Well, it's a great honor and privilege to be here with you this evening and to preach to this church and to be at this conference.
What an amazing conference that we have here.
You know, I really enjoyed the sermon this morning.
And as as Pastor Thompson was talking about going to that reservation, I was saying there's something familiar about this.
And then I was like, oh, yeah, I was on that trip because we did win in football by a lot.
So, you know, I did remember that portion of the trip very well.
Also, it's incredible to see all these decorations here and especially having been here yesterday because it was like completely different decorations.
And I was getting a little nervous, though, there's so many birds up here.
I kind of thought it was like the marriage supper, the lamb or something.
So I'm kind of, you know, just just pray for me while I'm up here.
No, I'm just kidding. No, the decorations look amazing.
What a great privilege to have a church that throws together a conference like this.
And I know many of you have been very sacrificial and donating your time and effort, energy for this conference to go forward.
And we greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for Pastor Anderson for not just hosting this conference, but really living up to its name.
You know, we don't just have a missions conference and talk about how wonderful missions would be.
We actually do a lot of missions trips, and especially this church.
This church is really trying to go across the entire world to preach the gospel.
And I believe that they are going to do it, and the question is just whether or not you're going to help them.
Because if you don't do it, they're going to do it.
And so, you know, this is the time to get into the game and to get a part of the giant soul winning movement that is happening.
And really, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about soul winning and about missions.
But really, soul winning can be very easy.
And the title of my sermon this evening is "Soul Winning Made Easy".
"Soul Winning Made Easy".
And of course, I'm focusing on the Bahamas as kind of a location where we went on a soul
winning trip this beginning of the year.
But you kind of see in the Bible, God making soul winning very easy at times.
And we look at a story here in Luke chapter 5, look at verse 1 again, it says, "And it
came to pass as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God.
He stood by the lake of Gennesaret and saw two ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen
were gone out of them and were washing their nets.
And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would
thrust out a little from the land.
And he sat down and taught the people out of the ship.
Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, 'Launch out into the deep, and let
down your nets for a draught.'
And Simon answering said unto him, 'Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken
nothing.
Nevertheless, at thy word, I will let down the net.'
And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and their net
break.
And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come
and help them.
And they came and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.
When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knee, saying, 'Depart from me, for I am a
sinful man, O Lord.'
For he was astonished, and all that were with them at the draft of the fishes, which they
had taken.
And so was also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon.
And Jesus said unto Simon, 'Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men.'
And so Jesus in his ministry would often use earthly examples, or as I say, carnal truths,
to illustrate spiritual truths.
And here they had a great carnal example given to them that when you follow Jesus Christ's
advice, you can have great success.
They tried fishing all night and caught literally nothing.
And then in just a few moments, just following Jesus Christ's example, they catch more than
they could even handle.
And he's using these fish as an example of what he wants to do for soul winning.
Because he says, 'Hey, I showed you this illustration so that you'd believe me, you'd trust in me.
But you know, it's not about just catching fishes.
It's not about just having a great business and making lots of money, but rather what's
important is collecting souls for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when you follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you're going to catch more than you can even
handle.
You can get more than you can handle.
And it can be very easy.
I mean, can you imagine how hard it would be if they said, 'Hey, all you have to do
in fishing is just drive out there, just let down your net and pick it up and you've got
more fish than you can handle.'
Everybody would fish for a minute at that point, right?
But any of us that have ever gone fishing, you realize it's really hard.
I remember the first time I ever went fishing, my grandpa, he took me out and we'd always
go to Jack in the Box for breakfast and it was good back then, okay?
So maybe because I was young, but we had Jack in the Box and he likes to go out fishing
very early.
You know, get out there on the water, maybe 5 a.m. or something like that.
So we get out on the water, I cast out my line and in about 60 seconds it's just tugging.
It's just tugging, I mean this thing is tugging hard.
And I start reeling in and I catch like a seven and a half, eight pound fish just in
like 60 seconds.
And I mean, you know, six pounds doesn't seem like a lot, but we're talking about fish,
for some reason they're just a lot bigger.
So I mean, this is a pretty big fish that I caught in like 60 seconds.
This is easy.
You know, and they're thinking like, this isn't how it normally works, okay.
And then we probably were out on the boat fishing for, I don't know, six, seven hours and we
never caught anything ever again.
And I didn't know what to expect having gone into fishing, but in reality, as many times
you get out there and you just cast your line, nothing happens.
Sometimes your hook gets snagged.
It's just kind of boring.
A lot of people think of fishing as being very boring because it takes a lot of time,
a lot of effort, a lot of energy, just to even catch anything.
And unfortunately it seems like in the world that we live today, a lot of people are fishing
for souls the way that Peter did at first, where they're laboring really hard, but they're
accomplishing nothing.
And it seems like there is just a giant movement of missions and evangelism today in this world
that's coiling hard, but they're not really catching a lot.
And you say, "What's the difference between Peter catching a lot and catching nothing?"
Well, in one clear example, he's doing what Christ told him to do.
And when you do what Christ tells you to do, you're going to catch more than you can even
handle.
And soul-winning can be very easy.
Getting people saved can be very easy, soul-winning can be made very easy, missions can be made
very easy.
But it seems like there are so many people in the world today that are trying to make
missions hard, and we need to make them easy again.
And let me tell you something, there is nothing easier than soul-winning in the Bahamas, okay?
And we're talking about mission strips.
I mean, this is mission strip as easy as you're ever going to get it.
It's so easy.
I'm wearing flip-flops tonight, all right?
Just to illustrate, I mean, you can go out there in flip-flops and get a multitude saved.
You know what I mean?
And it's so relaxed.
It's so easy.
It's so safe.
It's so fun.
I mean, really, it's like a glorified vacation, folks.
And it's almost as easy as if Christ said, "Hey, I know where all the fish are."
Just go right over there, just drop your net, and you'll have more than you can even bring
into the boat.
And you'll ask other people to bring their boat, and it's more than their boat can handle.
And you know what?
There are places in this world where you want to catch souls, well, as long as you go where
Jesus tells you to go, hey, you can have so many, and you can't even get them all in
the boat.
You know, a lot of people, they're taking a big boat and they're toiling really hard
in the nation of Israel.
I mean, think about how many missionaries are being sent to Israel today and they're
toiling hard, they're laboring hard, and they're not really accomplishing much, they're
not catching very many.
And think about how much harder it would be to travel all the way to the Middle East,
much more conflict, much more danger, whereas the Caribbean is kind of like the destination
spot for a vacation.
And then on top of that, talk about soul hunting being made easy.
And I think some people, they're just not trying to get the low-hanging fruit in this
world.
But you know what?
We need to try and get the low-hanging fruit, because who knows how long it's going to stay
there on the ground without rotting.
You know, fruit that's on the ground, it's great, but if you don't ever pick it up, a
bug could come get it, animals could come get it, it could rot, it could perish.
Someone needs to go and gather that easy fruit.
And you know what?
God bless people that go to hard places.
I'm not down on you, but let's go to the easy places too, okay?
But there's so many missionaries going out and kind of just doing nothing, going trying
to learn a language for six, seven years.
It's like how much souls could you have won if you had spent six or seven years in the
Bahamas?
If you were going to a place that was actually receptive, a place that you already speak
the language.
And I don't know why people just don't want to use this method, but we need to really
challenge a lot of people's minds and hearts on the right type of soul winning, the right
type of mission today and trying to seek out the people who are the easiest, because there
is a lot of fish that can be gathered right now that are not being gathered.
Go to John chapter four, go to John chapter four.
And I believe this, I believe that God consistently wants to make soul winning easy, and he has
made it easy, and it can be easy.
