 So, as you guys know, a group of us took a trip to Dajabon just last week, and we just arrived back this past Sunday, and we decided to use this time, this evening, to give you a report on how things went in Dajabon. So to get started, whoa, how about you start us off with a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, Lord, we give you praise for your grace and mercy that you have provided a way for us to spread your gospel throughout the entire world, Lord, by opening one door at a time. And for our small congregations here, Lord, you have greatly blessed us in terms of the doors of open forest, Lord. And in our trip to Dajabon, Lord, that you have opened the door that we may reach not just one people, but two countries, side by side, Lord, and this is amazing work from you. And Lord, we thank you for this church that has been able to put their support behind this work. We ask that we will continue to do so, Lord, and that we will do it in your, just for your glory, Lord. Amen. Amen. So I just realized I introduced him as WoWo, and his name is Ron. So, yeah, WoWo knows many things, but that's his affectionate nickname that some of us give him. But I'm going to try really hard to call him Ron for the rest of the evening. But while I keep trying to do that, turn with me to Acts chapter 14. Acts chapter 14. And I'm going to start reading at verse 24. And this is going to give an idea of what we're attempting to do right now. So in Acts chapter 14, starting at verse 24, just this. Then they passed through Presidia and came to Pamphylia. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atalia. And from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles, and they remained no little time with the disciples. So you might ask, why read that text this evening? And the reason is, well, one we see here in this text, we see the end of Paul's first missionary journey. And he's returning back to Antioch. And Antioch is the place where it says here in verse 26 where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled, the work that they had just fulfilled. Paul and Barnabas, they left Antioch, they were commended to the grace of God from Antioch to go and preach the gospel in many different places. But now they've returned to Antioch. And when they arrived, they gathered the whole church together in Antioch. And what they did was they declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to follow the same pattern. We have been, even on this little trip, and we have a larger goal, we have been commended by you together. We have been commended to the grace of God for this work, for this work that we are seeking to do in Dahabon. And we are returning back to the place where we have been commended for that work. And what we're trying to do is we're arriving and we're gathering you together, and we're here to give a report of all God had done while we were out on mission. And one thing I really want to focus on is the fact that this is all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Notice that there's no glory here for Paul or Barnabas. This is all the work of God. So one thing I want to be very clear about is we're going to talk about a number of things. But this work that we're talking about, the good conversations that we've had in Dahabon, the exciting things that you may have read on Slack or videos you've seen on Facebook, this is all the grace of God to us. And we're very thankful to be a part of that work. And I want to be careful for myself to glorify God in that and not to see any glory for myself in that. I want to be careful for you and I want you to be careful to only see the glory of God in that. And we should all walk away for every success and say, man, praise the Lord, glory to God for all that he has done. And even for every disappointment, we can still walk away and say, you know, although that is not what I wanted to happen, that wasn't my desire. We can still walk away and say glory to God and thank the Lord for the opportunity that we've had to work in his vineyard. So that's the purpose of our time together today is to do that, to gather you together, to give this report for what God has done. So we went on a trip. Who came? Obviously the three of us, Ron, Kazmir, Edgar, myself. We also had my wife, Anita. We had my daughter, Repentance, and Raquel, Edgar's wife. But we had two special visitors as well. We had Gabby Russi and Alex Delsid from Guatemala. And they were a very welcome presence and a huge blessing to be on this trip. I couldn't stop thinking how kind God is not just to send people from Cornerstone, but to send people from a church that was planted from Cornerstone for this work. Amen. Also, it wasn't just our two churches involved. You had Pastor Guzman's Church, Iglesia Biblica Trinidad, right? And Santo Domingo. And two brothers, Magdiel and Franklin. And these are two of the brothers who come every weekend, who they hold Bible studies on the Lord's Day. In fact, they're in Dajabon right now. Actually, they've probably just started driving back to Santo Domingo. So they're on the road, likely, right now, going back home. But they go to Dajabon every weekend. They evangelize on Saturdays, and they hold Bible studies on the Lord's Day, inviting people to the house. So we had a pretty large group at the house. The house was prepared thanks to the brothers who came and helped on the last work trip. Joby and Papa Lewis and Nick Norman. Edgar was there with us, too, on that trip. And those brothers worked very hard painting the house, cleaning the house, fixing all kinds of things in the house, putting bunk beds together. So we came to a place that was very welcoming, a place that was clean, somewhere that we can actually stay for the week. So I'm going to give you a little rundown of how the trip went from day to day. On Saturday, the 13th, it was a travel day. We basically flew in. We came to the house. We installed a sign that night that we had brought with us. So our little church house