A Family’s Leap Of Faith And Service

A quiet question in a dark basement changed everything. George Cisneros went from Sunday routines and Broncos games to selling it all, moving his family to Guatemala, adopting five siblings, and building a boys’ academy anchored in daily Scripture. The path wasn’t polished—no sending agency, no perfect plan—just a hard yes and a habit of showing up when it mattered most.

We walk through the moment that sparked his calling, the year of praying a single sentence that reordered his priorities, and the trip that revealed a different kind of wealth in the worship of children who had little but gratitude. George shares the surprising realities of independent missions, how his church supported faithfully if modestly, and why a small village school with an hour of Bible each morning may be the most strategic lever for shaping future husbands, fathers, and leaders in Guatemala. His approach to Scripture—reading for width and depth—offers a practical map for anyone ready to move beyond skimming and into study that sticks.

We also dig into the family’s adoption story, the decision to keep siblings together against the odds, and what endurance sports taught him about long obedience under thin air. If you’re exploring missions, George offers clear steps: get biblically grounded, put your house and finances in order, practice evangelism now, and build trust through a consistent newsletter. He even opens the playbook on fundraising that raised $140K in seven days from a small but engaged list. Warm, candid, and full of field-tested wisdom, this conversation invites you to trade hesitation for a faithful next step.

If this story stirred something in you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—your support helps more listeners find these conversations and take their own step of faith.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsey Us show. And the Dorsey Us show is sponsored by the Audery Audio Group, which inspires and uplifts through discussions, testimonies, and teachings, equipping listeners for meaningful conversations. On today's episode, we have George Cisneros who is a Christian missionary and he recounts his family's journey from the US to Guatemala, where they established a school that provided aid and adopted five children. George has his diverse experiences, including mountaineering, marathons, and Bible study, emphasizing his passion for helping others understand the Bible. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Dorsey, it is my absolute pr pleasure. I've been looking forward to this. I'm excited to get into it.

Poker Icebreaker And Humor

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

So yes, I played in the World Series of Poker a few years back. It's been probably five years, but so they have a seniors, uh a seniors, I don't know what you call it, but a seniors group. So you had to be 50 years older or older to play in it. There were still thousands of people that entered and played in the World Series of Poker, the seniors division. And yeah, I placed in the money, which basically means I got my money back. But in my past, I used to just love to play poker. It was just something I love to do, and uh didn't get a chance to do it until a few years back. And I got to go back and spend a weekend playing. So it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Okay. Nice. I'd like to open up with a couple of icebreaker questions. What's your favorite funny story to tell other people?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Wow, I think a funny story for me. And first of all, I've been looking forward to your icebreaker questions because these are questions that I have no idea what's coming. And as I listened to some of your other episodes, I was wondering, what is he going to ask me? So that's a great question. I think one of the funny stories that I like to tell is when we got to Guatemala, my wife and I did not know Spanish. And I remember one day we're leaving the neighborhood and there was a small little store that sold uh snacks and water. And I parked the car, and my wife said she'd go in and buy the water. And so she went inside and she came outside of this little tienda and she said, they don't have any water. And I was like, What do you mean they don't have water? Because they all have water. So I said, uh let me go in. So I went inside, and of course they had water. I asked for water. Uh I bought some water. I came back outside. And I said, What did you tell them exactly? And so she had asked them incorrectly. She said, uh, tengo await, which is I have water. And I think they were just kind of looking at her like, okay, great, lady, like you have water. I don't know. So it was just funny. It was just uh uh a miscommunication, but it was funny. We still give her a hard time for that. That was that was 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Right. What one of your biggest challenges in life?