That does not mean every time, there's going to be hard cases, there's going to be places
that are not very receptive, there's going to be difficulties in soul winning.
But many stories in the Bible, it's very easy.
And so many people, they're intimidated like, "Well, but I've never been soul winning.
I've never even gone out and shared the gospel."
And what I find so inspiring is that when you go on trips like this, you'll have people
that come out with you, and they say, "This is my first time to give the gospel to someone."
You know, and that's to me, a lot of faith to go to a foreign country, having never successfully
gotten someone saved by yourself, but just to show up and just say, "Here am I, Lord.
You can use me."
And then they end up getting a lot of people saved.
And when we were in the Bahamas, we had some younger people too, some young teenagers and
young children that had gone out so many plenty, but they hadn't really had the confidence
to preach to a lot of people.
And being in the Bahamas, they ended up preaching to a lot of people, and actually got a lot
of people saved, even the young people.
And I think that God wants to use stories like John chapter 4 to inspire us.
Look what it says in verse 39, "And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on
him for the saying of the woman which testified, 'He told me all that ever I did.'"
So in John chapter 4 we have a story of a woman at the well who ends up encountering
Jesus, not really knowing who He is, being confronted with Him.
They have a pretty interesting exchange, but through the exchange Jesus Christ convinces
her that He is that Messiah, that He is the one that is the Christ.
She believes in Him, leaves her water pot immediately, runs back into the city, and
according to the Bible, notice what it says in verse 39, and many of the Samaritans of
that city believed on Him for the sake of the woman.
This is a woman that's very sinful according to the Bible.
She had five husbands according to the Bible.
She was constantly getting married and divorced, married and divorced, and in fact the last
guy that she was with, not even married, not even in a good lifestyle.
She's a Samaritan so she's not really trying to live a godly life.
She's not even in the right religion, yet the same day that she gets saved, what happens?
She gets many other people saved.
You know what that tells me?
You have no excuse.
If you're saved, you have no excuse to not be able to get someone else saved.
I mean if this woman can get someone saved, you say, "Well, I'm sinful."
So is she.
"Well, I'm sinful."
So is Peter.
What did Peter say?
"Depart from me, Lord.
I'm a sinful man."
Jesus say, "Oh, you're right.
Get away.
You stink, too."
No, no, no.
He said, "Hey, come and follow me."
Right?
And he said, "Hey, you're going to catch a lot of men.
You, the sinful Peter, you're going to be really influential in the Kingdom of God."
And let me tell you something.
There's never a bad time to start soul winning.
And if this woman, after just having a short, brief encounter with Jesus Christ, can get
many saved, it sounds like it's easy.
You know why?
Because soul winning is easy.
Soul winning can be very easy.
And you say, "Well, I don't know what to say."
Well, here's the question.
Are you saved?
Yeah.
Then do you know how to get someone saved?
If you're, if you don't know how to get someone saved, you're not saved.
Okay?
Because you should be able to tell someone what you did.
Hey, I believed in Jesus.
That's what the Bible says, right?
Yeah, maybe you might not be the most eloquent.
Maybe you might not know every verse.
But I'm sure you've heard of John 3, 16 before.
I'm sure you could probably point to some verses.
I'm sure you got the basics of you're a sinner, you were on your way to hell, but you believed
in Christ as death, burial, and resurrection, and you're only trusting in Him.
I believe every saved person's got that down.
I think that people are so intimidated they think, "Well, there's more to it."
In many cases, there's not.
Of course, I'm not trying to say, "Don't become an expert soul winner."
I'm not trying to say, "Don't study the Bible."
I'm not saying, "Don't memorize all the verses."
I'm not saying, "Don't improve your soul winning."
What I'm saying is even the most basic beginning soul winner can get many saved.
And you say, "How?"
They just try.
They just go to the right group.
They just go to the right people.
They just try something easy.
And let me tell you something, if you're intimidated on missions, you know, you hear about these
places in India where they're eating rat, okay, and you hear about the weird things
going on in Africa, okay.
I mean, Africa is kind of scary, I'll just be honest with you, okay.
Middle East, that's kind of terrifying.
China, it's like illegal.
You're like, "I don't want to go to this place."
Thomas, okay.
It's soul winning, made easy.
This is like, you just walk into the town and you can just get people saved.
And you say, "Well, what kind of skill level do I have to have that you're saved?"
That's it.
If you're saved, you're already qualified.
You're ready to go.
It's soul winning, made easy in the Bahamas.
And look, it's not just the Bahamas.
There's other places like this.
I'm just telling you that this place is one of those places.
And it's incredible opportunity for a lot of people to do a lot of soul winning, learn
soul winning, maybe get some confidence, and then go into some harder areas, or some more
difficult situations in the future.
And of course, not all soul winning is going to be easy.
There's going to be obstacles, difficulties, there's going to be challenges.
But this one, for us, if you speak English, if you're saved, I mean, this is one of the
easiest opportunities you'll ever get.
And think about how many people are going on a long deputation, accomplishing what?
About nothing.
This woman, her deputation was about five seconds.
She just went straight into the town, and you know what, she didn't ask for anybody's
money.
She didn't need any money.
He'd say like, "How much money do I need to raise to preach the gospel?"
Zero.
Now obviously to get to the Bahamas, you might have to get like a thousand bucks to get a
ticket or something, right?
But you know, it wouldn't take that long.
You don't need hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn some foreign language
to then hope that some guy might show up at church one day and walk the aisle.
You can literally just open your mouth boldly and make known the mystery of gospel and get
people saved the second after getting saved.
This is near and dear to my heart from the way that I got saved because I believe that
you should start sharing the gospel right away and that we should even encourage people
that get saved to start sharing the gospel right away.
Go to Mark chapter number six.
I was about five years old and I was going to a church.
It was just an evangelical church.
It wasn't Baptist, but every week they would give the kids in the Sunday school class the
gospel and offer them to come down and get saved.
And I remember hearing it several weeks in a row and kind of every week kind of getting
closer and closer to wanting to get saved.
And I remember just one week I just finally, you know, I said like, "Look, if I don't
go down that aisle and get saved, if I don't trust Christ today and for some reason I die
on my way home from church, I'm going to hell."
I'm like, "I don't want to go to hell."
And I believed on Jesus Christ.
That same day I lived where we didn't have an alley, basically our next door neighbors
and behind us, we shared the same fence line, right?
And across the way was two kids that lived there and it was my same age, they were Casey
and Stacey, all right?
And they were twins and we were friends.
So I went over there, same day, and I just started trying to give them the gospel to
get them saved.
Now you say, "What verses did you quote?"
None, because I probably didn't know any verses yet.
You know, at least I was just trying.
And I remember one was interested, one wasn't, so I ended up praying with one of them to
get saved.
I said, "Do you know he got saved?"
I have no idea, but I know that I tried.
Now after he prayed, the other one didn't, so we just made fun of him that he was going
to hell.
And then I remember after that, you know what, he ended up wanting to pray.
So you know what, others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, okay.
So you know, some are really easy, and then others you got to mock into getting saved.
No, I'm just kidding.
This is not necessarily the right way to go about it, right?
Telling you what happened.
But you know, we should encourage our children, we should encourage the youth, we should
encourage new believers to go soul-winding right away.
To not wait.
I mean, if they're all headed to hell, you can't send them there again, you know?
And if you are in here and you say, "I go soul-winding, but I don't want to do talking,"
you know what?
Just start talking.
Just start doing it.
You say, "Well, it's intimidating here."
Okay, well, go to the Bahamas.
It's way less intimidating.
I'm telling you, you can wear flip-flops, folks, okay?
Sandals.
And hey, you know what?
The children of Israel were wearing sandals when they were walking through the wilderness,
okay?
It's called church, alright?
