The Stewart's: 350K New Believer Pt. 1

What happens when ordinary lives are met with extraordinary calls to serve? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Glenn and Rhonda Stewart, who share their transformative journey of 18 years as missionaries in Rajasthan, India. Discover how Rhonda, raised in a Christian family in North Carolina, was influenced by her older sisters and youth pastor in shaping her spiritual path. Meanwhile, Glenn opens up about his faith journey, detailing his struggles and eventual return to faith after years of personal challenges in Southern West Virginia. Their stories offer a heartening reminder of how mentorship and unexpected circumstances can guide us toward our life's purpose.

Ever wondered how a simple church visit could change the course of your life? For Glenn, a spontaneous trip led to an unexpected introduction to missions through a journey to Africa, igniting a commitment that would last a lifetime. Listen as we explore the profound impact of global missions, including transformative experiences in Japan, and how these moments fostered a deep-seated dedication to discipleship and church planting. As Glenn and Rhonda recount their experiences, they illustrate the unpredictable yet impactful nature of spiritual callings and how these can lead to life-altering experiences.

Navigating faith, career, and relationships can be a challenging path, especially when called to serve overseas. Rhonda shares her story of grappling with personal goals and spiritual callings, eventually finding a like-minded partner in Glenn during seminary. The episode highlights the importance of aligning life paths and shared visions when pursuing missionary work. We also explore the mission of the Tom Eliff Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University, where the focus is on equipping future missionaries. Discover how the center prepares students for global missions and how the Stewarts' journey can inspire others to consider a life dedicated to service.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:05

Welcome and thanks for listening to the From Every Nation podcast, the official podcast of the Tom Eliff Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University. I'm Kyle and I'll be your host as we learn to live as those sent out to spread the gospel. Welcome back, everybody, to today's episode of the From Every Nation podcast. We're so excited you all are here with us and I am beyond excited for you all to hear from our guests today, glenn and Rhonda Stewart.

Speaker 1 0:35

I've had the privilege of the last couple of days getting to listen to their testimony of the work that God has done through them in India, and I am just so excited for you all to hear that. You know, for centuries missionaries have gone to the field and come back and given a report, and people have just been moved by those reports and urged to go and serve, and I hope that some of you today are encouraged and challenged to go as a result of what you hear the Lord did in the lives of the people of India that you're going to hear about today, and so I'll let Glenn and Rhonda introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about where they served for the last 18 years of their life and we'll dive in from there. So, glenn, do you want to get us started?

Speaker 2 1:30

Yeah, thank you. It's a privilege to be here today. Rhonda and I have served for the last 18 years in Rajasthan, India. This is in the northwest part of India, in a desert area next to the Pakistan border, and it's a completely landlocked state.

Speaker 1 1:49

And so you've been back in the US. For how long? Just a year and a half, okay. So they'll tell you a lot more about specifically where they lived and what their ministry is like here in a little bit, but we're going to start with their early life, and so what I want our students and our listeners to really hear is that the Lord just calls and uses everyday people and he equips you for the task at hand, and so I just want them to hear your stories and hear about your life. So either one of you, whoever wants to start, tell us a little bit about what life was like growing up, what your family was like.

Speaker 3 2:37

So I grew up, North Carolina, um, in a, um, a Christian family, Um, my, uh, my parents had us in church from the time we were little, Um, I have two older sisters who set a great example. They were just my, um, like idols growing up. You know, in that respect of like, I wanted to be like them, I adored them and they both, from the time they were youth in the church, began serving in the church, leading in the youth group and that kind of thing, reading their Bibles. They set that example for me and so I followed in that when I was in high school, probably around the age of 15, 16, was when I really started taking that more seriously, really started reading God's word for myself more seriously and just really transformed my life. It was, I think at that time I really started thinking more about serving others and having a life that was sort of you know, beyond myself, and I decided, when I went to college, I decided to teach and that's what I started doing.