The Call: Loving God Above All

SPEAKER_01 4:17

One of my biggest challenges in life. You know, so we are parents to nine kids, and we have four biological and we've adopted five. And I think that fatherhood, just being a parent, is probably one of the biggest challenges because they're just you're never really prepared for the next step. We've, like I said, we've got nine, our four adult children are in the United States. They grew up on the field, so three of them are married, one is engaged. And, you know, when they leave, you're not prepared for it. It leaves a hole in your heart that you don't even know is coming. I don't know why nobody really talks about it, but when your older kids leave the nest, it does lead a big hole. And uh they're off starting their own family. They're doing exactly what you raised them to do, um, but you miss them. And so I think probably raising kiss is probably the most difficult or the most challenging thing I've had.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

What is the backstory of you and your family going from the US to Guatemala? How did that happen? How did that take place? You know, I mean, I know, you know, in your bio because you picked up and you left, but there has to be some type of backstory to that. Or maybe there isn't, and you just decided one day, hey, I'm gonna go to, let's all go to Guatemala.

Saying Yes And Moving To Guatemala

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah, you know, that's such a good observation because I think a lot of people, when we said that we were gonna be moving to Guatemala, uh, a lot of people thought, well, that's such a random decision. Like, did you just pick up and leave? And so that's actually a great observation because there is a backstory. The backstory is that before we moved, I was in the basement watching my favorite football team, the Denver Broncos, and it was just me. I mean, I got another Bronco fan. I love it. Well, I was watching this particular game. I uh for whatever reason, and I think it's one of those things where you just remember the details of important times of your life. But I remember Jay Cutler was quarterback. I remember we lost that particular game, and I just turned the TV off and in the basement it was dark, and I just was kind of sitting there, and I really felt the presence of God asking me, Do you love me? And it was just weird because I generally don't have this conversation with God. Matter of fact, I've probably only had five conversations that I can recall that I really felt like it was the Holy Spirit talking to me. Do you love me? And I said, uh, yes, of course I love you. I I love you. And then I fell to him asking me, Do you love me more than you love your wife? And I didn't answer quickly because I thought about it. I see my wife every day. We wake up together, we have coffee together, we pray together, and spend more time with her than I spend with anyone else. And I just I said, you know, God, I think I love my wife more than I love you. And then he asked me, Do you love your kids more than you love me? And that was actually a bit easier to answer because I would die for my kids. If my kids today called and said, Dad, I need a heart transplant and I could give them my heart, I would do it. And so I said, God, I love my kids more than I love you. And that's very humbling. But then the next question was kind of funny, but not funny at all. And that was, do you love me more than you love the Denver Broncos? I kind of in my head, I wanted to say, yes, of course, I love you more than I love the Denver Broncos. But I thought about it. I took a second and I thought, I just spent three hours watching my favorite team play football on a Sunday. And I do every Sunday during football season. Sometimes I'll watch a Monday night football game. Sometimes I'll watch a doubleheader on Sunday, spend hours watching football, and I have never spent three hours alone with God. I'd never prayed for three hours straight. I had never read my Bible for three hours straight. I had never spent three hours in a row with this person, God, who I say I love. And so really made me wonder, you know, do I even love God? And so it was actually a year later, almost to the day, which is crazy, that I, so well, let me back up one step. So that night I talked to my wife, I told her about this conversation, and I told her, you know, I need to explore this. And I said, I'm gonna stop praying. And I made a decision, stop praying for my needs, for our businesses that we own, for our family, for things like that, for health or anything else. I stopped praying and I traded all of those prayers into one prayer, which was, I love you, or Lord, love you. I prayed that prayer for an entire year. Anytime I felt like praying for myself or for my business or for anything other than that, I just it was a trigger for me to remember to say, Lord, I love you. And that was my prayer for a year. So a year later, my church had a spot open up. They were going on a missions trip to Guatemala, somebody canceled and they said, Hey, if anybody wants to go, we have one spot open. I said, Yes, I want to go. It wasn't, you know, any kind of inspiration from the Holy Spirit or anything. I just felt like I wanted to go. And quite honestly, it was probably selfish. I probably just wanted to go and do that and feel good, maybe, or help someone and feel good about myself. And so I went on this trip. We were working at an orphanage for the week. And basically what that meant was we got to play with the kids and just love on those kids. But at the end of the week, there was a feeding center that we got to go be a part of where we fed a couple hundred kids from the inner city a hot lunch. And honestly, as a very poor, as I know now, living in Guatemala, uh, it was a very poor part of Guatemala City. And we fed these kids, but before the meal came out, the worship group, the worship team came up and they started playing. And I was at the back of the room, the back of this cafeteria, and I just remember being overwhelmed by 200 kids. They just jumped up out of their seats, they started praying and really just singing with all their hearts, thanking God, hands in the air. And I'm looking at them from the back of the room, recognizing what loving God really looks like. Like they were loving God. And it was on that day, December of 2000, I guess it would be 2011. I remember it was that day that I recognized, you know what, I love God too. I love God. And it was the first time, maybe in my entire life, that I realized I love God. So I get back home, I told my wife again about the trip and that experience of just feeling this deep love for God and really feeling like he was calling me to follow him, which meant he was calling our family to follow him. And so we made the decision that night, Dorsey, to sell everything we have and follow God to Guatemala and serve him there. We didn't even know how, we didn't know what, we didn't know anything about it, but we made the decision that night and seven months later. So we put our house on the market uh a month later. Seven months later, we were aboarding a plane to Guatemala City. And so that's the backstory.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Now you are missionaries now to Guatemala. Do you have any type of organization that you or search that you work with when you're down there?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

