So the Bahamas is very receptive. Most people are going to give you a chance to give the
gospel. These people are spiritually minded, they're inquisitive, they want to know the
truth, and so I've had tremendous success preaching the gospel here. Definitely by far
the most receptive area that I've personally ever been to.
The Bahamas is really receptive. We're getting over 800 people saved in just a brief week.
It's very receptive, especially the young children.
Very receptive. Surprisingly, very receptive.
So the Bahamas is really receptive compared to America. I've been going to steadfast for
five months and I only got two salvations, but here I got way more compared to how it
was in Texas, so I'd say very receptive.
I think the Bahamas is receptive, especially with teenagers. Teenagers have the ability
to grasp the gospel really well, but they can also converse with you and accept the
message that we're giving them that salvation is a free gift and it's eternal.
The highlights are definitely the school mission trips, which is my first. It's my
first time preaching to young children from middle school and high school. That is one
of the best memories that I've ever had.
I think for me the highlights, there's just so many, but I have to pinpoint specifically
the schools. Getting an opportunity to go to middle schools, high schools, and preach
to kids during their lunch break, go into classrooms and talk to the youth, the future
of this country, I'll never forget it. The highlight of getting to see so many different
students get saved, understand what it takes to get to heaven, and really cut through a
lot of the false doctrine that they've been taught by false prophets and by liars and
charlatans.
The unfortunate part about the culture here is that there are a lot of false prophets
that are teaching lies, and so to get a chance to reach the youth before somebody wicked
gets to them first is really amazing, and that for me has been the biggest highlight
of them all.
The highlight is going to the schools and seeing these kids being very respectful, listening
to the gospel, not deterring, staying focused on what we were trying to teach them.
Or even the teachers as well.
Even the teachers as well.
I mean, how they were students, and even working with us, I can honestly think of them, they
were just doing great.
I would say speaking in the schools, because it's something that I've never had the experience
to do before, and you cannot do that in America.
So I feel like the highlights were when we went to the schools.
We actually, I think it was, I don't know if it was Thursday or Wednesday, but we were
at one of the schools, and we were preaching the gospel, and some of the kids were asking
weird questions and stuff.
They were like, oh boy, whom are the sexual people going to go to hell?
But anyways, I felt like the highlight from that was that the teachers really didn't like
what we were preaching, that we were preaching the gospel and that we didn't need words to
go to heaven.
So I felt like that was a highlight, and another highlight, I feel like the same thing happened
to another one of the other schools.
I think the second day, one of the teachers told somebody we were soloing with, Miss Victoria.
She was like, hey, get out of the classroom.
Salvation is my works.
Miss Victoria was like, no, we're going to preach the gospel.
I felt like those were highlights of the Muhammad's mission trip.
Without question, that is not, I mean, it's a no-brainer that I would love to do another
missions trip here.
I would love to come back.
I would love to bring my entire family here to preach the gospel and to get, you know,
hopefully many people saved, yes, without question.
Yes, I would.
I would go on another one.
I feel like, I don't know, just the people, the people were really nice.
I'm not, you know, I also like the weather.
I'm not even going to lie.
It was really good.
It felt nice to me.
But it's more so just like how receptive people were.
And there are other islands, too, so I feel like if we could go to them, you know, that
would be great.
Most definitely.
Absolutely.
Absolutely 100 percent.
Overall, the people are still receptive.
But what's surprising is that there are a lot of people who are still receptive.
The price of eggs and butter and milk and all that basic stuff.
What's surprising is that these principles of these rules let us come and, you know,
they give us 15, 20 minutes to give them the gospel.
That's the love that they have for their children.
They want God in their life.
And more so, and more so that they also allow them to have freedom to do their will and
to listen to the gospel.
You know?
There's not a, hey, you can't do it.
They're going to say, hey, come on in.
I don't adore people polite.
Yes, ma'am.
No, ma'am.
I mean, very polite people here.
I think for me it's just how open people are to listening to you.
You know, I've had very few people say, I'm not interested.
Go away.
I've had very few rejections.
So I think for me the most surprising part that, just as somebody who's never experienced
this before, is how open people are to listening to what I have to say.
That would be the first thing.
I'd say a secondary answer to that is the false doctrine that suicide makes you lose
your salvation.
I haven't had to deal with that very much in the United States, but people here really,
there's a few of them that needed help understanding that you don't lose your salvation from suicide.
It's not some sort of unforgivable sin.
So I would say that's kind of a two-part answer, but those two things for me stand out.
So what's surprising about the Bahamas?
I think this may be, you know, just me personally, I think it's surprising that we have guards
at every single restaurant door.
I've never seen that before.
And what they do is they protect the place, I think.
That kind of surprised me when I realized that they did that and that they locked the
doors so that the guard has to be there to open the door for you.
