.
Until some deed of greatness you may do
is how this begins right in the corner.
Let's sing it out together now.
Do not wait until some
deed of greatness you may do.
Do not wait
to shed your light afar.
To the many
duties ever near you
now be true.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Right in the corner
where you
are.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Someone far from harbor
you may guide across the
bar.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Just above our
clouded skies that you may
help to clear.
Let a narrow self
your way depart.
Go into an art
song of cheer.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Right in the
corner where you
are.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Someone far from harbor
you may guide across the bar.
Right in the corner
where you
are.
Here for all your talent
you may surely find
a need. Here we
thread the bright and morning
star.
Even from your humble hand
the bread of life may feed.
Right in the corner
where you
are.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Right in the corner
where you are.
Someone far from harbor
you may guide across the
bar.
Right in the corner
where you
are.
Amen. Good things tonight.
Alright at this time please turn to Bibles
chapter 8 in the book of Acts.
Acts chapter number 8. Once again
please turn to Bibles to Acts chapter
number 8.
Acts chapter number 8 the Bible
reads
And Saul
was consenting unto his death.
And at that time there was a great
persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem.
And they were all scattered
abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria
except the apostles.
And devout men carried Stephen to his burial
and made great lamentation over
him. As for Saul
he made havoc of the church entering
into every house and hailing men and
women committed them to prison.
Therefore they that were
scattered abroad went everywhere preaching
the word. Then Philip went down
to the city of Samaria and preached Christ
unto them. And the people
with one accord gave heed unto
those things which Philip spake
hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.
For unclean spirits
crying with loud voice came out of many
that were possessed with them and
many taken with palsies
and that were lame were healed.
And there was great joy in that city.
But there was a certain man called
Simon which before time in the same
city used sorcery and bewitched
the people of Samaria giving out
that he himself was some great
one to whom they all
gave heed from the least
to the greatest saying this man
is the great power of God.
And to him they had regard
because that of a long time
he had bewitched them with sorceries.
But when they believed Philip
preaching the things concerning the kingdom
of God and the name of Jesus Christ
they were baptized both men and women.
Then Simon himself believed
also and when he was baptized
he continued with Philip and wondered
beholding the miracles and signs
which were done.
Now when the apostles which were at
Jerusalem heard that Samaria
had received the word of God
they sent unto them Peter and John
who when they were come down
prayed for them that they might
receive the Holy Ghost.
For as yet he was fallen
upon none of them only they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Then laid they
hands on them and they received
the Holy Ghost. And when
Simon saw that through laying on of the
apostles hands the Holy Ghost was
given he offered them money
saying give me also this power that on
whomsoever I lay hands he may receive
the Holy Ghost. But Peter said
unto him thy money perish with thee
because thou has thought that the gift of
God may be purchased with money.
Thou has neither part nor lot in this matter
for thy heart is not right
in the sight of God. Repent
therefore of this thy wickedness and pray
God if perhaps the thought of thine heart
may be forgiven thee. For I
perceive that thou art in the gall
of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.
Then answered Simon
and said pray ye to the Lord for me
that none of these things which ye have spoken
come upon me. And they
when they had testified and preached the
word of the Lord returned to Jerusalem
and preached the gospel in many villages
of the Samaritans. And the angel of the
Lord spake unto Philip saying
rise and go toward the south
unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem
unto Gaza which is desert.
And he arose and went and behold
a man of Ethiopia and
Eunuch of great authority under
Candace queen of the Ethiopians who had
the charge of all her treasure and
had come to Jerusalem for to worship
was returning and sitting in
his chariot read Isaiah the
prophet then the spirit said unto
Philip go near and join thyself
to this chariot.
And Philip ran thither to him and
heard him read the prophet Isaiah
and said understandest
thou what thou readest and he said
how can I accept
some man should guide me.
And he desired Philip
that he would come up and sit with him.
The place of the scripture
which he read was this
he was led as a sheep to the
slaughter and like a lamb done
before his shearer so opened he not his mouth
and his humiliation his judgment
was taken away and who shall declare
his generation for his life
is taken from the earth. And the Eunuch
answered Philip and said I pray
thee of whom speakest
the prophet this of himself
or of some other man.
Then Philip opened his mouth and began
at the same scripture and preached unto him
Jesus. And
as they went on their way they came
unto a certain water and the Eunuch said
see here's water what doth hinder
me to be baptized. And Philip
said if thou believeth with all thine
heart thou mayest.
And he answered and said
I believe that Jesus Christ is the son
of God. And he commanded the chariot
to stand still and they went down both
into the water both Philip and the Eunuch
and he baptized him. And when
they were come up out of the water the
spirit of the Lord called away Philip that
the Eunuch saw him no more
and he went on his way rejoicing.
But Philip was found at Azotus
and passing through he preached in all the
cities till he came to Caesarea.
Dear Heavenly Father thank you for this
opportunity to gather here tonight and
thank you for this missions conference. Lord I
pray that you just open up our ears to
hear and to receive the message that is
going to be preached to us by brother Caleb.
In the name of prayer Amen. Amen.
Alright so I want to thank
everyone for being here tonight. I also want to thank
Pastor Anderson for giving me the opportunity to preach
about Vanuatu today.
So if you're here in Acts chapter
number 8 and look down at verse 36
where the Bible reads,
went on their way they came unto a certain water
and the Eunuch said see here is water what
doth hinder me to be baptized and Philip said
if thou believeth with all thine heart thou mayest
and he answered and said I believe
that Jesus Christ is the son
of God and he commanded the chariot to stand
still and they went down
both into the water both Philip and the Eunuch
and he baptized
him. So the title of my sermon comes
from verse number 36
where it says see here is water and it's just
more or less a play on words
of a recent trip that we took to
the island country of
Vanuatu. So in
Vanuatu we had three soul winners
and we were able to
get 127
people saved in the course
of about a week. So what I want to
do is use this story here in the book
of Acts in Acts chapter number 8 to
talk about the trip and just describe
some of the things that happened on the
trips that we took about two months ago.
Now keep your place here in Acts chapter
number 8 because we're going to go back and forth
through it so maybe just
keep like a paper or something
in there but
just as a way of introduction Acts chapter
number 1 verse 8 says this
but ye shall receive power after the Holy
Ghost has come upon you and ye
shall be both you should be
witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem
and in Judea in all Judea
and in Samaria and unto the other
most part of the earth.