The church of the wilderness, so don't get mad at me.
Now, I'll just be honest with you.
When I was pastoring at Steadfast, someone came to me and they approached me and they
said, "Hey, Pastor Shelley, you've got to take a missions trip with us to the Bahamas."
And I was like, "Yeah, the Bahamas."
I'm sure everybody would love that.
Pastor Shelley is taking a missions trip to the Bahamas, yeah!
You know, it's a lot of mission work, right?
And I was just thinking, like, this is what I told them.
I said, "I'm probably never going to take a missions trip to the Bahamas."
'Cause I said, "There's like a stigma, that's like a vacation spot."
And he's like, "No, we gotta understand, the people there are really receptive."
And I said, "Well, the only way I'd believe it is if I went there and did a scouting trip,
just because, frankly speaking, you know, I would be embarrassed if I take, like,
40 people from my church to this really expensive place and no one wants to get saved."
You know, that would be kind of embarrassing. It would just be like,
wasting money or something like that. And that was kind of what I was afraid of.
So I didn't really believe it. I was kind of skeptical, but he said, "Why don't we just go?
You and me just do a scouting trip." So in 2019, I decided to just take a quick little,
like, two or three day trip down there just to kind of test the waters and see what it was like.
Plus, I did a little bit of research into the continent, or I'm sorry, not the continent,
the country, just to see what it was like. And the Bahamas is actually a group of 700 islands,
which is crazy, but only about 30 or 40 of those 700 are inhabited. So there's just a lot of just
little tiny islands no one lives on, but there's about 30 or 40 that are inhabited. It's mostly
just a couple that have the vast majority of the population. And the main island there is called
Nassau. Nassau is kind of the capital city and it's the largest island. It's where the vast majority
of the people live. It's very small. It's only 80 square miles. And just to give you an idea of how
big that is, I looked at the city of Phoenix and we're not talking about the Phoenix Metro. We're
talking about only the city of Phoenix is 518 square miles. So just the city of Phoenix is over
six times larger than the entire island of Nassau, which is like this main population of the
Bahamas. Surprise. Surprise city here in Arizona. Some of y'all know where that's at. That is 110.5
square miles. So the city of Surprise is larger than the island of Nassau. So just to give you
an idea just kind of what kind of size dimensions we're talking about. So it's actually a very small
island. On this island, it's about 250,000 people. That's quite a few people to be concentrated into
this area. And that's just like the locals that live there. At any given time, there's probably
anywhere from 300 to 400,000 people on the island just because there's a ton of tourism. There's
tons and tons of people are on the island visiting at all times. And so there's a lot of people
that are on this little tiny space. So it can be kind of difficult to travel from one side to the
other, considering like, it's like, oh, it's only two miles. That's like 35 minutes, you know, it's
like, it's like New York City packed at times or whatever. So it can be a little bit densely populated
in certain areas. If you look at the ethnic aspect of the demographics, it's 90% black.
So of course, you know, most of the people there that you're going to run into are black. There's
there's about 4% white, 2% mixed, and then just like 1% other. So it's very predominantly black.
And, you know, it's funny to me that in America, it seems like there's just so much hatred
increasing for black people. And it's like they there's this idea out there that just black people
are just bad or something, or like black people are cursed or like, there's something wrong with
black people. But you know what's wrong with black people? America. Because when you visit black people
that are not from America, they're way different, like completely different people. And you know
what? You can really appreciate, you know, the the culture difference when you go to some of
these Caribbean islands, and you run into these individuals. They're much different. And let me
tell you something, racism is the dumbest thing on the planet. It's not real. Okay, red, yellow,
black and white, they're all precious in insight. And the reason why black people in America often
are bad is because no one loves them. It's because they don't have a father there to love them. It's
because they don't have a church with a pastor that loves them that's teaching them the Bible.
It's because they're living in a system where no one's feeding into these people and loving
these people. And let me tell you something, if you love black people, you know what you do? You
give them the gospel. You wouldn't give them handouts. You wouldn't just give them money.
You wouldn't just give them privilege. You wouldn't just tell them how enslaved they are. No,
you know what you'd do is you'd give them the gospel and you'd love on them. You'd teach them
the Bible. And let me tell you something, the black people in the Bahamas are some of the greatest
people I've ever been around. You know, they put the shame normal Americans. Oh, I just like to
be around people like me. Well, you know what? People are like you sometimes aren't that great,
but you know, the people in the Bahamas are great. I love them. And in fact, their nation is
considered 93% Christian. You know, visiting the Bahamas is kind of like if you could get
into a time traveling device and go back to like the 1950s of America and just like get to experience
what culture would have been like in the 1950s. Albeit everyone's black, but you know, so there's
a little difference there, right? The water fountains don't have a label on them. Okay.
But like, you know, it's, it's, it's like normal and nice and people always are worried about like
traveling to foreign countries, how dangerous it is. But I'll tell you what, downtown Houston is way
scarier than Bahamas, downtown Detroit, downtown Fort Worth. Hey, there's a lot of scary places
in America. Okay. And there I felt way safer. It was way more at home. I enjoyed it. I love being
there. It's great. Now of those 93%, 75% are classified as quote Protestant. Um, they kind
of break that down even further and a brother writer had rightly said that it's about 35%
Baptist. So, um, that's kind of the predominant denominational distinction, but here's the thing
that's crazy is, you know, having visited there, I like, I personally never ran in anybody that was
already saved. Like it's 93% Christian, but virtually no one saved. And I'm not saying that
no one is, but you know, when you run into people, it's almost no chance that they're going to be
saved, which is just kind of sad considering how much they love the Bible. They're very Christian.
Their schools are very Christian. They're reading the Bible daily in schools. Christianity is
talked about. Everybody talking about Christianity, thinks they're Christian, wants to be a Christian,
likes Christianity, and they're just not saved. They're very familiar with the Bible. They know
a lot of Bible, but unfortunately they just, they don't have that connection of what it means to be
saved. Another thing that's interesting is the original origin of the Bahamas is that it was
originally discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492. So you know that old saying where he crossed
the ocean blue? Well he actually found the island of Bahamas and it was the Lucanian people that
were originally there. It ended up becoming kind of a prison colony at one point. Later it became
a prison colony for American loyalists during the American Revolution. And so it kind of has an
interesting history. It was a British colony for a long time. Eventually got its own independence.
But again it's predominantly Christian. It's 35% Baptist, 15% Anglican, 8% Pentecostal,
5% Church of God, 5% Seventh-day Adventists, 4% Methodists, 14% Catholic, and I think he said
they had 300 Jews. So I don't know how that works, okay. Have fun with that, all right.
It's about 300 too many. So Brother Nick convinces me, we go on this trip, and you know,
give a lot of credit to Brother Nick because I would have never gone here, you know, if it
wasn't for him or someone else just saying like how great this is. So him taking us out there,
and he was right, super receptive. It was just us there for like maybe two, two and a half days,
and we didn't go sowing the whole time, just like maybe a few hours a day, because a lot of
it I was just scouting. I was going, and I wanted to go to different areas because I didn't want to
just go to one area and it was good, and then like have kind of a poor idea about the island. So we
went to all kinds of different areas, talking to lots of different people, went to schools,
tried to talk to them, see what that would be like, and in just like a few days we got like 33 people
saved. So that's pretty good receptivity for just a couple people. During that time we had some really
cool experiences. I talked to a guy whose name was Deacon John. Deacon John was the deacon of his
Baptist Church. He was just sitting outside and I tried to ask him about the gospel and it was
clear he didn't believe in salvation by faith alone. He believed in repent of your sins, he believed
that you could lose your salvation, and so I kind of gave him the gospel and it was you know it was
probably one of the harder people I talked to because almost everybody else has got like this.
