(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you amen alright at this time we will get ready for the sermon and so lets turn in our bibles where are we turning this morning 1st Samuel chapter number 17 1st Samuel chapter number 17 in our bibles looks like brother Nick is going to be reading for us this morning so follow along silently with brother Nick as he reads 1st Samuel 17 beginning verse number 1 1st Samuel 17 the Bible reads 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 1st Samuel 17 I want to preach about our trip to Fiji and Tuvalu at first I was going to preach on Vanuatu but then I ended up changing my mind because I thought it was going to take a little bit longer to preach this so I was going to preach in the evening but anyway I changed my mind so a double minded man is unstable in all his ways so I am going to preach about this today so for anyone who's asking because I know in the passport it has Vanuatu first and then it has Fiji so just you'll figure it out with the stamping alright so just as a way of introduction we're here in 1st Samuel chapter number 17 and look down at verse 4 where the Bible reads and says and there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Gath whose height was six cubits and a span and he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel and said unto them oh sorry verse 8 jumped a little ahead of myself so verse 4 and then look at verse 8 now it says he cried unto the armies of Israel and said unto them why are you come out to set your battle in array and am not I a Philistine and ye servants to Saul choose you a man for you and let him come down to me verse 9 it says if he be able to fight with me and to kill me then will we be your servants but if I prevail against him and kill him then shall ye be our servants and serve us and the Philistines said I defy the armies of Israel this day give me a man that we may fight together when Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine they were dismayed and greatly afraid so we see here in this passage this is the famous story of David and Goliath where you know many of us are familiar about what's going on in the story what's going on is that the Philistines they are going to battle the Israelites under the leadership of King Saul so it gets to the point that they send out their strongest warrior which is Goliath and he is out there trying to find someone who he can fight and it's going to be a one on one battle and whoever wins then that's going to be the one that wins that battle or wins that battle so but the problem is is that the Philistines they have Goliath and you know he's just like calling all these Philistines out trying to get them to battle but the problem with the Israelites is that they don't have anyone who wants to fight now look down at verse 22 of 1 Samuel 17 the Bible reads and it says and David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage and ran into the army and came and saluted his brethren and as he talked with them behold there came up the champion the Philistine of Gath Goliath by name out of the armies of the Philistines and spake according to the same words and David heard them and all the men of Israel when they saw the man fled from him and were sore afraid and the men of Israel said have you seen this man that has come up surely to defy Israel is he come up and it shall be that the man who killeth him the king will enrich him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel so what's going on here in this part of the passage is that David ends up going to the armies and he sees what's going on and then they tell him about what's going on with Goliath that Goliath is looking for someone to fight but the problem with Israel is that no one wants to fight Goliath and David ends up making inquiry about the situation and then look down at verse 32 where the Bible reads and says in 1 Samuel 17 32 and David said to Saul let no man's heart fail because of him thy servant will go and fight with the Philistines so long story short what's going on is that David ends up deciding to go and fight with the Philistines and or fight with Goliath and spoiler alert he wins he beats Goliath you need to read your Bible if you haven't read what happens in this part of the story because it's a good story but he ends up winning and beating Goliath now from this story because now I'm going to get to the point of me even bringing all this up because I know people are probably wondering okay what does this have to do with missions well from this story oftentimes people they see a problem but they don't want to be the ones who end up actually taking on that task or actually putting or giving a solution and what I mean by that is this is that you see how the Philistines they knew they know someone had to fight Goliath but no one was willing to fight him even Saul, Saul was as the Bible said that he was head and shoulders above all the other children of Israel and you would think he would be the best candidate to go fight against Goliath the giant but he didn't even want to do it and it ended up being some small ruddy boy you know shepherd boy that was willing to take on that challenge of fighting Goliath so David's a prime example of someone who's able to take initiative and do a good work of God and we should have that same aspect in our life now the problem is is that when it comes to missions there's a void of people that really want to do that want to do real missions work and I'm going to give an example in a second and actually get people safe I've been to I used to go to old IFB churches before moving here and attending faithful word Baptist church but oftentimes when you would have missionaries that would come to the church and present their work what would they do they would often say hey we're building houses we're making roads we're building schools we're building you know all these different things they have all these different projects going on but the problem is they're not actually getting anyone safe they're just doing all this work but people aren't getting saved in the process and you'll even have people that serve as a full-time church planner or a missionary and what ends up happening with these people is that they you know they're they're on the field they have the opportunity to go and do a great work for God but then you know a lot of it is that they're lacking and they're not really actually doing anything when the rubber actually meets the road so I respect what missionaries do I think missionaries you know they're making a lot of sacrifice in their lives they're leaving the creature comforts of America and going to a foreign field where oftentimes they spend the rest of their life there trying to build churches and serve God so there's a lot of good missionaries out there but then on the other hand there's a lot of bad missionaries out there and what I want to do is this is that I want to go over just a few quick stories from missionaries I met in my life and I am going to get to Fiji and Tuvalu it's all just introduction and so you can understand the state of missions in 2024 well and some of the stuff I'm bringing up happened way back when but this is the state of missions more or less than the old IFB so you can understand what's going on when it comes to mission work and what why we have the principle at our church of doing your own missions and that's the point of the sermon today is that hey if you can't find someone else to do it right then you know what you just got to do it yourself and that's the time my sermon today is just got to do it yourself and I'm talking about doing your own missions now I was going to a church where they had a bunch of missionaries that would come in and they would present their work and one of the big things and anyone who's went to an old IFB church you've probably heard of this the 1040 window and what the 1040 window is is that you have this part of the world where it has like two thirds of the population in that part of the world but like 99% of them are Muslim and they're saying hey this person these are unreached people group and because they're an unreached people group you know we need to send someone to go there and witness to them and are you going to be that person that goes there well the problem with that is is that Muslims are not receptive to the gospel second another problem is a lot of the time in those countries that they're saying are the 1040 window soul winning is illegal so it makes no sense to go to places like that but you'll have these missionaries get up and they'll start guilt tripping you saying are you going to be the one who goes or are you going to be the one who goes or are you going to be the one who goes on the mission field when it's like why am I going to go and try to and beat my head against the wall trying to reach Muslims you know it doesn't really make any sense I'm all for reaching Muslims we reach Muslims on previous trips so many trips that we had in Sierra Leone we got many Muslims saved there but we're not beating our head against the wall going to places where it's 99% Muslim and another principle we have is we go soul winning or we go to places where soul winning is legal you know first of all and I just mentioned that but yeah we go to places where soul winning is safe and legal and obviously receptive now another thing I want to bring up is that you have faith promised missions I don't know if anyone who has heard of that our church really does we don't do it but faith promised missions is another way that churches guilt trip you into giving your money to mission to missionaries for works that may not be that great and I'm going to go over a missionary that my church supported back in the day and you're going to see what these missionaries are doing and you're going to well I'll let you be the judge after we're done with that but anyway what faith promised missions is for those who don't know is that faith promised missions is just where you have like they have like a missions conference similar to what we're having now and during the missions conference they give you a paper and that paper has like different amounts that you can be able that you as an individual would donate to missions and how that works is that for the whole week you have all these missionaries come up they'll present their work they'll tell you different stories about what's going on and then what they would say is that what we want to happen is that God's going to lay an amount on your heart to donate to missions and that once God lays this amount on your heart you know it's going to be private we're not going to know about it but then you're going to write that amount down and that's the amount that you're going to give more or less above your tithes and offering to missions for that year so you know what they'll do is they'll say hey it's between you and God but then the whole time they're pressuring you saying hey did you turn in your faith promised missions card because they did that to me a lot