So it's crazy. We actually don't. We had no idea. We felt called to Guatemala. We didn't feel prepared. We didn't feel prepared in all kinds of ways, but we did have something, and that was our obedience. So we said yes. We came here to help some other missionaries kind of uh do the work that they were doing. But as it turns out, that actually didn't come to fruition. Really, just spending time with the Lord and looking for his direction, which thank God he gave us. Um but no, we don't our church does support us. Um they've supported us for the last 13 years, the church that we were going to, but really they just support us financially with a little bit, which we're super grateful for, but we're not really under any kind of um umbrella. We are here independently, and which, as it turns out, we have really appreciated. And in the end, um, even though we went through a lot of growing pains and a lot of learning and and a lot of financial difficulties, in the end, it actually worked out for the best because we were able to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and not be guided necessarily by you know uh uh a church that maybe has visu that we weren't kind of matched up with. So interestingly though, I wouldn't recommend that. I would recommend being sent. Um, but that was what we had to deal with, and it worked out incredibly well.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Now you did say, and I was thinking my next question that your six does support you and support you financially, but when you went, I mean, before you went, did you go to your pastor and say, hey, I'm gonna take my family and I and we're gonna move to Guatemala and wouldn't be missionary, what was that discussion like? And what did your pastor say?

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Absolutely, yeah. We did. And weirdly, on that particular trip, this is crazy. On that trip, I think there were maybe 20 of us that went on that trip to Guatemala. And on that trip, three families came back feeling called to serve in Guatemala, which is just, it's never happened. It probably has never happened since. It never happened before. As a matter of fact, our church had only sent, not supported, but sent one other missionary onto the field. And it was a pretty big church. It was an assemblies of God, it is an assemblies of God church. They they support missions, so they financially support a lot of different missionaries, but they had only ever sent one missionary onto the field. And so they were kind of weren't sure what to do. So they did the best they could to kind of help these three families, uh, my family included, to prepare to go out onto the field. And of those three families, one family stayed for, I believe, one year and then they went back to the States. Uh, and then this other uh family, they have been on the field um for the same length that we have. So coming up on 13 years this year, they've been on the field as well. So they were encouraging. They, like I said, they supported us financially a little bit, and they continue to support us financially. But yeah, it's they I don't know honestly what they do now if they send more missionaries out, but that particular year, they sent three different families out onto the field.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

You mentioned in your introduction there that you adopted five kids. What was that experience like?

