A Sunday with the Mompriemers

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

You guys, this is Jean Jean and Christy Mont Premier.

Will you welcome them?

If you have been um around Awakening for a while, then you know their names and you know our dear partnership with them and with their ministry in Haiti.

If you're new to us, you might not know.

So I want to just paint a little picture of them, and then we just have the great joy of hearing from them for the next half an hour of just the amazing and powerful things that the Lord is doing in Haiti.

Um and first service was powerful, and I know the service is gonna be the same, so it's very exciting.

But so Awakening's been a church for a little over nine years, and before that, we were a college ministry at Westgate Church.

And the Mum Premieres were partners in ministry with at Westgate, and so even when we were just a college ministry back in the day, we had a sweet relationship with them, and we've grown in that relationship as our church has grown, which has been sweet.

We've had the opportunity to send four or five.

We weren't sure if it was four or five trips to them.

It's one of the two of people from our church that have got to go down through the years, and um, we've partnered with them in so many sweet ways.

Our kids have done um art collection to mail down to them of art supplies and wrote letters to kiddos down there.

And I know even this year in this tent, we have paused our services to pray for them and to pray for their ministry and to pray for their country.

Um, and because we uh believe that where our treasure is, our heart is also right.

We've also had the opportunity to financially partner with them through the years.

And I asked John Obermeyer, who oversees our finances, to pull up some numbers for me this week of what that's looked like through the years.

Um, and and he found that we've given$660,000 through the years.

Isn't that cool?

I know.

And church, I want to be really clear.

When I say that, I don't say that like, yay, rah-rah us, but that that's not the motivation behind it at all.

It's the motivation of that we believe we serve a God who is extravagantly generous.

And so as a church, we are extravagantly generous.

We want to give greatly.

And so that money comes from your tithes, it comes from your offerings.

Um, and we're able to partner in a place that otherwise we wouldn't be able to.

And I was sharing with them this morning, like there are times for me, I went to Haiti when I was 18 and um got to see your beautiful country and got to hold a sweet little boy on my lap who was three at the time, and then got to go on and sponsor him through the organization he was a part of until he aged out, which was so sweet.

But when I hear what's going on in Haiti in the news, whether it's earthquakes or hurricanes or your president being assassinated, I mean, just so much.

My heart breaks.

Um, and sometimes I just feel really paralyzed.

You guys know that feeling when you watch the news of what's going on in the world, and you just feel like, what can what can I even do?

Like, what's what's our what can what are we called to do?

And it is such a gift that for our church, we can reach out and say, All right, Christy, what what can we do?

And she says, Hey, we're gonna, we're putting, we're gonna try to put 10 doctors on a plane and we need some finances for that.

And we can think, yeah, we can do that, we can partner with that, and we can pray for that.

So it's a very sweet partnership.

So welcome you guys.

We're so glad you're here.

So here's where we're gonna start.

For those of you that don't know the mom premieres, um, how did how did this beautiful marriage start?

How did this ministry start?

You wanna give us the backstory?

We try to tell people's e-harmony, but they don't really believe in this, which is true because we've been married 25 years, so you know, it's before that.

Um I'm uh I'm I am so glad to be here, guys.

I just have to say this before we start our story is that those songs were so, so good because it talks about how good our God is.

And I hope and I pray that what you hear is that you'll hear how God has been good.

Um, it has been hard all around the world, it's been difficult in Haiti.

Um, they have caught, they haven't caught much breaks at all.

Many, many bad things are happening there, but God is good through it all, and God is working through it all.

So I hope you hear that story.

Um, I'm an Iowa farm girl, so I was uh graduated from college and I was doing an internship, and the internship sent me overseas for three months.

But that three months was back in 1996.

So, yes, that that turned out to be a little longer than three months.

Um, I went down there and my eyes were open.

I had been a Christian beforehand, but it was in Haiti where God said, I want you, I want all of you.

And that's when I could give my, that's where I found I could what God really wanted was all of me.

So I can see all of him.

So I stayed in Haiti and I got a grant, and I was working with women in in agriculture and nutrition and health, and then I met this guy.