Now the principle we find here in
Acts chapter number 1 is this
is that you first start
preaching the gospel in your local area
and then you go
global kind of what Raymond constantly
talks about just
you reach your local area first and
then you're able to go and reach
the rest of the world and
that's the principle that the
disciples used they preach the
gospel in their local area first
in Jerusalem and then they eventually spread
out to different parts of the world
and for instance
here like in Phoenix we've knocked
a lot of doors I would say probably
all the doors within a 20
mile radius other than like
new builds have been knocked by
or not 20 mile 20 minute radius
have been knocked by our church
also you know for instance South
Phoenix I personally have
probably knocked different
parts of South Phoenix maybe 5
to even 7 times since
I've been here and our church has probably knocked it
between like
12 to 15 times so
we've been doing a lot of
soul winning in this local area
and I believe because of that God's
opening up doors to be able to preach the gospel
in places around
the world now
we don't just even reach all the poor
areas either we've reached people in
more or less the rich areas what we consider
the rich areas or the middle class
upper middle class areas here in Phoenix
like parts of Allatookee where
you know the houses are expensive there
we actually knocked out most of
the houses
or a lot of the neighborhoods in Allatookee
or different parts of Scottsdale
and Arcadia we've knocked out
a lot of those parts of
that area so I believe
because we've been faithful to
preaching the word of God, God has
opened those doors for us to be able to
preach in foreign
countries now turn back
to or you should be in Acts
look at Acts 8 5
the Bible reads in Acts 8 5
then Philip went down to the city of Samaria
and preached Christ onto them
and the people with one accord
Acts 8 6
and the people with one accord gave heed
unto those things which Philip spake
hearing and seeing the miracles
which he did
for unclean spirits
crying with loud
voice came out of
many that were possessed with them
many taken with palsies
and that were lame
were healed and there was great
joy in that city so
we see here in Acts chapter number 8 before
he even runs into the Ethiopian
eunuch Philip is already preaching
the gospel in Samaria and how
do we know it was the gospel? Well look at
Acts 8 12 the Bible reads
and says but when they believe
Philip preaching
the things concerning the kingdom of God
and the name of Jesus Christ
they were baptized both men and women
then Simon himself also
sorry then Simon
himself believed also
and when he was baptized he continued
with Philip and wondered
beholding the miracles and signs
which were done
so we see in Acts 8
12 and 13
that many of the people that
Philip was preaching to that they ended
up believing in Christ they put their faith in Christ
and then they were also baptized
and then even Simon
the former sorcerer because I don't believe he was a
sorcerer after he got saved but
you know we often call him Simon
the sorcerer he ended up getting saved
he ended up putting his faith in Christ and then he ended
up getting baptized
now look at Acts 8 25
the Bible reads in Acts 8 25
and they
when they had testified and preached
the word of the Lord returned to Jerusalem
and preached the gospel in many villages
of the
Samaritans and the angel of the Lord spake
unto Philip saying arise and
go toward the south unto the way
that goeth down from Jerusalem
unto Gaza which is desert
so God gives
Philip the opportunity to go to a
not too far but
it's a foreign field not close to Jerusalem
to be able to go preach
there and it says in Acts
8 30 8 27
and he arose and went and
behold a man of Ethiopia a eunuch
of great authority under Candace
queen of the Ethiopians who had
the charge of all her treasure
and had came to
and had come to Jerusalem for
to worship whereas returning and sitting in
this chariot reading
and in his chariot read
Isaias the prophet then the spirit said
unto Philip go near and join
thyself to this
chariot so I believe that
since Philip was already
preaching in his local area already
doing soul winning already reaching the loss
in his local area then God gave him
the opportunity
to be able to preach to
the low hanging fruit that we know as
the Ethiopian eunuch as he was going
down to Gaza
or Gaza and
just like Philip was doing a lot
of soul winning in his day you know
again our church has done a lot of soul winning
here in the Phoenix area
as well as Arizona and then
even just different parts of the country and around the world
so I believe because of that
God has given us
like he's opened doors and just other
places for us to be able to preach
now this leads me to the reason why
we chose to do some
soul winning in Vanuatu
and I'll get to what a Vanuatu
is in a moment but
before going to
Vanuatu I would say maybe earlier
this year when we were planning our trip to
Fiji I heard about Vanuatu
we were in a group chat on
WhatsApp and someone was like hey after we're done
soul winning in Fiji maybe we should go
to Vanuatu so that was the most
I knew about Vanuatu I just heard it in
a chat so then
after that
it was around July
a lot of people have
you know obviously have labor day off so
someone came up to me and they were like hey
we should probably plan another trip to
to do another to do another
missions trip somewhere I was just like yeah that's a great
idea so at first what we were thinking
of doing is we thought we were going to go
to Africa but the
problem with going to Africa was the tickets
were just way too expensive at that time for
some reason so then because of that
we were thinking well maybe we can go somewhere
in the South Pacific again but I didn't
necessarily want to go back to Fiji since we were
already in Fiji a few months
ago so because
of that what was going on was there was a
deal on Fiji
Airways where you can get from or airlines
whatever you call it but you can get
a ticket for $700 that
would get you from LAX to Fiji
so we're like okay so we definitely
we can at least get to Fiji so
now we got to figure out what country
we can go to in the South Pacific
so Raymond was
already planning on going to Samoa
at the at somewhere in
September but we didn't have the dates
settled on when he was going
and then on top of not having the dates
settled on when he was going we didn't know
if
you know he can take other people
because at the time it was just supposed to be Raymond
and Alex that were going so
we didn't know if he was going to be able to
have a bigger group that went with him
so anyway what ended up
happening was this was that
I was talking to the person I said well
this is my these are my three criteria
for going to
another country it was this it was that
if I'm going to go to Fiji first of all
it's only going to be a layover I did again I just
didn't want to go back to Fiji since we were already there
and we did missions earlier
that year my second criteria was this
since we were trying to go the week of Labor Day
was that I wanted to go somewhere
that had flights like
to another country that because
let me back up a little bit Fiji is a pretty big
hub for getting to other
countries in the South Pacific
so because of that I was
just like hey I want to have a go to a place
that has multiple flights
back and forth to Fiji
at least one flight a day
so just in case we miss one flight
or something happens then we only have to wait
24 hours to get the next flight
rather than having to wait a few days
because for instance with Tuvalu
the only way we can get to Tuvalu
was that they only had two
flights a week and those flights were on Monday and
Thursday so I
just wanted to make sure that we had a place that we can
get to you know we can get flights every day
so in case something happens then it would
make it easier to be able to get back to the US
and then I didn't want to go somewhere that was
too expensive now the problem with that
was that many of the
places in the South Pacific
they were just really expensive to get to
or they didn't meet that criteria
of having multiple
flights per day so that was the big
problem we faced so while we were just
checking all these different countries the only two
countries that met those criteria
that criteria was either Samoa
or Vanuatu so
because of that we were just like you know what
let's just go check out Vanuatu
and see how it is and I
believe it was a great choice
for us because of that now
I'm going to have you turn to
just to get you somewhere
it's fine so anyway because
of that that's all we ended up
choosing
Vanuatu for our
missions trip so while we were planning
out the trip what's funny is that we're on
someone's on Facebook and they sent like a
video of a Baptist
pastor inside of Vanuatu
literally praying for missionaries to come
so he's like hey I
I'm praying that some guys will come to Vanuatu
you know that are missionaries and do a
missions trip there and
I see the video I'm like well his prayers
been answered because we're
going to Vanuatu so we
ended up buying our tickets and then
you know I'll go into some detail
of what happened while we were there so that gives
you an idea of just why we chose Vanuatu
it wasn't anything special the Holy Ghost
didn't come in my bedroom after I finished reading
the Bible in the morning and said hey you're going
to Vanuatu now it was just that
we had different criteria
that we wanted to meet before we ended up going
so anyway just to give you an idea
or just again some fun facts about
Vanuatu so you'll know
a little bit more about it is that
it's another Melanesian country
it's about 500 miles east
of Fiji so you have Fiji here
and then Vanuatu is
500 miles away from that
and then
if you're still not familiar with where Fiji
is then it's roughly about if you know where
Australia is it's about 1100
miles away from Australia west
so 1100 miles
west of Australia you'll find
Vanuatu on top of that
it's again a Melanesian island
so with Melanesia
earlier I said in my earlier