where I'm like I didn't really want to participate in it because I thought it was dumb but they're like constantly pressuring you to turn in your faith promised missions card and I'm like I don't want to do it but they ended up just pressuring me anyway so anyway but I'm getting at that is that's what you have to deal with in a lot of old IFB churches and again there are a lot of great missionaries out there who are actually doing the work of God who are actually serving God who are actually doing doing you know a lot around the world but then you have a lot of missionaries that let's just face it they're lacking now I keep bringing this up because I want to read a few quick missionary letters and then again I will get into Fiji and Tuvalu but I just want you to understand the state of missions so you can understand why our church participates in do your own missions or DYI missions trips where we just end up doing our own missions because let's just face it a lot of people are not doing a lot of great works for God when it comes to missions so now this is a just to give you some background of what's going on is that back when I was going to an old IFB church we had a missionary that came in pastors actually preached against him like a long time ago it was a guy to Morocco while he's no longer a missionary and you'll probably see why after I read these missions letters but he ended up getting into real estate so I'm not ripping on anyone I'm not ripping on anyone that's like you know that's currently an evangelist or a missionary or anything this guy is not in the ministry at all anymore and it's not because he was just a bozo or anything he just ended up he had some his church had some church split or whatever and then he ended up just going to a different like missions board and then I don't know what happened from there but I just happened to be on his email list okay that's why I have all the updates that's why I know what's going on with him but anyway he came to our church and then you know he presented his work and then I signed up for his emails because I actually like missionaries and I'm not just here trying to rip on missionaries I'm just showing you that hey this is what you're going to get sometimes when you're talking to missionaries and the guy he ended up I signed up for his missionary updates as well as you know whenever other missionaries would come in I would sign up just to read it and see what they're doing and pray for them and stuff so I didn't have any bad intentions but then this guy is like constantly just sending out missionary updates and it got to the point he was sending them out like every week and then someone on the email list was like hey you're sending too many updates so then he sent an email saying hey I'm going to send less updates now but again let me just give you some of these so you'll know what's going on so this is dated from November 8th 2016 it says Dear Pastor and Praying Friends, Just this morning I was speaking to our security guard who watches over our neighborhood and we exchanged greetings. I asked how he was doing and he said Allah al-Hamud lila praise to God and al-Hafmed 1,000 praises. I've included a picture at the bottom of what the saying looks like. Here in Morocco it is normal to hear spiritual references to God come up very often in daily conversations. God protect you. God complete goodness to you. God be merciful to your parents. God provide for you. God help you. Even though they talk about God often throughout their day and pray multiple times per day, they do not know the true God. They do not know the God of the Bible. Thank you for praying for us as we continue learning Arabic, the Arabic language and that God would help these people know the forgiveness, love, and grace that God freely that God freely offers through Jesus Christ. Your soul's in Morocco and this guy was a missionary to Morocco and that was the ministry update. He's telling us about different greetings that people say in a foreign field and this is the guy that they're forcing you to put faith promise missions and pay for him to do you know work missionary work out in Morocco and he's literally sending you an update about how he said hi to a security guard. I mean it's like come on. On top of that, this is from February so this is two years later. You would think things may improve but this is two years later in 2018. He says this, please dear pastor and praying friends please pray for our brother in Christ Simo. I just heard that his parents found out what he was doing with us. I need to talk with him to get more details. It sounds like he may have gotten kicked out of his house. Please pray the Lord works in his family in this situation. Praise the Lord. Simo told me that he is not afraid of his parents anymore and that they needed to find out. Please pray to God to encourage him for his family to get saved. This past Sunday Zakiri's friend Muhammad came back to visit for the second time. Please pray the Lord continues to work in his heart and that he trusts Christ as Savior. This week our language school semester finishes and we get a little break to set up our new home which is closer to our language school. We are planning some outreach evangelism activities in the area around the church. Please pray that many people hear the gospel, trust Christ as their Savior and get discipled in church. Thank you for your prayers. We hope you have a great week. Your soul's in North Africa. And that was his missionary letter, his missionary update. Do you really see any work being done? According to this guy. He's just telling us about some drama that's going on in some Muslim guy's house that he got kicked out of his house. It's like you know, is that what you really want to be spending your money on when you're giving to faith promise missions or giving to churches where you're getting like really bad updates from someone who's supposed to be a missionary? On top of that, I'm going to just read, I have a few and I didn't even, I'm just going to read one more just for sake of time, but I have a few and I didn't even cherry pick these. I literally just typed in the guy's name scroll through some emails and then just clicked on it and then read it. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to use that. And that's how most of his things are. It's just like a whole lot of nothing. That's the easiest way to describe what this guy's doing. He's doing a whole lot of nothing. And this is his prayer letter from January of 2019. So this is one year later. So let's see if this guy got better. No, I'll just give you the answer. He didn't get any better. But it says, Dear Pastor and Praying Friends, We praise the Lord for all He did in 2018. God allowed us to serve in the city of Fess for the first half of the year and the second half of the year in a new city, Tunis. Through teaching and preaching every week, God allowed us to baptize two new believers in Fess and we're going to baptize two more before we got banned from re-entering in July. We set up our home and have been working hard at learning the new dialect of Arabic spoken here in North Africa. We are learning and serving in an established church until we finish language school. And then his goal is for 2019 at the time. He says, We are taking language classes and focusing on learning the language well so that we can take a short furlough starting in December 2019. Please pray for us as we learn from and serve under a veteran missionary family. As we return from our furlough, we are looking forward to starting a new church in a needy area of this large Muslim city where 99% of the people are Muslim. Please continue to pray for many in North Africa to put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, your souls in North Africa. So that was his missionary update and this is all he did. He had three bullet points for all the stuff that he did in 2018. I think that is embarrassing. He got two people saved, which praise God, you know, getting two people, sorry, getting two people saved and baptized is a good thing. But the guy had literally three bullet points for all the stuff he did in Morocco for the year of 2018. Now I bring all that up because what I want to do today is preach to you about what we did in two weeks in Fiji and Tuvalu and let's just compare what some of these missionaries who are out in the field are doing and what our church is doing when we're doing our own DYI missions. Now go ahead and turn with me in your Bible to Acts chapter number 13, Acts chapter number 13. Again, the sermon title today is this, you just got to do it yourself. And we see that these missionaries are not really doing a great work for God. I remember when I was, this is over a decade ago, and I was graduating from college. So then we had a missionary come to our church and I'm talking to the missionary. He's presenting his work and I'm like, you know what, since I'm graduating from college, I might as well just go and do, like, some short-term mission work before I, like, start my career or start my life. I was single, so I didn't really, at that point, it didn't really matter. So then the missionary comes, he presents his work, and then he gives us his email address. So then I get his email address, I email him, and then I'm like, hey, I want to do some short-term missions work. So then the guy ends up replying back to me. He tells me to fill out all this information, and then I fill out all the information and then explain that, hey, I just want to do some short-term, like, I like what he was saying, I like that he was doing missions work in a foreign field. I want to do the same thing just for a short amount of time. Can I do it? He said, no. He said the only way you can do it is if you do one year of Bible college. I'm like, I'm not doing one year of Bible college, so I didn't end up going on, doing any missions work with that church. And it wasn't until Faithful Word had the missions trip to Botswana and South Africa a few years ago, that was the first time I was actually able to get on the field and do some real missions work. So you have all these churches, you have bad missionaries that are doing nothing for God, but then on top of you having these bad missionaries that are doing nothing for God, you have people that are hindering people who want to serve God and actually do real missions work from actually going out on the field. They're putting all these borders and barriers so that you can't even do any real missions work yourself. So that's why I believe in the mentality of, you know what, if you can't find someone else to do it, then you just got to do it yourself. And I had you turn to Acts chapter number 13. Now my first point is this, and I'm just going to tie in some of the principles from pretty much like the common sense missions ideology or teachings that our church has, where hey, if you're going to go to a place, let it be a place that's receptive. Let it be a place that they speak English. Let soul winning be safe and legal. Just I