From Every Nation
The From Every Nation Podcast is designed to encourage and equip the next generation of missionaries to take the gospel into the world. Join us as we interview missionaries to hear first hand about their life and ministry. Learn firsthand what strategies, barriers, and opportunities they faced on the field. The FEN podcast also equips you today, for the missionary work the Lord has planned for your life. The FEN podcast is the official podcast of the Tom Elliff Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University
From Every Nation
The Stewart's: 350K New Believer Pt. 3
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Have you ever wondered how simple acts of faith and generosity can ignite a spiritual awakening? Join us for an inspiring look into the lives of faithful followers of Christ. A remarkable couple who've transformed their village through unwavering dedication and creative teaching methods. Despite literacy challenges, believers have become a beacon of hope and leadership, sparking a wave of new believers and inspiring others to lead with conviction.
Explore the incredible growth of Christianity in a remote S. Asian town witnessing a profound spiritual awakening. We'll delve into how local believers have maintained their vibrant faith and commitment to scripture even after missionaries left, illustrating the enduring power of community and devotion. Discover how their passionate engagement with scripture has not only strengthened their faith but also fostered a resilient and thriving spiritual community dedicated to spreading the gospel.
Transforming Lives Through Ministry and Generosity
Speaker 1All right, everyone, thanks for tuning in for part three, our final part of Glenn and Rhonda's story. Here we're going to jump right in where we left off, telling some stories from their ministry partners, from the field. So we're going to jump in with the story of Pascal and Sita. Hope you guys are blessed with that. We're going to wrap up our interview talking about their ministry before they left India and then what they're doing now as their back stateside. So I hope you all enjoy. Thanks for tuning in. Tell us about I think there's a lot of just really good encouraging things with Pascal and Sita and how, how they live their lives, and even the story that you told you're standing on their rooftop and they're just talking about their neighbors. So tell us about, about them.
Speaker 2So Pascal and Sita are farmers. They have a little plot of land and they have a house there, and he's a very respected man in his village.
Speaker 3He works for the bank and opens accounts for new people. That's what he does.
Speaker 2He does. He's a farmer but he also has a job with a local bank and so he's literate, but his wife is completely illiterate. And so he's literate but his wife is completely illiterate. And this was a similar situation. We hadn't told the whole story, but this was a similar situation to Suit Devon, that Glenn had gone there for another purpose, another training with a different person. That didn't work out and they called around to some people to figure out what they could do, since they were there for a couple of days and met Pascal and his brother-in-law and they were married to sisters and they had a group of about 30 there and they were leading them. They believed in Jesus but they had really no biblical literacy, so they taught them through the Ek Rosten material. And this was the group. Maybe it was a little earlier than Suk Dev, I can't remember exactly the timeline, but this was the group where, for the first time, they went back down there. They had told them okay, now we want you to share these stories with your neighbors. And they went back down there. I guess within a month or so they had started 180 Bible studies between the 30 of them and floored all of us.
Speaker 2But Glenn especially, is like this I've been training for 10 years, or eight, or nine at that point and this is the first time anybody's actually done what I've asked them to do and so continued to teach them, continued to train with them, so continued to teach them, continued to train with them. But they grew through reading God's word, through the lessons on that SD card. They were sharing with their village, or several other families that we know and love dearly, in that same village that we came to know over the years. They began sharing and things were just multiplying within that village, that's within the Billy tribal belt, as I said. So it was multiplying within the Billy tribal peoples and, like you were saying, we stood on their roof. We went down there to visit them one time more recently, years after things had been multiplying, and we stood on their roof and he said he was telling Glenn, when we first started this work together, he said that family, you know, he would point over this family over here and this family over here. They were the only believers in our village and I can remember him standing there and saying but now, that house right here, and maybe there was one more that house right there, those are the only families that don't believe in our village that are still unbelieving, and so it was just amazing to see with your own eyes how that village had been transformed, sita being completely illiterate when she was the one I can remember Glenn was telling you about that picture book and she was so passionate to share learning.