Um, that was a very unexpected surprise, a very good surprise.

And uh, long story short, um, we got married and we went back to the states for schooling.

I went to get more uh courses in nursing.

He went to go to seminary.

We had two little girls as well, and all of our Haitian friends uh said, Oh, wow, John John, he got himself an American wife, he's back in the States now, he's never coming back.

Um, the the sad story is that many, many Haitians, that is the goal.

The goal is to get out of the country, the goal is to leave how hard it is, how difficult it is in the country is and go somewhere else.

But for John Jen and I, all through those times when we were in seminary and and everything, and enjoying, enjoying the hot showers, enjoying electricity, um, enjoying hamburgers.

I married this, I married this man who's 135 pounds.

I have the pictures to prove it.

But the good wife will do it too, yeah.

But all through that time, seriously, all during that time, God was saying you need to go back.

I don't know how many times I heard him say, um, he was so excited about it.

We was learning in seminary, and he said, I've got to go back.

I've got to go back.

I've been blessed to be able to come here and get more schooling.

I want to go back to help people who haven't had that chance.

So it wasn't really a choice for us.

We went back when it was very difficult to go back because we tried the fundraising route and we tried getting pledges and everything, but we weren't sure what we were supposed to be doing down in Haiti.

We just knew that we needed to go back to Haiti and that we wanted to work alongside whatever God was doing.

So when we went back, we went back with our girls only two years old and six years old, and we had no pledges.

Uh, we had no supporting churches behind us.

We had three months of money to cover our food and everything that my mom had generously provided for us.

We also felt called to go back to John's hometown, his own community.

That sounds good, right?

Uh, except for his hometown was a place where there was no running water, there was no electricity, there was no communication, so no phone calls back home, no emails or anything like that.

Uh, the roads were so bad that going 45 miles would take four and a half hours to go.

And even worse than that, that was hard.

It's hard, especially when you have little girls and everything.

But it was even worse is that area was full of people worshiping voodoo.

You might have here, you might hear voodoo in movies, you might hear voodoo in this in restaurants, you hear about zombie burgers and all that stuff and everything.

But the reality of voodoo is that it's a it's a religion worshiping Satan.

It's people lost in fear, in darkness.

It's Satan saying, worship these evil spirits.

If you don't, you will be harmed.

But if you do, I'll give you, I'll give you power.

It's it's it's a it's it's hard to see people believing those lies.

Satan is the father of lies.

And when you're in that kind of religion and that's what you knew all your life, you you don't advance, you don't go forward at all.

So that's what we were going back to.

That place where people were not as a community, they were, it was, it was harmful.

We would hear the Buddha drums every single night.

And we'd hear, we'd see people, um, our neighbors and not helping each other.

But God had this huge plan.

I don't know if the slide's up.

If you saw the slide beforehand where it shows what it looked like when we first got there, John is a um um community.

It wasn't even, it's not even on the map.

Even today, it's not on the map.

But if you see the next slide, you see what God had in mind to do in that community.

It's cool.

You can see all these different buildings.

There's a university, there's a school there, there's agriculture programs, there's just a ton of things going on there in this little third world country that was happened in only 15 years.

What I can't show on the slide that I want this to kind of represent is how this wouldn't have been possible if we would just gone down there with our own plans and with our own budget and everything and just started building schools that wouldn't have worked because hearts weren't changed at first.

People worshiping voodoo, worshiping Satan, don't care about the community.

They don't care about the country, they don't care about their fellow man.

They do whatever is good for themselves.

This kind of development wouldn't have happened.

But God had a plan for this little area.

We don't know why he chose John Jennifer to be part of it, um, except for the Bible says very clearly he chooses the weak and the foolish.

And that's what we feel like.

But God had a plan, and we love telling about it.

United Christians International is what we named our organization, and we base it on three main principles: teaching the words of God, equipping national leadership, and United Christians around the world.

Teaching the words of God over and over, we have seen God's words changing people's lives.

Their hearts are changed.

We love to talk, but you probably will forget what we said pretty soon and everything, because our words don't change anything except for when we base it on God's words that don't change and that change people's lives.