Independent Missions And Church Support

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Wow. So here's how that came about. We were serving in our ministry. We uh started a uh um Christian middle school for boys in a very small village. But while we were working, my older daughter, when she was like 15 years old, she started working and volunteering at an orphanage. And she got to really get to know some of these kids, and she would come home and tell us, you know, there are these two kids that are older. One of them was born deaf. And, you know, it just had a big heart for them. And so my wife also started on her free time. She would go in with my daughter to support my daughter uh and and volunteer at this at this orphanage. And as it turns out, it was those two kids that became eligible to be adopted. And in Guatemala, the way adoption works, you can't adopt, you can't go in and choose kids to adopt. But because these kids were older and because one of them had special needs, we could go in and say, you would like to adopt them if possible. So we went through the process. We already were permanent residents, which you have to be in Guatemala. You can't be a U.S. citizen and not a Guatemalan resident uh in adopt. So it's only available to citizens of Guatemala and to permanent residents, which we were. We went through the process of becoming eligible to adopt, and then we went through the process of adopting these two. During that process, Dorsey, two other siblings, biological siblings, were found in another orphanage. They were transferred to that orphanage. The director called my wife and I, and I can tell you exactly where we were when we got that call. And she said, We have found two other kids. There's biological siblings, and now they are all basically a package. Can't we cannot split them, can't split legally in Guatemala, you can't split siblings up. And so we uh were asked, you can adopt all four, or you can't adopt them. You know, listen, we didn't even think about it. We said yes, absolutely. We didn't we didn't know anything about these kids. We didn't know what kind of needs they had, we didn't know, and it didn't matter. We said yes, because we we knew that the two older ones would probably never be adopted. And now that there were four, it just would never ever happen. In Guatemala, adoptions are uh rare. There are millions of people in Guatemala, and there are only a couple of hundred adoptions every year. And so we just knew what their fate would be. So we said yes. We adopted those four, went through that whole process. And then three years later, we got another call from the director, and she said, We have found another one of their siblings that was born. She's a young girl. She was born uh through, you know, that process because she was only a couple years old, but she had been taken uh out of the home because of neglect and abuse. Would we be open? She said, Of course, you know, you're not obligated. We just wanted to ask you first, would you be open to adopting this little girl? And we immediately said yes, went through the process, and that's how we ended up adopting five.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Oh well. Do they know if there's any more possibly out there? Any older siblings that are connected to the to these kids?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Well, wow, you're you just are so aware because that's that's a great question. And I don't think anyone's ever really asked us that. But yes, there are other siblings. As it turns out, there was an older sibling who was placed, she was placed in an orphanage for special needs. And interestingly, she had a clear mind. She was completely normal, but she had some physical disformities. Is that a word? Yeah, the deformity is a word. Yeah. So she had some physical deformities that when they put her in the orphanage, they thought that she was special needs, but really she wasn't. She just had some physical deformities. And so she actually ended up being adopted by the director of that particular orphanage. Once the orphanage uh director of that orphanage recognized that she was a completely normal kid, you know, and that she didn't really belong in that particular orphanage, she adopted her. Praise the Lord. And so they do have an older sibling. Um, we have gotten to know her. She has since moved to Canada with that director. Then there is one younger sister. And as it turns out, that sister was adopted by her biological aunt, which makes that lady our kid's biological aunt as well. We have gotten to know them over the last couple of years very well. They're very good friends of ours. And matter of fact, they have spent the last two Christmases with us, spent the night, and we've all celebrated together. And so we we've built an incredible relationship. So the aunt actually grew up in an orphanage and aged out of the system and is married and has her own biological child. She has the uh Sophia, who she adopted, and then she is pregnant and due any day. So yeah, it's because of that connection we now actually um know a complete family history, which uh even the orphanage didn't really know about.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Right. So it depends on the you know, to go back to the ministry part of what you do down there. You help men read the Bible daily. How has that making impacted your own work with God?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