Speaker 2You know we take reports and so I can remember learning that she had 11 Bible studies when she was, when it was only a literate method, so she was remembering them. She was trying to start house Bible, in-home Bible studies. She had started 11. When she got that picture book the next time we took a report, she had 17. So I mean it was it helped her so much 17. So I mean it was it helped her so much. But when she got that SD card, it just went crazy.
Speaker 2I mean she, she goes. Uh, people love her. She goes and she prays for people, she starts Bible studies in homes. Um, she takes other ladies along with her. I mean there have been hundreds now of women down along that Gujarati border that have been trained by Sita and there was one lady that stood up in the training center one time talking about how that.
Speaker 2You know she never she's illiterate and she never thought she could teach anybody anything. But she knew that Sita was also illiterate and that Sita was going to all these homes teaching and she had become a believer and taken baptism and she was going and watching Sita and Sita was modeling for her and it took two years but that lady now has many Bible studies of her own and she stood up and gave testimony in that meeting and afterwards we were back at home and Glenn said you know, it doesn't matter how long the process takes. That lady was probably in her early 20s. It was a young woman that Sita was training and Glenn said it doesn't do that for the rest of her life. And that's what is happening. That's what they're doing. It's not like a rapid process that happens quickly. It takes time and with some people it takes a lot of time. But God uses that. God is working in their hearts and he is using them and just their simple obedience to go in and do. Yeah.
Speaker 3Right, and another notable aspect of Pascal and Sita are the generosity of their hearts. See, the generosity of their hearts. I had been down there talking to them, and so then Deeproch talks a little bit on the side, and on the way back he's telling me that in the season they had a pretty good harvest year themselves, but the neighbors, they were unbelievers. Their crops essentially failed, and so Pascal decided that half of his crop was enough for him to live on, and so he gave away half of his field to his neighbors. And it's just, it's very uncommon in any part of the world, right, people just won't give away half of what they have. Another young couple had fallen in love, and they weren't of the right cast, and so their families sort of disowned them, and they were telling us one day so Brother Pascal has let us take this room that he has and live here, and he's helped us out. And then the girl said underneath her breath, almost just like everybody knows this. She just said but he helps everybody. Everybody knows this, she just said, but he helps everybody. And so it's unbelievable how that we kind of tried to focus people on good works.
Speaker 3Looking at Acts 2, at the end of the chapter there's a phrase that says and they had favor among all men. And so when we're not really establishing concrete buildings that we call church, then we're not employing pastors to teach us every week. We're engaging God's Word through the Holy Spirit on our own with inductive Bible study methods Spirit on our own with inductive Bible study methods. I told them that you can use your tithe money to help people out. You can use your time as a tithe and help people out.
Speaker 3You can, you know, wash dishes for someone who's not well, or you can prepare a meal for someone who's not well, or you can prepare a meal for someone who's not well. And these are all very acceptable ways, I believe, from God to accept as tithe. Take an Old Testament example where it says if you're on your way to Jerusalem and something happens, but you're headed there to give know, to give your tithe the way I read it it looks like they're like sit down and have a party, you know it's okay, you can eat the goat, you know. Then God's Word says that that's cool. So we've used those examples to just always garner favor among all the community that's around us and it's been tremendously effective.
Speaker 2Even Paul in Titus. He's telling Titus how to set the churches in order there and at the very close of the chapter he says it twice to be devoted to good works. And the very last thing he says to him at the very end of the book of Titus is he's telling them to make sure the churches are devoted to good works.
Speaker 1And so, through the stories of all these people, through the Deep Raj and Lakshmi and Pascal and Sita, and all these believers that we haven't even talked about and you all don't even know, the gospel had spread to how many people in Rajasthan.
Speaker 2We have confirmed over 350,000 baptisms. We know through our accounting of those things that things get missed, so we know that there are others, but we have confirmed through partners.
Speaker 3And since those numbers are so amazing to us, amazing to us, I'll mention that, if you took those numbers in context, in South Carolina I think they baptized last year around 10,500 people and that would be about 0.019% of the population.