term I said Papua New Guinea that's where
it kind of the borderline but it's actually
Indonesia too so
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea
they share like a border
so it goes as far out as Indonesia
and then far out
west as Indonesia and then
as far out east as Fiji
so that's that Melanesia area
Melanesians again they
are
as like a people group they're
dark skinned people that
have the ability of growing
blonde hair especially as young
children I mentioned that this morning just for people who weren't
here this morning or didn't hear the sermon this
morning but Melanesians are
darker their dark skin so
sometimes my complexion lighter darker
it varies but they
they can grow blonde hair as a child
and then as they grow older the blonde
hair goes away so that's just
something interesting about them
on top of that the country is made of 82
islands and out of those 82
islands 65 of those islands are
inhabited and only
14 of those islands have
a surface area of
100 square kilometers
that doesn't really matter to us in the US because
we don't use the metric system so
anyway all the islands
are part of this thing called the Ring of Fire
and what the Ring of Fire is
it's just this it's a part of the
it's a part of the South Pacific
that has a lot of
volcanic activity so
you'll have a lot of places in
that area where you'll see a lot of volcanoes
and they believe that's how a lot of these islands
were formed in that area is because the
Ring of Fire and even in
Vanuatu there's an island with an
active volcano where people go
and you can actually see it spewing
out lava on top of that
Vanuatu pretty much
any natural disaster can
be found in Vanuatu they get cyclones
on a regular basis tsunamis
earthquakes mudslides
pretty much most things
most natural disasters you can
find in Vanuatu
and then on top of that they have about
200 earthquakes a year
but the thing is is most of the earthquakes
are like less
than five like a magnitude
five so it's not as that big
of a deal the three largest
islands are Espiritu
Santo which that sounds familiar if you
know a little Spanish
the other one is Malakula
and then where we were at is an
island called Afate
so that's where the capital
is and where we did most of the
soul winning which is Port Vila
and that island itself has
a population of about 50,000
people now
if you want to go to any of the other islands
that are in Vanuatu then you have to
take either a boat or a ferry
now the problem is before
we I think earlier this year
they had an airline that actually
went to every single island
or at least most of the major islands that had
runways but the problem is
I guess through some corruption and just
other things that were going on the airline
ended up closing down and it just became
a big disaster over there so then
because of that they just there's no airline
that takes you to the other islands
so the only way you can get there is by taking a boat
or a ferry and it can take between
a day and up to maybe even a
week to get to certain islands depending on where
you're trying to go
on top of that
they have a normal
parliamentary system and what that means
just like a normal government like how we
do here in the US but you do have
chiefs that rule certain
parts and areas of
Vanuatu so in some
certain cases you may have to get a permission from
a chief to be able to do things in
a certain area which I'll explain that a little
bit later it
was ruled by it was one
of the few countries that was ruled
by both the French
and British at the same time
for until its independence in
1980 so some of the
languages that are spoken there are obviously
English and then French and then they have
another language called Bislama
which is kind of like a pidgin English so
if you know if you hear
Bislama because we went to a church
and the church they're preaching in Bislama
for the Sunday service
you would probably understand about
50% of what they're saying like I understood
that they were preaching on Father's Day
but I didn't know like every single
detail what they were saying but you can under
you can kind of pick up some of the things that they
were saying now when it comes
to the food the food was
okay for the most part
I say it like that
just because the food was really
expensive so I wasn't
really able to enjoy anything that was
that may have
tasted a lot better and
we got a lot of our food from
a market so like
at the market they sold like fresh
fruits and vegetables and stuff like that
but then they also had people kind of
like cooking at a restaurant
type style place
but the only thing is I know for a fact
they were putting MSG in the food like there's no
doubt about it but to me
MSG stands for mmm so good
so
so didn't really
matter you gotta you gotta take what you
gotta take when you're or eat whenever you're
in a foreign country so
when it comes to animals
I didn't really see too many animals other than
the there's a banded iguana there
so it's like an iguana that
like at the place we stayed at
I guess there was a wild iguana that came by
and it was like it's green and like
kind of like a bluish color so it has
different stripes on it but outside
of that you have really huge spiders
I mean the spiders are probably about that
big and you just see them all
over the place but the cool thing about
is none of those spiders are venomous the only
ones that are venomous are
the only animal that's venomous there
is that they have
some centipedes that are venomous and then
while we were snorkeling
there is a we
saw something in the water and
the guy was telling us it was an eel
but I have kids and they love
animals so I kind of know a little bit about
animals and I saw it and I was like
that ain't no eel
what it was was it was a
banded sea snake
and sea snakes are one of the most venomous
snakes in the world so
we ended up staying in the water
but it was more afraid of us than we were
of it so it wasn't really that big of a
deal but we did see that
and then we went to a snorkeling spot
and we were able to see like different species of
fish and stuff so it was really cool there
and it's a really nice place I was just telling
Raymond this a little bit earlier if you want
to kind of figure out a country that you know
some people have been to it's like a mix
if Hawaii
and St. Thomas
you know they ended up getting married
and they had a child then that would be
Vanuatu so that's how I would describe
it because it's like
it has some touristy
stuff that you can do there but it's
not as touristy as
you know somewhere like Hawaii
but it's still really nice
it's a really nice place I would say it's like a little
it's a step above St. Thomas
but not
quite at Hawaii level but the water
is like really nice there it's like that
really nice blue color like
the sky blue color in certain areas
and then depending on
where you go you'll see the water
the different colors of the water change
so you'll see like a really light blue color
a sky blue color and then it'll kind of go
into like a navy blue color
so it's really nice
there on top of that there's about
350 million people
and then you have obviously
a lot of the people are locals but then
they do have an Asian population
there so there's a lot of people
from Vietnam that ended up moving
to Vanuatu and then there's a lot of
Australians and how that works is
that if you go to Vanuatu
and you stay there long enough then you
can become a citizen I think they
charge something for it but you can become a citizen
of Vanuatu if you
stay there for long enough and I've seen other
countries do that too I think Ghana
does the same thing
they drive on the right
side of the road which is contrary to
most of the countries in
that region because in Fiji
and Tuvalu we're driving on the left side of the
road but there we're actually driving
on the right side of the road just like here in the US
so there's no difference between
driving here or there and the only other
place in that area that's like that is
New Caledonia on top of that
I spoke about the languages but
Bislama is one of the
big languages that's spoken there
on top of that the people were very nice
they were very humble
the people were really friendly
not everyone
I talked to or we talked to
got saved but most of them they would
listen to the gospel whenever they had time
and then one interesting thing is that
everything is closed down on
Saturday so
there's a lot of 7-Day Adventists there
so because there's a lot of 7-Day Adventists
in Vanuatu
everything's closed down on
a lot of things are closed down on Saturday
but then Sunday things
were even worse it was just empty because
Vanuatu is supposed to be
a Christian nation
now on top of that let me just go over
some quick highlights and then I'll get into
some more verses in Acts chapter
number 8 but
one cool thing is that
how getting to Vanuatu
works is that
you literally can get on a flight and I was
talking about this earlier
you can get on a flight at around
midnight 1 AM in the morning from
LAX and then within 10 hours
you'll be in Fiji and all you have
to do is just wait for
you have like maybe an 8 to
9 hour layover and then you can take a daily
flight to Vanuatu so
they have a flight that leaves every day at around
2.30 PM and then you can get to
Vanuatu that way so what we ended
up doing is that once we got
to Fiji that morning
we got there at like 6 in the morning and
then after we got through immigration
stuff we left the airport and then
literally if you walk 20
minutes down the road
there's a university where we did
some soul winning there
on our first trip in Fiji
called Fiji National
University or FNU so
we ended up going there
doing some soul winning and within like an hour and a half
or two hours we were able to get like 6 people
saved just on a layover because
it's so easy to leave the airport
and then just walk back and then
catch our flight so that's what we ended up doing
now one of the places we stayed at
they said that you need
we need to get to
the, because it was at like a guest house
Airbnb type place they said
we need to get there before things get dark