We do this through different church ministries, um, evangelism, a lot, especially evangelism into the voodoo, uh, discipleship.

We do it through church planting, we have a theological department, our university, many different ways that we do that.

We're trying to get out the words.

Because even more, even more than helping a starving child.

We have starving children in Haiti.

But even more than that is teaching them who God is and how they how God loves them so much.

That's what we want to tell about.

We didn't plan on going down there to reach out to the voodoo community per se.

We wanted to use John Jen's knowledge in seminary and help work alongside other churches that were run by lay pastors, and we still do that.

But very quickly on in our ministry, God showed us that He wanted us to do, go into the voodoo community as well.

Yeah, I want to say good morning to you all because you are part of that story, God's story.

Because, like Christie said, being in America, why go to where you come from, where we came from?

And you got Hatch Hour and Hamburgers and uh all of those things.

But God keep on calling us to go because I knew what we left behind.

It's a community where people worshiping Satan, basically.

And as God opened my eyes, and I wanted to see, tell those people, He's about to open your eyes too.

And uh, while we were there in the beginning of that ministry, there was a huge voodoo ceremony, and I came, uh we came to help that people, but it's uh to know God who God is, and that night God grabbed my heart and said, You gotta go out there and tell those people.

And it was midnight, a huge voodoo ceremony, more than 50 men worshipping, being drunk, and all of those things.

But I I said, I gotta tell them.

Because when we were in the US, this is what I wanted to do.

I gotta go there and tell them.

And uh I went out there, and then there was uh people watching overnight, they said, Well, where are you going?

I said, I'm going to share the gospel with those people.

And he said, Do you know you can get killed?

And I said, Well, let us go.

But the under the guy, another uh watchman said, What on us?

It's more powerful than we started discussing that among us.

And he said, Let's go, man.

Let's go and share the gospel.

And we went to that voodoo ceremony and started sharing with those guys.

And they they they give me five minutes and their time.

They said, Talk quick because you stop our ceremony here.

Talk quick.

And I read John 3, 16, as you know what that says, God so loved the world that He gives His only begotten Son.

And I share with them about that verse.

I said, Those who believe this is what Jesus promised, those who don't, this is what it is, uh uh, and clear card, this is what it is.

I grew up with you guys, and then the master folded up the drums, everybody went home.

And the next morning, uh, the master came to the house.

If that is for me, you talk about it's that Jesus is for me too.

And I said, Yeah, it's for all of us that believe.

And he gave his life to Christ.

And that was the the way from thank you.

And then that's what that's what when uh the voodoo uh started falling.

Now we have like over 30 some witch doctors worshiping in our church today.

So they become Christians and their life change.

Even that guy that killed my own dad when I was 13 years old, he's a Christian.

Did they sit on the front wall?

Whatever you want to do, he's called his and Miss Andre.

He said, Andre, we gotta we gotta uh go somewhere to uh do some evangelism too.

Andre is the first guy because he saw what God did, and then then so friendly.

All of my family used to see if this saw Andrew somewhere, they went the other way.

But now Andre will like uh we greet each other.

This is the guy we hook it.

Happy morning and Sunday.

So God is good.

What we are doing, my friends, it's matter.

Keep on sharing that good news with the world.

There was no other way that world will be better.

There was no other way, not money, not anything else.

It's Jesus.

This is the solution for this world problem.

And thank you.

Amen.

That's amazing.

What a story of reconciliation.

It sometime will have to tell us the whole story of how the man who killed your father now worships in your church.

That's just phenomenal and beautiful.

Christy, will you give us, just paint for us a little picture of UCI right now in 2022?

What all does that include?

So we laid down the base, right?

The foundations laid um by the grace of God, by him leading us just a little bit at a time.

Um, when I was talking about you only had three months of support, you know, um, we only had three months of support, and God made it that way so that we would be to be depending on him and him alone.

We thought we'd be starting ministries down there to be run by Haitian nationals.

We would go back to the states, get jobs, fund it that way, find other people to fund it that way.