Speaker 3Then that 102,000 that we baptized just last year they baptized would come to 0.12% of the population, and so percentage-wise it's about on course with the state of South Carolina, Carolina, but it is, you know, very large numbers to see, you know, as a, as an American or an outsider.
Speaker 3And so, uh, it, it raised some eyebrows and so, uh, we had a assessment done. So that's a third party, so colleagues of ours, but from different parts of the country that could speak the language, and they came in and took a random survey that would pick random churches and come to a 95% accuracy in whatever they found out, and they were able to confirm that everything that had been reported was accurate and true and there's no true attrition, and so it was even sort of confirmed for them. We knew it was the truth, but it was confirmed by a third party, so it kind of helped. Some people who might have a little bit of a doubtful mind say well, you know, maybe it is true, but God is doing that and we're very hopeful that it'll continue to grow and it will be the seabed of Christianity in India and into all the world.
Speaker 2And one of the things that creates hope is that number that you just shared the 102,069 baptisms in the year of 2023. And the thing that creates hope there for us and for those that are here, is that we, as missionaries, were not even in the picture for 2023. We left India at the end of 2022. And, of course, we know that they've been doing that work all along, but I think it's such a beautiful thing to be able to show to others that God is using them. It no longer has anything to do with us. That it doesn't. It no longer has anything to do with us. They have taken ownership of making disciples and will continue, as far as we know, for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is so encouraging Every time I talk to you all and hear the story. Now. It's just so challenging and so encouraging to just hear the passion with which these believers are reading scripture, are sharing scripture, are memorizing scripture. And that's Glenn. You were starting to bring it up, but talk really quick about just the percentages that were found through that study of how many of them were in the Word. How often were they in the Word and doing discipleship. It's just so encouraging.
Speaker 2Yeah. So through the assessment even though it was a lot of work and all of that, it was beautiful. We knew it was true, but it was beautiful just to see things confirmed we did learn things. For example, through the assessment, through the interviews, it was found that 90% of the people the believers were engaging God's Word for themselves, either through reading or listening to God's Word, at least four times a week. I started to say 80 because it was 80%. If you drop down to 80%, we're in God's Word daily, but 90% bumps it up to down to four times per week. So that was beautiful to learn. Scripture memory was around 80%. In fact, one of the men that was there doing some of the assessment. He sat downstairs interviewing people and asking them what's your favorite verse? What's your favorite verse?
Speaker 3Yeah, so it's impromptu right.
Speaker 2It's very impromptu. And he was impressed because he said you know, if you ask that in a church in America, you're going to get a whole bunch of John 3, 16s. And he was really impressed because, as he asked people, he was getting random verse, different verses. And he was really impressed because, as he asked people, he was getting random, different verses and he loved that. But he said he asked this one older lady to share with him her favorite verse, her favorite Bible story, and he said she started completely illiterate woman. She started in creation. And he said 45 minutes later she was still going.
Speaker 1I love that story every time.
Speaker 2So they really are in God's Word and it's obviously just changing their lives. And then the other thing was that—.
Speaker 3Well, they found no true attrition right.
Speaker 2They found no true attrition, and I say it that way, in that there were groups who had combined, so there were churches who had combined, so there were churches that we had reported as independent house churches in 2020 that were now meeting together. They had maybe multiple churches in the same village over time had begun meeting together, but they were still worshiping. And then we had one instance where a man that was leading a house church had died. He had died of a heart attack and that house church had combined with another one, but no true attrition. That family was still worshiping.
Speaker 3They had just joined with another church. And another aspect we have mentioned with Kyle was that since they were doing the assessment, were doing the assessment, our leadership thought that it would be a good idea to go and try to find three-year-old and five-year-old believers and also interview them and listen to find out if there was an indication of maturity or where the state of the church was even longer stages. So you have a couple of things you can tell them about that.
Speaker 2Right In that instance. What was really interesting to us, and maybe even we learned through that assessment, was that many of the house churches had actually grown in number. So the house church that we had reported as being a family or two families or a family and some widows or something like that, was now 35 or 50 people gathered together. So many of the house churches were growing in size as well the ones that had been, because the assessment was only done from one year 2020, but when they went back and interviewed some of the ones that had been five years or more, Just to explain how some of that might happen many times when we just go through and take reporting one time and so that house, church doesn't ever enter into any of our ability to track it again.