if it gets dark then you're not going to be able to navigate
to be able to get to
to the house so our flight
didn't get in until like 3.15
3.30 so we had to
rush through immigration and after we
rushed through immigration we ended up getting
the rental car so
the thing is in Banwa too the sun
starts setting around 5 o'clock similar
to here you know during the winter
so at that
time we're like rushing to the place
and the place is like about
40 minutes from the airport
so by the time we got there we actually went
the wrong way so then we had to turn
around and then get to the place and then
by the time we got to the place it was 5
the sun started setting and then
they already closed their office so we couldn't find anybody
the only people that were there
were not people unless you're a weirdo they were dogs
there was just a bunch of dogs there
and then we
we like were trying to find how to get
into the guest house and then
luckily the person who owned the guest house
ended up
coming and then giving us the key and then we were able
to get in so it wasn't that big of a deal
but one cool thing was is that
where we were staying was right
on a river you literally just had to walk down
the hill and then you're right by
by this river and we have
pictures of it back there so you can see it
whenever you get a chance
but it was a really really nice
place and then one cool thing was
was that about the place we were
staying was just that because it was kind of
a little far out from the city there was
no light pollution so if you're
someone who's kind of into astronomy you
can see like so many stars when you were
there and what I learned how to do
while I was on the trip was that I learned how to do
astrophotography with my phone
as long as you have a tripod
and a decent enough phone and the right app
you can take pictures of like
the sky at night and they look really
really really cool and I think
I'm pretty sure we have a picture of that
in the back also so if you want to take a
look at it just to see how it is. So now
on this trip because it was
self funded we only did
like roughly two or three hours of soul winning
so we didn't really do a lot of soul winning
just because we wanted
to enjoy our time there so
we wanted to you know like the church's
standard when it comes to
you know if the church pays for some of the things on the
trip then it's you know you do
five hours of soul winning roughly
so we did roughly about three
hours of soul winning just because the sun
set so early so
so it wasn't easy for us to
and where we were staying at was just so
far off from the university that
we were doing most of our soul winning at
so because of that it just made it easier
if we ended up just
doing a shorter amount of time soul winning
and then just you know
got to see around the island and just enjoy
it. One thing we ended up doing is that
we drove around the whole island so
I brought this you're probably not going to see it
unless you're in the front but this is something they give you
at the airport and it's just like a
map of the country
and
again you're probably not going to be able to see it
but this kind of gives you an idea of how
the country or at least the island that
we were on look and where we were
staying again you're probably not going to be able to
see it especially if you're in the back
we were staying here
and then
where we ended up
going what was I going to say
so we ended up staying here and
we ended up just driving around this whole
island it's like maybe I'd say
an hour and fifteen minute drive
but once we
it wasn't that long but we were able to see everything
and it was a really really really nice
scenic drive so
we did go to church there there was a Baptist
church it was called Grace Bible
Baptist Church the people were really nice
we
ended up going there because they only had two services
they had a Wednesday service and a
Sunday service so for their Wednesday
service they happened to speak English
that like they when they do their
preaching it's typically in Bislama that's the
native language there but they
ended up doing
they ended up having some
services that were in
English like they have like I think
three Wednesday night
services that are in Bislama and then one
service that's in English a month so
we just happened to come when they had that
one English service that month so
we were able to hear the preaching in English
the people were really nice and then on Sunday
we went back and then they ended up
giving us like a small
little thing of honey for some reason I don't know why
but they're like hey it's
sweet that you stop that's what it said on it was like
it's sweet that you stop by here's a little honey
so I was just like alright so they
gave us that but again they're really friendly
I don't have a good idea of
like exactly their beliefs but they were
really nice it was a really nice church to visit
they talked to us and
you know so on and so forth so I have nothing bad to
say about them another funny thing is
is that when I was there
people would say
whenever I would talk to someone they would say hey
you're African and technically I'm
African yes I mean I was born
here but my parents are African and
I'm just like how do you know so because these
guys they just somehow knew
that I was African because most other places
they just think I'm American even in Africa
the times I've been to Africa they think I'm
American they don't think I'm African
so I was surprised but I guess
what's going on is that
in those countries
you know if you're black then you're probably
from Africa they don't think that maybe
a lot of black people come to visit
from the US or something I don't know exactly
why but I was just like hey they're right
um
I mean I don't know what to say
but I just thought that was interesting that they were able to
peg it and they were like hey this guy's an African
so I was like hey um
another funny thing was
that when people would walk around
they would have machetes like a
bunch of people just had machetes so you'll just
see guys walking around with a machete
the whole time you're there
and it was kind of sketchy
because you would like walk
to different places and the guys would
literally just they'll have like a really
how should I put it just they look
like they're gonna rob you so they have this
like really bad look on their face just like
and they just have a machete in their hand
just walking around like that
so then the way I figured
out how to like fix that
if I just didn't trust the guy
I would just say hi and then
their whole demeanor would just change it's like
the guy has a machete he's just looking all
rough and tough and all this stuff and I'm like hi
he's just like oh hi and then that was it that's
how I fixed that just by
saying hi to the guy so I don't
know it just worked for me but that's
literally how they were there it's just
that I don't know why then I
even asked them hey why do you guys
walk around with machetes and they're just like to cut things
down that's what they literally told me
I was just like alright good answer
so another cool thing is
and you'll probably see a picture of that they had a
really really nice waterfall and
that's where I asked them about the machetes because
there was like
so
walking to the waterfall was just kind
of it was really nice because there's
like these different pools of water
and they're really blue as you walk to
it but then the problem was
was that you had to pay twice so they had
like an entrance fee
that was like 20 US dollars and then
they had another fee that was like
15 dollars and how they how they
did it was they had like they're currently
having some land dispute to get to
the waterfall so like some Chinese guys
bought part of the waterfall
so because of that they
you can you pay in you pay to
like the natives to get on the property
and then you pay again after
you walk maybe like half a mile
and then you have to pay another time because
that's where that's the part of the land
that the Chinese own so
it was just
I mean it was a really nice waterfall when I got
there but it was just you know that was kind of an issue
so they're saying they're trying to fix that
and figure out what's going on with that
and get that settled but
you know it's just it's just one
of those things
just trying to think of anything else I wanted to
say before I move on oh
one cool thing is they had this really
really nice place that we went snorkeling at
and it's called the Blue Lagoon
and this water was like super blue
and on top of it being super blue
like no one was there so
like I would say
cause you know like if you've ever been to Hawaii
like just a lot of things are super crowded
in Hawaii but there
nobody was there it was just like
I would say
at the peak time we went at like 2.30
pm and there was like
at one day it was like 15 people there
and then the next day it was like less than 10
people there the whole time so I thought
that was cool and then even walking to
the waterfall there was like
only there was no one
at the waterfall when I walked there it was just people
like a lot of the locals just doing work
like around the waterfall
like digging holes and cutting down
trees and stuff like that so anyway
let's go back to some
Bibles that just gives you an idea of kind of what we
did while we were there a little bit just
gives you more insight on
Vanuatu and just
to help you understand just kind of how the culture
is and just things in Vanuatu cause
I'm sure many of you didn't have not
heard about it before now I'm gonna
talk about I'm just gonna go ahead and start talking about
a lot of the soul winning that we did there
inside of Vanuatu so
my first point was
was this and I gotta remember it
I've been talking so long about
so much about Vanuatu
my first point is just that oh yeah God's gonna
open doors if you're
soul winning here in the US God's gonna make
sure he opens doors in other places
so that you can reach people
globally but my second point is this is just
because someone says that they're a Christian