I mean just super easy super fast. This guy wasn't really getting it but my soulmate partner was
like talking to somebody else so I was like all right I'll just give him another chance or just
keep explaining things and it was just like not going anywhere and just it was just over and over
I just kept explaining it explaining eternal security not getting it and then I was about to
just give up and just kind of move on and then he just he just kind of like looks at me and he's
just like wait a minute I felt you came from America today because God sent you here to tell
me that salvation is actually free and you can't lose it because I'm not even saved and you need
to get me saved and I was just like right that's that's what I was trying to tell you this whole
time and he's like well thank you so yeah you're right and then he ended up getting saved and it
was just like so incredible because I wasn't that blunt but then finally he just kind of was like
wait a minute you're telling me I'm not even saved and you're here to get me saved and I was just
like yeah and he ended up getting saved and it was just a really cool story to see someone that's
been plugged into church and kind of have to throw away the fact that look been in church his whole
life he's a deacon he's in a respected position but then he has to admit humbly like I'm not even
saved I haven't even gotten it yet and God must you know wanted you to come here now every store
was this this great I was talking to another lady at a door and my soul winning partner brother Nick
he got really zealous so he just goes to the next door so I'm just still talking to her and kind of
I'm not even finished but he like comes back and he looks like he just saw a ghost or something
he's just kind of like oh man that lady over there is something and I'm like he's interrupting
me while I'm preaching the gospel he's thinking like calm down bro okay so I finished with her
and then I like I kind of look at him he's like dude that lady is is like deemed possessed or
something I don't know so but but before we can even like really move very forward a kid's
walking down the street he's like hey let me grab him so he just kind of starts talking to this kid
well then I noticed there's this woman and she's just kind of like there's her fence she's just
like she just kind of like pops up over this giant fence and she's just like mad dogging us
and then she's like she's coming out and so like I try to just like meet her halfway so he can like
keep giving the gospel to this kid and I walk up to her and I'm like hey we're just talking
to people what's your name she's like Pandora it's like oh man like Pandora's box or like what
now there's a story about Pandora's box and Pandora's box is basically this Greek myth
where a woman opens and it's like a jar a box depending on how how you read it but she basically
had a husband's jar she wasn't supposed to open it she opened it and when she opened it she unleashed
curses on all mankind and so it's basically like a bastardized version of Eve but it's not good
okay and she lived up to the name so I start talking to this lady and you know I'm just
I just like just I'm agreeable to anything like anything that she says I'm just saying yes because
I'm just like just trying to like keep the conversation I'm just like showing her verses
and she's just like doesn't even blink she's just like staring me down just saying nonsensical
things getting really mad at us you could you could lose your salvation yes you could you don't
tell me anything different and I'm just trying to be calm but she kind of figured out what I was
doing at some point and I'm just like yeah sure yeah whatever that she then just runs over there
and she interrupts brother Nick she starts screaming like get away go away they're false
prophets run away from them and unfortunately the kid got nervous and so he walked away and he
didn't get saved and then brother Nick just looks at her and he's just like you wicked she just like
curses her in the name of the Lord and I was just like whoa okay then she just walks back in so we
just kind of finished the street and then we're walking back and this is the weirdest part we're
like walking back and she's still kind of just mad dog I guess but then as right as we kind of
like walk away she goes these two guys are the servants of the most high god I was just like
what let's get out of here like what's happening this is a weird story okay so okay there is some
weirdos there all right but that was the only lady that we ran into that was kind of weird
also uh brother kitten knolls he's from there and I think he was in the Philippines at the time or
somewhere abroad but he had messaged us to go and talk to his brother and so I ended up meeting up
with his brother at one point on the island and we were able to give him the gospel and you know
it looked it seemed like he got saved so praise the Lord that we were able to talk to somebody that
we really cared about and give him the gospel and you know you would think it's kind of weird like
oh someone that's a really good soul winner why would one of their family members need someone
to get give him the gospel but think about this Jesus said this for Jesus himself testified that
the prophet hath no honor in his own country and look what it says in Mark chapter six verse four
but Jesus said to them a prophet is not without honor but in his own country and among his own
kin and in his own house you know the bible says that even Jesus own brethren didn't believe in him
and you know sometimes i think the hardest person to ever give the gospel to is a family member
second friends third co-workers you know and then everybody who don't know it's easy right
i mean it's a lot easier foreign people really easy so it's it's definitely true now because of
the success we actually scheduled a trip to go right back this was at the end of 2019 so i was
like all right may 2020 we're going but then of course covid came and just kind of put our plans
on hold and i just because i felt like it was going to be such a successful trip i canceled it
i didn't know what was going to happen i just wanted to make sure that the max people could come
when we went there so we decided to postpone it i didn't know how long it would take obviously that
was kind of unprecedented but it took us a few years but we decided to go back in 2023 so the
beginning of this year we went and praise god when we waited you know we ended up having 60 people
come out soul winning with us which is a large group try organizing 60 people it's fun but we
ended up having 653 salvations like one-on-one and then with the schools we ended up counting
close to almost a thousand is about 980 total salvations for the trip but what was cool and
i'd never heard of this before but brother kenton told me he said hey there's this really cool thing
you need to do at the school when you go there after you preach the gospel tell every student
to get out a piece of paper and then on the piece of paper you're going to have them write out
what they believe now and so you know basically questions asked hey what do you have to do to be
saved can you lose your salvation did you change your mind and then some people would even ask
a few other questions like that and so we would go and we we got an opportunity to preach in some
of the schools and we actually had like thousands and thousands and thousands of students that we
got to preach on this trip and you know credit to brother Kent Noles he went and talked all these
schools and got it all set up and he said the reason why they were so willing is because he
told them we have 60 evangelists coming from America so the fact that people came made a big
deal if they said hey there's two or three they may not want to give us the time but when they
said they had 60 they were thinking like yeah and you know say well how do 60 people preach to kids
well they would put us all in their different classrooms so we'd show up early in the morning
and they would just shuffle us out and in fact many times they wanted 40 or 50 so we didn't even do
just the two we didn't even pair them out some would just you're just going with this class you're
going with this class some people we paired up too but like we had opportunities where if we had
even more soul winners we could have talked to more classrooms we like ran out of people even
some of the days think about can you imagine today going to like the junior high school here in Tempe
or in Phoenix and just preaching to a bunch of students but you know what it's what the Bible
says that a prophet doesn't have the same honor in his own country as he does when you go to a
foreign country go to a foreign country now all of a sudden you can talk to a bunch of students
and i mean what an incredible opportunity i think we went to about five or six different schools
while we were there we preached to probably close to a thousand students every time so in total
probably five six thousand kids heard the gospel very clearly you know and i even have in fact with
me a lot of those papers today and i'm going to read some of them here in a minute but really
cool stuff so of the salvations that we just confirmed one-on-one like normal traditional
soul winning we had like over 600 and then the ones where the papers were really clear
you know it gave us another 300 or so so we had like almost a thousand salvations
total for the trip plus a lot of times what we did is we would preach in the morning come back
at lunch and then talk to the students one-on-one but it was hard to get anybody saved because
everybody was saved after that like you would show up at lunch and a lot of them were already
saved you could tell a lot of them already had all the right answers were talking to their friends
and in fact encouraging their friends or they'd bring you somebody like here's a kid that didn't
get it you know like we preach it to him he's kind of slow you know what i mean he needs it again
right but i mean the smart ones the quick ones they got it who got there's a lot of people who
preached in that in those schools that are here today oh yeah we have we have several people here
they got to preach in the schools you know you need to ask these people about it one of the coolest
experiences all of them were nervous and all of most every one of them was kind of like the woman
of the well like i don't even know what i'm doing like what do i say it's like say god loves you
okay you're a sinner say it with me you're a sinner you know it's like he's giving the gospel