But at every month for three years, God said, kept on saying, I have another, I have enough for you to stay for one more month.

Now that's a difficult place to be in if you think of it in human terms.

We think I have two little girls, oh, my little 92-year-old, my little six-year-old, what am I gonna do for school?

What am I gonna do for them?

Are they gonna be okay?

Are we gonna find enough to food food to eat?

But God just kept on saying, one more month.

I have nothing, some somebody would would would generously give us something enough for us to stay for another month.

Another month again, for three years that way.

Just building in us a trust, a dependence, a firm belief that God is providing for us, which is really good because we were in a third world country, the poorest nation of the Western Hemisphere.

If we're gonna tell other people, if we're gonna tell everybody and preach, say God is Jehovah Jirah, he will provide, well, we better believe that ourselves.

We need to depend on that.

And we can say to the poorest person in the very primitive hut, God will provide for you.

He will.

So the base, the for foundation is laid.

Now we can start doing more development because people's hearts are changed, and now they want to work for their community, they want to have change for the better.

So we did the teaching the words of God, and we still do that throughout all the ministries.

But now we're doing equipping national leadership.

We saw what a big deal it was when John Jim went back to Haiti and gave back to his own country.

We try to think of the early church.

What did God do for the early church through the apostles, through the disciples?

He built up the different churches in different areas through the local population.

So we try to do that too.

We try to do that as much as possible.

We do that through education and training and development.

We have a uh school from preschool all the way to high school, 1,600 kids.

Remember, we went down there with no plans of this.

We went down there with no support.

1,600 kids who come to our school.

We get to show them the basic curriculum, and we get to add um computers and arts and sports and music and all these different things, and we get to tell them about how God loves them.

I think I mean we're standing, we're sitting surrounded by a school system right here, and it just is exciting to see the hope in these little kids, right?

The next generation.

And then God went even a step further and he said, I need you to do a Christian university.

The earthquake hit in 2010, the big one came.

300,000 people perished.

Many of our young people had been in Port-au-Prince, the capital, to look for education and lost their lives there.

We felt very called that we need to go and do a university.

Now I say that, and it sounds so simple sometimes.

I we felt we felt God calling us to do that.

But at the time, a university?

Are you kidding?

If they would if you would have told me that back in 2005, we would have never left the United States because there's no way.

I can't do that.

But that's exactly where God wants you to be.

God wants you to be where, no, you can't do it, but I can.

I can.

So we're there's nothing again, there's nothing special here.

But God just kept on bringing good people.

We have a Christian university, you guys.

It started about the same time as awakening started as a church here, which is exciting because you know it was the same age group and young, many, many young adults.

And wow, it's just exciting to see that.

Our vision, five-year, ten-year, fifty-year vision is not what Kirjan and Chrissy can do, but what how can we instill this vision of looking to see where God is working, give you good education and training, and give you that motivation.

Give back.

Give back.

You are you have talents, you are given what you're given, as the Bible says, to bless others.

So that's that's that's our that's what our um what what can hate how can Haiti be changed?

Many people say, you know, that uh Haiti is just is is has so many problems, how can it be changed?

We will never say billions of dollars.

No, we will never say it's gonna start from the top down.

We pray for our leaders, definitely, but we say one student at a time, one community at a time, God is gonna change things that way.

We love doing um equipping national leadership.

We see such hope there.

We also do United Christians that are national, or uniting Christians around the world is our third, our third um goal.

And that's where we just feel that we don't do it by ourselves at all.

We don't um there's nothing possible without the prayers and support from you guys behind us.

We love having teams come down there, it's life-changing.

It's not about the money that's spent there or the work that even is done there, those are all good things.

It was all about seeing how God is working a different place.

We've seen lives change for people that go to Haiti, and we see people lives change in Haiti because of people that came and worshipped with them.

So awesome.

And just give us a little overview of how is the ministry doing amongst so much tumultuous times, like with COVID, with hurricanes, with earthquakes, with so much political unrest.

Yeah, like uh you you you guys is on it too because the three the past two years, the world is upside down with COVID.

You don't know what to do.