Speaker 3It's the first time that we engage a family and we go through. Maybe a grandmother or a grandfather or a brother or sister, Maybe there's people in the family that don't take baptism the first time around so not everybody does, but there's. So that indicates that those people come to faith you know a little later, and that that group has brought some other people in. And it just it's not really in in the method that we use. We just don't go back and collect that kind of data.
Speaker 2Right, we say, you know, we're only tracking the tip of the spear. We only are tracking the edge of the movement. With so much, there really has not been a way to go back and re-report on those same churches. The other piece of data that was exciting was that 79% of those that were interviewed were actively currently making disciples among the next generation.
Speaker 1Which has to happen because otherwise, I mean, movement's not happening, multiplication's not happening. It's truly amazing to hear this story every time and we were talking with our students this morning and I just thought it was so encouraging. One of our students asked. One of our students asked you know, how did you deal with specific cultural issues or sins or things that were, you know, countercultural to Christianity? We can take an easy example of idol worship.
The Impact of Scripture on Society
Speaker 1How do you take that and disciple these believers, to put those away, to take them down to worship the one true God? And you all responded and just said we didn't. They just read the New Testament, they just read Scripture. The Holy Spirit worked in their lives and convicted them and they as a body came to these conclusions like we can't do this anymore. This isn't the truth. I just thought that was so encouraging because that's what we hear all the time here at the Eliff Center. We hear Albert hear all the time here at the Eliff Center. We hear Elbert says all the time if you would just read Scripture regularly, he specifically says if you were to read the New Testament twice a year, you can nearly guarantee yourself that you're going to stay away from heresy and that you're going to know the Word and you're going to know the plain understanding of the text. We were talking about that yesterday.
Speaker 2That's what we always say. We're just looking for the clear and plain meaning of the text.
Speaker 1We've said all weeks Scripture, when we read it, it's going to match reality, it's going to bring about the truth and it's going to help us know how to shape our lives. And it doesn't have to be complicated.
Speaker 2And these people who are uneducated well, I mean, it's just like Peter in the book of Acts right when they got brought before the court, they were amazed at how they spoke and said we know, these are unschooled, uneducated men, but it was evidenced by their life and by what they were saying that they had been with Jesus. And it's the same with these folks. You know, they're uneducated, they're unschooled, but they take in God's Word at least four times a week and they are taking, they are reading God's Word and they are growing and they are becoming. They are reading God's word and they are growing and they are becoming very spiritually mature. They don't have, you know, there's, no Bible college, there's no seminary, but it's God's word. And in first Corinthians it says you know that the Holy Spirit will help us to understand scripture, and whereas it says even the deep things of God. And so just their daily reading of God's word and the Holy Spirit working in their heart is enough.
Speaker 2You can entrust them to God's word.
Speaker 3There's just a few other things I want to mention about the fringe sort of benefits of Christianity entering into a culture, of Christianity entering into a culture. So a lot of those illiterate moms and dads thought it important that their children stay in school because they wanted to make sure they could read God's Word for themselves. So then these children are now going to college. For the first time ever in the family's history there's a community of believers that garner attention from a political domain. So if people are going to get elected in a certain area, the contingency of Christians has become so large that they need to approach them and ask you know how can we get your vote? You know there might be a road, might be a well school system and things like that, and so it continues that Christianity has always benefited, you know, the culture and the society at large.
Speaker 3Another example is that we'll tell them you know there's all kinds of clinics and I had a Bible study with a guy that called himself a doctor but he had never been to school, he ran a doctor, he doctored people but it was just like all in and of himself approved. And so we tell them you know it's important to go to the hospital or go to a good doctor, you know, don't go to just the little shops, you know, because they really don't know what they're talking about. And so, you know, health improves, you know, and some people who may have unnecessarily died, you know, don't die. So there's a lot of things that are improving, even from a social aspect, due to the advancement of Christianity.
