 Folks, blessed to be here this morning. I just got back from Afghanistan about three and a half, four weeks ago, and we head out to the Ukraine tomorrow. Pastor David was kind enough to invite us to come back and share and kind of give you an update. Now, folks, I'm very aware there are people here that probably were not here the last time, so we'll give you a little bit of an update of understanding so they won't, they'll have an idea of what we're talking about here. But as a ministry, we have been involved in the longest-running civil war in Africa, the war in Southern Sudan. In the last 65 years of the nation, that country has had over 40 years of declared war, but there's really been no time that they have not fought in the last 65 years, and they're fighting on multiple fronts right now. About 23, going on 24 years ago, we became the official training arm for the South Sudanese Army, our training all pastors and chaplains for the military, and these guys are frontline combat chaplains. All of my men are armed, all of us go into battle. And I know that seems a little strange, guys, but as we share a little bit, I think you'll understand why. But this morning, what we're gonna be sharing with you about is Afghanistan and the Ukraine. One of the things you need to understand is that we are an extremely large organization. We're not actually small at all. We're involved in 37 different countries around the world, and most of the works, not all of them, most of them are pretty large works in each country. Folks, South Sudan, about four years ago, was upgraded to the third most dangerous nation in the world to live in. We used to be fighting one army, we're now fighting five armies, and there's 148 different rebel groups operating. And we're actually involved in five different wars around the world. We're involved in the war in Burma, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, the war in South Sudan, and the killing of Christians in Nigeria by the extremist Islamists. There's one village that we work in. There's over 400 widows where the Islamists have come in and murdered all their husbands. And so we have enough going on with the wars that we're involved in. We don't need another war. But what happened was when Afghanistan collapsed overnight, we had 22 missionaries in the underground in Afghanistan. It's a part of our ministry, we call it ghost operations. It's the invisible hand in the closed roll of radical Islam. Our organization is operating in nine of the 10 most dangerous Islamic nations in the world. And I got a call from our Dutch office, and they called and they said, well, with our 22 missionaries and their extended families, we have over 200 people in Afghanistan that are all expecting to be killed for their faith. We had one family that was discipling three other families. They were Muslim, they came to faith in Christ, and this missionary family were discipling them. Well, they realized they needed to go into hiding so they went into hiding, but they didn't realize what Taliban would do. The Taliban found the three families that were being discipled, and not only killed the mother and father, they killed all the children, even down to the babies. And so we realized that we had a critical situation on our hands. I went down to my staff and I said, guys, we're going into wartime operations. A week later, maybe a week and a half, I'd have five former Navy SEALs fly in, three former Marines, all special forces, one Army Green Beret and one CIA agent. And we planned operations into Afghanistan to rescue and get our people out of there. We sent in two teams simultaneously. The first one, we flew into the chopper, we landed at 12,000 feet in the mountains, and we deployed one Marine and one SEAL. I was with the second team, two Marines and two SEALs, and the two SEALs went off in one direction, and me and the other Marine went off in another direction. And folks, we were supposed to climb to 4,000 feet, but we'd actually end up having to climb to over 11,500 feet to get to our location. Really one of the most difficult climbs in my life. And a matter of fact, every SEAL and every Marine told me that it was the most difficult climb they had ever made in their life. Now, besides myself, every one of those guys that had multiple tours into Afghanistan, they'd been all over those mountains. My war was the Southern Sudan. And so as we get there, when you're climbing up the mountain, these are places that nobody has ever been before. And a matter of fact, I asked them what the names of the mountains were, and they said, we have too many of them, we don't name them. Whether they didn't know or they were not named, I have no idea. When you're going up these mountains, there really is no trail. They have a rare animal called an ibex. It's a rare mountain goat, and they have these massive horns that go back, wealthy people fly all around the world to shoot these things. And so there's a little bit of what we might call an ibex trail at certain points in the location as you're going up there. As you go up there, it's maybe about six inches of trail, and then six inches of rock and shell that's sliding down into the trail. And if you miss one step, you literally fall a thousand feet and you die. I was coming off the side of one mountain and I began to hear gravel sliding, and I honestly didn't have time to think about it. I just reached back and I grabbed, and I caught her interpreter as he was going off the mountain. Once we got to the top of the mountain, we began to watch drones. And guys, what we were looking for is rat lines. A rat line is an escape route to get people out of a country. Now, we have multiple places that we're extracting people out of Afghanistan. One of the things that I want to share with you as a body of believers is so often God wants to use his people. But we look at it in and of our own strength and our own ability. And guys, we're honestly not supposed to do that. One of these we need to realize is that we follow the God of angel armies, someone that has ultimate wisdom that can lead and guide and direct us. If you ask me how to fight a war in South Sudan, I can tell you, I've been there for 26 years. I know exactly how to fight a war in that nation. But Afghanistan was new to me. All I knew is that the war told us to go. And so we were over there