As in Haiti, we have all kinds of stuff happening, like earthquakes, uh, gangs, uh uh, you talk about like uh COVID and all of those things, assassination of the president and all of those things.

But you know, in the midst of those things, God is at work.

God's still at work.

And I love that song this morning, God is good.

And it is good all the time, even in the midst of those problems, because we see amongst all of those things, we see like uh now we graduate two um medical doctors, people.

Like uh, who are we to be able to do all of that?

Two groups of doctors out there, uh, even even in the midst of the earthquakes, we are the first responders to uh the uh the south of Haiti.

That school that we never knew all of that would be happening.

God is at work.

So by saying this, it's it's uh uh uh UCI is flourishing with like uh uh um the uh 1200 uh that medical school, the university, you've got 1200 students there, uh from uh from theology all the way to but they all are doing uh the same thing that we do now, teaching the house of God, equipping themselves to go out and to be united.

That's that's amazing to see what the Lord is doing.

And uh we cannot take that for granted that uh we do anything special.

God is Is at work in the midst of all of those things.

It's amazing.

And how about an update on your health?

We when we got word you're in the hospital, we prayed for you.

How are you doing?

And what came from that?

Yeah, thank you for your prayers.

Uh, because of it's been amazing.

I'm I I'm great by the grace of God.

Uh, I went to the hospital there and they do all of the checkup for me, but there was a sudden machine they don't have.

And they said, if you can go to the US and maybe you'll find somebody that will help with all of the equipments there.

And then I went uh to uh Iowa and then they checked me out.

There was no blockage, no nothing.

And uh uh actually the doctor there just sent a note to the uh the Haitian doctor said, You are doing a great job, keep on doing what you do, because what will put you on, that's the same thing that we should do here.

And uh the thing is, I was talking about going to doing hospital ministries, being like uh send chaplains to those those places to help people and a lot of work, no time to do all of those uh things, but that that time, God just grabbed my heart to help those people.

Uh for five days of the hospital there.

I've I've been praying with people that close to die, those are dying and needed to become to the Christian, uh be uh to know Christ as the savior, some of them.

It's amazing.

And since then, I make another four or five trips to the hospital to help sick people because I feel like I needed to do that.

He was John Jane was in a ward, a big public ward, 60 beds in this public ward, because this hospital um was the best hospital in Haiti, but it was a it was a public, it was in the government hospital, so there was no private rooms.

But God uses that, of course, right?

So I left him there.

I had couldn't stay overnight, and then I couldn't come back the next day because there was roadblocks and burning tires and everything like that.

So when I finally came back, I said, Junge, I'm gonna bring you some food, you know?

And and and he said, Yeah, bring me a meal, but bring 25 extra.

And I said, Oh, you're that hungry?

What's up with that, you know?

And I should have known better because that you don't meet this man without making him without being his friend.

And uh he had he had um just gotten such a just been such a blessing to so many around them.

Um the people in the hospital were looking for hope, they were looking for answers, they were they were hurting, and he had good words to tell them, and so God just uses even that in everything.

So cool.

Okay, I've heard a little bit about a new sports ministry, a new hospital.

Can you talk about those a little bit?

I'll talk about the sports ministry.

Awesome.

That's something near and dear, near and dear to my heart.

Um, yeah, so you go down, you go overseas, and you well, I shouldn't say overseas, you go into the ministry.

You go into the ministries, and maybe you have thoughts what you're gonna be doing.

And then God just opens up these other avenues.

I like volleyball.

I played and I played lots of sports and everything, and my girls were getting older, so I just started uh started teaching volleyball.

Well, no one else knew how to play volleyball, everybody knew how to play soccer.

And so we started getting other people.

Well, God just wanted to use that.

We just I saw very, very early on that it was difficult to get youth and even children sometimes into the church building a lot of times.

It was hard to get them excited about if they were, especially if they were in the voodoo voodoo religion with their parents, hard to get them in the church, but invite them to a volleyball court, invite them to a basketball court or a football field, a soccer field, then then I could get a lot more youth out there.

So this little this little love of mine, this love of volleyball, all of a sudden became a sports ministry.