Speaker 1So any final thoughts on your time in India before I ask you a question or two about kind of life now in South Carolina.
Speaker 3Well, I would just say that it hasn't been easy. Is that fair? That's fair, right. It hasn't been easy. It has been extremely difficult at times. We've seen colleagues, children, die, and it's a difficult life. But we were just talking this morning that if we had a chance to go back and do it again, we would definitely do it.
Speaker 2There is no greater thing to give your life to, to invest your life in.
Speaker 1There's no better place to be than in God's will, right when we started. So one thing we kind of started talking about before we started recording here was you know, what are you all doing in South Carolina now? What does ministry look like? What does ministry look like and how and in what way is Ek, Rasta and the Bible story set applicable to the US? That there's a sense where we are shifting more and more to a functionally biblically illiterate society, and so that's what this addresses through the gospel. So let's kind of talk about that and start fleshing that out.
Speaker 3Okay, so we're looking to be used by God to work in the United States. There's a large international contingency, but there's also a shrinking church. Let's just say it's just it's getting smaller. And so we looked at the demographic in our state and it's 80% of people in South Carolina are unchurched, not going to church, and so there needs to be, and a lot of the churches, after the pandemic, they may have stopped doing Sunday night and even Wednesday night Some of them just did Sunday morning church and still just doing Sunday morning church. And so how are people getting discipled? Where's the room, where's the time given to discipleship?
Speaker 3If I come to church and all I hear is the preacher's message the entire week, then you know I'm not going to become biblically literate anytime soon, right? And so we want to use this chronological Bible story set, which establishes all seven pillars of a Christian worldview, along with just a general knowledge of God and his character and his plan for the world and our purpose in that world, and be drawing attention to the fact that in a very, very short amount of time, people can go through this content and become much more knowledgeable about the God that we serve. And I always talk about, you know, when I was a kid my dad and others would talk about, there's the scarlet thread that runs through all the pages of the Bible and I would often think to myself man, I would love to know about that. That sounds really cool and really interesting, because when I read as a child, and I read the Old Testament stories, I don't see Jesus so clearly. You know, I see now, but I also, you know that was brought to my attention.
Speaker 3And so, with what we call two things, one is an intentional growth path for people, so we definitely want to go from introduction to the Bible to a disciple that makes disciple. There's two passages Ephesians, that we want to make a mature man, and Colossians, we want to present every man complete in Christ. And so we have those passages that motivate us to teach the entire Bible and to continue to encourage the existing Christians to find a new confidence, and also offer to go along beside of them and train them one-on-one to share their faith with the people around them, engaging them through prayer and good works, so that there's no reason that this ship can't be righted, so to speak. It's not impossible at all. We just need to get out of our place of comfort and complacency and engage the world that is around us.
Speaker 3The average age in the church is 60 years old. The average age of the United States population is 40 years old, and so there's an automatic generational gap between the current church and the current world that that church lives in, and so that divide's only going to grow greater if we do absolutely nothing at all. And it's clear that what we've been doing isn't working. What we've been doing isn't working, it is not working, and so this model that we have, if you will, has to be changed, and it has to be changed drastically, and so we're excited to enter into that arena, if you will. The United States is bringing in people from all over the world, and we also know that the workforce is in the harvest not only in the harvest to come, but in the harvest that's already sitting in the pews, and we just have to do a little bit of education and be intentional to share in their faith.
Speaker 2Yeah. So this harvest that's coming to us, you know the nations are coming to us, so of course we want to. You know, it's such a great opportunity to reach the nations, to reach unreached peoples Right here. You don't have to get on a plane, you don't have to learn another language. They're right here among us, in our communities. But at the same time, we really have a burden for the local church to be equipped to reach them, to take advantage of those opportunities, to take advantage of even just the neighbors around them, but then also the peoples that God is bringing to us.
Speaker 1When thinking about your 35 Bible story set and creating biblical literacy and sending people out. I mean I think you all would encourage people to go through the whole thing right, Regardless of they've been a believer for 30 years, 35 years, but go through the process, get a solid foundation of biblical literacy, of an understanding of the gospel, and go.