landing in that part of the world. When we came off of that mountain, guys, not a single guy, all of our toenails were black just from the blood that was under that was the very difficulty of that climb there. I actually lost two toenails during that time. And I'm fortunate because they're both growing back. Sometimes when you lose them that badly, they don't grow back. We had one brother by the name of Rodney. Rodney was with the elite SEAL Team Six. He spent 22 years with the SEALs, 12 years with SEAL Team Six. And then he got out and spent 13 years with the CIA. And so Rodney got off, he lost three toenails. That tells you how difficult the crime was there. Once we got off the mountain, one of these I want to share with you is God began to do miracles. And I really want to make sure that we give you the understanding that this was, we're following the God of angel armies that's leading us and directing us. We don't have the wisdom of what to do. And we got a call from YWAM Youth with a missing. They said, listen, our country director is in a certain city. The Taliban knows he's there. They're hunting him. They're literally going to door to door. They said, guys, they're within two hours of finding him. And when they said that to me, I said, guys, I said, two hours is not a lot of time. You really should have given us some advanced notice. But we were able to get ahold of one of our assets in the country. An hour later, our team showed up at the door. We got the kid, we got him out of there. An hour later, Taliban showed up at the door. Had we not got the kid, he would have been killed. Then we got a call from Heather Mercer. Many of you might remember Heather Mercer. She's a very famous missionary. She was imprisoned in Afghanistan back in, I believe it was 2020. And Heather Mercer called and said, hey, we have 26 missionaries, our 26 Christians that need extraction. They will all be murdered. Is there anything you guys can do? We sit on an operational team. We got those 26 and got them out also. But the one that surprised me the most is we got a call from Shannon Spann. For those of you who do not know who that is, Mike Spann was the first CIA officer killed in Afghanistan in the war when we invaded the nation. I remember it like it was yesterday and very much troubled me. The reason he was killed is because they trusted the Taliban and I myself knew that was a tremendous miscalculation to be able to trust those people. Mike had actually been in the Marine Corps. He was special forces. He was recruited by the CIA. Shannon was also recruited by the CIA. They met at the farm, which is a training base. They fell in love, got married, and they had three children. When Mike was killed, they had gone in with the alpha team which was the first team into Afghanistan. And Shannon's a very godly woman, folks. She does women's conferences and she said that when Afghanistan began to collapse they were getting all kinds of people out. But when the last aircraft left, the US aircraft left, she said she couldn't get anybody out of Afghanistan. And one night she was walking around, she was praying, she goes, Lord, I don't know what to do. And the Lord said, Shannon, why are you going to the world? Why aren't you going to my people? She goes, well, I don't know any of your people in Afghanistan. Well, he gave her a name and she called this gentleman and he said, Shannon, call for our reaching ministries. Well, Shannon called, I was out of the country, guys. She spoke to Brent. Brent's on my staff, Brent is with Second Force Recon. He was with Second World Force Recon which is the elite of the Marine Corps Special Forces. And she said, Brent, I have 28 people in Afghanistan. They are not Christian, they are Muslim but they were all helping our nation and they will be murdered. Will you guys help me? Brent called me and said, Wes, what do you want to do on this? I said, let's green light the operation. We green lighted the operation. We're able to go in and get all 28 of them out. Then we got a call. They said the first female Supreme Court Justice was in a certain city, Afghanistan, and she was there. They wanted to find her and make an example out of it. Now, guys, they're making radical examples. When they're catching people, they're burning them alive. Women are being raped. One of the things about Islam, they believe if they rape you, you cannot go into heaven. So of course that's an excuse to rape any woman that they capture there. They're murdering entire families. I mean, it's a brutal, brutal situation there. And again, we were able to sit in the operational team and get this woman out. You know, guys, I'd shared not in the first service, but the last time I was here, I'd been a missionary for over 30 years, in 26 years in the South Sudan and then five years in Russia. And guys, Russia was always my first love. Matter of fact, if God not called me out, I would have never left and gone to the Southern Sudan. I had prayed for that nation for 13 years before I went there. But one of the things that, you know, I've always been a cold weather person. I don't like heat. It's funny that God would call me to South Sudan. I mean, it's like the hottest place on earth, you know? Of course, this is where you get called to do ministry there. I mean, you literally sometimes you sweat 24 hours a day. It's impossible to get cold. So I really look forward to going back to Russia every year, or at least I used to. I would go there for a couple of weeks to do ministry to get away from it. We have built seven Calvary chapels over there. We have over 20 pastors and missionaries working in Russia. And one of the things you need to know is the Russian people are not behind this. Now, there are a few, of course, it's always the way it is. But by and large, the Russian people are not happy about this invasion. We've gotten reports from our assets in the Ukraine. Russian soldiers are driving their tanks in a circle to run them out of fuel because they're saying, we're killing our own people. We don't want to be doing this war. We actually have one of our Russian missionaries that's already rescued 39 Ukrainian families. They've got them through Russia to another country. And guys are extremely traumatized. One of my missionaries called me and said, Wes, we have women here that have literally been crying for