wanted to kind of go over those things, but just show you how we use a lot of those principles in our trip to Ephesians 2 this year. Now in Mark 16 15, the Bible reads and says, and he said unto them, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel of every creature. That's the great commission is that we need to go out and preach the gospel to everyone to preach the gospel of every creature and we need to go into the world to do it. Not only that, it says in Acts 13, look at verse 45 is that we want to go to places where the people are receptive to the gospel. And it says in Acts 13 45 when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken, should have been, should have been spoken, sorry, should first have been spoken to you but seeing you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo we go we turn to the Gentiles. For so had the Lord commanded us saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. So we see here in this passage that the Jews weren't receptive to the gospel so what did Paul and Barnabas do? They ended up just going to the people who were receptive which were the Gentiles. And go turn with me to Matthew chapter number 10, Matthew chapter number 10. So even God makes it where hey if people don't want to listen to you, if people don't want to have anything to do with the gospel, then go find people who do or go find people who are receptive and don't sit there and waste time trying to talk to people who are not receptive to the gospel. Now it says in Matthew chapter number 10 look at verse 11, Matthew 10 11 it says, And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter inquire who in it is worthy and thereby till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house salute it and if the house be worthy let your peace come upon it, but if it be not worthy let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words when ye depart out of that house or city shake the dust off your feet. Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. So Jesus is saying the same principle, hey if you're going to go to a place then let that place be a place that is receptive, let that place be a place that wants to listen to the gospel and if there's a place that is hindering people from preaching the gospel or hindering people from being able to listen to the gospel then don't go to that place, you know, shake your feet if you go there and they don't want to listen, shake your feet off and go to a place that is receptive and it's not your problem because Jesus even says that hey in the day of judgment it's going to be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for that city, so that city is going to be destroyed but it's not your fault, it's their fault because they don't want to listen. Now I bring that up because when we choose places and when we plan different mission trips to go, we choose places that are receptive. Now when it comes to both Fiji and Tuvalu they're receptive. For instance in Tuvalu, or in Fiji we're able to collectively get 2,115 people saved in the course of about a little bit over a week. Just going to Tuvalu or just Fiji alone and then in Tuvalu we're able to get 207 people saved in the course of about a week. So we went to places that were really receptive and we were talking and when it comes to the planning I was talking to someone about going to Fiji or they actually asked me and this is like towards the end of 2023 so then I believe in earlier this year, so I think it was January of this year, Pastor Shelley ended up going to Fiji and then when he went to Fiji, him and another guy, they were able to get 23 people saved in the course of like two hours. So it wasn't like, or not two hours, but a few hours. So it was just him and another guy, they were soloing in a city called Nandi and that's where we did some of our soloing, but they were able to get 23 people saved in the course of only a few hours. So to me that's receptive. If it's two people getting that many people saved in the course of a few hours. Not only that, Pastor Sepulveda, a while back, he had some people from his church they ended up going to another place that we were soloing at called Suva and when they went to Suva, they said it was super receptive there. So because we heard these stories, we saw Pastor Shelley put out a video about how receptive Fiji was, we were like, you know what, let's do it. Let's go to Fiji because this place seems like it's going to be receptive and lo and behold, when we got there we found out that it was and since we were already on that part of, or in that part of the world, we ended up just saying, you know what, might as well just go to Tuvalu while we're at it and we ended up making, you know, killing two birds and one stone with that trip by going to both Fiji and Tuvalu at the same time and as a result, what we ended up doing was we planned the trip around Labor Day, or sorry, Memorial Day because a lot of people have Memorial Day off so it was just a lot easier to accommodate some people's schedules that way as well as that the plane tickets were actually cheap during that time to go to Fiji to around Memorial Day so it made it a lot easier for people to end up going to go soul winning there and what our church was able to do was that the church was able to cover the hotels and the transportation for everyone who ended up going on the trip that came from our church. So now while just talking about Fiji, let me give you some quick fun facts about it because people are like, what's Fiji or what is a Fiji? Fiji is a country so that's the first thing you got to know. Fiji is not a person or a thing. It's a place. It's a country. And it's what's called a Melanesian country so Melanesia is just, Melanesia is, it's an area close to Australia like in Oceania so it makes this square that if I remember correctly, it goes as far out as Papua New Guinea and then it goes as far out as, like as far out east as Papua New Guinea and then it goes as far west as Fiji so it's like this big part of the South Pacific right by Australia. On top of that, they were under British rule up until 1970 and that's when they gained their independence. Yes, that is where Fiji water was created and no, I did not drink Fiji water while I was there because I just don't really care that much about Fiji water. Now one cool thing we learned on this trip was that if you're in the US, you can go to, or when we were planning this trip is that you can go out to your local bank and they before, if you want to get some cash before you go on the trip, they will give you, you could do some exchange here in the US and it's a lot cheaper than going to like a money exchanger when you get to like the airport or in the foreign country that you're at and get their local currency there so that's just a travel tip for any future missions trip is that you can just get your currency here in the US and then take that to whichever country and we did that when we were in Fiji. Now just to give you an idea of Fiji's geography, it consists of 330 islands and we were on the main island of Viti Vua which is is where we did most of our soul winning at and that's where we went soul winning in Nandi which that is where our plane landed and we did some soul winning there and then we also went to a place called Suva and that's what we did the majority of our soul winning when we were in Fiji and then we also on Sunday because we went to church in Latoko we ended up doing some soul winning there so we went to those three places all on the same island and like to me and forgive me for those who like Fiji Fiji was kind of hit or miss for me I really wasn't super impressed with it compared to like other people I know a lot of people like Fiji but and you know it's like the tourist destination but I just really I think because it was raining a lot there I just wasn't really like super jazzed about it and then on top of that just the scenery wasn't really that like breathtaking now maybe it was just where we're at maybe maybe I don't know because we drove literally like from one part of the island all the way to the other part of the island and there were some nice things but overall it was just like eh I don't know and again some people may feel different than I do but I just wasn't really that impressed with Fiji like all the hype that people have about Fiji now in Fiji there's about 900,000 people 57% of them are native there's a lot of Indians in there so there's about 33% Indian and then more or less like 6% other so we actually preached to a lot of Indians and we actually got a few Hindus saved while we were there on the trip and then at one point in time or here so in Fiji they drive on the left side of the road so that happens in different countries that you visit but what's a little interesting with our story is that we ended up renting a manual 15 passenger van or two actually three manual 15 passenger vans so if anyone who knows how to drive a manual the shifter is on the opposite side so instead of shifting on your right hand side like you do in the US you're actually shifting with your left hand and then as well as the clutch is on the opposite side so it was not easy for some more than others but I still thought it was fun I really enjoyed driving that on the other side of the road and just everything's like completely backwards I thought I was like warped in some time another dimension just because it's like oh this is cool everything's like the opposite of the US but anyway another thing is that in Fiji there a lot of the people they used to be cannibals and I don't know exactly when they stopped being cannibals but they weren't cannibals when we were there I can say that but they were cannibals at one point in time and then I guess they stopped being cannibals praise god because if they were cannibals I probably would not win that's another thing we should add to common sense missions is don't go to a place that that you have cannibals okay that's another pro tip don't go to a cannibal eating or people eating country so in Melanesia so and what it means to be Melanesian is that you have people that pretty much like various shades of brown or you know black but some of those people are able to grow blonde hair so that's one thing that makes a lot of these Melanesians Melanesian is that they are able to grow blonde hair so they'll be as black as me and maybe even darker but then they'll have blonde hair but usually that's only when they're a kid and then as they grow older the pigments go away because they have some specific gene that gives them blonde hair another thing is to say hello in Fiji or in the Fijian language you say bulla so and then if you want to say thank you you say venaka I'm not saying either one of those for the rest of the sermon because I was on the plane and I just got so tired of hearing that they just like every time they talk they're just like bulla bulla venaka bulla venaka bulla venaka I'm just like alright it just it got old like it was cool the first like 20 times you heard it and then