So we started a Bible school or uh we started a middle school, it's a private middle school for young boys in our small village. It's our village when we started this middle school didn't have a middle school. And we didn't know why, but we really felt that God was asking us to start a middle school for boys. And we again, we have no idea why. We just we just did it. As it turns out, in the villages of Guatemala, men are not involved with church. Like it's just anemic. And so, as it turns out, God is raising these boys to be men of God, to lead their families as it should be. And so my job at our school, so we have a middle school, seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. We teach math, science, and language all of the classes, but my job is to prepare and teach the Bible every single day. And so um I prepare. Usually I get up very early, 4:30 in the morning. I'm preparing basically a sermon for the boys every single day. And then from eight to nine, I teach the Bible. My life has been transformed by reading the Bible, which is crazy because I've read the Bible, but when you are preparing a Bible lesson for anyone, you can't just skim scripture anymore, like I did for most of my life. You know, it really has taught me to slow down, to take a look under the hood, and to really understand word for word, you know, what is God teaching us? What is he telling us? Where is God in that scripture? So I'm wildly passionate about the Bible, about reading the Bible, about teaching people to read the Bible. More than teaching people to read the Bible, it's helping people fall in love with the Word of God. And it starts with the boys here at the academy. But outside of that, it's probably my greatest passion right now is to help people fall in love with Scripture.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Now, I know there's a little off hinted question, maybe, but where is um, I mean I mean, I've heard of it, I'm sure most people have heard of it, but where exactly is Guatemala?

SPEAKER_01 24:11

That's a great question. I dare, Dorsey, I'm loving your questions because they're not the normal questions that people have asked me. They're they're always kind of one or two levels beneath the surface. Because when my church said, hey, we've got a team going to Guatemala, I had no idea where Guatemala was. I had to look it up on a map. So Guatemala is from the United States. You drop down into Mexico, you go south into Mexico, then right below Mexico is Guatemala. It's a tiny country. It's in Central America. So it's not in South America, it's in Central America. Central America is made up by a number of countries: Nicaragua, um, El Salvador, Belize. Uh, and so uh Guatemala is right below Mexico, and it's a tiny country. It's only the size. So I'm from Colorado, and it's one-third the size of Colorado. That's how small this country is. So uh it's very dense. There's a lot of people that live here, but it's, I don't know, it's one of the most beautiful countries. I've traveled a lot. It's one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Now, going back to what you mentioned before about doing a sermon for the boys, you all do 14 hours a week studying scripture and what can sermons and reading commentaries. What does that project look like? And how do you make the Bible easier for others to understand?