doesn't mean that they're saved
I know that's a simple principle it's something we all know
but we use the term
Christian very loosely in 2024
and even Catholics
if you ask a Catholic are they a Christian
the Catholics often get to say no
they're not but then
they still group Catholics into
Christianity when they do all their statistics and
stuff and the Bible says in Matthew 7
13 enter ye at the straight gate
for wide is the gate and broad
is the way that leadeth to destruction
and many there be
which go in there at
because straight is the gate and narrow is the way
which leadeth unto life and few be there that find it
now Vanuatu is considered to be
a Christian nation so
some of the stats on that it's
roughly 93-94%
Christian and then it's
roughly 5% animism
and if you're familiar with that
it's just like the worship of animals
and then
it's 1.4% Baha'i faith
and then it's about
.6% other
so and then when it comes to Christianity
there is a lot of Protestants
there
and specifically Presbyterians
we ran into a lot of Presbyterians
while we were there
Seventh-day Adventists we ran into a lot of Seventh-day Adventists
not that many Jovis
witnesses and ironically we ran into
a lot of Mormons
there were a bunch of Mormons there
we counted probably
for the time we were there there was probably like
eight pairs of Mormons so like around 16
Mormons like just out
walking about trying to preach
their false gospel and stuff
so
yeah so that
was something that I found interesting there
that there
like there's a lot of Mormons there
even more than I saw in Tuvalu and
Fiji like there was a lot
of Mormons now in Acts chapter
8 verse 30 the Bible reads and says
even he not his mouth
in his humiliation his judgment was taken away
and who shall declare
his generation for his life
is taken from
the earth now
in Vanuatu out soul winning I don't
think I met anyone who was saved
and we did a lot of soul winning at
the university because again there
there was another university of South Pacific
which is all over the South Pacific
like that's where we did a lot of soul winning
in Fiji
and also Raymond and Alex
did some soul winning there in Samoa
so that's where we did a good chunk
of our soul winning and we didn't the reason
why we did a lot of our soul winning there is that we
didn't know how people's English was gonna be
so when in doubt
if you don't know how well
someone's English is gonna be in a country the
best thing to do is try to go to a university
and at the university their English was
great and I don't think I necessarily taught
too fast but I didn't really have to
slow down the way I spoke to them
they understood everything I said
you know as I talked to them now we did
meet some guys from Fiji
from what's called the campus crusade
and I remember campus
crusade when I was in college and
typically they don't really have the right gospel here
however when we were in
Vanuatu there were some guys
from Fiji that ended up coming from
the campus crusade that happened
to be I guess evangelizing
there while we were in we
were on the university of South Pacific
campus so
I ended up running into a few of them
and when I talked to them they actually gave
me the right answers when it came to salvation
like at least I taught the two
I taught the three different people
that happened to be with the campus crusade
and I would say two gave me a solid
answer on salvation one I think
he was saved but his response
wasn't that great but those are the only
saved people I can think of that we met out
solely I'm not saying there weren't any
saved people there it's just there weren't that many
that we met even on the college campus
or when we actually did some soul winning out
and about and again most of the people we
talked to were like Presbyterians, Catholics
Seventh Day Adventists and
again we did talk to some Mormons
while we were on the trip one
cool thing is we went to
and you're not going to see this but I'm just going to point
in the direction maybe after service I could show
you on this map but
we went to this little island
so it's called Pele Island
on a Saturday and
what I thought when it
when it came to going to Pele Island
we were going to do some soul winning there as well
as a little recreation so
it's a place where you just go swimming
and what ended up happening was I thought
the island literally only had like ten houses
there so we took
we went to a wharf and then we ended up
taking about a twenty minute
boat ride to twenty to
thirty minute boat ride to Pele Island
and when we got there
what ended up happening was that
as soon as we
got on the island they said that we needed
to have the chief's permission
to be able to preach there
but then the
problem was that as soon as we got there
the chief was literally getting on a boat
to leave the island so we're like well how can we
get the permission of the chief if
he's getting on a boat and leaving the island
well his brother happened to be
there and I guess
he's like second in command once the chief
is gone so what ended up
happening was that Rob ended up
talking to the chief's
brother and then he ended up preaching
to him the gospel and he ended up getting
him saved so then after Rob
got him saved the guy was like
you guys can preach to anyone you want on
this island so we were like
perfect but the problem was we were already
while Rob was preaching to the chief
we already started preaching to other people so it didn't really matter
but
but we did have
permission so we were like okay this is
great so when we got to the island
we went soul winning for probably about
two hours and within those two
hours we were able to get about
thirteen people saved and
it wasn't like we were putting that much
effort into like trying to preach to people
because a lot of the time I was just walking
around the island looking at it and then just
going up to people and just you know making small talk
with them Rob on the other hand he
was talking to
he ended up
giving the gospel to this lady named Janet
and then the cool thing is that after
you gave the lady this lady the gospel
she like became his silent partner
out soul winning so then what
she would do is she would give she would
like take him to different family members so
she took him to her aunt and then
Rob ended up preaching the gospel to her
aunt and then he ended up getting her aunt saved
and then he ended up she ended up
taking him to other people and then he just was
like getting the people saved that she brought him to
that she was bringing him to so
I thought that was really cool and then for
it to be like a remote island
I was surprised that their English
was pretty decent like you could communicate
with these people with no problem like
I remember talking to some
an older lady and she was
just telling me how she's been on the island her whole
life I'm like how'd you learn the English
you know your English you know
since I'm speaking to you in English and she was
just like well how I learned it is just that we
have a school here and then in the
school they actually teach them English so
English was not an issue
on that island so I thought that was
something that was pretty cool
now and one cool thing
about this island is that it only
has 500 people so say if we
were to go back I think it would be a good place
to do like a soul winning marathon to try to knock
out that whole island because it's not really
that big and they only have
we only knock pretty much one village
but they have four villages on the island
and I think it's something
that we can probably in a week we could
probably get that whole island knocked out
in uh of Pele
um my next
point is this third point is that
you need a believer to expound
the Bible to the lost
now why I bring that up is that while
we were in Vanuatu we
met a lot of people that
were quote unquote Christians
and even trying to quote unquote serve
God and read the Bible but these people
were not saved I again I didn't
meet when I was in Vanuatu
I think I didn't meet any people
out soul winning that were saved
but it was good because a lot of the people were low
hanging fruits and we were able to preach to them
and get them saved in a pretty
relatively short amount of time
now Acts 8 uh 34
says this and the eunuch answered and answered
Philip and said I pray thee of whom
speakest thou of whom
speakest the prophet this
of himself or of
of some other man then Philip
opened his mouth and began at the
same scripture and preached onto
him Jesus so we see in this
passage that again
the Ethiopian eunuch he had
the Bible he didn't really understand what was going
on in the Bible and he needed Philip
to expound the scripture
to him so he can understand how
to be saved and
same thing goes on in our
day and age is that unsaved people are not
going to be able to read the Bible on their own
or uh
have some another unsaved person talk
to him and then that person gets saved they need
someone who is saved
to be able to preach the gospel
to them and I strongly believe that because
to me it doesn't really make that much
sense how an unsaved person that
doesn't understand the Bible that's going to hell
can preach to someone and get that
person saved and
I think Acts chapter number
8 is a very good text
verse from the Bible that kind of explains
that that hey we have an
unsaved we have an example of an unsaved person
that didn't know the Bible
or that's trying to read the Bible but can't
understand it and then you needed someone who
was saved to expound that to them
the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1 18
for the preaching of the cross is to them that
perish foolishness unto us
which are saved as the power of God so
the preaching of the cross according
to the Bible to unsaved people it's foolishness
it's dumb so how can someone who
thinks the things that are in the Bible
you know are dumb or they don't make
sense how can they expound the word
of God to someone else and get them saved
to me it doesn't really make that much sense
and then on top of that 1 Corinthians 2 14
says this but the natural