after that it's just like alright I'm done on top of that the food was good and we ended up going to a market while we were there and they had a lot of fruits and vegetables so the food I would say out of all a lot of the countries I've been to so far in the South Pacific Fiji has the best food on top of that there are many tourists from Australia and New Zealand that end up going there the three main languages are Fijian English and Hindi and what we did before we went on the trip is that we made some custom YouTube cards that had those languages on there so if we did speak with someone that didn't necessarily speak that great of an English or didn't speak English at all then we would give them that card and then they would be able to scan that card and it'll take them to the Bible Way to Heaven video in that language on top of that the people were really friendly there they had really good manners they would whenever you would talk to them like whenever you would preach to them and they were eating they would just stop what they were doing and then let you speak with them and then after that once you're done preaching to them the Gospel then they would bring the food out or they would start eating again and when I was there I felt extremely safe like it's a super safe country like hands down like you do not feel like you're going to die at all while you're there unlike South Africa where is he I don't see him he's here oh he's right there yeah unlike South Africa so anyway it's a great country and South Africa is cool I mean as long as you have Pastor Bogart there then you're good you'll be safe so you don't have to worry about that and one big problem I do have with Fiji it was a great country I really like Fiji I just am not too jazzed about just like I wanted better scenery but other than that it was a good country the only thing one big problem I do not like about Fiji is that in Fiji a lot of the men wear skirts so they have these things called Sulas and you'll literally I don't know if we I gave some pictures out to that you may be able to see but you'll see a lot of us preaching the gospel to guys in skirts and it's just some cultural thing that I think is horrible and wrong and that they shouldn't have but that's something that's really popular in Fiji for some reasons that a lot of the guys wear skirts there and same with Tuvalu a lot of the guys just ended up wearing skirts in Tuvalu too I did not see that in Banoa too so I was like praise God for that so anyway when it comes to religion it's 64% Christianity around 30% Hindu and then 6-7% Islam and so on and so forth so now for my next point is this go to Philippians chapter number 3 sorry Philippians chapter number 4 Philippians chapter number 4 verse 3 so that just gives you an idea of why we chose to go to Fiji is that it was receptive the people were friendly it was a safe place to go it was a good place to go for soul winning so we use that common sense principle in Fiji for that or when planning the trip to Fiji second thing is this is that anyone can participate we were able to have 57 people show up to this trip 33 of them were with Pastor Sepulveda's church or with his group and then we had 24 soul winners with our group and it says in Philippians 4 verse 3 and I entreat thee also true yoke fellow help those women which labored with me in the gospel with Clement also and with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the book of life so one great thing about this trip is we had a good turn out of both women men and then we had some children on the trip so we made this trip open to anybody who especially from our church that was able to make it and go now this goes contrary to the old IFE where they say you have to have a Bible degree college before you can do some short term missions trip which I still understand you know if someone wants to serve God just let them serve God but we're able to accommodate people and bring them on those trips so they can have that experience of going out and getting people saved in a foreign field now turn with me to Acts chapter number 18 Acts chapter number 18 now while we were in Fiji or what ended up happening while we were kind of getting everything going and setting up the trip was that someone made a pretty misleading video and what I mean by misleading was that they had a video like while we were planning the trip we were trying to get as much participation even around the world so we sent out an email about hey our church is going to Fiji if anyone wants to participate you know just let us know and we'll try to we'll give you more details and then on top of that we had a video that was kind of and why I say it was a little bit misleading is that it was just like the video said hey we only have a few slots left so for people to come on this trip and if you don't sign up then you know these slots are going to be filled up and you may not be able to go well people took that as hey we're going to pay for your whole trip and they thought we were going to pay for their plane tickets and all this other stuff when that wasn't necessarily the case and you know that was a problem on my part because I didn't catch that I just the person sent me the video I was just like yeah it looks good and then brother Segura he said hey this video is pretty misleading and once after he posted up he watched and he's just like this video is pretty misleading so he's just like any emails that come in I'm sending them straight to you so I'm like answering all these emails about like people thinking that we're paying for like like people in different countries thinking that we're paying for their plane tickets to Fiji when that wasn't necessarily the case we were trying to like at least just get more participation from people that you know that are in that area and that are able to try to make it but what ended up happening was this after sifting through all those emails and I got a lot of emails about that we had one guy that was living in Papa New Guinea at the time and he saw the email or he saw the video and his name was Rafa and he ended up saying hey I was originally born in Fiji and I see that you guys are doing a soul winning marathon you're doing a missions trip there I want to join up with you so then I eventually got in contact with him on WhatsApp and then we started talking and then he ended up confirming that he was going to be able to take some time off go to Fiji to visit his family and then come on the trip so that's where we get into Acts chapter number 18 because I think his story is really good I feel like it ties in really well with the Bible character Apollos where it says in Acts 18 verse 24 and a certain Jew named Apollos born at Alexandria an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures came to Ephesus this man was instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in the spirit he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord knowing only the baptism of John and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard they took him they took him onto them and expounded onto him the way of God more perfectly so this is a perfect example of kind of what happened with Rafa was that Rafa never he was saved but he never went out soul winning so then when he actually came to Fiji and then ended up going on the trip with us and meeting us in Suva he was actually able to go soul winning with a lot of the guys Rob ended up going I believe you went soul winning with him either when we were in Nandi and you guys were in Suva so Rob ended up going soul winning with him Pastor Sepulveda ended up going soul winning with him so he was able to learn how to go soul winning as well as on the trip he ended up getting baptized while he was there so we were able to help this guy grow in the Lord teach him the Bible, help him so that he could be a lifelong soul winner if I remember correctly because I saw a picture of him preaching to someone towards the end of the trip so even by the end of the trip this guy is already starting to try to preach the gospel and I think that's another good thing with these trips is that because we have the do it yourself missions mentality is that you can try to get other people who may not necessarily be in church or serving God but they're saved and they want to be a part of these types of trips so that they can be able to serve God better. Now go with me to Matthew chapter number five, Matthew chapter number five so Matthew in Matthew 5, 15 when you get there, what I want to just quickly do is go over a few stories that we have of things that happen in in Fiji and just a few highlights just because a lot happened while we were there but I do want to give you a few quick things that I think are are really good but in Matthew 5, 15 the Bible says, or the Bible reads and says neither do men sorry, neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick and it giveth light unto all those that are in the house let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven so I bring that up not just because I'm trying to say hey look at all the stuff we did while we were in Fiji but I bring that up because I want to glorify God and just show how God can work with just a handful of people in a foreign field where they're able to get many different people saved so again, just to give you the soul winning numbers in that week, or a little bit over a week while we were in Fiji, we were able to get 2,115 people saved when we partnered up with Pastor Sepulveda's group now when it comes to the soul winners of Faithful Word we were able to get 750 people saved during that time and then on the trip we were able to get two people baptized so we were able to do more in these two weeks that we were there than a lot of missionaries do in a year while they're out on the field now one cool thing is that we were preached to a lot of big groups while we were there, for instance Pastor Sepulveda, he ended up preaching to a group of like 18 people and then one, like I don't remember exactly which day but one of the days we were there we had 500 people saved in one day with 57 soul winners, I believe that was the Wednesday if I remember correctly while we were there another cool thing was that we did a lot of soul winning on what's called the University of South Pacific's campus and there I believe it was the most receptive place in Fiji, just because we had a lot of people, or a lot of students that their English was good on top of their English was good, they were super receptive to the gospel, it was just really easy to get a lot of those guys saved and on top of that you ended up winning a lot of people of Christ that were just visiting Fiji but they were from other countries just like Raymond was saying yesterday that he had some guys that we talked to in Fiji ended up going back to Samoa that's kind of how it was at the University of South Pacific it was a big melting pot of just a lot of different people that you're able to talk to and we had people talk to people from countries like Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and it was extremely receptive on top of that if we weren't at the college a lot of our soul winning ended up happening at a mall and the mall was kind of like, it seemed like the big central hub of the city so at the mall to me it wasn't that great because I didn't really have a good, too many success stories there, but I know a lot of the ladies on our trip, they hung out at the mall and they were soul winning at the mall and then it got to the point that at a certain time I think it was like 2 or 3 o'clock a lot of the school aged kids started getting out of school so then they were able to preach to a lot of them and get a lot of them saved on top of that, even though the mall was hit or miss for me, I was able to get some government officials saved while I was there because, and this guy was low hanging fruit, super receptive I started talking to him he was just like, I don't know if I'm going to heaven I'm preaching to him in the gospel everything is just clicking, clicking, clicking it was a really low hanging fruit, and then after I'm done preaching to him, he's just like, hey do you mind coming and preaching to all my government friends because he was asking how long we were there for and I was just like, well unfortunately I'm not going to be able to because it was a Friday night when I was preaching, or a Friday evening when I was preaching to him, and then we were leaving that next day to go back to this was in Suva when we were leaving the next day to go to Nandi, so we weren't able to talk to, I I wasn't going to be able to do that, but I did get his contact information, so if we do go back and we happen to be in Suva, you know we have that opportunity to go preach to his government buddies in Fiji, and then Pastor Sepulveda, while we were there, he ended up preaching an evening service sermon, and at that sermon, that's where everyone who was on the trip, so the 57 Soul Winners, we ended up meeting at like an Indian restaurant, Pastor Sepulveda preached there, and then on top of him preaching there, we ended up disfellowshipping and eating really good food and so on and so forth, but while he was preaching like first of all, we were singing in the Indian restaurant and we were singing loud, and we thought they had it closed off to everybody but that was not the case like some, just a few people started walking in, and then we're still just like singing as, I mean we were, the place was, I don't know if it was really shaking, but that's how I felt, like just because we were singing that loud at this restaurant well come to find out, one of the people at the that was in the restaurant was the Vice Prime Minister of Fiji so he heard the sermon he saw us singing, so I thought that was cool that that guy ended up coming in and just at least seeing how Christians do, you know how Christians do it right, or Baptists do it, amen now several people ended up on this trip, they ended up getting Hindu saved, they got Buddhist saved, they got Muslim saved Rob talked to some demon-possessed guy, but like some demon-possessed guy was trying to like not let Rob talk to someone and then Rob, I guess his partner your soul-winning partner was able to deflect the guy so the guy, the person you were talking to was able to get saved and then again we went soul-winning in three different places the majority of the time we were in Suva, so that was for probably about four or five of the days but we did do some soul-winning in Nandi and then we also did some soul-winning in Latoka and I'll go over that in a little bit and one cool thing was Ms. Jennifer Johnson, she went to Fiji and then she ended up getting a guy from Eloi Arizona saved, so I thought that was cool so she leaves Arizona to go across the world and then she's able to get someone saved that lives here in Arizona so I thought that was cool but and then on top of that we ended up going to like just different bus stops and stuff and getting a lot of people saved there, like the bus stops seem to be super receptive there for some reason, like we went there the first day we arrived, so it was me Heather, Michelle and someone else and we ended up going soul-winning at like a little bus station and within two hours we ended up getting 16 people saved in two hours, just the four of us and then the rest of the team there arrived the next day and I was telling people, like so half of the group ended up just going straight to Suva as soon as they got there, I mean we're on Fijian time so they had to wait a little bit but anyway they ended up going straight to Suva and then you had another group that was in my van and I said, hey, anyone who wants to go soul-winning before we go to Suva, you guys, because I know pretty much to Fiji it's a red-eye flight, so it's like you leave LAX at like almost one in the morning and then you get to Fiji at like two days later at five in the morning or five or almost six in the morning, so it's a red-eye flight some people can't sleep on planes, I sleep like a baby on a plane, I have no issues sleeping on planes at all but some people do so that's why I gave some people the opportunity of going straight to Suva and you know, not doing any soul-winning but I'm like, hey, anyone who is able to sleep on a plane or who wants to go soul-winning then they're able to go, so anyway they can go with my group and then we would go to Suva later on well, anyway, I was telling people that, because it was really early in the morning, this is like, by the time we kind of got settled down, it was like eight in the morning and the first group that was going straight to Suva already left and I took everyone back to our hotel and I'm just like hey, if you just want to rest and relax and then we can go soul-winning at like you know, 10.30 or something at a more reasonable time, you can but the thing is, I like leave for a second because I had to drop off some people somewhere and then I come back and like, everyone's gone and I'm like, I don't know where everyone's at so then, this is, well, I'll leave them alone because the people know who I'm talking about but anyway but so then I leave and then I come back and then they're all gone so I'm like, what happened to everybody? so then I start like driving around trying to see where everyone's at and they're literally like down the street at a bus stop and they're just like, preaching the gospel this is like 8.30 in the morning and they're just preaching the gospel to all these people I'm like, I'm like, hey, you guys know you don't have to do that but I guess, you know, these are super soul-winners where even at 8.30 in the morning, they still want to go soul-winning, I'm like, hey, more power to you so they ended up doing that and I don't remember exactly how much we got saved but we got a lot, I think we, if I remember correctly it was like, by the time we were done and we ended up heading back to Suva, we got like 40 people saved so it was a pretty good, good morning for us that day. Now, last thing I want to bring up for Fiji, just because I'm kind of going in order chronological order of what happened and then I'll go into Tuvalu and then shouldn't take too long with Tuvalu but turn with me to Romans chapter number 8, Romans chapter number 8. So, while we were there we ended up visiting another church and, or visiting a church in the country and I didn't really know exactly what we were going to do for church I was debating on whether or not we wanted to have our own service or we wanted to just go to another church, like visit a church and more or less be a blessing to that church to see how it is, see if it's a good church that we can recommend people to. Well, anyway, I didn't know exactly how we were going to do it and on Saturday, we were soul winning in the mall area and that Saturday was when we were going to head back from Suva back to, back up to Nandi to be able to, because we were going to, everyone was leaving everyone's flight left from Nandi back to the US, so we ended up just leaving Suva on Saturday because everyone's flight was leaving Monday night so that they can be able to, you know, we could have enough time for people to get settled down in Nandi so we wouldn't be too far from the hotel instead of like rushing down to Suva, from Suva to Nandi because it was like a three and a half four hour drive to Nandi so we didn't want people having to rush to catch their flight and stuff so I said, hey, let's just leave on Saturday and then we get to Suva spend the night in Suva for the next two days and then everyone else, everyone who's leaving to go to Fiji, or go back to the US from Fiji they'll be able to leave on Monday. Well, anyway, while we're, so that morning, that Saturday morning we ended up doing like three hours of soul winning and while we're soul winning Alex is talking to a guy and let me read the verse and then I'll explain what's going on. Let's just, we'll go for Bible first then I'll explain what's going on but in Romans, I don't want to get too ahead of myself but in Romans 8 26 the Bible says, likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God and to them who are called according to his purpose. Now, I bring that up is that when you love God a lot of things are going to happen that you're going to be like hey, I'm surprised this happened. So anyway, and this is where I want to get into was that while Alex was soul winning, he's talking to a guy and come to find out it was a guy and a husband and a wife and come to find out the guy was a pastor of a church. Now, he was newly ordained to be the pastor of a church called Solid Rock Baptist Church and it was in a different town but he was saying that his sending church was in a place called Latoka and the guy was saved. He gave when Alex talked to him, he gave all the right answers about salvation. So, we're like well, maybe we should just go to church there and want to go back to Nandi. So, we looked it up and it was only like a 40 minute ride from our hotel to that church. So, we're like you know what, let's just do it. So, I think God was able to work it out in that circumstance that Alex just happened to talk to a guy that happened to be at that mall that happened to be in Suva that had a church that was actually close to where we were at and we were able to go to that church and the service like on that Sunday the guy, the pastor seemed like a nice guy. I do think he may have been possibly dispensationalist because on his, he had a wall and it had like the seven dispensations or no sorry, it had the seven church ages. So, I don't know if he we didn't ask questions, we just went. So, you know my thing is sometimes it's just like best not to know just hopefully the guy's like a good guy. So, I didn't ask too many questions but he did preach against, he kind of was like while he was preaching and he preached a good a pretty good sermon. He just was preaching that salvation was by faith. So, he had a lot of things right and he was even saying that, you know, the Jews have to get saved