Speaker 1 4:06

What grade did you teach?

Speaker 3 4:08

I taught in elementary school. I taught third grade and fourth grade.

Speaker 1 4:14

Nice, when you were raising a Christian home. What things, if any, did your family do outside of going to church for spiritual development at home?

Speaker 3 4:30

I wouldn't say, like I never saw my parents necessarily share their faith. I don't think Just being faithful members of the church, I guess, was what I experienced. But in our church we had what used to be called GAs and acteens, and so I did. I did grow up hearing those stories and reading about missionaries and hearing about missionaries and and it had an impact on me.

Speaker 1 4:59

Yeah, did you have any mentors or people in your life in those high school years that really helped kind of shape and develop your faith?

Speaker 3 5:11

Yes, so my youth pastor was a big influence in my life and, I think, especially in reading God's Word and being in God's Word for yourself, but then also my oldest sister. She's 10 years older than me, so when she got married I was still quite young and she became a pastor's wife, you know, out of college, and so I would go a lot of my summers, I would go and live with them and help her and help her take care of her children, and as I was growing up, and so I would say she was probably the biggest mentor in my life.

Speaker 1 5:48

That's awesome, Glenn. What about you?

Speaker 2 5:51

Well, I grew up in Southern West Virginia and it was about two and a half years of age when we moved to the country out there in a little town called Shady Spring, and so a lot of my childhood was spent outdoors just playing, even going to elementary school.

Speaker 2 6:12

It was just a third of a mile up the road, so even as children we'd ride our bikes to school and back again. The family was always attending church Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Wednesday my father, a member, eventually became a deacon and it was more of a cultural experience for me. I trusted Jesus Christ with my life at about the age of nine, but there was no commitment we could say to the Lord, so I just continued to grow up. We were heavily involved in wrestling and that was probably a pretty main focus in my life, but there wasn't any real solid spiritual influence in my life and so for me I just dabbled over into some some like gateway drugs and alcohol, and pretty much started around the age of 15. And so pretty solidly lost my way. By the time I graduated high school as a senior and decided not to go to college and moved down to a state in North Carolina and got into the construction business down there.

Speaker 1 7:42

So when did you kind of come back around to faith?

Speaker 2 7:49

To the faith. Then it was about 15 years later. So we spent many years out there just having a good time. People say, you know, sin wasn't any fun, nobody be doing it. So we were just young and wild and reckless and really, by God's grace, even that, I'd survived, uh, through to adulthood. But then, um, one weekend I got a letter from my mother, which was unusual all of itself, and in that letter was a newsletter from a pastor in Florida, steve Brown.

Speaker 2 8:29

And the letter said that the great truth grows in the soil of great need. And if you thought you had been and done so bad that God couldn't use you, that the opposite was probably the truth that God takes great joy in taking completely broken lives and working great truths through them. That way he gets all the credit. And so I was completely broken and knelt down before the Lord repented and pleaded the blood of Jesus Christ If I had somehow not done it correctly.

Speaker 2 9:01

As a child I wanted to make sure that that belief was known and I asked the Lord, as I was on my knees, that he would take the alcohol away from me. I knew I couldn't do that on my own and when I stood up I knew that I would never drink again, and so it was literally like a prisoner being set free. And at that time, if you can't make a deal with the Lord, but I'd said, if you will take the alcohol, I'll try to do my dead level best to do with my life what you want me to. And so there began an amazing journey at the age of 32 years.

Speaker 1 9:44

So were there? Was there anybody in your life who was just really influential in those early years of your spiritual development, personal growth, things like that?