man receiveth the things not the things
of the spirit of God for they are
foolishness unto him neither can they
know them because they are
spiritually discerned so
unsaved people are spiritually discerned
they can't rightly divide the word of God
so again how can they be able
to get someone saved if they really don't
even understand what the Bible is saying
now
I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter number 3 keep your place in
Acts 8 but 1 Corinthians chapter
number 3 and when you get there
look at verse 3 1 Corinthians 3
verse 3 now what's the solution
the solution is this is that we
need to go out and preach to these people who are
lost and get them saved and
then have other believers
expound the Bible to
to unsaved people so that
these people can let other unsaved
people can get saved you know the Bible says
faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the
word of God now the Bible says
in 1 Corinthians 3 verse 3
it says for ye are
yet carnal for whereas
there is among you envying and strife
and divisions are ye not carnal
and walk as men for while
one sayeth I am of Paul and another
I am of Apollos are
ye not carnal who then is
Paul and who is Apollos
but ministers by whom ye believe
even as the Lord gave
to every man I've
planted Apollos water
but God gave the increase the Bible
says that you know Paul
and Apollos they're ministers
so other people can
believe and you can be that too if you're
saved if you you
you know understand salvation
you believe in Christ then
you can be able to expound the
word of God to other people so that they can
get saved and that's our goal
is to try to reach as many lost
people as we can
so and every man has that it's just
are those people because you know
there's people in my life that you're
probably never going to see or talk to that
it's my responsibility to give them the gospel
and then there's people in your life that
I'm never going to talk to
and it's your responsibility to give
them the gospel and that's why God puts
them in our lives so
you need to just take the time and try to
you know preach that person the gospel
and that's how those people are going to get
saved now
I
bring that up because in
when we were in
Vanuatu we
had a lot of people that were like that
where for instance
Rob he was talking to a seven-day Adventist
lady and the seven-day Adventist
she was actually receptive to
the gospel but she was with her
friend and her friend kept trying to pull her
away so that she couldn't listen to Rob
but the lady kept listening
and Rob and her were talking for a
pretty long time I think it was
like almost 45 minutes
and eventually at the end Rob
got her to denounce
you know seven-day Adventism I don't know
how you put it but he ended up
getting her to denounce seven-day
being a seven-day Adventist
and she ended up putting her faith in Christ
and same thing with me while I was on the
college campus soul winning
I was talking to I talked to a lot of
seven-day Adventists and I had
I'll be honest they had my head
they had me scratching my head because
I was talking to one guy in particular
and this happened twice while I was there
but I know enough about
the seven-day Adventist doctrine
that I'm like when
people tell me they believe something I'm kind of like
skeptical for instance like when
seven-day Adventists they believe
in a thing called annihilation
so they first of all they believe in soul
sleep and what that means is that as soon
as someone dies then their soul
just rests in the earth until the
great white throne judgment got then
after the great right throne judgment God
ends up judging them and then
he cast them into the lake
of fire and then they're annihilated so they believe
in those two doctrines of
soul sleep
where a person if they die they don't
go straight to heaven or hell they
just sleep in the ground until Jesus
comes back and then the great white throne judgment
and so on and so forth and then they get annihilated
so they don't necessarily
they don't really believe in hell and then on top
of that I remember seeing
this in the past and I had to check like the
internet to see but
I remember seven-day Adventists
thinking that Jesus Christ
was Archangel Michael so a lot of them
did not believe that Jesus Christ was God
they say he's like Archangel Michael
and then they had
a lot of just other weird and false doctrine
but I'm talking to this guy like
I'm preaching to this guy and I ask him about
hell and what I've been doing
lately is when I talk to people about hell
I'll say things like hey do you
believe hell is a literal place
of fire and torment
and he was telling me yes
because what goes on is that
I've knocked a lot of doors in Mesa
and the thing is Mormons in
Mesa do not believe or
just Mormons in general do not believe in hell
so they think that hell
is just a place where you kind of get
reformed if you're not
like an ex-Mormon so sorry Rob
you know but if you're not an ex-Mormon
then you're not going
to you know if you're an ex-Mormon
you're doomed but if you're not an ex-Mormon
but you're bad then
you know God's going to reform you and then
eventually you'll go to one of the three
you know heavens or whatever
probably the lowest one so
that's what they believe so they don't think hell
is an actual place of fire and torment
so because of that since I know
seven-day Adventists don't believe hell is a place of
fire and torment then I would often
ask them that too because they believe in
annihilation so I'm talking to this guy
and then he's saying that I'm like
hey do you believe hell is a place of fire and torment
he's like yes I'm like
are you sure because I was like seven-day Adventists
don't believe that and he's just like yeah I believe
that so I was just like okay and I
was just like well do you believe Jesus Christ the
dark angel Michael and he was just like no I believe
Jesus is the son of God so I was just like something's
wrong with this because I'm like this is a little too
easy for the God of like
give me all the right answers because I'm
like I know for I'm in my head I'm like I know
for a fact seven-day Adventists don't believe that
so it got to the point why like
while I'm talking to the guy I'm like
look I said I'm glad you
believe that but that's not what seven-day
Adventists believe and I literally pulled out
my phone and then I like went
on the seven-day Adventists website to
make sure that's what they believe but
then I was confused because it was just like
I couldn't find it like they were saying
the stuff I thought that seven-day Adventists believe
was not what
they were actually saying on the website so I
was just like whatever so I just kept preaching
the gospel to the guy and then
after that I was just like well
I said I kept talking to
him about it and another thing
I was pretty sure that seven-day Adventists
believe is that if you don't keep the Sabbath day
then you're not going to be able to be
saved you know they'll say they'll sometimes give
salvation by they'll say salvation's by
faith but then they're really hard they're really
adamant that you have to keep
the Sabbath so I'm like
as I'm giving him my
you know as I'm preaching to him the gospel I'm just like
hey do you have to keep the Sabbath to be saved he's
constantly saying no so I'll be honest I was
kind of confused that this guy was just like
getting like he wasn't
he's saying he's seven-day Adventists he said he was a
seven-day Adventist for a really long time
but he's giving me all the right answers
or at least he's not giving me the seven-day
Adventist doctrine so after
I gave him the gospel
I just got to the end and I was just
like I don't really know what to do so
I just was like alright this is what I'm going to tell him I said
hey look man I said
I'm not a seven-day Adventist I'm never going to be
a seven-day Adventist I said I don't
believe you have to keep the Sabbath day I believe that
was done away with in Christ so I was like
if I was to work
every Saturday or Sunday or whatever you
believe about the Sabbath and
you know not take any rest and not
regard the Sabbath where would I
go and he was like you would go to heaven I was
just like okay let's pray
so then I was just like whatever because
at that point it's like what else can you
ask the guy it's like I don't know you know
I just threw my hands up on that
another one and I think this is a
really good story was that I was talking
to a Mormon guy so we were
soul winning on the campus and then I was
talking to a Mormon and the guy
he ended up
happy and sitting on a bench and I ended up
trying to preach them the gospel and the
same thing since I knew Mormons like whenever
I talk to Mormons just to kind of
make sure like I know what they like
just to not waste too much time on them I just
make sure to see
what they believe about hell because if they start
saying hell is not what
you know what the Bible says hell is then I'm not
going to waste that much time trying to preach to a person
who doesn't believe in hell because if
you don't believe in hell then do you really you know what's
the need of the savior if you can't if you're not going
to be believe in hell but anyway
so I ended up
talking to him and it was kind of the same
thing with him and the Seventh-day Adventist
some of the stuff that I'm thinking he was supposed to
give me some pushback on some of the questions
he wasn't giving me pushback on I asked him
about hell he's actually agreeing with me
on hell even though he told me it was a Mormon
Mormons don't believe that
Jesus Christ is God so I was
telling him hey the Bible says Jesus
Christ is God showing him verses
he wasn't really giving me that much pushback on
that so with Mormons
anyone who's been soul winning
in places like Mesa and talked to Mormons
you know that Mormons are extremely
deceptive so what
they'll do is they'll agree with everything you're
saying and then just to waste
your time and then towards the end
let's say you talk to them for about 15
minutes towards the end they're going to say
oh yeah we're just like you I believe the same thing