So I thought that was pretty cool.
It's a life-changing experience to go on a trip like this.
You get tremendous fellowship.
You get a tremendous opportunity to preach the gospel, to turn many to righteous, to
get people saved.
But beyond all of that, the experience itself of being in an unfamiliar place with the brethren,
it's one of the best trips I've ever done in my life, one of the greatest trips I've
ever done in my life.
And I would encourage anyone out there watching this, if you have not done a mission trip
yet, if you've not gone to a foreign country, to help them understand what it takes to be
saved, you're missing out.
Go do it right now.
Go be a soul winner.
Any last comments?
Other than the Bahamas being great, you know I would come again.
And the weather is fantastic and nice and I love the water and nothing else.
Yeah, go to the Bahamas.
Go to the Bahamas.
If they have another mission trip, come out again and be ready for witnessing to teenagers
that are super receptive and all the people that eat the free gift of salvation.
I say, in my opinion, that if also women should be able to afford their own rights, it would
encourage them to understand why it's very important.
Huge encouragement.
Very important to win souls for Christ.
I love the Bahamas.
Alright, sister, Faith and Aliyah, what would you guys like to share?
Hi, my name is Aliyah and I'm from Steadfast Baptist Church.
My name is Faith, I'm from Steadfast Baptist Church.
And it is very receptive.
So receptive.
And there's one thing that I wanted to share.
We were at the mall earlier and there was this lady that was very receptive and she
wanted to listen but she was very busy so she said that she would come back.
So I thought for a second she probably wouldn't come back but she just was not going to want
to hear.
But she actually came back looking for me just so I could tell her the gospel.
Which I thought was very surprising and she ended up getting saved.
And what about you, Faith?
The most interesting thing that happened, well first of all, a ton of people got saved.
Second of all, it was a mall that was surrounding me at heart.
It was like 20 people.
They were going crazy because we had straight hair and they were touching it.
So I just said that someone was waiting in the car for us so they let us free.
Yeah.
Wow, so people were looking for you guys to preach to them.
Yes.
Did you guys pass your goal of souls?
Yes, my goal was 15 and I actually got 35 salvation.
35?
And what about you, Faith?
I don't know how many salvations I got.
It's probably around 35 more or less.
Wow.
I don't know.
I haven't counted.
Okay, praise God.
I don't know.
I did 8 the first day and then 16 the second day, 19 the third day and then 8 today.
I did 8 today, 10 yesterday and 14 the day before and then another 10.
Would you guys like to come back?
Yes.
And would you encourage other kids?
How old are you guys, by the way?
I'm 9 years old.
So she's 9 and you're?
17.
What I would say to the younger, it's a very shocking story because they actually said
yes whenever I haven't been practicing.
So I had to kind of just do it and then it happened again.
So the third time, you just feel relieved knowing that you're saving people from going
to hell and now going to heaven.
So will you tell other kids to do it too?
Yes.
To learn how to do it?
It feels relieving after.
Amen.
Alright, thank you girls.
Thank you.
Bye.
Answer a few questions.
And so we ended up getting hundreds and hundreds of papers from these students to give us just
generally some feedback as far as if they ended up getting what we taught them, if they
understood the gospel, if they changed their mind and basically what they learned.
And surprisingly, you know, a lot of kids actually did get it the first time and a lot
of kids did get saved.
And so we had hundreds of students who they believed in work salvation, they believed
in repenting of your sins and lifestyle, you know, work salvation but after being presented
the gospel and hearing from the Bible, they were willing to change their mind very quickly
and you know, it's crazy to go to the Bahamas because it's a Christian nation.
So, you know, when you go to the school, like I got to go to the classroom and the first
classroom I walk in, we're singing, this is the day that the Lord has made.
That's how we start the classroom.
And is that how you'll start a public school?
You know, I don't remember.
And this is a public school, okay?
And then we sang like another Christian song and they have, then they quoted a verse of the
Bible.
It was their memory verse of the week for their class and this is how we start the classroom
setting and then I was able to present the gospel.
And the thing is, even though they have so much Bible and they're singing and everything,
they're just not saved.
I mean, I didn't personally run into anybody that was saved again this trip.
I know some people on our trip did.
But for the most part, by and large, the entire island, no one is saved.
Even though they could quote for you John 3.16, they can quote for you.
I mean, virtually almost every verse that we use out so many, many of them are very familiar.
They can quote it.
They know it.
But it just hasn't ever clicked and no one's ever presented to them the gospel of Jesus Christ
and how to be saved.
There's just a lot of work salvation.
In fact, many of the teachers there, they were so excited to have you in the classroom
and then you start preaching salvation by faith alone and they're like, what?
You got to repent of your sins.
You know, they're getting all mad and flustered.
And, you know, so we were behind enemy lines in some cases.
