.

I said, well, that's true.

But I said, I I work with kids a lot, so you know, maybe that's why I've gotten along.

He said, well, I didn't even have to ask him.

He looked at me and said, What is it?

What is that thing?

What are you doing with that?

I said, Well, you really want to hear about this?

Yeah, man, don't don't give me, don't ask me once.

Because I'm in.

And dude, I took off.

Mine got through pumping, his got through pumping, and we, I wasn't about to shut up because once I got on a roll, I was going to finish it.

You know?

And I got him down to the question mark, the last one on there.

And the question mark is, Will you trust Jesus Christ?

Will you?

And I said, Man, have you ever had an experience like this?

Has God ever brought you to the place where you did it?

No, I never have.

Would you like to?

What do you mean, well, I like to.

Will you want to do it?

I mean, is God drawing you to do this?

Do you feel a tug in your heart that maybe God's wanting you to be saved?

He's calling your name.

Well, yeah.

You've been doing it for a long time.

Well, then what's stopping you from doing it?

He looked around.

Here you got to, yeah, why not?

I'll pray.

You want to pray?

I'll pray.

I'll start it.

I didn't get good and started.

He took over.

Look.

I wasn't going to do this, but I'm going to do it now.

See?

Y'all ain't got me all fired up.

Last night, some of you watched TV and you got all ticked off and mad and angry because of what you saw at the Olympics.

Come on, man.

You did.

You got angry.

You got mad.

You even wrote some Facebook post.

Hey, I'm going to put this out there.

I can't believe that they would desecrate the.

I mean, I saw all that out there.

You know what my first thought was?

I started crying.

I didn't watch it, but I I saw the post come out.

And you know what?

I I started to cry.

Sin ought to break out of your heart.

It ought to make Mad at some point in time, it's going to make us mad.

But the first thing sin ought to do is break our heart.

If you want to know why a 68-year-old man is wearing an FCA t-shirt, golf shirt, and working this job and doing this, and working 60 and 70 hours a week sometimes, and stays and stays down at the BSU building, because God bless y'all.

Thank y'all for allowing us to use the BSU building for our FCA meetings.

We get to use that building, and we have a meeting every Monday night with about 100 to 150 student athletes, and the gospel goes out every time we meet.

The gospel goes out every time.

During this spring, I mean fall semester that's fixing to come up, we will actually have about 45 or 50 student athletes who will share their personal testimonies in those meetings.

We won't have a Bible study in those meetings.

We will do nothing other than share the gospel.

We will train them on the bracelet, we'll train them on this to call the forward.

We'll also train them on a method for Bible study.

We'll do that.

But if you want to know what FCA is doing, FCA's mission is very simple.

The work that I do is very simple.

It's not rocket science.

I believe that every coach and every athlete needs to be in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and His church.

Do you hear the last thing I said?

I don't think my job is done until I can say, hey, where are you going to church?

So when I got to baptize five people this year, and I'll explain to you why I got to baptize five people, they were Methodist.

Don't tell them they don't know yet.

I had five student athletes come back to me and said, hey, look, I got confirmed when I was 12 years old, and I'd have a clue.

But now I know I have entered into a personal relationship and I'm walking with Jesus every day, but my baptism is on the wrong side of my salvation.

Can you fix that?

Look, here's water.

What hinders you from being baptized?

We got a pond?

No, we don't have a pond.

You know what we have?

We have troughs that they take ice bath in.

We got about eight of them.

So I filled one up with water.

Yes, I did.

Uh-huh.

I sure did.

I filled one up with water.

My wife said, hey, look, I found something for you because I have remarried.

God bless.

I've married remarried and God's moved into my life.

This is a sweet deal.

But I remarried.

My wife is this.

The girl I'm married to now is such a funny thing to be married because she's this person that comes up with all these neat ideas how to do stuff.

You know, I love Christy, my first wife.

I love her to death.

I mean, we that's a bad way to say that, wasn't it?

I love Christy.

I mean, I really did.

But now she was the book person.

She could keep it straight.

She did, and she was my Holy Spirit.

Jack Domino, that Christy was my holy spirit.

I didn't, I y'all prayed to God.

I prayed to Christy.

No, I'm just kidding.

I didn't do that.

But usually when I had some big decision that I was looking at, I usually would go talk to Christy, and guess what?

She was right.

And she'd look at me sometimes and she'd just shake her head.

And I said, Why are you shaking your head?

You screwed that up.

You'll find out, it'll happen to me.

You'll find out.

And sure enough, I'd find out pretty soon that I did.

But now, my wife, now she's this kind of person that can find anything out of anywhere.

You know that they make a little drop-in thing that you can put, like an electric piece that you can actually put in a tub of water and it'll heat it up.

Yeah, they do.

Now you can't get in there one of the little electric tubes in there.

You know, I didn't try that.

But we put it in there and we warmed that water up and we baptized.

Guess what?

We've we baptized four little Methodist girls.

There were three of them on the softball team.

One was just a student athlete.

And then, oh, by the way, we baptized a man, a father.

Because when the girl went home and told her dad what she was going to do, he said, I need to do that.

So he came and was baptized.

I need to do that.

Guys, I'm telling you that God is working, He is doing things.

I see stuff like your church comes down, has come down the last two years.

This will be the third year that they've done it.

They've come down to help me feed the football team.

They the football team guys have to be there for some of the weekends that the school's actually closed.

Well, then that means there's no cafeteria.

So your church has been a godsend to come down and provide a meal for them to be able to eat.

So I usually do a meal on Sunday night when they come back to campus and then on Monday lunch because the Monday's the holiday.