Speaker 2 9:55

No, no one really that stands out. I was from a large family and so those older brothers were kind of leaders in the youth and so just kind of in the background and nothing really stood out at all. But as soon as I had been rescued, as it were, by the Lord at the age of 32, been rescued, as it were, by the Lord at the age of 32, began a new job. A friend of mine stopped by out of nowhere and said there's a guy at the church doing a remodel job. He's looking for a lead carpenter. I don't know if you need a job or not. I just thought I'd come by and tell you. I went up and interviewed with the guy. He said I could take it as soon as I could. So that was the first time I've been in church for 15 years and the only question he asked me before I left he asked me do you drink? And that was the first time since I was 15 years old I could ever answer that question with a no. Wow. And I was actually weeping on the way. I couldn't get out of the building and get everybody to my backside quick enough, and just sheer gratitude to the Lord for delivering me from that.

Speaker 2 11:15

A couple weeks later a guy named Michael got hired on. He was already a seminary graduate. I'd begun reading my Bible, so it was just like I had this private tutor and every day I could just ask Michael what about this verse and that verse and the other. So it was really a blessing. He gave a book to me and it was about a bush pilot and the book was about a pilot and been in the bush and ran out of gas and really incredible story of this guy. And then Michael himself was a seminary graduate, an airplane pilot, small plane pilot, a commercial plane pilot. He was an instructor and he was working to save money so he could go and be a mechanic, learn the mechanic side of aviation, so he could raise support to fly missionaries in Mexico. And I was astounded that a person that could make well over six figures a year, no problem at all, would devote their lives to the Lord and raise support to do so. And so Michael was a huge influence in my life at that point.

Speaker 1 12:30

So I don't know, I don't know the timeline well enough to say, okay, what's next? Because I know you all, you all met at seminary, right, right, and so what was right, right, and so what was, what was the journey for you all to say, okay, I need to go to seminary. Um, and where, where? Where does your introduction to missions kind of fit into that too?

Global Missions and Life Transformation

Speaker 3 12:57

so I'll start. I, um, was teaching school, like I said, so, after I graduated from college, I started teaching in a local school in the same hometown I grew up in, and at the same time, I was a member of a church. I sang on the praise and worship team there, and one of the other members of the praise and worship team, her father, was on the board of trustees for a small missions organization out of Virginia, and so they asked our praise and worship team to come and do the music, for they were having a missions conference and national missionaries were coming in from Africa, bangladesh, india, different places. They were coming to this missions conference to speak about their work in order to raise support, and so we were there that week with these people from all over the world that had very little. They were telling their stories and raising support, and I was hearing all of these different stories of how there were people around the world who had never heard the name of Jesus, people around the world who had never heard the gospel. And here I had grown up in church all my life. I didn't even know a world apart from hearing the gospel and preaching every week.

Speaker 3 14:20

I came back from that just really impacted and realizing that those people that they were telling us about, those people that were Hindu, that were Buddhist, that were Muslim, they were not people who had made a choice to be Hindu. They were Hindu because that was all they knew. No one had ever told them that there was an option. No one had ever told them that there was an option. No one had ever told them the truth.

Speaker 3 14:50

And I would drive something maybe I really had never noticed or thought about before, but when I would drive from my home, my parents' home, to the school that I was teaching at, I would pass by 11 churches, most of which were Baptist churches. Actually, I would drive past 11 churches on my way there and I knew that I needed to go to where there were people who had not been told that there was an option, that there were people who had not been told the truth. And so I was in the middle of a school year at that point. That conference had been, I guess in the fall. By January, I applied to be a journeyman with the International Mission Board, and then I was able to finish out that school year and I went to journeyman training what's now called FPO in June, just as soon as the school year had ended, and went to Japan for two years.

Speaker 1 16:08

Awesome, Really quickly. What were some of the most formative things from your journeyman years?

Speaker 3 16:16

So it was the people that I worked with, my supervisors really helped me to understand. I wasn't just there to teach English as a foreign language, but really to see that my purpose was to make disciples and to plant churches. We actually planted a church out of the little one-bedroom apartment that I lived in during that time and baptized people in my bathtub. But that was really big to see that I could be a part of something like that. You know, you go as a I was whatever 23, 24 at the time. You go and you think, well, I'm going to be teaching English as a second language and, you know, maybe the actual missionary that was my supervisor will have a bigger part in that. But just to see that God could use me was very formative.