they're not even they're not even prepared in a sense but in the same way because they're saved
and you have the holy ghost it's easy it's so many made easy and these people just love this
opportunity i mean many of the teachers were very thankful many of the students were thankful
not all many of them okay um it was also cool that when we were there we had a lot of people
from faithful word come out we had people from first works come out we had people from very
bad this church come out and you know to bring this verse to light a little bit in mark six
it's always funny to me when i go to an emission strips like this and it's mixed it's like my
people and then a bunch of uh people from other churches because i've noticed that all the people
from other churches they treat me so much better they're always like thank you so much pastor
shelly this is so awesome pastor shelly my people are like where's where's the soda you know like
why do i have to bunk with him you know it's like like yeah okay cool the people in other
churches like this is so amazing you know thank you so much you know they're just like all excited
right that's what you get okay so so you know what if you go to this church thank pastor anderson
don't be one of these people that's ungrateful for this church i mean you have an incredible
church and an incredible opportunity i mean they're taking you and spoiling you every week on all
these mission trips that sometimes you would think like a person from faithful word coming to yours
is like where's all the mission trip you know brother's a girl goes so winning every day
you know where are you at you know it's like okay calm down right we're just we're just trying to
do you know some work here right but you know thank pastor anderson thank faithful word baptist
church if you're visiting from another church thank your pastor encourage your pastor you know
just because this verse exists doesn't give you an excuse it's just saying hey it's a reminder like
you know don't get your hopes up when your people don't like you that much you know but at the same
time you don't be that person you'd be the exception that still is very thankful very
appreciative so we got a great opportunity to go to all these schools not only that we went
soul hunting at the university the neighborhoods the mall the stores and honestly all of us good
really the only problem is just if you don't run into people so sometimes when you go to
neighborhoods and stuff maybe there's not a lot of people home or answering that'd be only a
really obstacle because virtually almost everybody wants to hear the gospel and then a high percentage
of those that hear end up even getting saved so really it's just you're just trying to find people
but like when you find people it's just like so easy also the university during the timing if it's
when school's in session boy this is like so when he made easy times a thousand we went there and it
wasn't even like in session and we still had a lot of people safe but i remember the first time we
went there's like six seven hundred students just walking just just out in the middle of nowhere
and i mean you could just walk up to groups of three four five and just give the gospel until
you couldn't talk anymore i mean talk about a net that you can't even drag in and you know my my
goal is the next time we get an opportunity to go to the bahamas or take a mission trip i want to
go at the peak college time and and and try to go at that time and that would be my recommendation
to anybody if you can go there that would be one of the greatest opportunities that you could
possibly have schools are amazing sc mcpherson junior high school loved us and it was awesome
the teachers were giving us water they wanted to take pictures with us the students were getting
saved in droves it was awesome we got to eat at some places and you know we didn't have to have
rat or any bugs or anything like that i saw dogs out in the neighborhoods and no one was like trying
to tackle it or anything like that but you know the thing is because the bahamas is like a tourist
place then they have like american food you know what i mean like if you want mcdonald's
it's heading to bahamas you want windies they got windies but then they also have great food
okay they have good food especially because they have two giant resorts they have like bahamar
and they have atlantis and atlantis is like its own island of videnture it's just this is amazing
and you basically you go from like all black people to only white people again okay so then
you kind of cross this bridge and you have to pay to cross the bridge right that's that's where
i said the 1950s you kind of go back because they kind of have the white side but some people just
got that um but you know we went to one restaurant Poseidon's table it was like a buffet amazing
amazing food uh then we even went on the beach and we got to ride on sea doos this was awesome
go over to axe chapter 16 in the bible go to axe chapter 16 this is some of the greatest beaches
you'll ever see some of the greatest water you'll ever see so clear uh we got to go to one of the
beaches that was near the baha mar resort and we rented some sea doos and we were having fun
and honestly we i i like i enjoyed it a ton but i got to the point where i didn't need to ride
anymore i mean we could have had you know we were there for hours but it was like we could have had
more people riding it people were just riding two three four times and whatever and it was a lot of
fun and we were just we were just having fun like you're like how many people were preaching the
gospel zero while i was on the sea dude okay you know i was just trying to hang on for dear life
but it was fast it was fun right and you could fly out there the water is so clean and so pristine
and the beaches are the most amazing beaches you've ever seen cool site a lot of fun you could go fast
go everywhere well i kind of got done so i'm just kind of standing there and one of the uh
gentleman that was just kind of manning the station he just like walks up to me and he's just like so
tell me about baptism like what do you mean he's like i want to know about baptism tell me about
baptism and i'm like okay so i just kind of like told him a few i just quoted a verse or two and
just kind of told him and then i'm like do you want to hear more and he was like yeah so i just
like grabbed my bible and i just started like preaching him the gospel and you know he got
saved and it just it was like i wasn't trying at all honestly i didn't even want to give the
gospel like i had been giving the gospel all day i'm like i'm trying to just have some fun
and this guy's coming out of nowhere like give me tell me about the bible okay you know you're not
done preaching okay you say how long are you gonna preach tonight well you know i have like 10 hours
of content probably i'll try to just preach half of it no look at act chapter 16 verse 25 the bible
says and at midnight paul and silas prayed and saying praise into god and the prisoners heard them
and suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and
immediately all the doors were open and everyone's bands were loosed and the keeper of the prison
waking out of sleep and seeing the prison doors open he drew out a sword would have killed himself
supposing that the prisoners had been fled think about this you're you're a preacher of the gospel
you've done nothing wrong you get wrongfully imprisoned and then god by a miracle just flood
open the doors and then this liberal wants to kill himself you know a lot of people be like
i mean don't you think a lot of people just be like i'm out of here have fun with that but what
is what does the bible say paul cried a loud voice saying do thyself no harm for we are all here
then he called for light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down before paul and
sylas and brought them out and said sirs what must they do to be saved don't you think they
were kind of nervous they're like oh no what's gonna happen i mean the guy could kill him he
has a sword couldn't he have walked in and just killed paul and sylas for fear that they would
escape to preserve his own life i mean paul was literally risking his life by calling for this
man to come in because any prisoner that escapes his life for life at this point in time that's
why he was going to kill himself because he felt like well the inevitable is going to happen but
if he went in there he slew the prisoners perhaps he may have gotten out of the predicament but he
falls down and he asked them hey what must they do to be saved what did they say believe on the
lord jesus christ and thou shalt be saved in thy house he said this is really easy if soul winning
was like this where people just walk up to me and just said hey what do you have to do to be saved
i get a lot of people saved that's soul winning made easy when you're not even trying but let me
tell you something when you take a step of faith out and you have a heart for souls god will take
people that want to be saved and bring them right to you you don't even have to try but you know
when you're not taking any steps of faith when you don't even have an interest of souls when you're
not even going to be able to be giving the gospel to someone well here's a track maybe next time
you come to my church you can walk the aisle what do you have to do to be saved i don't know
does anybody know he asked the right guy didn't he and god brought him the right person and you
know sometimes god just wants to make soul winning so easy and let me tell you something
you in america may not find a lot of people that are just going to walk up to you and be like
tell me about baptism you know you go to foreign countries and you will have experiences like this
you will have people just walk up to you you will have hey i saw you talking to those people tell
me what you're telling them about you know you'll have way more people they're just wanting to get
saved than anywhere else why because a prophet is not without honor saving his own country
and you know they recognize look if you're white you're going to stick out fyi you got a great
opportunity to get a lot of people saved now you won't entirely stick out just because the island
still has hundreds of thousands of white people they're just usually in the tourist area but you
being out kind of where they are you stick out a little bit and most of them are still very nice
very kind because they realize that you're kind of paying their bills in a sense but you know the