days. They've lost their homes. They lost family members. They watched people getting shot indiscriminately. He said, one woman's been crying so many days ago, so her face is swollen, it's contorted. And we're trying to minister to these type of people. It's a very, very difficult situation of what's going over there. Because one of the things I used to love in Russia was the snow. I remember a few years ago, I was going from one city to another. We just bought a new car for a pastor. And as we're traveling from one city to the next, we go through this blizzard. And it's one of those beautiful snowstorms where the snowflakes are about the size of a quarter. And you can't see much more than 30 feet ahead of you because it's just a blizzard coming down. And the Lord really spoke to me during that time. And he said, if the body of Christ does not intervene, Satan is about ready to harvest a blizzard of souls. And we realized that we had a critical situation. I prayed, I asked the Lord to give me a verse for this operation. And he did give it to me. It was Proverbs 24 verse 10. If you falter in the times of trouble, how small is your strength? Rescue those being led away to death. Hold back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say that we knew nothing about this, does not he who weigh the heart perceive it? Does not he who guard your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done? And guys, we realized that we had a great responsibility. Now, one of the hard things that we really had to deal with guys, we've already got about 460 people out of Afghanistan. But on March 4th, we had three aircraft that were scheduled to leave Afghanistan. We had gone through months of negotiations. We had 910 people scheduled to get on those aircraft and fly to a safe country in Europe. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it ended all of that. Afghanistan had an agreement from what we understand with Russia that no aircraft could leave Afghanistan airspace and fly to United Nations or NATO country or UN country. And so all of a sudden everything fell apart right at the last moment. So what we had to do is we had to reorganize everything. We are still in the process. We're having to take them out of Afghanistan in our safe locations and get them to another country. And then we're gonna fly them out in about the next 10 days. We have two aircraft scheduled at this point with over 850 souls to be put on it. The hard part about the situation guys is we have over 2,000, maybe 3,000 more requests for extraction. Everybody from Jesus film to whoever has been calling us and saying, can you guys help us? One of the things that was extremely troubling to me this week is that I got called by Brent and Brent said, well, you may not be aware of this. He goes, all those organizations that were in Afghanistan trying to rescue people had pulled out. He goes, there's nobody there doing it anymore. I wasn't sure that that could be true. So I called a brother of mine that spent 22 years in counter-terrorism and has dealt with this his whole life. I said, bro, is this really true? Has everybody pulled out? He goes, we're the last organization there that we know of. And so guys, their lives are really dependent on pulling what the body of Christ does right now. And I feel a tremendous responsibility to intervene on behalf of these people. You know, one of the families that we dealt with folks and we did not actually rescue this family. It's a very hard story to share with you. There was a mother and her mother had escaped Afghanistan. The younger mother had two children. The other mother's children, her mother was grown. What had happened is both of their husbands had been killed by the Taliban. The younger mother had two girls and a little boy. One was like four, one was like seven, and the little boy was probably just a year old or two years old at the time. The guy that killed her husband was her brother's own brother. He was a Taliban guy, extremely evil man. He not only killed his own brother, guys, I've seen the photos of his body. Now, in 26 years of war, I've seen a lot of dead bodies. It's nothing new to me. It was the most brutal picture I've ever seen in my entire life. I cannot imagine the suffering that this poor guy went through. After he killed his own brother, he raped his brother's wife and he raped his brother's four-year-old daughter. And when they got to there, we met at an Afghan restaurant. Guys, the clothes they were wearing, it looked like they had not changed their clothes in weeks if not months. They probably left with the only pair of clothes that they had on their back. They didn't have time, they just ran for their lives. And we get there and there was a brother from youth with a mission that organized this and we bought him a beautiful dinner at our lodge. And truthfully, they're eating because they're hungry, but there's no joy in it. You know how it is when you haven't had a good meal in a long time? How much people have joy in eating? You're consuming it, you're enjoying that meal, you see the light in the eyes, there wasn't there. Everyone was just very solemn faces. When we got in there, the mother begins to explain to me what happens. And she says, now my husband's brother is calling us. And he tells me that if we do not come back, he will kill all 14 members of my family. She goes, I don't know what to do. Now when she said that, the older girl that was not raped, she was probably seven years old, just started to break down and started solving. She started crying uncontrollably. And I looked at the mother and I said, I said, you know, Jesus said, come to me, all you are burdened, heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I said, the first thing you need to understand is you cannot put these children in jeopardy for your grown adult family. I said, now that being said, we will send in the operational team. If they're willing to go, we'll come for them. And you need to tell them that when we come, they leave immediately. If they don't leave, we're not coming back. They agreed, we send in the operational team. We got all 14 of them out there, folks. But... When we got done and the mill was over, you know, one of the things is that they said, you know, in the country we're in, they won't allow us to work. We can't have a job. We can't own property. We