Speaker 3 17:11

And then building the relationships that I did through those different things, through the classes, through the missionaries that were supervising me, and then there was just no way I couldn't go back and just go back to teaching and go back to the way things were. I knew that I had to continue to give my life to that purpose. And so, yes, I, when I left from Japan it was it was already kind of decided that I was coming back. In fact, my supervisors had already, you know, put in the whatever was required at the time for having a job request with my name on it. I was going to get the seminary hours I needed and do a quick turnaround, and then that was where I met Glenn.

Speaker 1 18:05

Glenn, what's your introduction to missions and how did you end up at seminary?

Speaker 2 18:10

So, as I had started working at the church and talking to Michael, then it led to me one day finally deciding to go to church, and so I went in there and I knew they had two services, so I thought I'd go to the second one at about 10 o'clock and that turns out to be the Sunday school hour. That's how much I knew about church. But I walked in there and I stuck my head through one of the doors and the assistant pastor was right there, standing right there, and he's like Glenn, what are you doing here? And I was like, well, I thought I'd just come to church today, will. And he's like, let me take you to the desk. And when they took me to the desk, that guy took me to the Sunday school classroom, and that Sunday school teacher wasn't there that day, but Will was sitting in for him. So I couldn't have been made to feel more comfortable. And so I'm telling you I'm a very ordinary guy, but God was working supernaturally in my life and it was unmistakable. So I'm attending and they talk about a group that's going to share about their trip to Africa, and I'm sitting there and I'm hearing them going to Africa and grass huts and safaris and it was just blowing my mind. I didn't know people still did that. I'd heard about it when I was a kid and it was like the Spirit of God just came over me and it was like you need to go and I thought that is crazy. Okay, I had 32 years old, I'd never been on a plane and hadn't ever intended on going anywhere, and so I talked to my pastor and we got us, got a passport, and as we met together and prayed for the trip, people would ask me Glenn, why are you going? And I would say I don't know. I didn't know anything about sharing your faith with anybody, I just felt like I was supposed to go.

Speaker 2 20:15

And then, as we were there, we were in the interior of Kenya, africa, and as I returned from one day working with a lady at a church, I was going to put my backpack down and the Spirit of God said you're not done yet. And so I turned around and left my room and I went out to the street and I was just like do I go left or right? There was like no answer. I thought we were having a conversation, but that was it. So I just took off to the left and then I turned left and I walked for a very long way and I think it was a little bit of a dangerous situation actually.

Speaker 2 20:56

But I tried to engage one group of guys and they all just kind of laughed and mocked at me and I was like boy, I was sure I heard this voice of the lord there, you know, and and I was coming back and this guy was just like was beside of me pushing a wheelbarrow, wooden wheelbarrow, with a big bag of seed on it, and he was just like, are you one of the missionaries that's staying at this hotel? And I mean it was like hotel. Our pastor said think of the hotel as a Motel 6 minus 12. So this is the situation. And I was like, yeah, he's like, well, after I do this job, I work with some deaf children.

Speaker 2 21:38

Do you have anyone that could tell the deaf children about Jesus? And I was like I had no idea, right. So I told him. I said, well, if you meet me back here the same time tomorrow, I'll give you an answer. And we got into the group and there was one girl from the western part of our state that had joined the trip, that no one knew formally. And when I went around to the tables my pastor told me to see if I could find it out or work it out. And I went around and asked me. My and she's just start shaking her hands are kind of in the air. A little bit said both of my parents are deaf and I teach the deaf children at our church.