just like anyone else. So, to this day I don't know exactly where he stands on dispensationalism and I don't really care either because I don't know the next time I'm going to visit this church but I hope he's a good guy, you know what I'm saying? So, anyway we ended up going to that church. The church was a good service and then after we ended up going to that church we ended up going soul winning at a mall that was in the area and I don't remember the exact number of how many people we got saved but it was decently receptive while we were there. One funny thing that happened I mean it may not be that funny but anyway one thing that happened to me while I was there was that I'm preaching the gospel to this lady and then next thing I know like all these people just start running up to one another and then they start fighting. Now, I thought someone got shot so then I was like thinking about running while I was preaching also to the lady but I was just like wait no one else is running so maybe no one else got shot. So, then come to find out I guess these guys are just fighting and then you know that was kind of it but that was like the only time I've seen something like that happen in Fiji so I was actually surprised because I was just like Fiji is supposed to be such a nice country but like because they're super friendly there but I'm like really surprised to see that you know these guys are just fighting for no reason or whatever but anyway so that kind of sums up everything we did in in Fiji so after we went to church I left that Monday to go to Tuvalu and then the rest of the guys who were leaving to go back to the U.S. they ended up staying so on the last day that they were there, there was eight soul winners and they were able to get 112 people saved you know for that day, the day that they left to go back to the U.S. so I thought that was a really great accomplishment. So that's it for Fiji, that's kind of everything that happened there's a lot more stories that we can tell but I want to kind of jump into Tuvalu because I think some of the things that happened in Tuvalu were really really cool too while we were there. So now just to explain what was going on in Tuvalu was that in Tuvalu Tuvalu's like, it's like a two and a half hour flight north to get to Tuvalu from Fiji and while we're in, so what ended up happening is like while we're planning the trip they ended up canceling our flights to Tuvalu so we thought we were going to get there on a Saturday but then come to find out we ended up, they canceled that Saturday flight so then we had to rearrange a bunch of stuff so we ended up having some guys leave to Tuvalu on a Thursday and then I just stayed with the rest of the group and then I left to go to Tuvalu that following Monday so while I was still in Fiji we already had some people doing some soul winning in Tuvalu and the cool thing about the soul winning in Tuvalu was that it was receptive there too I know Rob had a really good time out soul winning when we were in Tuvalu and a lot of the other people that were on that trip had a really good time so I didn't know all this was going on but we did have a WhatsApp group and they told us kind of like kind of how kind of just to tell us like more or less what, they gave us a briefing on what was going on in Tuvalu so I kind of had an idea but I wasn't fully aware but what ended up happening was that in Tuvalu they ended up that Sunday they ended up visiting a Baptist church and this Baptist church was a pretty good Baptist church I enjoyed that church a lot when I was there in Tuvalu because they gave, when I was there they gave me the opportunity to preach twice there but what's funny is Quinn from our church he was talking to me about when he found out we were going to Tuvalu he started talking to me and he was like, hey I heard you were going to Tuvalu and there was a pastor I knew back in I believe in Iowa and the guy's name I think was Steve, or a missionary I think his name was Steve Larson and he said that he was supposed to be a pastor in Tuvalu so he was just like hey if you go there or when you go to Tuvalu try to find that church and if you can find that church just let me know so I was just like yeah I'll do it so when we get to Tuvalu come to find out the pastor or that guy that Quinn was talking about was actually there and it was the only Baptist church on the island but the problem was was that during COVID he ended up leaving he ended up going back to the US and then the people of that church just kind of ended up taking like the locals ended up taking over that church and then running it so by the time we got there they were you know it was the locals running the church so that just kind of gives you an idea of what was going on prior to me getting there so when I got there then you know the fun really started right the party really happened I'm just joking but I do want to stop right there just to say some fun facts about Tuvalu because I'll be honest prior to earlier this year I didn't even know Tuvalu existed so I do want to just at least talk about I like to give a little fun facts for you nerds out there that like those type of things so you understand what Tuvalu is all about but Tuvalu it means eight standing together that's what the word means and why it means that is because Tuvalu consists of eight islands it's a Polynesian island so Fiji and Vanuatu they're Melanesian islands but we want but Tuvalu is actually part of Polynesia and Polynesia is a stretch from like Tuvalu to Hawaii and then to the Easter Island so it makes like this triangle so it's still in that South Pacific area but it's just more or less different people group that's there so it has a population of about 12,000 people and it makes that's that makes it the third smallest country in the world and then on top of that it's made up of six coral reef atolls which those are just kind of like things standing outside the water and then the inhabited islands are three coral reef islands and that's where we were at so the capital is Funafuti and that's where we did most of our soul winning at there's not a lot of when I was when I actually arrived there there's not a lot of people that's just like you know how in other countries you have like just parks where you just have tons and tons of people just congregated there it wasn't like that inside of Tuvalu you really other than whenever an airplane landed and you know people are picking up or getting their friends and family from the airport and stuff you didn't really have just like these big pockets of people congregating so when I was there and I know with some of the other guys in the group we ended up just doing some we did a mix of just hey talk to anybody you see on the street and then on top of talking to anyone you see on the street doing some door to door soul winning and then later on towards the end of the trip we ended up going to some schools to do some soul winning there now one interesting thing about Tuvalu is that there's only five miles of paved roads so it's a really really small island they let you rent motorcycles there so I ended up renting a motorcycle and I ended up just driving across the whole island it takes like 40 minutes to drive like from one end of the island to the other so it was pretty cool and when it comes to renting the motorcycle they don't ask any questions and I thought that was like like literally they don't ask any questions the only question they ask was what's your name and what hotel are you staying at and that was it they didn't take my license they didn't do anything they just gave me I'm like do you need any more information the guy was like nope and I was just like alright and I just got on the motorcycle revved it up and then drove on just cause I'm like okay whatever cause I guess they're really trusting there and then everybody knows since it's such a small island everyone knows everyone there so it wasn't like that big of a deal now another interesting thing there's only one hotel on the island and on top of that there only being one hotel there's three guest houses so there's not really a lot of people there on the island on top of that for you conspiracy theorists out there that are scared of the cashless society in Tuvalu they only take cash so that's one thing about that is that they only take cash but the problem is there's no ATM so I don't know how you're gonna do it but they do have a bank that does exchange money so it's not that big of a deal on top of that it is a really poor country so you don't get a lot of the creature comforts that you get in the US like for instance the showers had they were not there was no hot water and a lot of the water that you use in Tuvalu is just rainwater so they just reuse a lot of rainwater on top of that they only have one national TV channel, no national newspaper one radio station and one fully functional hospital so again it's a really really poor country and how they make a lot of their money is through internet royalties because they have domain rights to the .tv domain of a URL so that's how they make a lot of their money as well as they let people from other countries come in and fish so I saw lots of animals outside the island because we went to on one of the I guess more or less wreck days we ended up visiting a few different islands so I was able to see a lot of just animals I'm surprised that exist in the wild but I was able to see sharks just there's like these sharks that are about that big they're called black tip reef sharks so I saw several of those I saw some flounders so I saw a lot of animals and then they have a lot of stray dogs there so Raymond would not like it if he was in Tuvalu because they have a lot of stray dogs but the cool thing about it is the dogs are like super chill they do not bother people at all like I went to go check out the beach and then I saw a dog literally just like go into the water and then it went swimming for a little bit and then it just like got out of the water shook itself off and then like started laying on the beach and it did that for like the rest of the time I was on the beach just chilling I was just like alright man more power to you on top of that in Tuvalu they only take Tuvaluan dollars and then they also take Australian dollars so we don't know how to get Tuvaluan dollars but we were able to get Australian dollars and that's how we were able to function while we were on the trip they also let you they drive on the left side of the road so similar to Fiji and then the two main languages are Tuvaluan and English and then technically they're still part of like the British colonies because I don't think they have their independence yet but they deal with everything all the stuff locally and on top of that you have chiefs on the island that kind of dictate what people could do to a certain extent there and then one very interesting thing was that there I don't so I don't remember seeing any cemeteries so I do not believe there are any cemeteries there in Tuvalu so how they do it