can't own a business. And they go, we don't know how to survive. So I said, listen, we're gonna pay your rent. We're gonna pay your bills. We'll take care of you until we get you to a safe nation. When the mill was over, the young little girl got up and she came over to me and she put her arms around me at my waist that she just began to sob. And all the guys on the team were surprised. I mean, these are all tier one type of guys, special forces guys. And they said, you know, Wes, that's not common. You know, they don't do that in Afghanistan. People are afraid. She goes, you're probably the first man that you have ever felt safe with. And you know, I wrap my arms around the little girl. I lean down and I kiss her on the head and I'm talking through an interpreter. I said, listen, honey, I go, do not worry. I will not let anything happen to you. I will protect your mother and your sister and your brother. Nothing's gonna happen to you. And after that, that little girl would not let go of my hand. Wherever I went, she held on to the entire time. We took them down to a place to buy them new clothing. We bought them all new clothing. And after we got done with everything, you know, we went and bought them some ice cream. And I think that was the first time I saw a smile on any of the children's faces. But the Lord really spoke to me very clearly at that point. And he said, this little girl is your daughter for the rest of your life. Now, she may never live with you, but I am giving you the responsibility to care for her. You know, folks, when I was just over there a few weeks ago, when I came there, I found out the little girl had been telling everybody for weeks my grandfather's coming to see me. I don't think she knows I'm not her grandfather, you know. And of course, what she came, she sat next to me the entire time. And the children are very sweet. One of the things is they've been away from the war a little bit. They're beginning to heal. And it's gonna be a huge operation. Getting them out of Afghanistan is one thing. Once they get into another country, it's much more difficult to get them out. But we cannot send them back and try to get them out of Afghanistan. It's just some of the hardships of the ministry we're doing there. Again, what happens? Ukraine explodes. We have 40 missionaries in the Ukraine or 40 pastors. And guys, you're dealing with some real hardships here, but one of the things that I think that shows a man's character, do you allow problems to overtake your life? Or through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, do you allow the Lord Jesus to give you wisdom to overtake problems? This is one of the things that we had to do. One of the things that I was blown away by, Shannon Spann is good friends with a New York Times best-selling writer. I do not know who this individual is. But I guess he wrote the movie, 12 Strong. I think probably many of you have seen that movie. And it's about U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. Well, he called Shannon up and he said, Shannon, what is in it for a far-reaching ministry? She goes, nothing. He goes, no, there's gotta be something. She goes, no, there's nothing in it for him. They're not doing it for any reason. They're doing it because they're believers. They love people. They love the body of Christ. They fulfill a responsibility with what the scripture says, which is to rescue those, protect those that cannot protect themselves. And this gentleman said to her, I said, you know, I've been watching all the organizations over there, both believers and non-believers. He goes, every one of them is advertising themselves. Every time they do something, they're trying to get in the media, get their name out there. He goes, the only organization that we're not hearing from is far-reaching ministries. He goes, you gotta tell me what is in it for them? She said, nothing. And he said, you gotta realize this is a non-believer. And he said, you know, Shannon, he goes, it's kind of like Jesus turning over the money changer tables. I said to Shannon, I said, Shannon, if that's all I ever receive in eternity, that's enough for me. Guys, when we go to the mission field, we do not go there to make a name for ourself. We don't go there with the hope that we'll write a book someday or have fame or notoriety. It will bring great resources to us. We're not there for our denomination. We're not there for our church. When you go to the mission field, you go for one reason only, that you have been called by Christ. In the book of John, Jesus said, you did not choose me, but I chose you and I appointed you to go. See, we don't choose to go, we are called of Christ to go, and God expects His children to be obedient. I believe that I have a part of my relationship with the Lord that many believers are missing. Guys, I have the part that most of you do where God is my father and I'm his son, and it's very special to me. And for many of you, he's your father and you're his son or your daughter, and it's special to you. But there's a part that I believe that most believers are missing, which is, he is my commanding officer, and I am his lieutenant. And when he gives me orders, I am to obey them unconditionally. You know, guys, one of the other things that really happened to me, and Shannon had just spoke with us, Brent last night, Brent was relating to me, he said, you know that she went to meet with current CIA and former CIA, and they were saying, Shannon, far reaching ministry is as far ahead of us in getting people out of this nation. Now I find that almost impossible to believe unless you're not really trying to get them out. And I think that's exactly what's happening there. And guys, I got a call from a US intelligence officer, he called me on the phone one day and he goes, can I come out and meet with you? I said, sure. Well, I was surprised, he flew out like that day or the next day, it was very quickly he got out there. And he came to my office and he let me know that he was with American intelligence and he was. And he said, you know what, as he goes, you may not be aware of this, he goes, but the entire intelligence world is talking about you. I said, how is that possible? Why would they even be talking about us? He goes, we're American intelligence, and this is in the early part of the world. After US