Speaker 2 22:17

I was just like unbelievable. And so I went to the school and talked to the head person and he said we could come and share with the children. And we went there and I thought it was going to be about 10 to 15 children and we were in this very large room like a cafeteria-looking thing and kids just started pouring in and it was like 120 kids. And she stood up there and she shared the gospel with them and said if you want to follow Jesus, raise your hand. It's like maybe everybody raised their hand and she said okay, put your hands down. She turned around and looked at us. She said I'm not sure they understood, so I'm going to do it again. And she went through the thing again. She was taking like 35, 40 minutes and she said now, if you want to follow Jesus, stand up. And so all the children stood up and I'm just I'm weeping watching this.

Speaker 2 23:16

And as I was taking it in, it got the feeling that the Lord was saying to me if you'll go, I'll use you and remember, I just said I had no ability. The only thing I could do at that point was hand someone a tract. That's as much as I knew about sharing my faith, and so I came back and told my pastor you know, I think I've got to go back to school. I'm 32 years old. I got six hours that I'll transfer in, and I started with a BA and then went through with Southeastern to get my BA and then the MDiv. And so along the way the Lord just kind of made it clear that we called a deployment. The guys and the men and women that were in my group were going to be intentionally sent to India, and I was in that group. It would take a special effort to go somewhere else, but the main part of the group was going to go to India, and so that's how I ended up in India.

Speaker 1 24:23

And you did the. Am I correct in thinking you did the two plus three program? Yes, so let's talk first about how you two met at Southeastern and then just briefly about the two plus three program.

Speaker 3 24:40

So as a journeyman I mean I was a young woman, I wanted to get married, I wanted to have a family, and so that was kind of a struggle for me. During my second year of my journeyman term I felt like God was leading me to come back to the nations, to come back overseas to get the seminary hours required to go career, but at the same time, I mean, I had no prospects of marriage. I didn't, you know, I had no. So I kind of had that settled in my heart before I had, before I even left Japan, knowing that I was going to be returning single and started seminary.

Speaker 3 25:23

And in the first class that semester Glenn was sitting right behind me and we started talking and struck up a friendship and we would talk during class or after class and pretty soon, you know, I was interested in him and pretty soon I was interested in Him. But at the same time I didn't want to get my heart tied to something that wasn't what God wanted and I knew I was headed back to India or back to Japan at that point. So I would pray and ask God to not let my heart get entangled in that. If that wasn't His will and I actually remember praying that God would just make Him leave me alone, that he wouldn't be where I was and everywhere I went on campus, there he was. I would go to the student center. I think one day we ran into each other outside of the bookstore in the student center and we stood there and talked for two hours Hours, yeah, standing and talked for two hours hours, yeah standing there talking for two hours.

Speaker 3 26:26

Um, and you know, I think it was pretty obvious pretty soon after that that we were interested in one another and um talked about marriage fairly soon and um had a quick engagement and were married by the end of that year, end of that school year.

Speaker 1 26:47

What were the conversations like with? Hey, I know I'm called to missions and I want to go. Glenn, are you called? How did those conversations happen for you all?

Speaker 3 27:01

I think it was in that conversation we had outside of the bookstore that you sort of told me that you were also going overseas.

Speaker 2 27:13

Yeah, I started with a seven-year plan, and so I had to do the four years of undergrad and two plus three and go to the field. Because I was older 32 when I started and my understanding was that the IMB didn't appoint people past the age of 45, so this meant, right at in the seven years I would. I would be 42 and do three years on the field and come back and be a point of career right at the limit, and so, not having time to mess around the whole time, I wanted my heart to get entangled with somebody. I didn't want to go to the field as a single person, and so it was near the last year, and so I was praying. My prayer was God, I think it's a bad idea if you send me over there single.

Speaker 2 28:10

And so that's when I began to overhear the conversations Rhonda was having with the lady beside of her that she was a missionary already, because the whole time I'd been there I really didn't run into very many people by God's design, especially young ladies that were really interested in going overseas, and so I found that a little bewildering. But then God had his plan and it just wasn't time to unfold yet. So that's how I knew where I was going to go and Rhonda was okay with actually had some intentions of going to South Asia already but was kind of redirected to Japan and so it had been on her heart before that time. So we agreed that that would be okay to go that route.