Adopting Five Siblings

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Thank you for asking that. Here's the thing. If I had to choose one thing to do for the rest of my life, I'm 59 years old, uh, actually 59 this month, and if I had to choose one thing that I could do, I think it would be that exactly. And that is reading the Bible, spending time watching sermons, spending time reading commentaries, and breaking down the Bible in a way that's easy for the kind of average person to understand. Because when you read a commentary, at least when I read commentaries, there are some amazing commentaries, but they're hard to read. Like they're heavy. And what I like to do is to go break it apart word by word until I completely understand it. But more than me understanding it, I then take all of my notes, I put it together so that it's easy for an average person to understand. Because once you understand the Bible more clearly and you understand especially the context of who it was, where it was, it it the book, the Bible starts to come alive. And that's that's my passion. So I spend um 15, 20 hour week doing exactly that, breaking the Bible down and then putting it back together. And then I started a newsletter, Dorsey, um, last year, January of 2024. Uh, with all newsletters, you start out with zero. And in uh, let's see, by the end of 2024, so in one year, I had reached 850 subscribers, which I was very happy with. But then from January until yesterday, I just looked again from January until yesterday. So it went from 850 and uh in one year, and now it's 2,574. So it's it's grown quite a bit, and uh there are 20 different countries represented that get this Bible study. I don't even like to call it a Bible study really. It's more just presenting the Bible. It's kind of a commentary, honestly. I would say it's this it's a commentary for the average person.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Now I I see this next question and do and I'm gonna ask that question. But the first question I'm gonna ask is I was out in Denver several years ago, and I was able to go to a Denver Blanco game with a friend of mine, and we you know, we were able to spend the weekend out there. And it was the f it was the weekend that Pink Man was there, and he did the passing record. He broke the passing record in that game. And then like another, you know, couple of you know minutes later, he's taken out of the game because he's doing so bad. And then they had to bring in, you know, the backup quarterback, and unfortunately they they lost that game. But I'm getting the point I'm trying to make is we my friend and I also went up to uh Pike's Peak. And we went up to the to the top of uh Pike's Peak, we drove up to the top. You know, as you know, being from Denver, so high up there, I got sick to my stomach up there. We had to come down. But my question is have you ever been wanting to mountaineer and everything, have you ever hiked Pike's Peak?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Well, actually, I have not hiked Pikes Peak, but I have hiked a number of Fourteeners. A 14er is just uh a mountain that is 14,000 feet above sea level. And I've hiked a couple of them, and I know what you're talking about. When you start getting near the top, it's very hard to breathe. You can't take, there's just not much oxygen, so you can't take very many steps before you're out of breath, uh, especially when you've been hiking for five or six hours. And so um my wife and I have hiked together. We climbed Mount Elbert, which is the highest peak in Colorado. Colorado has like 50 different 14ers. Um, my wife and I also here in Guatemala, there is a volcano called Volcán Acatanango. We hiked that one and it is like 13,500. It's also difficult when you get up near the top. And so uh I love to hike. As a matter of fact, weirdly, my buddy and I just decided to do something called 29029 Everesting. And so basically, what that is, every year, a gentleman named Jesse Itzler is uh kind of a motivational speaker, he puts on this uh this event in like seven or eight different ski areas. And what you do is you hike the mountain straight up, or basically straight up uh a ski mountain, and then you take the gondola down. But so what you're doing is you are climbing up elevations. So let you know, let's say it's uh 1,500 uh feet in elevation, this this uh elevation gain, I should say. What you do is you climb enough times to climb the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest, which is 29,029 feet. And so we're gonna do that next year. We have 36 hours to complete it. Um we're thinking about maybe doing the event in um Vermont. And in Vermont, you would have to climb this mountain. So it's only uphill climbing. You would have to climb this mountain 13 times. And so it's just a passion of mine. I love to do it.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

As we get rid of the end here, what advice would you give to someone who's starting out in raising support for full-time missions, especially when it feels uncomfortable or overwhelming?