is that in front of buildings you'll have like a coffin in front of the house or in front of a building so like where our hotel was at you had like you had like a coffin and I guess that's where they put their dead you know relatives there so you know grandma's always watching you literally wherever you're at so and what you would see people do is it's like it's really weird but they would start they would either lay and sleep on these coffins or if they're not laying and sleeping on the coffins they're like I like I remember seeing one lady just crying on it she's like sleeping on it and crying on it and sleeping on it so I'm just like okay I mean whatever so anyway that just gives you an idea of Tuvalu and one another thing is that when it comes to religion it's 94% Christian so the biggest church is called the Church of Tuvalu and they're Calvinists I ran into a few of the people that go to that church while I was there it seemed like some people were saved some people are not just dependent on who you talk to and then but you know the majority of of Tuvalu is Christian and they have a few other religions or people are not religious at all so like 2% is like Baha Faith and then the rest is either other or no religion so we did see as much as it stinks is that we did see all your cults on Tuvalu for it to be such a small island there was still there was a bunch of Seventh-day Adventists Mormons and SDAs sorry and Jehovah's Witnesses on the island so you had both of those or all three of those cults had buildings on the island and I didn't really see any Mormons but I know they had a building on that island so you know that's kind of a bummer that even a small country like that you still have false religions trying to infiltrate that so getting back to the story when I got to Fiji or sorry when I left Fiji and got to Tuvalu I ended up going soloing as soon as I got there so I got to Fiji roughly at like noon so the airport and the hotel we stayed at are literally from where this pulpit is at to that wall where the clock is at that's how close they are so I literally got off the flight went through immigration and then just walked straight to my hotel room put my stuff down and then ended up going going soloing as soon as I got there and when I went soloing I liked it a little bit better than Fiji for the reason that in Fiji a lot of the people I talked to they would kind of string you along whenever you would try to preach to them the gospel some people it happened more than others like I know for instance Nick told me that happened to him every now and then Alex seemed like he had more success that didn't happen that much but I would literally give the gospel to someone and I would spend 15-20 minutes talking to someone trying to give them the gospel and they would they would seem like they're agreeing they would give you all the right answers but at the end you kind of just ask them some more questions you say hey what does it take to be saved and they'll just give you all the wrong answers again and you're just like am I doing something wrong but it's either that they just really didn't care what you had to say they were kind of stringing you along or they just really didn't understand so that was the problem in Tuvalu what I liked was and another thing in Fiji they it was hard for people to say no and I think that was one reason why people would just listen to the gospel even though they didn't believe it and in Tuvalu it was a different story in Tuvalu if someone didn't want to listen to the gospel they'll just tell you no I'm not interested I don't want to listen and I actually liked that a little bit more just because at least the person's up straight it's like hey I'm not going to waste your time you're not going to waste my time it's a mutual agreement there and in Tuvalu it was like that Fiji I guess it was hit or miss with that but when I got there it was a little rough at the beginning when I was going soloing because I saw Rob's post in our other WhatsApp group and it seemed like he was having a bunch of success anyone who seen some of Rob's Facebook posts you know he was taking pictures of all these kids and you know it seemed like he was having a good time but it was kind of rough for me at the beginning but then after that I ended up getting my like within maybe an hour, hour and a half I was able to get my first the first person saved and another thing there is that I ended up going door to door soloing just because I couldn't find any real people on the road but what was kind of weird about Tuvalu was that you'll knock on a door and either the door would already be open or people if it's already open then what you'll do is you'll see people just laying on the floor because I guess they didn't have any furniture there a lot of time because it's such a poor country so you'll just see people literally laying on the floor I thought some people were dead at the time like I was just like man is this guy dead I was like man I guess I caught you at a bad time but I literally thought some people were dead but I was just like oh they're sleeping so then that made sense I was just like okay I would either knock louder or try to get their attention but that happened to the first guy I was preaching to was that he was just laying on the floor knocked on his door kind of got him I woke him up and then I ended up preaching to him and he was super receptive his English was great and he ended up getting saved and even there the English was not bad like for there are some people who spoke English rather than others I didn't have a lot of success with kids it seemed like kids didn't speak English that well like kids under 10 but kids above 10 their English was great like you couldn't preach to a bunch of kids they were able to get saved so another thing was this is that I had the opportunity to preach at the church that they visited it was called Grace Bible Baptist Church and that's in Tuvalu and what ended up happening was this is when I landed and we started talking they were like hey Caleb we want you know the church wants us to preach on Tuesday night and I was just like okay and they're like we want you to preach I'm like me to preach and at this time I was sick like the whole trip I was sick and like I had that everlasting cough like where I just could not stop coughing it sounded like you know a bunch of bullfrogs like mating that's how bad my cough was and I was just constantly coughing and then it got to the point because we were singing at church the day before I was singing so loud that I was losing my voice so by the time I got to Tuvalu my voice was pretty much just completely shot so I'm like I don't know if I want to preach just because I can't I'm not feeling that great and then my voice isn't really there but then I just decided to preach anyway so that Tuesday night I ended up preaching at the church and what they like the group that was already there they kind of told me what was going on they said the church wasn't doing a lot of soul winning so they said it would be good to preach a message that like kind of motivates them to go soul winning because they said their idea of soul winning was that they would pass out tracts and they would only give tracts to people who wanted them so if someone didn't want a tract they wouldn't even give it to them and on top of that you know they weren't really bold in how they preached so then I just preached a sermon about confrontational evangelism so I just showed them why we do confrontational evangelism why we present the gospel the way we do where we ask people if they know for sure they're going to heaven and if they're not sure then we preach them the gospel and then hopefully that person is able to get saved so I was able to do that or able to preach that sermon just show people show them you know what you know our method of soul winning and how it works so then after I was done preaching Rob he ended up him and someone else they ended up doing a soul winning presentation just so that they can understand how to preach the gospel so then the next so after the service was done I ended up saying I asked the congregation I was just like hey we're going to be soul winning all day tomorrow so if any of you guys want to join up with us you know feel free to so a lot of the guys said hey we have to work we don't get off at five but we do want you guys to come back tomorrow for their midweek service on Wednesday and preach so I was just like okay so then they're asking us if we can preach again so I was just like yeah you know that would be great so but we did have one of the people from the church actually go out soul winning with us after you know that Wednesday morning I guess they heard that we were soul winning they got in contact with us and then they said hey you know what I'm willing to go out with you guys for a few hours to go soul winning to see how you guys do it so we took one of the church members out soul winning she was able to see how we do our soul winning and we were able to be a blessing to her in that way so that she could be able to preach the gospel there because the thing is Tuvalu is small and you can talk to a lot of people in a short amount of time it's only 12,000 people so I believe if someone just spent a few months in Tuvalu you can probably get that whole country reached with the gospel in a really short amount of time I don't think it would take it would take that long well anyway so when it comes to the preaching on the Wednesday night I decided I was just like you know what I wanted to give some of the guys the opportunity to preach just so you could know that hey if you visit a different church than or sorry if you go and do missions trips or missions works outside of you know you go to another country and do missions work there may be chances or times where you're going to have to get in front of a church and preach to them so and you're not going to know when that's going to happen but sometimes they'll just you go visit a church and they're like hey oh you're a missionary hey come and preach for us and they'll just do that so I said I just want to give the guys who are on the trip the opportunity to preach since that happened to me like the day before that I didn't know I was going to preach and I ended up having to preach so I just said this I said my rule and I think this is this lines up with the church rule is like if you're going to preach at someone else's church do not preach stuff that's contrary to their beliefs so even if the church is pre-trib don't preach a sermon about the pre-trib rapture or you know a sermon against the pre-trib rapture you know it's their church respect their church so so just preach a normal message that has nothing to do with whatever doctrines we disagree with that was kind of my rule and that's what I told them so anyway Rob ended up preaching that Wednesday night and he preached about soul winning I preached the sermon just about how a church should look like and I was just trying to encourage the people