Speaker 3 29:02

It was interesting we were with the IMB. We both actually had folders, files, with the IMB going career single and I remember I think it was Herman Russell was our consultant and he was the way he described it was he merged our files.

Speaker 1 29:17

That's funny. So what? I want to pause just a second and kind of go down a rabbit hole here when I think about high school students, college students, seminary students who are single but they know they have a call to the nation called a go. What thoughts do you have or advice do you have for them when it comes to dating and making sure they date somebody like-minded? That can be something that can derail people.

Speaker 2 29:56

Yeah, that's right, and so that was the prayer. I thought it was a bad idea, but I was going to the field, you know, and I wouldn't have entertained any relationship with anybody with any other mind, because life is really about your personal pursuit to know God through the Lord Jesus Christ, enabled by His Holy Spirit as we engage in His Word daily. And so I would say, whatever God is laying on your heart, to pursue that, and he does things in His time and in His way, and if we even tried to imagine what they were, we wouldn't be able to predict the circumstances, how he would bring it to pass. And so, for a younger person, I would definitely really be cautious about dating we often talked about in different groups. I was in that we didn't want to practice divorce. We didn't want to just be a person who dated and then went to someone else and went to someone else. You could think of it as even practicing divorce. And so just trust the Lord and stay in a really close relationship with the Lord.

Speaker 1 31:28

Yeah, I think that's really good and something for all of our anybody called to missions to keep in mind is staying focused, and staying focused with the right people.

Speaker 3 31:39

Yeah, I think, apart from any relationship our parent relationships, our friendships all of those relationships are important and they have a role in our life and of course we want to honor our parents that's a commandment but at the same time, our relationship with God and the obedience to God's word and to his spirit and to his call and purpose in our life is our higher duty of obedience.

Speaker 1 32:08

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up family because at this point you all are at seminary, You're dating, you get engaged, you already have files with the IMB. What were your family's thoughts and opinions on? Hey, my son and daughter are going to go overseas.

Speaker 3 32:29

So mine would begin with becoming a journeyman. I actually remember my father had cancer and I remember when I filled out my application for journeyman and had to write that long biography paper that you have to write, I remember taking it to the hospital. My mom was there with my dad he was still in the hospital taking that to my mom and asking her to edit it for me and she refused to edit it for me. She couldn't handle it. Her heart was kind of like you do what you've got to do, but just don't, I can't be a part of it right now. And I think it was hard. You know it was hard her single daughter that had never been anywhere, to think about her going and living in Japan by herself. But she at the time I think you know it's only two years, she'll go, she'll get that out of her system. But when I came back with the intention to go back again for the rest of my life was when that was really hard for her.

Speaker 3 33:39

I heard a lot of you can't do that, you shouldn't do that, that's you know, will they? Even you know the IMB will allow that. You know those kinds of things. But once we met and I was married or getting married and they met Glenn and loved Glenn. Then I actually think that helped a lot for my mom's heart that I wasn't going by myself. Then we got, then we were expecting our first child just before it was time for us to leave for the field.

Speaker 3 34:10

And so again, you know those things are hard and respect that. You know we should respect that as missionaries and as people that are working serving the Lord overseas, to understand the. Not just you make sacrifices. You're leaving your family, you're selling your stuff and all of those things, but your families are making sacrifices too to release their child and to see you leave. And we were just talking about that this morning. You know all the. It's not just financial sacrifices like your house and your stuff, but it's those sacrifices of not being at every wedding, not being at every graduation, not being at every funeral, not, you know all those not being at the birth of children that are born in your family, not seeing your kids, not getting to see their cousins grow up, and all those things are sacrifices not just on the missionary but also on the missionary's families not just on the missionary but also on the missionary's families.