Speaker 2That's right, Kyle, because we believe that that 35 story set gives a overview of the Bible that then becomes a hermeneutical tool to help you then the rest of your life as you read the Bible for yourself. So there's two things I think believers need to be really grounded in intake of God's word for themselves and knowing how to share their faith with others and I think Ekrasda helps you or helps the believer, has helped the believers in India to do those things. And once those two things become a part of the ordinary Christian life, then I think we have put ourselves in the place where God can really use us.
Engaging the Community Through Faith
Speaker 3Yeah, we're trying to do that. And if you think about the, we've mentioned ekrasa it's the Hindi words for the way where we see Paul telling King Agrippa you know, it's true, I belong to the sect they call the way. So another place, a little girl that prophesies says these are the men that tell people the way to know God. So that's what Ekrasa means is the way. If you look at the content, the largest part of the content is the 35 stories, the Bible stories, and then after that, if we want to call them units, they're like 10 less than units on average. And so if you put this all together and print out like a notebook, a collegiate notebook size, composition book, you're, you're going to have a book of a maximum I don't think it'll reach this level a maximum of 150 pages, and then that is nothing for us to read as, as literate american people, that is. That is a very short read. We read novels and fiction. Uh, all the time that, I don't know, twitter's got us used to 160 characters.
Speaker 3It's that right here in reals, you know, we learn everything we need to know in two minutes yeah, but no, that's right.
Speaker 1150 pages, that's nothing it's not much.
Speaker 3And so, um, we can, it's, it's it's not a lot to, not a steep learning curve at all, and so, um, we're just going to challenge the, the local church, to take this on and give it a try. You know, if it doesn't work, so be it. But you know, to not share, as Albert says, is not to obey the great commandment. And the church, you know, grows anywhere the great commandment is being obeyed and stops growing anywhere it's not obeyed. It really is that black and white.
Speaker 2So you know, our prayer is that, at the same time that people can walk through this material and grow in biblical literacy, at the same time, having someone helping the churches to begin to model, walk alongside, take them. Sharing the gospel is not an academic task. You know, I can read Sharing Jesus Without Fear. I can read the faith book, I can read the different books that are available on evangelism that teach me a method of evangelism. But it's a totally different thing for someone to say, hey, come with me, we're going to go share the gospel, we're going to go find a house, find people and begin to share the gospel with them.
Speaker 2And I think in a lot of places not everywhere, but I think in a lot of places we've lost that modeling and believers modeling and believers don't know. It's not that there's not a desire, because even with the IMB, one of our top five barriers of going overseas is they're not sharing their faith. So these are people who have a desire to go to the nations, they have a desire, a burden for the lost, but they haven't been equipped to know how to share their faith.
Speaker 1It's all so challenging. You know there's I just think about our community and even here, you know, there's probably very similar stats to what you're talking about in South Carolina and just so many people who need to know. Albert says a lot, he goes. One of the largest groups of people, one of the largest avenues through which our generation is dying, going to hell, is through Christendom and people thinking they're saved but really having no idea. Thinking they're saved but really having no idea. And a lot of that comes from just a true lack of understanding of the gospel, a lack of understanding of what's in God's word, what the Bible says. And the more we can share, the more we can just be dedicated to going and saying 200 times today, 200 times, I'm going to go share, I'm going to invite people to Bible study. I'm going to invite people to learn. I can't help but think people know. Scripture is God breathed, it's powerful. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, it's going to work.
Speaker 2And it takes all of us. It's powerful. The gospel is the power of God for salvation. It's going to work and it takes all of us. It takes all of us In that Ephesians 4 passage where it talks about equipping the saints to do the work of ministry. A little later in that chapter he says so that everyone, every part, can do its work. So it's for all of us. And you know, we can start a Bible study and maybe nothing comes of it, sharing this with our neighbors or in our community. But if you know 50 in my church if we all start in-home Bible studies and invite our neighbors to them, somebody's probably going to see some fruit. You know, if we've all got to be, what do you say about swinging the bat? We've all got to be swinging the bat, um, and somebody's gonna. Somebody's gonna hit a ball.