Building A Boys’ Bible-Centered School

SPEAKER_01 31:37

So I'm gonna I'm gonna break that into two pieces. So the first piece I'll talk about, and then I'll get directly with the question you asked. The first thing I would say is that if you're thinking about full-time missions, I would highly recommend three things. Number one is make sure that you're biblically sound. We weren't. I wasn't. I had gone to church, I had served at the church, I taught Royal Rangers, which is kind of a kids' program. But I didn't have a very good habit of reading my Bible. I read it, I didn't really understand it. Uh so I would make sure that you're biblically sound. There are so many great opportunities online in schools or colleges or Bible schools across the United States and of course across the world, that you can go, even if I would have gone six months or a one-year program to really understand how to read the Bible, the important reading the Bible, I would highly recommend being biblically sound. Number one. Number two is I would make sure that your house is in order. And what I mean by that is your marriage, if you're married, your marriage should be in order. You don't go onto the field hoping that because you're doing work for the Lord, that your marriage is gonna miraculously miraculously get better because it doesn't. It actually makes it harder. So I would make sure that you have a very sound marriage. The other thing is I would make sure that your finances are in order. Before you start asking people to support you for doing missions, especially long-term missions, it wouldn't be wide to try to do that if you've got debt. So again, God was preparing us before that day in the basement, watching the Denver Broncos before that day, the Lord had helped us and really guided us through getting out of debt. We had$45,000 worth of debt, and he walked us through that. And within, I think it was like 14 months, we were able to pay off all of that debt, having zero idea that we would be called to do missions. So those are just, you know, get your house in order and get biblically sound before you make that decision. In my opinion, that's something I wish that would have done is biblically. If you're not sharing the gospel currently in your life, wherever you are in the world. Um so if you're in the United States and you're not sharing your faith, if you're not evangelizing, if you're not sharing the gospel, you probably don't need to go train and learn how to do it on the field. That's something that, you know, I again highly recommend. And you can work with your pastor, work with your church and begin to participate more in sharing the gospel, evangelizing. Otherwise, you may end up doing what we did. And we got onto the field. And for the first couple of years, you know, at the end of the day, we were humanitarians. We weren't really sharing, expanding the kingdom of God. Now, let me say that's important as well. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself is part of the gospel. So I don't discount that work, but really we were humanitarians with Christian t-shirts on. And so now, today, firmly focused on participating, working with the Lord in expanding the kingdom of God. Okay, so that's thing one. Back to your question as far as raising sport. So let's say you've got that in order. I think that, you know, having faith, if God has called you to this, he is going to provide opportunities for you to be financially supported. It is not easy. You're probably gonna feel this or you're gonna tell yourself this. That's not my gifting. I'm not gifted to raise support. I assure you that if God has called you to the field, he will give you the gift of raising support. It's taken a while. It's a process. Here's the what if I could give you um, well, first of all, two pieces of advice. Because this is also, I know it sounds like I have a ton of passions, but I I am passionate about raising support, helping other missionaries raise support. We've had we've helped multiple missionaries raise support to either stay on the field or to to build buildings. Um, we, you know, an orphanage and things like that. So uh, but number one is to have a plan and to begin to ask. And so that kind of leads into the main thing that I would recommend people that are thinking about missions in the future is start an email list yesterday. Write down every single person you know, get their email address, and start sending a monthly newsletter to them telling about the journey that you're on as far as becoming a full-time missionary. So you don't have to wait until you're on the field to tell people what you're doing. What you want to do is like, you know, this is this is what I'm doing at our church in preparation to go on to the field, not asking for any money, but you have this opportunity to share with potential supporters how God is calling you to do work kingdom work. And so if you can imagine, start out with every single person can have an email list of 100. And you're always looking and thinking, okay, when you're in new situations and meeting new people, introducing yourself and say, hey, I've got a newsletter uh that I send out once a month. I'd love to add you. Boom, you add them to the newsletter. We only have, we have like 650 people on our newsletter. So 650 people get it. Weirdly, amazingly, 75% open it, which is a very high open rate for a newsletter. As an example, last year we had a fundraiser. It was an email fundraiser. We only do it once a year, and we raised$140,000 in seven days from 650 people. So those are the operating costs that we have, and we were able to do it. So I would highly recommend that you begin writing a newsletter because the better you communicate what's going on and the stories that are going to start unfolding throughout your life, um, the more people are gonna connect with you and most importantly, they're gonna trust you. And um, so that that's probably my biggest piece of advice.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah. You said earlier that, you know, you weren't firmly, you know, founded in your faith or in your in Bible study and in knowing the Bible, different things of that nature, until you, you know, got down there. What was the you know thing that said, hey, I need to get, you know, learn my Bible, you know, and I need to get, you know, found a firmer foundation in my you know, it's crazy.