of the church so they understand that you know just different like what we do at our church and you know how we believe a lot of the stuff we do at our church is biblical such as like congregational singing you know church discipline things like that so I just explained those things in the sermon just so they can understand you know what is a biblical church and what a biblical church looks like that they have hard preaching against sin and so on and so forth now last thing I want to bring up is this and that you know that's kind of the gist of that so we ended up going soul winning on Wednesday and then we went to the, we preached on Wednesday night and then Thursday was the day we left so I just want to wrap up with what happened on the last day and then we'll be done so go with me to Acts chapter number 28 Acts chapter number 28 so one thing I really liked about Tuvalu and this just kind of wraps it up in a nutshell is that in Tuvalu they give you the you have the freedom to preach the gospel and sin is going to stop you from preaching the gospel except for one guy and I'll get to that but literally one guy is the only one that's going to stop you from preaching the gospel I'm not joking about that there's only one guy so the Bible reads in Acts 28 verse 30 it says, and Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house and received all that came in onto him preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence no man forbidding him so towards the end of Paul's life he had the opportunity of being able to preach to different people and no man stopped him from preaching well anyway we had the same thing happen to us where Rob, he ended up while we were on the trip he ended up preaching to three kids and then the group grew larger and larger and larger so then a police while Rob is preaching to these kids a police officer comes up to him and he's like, hey, excuse me can you move these kids off the road and move them onto the sidewalk because it's safer there so the guy was really nice he just was like, hey, I don't want the kids in the road but you can still preach to them another thing was that the last day the Wednesday the Wednesday we were there before we left we ended up going soul winning at a school and I said this we got there roughly like 9, 30, 10 o'clock and kids were still going into class and I said my rule about when kids are going to class I just said I've been to other countries other countries take education serious so I said, hey for right now until the kids actually get out of class and they're on their own I said, let's just not preach to any kids let them go to class first and then we'll wait a few hours once they get out of class then we'll preach to them because I know adults get really mad, especially in other countries when you stop kids from getting their education or whatever so I said that and did anyone listen to me? Some people did but not everyone listened to me so as soon as I said that we dispersed and we started going soul winning and then we had people talking to kids even though I said, don't talk to any of the kids right now because I know you're going to get rebuked for it by one of the adults well, lo and behold, exactly what I said happened so someone's preaching to some of the kids and then an adult comes up to them and tells them, hey you can't preach to the kids right now but once they get out of school then you can preach to them so we were still able to preach to the kids it was just that, don't preach to them while they're in class and on top of that, we ended up getting the opportunity to preach to that school the day we left, so we left on a Thursday and we worked out some stuff to be able to preach in some of the classes, so three of the guys that were on the trip or three of the men that were on the trip, we ended up preaching in the classrooms to a lot of the students on top of that, there was another time where, this is when I first landed and then I was soul winning and when it came to Rob in Tuvalu, you never knew where Rob was at the only way you can figure out where Rob was at is if you check Facebook and he would like post like pictures of what was going on, you're like oh, I know where Rob's at now, that's how you would figure out where Rob is at, you would not know where he's at just because he would disappear and then he would just show up on Facebook but anyway, I was I was out, I was soul winning and then I ended up running out of materials so then, I'm walking back to the hotel and then I see Rob preaching to some kids, so then I'm like waiting while Rob is preaching to the kids, so then this lady ends up calling me over and she's just like, hey, come here, come here, I want to talk to you, I'm like, oh man, because you know in the US if you're talking to little kids, people are going to get really mad at you and the kids are just outside like just walking or playing or whatever but I'm like, oh, she's going to she's going to get on this for this, so then I start talking to the lady and then she's just like, oh, is he with you? I'm like yeah, he's with me and then she's just like oh, I'm so thankful that he's preaching to them right now and then I was just like, huh? and she was just like, yeah, I'm so thankful that he's preaching to them because a lot of the parents don't preach to the kids here in Tuvalu, so then I'm glad that he's taken the time to preach to them about Jesus Christ so then I talked to the lady, come to find out she was already saved and she wasn't stopping us from preaching the gospel, she was happy that we were preaching the gospel to the people and to the kids in Tuvalu now, last thing I want to bring up is just that we had some opposition while we were there, now I was going to go over a story but I feel like I don't want to take too much time but like go over the Bible story but I'll just skip to the story with that but while we were in Tuvalu, we were soul winning at a school and then some guy ends up following us to different places while we were soul winning so we were soul winning roughly at like an elementary slash middle school and this guy ends up coming up to us and saying, hey, you guys shouldn't be preaching here and then we're like, we have permission from the school to preach here because this was after the kids got out of class and the administrator said, we can preach there you know, they told two different people that we can preach there with no problem, so the guy was just being a jerk trying to get us to stop preaching so then anyway, the kids, a lot of the elementary school students ended up leaving, so then we went to a high school and then we started preaching to the high school student, while the same bozo ended up coming and following us to the high school and then I literally just finished preaching the gospel to like five high school students and then once we were done the guy just comes up to us and then he just tells me, he's just like, you need to go to Papua New Guinea, I was just like, yeah, we're planning on that soon, that's what I literally told him and then he was just like, because I don't want you here in Tuvalu, I was just like, okay I was just like, okay I was just like, so the guy was just like yeah, I don't like that you guys are here you need to go take this, your stuff somewhere else, so I was just like are you a Christian, I asked him, I was like, are you a Christian and he was just like, yeah, I'm a Christian, so I'm like so what's the deal, so he's just like yeah, I just don't want you guys here, so then I literally just finished preaching to those students and then I turned to them, I'm like, hey, I don't want you guys to be rude to an adult, but I was just like, before I got here, did you guys know if you were going to heaven and then the kids were like, no I said, after I talked to you, now do you know for sure you're going to heaven and then they were like, yes, I was like, if I did not come here and preach to you, would you have known that you were going to heaven or where would you be going, and they were like, hell so I was just like, okay, so I turned back to the guy, I'm like, so it seems like there are people here in Tuvalu that don't know the gospel, that want to get saved and you're sitting there telling me to go to another country, I'm like, dude, you're making no sense, so then the guy just yaps off at me and then walks away, so it's just like, come on, you know, but anywhere you go, you're always going to have weird people like that, that just want to give you trouble when you're out soul and you're doing a good work for God, so, anyway, that's our story with Tuvalu, after we went soul winning there on the Thursday, we went soul winning Thursday morning, got on the airplane, went back to Fiji and then flew back to the US, so it was a really good trip, again, we had 200 in Tuvalu, we ended up having 207 people saved and we want to go there again, like, I would love to go back to Tuvalu, just especially to see, because we had such great fellowship at the church, I wanted to be able to see what that church is doing so as a conclusion, just to wrap everything up is this, I know the sermon was long so and I didn't even get to every story, so I'm glad you guys bore with me, but I just wanted to help you understand what a successful mission trip looks like and that I believe this trip that we went to Fiji and Tuvalu was a successful mission trip, it went pretty smooth, we had some hiccups on the way and while we were there we had a few hiccups but it was nothing that was too major that you know, we couldn't deal with, but I'm glad we took this trip there, it was a great trip, super receptive, the people were great and you can just see how just the principles of common sense missions goes with do it yourself missions, you know, you go to a place where you know the language, so it's easier to preach to people who are receptive, you go to a place that's receptive, safe and legal so that you'll enjoy the soul winning and that you're not going to be hindered by preaching the gospel and then you know, with do it DYI missions, you have the opportunity of going anywhere you choose that fits that criteria and you can be able to go preach the gospel there and have a great time doing it, so this is, you know, with the choice or with do it yourself missions, then you have the choice of where you want to go as long as you have all the right principles to do a great work of God, so let's pray, Lord, I thank you for all you've done thank you for giving us the opportunity to go to Ephesia to Tuvalu earlier this year to be able to serve you and do a great work I just pray that you can help continue to let us have more and more missions trips and that you continue to bless our lives as we serve you, I thank you for all you've done, Lord, and I pray in Jesus' name I pray, amen Alright, we're going to go and get the song, but we'll be dismissed now if you didn't catch the announcement earlier there's a pass you you you you you you you you you 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