And we've been able to feed them.

We feed kids all the time.

That's, I mean, how do you draw them?

I mean, you you you bring food, they're gonna show up.

Yeah, that's that's pretty much the case.

And I mean, it it works really well.

This past semester uh at school, I was really I was really impressed with our kids.

We did um we did a study on relationships.

We spent the bulk of the year, of the the second half of the year on relationships.

And basically we now have, and I can honestly say there are about 45 to 50 young men and women that are on the north that were on the Northwest campus.

Most of them now have have moved on uh because they're they were second-year students and they're gone.

But most of those kids now understand that the relationships that they get into in dating need to mirror marriage.

Don't wait until you get married to do these things.

Do it wild, do it before, get it straight, get the relationship right, follow biblical patterns before it ever starts, and then it works.

Guys, this is what we're doing.

If we're trying to see that every coach and every athlete is in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then I'm gonna point you to our bigger, the bigger picture, which is our vision.

Our vision is actually to see the world transformed by Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes.

Billy Graham said several years ago, he he was doing one of his uh, he was doing a speech, he was doing a message somewhere, and Billy Graham used the expression he said, he said that a coach will have more impact and touch more people's more lives than I will.

He can do it in one year, he'll do what I'll do in a lifetime.

Guys, if you stop and think for a minute, go back in your life and remember some of the most influential people in your life were either teachers or coaches.

People who were in that position.

And oh my gosh, if we can just get some godly people in those positions doing those things.

So I can tell you right now, there's an excitement level because I have a coaches huddle that started at Northwest, and my coaches meet every Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock, and I have about 10 of about 10 of the 18 come, which that's that's not bad if you can get that.

I mean, that sounds like church.

I I can say that, you can, but I can't.

I have about 10 of the 18 that show up.

Well, guys, stop and think about it.

If there are 10 coaches at Northwest Community College that are studying the gospel together, studying the Bible together every Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock, tell me what you think is going to happen.

We have a we have a our our t-shirt on the back of our t-shirt at Northwest says, build a family, the winds will come.

Build a family, and the winds will come.

Our plan since I've been there is that we build a family.

Guys, understand when you start looking at that word, abide, when you start looking at that word, start paying attention to John 15, and you remember that it means to remain in unison in lockstep.

Then that means that basically that's the life that we're trying to live.

FCA actually tells me, and we're going through this process right now, we do an annual review of our own work and what we're doing in our life.

One of the the first area of that study that we when we do our review, the first area is how's your personal, uh, how's your personal walk with Christ rated?

How's your Bible study going?

How's your devotional time?

How's your relationship with your wife, with your kids?

That's the first question that we ask.

It's not of how many kids did you see this?

How many do you how many do you have in camps?

That's the last.

Those are the last numbers.

The first numbers are how's God working in your life?

And that's what we're doing.

So if you understand that, then you begin to understand what FCA is all about.

The money that you use, uh, that you provide actually goes to pay uh because I am a missionary.

Oh, by the way, now.

That's how so I I'm no longer a youth minister, I'm now a missionary.

Uh, and the reason we call it missionaries is because we raise our own support.

I am a faith-based minister.

Um, and and so the support that your church gives to me helps me to get a paycheck every month, um, is basically what that does.

Um, and I don't get a big one, I'm just grateful that I get one.

Um, and I'm not looking for a big one, don't need a big one, but I'm grateful to have the one that I have.

Now the question mark is do I have enough money?

No, I don't.

Um and there's a couple reasons why.

One is um we operate off of a basis of what's called AMP.

AMP is an automatic monthly partner.

That's somebody who decides that on a monthly basis they would join us and become donors and sponsors and partners with us in the ministry that we did.

Okay, so if any of you would be interested in being an AMP partner, let me know.

Just talk to me.

Uh, I can leave some cards here.

You can actually have a card that tells you how to do it, but you can do that as well.

Your church is already doing it, and I'm grateful and I appreciate it.

Uh, but if others want to do more than that, that's that's that's also awesome.

But the real reason why I'm here tonight is this to tell you thanks.

That what you're doing is making a difference.

What you're doing, because I can tell you that this is this this is the story I'm hearing, so I'll pass it on to you.

When I came to Northwest three years ago, there were 35 kids that were involved in FCA, and that's all there was.

Okay, there was one huddle, and they met once a week, and there were about 35 kids involved in that.

Today, there are 17 huddles at Northwest.

There are 17 huddles on campus.

Every team has their own huddle.

Every team, every coach allows us to take time out of their practice schedule, and we meet every week, and that happens all year long.

So that's 300 and about 350 kids who are being who are being influenced by the gospel all year long.

So that's happening.

And the money that you're providing is helping us grow this because we started off with one huddle, we're up to we're up to 17 now, which includes that coach's huddle.

We're also uh we're also taking our student athletes now are now deciding that it's time for them to go out and start discipling other kids.

So this year, uh last year we had about four, but this year I've got as many as 20.

I think I've got about 20 that have said that they want to go to the local high schools and do work in those high schools, so they're gonna lead huddles in those high schools.

So some of them will even come here to DeSola County.

There will be some that will.

We'll have some ministry up here through the Northwest because of that.

So, guys, this is what you're supporting, and I I appreciate it.

And if there's anything uh that that I can ever do for this church, y'all know Grant knows how to get me.

Uh, I I would I bend over backwards to help because your church is helping me, and I definitely appreciate it.

I want to tell you thanks, and we appreciate it.

Love y'all much.

This has been your midweek motivation.

We'd love to have you join us in person on Sunday mornings.

Our services are at 9 and 10 30 a.m.