left, he goes, we can't get anybody out, but you guys are getting everybody out. What are you doing? Well, I sat him down and I spent 45 minutes explaining the Lord Jesus Christ to him. And I said, brother, I said, I do not have the wisdom for this, I cannot trade credit for it. It's not enough of my own strength. Every day we wake up and we have someone to extract. And we look at nine or 10 bad options and we say, Lord, which is the best of the bad options, you know, and that's how we pray. We ask the Lord to lead us and guide us. And I just shared with him how we trust it in Christ. He goes, you know, I did not know that organizations like you exist. And I said, well, I'm not sure there is anyone else out there quite like this. Well, I got a call from, when I was over in Afghanistan this last time, he sent me a communication. I won't go into it, guys. It's a private way that cannot be intercepted. But he basically wrote me a letter in this communications format. And he said, when I came to see you, I had been a Catholic many years ago. He goes, I had walked away from faith. He goes, after meeting you guys, he goes, I have surrendered my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. So, and guys, he's helping us with our operations. I mean, if Rockstar is the right way to sit, I would say he's a Rockstar and helping us to get people out. One of the amazing things that I've seen is that we knew how to do the military side. All of us had had a lot of military experience. But guys, we didn't, I didn't know the intelligence world. Now, one of the guys on my staff has 14 years Marine Corps, Special Forces, he was a major. 22 years with the FBI, speaks Flutter Arabic, I believe in seven dialects, plus about four or five other language. He's tested at genius level. And so we have some really quality guys out there. But again, guys, we didn't know the other side of it. Well, Shannon has come in and she knows that entire world. She's been a tremendous asset in helping us to extract people out of this part of the world. And one of the things that I wanna share with you is that God wants to use you. So often we look at ourselves and we go, what good am I? Guys, being a soldier doesn't make you more spiritual. Obeying Christ is what makes you spiritual. You know, I share with people that many years ago, before I became a born-again believer, I remember that when I was in school, I used to have a young kid that would come and share Christ with me. His name was Ronnie Jensen. And guys, I have no idea where this kid is in the world. I tried to find him, but I don't know where he's at. And I remember this kid used to come over to my house with his Bible to share Christ with me. And I would see him come and I go, oh, here he comes again. And I'd go in my room and I'd get my pellet rifle and I'd walk outside and I'd say, Ronnie, you better start running. And he'd start to run and I'd shoot him. And I mean, it was a very high-powered pellet rifle. I remember he would flail and I just thought that was hilarious. And I go, well, that's the last time I'll see him. A week later, here was Ronnie back again. I probably beat that kid up 10 times. And yet he'd keep coming back to share his faith with me. And I remember that one day he was getting on the bus and I was mocking him. I said, who do you pray for, Ronnie? He goes, you know what? I pray for a lot of people, but I pray for you the most because I know that God has a calling on your life. And guys, I laugh, but the Lord pierced me. He slew me. I knew there was something in what he was saying was true. I didn't understand it, but I knew it. I don't know where he is, guys. He does not know, but he's responsible for ministry in 37 nations around the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have come to Christ because of that one boy's heart for the Lord. You know, guys, sometimes as believers, we don't understand it. We're supposed to be out there sharing our faith. And guys, when you share your faith, that figure that he gave you was correct. 82% of all people who are invited to church will come. That's an actual fact. Every believer in here, when you leave today, should have it in their heart. I'm gonna go out and have cards made with my name, my phone number, the church address, the service, and the church phone number. And you should be all week going out and handing them out. So, hey, I'd like to invite you to church for the study. Why don't you come? If you see me, seek me out. I'll get you a cup of coffee afterwards. We should look for that opportunity. It's a great opportunity. I remember that when I got saved and I got saved in the Marine Corps through the navigators. I remember that when I was in there, guys, we started a house ministry. It was called the House of Disciples. And most of it was for Marines, but we had a few guys off the streets. There was always about 25 guys in this house. And I was in charge of the house. So when anybody new wanted to come in the house, it was my responsibility to pray and decide where they could come. We'd allow them to come in for two or three days to make sure they weren't there just to get food and didn't really care about the gospel. They were actually interested in seeking Christ. Well, I'll never forget they brought this guy named Tom and Tom was a Marine. And I could tell he was off when he first came in there. I could just see he just wasn't quite there. And I remember that when he came to the house, the first night he was there, we had four bedrooms upstairs with about five guys in each bedroom. And then we had one bedroom downstairs. Well, I'm in my bedroom one night. And guys, all of a sudden this stench, this vile smell starts to seep under my door. And I look up at the other two guys and I'm gonna go, what is that? And they go, what is that smell? We're not gonna be able to see, we gotta figure this out. So we opened the door and it was like a wave came in and hit us, you know. So I walked down a hallway, I walk around a corner, I walk up one flight of stairs, another flight of stairs, down a hallway, down another hallway. And I opened the last room on the back. Well, Tom had taken his boots off. And from a closed door, a story up, it went under the door, down the hallway, down another hallway, down one flight of stairs, another flight of stairs, down another hallway, down another