thing I do like about it too is is they're not necessarily money hungry nobody asked me for money
a single time so you know if they gave you attention it wasn't to get something from you
they genuinely wanted to hear what you had to say and so there wasn't a lot of obstacles when you
would when you would talk to people and you know after I gave this guy the gospel and he got saved
I said it's a lot of water right here he asked me about baptism well you know you just fulfilled
the one requirement for a baptism you got saved let's get in that water and get baptized no I'll
do it another time you I was like this is your I said how many times does someone come here
and try to give you the gospel and try to get you baptized he's like never he's like it's never
gonna happen again this is your time like let's do it so we walked right into that water and he got
baptized right there in front of all of us having fun with the sea dews I went to have fun and I
got a baptism but then Marcel he's like hey I got that kid saved yesterday he saw another kid just
randomly there and he's like do you want to get back you're getting baptized and he's like I'm
getting baptized so then he brought him over we had another baptism you know it was great just
right there and and the cleanest water you've ever seen and it was great to have a couple guys
baptized there and we ended up having a church service we only had a few locals show up we didn't
have very many of our locals that we had preached to show up that time but we were since brother
kinden's there he has a church he's friends with and we even went to a church service there
and we had a great time we went on their Wednesday night service to liberty baptist church
pastor lee's and it was a great service kenny goes there's a very small church
i don't i don't know the guy necessarily probably likes the new iv necessarily i don't really care
he's a baptist saved and you know we had a good time we enjoyed the service
i'm sure that he's got all his bills paid by a bunch of pre-tribbers so he probably wants
to be careful being our buddy but at the same time you know he's there and he was very pro-soul
winning you know we told him about the fact we went to all these schools and we're talking to
the kids and he was very encouraged very excited about that very pleased and go to Acts chapter
number 17 go to Acts chapter number 17 and you know i think that sometimes we we get a little
bit jaded from some bad church experiences we've had where we feel like only the new i of b loves
God or something like that you know that's not true there's still other Christians out there
and there's other churches out there and you know maybe they're not doing a lot
but by you having a good attitude you might encourage them if you have a bad attitude
that's usually not going to accomplish that much and let's be honest most of us probably are never
going to start a church in the Bahamas anytime soon so it's probably better to use some people
there that can actually do something about it than us doing nothing and pretending like we're so much
better well you know i don't want to start a church over there unless it's perfect
you know unless it's basically pastor anderson cloned okay well you're probably not going to
figure out how to clone them yet all right and you know there's still great men of god out there
there's still churches out there there's still saved people and we can come alongside of them
and you know what i love about this church is they have a like-minded spirit and i think that
you know god likes to bless people that take some good stands even if they're not perfect
and and this guy has taken some pretty cool stands um he was telling us that in 2004
there were some celebrities that wanted to come to the bahamas and there was a lot of pressure
because you know there's all these sodomites that want to have weddings in these cool destinations
let me tell you something that's nice about the bahamas they don't like faggots okay and you say
why do you use that word because they don't like faggots it's not you know clear you know no no
they don't like fags okay and neither do i and i just already feel like they're my brethren you
know just talk about normal people you know you go back in the 1950s men didn't like faggots
and you weren't like afraid to call someone a faggot in the 1950s or 60s or 70s or 80s or 90s
or not even that long ago it's just like recently somehow people cringe at that and it just it blows
my mind you know how our cultures change so fast but there's still a lot of people out there that
aren't brainwashed and they still recognize that it's disgusting and gross the vast majority of
the people here think it's gross including this bastard okay now I don't know that he
necessarily agrees with the rep break doctrine but at least just finding fags repulsive I like you
okay I like you even if you don't like me okay but Rosie O'Donnell and her lesbian partner
wanted to come to the Bahamas in 2004 and there was over a hundred protesters at the like basically
docking area or at the shore trying to get them to not be able to land or to like scream in their
face and tell them how disgusting they were at least and he was one of them this pastor was there
he's telling us about it you know we're like hey here's a movie you can watch and he's like let me
tell you something you know we're not as deceived as you guys in America you know like can you imagine
these people that hate fags are thinking like America's like soft they're like a bunch of fags
or something you know but I printed out there's actually an article about this you can look it up
online says gay lesbian cruise ships passengers were met by more than 100 protesters as they
stepped off their chartered ship friday in the bahamas the protesters led by christian
pastors gathered in a square in front of the cruise terminal enchanted gay ways are not god
ways as a trickle passenger stepped out protesters held signs reading if you're openly gay stay away
and we will not bow to the gay agenda cruise organizers said former talk show host rosie
o'donnell who promoted the voyage was aboard the ship but she wasn't seen among those who
disembarked so she was she was hiding she was too nervous to come out but it you know this is great
can you imagine pastors a whole group of american pastors doing this these days they're so afraid
they wouldn't even dare say something they can't even say something in their sermon let alone
go out in public at the shore protesting openly but you know what these pastors were talk about
some real boldness talk about some real men standing up and fighting this disgusting thing
and you say why is it that homosexuality creeps into nation because the pastor stopped standing
at the shore screaming for them to get away he faggot disgusting freak that's you know how do
you get fags away that will help okay but it made me think of a story in the bible you know in
act chapter 17 the bible says in verse five but the jews which believe not that's just jews
mood with envy took under them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort and gathered a company
and set all the city on an uproar and assault the house of jason and sought to bring them out to
the people now this sounds like steadfast baptist church okay where basically you go to church you
just have all these fags causing an uproar in the city and trying to just attack god's people
this sounds like very baptist church this sounds like sure foundation baptist church this sounds
like favor baptist church this sounds like any church that actually stands up for the truth these
days where there's a bunch of lewd fellows of the baser sort you say what does that mean
faggots going around harassing people and i think that god you know because he's given me
you know a little bit of a ruckus in texas was like i'm gonna give you the easiest mission trip
ever okay where you can go and they don't like them either they're gonna stand that you're gonna
have protesters on your side standing on the shore telling them to get away from you when you're on
the island okay it was not it was refreshing and again you kind of read this story they end up
fleeing in debriah look at verse seven and the brethren immediately set away paul and sylas by
night in debriah who coming to their win in the synagogue of the jews these were more noble than
those in tessalonica and then they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the
scriptures daily whether those things are so therefore many of them believed also of honorable
women which were greeks and of men not a few you know i think just because these people stand for
righteousness and contend with the wicked and say stay away gays god's like well let's send some
evangelists there then because you know these people are more noble than a lot of people in
america who embrace the fags and embrace sodomites and embrace the loot fellows of the baser sort
whereas a country that says hey get away then you can actually bring in the good people you can
bring people to actually love the word of god and love the bible and give them the gospel and you
know what in my opinion the people of bahamas are much more noble than many other people
and they actually care about the bible and actually like the bible and you know what i
believe that's why god has given them an opportunity to get saved different than other areas now again
it's not that the bahamas is the only caribbean i like this i mean i think that most of them probably
are very receptive i went to jamaica in 2018 with faithful word baptist church this was
several years ago who who went on that jamaica trip in 2018 yeah there's people that went brother
raymond that was one of your first times to go on a mission trip wasn't it and look where he is now
i mean this guy showed up and i was kind of like okay you know first time you know he's got like
a satchel and like water bottle i mean you know but you know what i liked about brother raymond
he was determined to get someone saved and just to be honest i don't think he was that experienced
or very skilled yet he was kind of like that woman at the well but you know what god saw he
saw a heart that wanted to get people saved and he was able to get people saved and then look at
him now i mean this guy is championing all kinds of soul winning trips doing great work for the
lord you know praise god for people like brother raymond cooper praise god for people that said
you know what i've never been on a missions trip i don't even know a soul i don't even know any