But God has bigger plans than I we ever have.

We are, did I did I mention how we're just a really remote area?

I think I've said that before.

We're just way out in the boondocks, right?

And we developed this program so that we started playing other teams.

And I had two young men that went into the national beach tournament, beach volleyball tournament, never had been on a sand volleyball court until they started playing in the in the in the championship.

And they won it all and went to Aruba to play.

I have six on six teams.

Um, oh, I have so many kiddos, all the way from eight years old all the way up to 20 years old.

And they were winning national tournaments.

And uh even this year, because of Port-au-Prince being so unstable and so violent so violent, we they can't do the national tournament there.

So they're gonna do the national tournament in my place.

I mean, we have cement courts, nothing underneath, and there's no no tents or anything like that, no gymnasium.

It's just outdoor in the hot sun.

But I just kept on saying, we need to have this tournament.

They're coming in Easter.

They're coming on Easter and everything.

And there's one stipulation I said, I said, I would love to host this team, but if it's Easter, give me Easter morning.

Give me Easter morning that we have a service, a sunrise service, that we can praise the Lord for what he has done on Easter.

He is resurrected.

So they said sure.

So I get hundreds and hundreds of volleyball players that are gonna have a chance.

I'm gonna invite every single one of them.

I don't know if I can make it mandatory, but we're gonna sing loud enough that they will hear.

They will hear about what we believe and how God loves them.

So just great things.

That is so cool.

And then for the teaching hospital, because getting a med school, you need to have a place where people practice all the time.

And then now we we we bus our kids to other hospitals like uh 14 miles away, or uh uh uh to be able to do their practice.

And then uh uh the health department of Haiti asks for us to do that.

Now we are building already.

We have uh the all of our our um lab is already done, and we got uh uh all beds already there.

So God is at work again.

I don't know where all of those seems come come from, came from, but they are coming and uh seeing seeing uh yeah, so God is 2005.

Nothing there, nothing there, food, no no infrastructure whatsoever.

And 15 years later, here we have a university with a clinic.

We already have a clinic and dental clinic, now a teaching hospital.

If if we can't say God is good after that, I don't know when we can say it.

God is so good.

Yeah, amen, amen.

Church, isn't it so cool to hear all these stories?

Isn't it encouraging?

Yeah.

There's a part of me that feels like it's so cool to hear what God's doing over there, and then I look at where we live in the Silicon Valley and I look at our lives and what we value and how we spend our time and the oppression here, the spiritual oppression here.

And I just wonder, Pastor Jean-Jean, can you can you speak to us?

What's your what would be your word to us?

How can we receive?

Because we don't want to just hear, yes, we want to rejoice in what the Lord is doing.

We're so grateful to be partners, but we want to be pastored by you.

What is the word you'd have for our church today?

Yeah, um, I I thank you again, because people are crying all over that worldwide.

Even if you don't see my neighbor, because I knew when I was uh uh where I grew up, all of the Avoodoo situation, all of the uh drugs that people are taking, all of those things, they are crying inside.

They are looking for the answer.

They are looking to find something to help them.

And then we we we got one thing we in our ministry we gotta share with you today.

It's uh uh it's uh just to pray, to care, and to share.

So, how we go about doing those things, you know, like I said before, people they won't tell you the whole story.

Probably they they deny what's going on with them.

And we all in denial sometimes.

Myself can be in denial, but that's the one thing we do, we start praying for our community, we pray for our neighbor, we pray for them uh seriously, and then when you we start praying and praying for them, you let them know that you are praying.

And then you know what will be happening when you let that happen, they will know that you care so much.

And sometimes those things happen when people start releasing themselves into your hand.

Like I talked to you about the guy that killed my own dad.

Well, we start praying for that guy.

It wasn't an easy thing.

If that guy killed your dad, why pray for him?

But when that Lord keep on pressing on your heart to do those things and to keep on praying and pray and let that guy know, hey, I'm praying for you.

Because if we don't care, people know that we don't care.

And then this is why Jesus gave himself, because he cares so much about this worldwide to be able to uh uh bring this world into it.