has a sign now telling people what time to get there on Sunday. On Sunday, we had a Lord's Day service. We had a number of visitors who showed up that Lord's Day. And we also had a nice fellowship together at one of the local restaurants there. It was really good to spend some time, especially with Wasgard, who is one of the brothers who lives in Dahabuan, who's been a huge help in getting things set up down there for us to plant the church. He organizes a lot of resources behind the scenes while we're gone. It was good to spend time with him and his family. It was also really good to spend time with our Frankeli and with Magdiel, just because we don't get a lot of chance to talk to them. So that was just really, really blessed time to spend with them. And the meat of our trip happened from Monday to Thursday. In those days, we spent a large chunk of the day evangelizing. And then in the evenings, we would have a Bible study. So we would wake up early, have breakfast, have a little meeting. We pray together and we go out evangelizing in the morning. We spent our mornings doing what I called at the time long form evangelism, very similar to what we do door to door here. You spend time with people, you walk through the law with them, you take as much time as you need to get through a gospel conversation with them. It could be a half hour, it can be an hour, it could be longer, however long it takes. Then, and we did most of those conversations around the church house, as close to the church as we could. In the afternoons, we would go with a bunch of tracks in our hand and we invite as many people as we can to the Bible studies. And that was just very quick, very short conversations, explaining to the people where the church is, what time to be there, what's going to happen there, what we're going to talk about. And just very quick, so we got through a large chunk of the town doing that Monday through Thursday. And in the evenings, we had our Bible study and what we did was we just preached the gospel in our Bible study. We divided those four days up into different parts of a gospel presentation. So on Mondays, we talked about the doctrine of God, who God is. We spent a lot of time explaining Monday how a lot of what we learned when we went through that book, None Greater in small groups. How God is nothing like us. God is not like a superman. He's in a totally different category. And when we talk about God, we need to think about who it is that we're talking about. Who are we dealing with when we're dealing with God? So we talked about that on Monday. On Tuesday, we talked about man and sin. We talked about the fall. We talked about a man's depravity, his sinful nature. We talked about the penalty for sin, what men deserve, men deserve hell because of their sin. On Wednesday, which is my favorite night, we talked about the person and work of Jesus Christ. We talked about who Jesus is and his person. We talked about his two natures. We talked about who he is. We talked about his character. And we also talked about his work, his work of redemption, his work on the cross and his resurrection. And on Thursday, we talked about conversion. We talked about their response. We talked about how it's not enough to know the facts about God, the facts about sin, the facts about even Jesus Christ and what he has done, that this requires a response from them and that they must respond in repentance and faith. And each one of the nights, we focused on those topics, but we hit every topic every night. So it's not like on the night that we talked about God, we didn't talk about sin and Jesus Christ and the response. But we would highlight one topic and run through the rest. So the people were very receptive, surprisingly, I wouldn't say surprisingly receptive, those of us who visited there before, we had an idea that people would listen when we spoke to them about what the Bible says. But it's not something still that we're used to here to have so many good conversations in such a short period of time to speak to people and have them actually show up that night for a Bible study. So people were very receptive. They were very polite for the most part. It was just great. It was a great time. We also had a pretty large turnout by God's grace. Quite a number of people came. I think two nights we had 21 people come into the house. We had just many good conversations. And many people, and when they came, it wasn't like we had a dinner and a Bible study when we did it. And you would think, oh man, people would come just for the food. And I was talking with Pastor Mark. I'm fine if they just come for the food. I still preach the gospel to them. But it was clear that they weren't there just for the food. In fact, you had plenty of people who weren't eating. They were there to be taught the word of God that night. So it's very thankful. There were some people, I think, some people that were so attentive, they just stood out like Esther, who is the wife of our landlord there. She's a Catholic. She said stuff like, man, I never heard this before. Sometimes when you teach or sometimes when you evangelize, I'm sure many of you have done this before, where you would anticipate a question that the person you're talking to might have. And so you start to answer that. You might even say something like this. Well, someone might think such and such. So I think I was talking about the relationship between works and faith. And I said something along the lines of, I'm sure someone might be thinking, well, Jerome, didn't you just tell me I can't work my way to heaven and now you're telling me that I must do good works? And when I said that, she's sitting there like, yeah. She was just tracking the whole entire time. I was very encouraging to see that. There's another guy named Jose. He brought us three grandsons. And I'm teaching and I see a light shining at me. And that's from his phone. He was holding up his phone the whole time trying to record the teaching because he hadn't