of these people i'm gonna go i'm like one of the whitest people ever i'm gonna go to one of the
blackest nations ever hey mon what are you doing mon i'm just gonna tell you the gospel you know
it's like you know what it was a heart of gold that god saw and he just blessed brother raymond
cooper to give the gospel and you know what i'm telling you if brother raymond is getting
multitudes saved you can get multitudes saved too if i can get lots of people saved you can
get lots of people saved you know what god is not looking for some great person to give the gospel
he's looking for someone that wants to give the gospel it's not always the great men sometimes
he takes simple men and he turns them into the wisest men who are going out and preaching the
gospel and getting a lot of people saved now again this this trip was just success in every
check mark you could think of just everything it's like fun yes greatest beaches yes amazing
food yes great fellowship yes i didn't even there was like almost nothing i could say negative i
can't even think of anything and i'm not trying to hold back i'm just saying like it was amazing
and if i compare it to jamaica jamaica was super receptive but sometimes you know
and i'm like why didn't you just say that you know so you know you go to some of these other
places and it's a little bit like i don't even know what that guy just said you know in the
bohamas they speak great english i never had anybody say anything like that okay it was also
you know in the jamaica we had to drive around the guy that just got shot a few minutes in the
middle of the street okay in in jamaica you know when i rented a car i said hey i'll use our
insurance you know it's on the card and they're like oh that doesn't work and i was like what do
you mean so i called and they said yeah there's only two countries in the world that we don't
offer car insurance it's like somewhere in africa and jamaica and i was like oh okay so you know i
love jamaica i'll go back but i'll tell you this it's a little dangerous all right especially the
driving like there's zero street signs zero street lights and the the the big big buses they don't
stop all right so pretty much the only sign you'll see is wear a helmet don't die but you know it's
it's way different because in jamaica you have a huge tourist area called montego bay which is kind
of like one end of the island and then on the opposite end is kingston and that's where like
all the people live well kingston's is kind of poor and more dangerous because you know it doesn't
have that influx of tons of money from tourists and all that's over in montego but the cool thing
about the bahamas and nassau is it's just the one island so all the tourism and all the people they
all just are in the same spot so you kind of get the benefit from all the wealth and the safety
and just the prosperity of the tourism that's been coming in there white people it's not like
you're sticking out like a sore thumb because there's white people everywhere in certain areas
and they're not like what's this guy doing you know in the jungles or whatever
and and so i'm telling you what i mean if you are going to go so if you say i want to leave
america and i want to preach gospel somewhere it's not going to get easier than the bahamas folks
and ask anybody that went on that trip please talk to them please ask them how it went most of the
people they told me that this was the greatest trip that they've ever been on and again it may
not be the best in every category i've had some people tell me like this spot might have been a
little more receptive or maybe it felt like this area we got more people saved or maybe they liked
eating the rat i don't know i mean but just like an overall experience it was pretty hard to beat
you know and honestly there's still a lot of work to be done 250 000 people is a lot now one person
still there brother kenton knows he lives there and he's still there and i asked him for some
updates about it um about one or two people from the trip that we got saved end up coming to his
church and so he got to you know have them come to his church at least one time and then he said
since then he's had about 30 people come to the church and i think that through hit a lot of just
his personal soul winning but you know and this church was very small i mean i i don't know how
big the church normally is but when we were there there's probably like 10 15 people that are local
for the church most of that being the pastoral staff and so you know to have 30 visitors is big
for a church like this um not only that he told me he said that he was preaching the gospel a few
weeks ago at the university and he ran into someone who said that they had gotten saved
talking to me so apparently he ran into somebody that i preached to previously that had gotten
saved and the young man said that uh he's been really searching the truth since then and reading
his bible and the young man told him he said the week before i prayed to god that he would have he
would send someone to teach him the bible and that he would also find a church and that he could get
baptized so this young man bryant was like praying like someone i want someone to come to me to teach
me the bible and get a church and get saved he ran into kenton and literally kenton was able to help
get him into church and he got baptized and he's in the trees join the church and he said he's been
discipling him uh brother kenton also said that um he's been trying to take a lot of these comrades
out soul winning with them but it's hard because he has so many silent partners he's taking like
three four silent partners with him at the same time and he's like please pray that another new
ifb person would be willing to come out here and start discipling a lot of these people because
he's like i have more people that i can even handle you know as far as it's like trying to
reach people um and and i encouraged him i said hey if you have three or four silent partners
take them all to the door with you you know sometimes you feel like oh let's leave them
behind or something or hey just bring them all the way i remember when we went to uh
minneapolis minnesota for a soul hunting trip in january this is pastor anderson's idea you know
he's like what's the worst time and then we swam in this pool that was like 40 degrees
no i'm just kidding that's an inside joke but when we were out soul hunting we we had this trip but
there were so many silent partners and i remember we were kind of organizing and we're kind of new
at it i end up getting like six silent partners and i was like i don't know what to do with this you
know but you know hey you show up at a door with seven people and it sounds weird okay to us but
it's not honestly any more weird to that person than two people because they haven't experienced
anything they were like well there was only two people here i mean think about when we go
christmas caroling it's like 20 people it's even weirder okay and they all start singing at you
okay some even just run away for sheer terror but you know if someone's gonna listen to two people
they're gonna listen to six or seven you know it doesn't really change anything obviously you want
them to still be silent you want them to have good etiquette and good manners and not be distracting
and everything like that but at the same time you know if that's what you have more the merrier
right you know lots of times i mean if i go so into my family we're seven all right i've already
broken the six person rule you know what i mean like we're already seven and people don't seem to
be shying away in fact i honestly think people often will listen to me more when i have my whole
family than when i just have a random ugly dude with me you know jacob scares way more people
away than my kids okay so you know it's not like you can't take your family or take lots of people
out there with you in fact i feel like people are nicer when you have your kids they they think
like this person must be more sincere you know and and if you have a lot of people coming he's
like wow there's a lot of people that care about me you know all of you want to come here to give
me the gospel that's that's a big deal so you know i'll encourage him and encourage anybody
if you find yourself in this situation take them out it's all winning take all those people out
there with you and he also asked that if we would pray that you know more people would you know help
out in his church i think their church is trying to get a bus because he says he's already filling
up his car every week bringing people but he can't he doesn't have a big enough car to get all the
people he could so you know if they could even have more church transportation they would they
would love it and he said that their numbers are growing fast church is going well and you know
what praise the lord praise the lord that the church is doing good you say like what if this
church doesn't new ifb i don't care you know when we get into heaven there's not going to be a new
ifb section now there might be a street where there's a lot of mansions where a lot of new
ifb people live okay and we might call it the new ifb neighborhood but there could be other people
there all right and you know what it's not like other people that aren't new ifb can't do great
works for god and can't get people saved and can't you know complete the rest of the great
commission that we've been given and you know we need to win some more people over i am as
new ifb as you're going to get but you know what i would love to encourage other churches to get
excited about soul winning and if i heard a non-denominational church was going to send
a bunch of people to the bahamas and preach them the gospel with the king james bible i would say
praise the lord you know what would to god all the lord's people are prophets envious now for my
sake i mean who cares i hope that the bahamas church runs 10 000 people right i mean we should
stop getting you know this competition spirit of like we're better than other people and then just
trying to get as many people on the team as possible because you know what soul winning is
easy so there's nothing to brag about okay like it wasn't like i've been training my whole life
you know in many cases you know we just we just step out there we just say lord do a work and
the lord does the work the lord should get the credit here folks you know we're entering into
other men's labors the harvest truly is plenius but the labors be few and you know it's really