hallway, and under my door. Now, if that isn't vile, I don't know what is, okay. So of course it was my job to pray about it. I said, Lord, do you want me to have Tom come in the house? No, I didn't think so, amen. You know, I pretty much decided Tom was not supposed to be there. Well, at the time I was a rifle range instructor. I used to shoot competitively in the Marine Corps battalion and division matches. And we're out at the range training and there was a brother by the name of Randy Riedel. Randy was a Christian brother and he was also a rifle range instructor. And Randy was talking to me one day. He said, you know what else? He goes, Tom said something to me today that really affected me. And I'm not only half listening to him. I said, what did he say to you? He said, if the brothers decide to let me move in the house, he goes, do you think they'll really love me? And the Lord just savored me. I mean, guys, I had tons of friends and all this guy wanted to do was to be loved. Well, we allowed him in the house. And guys, he was a trial. I mean, he was a trial. He didn't really have any social ability to know how to behave. One of the guys had given him this old, like 20 year old Oldsmobile 98. It was a white car. Tom went out and bought like 16 cans of fluorescent green spray paint and about four cans of silver. Now he didn't wash the car. He didn't tape off the car. He painted the whole car with fluorescent green spray paint. And then he pulled the half cup caps off and there's 20 years of muck on the rims and he paints some silver. And I mean, there's silver on the tires. There's green paint on the trim. And I remember they were going up to Twin Peaks to go to a Bible conference and Tom insisted we take his car. The last thing I wanna do is go in that car with Tom. And I remember going through San Clemente and I'm in the car and I'm embarrassed. And all of a sudden a car pulls up with four young girls, all of them attract them, all of them servers and they look over a car and they just burst out laughing hilariously. And Tom starts bouncing up in the chair of his car and he goes, brother, they really like my car. And I'm sliding down in my chair hoping I hope these girls won't recognize me in the future. Man, I'm embarrassed by this. And I remember that one day I came home and Tom had on one of those polyester suits. You know, it kind of had a plaid jacket with red pants and he's got his Marine Corps black shoes on with white socks. And I walked in and I looked at him and said, Tom, where are you going? Well, he'd met a girl in the church and he told me I'm gonna ask her to marry me tonight. Now guys, I was gonna go out that evening but I knew this was not gonna end well. So I thought, I better stay here, this is gonna be bad. And so I sat down and a little over an hour later, maybe Tom comes in the house and I can look at his face and I can see the rejection. I go, brother, what happened? You see, you know, brother, I went to her house and she had a house on the ocean and we walked out on the beach and the waves were rolling in and the moon is setting and I'm getting ready to tell her I love her. I want to marry her. And she says to me, Tom, do you know what you need? And he thinks she's gonna say, you need me. And he's like, what do I need? She goes, you need a dog. He goes, what? She goes, you need a dog. You need somebody to play with you. He goes, I just shook my head and walked out. And I mean, he felt so rejected. You know, the hard part, guys, I was going to Calvary Chapel. Our pastor didn't even like this guy, you know? I remember one night he wanted to play a song and the pastor did not want him to play, but there were about 15 Marines going to the church and we kind of, brother, you gotta let him play. So finally he let him get up there. And he sings a song about a girl called Pamela. It's about a girl that's going through life. Nobody's ever cared for her. She's been abused. She's been hurt. All she is looking for one person to love her. And it was actually a well-done song. Well, the song really was not about Pamela. It was about Tom. His mother had left when he was a baby. Never saw her, didn't know where she was at. Father didn't know how to take care of him. And I remember that when Tom got out of the Marine Corps, we had a band and I'm taking him to the airport. Guys, whenever we saw a hitchhiker, we would pull over, we'd always share our faith. And there was this young Marine hitchhiking I pull over and he gets in the car and I'm getting ready to try to formulate how to open the conversation. And all of a sudden, Tom looks at this guy and goes, hey man, has anybody ever told you about Jesus? And then what came out of his life, mouth, was one of the best presentations of the gospel I ever heard. The guy broke down and started weeping in the back of the car and Tom led him to the Lord. When we got to the airport and I dropped him off, Tom looked over at me and goes, well, he goes, I need to say something to you. I said, what's that brother? He goes, you're the only person that has ever loved me. And guys, he savored me again. And the reason was is that I did love Tom, but he was on my top five list, my top 10 or 25. I mean, I did love him, but he was pretty far down the list. But to him, I was the most important person in his life. And what I'm sharing with you, we all know those people out there that are angry. And a lot of his guys, they've just been so beaten up by life. They've been abandoned, abused, hurt, and God wants us to go out and find those people. We are to leave the 99 and go and find the one. And guys, it may be a trial for a Syrian life, but the reward that you will receive in heaven will far outweigh anything that you could ever imagine. You need as a body of believers is to start sharing your faith. You shouldn't share it once in a lifetime or once in a month. Guys, you should look for every week. Stop at a gas station. Hey, bro, I just want to invite you to church. Why don't you come along? I want to really encourage you to do this. In Romans, or not, in Acts chapter 10, let me turn to this. In chapter 10, in verse 1, it says, in Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion, what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and Godfaring. He gave generous to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision, he