He cares so much, he gave himself uh uh to this world.

And then while caring, most people will say, Why do you care about me?

And when City, that like uh Iowa, there was a guy that was there, there was a huge snow there, and um our pastor uh were praying for that guy, and then he could not start his track and then start praying for that track to start and things like that.

And then that guy said, Well, I never go to church, and you why you care about praying for my track that not start, and it's that the conversation started right there, and then then you know what will be happening that next.

So you open that door to share Christ's love to other people, and we had no other calling in our lives is to be able to uh to uh tell people what Jesus did for us, our testimonies and all of those things, and then when people see that, like what else?

My community uh in Kayema, where you see Aizar, is changing, and people travel miles to come.

And then why is that?

All of those voodoo doctors, why?

But then 2 Corinthians 4, 4, Paul talks about the God of this world, blinded people so that they don't see.

But the only way the whole that they will see Jesus is by praying for them, praying that God opened this time, that the His timing, not on our timing, but we'll keep on praying, keep on praying, and then you care.

For example, like if if your neighbor um uh this afternoon is Super Bowl, yeah, I don't know.

Everybody wants to watch this.

I'm going to watch.

Hey, there were some people that stay in the home.

They invite them to, hey, let's go do that Super Bowl together.

And then if you find out this is where friends started, and then this is what Jesus wants us to do.

By that well, for example, with that Samaritan lady, he didn't come and say, Hey, I'm Jesus, so I come to do all of those things.

But they start talking, and that conversation started there, and then here we are.

That lady became a missionary to go back and tell everybody, look at what Jesus did.

So, my things for you this morning is to pray, is to care, and then to share.

I know you are doing that all the time, but can we say it together, my friend?

It's prayer, care, and share.

Simple enough.

May God bless you.

Oh, beloved, amen.

So good.

Okay, awakening, it's time for you to grab your bulletins and your pins or grab your phone to your note section because we're gonna ask Jean-Jean and Christy to share some prayer requests with us so that we can be praying for them because we pray for them, we pray for their ministry, and we want to be faithful to that.

So grab those things, and I'm gonna ask you guys to share with us you individually, personally, your family, the ministry.

What are the ways that we can be praying that is most influential right now?

Yeah, um, I got something that in our hearts for the young people, like Christian talk about uh uh young people of Haiti.

Now they are believing in some lies of their enemies, like in Port Open Say, uh, some young people will go to a witch doctor and say, Well, can you make me bulletproof?

You know, bulletproof is just that you cannot be a bulletproof, but they brainwash those people, like ISIS, for example, brainwash them.

Hey, I can make you bullet proof.

And then finally, that uh that guy uh uh with his gun against the policeman, the other policeman shoot him dead, he's dead.

And then they brainwash those people, they can do that.

So help us pray that the Lord will open the hearts of the young people because the young people I really believe is the hated tomorrow or the wall tomorrow.

Uh so help us to pray on that so we can reach out there to them and their hearts can be open for the gospel.

So yeah, so many of our I see, because I work with young people a lot.

I see a lot of times young people are are choosing to resolve any kind of conflict, any kind of disagreement, any kind of problem with violence now.

Um not not even thinking that.

Let's just sit down and talk.

Let's just sit down and resolve things face to face, talking rationally, talking lovingly, but instead going straight to protests, strikes, violence, and then that.

That's what they're seeing on the news in Haiti.

That's what they're seeing, how their government is handling things.

So yes, would love prayer for that.

I would love for you guys to, when you think of Haiti, um most people when they think of Haiti think of uh the poorest country in the nation and it's in the Western hemisphere.

Um you know, the physical the material poverty.

I would like you guys to think about the spiritual poverty that's there.

The spiritual poverty needs to be addressed.

We need to get people out of that darkness, out of out of voodoo and worshiping who God is.

So many of them just need to know that God loves them, that God is an option for them too.

So I would love for you guys to pray about that.

Anytime you think you hear you're hating in the news, anytime you hear about the bad things happening, pray for that.

We would love to have your prayers for our university.