you believe and then what are they going to say
faith without works is dead I know
I'm sure every person that's
taught to a Mormon and who's been
soul winning for long enough has seen that
so anyway I'm just like
I didn't trust the guy I'll be honest
so because I didn't trust the guy
I just was like I don't know what
got me but I was just like I feel like this
guy is just like pulling my chain
so I was just like
you know what I'm just going to go off on
Mormonism and just see what he says
so I just
literally went off on Mormonism
I was saying like
as much bad stuff as I could about
Mormonism just to see what he said so I
was just like you're a Mormon huh
I was like you know Mormonism is a cult
I said you know every Mormon is
going to hell I was like you know they don't believe
the Bible I was like you know what Mormons
believe and this is what I'm telling them I'm like you know what
Mormons believe they believe that
God is on a planet
called Kolob and he's sleeping
with all these different women
populating planets I was like did you know Mormons
believe that and then the guy's
just like no I didn't
so I was just like well that's what they believe
so I'm like preaching to him
and then I'm like just getting really
passionate about it so then I'm like
you know what because he was black
so I was just like and with
I don't use the race card much
but when I do
I use it with Mormons
so
so anyway
because he was black I'm just like
you know what I'm going off
so I was just like hey
I'm like what's in your book bag
I'm like you have a Book of Mormon in your book bag
right now don't you because I was like
pull that Book of Mormon out and low and
behold he had a Book of Mormon in
his book bag and then he ended up
pulling it out so then I'm
like let me show you something so the
problem was was this so
it was all good up until
this point because I know in the
Book of Mormon I'm going to read the verses out
it says that pretty much if you have dark
skin that you have a curse
so I was just like
I know it says it in there but the problem
is the Book of Mormon is a big book of
a bunch of garbage so the problem
is I don't remember where it was
so I'm like sitting there trying to turn
and find the pages of where it's at
and I just couldn't find the page of where
it said like
you know people with dark skin or curse
so I'm like sitting there for like
ten minutes just like hey hold on just
be patient just wait
just be patient with me I'll find what I'm trying
I'll find what I'm trying to show you just
give me a few minutes so that got to the point
I was just like you know what I'm going on the internet
so then I pulled out my phone
I was just like where do Mormons believe
or where is it saying in the Book of Mormons
that black people are going to hell so then
I found the verses or that they're cursed
so I was just like okay so I was like let me show
you this so then I ended up showing them this
so actually there's three verses
that in the Book of Mormon that
say that people with dark skinned or cursed
and I'll just quickly read about to you
it says in Alma and this is not
Bible so bear
with me I'm just they try to make it
sound like the Bible but it's not but it
says Alma 3 6 it
says and the skins of the Lamanites
were dark according to the mark which
was set upon their fathers
which was a curse upon them
because of their transgression
and rebellion against their brethren
who consisted of Nephi
and don't name your child Nephi because we know you're
you're a Mormon so
but anyway Nephi Jacob
and Joseph and
Sam who was
just who were just and holy men
so also in
3rd Nephi chapter
number 2 verse 15 it says and their curse
was taken from them and their skin became
white like the Nephites so
once you're the curse is taken away
from you you know what you become white
it's like
and that's what it says in the Book of Mormon so if you
want if you want if you're a true
racist then you know what you do you go become a Mormon
that's that's what I believe about that
but
but this is the big one is
second Nephi 521
or 520
22 through 23
so just bear with me it says wherefore
the word of the Lord was fulfilled which
he spake unto me saying
that in so in as much as
they will will not
hearken unto the words they shall be cut
off from the presence of the Lord and behold
they were cut off from his presence
and he had caused the
cursing to come upon them
yea even a sore cursing
because of their iniquity for behold
they had hardened their hearts against
him that they became
like unto a flint wherefore
as they were white
and exceeding fair
and delightsome
that they might not be enticing
unto my people the Lord
did cause a skin of
blackness to come upon them
and thus saith the
Lord I will cause
I will cause that they
shall be loathsome
unto thy people
save
they shall repent of their iniquities
and the curse shall be
the seed of him
that mixeth with their seed
for they shall be cursed even with
the same cursing and the
Lord spake it and it was done so
you can clearly see from the
Book of Mormon they say hey if
these guys are getting
cursed so their skin is no
longer going to be white but it's going to be
a skin of blackness and it's going to be
loathsome so I
showed this guy this and I'm like you know
Mormons and I guess I
have the dates wrong but I'm like you know Mormons
didn't allow black people to join
Mormonism until like the 1960s
but I think it wasn't even
until the 1970s when they actually let black
people join Mormonism
where they said oh blacks can join
the Mormon church at that point so
I'm telling them all this and I can see
you know he's
opening up and things are making sense
to him so then I also told
them and this is something I know about
Mormons is that they teach that
marriage is eternal so if you're having
problems with your spouse now
don't become a Mormon because
you have problems for
all eternity so
but
these Mormons they believe
that you have to get married in the temple
and then once you get married in the temple
then you become you know you have this eternal
marriage and then you're with your spouse
for all eternity so I'm like that
contradicts the Bible and I'll just
quickly read these verses but if you're
familiar I'm not going to have you turn there just
for sake of time but in Matthew 22
they the
some guys come to try
to tempt Jesus and they give this elaborate
story about a woman that
or a man he's married to this woman
he dies and then his
wife dies or sorry
that man dies so then his brother
is supposed to take her to
be his wife the brother takes her
to be his wife and then he dies and it
gets to the point that seven brothers do
this so they're giving Jesus this
weird scenario and then
they said hey the woman dies also
so in heaven who's this
woman's husband going to be? So then
Jesus answers in Matthew 22
29 it says Jesus answered and said to
them ye do err not knowing the
scriptures nor the power of God
for in the resurrection they
neither marry nor are given in
marriage but are as the angels of God
in heaven but as touching
the resurrection of the dead have you not
read which was spoken unto
you by God saying I'm the God of
Abraham and the God of Isaac and the
God of Jacob God's not the
God of the dead but the living so we have
clear scripture from the Bible that says hey
when people die you're no longer married
you know you're gonna be like angels where
angels are not given into marriage
so we're not gonna be given into marriage
either so I showed them all these
verses and I was just like hey
I'm like I just
kept emphasizing that Mormons are
evil and wicked and
and you know they're going to hell they have
really bad doctrine and the guy
eventually was just like yeah you're right I see
what you're saying and then he started opening
up and he was just like well he was searching
like he went to many different churches in
his life and he just never felt like
he like knew what the truth
was so then because of that
that's why he ended up just going to the Mormon
church I was like well now I'm showing you
the truth that salvation is my faith
you know that you can't lose it
and now you know this so now
at least you have that truth and you can
you know live your Christian life from
there so one other thing I
did was that because
I was like I didn't want the
Mormons like influencing the guy
I said hey what I'll do
is this I'll give you my number
and I said what I'll do is
that if you have any questions
feel free to contact me because I just didn't want
him like the Mormons like let's say he gets
saved and the Mormons start talking to him and
start trying to like subvert him again
and all this stuff so I said hey I'm going to
give you my number and then I said
if you have any
questions just you know feel
free to send me a text message I said
I may not answer right away but I'll
try my best to answer you if you have any questions
so I think because I said that he
was able to open up more and then he was able to
get saved so then after he got
saved what's funny is this is
that was it was our last day soul winning so what
I ended up doing was this I ended up
I had two New Testaments
and then he had his Book of Mormon so I was just
like hey you know what let's do a two for
one trade I said I'm going to give you two Bibles
if you give me that Book of Mormon
so that he was just like okay so I was
just like perfect so then I gave him two
New Testaments he gave me the Book of Mormon
and I gave it to the ex-Mormon there
Rob so he has it still
I don't have it because it's evil
whatever it's probably filled with demons or something
but anyway
you know so that
was I think a really good success story
when it came to preaching to someone who was
lost who they were seeking
to try to get saved and understand
the Bible but they're going in
all the wrong directions and you know
what I was there to help preach the
Gospel to that guy so that he was able to get saved
and that's what we do when we go on
these mission trips is I'm sure
other people have stories like that
of different places they've been or different people
they've talked to about soul winning where you're