Speaker 1 35:08

I hear Albert say regularly that, no matter how hard it is, the best place for you to be and the best place for your family to be is for everybody to be walking in the Lord Right. And even if the will of the Lord is sending you all to India and those sacrifices coming, there's no better place. That's right. Yeah, Lynn. What was your family's reaction?

Speaker 2 35:38

Well, you know, my family was glad to have their son back. In a way it was. They knew the struggles that I had, and so they were glad for that. And it was a seven-year plan, and so in the beginning there wasn't a lot of discussion about it, and maybe I don't know if they even knew. I don't know if I knew I would get through such a lengthy process, and school just wasn't something I really enjoyed. I liked being outside, and so it was a little bit of a struggle. But as the time came nearer to going, there began to be more questions about you know, aren't there lost people here in the United States? You know, isn't there lost people here in the United States? Or you know the work you could do here? And so I just continued to try to honor them, like Rhonda's saying, and help them to come to grips with, I guess, the fact that they were going to, in a way, lose their son again, the fact that they were going to, in a way, lose their son again.

Speaker 1 36:51

But they were much more contented with the path I was on now than I had been before.

Speaker 3 36:55

That's encouraging to hear. And I'll add, even this morning, as I told you, we were talking about the sacrifices that our family had made. We both said but it was worth it and we wouldn't have changed.

Speaker 1 37:07

you know any of that so you all are at seminary, you're engaged. Tell us about the two plus three program and how that directed you all to India.

Speaker 2 37:23

And so being in the seminary, even in the college level, was an amazing journey for me that the professors were praying before class. They were godly men and women. They talked to you like you were a significant person, and there were kind of things that didn't happen a lot in my life. And then, as we move on into the seminary, where we're in 2 plus 3, you find professors who have been on the field, had knowledge about living overseas and developed a program where you could, instead of taking three years to do your MDiv, you could do two years on campus and then complete your third year overseas. They would actually take you out of your country.

Speaker 2 38:23

For us, it was going to be into Thailand and bring the professors over and do intensive classes to give you both the field experience and then finish those classes up in an overseas setting in a full eight-hour days, which amounts to the same amount of hours you have in a regular class. It's just really intense, and so that's the path that God put us on. For us, it ended up being that there were 14 units in our classes that all went out to the field the same year into the same part of the world, and so that was really something. Many of those couples are still on the field. We've grown into leadership in our respective places of service and it's just been a tremendous journey that God's had us on and that was all facilitated through that two plus three program that they had two years on the field and three years. Two years at school, three years on the field and come back and graduate.

Speaker 3 39:39

It was a partnership between the seminaries and the IMB, and so the reason for that three years is you would complete your final year of seminary during your first term as a career missionary during your apprentice term.

Speaker 1 39:51

Yeah, I've heard a lot of missionaries who've used that program. I think it's genius, kind of fast tracks people a little bit right.

Speaker 2 40:00

Right Yep Saves the year.

Speaker 3 40:03

And it's good. It was actually because we were taking those classes. Like Glenn said, they would bring us all out to Thailand a couple of times a year for classes, and so it gave that opportunity for us to all reconnect and encourage one another and have that community together and then go back to the field.

Equipping Future Missionaries at OBU

Speaker 1 40:24

That's cool. This has been really good. I really appreciate the way you guys have walked us through your early life, your conversion to Christ and your call to ministry. I think this has been really beneficial. We're going to take a quick break and help split this conversation up for our listeners, so we're going to pause here and then we'll jump right back in with our conversation with our next episode.

Speaker 1 40:48

Thanks, for listening to this episode. The Tom Ellef Center for Missions exists to equip the next generation of missionaries at Oklahoma Baptist University. Regardless of your major, you can come to OBU, get a world-class Christian education and get equipped to take the gospel to the nations. Our prayer is to send students from the local church through OBU to the world with the gospel. For more information about us or the Ellef Center Scholarship, follow the link in our description and come visit us at OBU. You.