Studying Scripture For Depth And Clarity

SPEAKER_01 38:27

As I look back over the last 13 years, I believe that the Lord brought us here to Guatemala, honestly, maybe just to save me. Like literally, my salvation came on the field, which sounds crazy. We came out here as missionaries, but you know, it's the work of the Holy Spirit sanctifying us. So even if it even if I was a believer, it's a completely different thing when you allow the Holy Spirit, like you get out of the Holy Spirit's way, begin to do work. And so when you start teaching the Bible, I did the best I could, but I was, I was, I was new to studying the Bible. There's a difference between reading the Bible and studying. And I believe that every single believer in their life should be reading the Bible in two ways. You should be reading the Bible for width, which means reading uh an amount of Bible. So it could be reading just a chapter a day, or it could be reading three chapters a day. If you read the Bible just three chapters a day, you're gonna finish the entire Bible in one year. So that's what I call reading wide, reading one, three, five. I've read 20 plus chapters uh a day to finish reading the Bible in three months, but generally I try to just one chapter a day is enough. You're gonna get through the Bible every three years. So that's reading for width. But I also think that every Christian, and this is really what changed me. This is what changed the entire game for me personally, and that was when I started reading the Bible for depth. And what that means to me is I started studying the Bible. So as I'm reading through Luke, for example, and I'm seeing, you know, different places uh that uh Jesus is preaching. Why is he using this word? It's amazing, Dorsey, that when you read the Bible, you kind of gloss over the parts that you don't understand or don't think are important. What we do when we read the Bible, generally, I believe, um this is the way I read the Bible is I would read it, and it's like, I understand that. That and that. So I might understand 30% of the Bible, especially in the Gospels. We understand so much of the Bible, but I would just skip over the parts I didn't understand. So what happened is I started going back to the parts writing down. I don't understand that. Why did that happen? Where is this? And I started connecting the dots. And when you start studying the Bible, slowing down. So for example, it can take me up to five weeks to study and write out and share this Bible study. It might take me five weeks for one chapter. That's studying for depth. And so I think it's important that you do both. You know, this is gonna sound like a broken record, but it is it is the most thing I'm passionate about, and that is to start reading the Bible, make it a habit. Probably just starting out by reading one chapter a day is enough. But then start getting curious about it. Start talking to God, start praying that He would open your eyes, start praying for the desire to read the Bible. Because most of my life, it was I didn't make time. It wasn't a priority. Listen, one chapter a day should only take you five or six minutes, seven minutes tops. I would also recommend this particular tool that was hugely important for me. And it was called The Bible Recap. I'm sure you've heard of it. The Bible Recap by Tara Lee Cobble. She became a friend of ours. We actually visited Israel with her. And the Bible recap is absolutely perfect for anyone who wants to start reading the Bible and understanding uh a little bit more deeply the meaning of the Bible. She covers her podcast covers three chapters in about eight or ten minutes. And so you read those three chapters and then you listen to her podcast and she recaps it for you. So I would start there. And I think the next level, I would I'm just gonna do a shameless plug here. I would, I would look into the Bible study that I send out. It's really just my notes and it's it's a commentary for the ordinary person. It's called uh it's called Covered in His Dust. I send it out once a week, usually on a Saturday. And it is it is just a very deep look into scripture. And I think, man, if I can encourage, if I could leave anything with your listeners, Dorsey, it would be to fall in love with the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Where can people connect with you? And I know you even have a book which we really didn't discuss much of it, but where can people get your information and connect with you and even your Bible study?

SPEAKER_01 43:43

The two places. Coveredinhisdust.org is where you can sign up to get my notes that I send out once a week. And then I am on Twitter under 1G Ciceros. I just uh saw your account and followed you today. 1G Ciceneros, and I'm also on Threads, and actually I'm probably on Threads more than anywhere else. Both places, I'm easily, you can get hold of me. Uh, if you sign up for the newsletter and you have a question or uh need prayer, anything at all, just reply to one of the newsletters that I send out on Saturday, and I respond to all of my emails, and I would love to connect that way. So that's probably the best place.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Okay, great. Well, Georg, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Man, Dorsey, it has been an absolute pleasure. Your questions were some of the best questions that I've been asked. I really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Thank you. Well, guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on the show and for listening. Please go and like and share my this episode and um listen to previous episodes, and please go and like and follow the Audrey Audio Group on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and share and uh review some of their podcasts. Well, and until next time. God bless. Bye bye.