heard teaching like this before. And it wasn't the fact that it was me teaching and it wasn't my style. The issue is, as you talk to these people, these people had not heard biblical teaching before in their lives. They've been to many churches and this was something new that someone would explain what the Bible says to them very clearly. Those who were evangelizing individually had heard many of the same responses. I've never heard these things before. My wife was telling me about one of the ladies she was talking to and as she was going to the scripture she just kept saying, wow, wow. Just not knowing that the Bible had said these things. So very good response. And we also had a lot of Haitians that we talked to as well which I've been to Dahabon before saw many Haitians there. I was expecting to encounter Haitians. I just wasn't expecting to encounter as many as we did. So I speak very poor Spanish and very poor Creole but I wasn't planning to speak as much of my poor Creole as I did when we were down there. Similar to what Ron said earlier. Ron had no problem getting into conversations. So very good response, very good reception. Brothers, did you guys have anything? I know I'm doing all the talking here. Any stories, anything you'd like to add about the reception and the response from the people there? Okay, that's my cue. I would maybe give a little bit more context. So there was one conversation I had with brother Alex where, so imagine something like a lakey hole and that is big and so there's a lot of people sitting around and they just hang out. Some people that are retired or maybe they just don't work, I don't know the case. So we were kind of in the downtown, I think it was like maybe City Hall in front of the Catholic Church. They usually have a big plaza. That's the way that a lot of these cities are designed. You have the Catholic Church, you have a big plaza and people just kind of hang out. So we talked to this one guy, I don't remember his name and I don't want to butcher, so we'll just, you know, call him John. Person A. Yeah, Person A. Mr. John Doe from D'Habon. So what was fascinating about this conversation was, and brother Alex was leading the conversation, this older gentleman, he had to be maybe early 50s. And so the main issue of this one conversation was he had not ever been challenged or encouraged or informed of the Word of God of the necessity that he has of what biblical true biblical repentance is. He said, well, so I'm not a good person, but, and he kept on saying this like he really believes it, but I'm just going to try harder and we'll go and explain, well, you can't try harder. Here's the reason why I give him an illustration. And I'm like, so does that make sense? Oh, yeah, that makes total sense. I'm like, amen, it's making sense. So, so, so if you hear this truth and the Word of God says you have to respond, what is the response? I'm just going to try harder. And so, you know, there is a sense where you've, you know, of course we're in another country. I'm like, maybe we're getting punked, you know, maybe there's cameras somewhere because, but the part that really is encouraging, and then we might laugh about it because it seems humorous, is the genuine ignorance, the genuine lacking of clear, logical, objective, rational truth from the Word of God. And I was thinking about a particular text that came to mind that I'm sure we've all, maybe at some point or another, heard which was in Acts chapter eight, and it was in the narrative of the Ethiopian and when he's writing and he's encouraged. And it's interesting because when Philip shows up and this man is reading from the scroll of Isaiah, the fascinating thing is that the text says that after he reads the text, the eunuch answered verse 34 of chapter eight, please tell me of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or someone else? So he's been reading the whole time. He's been getting understanding of some sort from the Bible or whatever the case is, but he cannot put the pieces together. And so praise God that there was many cases like that. Earlier I talked a little bit about MoMA, a very sweet lady, and we couldn't get into too much of the story, but even with her, her issue was you could see the tension in her face. That makes sense, but my family's Catholic. And I can't just leave, you know, and this pressure and you could see it. And then it's funny because her son comes in and he's like, he's here in the conversation the whole time, by the way. And then at one point he says, well, you know, she's got to get back to work. And I said, well, I'm sorry, I showed up and she was lounging, so I'm thinking she's not working. And so she wasn't working. Well, she's got to cook. And I said, well, you know, that's okay, no problem. But it was interesting because even then she says, she tells her son, calm down, calm down, we're talking. And so even then you see the grace of God and this woman, the spirit of God is giving her truth. The spirit of God is applying this truth. And I think that really those scenarios and we've seen this in our church is to continue to repeatedly, lovingly go over it and pray and talk to them and teach them. And so there's so many stories that I could say those two I guess really kind of pop up. Okay, maybe one more because we have time. So there was these two young ladies at the park and brother Alex was engaging them and they were very skeptical. I guess these people and I used to be and talk like that or engage with the gospel. And so it was probably like a 45 minute conversation. One of them was very lax, lax a days ago like she was not caring. The other one, like the rest of the day one would tell like something series had struck her because even her demeanor had changed by the end of the conversation. And they had to leave, but you could tell that the spirit of God was engaging her mind, engaging her mind on this idea of if I die because I don't know when I'm gonna die and the truth of the Bible says that