Like we said, that's our that's our vision right there.

These university students um going out, being well trained, and being having a uh a passion to go back to their own communities and seeing how God is gonna use them.

It doesn't have to be a little mini UCI.

Um, it's gonna be whatever God wants them to do in the different areas.

Pray for the university students.

You guys have helped so much, so much with the university.

The majority of the funds that you guys have sent have been sent has been helping that ministry.

Um our university only costs$1,800 per year compared to that to the U.S.

colleges.

I have one in college and one that graduated.

Yes, it's it's uh not very much in comparison, but there's so many in Haiti that that is insurmountable for them.

They come from that mud hut, they come from that thatched roof, and they need to be educated.

They need to be the ones going out with good education that can make a difference in their country.

So your scholarships are helping us do that one student at a time.

And we have so many stories, so many stories of what has happened when that when someone I was given a chance, given a chance to get the education.

We'd love to have your prayers for the teaching hospital.

That's a big thing, a big, big thing.

13 phases if we if God wants us to do that.

If he wants us to do just one, we're finishing up the phase one, we're good with phase one.

If he wants us to do 13, okay, Lord, you better lead us.

So we don't because that's what's needed.

So we just pray, we just appreciate your prayers for everything, guys.

I love it.

And what about personally?

How long are you in the States and how can we pray for you?

Uh we uh we'll be going back to the end of uh this month because the hate uh the US board is uh uh we'd got a wee treat.

So we'll talk about that vision for the next couple uh years or for uh what's coming up.

And uh yeah, so end of February we'll be going back.

Awesome.

And they were sharing with us in first service that COVID has not hit Haiti really hard, um, and that there's been a blessing in that.

So, y'all, let's pray protection over their physical bodies while they're here.

Because we want them to stay healthy and be able to complete the the whole of their trip, which is awesome.

I'm gonna invite Chris and the worship team to come on up and church, we're gonna have a time right now to just pray for them.

I'm so proud of y'all watching you guys take notes and judge on your phone.

Thank you for that.

Um, you guys will be in our hearts and you'll be in our prayers, and you know on Easter morning we are gonna be thinking of all those volleyball players.

That is amazing.

Yeah, for sure.

So, church, I want to invite you to stand and reach out a hand.

Yeah, church, let's um if you're comfortable, uh close your eyes, bow your heads, and reach out your hands to the mom premieres here.

Let's look to the Lord now.

Oh, Heavenly Father, what a joy it is to receive um from this amazing couple.

Um, God, we praise you and thank you that your dream and your plan was so much bigger than theirs.

And we thank you, God, that we are witnesses, even though we're far away from them geographically, we are witnesses to your work.

We are witnesses to your power.

We are witnesses to what you can do when we submit our lives to you.

And so, Father, we submit these prayer requests knowing you are the caring God who protects and provides for his children.

And we pray that over the Mont Premier's.

God, we pray against voodoo and the evil spiritualities that exist in that country.

And we pray, God, that through the power of Jesus and your cross, that you would rebuke Satan and his devices and you would use UCI as a beacon of light in a dark place.

God, we pray especially for the youth ministry and for the young people.

God, we pray that um we are a church all about the next generation.

It's why we love the Montpelliers, they're all about the next generation.

God, would you capture generations of young people?

Would you, God, bring them into your kingdom of light and rescue them from the kingdom of darkness?

And God, we pray that you would powerfully use UCI in that process.

God, we pray for the spiritual poverty that you would make it a spiritually rich nation.

God, we see UCI as spiritually rich.

And so would you multiply the investments that they are making in the kingdom as they sow righteousness?

Would you they reap righteousness in that country?

And would you multiply beyond our imagination what you can do, God, through the university, through the teaching hospital, through every effort that they are endeavoring in?

Would you bless it, God, and sustain this work, Jesus?

We pray that the university, the next generation, the teaching that's going on would multiply for generations to come.

We thank you for the work that they're doing.

We bless them and commission them and ask you to encourage them supernaturally through the mighty power and the good work that you do.

We pray this in Christ's name.

All God's people said.

Amen.

Amen.

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