easy but we're supposed to do something we're supposed to pray go to matthew nine i hope you
you turn there matthew nine's last verse i want to look at i hope that i encourage you to to do
some soul winning because you know frankly one of the most heart-touching things that i i remember
from this experience was going to these schools talking to these students and then getting to
read their papers afterwards and so i just wanted to kind of read some of the responses
it's not all of them it's just a handful because we literally got thousands of these but one of
the students shane johnson and the question of how do i get to heaven he answered believe question
can i lose my salvation no did you change your mind today yes what did you learn today i learned
that we're all sinners that was a great response another one this was a 15 year old young lady
how do you go to heaven believe in god and jesus can you lose your salvation no because it's an
eternal gift that jesus gave us number three what you used to believe did that change today
she says as a pastor's daughter i've always believed in god but what changed was today is that god
can't take away my salvation if i didn't do what was right i mean here's a young lady that was a
pastor's daughter safe and just just to make it clear when we went into this classrooms and
we asked the students they're all saying repent of your sins be a good person you can lose your
salvation i mean we would ask hey what do you have to do to be saved follow the commandments
be a good person do right go to church stop sinning just that's what all of them were saying so for
them to say this and just 15 20 minutes later you can tell they had a real heart change and i have
plenty of papers that still say that they still say like you can lose your salvation you know
you have to stop sinning to be saved so not everybody got saved but many of them did here's
another one from gary says i don't know sorry from gary says you have to my sermon too long
sorry this is the second sermon okay you have a question of what do you have to be saved
i don't know what sorry devil i'm just kidding all right maybe doesn't like my phone or something
that's what it is okay thank you sorry i'll keep the i'll keep the phone as far away as i can
can you hear me now well i'll just try to bear it through sorry yeah yeah yeah just really hates
this phone now i know yeah i killed the battery all right he's got a fresh battery you should be
good okay no problem no one's fallen out of the window yet have they okay all right gary said
about what you have to be saved you have to believe in jesus christ and that he died for us
can you lose your salvation no you can't lose your salvation number three what did you learn today
today i learned that salvation is the only way to go to heaven and to believe in jesus christ
your good doings doesn't take you to heaven jesus does thank you for telling me that prayer and
saving me from hell now i have my spot in heaven i want to share that prayer to everybody to be
saved god said there is a a few people that are going to go to heaven please tell me that prayer
again so that we can save souls there's another student uh he said how do you go to heaven believe
in god can you lose your salvation no what did you used to believe did it change today
yes i learned that jesus went to hell um also another one said how do you go to heaven believe
in jesus can you lose salvation no because it's an eternal gift that jesus gave us what used to
believe that changed today yes uh that they learned how to be saved another one uh what do
you have to do be saved believe and trust in the lord jesus christ can you lose salvation no we
cannot lose our salvation and we are saved forever did you change what you believe yes i believe what
i heard today we do not have to repent to be saved that was a big that was a big step another student
what do you believe you have to do to be heaven or believe that you have to do to go to heaven
believe and trust in the lord how long are you saved forever did you change your mind today yes
i did do you have to repent of your sins to be saved no because i believe and trusted in the lord
and i have a lot of ones that are just pretty much the same thing just uh lots of just believe
no yes believe no yes because we're just asking kind of the same questions just over and over
and over and you know not every school is the same some schools there were a lot more receptive
than others there was one school where we kind of uh caused that uproar that the bible says in uh
acts where they turn the world upside down kenton ended up messaging me while he was at a different
school because we we split up went to different schools and i get this message kenton uh shared
with me because one of the principals messaged him and said good afternoon mr. knolls just a
little feedback from the students and teachers your visitation caused an uproar on our school
campus today some of the students indicated sorry some of the students indicated that the speakers
were spreading false doctrine crap get you man some of the students indicated the speakers were
spreading false doctrine for example they said they were told they didn't have to repent to be
saved and then they can go to heaven without repenting well at least they understood the
message another indicated that if they commit suicide they'll go to heaven i'm pretty sure
that wasn't like hey kill yourself you're going to heaven okay something got lost in that translation
okay then she's like another was talking about and then something perverted i was just like of
course they throw in false accusations too right a number of our students were very upset and they
were left feeling angry and confused as to why the school officials allowed this to happen it was
really just the teachers that got bad okay our sem advisor was also perplexed by some of the
teachings your guests brought to us so i mean they literally some of these teachers are like hardcore
repent of your sins work salvationists and they would just start rebuking our soul winners like
right in the middle of their presentation you know because they they started figuring out like
what's going on so sometimes it was hostile territory okay but you know what praise god
that we had brave people going in there into the snare of the devil and preaching the gospel
because there was tons of students that did get it and they did get saved and think about it they've
been learning false doctrine for 14 years of their life and in 15 minutes many of them get saved you
know why not because how great we are but because how powerful the gospel of jesus christ is why
so wanting is easy you know what made so uneasy the gospel of jesus christ oh i gotta give my
testimony of how i changed my life and i turned from sin and i'm no no no that's your story
we're to tell his story and you know what think about how easy i mean we can give someone saved
in 15 minutes when they've learned false doctrine their whole life why because the gospel is so good
it's so powerful if you would just share the gospel you get many saved and you know you go
to the right place it'll just be i mean a net that you can't even drag in look at verse 38
the bible says this pray therefore the lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers
into his harvest you know what we need to do we need to get on our knees tonight and we need to
pray that there's going to be more people to go on these mission trips and not just the bahamas
everywhere but you know for those that are saying i'm nervous about soul winning bahamas you say i
want it to be easy bahamas i want it to be fun bahamas i don't want to eat rat bahamas
i want to understand their language bahamas you know i mean it's really it's awesome i can't i
can't say enough good things and and don't just take my word ask the dozens of people that are
here this this evening that went with me and they know and they can testify to the exact same things
i'm saying this was the greatest soul winning trip i've ever been on my life i i don't know
that i could they could ever get topped honestly but you know that doesn't mean that there can't
be really cool experiences other places but you know what i i want to sell you on this because
i want a lot of people to go i want to give everyone in the bahamas of the gospel it doesn't
have to be me i just want everyone to get it so many of them want to get saved and will get saved
and maybe eventually they'll have to come here and get us saved again and i also have been thinking
like you know if this tribulation thing kicks up i need a place to go so same you know why not build
ourselves a nest egg somewhere you know what i mean okay but thank you so much for all of you
that that prayed for us while we're there and so many of you that came with us and uh you know if
you plan on coming again in the future when we go back we would love to have you um please please
do this though just pray that god would send more labors there pray that someone could come alongside
brother kenton and help him in their church pray that that church would continue to grow and get
more people saved pray for some of these converts pray for bryant pray for some of these kids because
you know they've been going to school teaching and repent of their sins for 14 years and they
got saved but you know what they're gonna have to go to that school again and they're gonna have to
deal with a lot of people that don't want them to do something for god and and there's a lot of
people out there that need someone to love them and give them the gospel and come alongside them
and pray for them and i pray that we'd raise a generation of people that care about real missions
work and they'd realize how easy it truly is closing prayer thank you heavenly father so much
for this church and thank you so much for giving us opportunities to go out and preach the gospel
thank you for making the gospel so easy thank you for doing all the hard part thank you for
making it so that we can just go out and have no real skill or power of our own but rather through
just faith in the gospel we could see multitudes saved and we could gather in more than we could
even catch i pray that you would raise up an army of soul winners and missionaries that want to go
and spread the gospel the whole world not just to build a well not just to build a hut but rather
build a church of people that love god to fulfill the great commission and i pray that we would never
lose sight of the reason why we're here it's to save souls and to catch men jesus name we pray amen