that person's you know
that person's I guess
the way that person can understand what the
Bible says about salvation and you'll be
that person that leads that person to Christ
so that they can
get saved you know there's a lot of people
how should I put it there's
sometimes you just need a specific
person to talk to someone and then
that person can help open that person's
eyes and that person can be able to get
saved and you know what that person's you
that person's you when you go out and go soul winning
I think of just many different stories of people
saying like I know
recently Ramon we were out
soul winning here in Phoenix
and we were knocking an
apartment complex and then some lady
was contemplating suicide and
Ramon ended up preaching to her
the gospel and then she ended up getting
saved and Ramon was just at
the right place at the right time to be able
to preach to that lady so that we can
so that she could get saved and same
thing with us hey we when we go out
on the foreign mission field
we're at the right place at the right time to preach
to the right people so those people
can be able to get saved now last
thing I want to get to is this
or two more things and I'll be done but
look at acts
836 acts 836
it says in acts 836
as they went on their way they came onto a
certain water and the eunuch said see here is
water what doth hinder me to be baptized and
Philip said if thou believeth with all thine heart
thou mayest and he answered and said
I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God
and he commanded the chariot to stand still
and they both went down and they went down
both into the water both Philip and the eunuch
and he baptized him
so one cool thing about this trip in
Banoi too was that after we got
people saved we ended up
talking to the people I would say
on average for like 10 to 20
minutes after they got saved
and what we were doing is we were trying to get the
people to live for God you know we see here
the eunuch wants to get baptized
because baptism is the first step of obedience
into serving God after you get saved
obviously we didn't baptize anyone on that trip
but we tried to point people in the right direction
we pointed people to the Baptist church that
we went to and said hey if you want to
serve what we would say
is hey try to go to this Baptist church
so you can be able to serve
God on top of that we would give them a lot
of material we gave them Bibles we gave them
our custom YouTube cards
with different videos and stuff on it
and then we had a QR code which they
can scan and then get on our email list
for the church and
we just took extra
time in talking to
them about the Bible what I often
did was after I got someone saved
kind of as a test but then a way to encourage
them to keep serving God is I would
take them here to Acts 16 or sorry
Acts 8 verse 36
and I would tell them about you know
the how a lot of these
false modern Bible
versions take out Acts 8 37
so I read the verses out and
say this is why I'm giving you a King James Bible
is so you'll know that it has
everything you need in here
unlike all these other modern Bible versions
they take out verses they remove things
and they change things
so now you have the truth and all you
have to do now that you're saved is just
read the truth and that's going to help
you grow as a Christian
so I would take the time to try to
edify them and
and just you know help them where
that they would be able to kind of get
get on their feet as a new believer
to be able to serve God so that's
one thing I really liked about Vanuatu
the people were extremely friendly
whenever you would preach to them they were extremely
thankful they loved that we were
there so it was a
really good place to go soul winning
for the short time we were there
now last last thing I want
to talk about is this look at Acts 8 39
where the Bible reads and it says
and when they were come out of the water the spirit
of the Lord caught away Philip
that the eunuch saw
him no more and he went
on his way rejoicing
but Philip was found at
Aztos
and passing through
he preached in all the cities
till he came to Caesarea
so what ends up happening this
later with Philip and the eunuch
is that after the eunuch gets baptized
Philip just disappears
and the eunuch sees him no more
and unfortunately just because of how the trips
go we're not church planting or anything
but a lot of these places that
we go soul winning they already have a good church
where they have a church there so
the best thing we can do is try to point them
to that church so that they can serve God
you know we're going there to get
people saved and we can even see
here in this passage that that's what Philip did
he got the eunuch saved and then
what did he do? He just disappeared
and went somewhere else and unfortunately
that's just kind of how life leads
that's the things that happen
in life where we may go to one
place and go soul winning there
and do a great work for God
and then once we're done with that place
we may end up going somewhere else later to try to be
a blessing to some
new country and see how that new country
is when it comes to receiving
the gospel so you know
but in 2024 there's a lot of ways
you can follow up with people especially
since you have things like WhatsApp
where you can talk to people around the world for free
so there's still ways where you can
encourage people to try to serve
God and serve the Lord it's not like
you know here where they don't really have
any you know ways of
communicating in 2024 we do have
ways of communicating via email
WhatsApp just different things
Facebook so there's ways you can
keep in contact with your converts
if you need to to be able to serve God
but with these
missions trips that's not necessarily
the you know the
we want to do that but
our goal is just to try to get as many
people saved as we can in
different places because some of these
places are not reached with the gospel at all
I mean we saw that in
Vanuatu where again we
talked to a lot of people and I did not meet
any people who were saved there
so there's obviously a need for people to go preach
the gospel in Vanuatu
but then there are other countries that we want to visit
that we want to go and preach
the gospel to the
people as well now I'll have you
turn to Matthew chapter number nine and
that'll be it but
Matthew chapter number nine
chapter number nine
and
last thing I want to say is this in Matthew
nine verse thirty-five
when you get there Matthew nine thirty-five
the Bible reads and it says
and Jesus went about all the
cities and villages teaching in their
synagogues and preaching
the gospel of the kingdom and healing
every sickness and every disease
among the people
but when he saw the multitudes
he was moved with compassion on them
because they fainted
and were scattered abroad as
sheep having no shepherd
then saith he unto his disciples
the harvest truly is plenteous
but the labors are few
pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest
that he will send forth
labors into his harvest
so I bring all that up to say this
is that I don't know the next time
we'll be going to Vanuatu
I would love to go back because I think it's a
really nice place I think it's
receptive to the gospel again
their English was better than I thought
it was going to be for talking to people
because we actually talked to people who were
not just on the college campus
we actually talked to just local
people and their English
seemed to be okay like I remember
preaching to a few people and their English
was fine same with we went to like
an island over there and their English
was good too so I think it's a good place
where we could definitely go back
but we just need laborers we just need people
who are willing to take that time out of their
schedule and out of the day to be able to go
to these foreign fields so that we could
be able to spread the gospel and preach
the gospel and get
many people saved and I pray
that we can find more hidden gems like
Vanuatu because I believe
it was a hidden gem again I didn't know
about Vanuatu until
like a few months ago and I think it's a
hidden gem and I'm sure there are other
hidden gems like that around the
world and I think that's
that's something that we can
strive to do is try to find these hidden
gems where we can preach and
evangelize and get many people saved
let's pray Lord I thank you for all you've done
thank you for giving us the opportunity to preach in
Vanuatu and just learn more about the people
and be able to to make an
impact there I just pray that you can
keep blessing our church and blessing
just soul winners around the world as
they try to preach preach preach
the gospel and get many many people saved
I thank you for all you've done Lord and I
praise you in Jesus name I pray Amen
Amen
Before we sing our last song this
evening if you would like to help
take down decorations or anything
don't take all of them down
meet with Mrs. Ball right
here in front of the pulpit after
we sing the last song so take
her song of us go to him 315 we'll get
we'll be dismissed
and singing 315 take my life
and let it be consecrated
Lord to thee 315
315
sing the sounds together now
315
lift the voice on that first now
take my
life and let
it be
consecrated
Lord to
me
take my hands and
let them move
at the
impulse of
thy love
at the
impulse of
thy love
take my feet
and let them
be swift
and beautiful
for thee
take my
voice and let
me sing
always
only for my
King
always only
for my
King
take my silver
and my gold
not
my blood I
withhold
take my moments
and my days
let them
flow in
ceaseless
rays let them
flow in
ceaseless rays
take my
will and make
it mine
it shall be
no longer
mine
take my heart
it is
mine own
it shall be
my royal
throne
it shall be
my royal
throne
bring things down we don't want to lose any
decorations some stuff belongs
to people hopefully everybody can
hear me I don't know where the mic is at but
other than that you're dismissed but if you
want to help out please come up here as soon
as you can
come up here as soon as you can