Speaker 1Yeah, good point. So we we've been chatting for a while and, as we've talked for the last couple of days, there's multiple resources that you've brought up that I think are really good and beneficial, and I want to make sure our listeners can get some access to that, and so we're going to link in the description of our show a link to the Ek Rasta app. And then you, rhonda, you had mentioned the Bless Every Home and I still just am mind blown by how cool of an opportunity this resource provides for believers. And so talk to us really quickly about that. We'll link that in our description so our listeners can get to it, but tell us really quickly about that.
Speaker 2So on the Bless Every Home app, it's actually called the Bless app. Now They've just transitioned the title of it. It's called the Bless app and that bless stands for, begin with, prayer, listen and learn about people, eat together, share meals with people, serve them and then share the gospel with them. So that's what the BLESS stands for. But on the BLESS app you can sign up, create a little account it's a free app and you put in your physical address and when you enter your physical address, the BLESS app will populate a prayer list for you of 40 neighbors around your physical address. The Bless app will populate a prayer list for you of 40 neighbors around your physical address within you know, a certain radius. My list is probably all within a mile of me, and so then it populates that prayer list and then when you go on the app, each day or a few times a week, however often you do it when you go on the app, it gives you for today. For each day, it will give you five of those 40 for you to pray for, and once you've prayed for the 40, it just goes back through that 40 again. But on the app you can keep track of. Okay, I've met this person. I've prayed for them, I've met them, I have ate a meal with them, I have served. You can keep track of those steps until you get to the point of sharing the gospel. It even has a little area where you can take notes. You know, if you have a like me, you know, maybe I want to write down this lady's children's name so I can remember them, so you can keep that information there in the app as well and pray for your neighbors. I'll just give a quick testimony.
Speaker 2I had the opportunity. I've been praying I've prayed for my 40 now several times and I was driving down the road the other day and there was a woman just in obvious distress on the side of the road and I didn't know what was going on exactly. But I pulled over and asked her if there was a way I could help and she said you know, can you just give me a ride home? So I said hop in. And I took her down the road to her house, had the opportunity to share with her along the way. We got to her house and she had shared with me some about what was going on, and so I just asked her if I could pray for her. I prayed for her before she got out of the car and I said you know, look, I'd love to come back and check on you because she was having some problems and if we could, you know, we could maybe study the Bible together, because I had shared with her that I was a Christian. And she said, yeah, I'd love that. And so, you know, I left.
Speaker 2We've begun talking on the phone some. She came by my house the other day for a little while, but I sat down Sunday afternoon to pray for my five families for that day and the name caught my attention and it was this lady that I had picked up on the side of the road and I had prayed for her several times. But I had, from meeting her and praying for her, I hadn't connected the name until I sat down to pray that day and it just, it floored me that God just just, in such an obvious way, answered my prayer that that I'd been praying. I just pray a simple prayer, as I pray for my list of five every day that God will bless them and provide for any needs that they have in their life right now and that he would open up doors of opportunity for us to be able to meet and bless them in some way, and and he answers those prayers when we pray with a sincere heart, I think.
Speaker 1We have so many resources available to us to pray for unreached, unengaged people groups, unreached people groups needs around the world through the IMB and our missionaries, and here's one right here that allows us to be as strategic with the people living right next door to us to pray for opportunities to share, to pray to meet them, to pray for the Lord, to just bless them, meet their needs.
Speaker 1What a cool opportunity. So we'll make sure to link those apps in our description. I really do appreciate the time you all have taken to speak to our students, speak on our campus, to take time to speak to our listeners here. I truly think so many people have already been and are going to continue to be, encouraged and challenged by the work that the Lord has done through you all and through the lives of just thousands of people in India who are just taking the command of the Great Commission at its word and going and sharing and sharing with everybody they can, sowing seed broadly and one day, hopefully, to the ends of the world. So thanks for coming on and we look forward to hopefully talking sometime soon and hearing about how ministry is going in South Carolina or wherever the Lord takes you all. So really appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 2Thank you.
Speaker 1It's been a real privilege. 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 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.