And, you know, it's intense.
And there was a spiritual battle that you could really see waging when we go in there.
And we were causing an uproar as one principal wrote.
So she wrote back to Brother Kennedy.
She says, you guys caused an uproar at our school today.
And, you know, but praise God that we were able to have that opportunity.
There was a church there that we ended up visiting.
And the pastor was a great guy.
We had a great time at their church.
And Brother Kenton down there that's local is trying to get a lot of people plugged into that church
and trying to reach people.
And apparently that pastor is famous for being the anti-gay pastor of the Bahamas.
So it's interesting, you know, I guess birds of a feather flock together.
But it was a great, great experience.
In fact, you know, I don't want to be the only one to give you testimony.
I was going to say, Brother Marcel, do you want to come and just give us like a couple minutes,
just one or two minutes testimony of your experience from the Bahamas?
Yes, sir. Well, I just want to say thank you to Pastor Shelley for hosting us.
And we had a great time over there.
There was a lot of great food, a lot of great fellowship.
And, yeah, like he said, one of the most interesting parts of being able to go to the Bahamas
was being able to preach at the schools.
You know, that's not something that you do on an everyday basis.
And, you know, just going there, the students were very attentive.
They wanted to hear like everything you had to say.
They gave you a lot of respect.
So one of the cool things I will say about the classroom experience, excuse me,
is that the teacher, she said, you know, thank you for coming
because I try to teach a lot of these principals to the students.
And she said, you know, a prophet is not without honor saving his own country.
So I'm glad that you were able to come over here and preach to the students
and kind of give them a testimony about Jesus Christ.
And she was very thankful.
So that was a pretty cool experience.
And another cool experience was just talking to a security guard
and just talking to him.
He says, you know, man, my whole life I've been taught you have to repent of your sins,
you have to live a good life.
And one of the hang-ups a lot of people have over there is that you have to,
you know, you can never commit suicide.
So they kind of equate suicide with the unpardonable sin like blasphemy of the Holy Ghost.
And, you know, once you kind of just prove to them from the Bible that salvation by faith
and once they've always saved and make them understand that Jesus Christ already paid
for all of their sins, past, present, and future,
they're very humble and they will repent, you know, of that belief.
And a lot of the people, you know, once you showed them from the Bible,
you know, they'd be like, well, that's what the Bible said, you know.
So it was really cool, you know.
You know, most people were like that.
And, you know, a lot of the students, too, as well, like Pastor said,
once we, like, spoke to the students, we went back to the school.
And a lot of the kids would be like, hey, what do you got to do to go to heaven?
And mostly every single student had it right.
Believe in Jesus, once they've always saved.
And what they would do is, like, a lot of times the kids would come late to class,
you know, because, you know, you've got your knuckleheads, you've got to come in late, right?
But they're like, hey, you got to talk to this kid right here because, you know, he wasn't there.
So, you know, we'll give the kid the gospel, get the kid saved.
And, you know, like, the most important part is just being able to fellowship with your brother.
So at the end of the day, we'll just go back to the pool and go see Jacuzzi
and just kind of debrief and just hang out, spend time, talk about our day.
And, you know, just ending the trip with just going to the beach, which was so beautiful,
and we were able to ride the jet skis.
And Pastor Shelley was working really hard to get a guy saved
and got him baptized right there at the beach, so that, like, put the icing on the cake.
So, you know, if the Lord opened up the door in the future
and we could go be able to go to another mission trip,
just make sure everybody has their passports and is ready to go
because you're not going to want to miss the next trip.
So thank you, Pastor Shelley, for hosting us.
Yeah, the security guard that Brother Marcel is talking about
actually ended up coming to our church service on Friday night.
So we had a local church service ourself, and it was great.
We had a couple people come out for our church service that had just gotten saved.
And, like you said, you know, we did end up having two baptisms as well while we were there.
And one of the other baptisms was someone that Brother Marcel had gotten saved.
And, you know, you can't take soul winners anywhere with you if you want to be on time.
And I was going—we were going to rent some jet skis for just the afternoon,
and I had to go pay the day before.
And I say, hey, just stay in the car, or you can go look at the beach,
but I'm leaving right when we're done.
And I go, and I take care of it, and I'm walking back.
And Marcel, of course, is going over and talking to people about the gospel or whatever.
And so we had to wait for him.
But then the next day when we were on the beach, he's like, hey, I got that guy saved yesterday.
I'm going to go see if he wants to get baptized.
And he went over there. The guy ended up wanting to get baptized, and so he got baptized.
And it was funny, the first guy that got baptized there, he pretty much approached—
he was kind of like the guy in Acts, chapter number 8,
because I just handed out some material while we were there having fun,
and then he kind of comes to me, and he's just sort of asking me all these questions.
He's asking me about the Bible, and he's like, hey, can you be a Christian and gay?
And I was like, no. And he's like, I knew it.
And he's like, you know, and I ended up just giving him the gospel
because he was just so hungry for the truth.
And then as soon as I prayed with him, he's like, so tell me about baptism.
And I'm like, okay, well, here's what the Bible says about baptism.
I'm like, you want to go?
And he was kind of like, I don't know.
But I was able to convince him, and he ended up wanting to get baptized.
And so it was great that we could do that.
But the trip was also a lot of fun.
I want to see, Brother Ben, would you be willing to give us another few minutes of a testimony real quick?
And I didn't prep these guys, so we don't know what he's going to say.
Live microphone, huh? All right.
No, on a serious note, this is one of the best trips I've ever done in my life.
The receptivity was off the charts.
Everybody wanted to hear the gospel.
Everybody was hungry for the truth, like Pastor was saying.
The fellowship was incredible.
And I just want to say, Pastor Shelley loves his people.
He treated us incredible while we were there.
The events that we were able to go to, the dinners, the lunches, the jet skiing, the fun, the fellowship.
It was all incredible.
And the only negative is it's over.
I would have liked to be there another week, honestly, if I could.
But I just thank everybody who made it possible.
Thank you to Nick Connolly, who went there on a scouting mission beforehand.
Dylan Oz for all the work that he did.
Pastor Shelley, of course, for the hard work that he put in to make this thing possible.
And if you've never been on a mission trip before, I would start preparing now to go on one.
Prepare right now to go on the next one so you can reach many with the gospel.
That's the reason why we're here.
That's why God put us on this earth.
That's why God keeps us on this earth.
And I would not pass up another opportunity to go to a foreign country and explain to them what it takes to be saved.
Thank you.
I got someone saved at one of the schools, a little girl, during the lunchtime.
And after she prayed with me, I think it was maybe 10 minutes later, I witnessed her talking to her friends about everything I was showing her.
She was telling them about how Jesus Christ took the punishment that we deserve in hell.
And she was like, I can't even believe. That's amazing that he would do that for us.
And she was trying to share the gospel with someone that she knew, which I thought was amazing to see.
And then one other thing too, after we finished, for me personally, after I finished preaching the gospel in a classroom,
I had a student walk up to the front of the room, look at me and say, thank you for showing us what it takes to go to heaven.
None of us knew this. We learned something new.
And so thank you for taking the time to come here from the United States and share this message with us.
And the teachers, by the way, I had two teachers in the classroom who also prayed at the end when everybody prayed and asked for salvation.
I mean, it's incredible. I'll never forget it. So again, I just want to thank you for making it possible.
Well, it's definitely a team effort. And you know, a lot of people have prayed for us and given sacrificially to our church so we could even do a trip like this.
It's very expensive, but you know, you get what you pay for when it comes to the Bahamas and it's definitely a great opportunity.
In fact, it could have even been better just because the timing of when we went.
The schools were having a lot of exams and even the university was already pretty much in finals and most of the students had left.
And these areas are so receptive that, you know, God willing, you know, if and when we go back that we'll try to time it a little bit better.
And I venture that it'll even be more successful than this previous time just because, you know, the more opportunities you have, the better you can learn from and figure out what works and the places to go.
And so I think that even though we had a great harvest that there's still way much, there's so much more of a harvest there.
In fact, the island Nassau has around 250,000 locals that live there. That's the population generally speaking.
And so just think about how long it would take for you to give the gospel 250,000 times.
But honestly, the thing about the Bahamas is very interesting. It's almost everybody will listen to the gospel.
Almost every single person you approach will give you time and decide to let you give them the gospel. Not everyone gets saved, but many of them do.
And so, you know, you'll experience that you'll lose your voice very quickly if you're not ready to preach.
And that's why we love all the women that came soloing with us, because they never can lose their voice. They're so good at talking.
But some of us men, you know, definitely struggled with that, even myself included.
You know, I preach a lot and I talk a lot, but even me, I struggle to keep a strong voice the whole time while we're there because it's so much fun.
And, you know, I like to even have a little bit of fun because I just want when the next mission should come around for people to think like there's no way I want to miss it.
You know, it's just incredible. And we worked really hard. The people here worked really hard, so credit to all the soul winners.
We were at the schools very early in the morning, every single morning, and people are going soul winning almost all day.
I mean, they're putting in 8, 9, 10 hours, even more. Even when we're having fun, people are just getting everybody saved around them.
And so, you know, I had to take them to the resort area so they couldn't soul win anymore.
But it was great. Please, please, you know, talk to the people that went there. If you went there, please share with people.
And, you know, we got a lot of great footage for our soul winning documentary that we're going to be doing in the future as well.
And so, again, thank you so much to everybody. I just wanted to give a couple of testimonies this morning.