distinctly saw an angel of God who came to him and said, Cornelius, Cornelius stared at him in fear. What is it, Lord? He asked, the angel answered, your prayers and your gifts to the poor have come up as a more moral offering before God. Guys, what the scripture tells us is God remembers what we do. Your sacrifices to the Lord Jesus Christ will echo through all of eternity. The things that are done for this world, they will be forgotten. You know, guys, when we went into the Ukraine and we've got boots on the ground there, I've got one guy, he's with the military right now. He says, well, they're letting me go to every military unit and every time I give the altar call, every soldier is receiving Christ. And he's just bearing great fruit. But there was an old grandmother guys and I'm gonna show you a picture of her in a moment. She had lost a daughter and I don't remember how she lost her first daughter. Her second daughter was in her apartment when a Russian rocket or artillery shell hit her apartment and vaporized her. They can find no peace over her. She was at the point of suicide. She was gonna kill herself. Our people showed up at the door. They shared God's love with her. She has surrendered her life to Christ and she now hopes that she will see her children on the other side. Let's bring up the first photos, guys. This is where we were in Afghanistan. Those are the mountains of Afghanistan. You're looking at right there. That's Brent with second force. Next one. And again, you can kind of see the train that we were climbing in. This is not easy area to climb. Next one. This is the food that's going into the Ukraine. Guys, we've already sent over a quarter of a million, maybe close to $300,000 to purchase food and medical supplies. Next one. More food being delivered. Next one. This is the woman that lost her daughter. And guys, you can pray for her because we're gonna continue to minister to her. She's lost everything. And guys, you lose your home. At that age, you can't rebuild without help. And what we wanna do is come along and help these people to rebuild their lives. Next one. And here's just the outgiving of the bread. As you can see, wherever we go, there's just lines and lines of people showing up to do this. You know, guys, when I was in the top of the mountains, there was a real realization that I could lose my life. I was very aware of it. You know, when I climbed up to about 7,500 feet, I could tell the lack of oxygen. When I got to 11,500, I was actually amazed that within one day I acclimated to the oxygen. I thought that it would be a real problem, but I acclimated very quickly. One of the things I noticed was the air was so pure because there was no pollution in the area. But I remember I was on the top of that mountain and I was praying. I said, Lord, if this is my time, I'm okay with it. And the reason is, guys, is when Jesus Christ is the author and the finisher of your faith, you can trust whatever comes. See, what we need to understand is that we often want to live a long life. Well, guys, if God has a purpose in that, that's okay, but not all of us are supposed to live long lives. A race has a beginning and a race has an end. And when your race is over, it's time to go home and be with the Lord. The Bible tells us to remember those who are suffering as though we were there suffering with them ourselves. And guys, one of the things I want to share with you is that we need to have a heart to go to people. I really believe that we are racing towards eternity. People ask me all the time, do you think we're in the Great Tribulation? No, we're not there yet, but we are definitely racing towards it. You can see the signs of the time. Persecution will come to America. We will experience it. But guys, God chose you to live in this generation and why? Because He chose you, so that you might be a light to a lost world. The Bible says, let your light so shine before men, but they see your heavenly Father. Guys, when we pray, we should believe that God will answer. I remember when we were making the decision to go into Afghanistan, I called Jared, Jared was with the elite SEAL team three. He was a sniper, he was the lead sniper for that one. I think he'd killed 250 Taliban soldiers himself. And I asked Jared, I said, Jared, can you plan an operation to rescue these people? And he agreed to help me. He's a great brother. He was actually running for sheriff in another state. I can't help but love this guy. There's a gang out there, they call himself H2Kill, hard to kill. H2K, hard to kill. And the press was just interviewing him. They said, how are you gonna deal with H2K when you get out there? He goes, well, we'll put the theory of the name to the test, you know? I can't help but love these guys. You know, they're tough boys. But I asked Jared to put together an operation and it came up, it was $400,000 for the first operation. Now guys, we had the money, but I don't wanna waste God's money. And I remember one night I was praying, it was late at night and I'm praying, I'm going, Lord, do you want us to do this? And the Lord told me, I'm gonna give you one piece of the puzzle of time and you'll have to trust me for the next piece. Well, the next day I get a call. We had told nobody about what we're doing and the brother calls up and says, the Lord has told me to send you $400,000. Sometimes God just gives us one piece of the puzzle of time for our life and then we trust him and with that piece we go on to the next piece of the puzzle. Guys, whenever one of my staff members is killed, we have a ceremony and we take two candles and we light one on one end and we light the other one on both ends. And we have a saying in South Sudan that a candle that burns twice as bright only burns half as long. And I wanna encourage you that, I know I've shared that with you but I want you to let that sink into your life. Sometimes God has called us to burn brighter than others to be fanatical about our faith, to have a passion for the Lord, a love for the Lord Jesus Christ, to care when others do not care. God wants you to be different. You're not supposed to fit in this world. The Bible says you're in the world but you're not of the world. And guys, as I said, I feel like the Lord has shown me that Satan is getting ready to harvest a blizzard of souls unless the body of Christ intervenes. This morning, as you leave, we wanna give you an opportunity. And guys, normally when I come to a church, I don't, we were just here recently and Pastor David was kind enough to invite us back. I don't really believe in coming to churches and raising support every time you come. You come and you raise maybe four years later, you come again. That's in my mind what's right. And then if a pastor asks you in between, you go and teach because you love him and you love the body of Christ. But these are unusual circumstances with what's going on in the world right now. And so I wanna be careful about this. First thing I wanna say is that if today you decide you'd like to be apart, I'm gonna ask that you will not take it out of your church tithing. You may be a person to say, well, since everything I can to tithe, and I tithe that I'm able to make my bills, but I just don't have anything left over. Well, that's good. You don't need to give anything. You just pray for us. We need those prayers. But there are other people that God's gifted guys are able to give. We have 400 pastors in nine radical Islamic countries. We're trying to get it to 700. But guys, right now what we're gonna raise support for is the Ukrainian pastors. They have support, but their churches have been destroyed. Their lives have been destroyed. People have lost homes. They need help. So if you sponsor one of these ghost operations today, it will be a Ukrainian pastor. We'll send the information to you within the next six to eight weeks. It is $75 a month. We have our potatoes for grandmothers, which was made for the Russian church. But now there are thousands of believers and even non-believers in Russia that have lost everything. You know guys, during COVID, what you may not know is in places like the Ukraine and Russia and Afghanistan and Pakistan, people were committing suicide because they'd worked 20 years to own a home and have a life. And when COVID hit, they lost it all. They lost their homes. They said, I don't have time to build anymore. They just lost hope and killed themselves. Well, we wanna come in and help them to live. We will send you also a Ukrainian male or female. They may be elderly. They may be a mother. A lot of these women have lost their husbands in the war. But we're gonna start supporting them for years to help them to rebuild their lives. If you would like to sponsor one of those, it's also 75. The last thing which doesn't really go with the sermon today is we have a school in Uganda. We have built two castles in Africa. One is in South Sudan, one is in Uganda. The one in Uganda is a school for children. We have 400 kids there. We're gonna be moving up to 700 kids very quickly. If you would like to sponsor one of those children, it's also $75 a month. And guys, 100% of what you give goes to these programs. We don't keep it. We don't need your money to pay for the extras. We're not a small organization. We're an extremely large organization. In the year of COVID, I think everybody wondered, could we lose half of our support? Well guys, we started getting calls in from all over the world where people were hungry. And I said, guys, we're gonna start giving. And if we run out of money, we run out of money. We started feeding people in 17 countries. In Mexico alone, I think we fed 4,000 people for three months. We had people come into Christ in Pakistan because they said the Christians were feeding them and the Muslims were not. And in a year that should have been a backbreaker for our ministry, it was the biggest year in the history of our ministry. We were brought in $7.8 million. Well, in June of this last year, I told my staff, I said, I don't understand this. It does not make sense, but I felt like the words told me is gonna double our support. Now guys, when you work 23 years to get one point, it doesn't make sense to double in a year's time. On December of last year, we brought in $12.5 million. We're all close to 14 to 15 million this year, which means that we will have doubled. The thing about missions that's great is that we can put about 92% of what we bring in to the field. We don't need a lot to run our administration. If you would like to sponsor one or more. And guys, the only reason I say this, people come up every Sunday and say, what if I want to do all three? We're not asking you to do that. But if you're one of the few people out there that you pay your bills, you pay your tithing and God has blessed you financially and you want to store treasures in heaven, sponsor all three, then it's 225. It's an automatic debit. It comes out on the third of each month. You have to fill out the form and give it back to us. If you don't fill out the form, I won't know if they're sponsored. They're all numbered. We just have too much of this going on. This name address phone number, sign it at the bottom. Guys, you can use a Woody Check or debit or credit card. Woody checks work best because we don't pay fees. And if you don't have all your information, fill out the best and we'll call you later. Let me close with this and I'm gonna ask the pastor to come up in the worship team to come out to prepare to close. My hope for you is a body of believers. There is a great possibility that in your lifetime, many of you will see the coming of the Messiah. And there's gonna come a day guys that all of you will stand before him and you'll look to him in his eyes for the first time. And my hope for you is that the same hope I have for myself, that you will look into the eyes of the Lord and he'll look at you and say, well done my daughter, well done my son. The greatest privilege in my life guys has been to serve Christ. Your pastor's been very gracious to us. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. You have been well taught. I know because I listened to Pastor David on the radio. I know what good teaching is. The Bible says to whom much has been given, much shall be required. And what I'm talking about is the spiritual part of your life. The fact that he's invested the word in you so much, you have a responsibility to go out and reach others. Guys, we have over 2 or 3,000 more people to get out of Afghanistan. And I hate the thought that we're the last organization there, but we do not intend to leave until we've extracted every single one that God has put in our trust. God bless you.