I'm going to die what is gonna happen to my soul? Where am I gonna go? Who's gonna pay for my sins and I'm going to do it? And if I pay it then I go to hell. If Christ is going to be my substitute then obviously there's a blessing because I can have reconciliation with God. So if there was something I could encourage just as we think about these stories there's always some encouragement is brethren do not shy away from the simplicity of the gospel. I know that in America we believe that everybody knows it, everybody doesn't know it. Pastors don't even know that. And you could see all the false churches that are up. So we should rejoice in the beauty of the gospel. We should rejoice that that beauty is based on the simplicity of the gospel. Because when we're over there we're not having debates on eschatology. We're not having debates on dispensationalism. We're really trying to slowly, carefully, lovingly point them to Christ. Point them to the beauty of the simplicity of how is it that a good God has died for evil men and how it is that that work of Christ has been provided so that because by the grace of God we can respond to repentance and faith we could be in Christ forever and have all those blessings. Thank you brother, I appreciate it. Do you have anything brother? Well it reminds me of the one conversation we have with a young kid called Jason which is kind of like a weird name for a Haitian. Never seen a Haitian named Jason. But the conversation started with him basically he's selling services like shoe shining. There's a lot of kids like that going about town. So we started talking to him and some of the first questions we ask him is about the law and stuff like that. He's never heard what is a law. He's never heard of that. But one of the way he answers he says he's never sinned in any of those ways. And at first I was kind of like making fun a little bit. I said looks like we found the only perfect guy in the universe. But throughout the conversation you can tell that he started changing his tune according to that. And one of the things we emphasize with him is that how lucky he is to be hearing this gospel. Because we told him that we come very far away and here he is on the side of the street and here we are talking to him in the middle of the street both me and Jerome. We spoke into this kid longer than anybody else. So I think we spent about an hour and a half in the hot sun with no shade. But it was a great opportunity to talk to this kid. But also I saw this kid as a representative of so many other souls that we saw that we weren't able to talk to. So it was encouraging that first of all he stood there the entire time. And some of the things he heard was pretty much for the first time. And I think of the best feeling when you evangelize is knowing that the person might be hearing certain things for the first time and it's coming from you. Even though you don't know what's going to happen to that with the word that they heard but the fact that you were the first messenger to that person in terms of the gospel is very encouraging. Yeah, Jason was one of those guys who said I never heard this before, remember what I'm saying? And you just think about it. You know, there's a, you know, he's a Haitian. Jason was a Haitian on the Dominican side. It's already not normal for someone to go walk up to a Haitian to have a conversation on that side of the border. And so he has, he has Ron, a Haitian who comes from America on the other side of the border to preach the gospel to him, you know, and to invite him to a church that would be unheard of for a Haitian to be welcome to come to and to have his long conversation with him. So man, what a blessing it is to guys like Jason and what a blessing it would be in the future for more people like Jason. So, you know, I want to make a few calls to action, you know, and then we'll open up the floor for questions. One, I just want to encourage you to pray. And I divide my prayers up into, I used to have three categories, but now I have four. And they all start with a P so you can remember them. First is purpose. Purpose people, pastor and process for the purpose. Pray that the, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ would spread and his name would be glorified on both sides of that border. And Da Habon and in Haiti, people pray, pray that the Lord would build up a core group, a core group of believers in Da Habon for us to plant the church. I think we're already seeing the seeds of that. I think you saw the seeds of that in the pictures and the videos that you saw, we're seeing the seeds of that. So pray that the Lord would continue that work. Pastor, pray for me and my family. Pray for our acquisition of the Spanish language. Pray that the Lord would prepare me in maturity for ministry down there. The same with my wife in being able to support the ministry and to deal with all of the family things in a different country. Pray for my kids to be able to become acclimated to this new country, this new culture. Also along with praying for the pastor, pray for a family to come and move down with us. Especially if that family would be a Spanish speaking family. That would be a huge help to us. And then process. Pray that the Lord would give us wisdom, that he would guide our steps and all the logistics of moving down there. There are a lot of things. It's like I have a list at home and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger of all the things that need to be done to move to another country. It's already hard. I think about it. If you had to move from one apartment to another, that's not easy. No one likes to move. Now try to move from one city to another in Florida. And then increase that from one state to another state. And now increase that from one country to another country. It's very difficult. And there's so many decisions to make. Pray that the Lord would give us wisdom in that, that he would guide our steps in that. And he's already answering many of those prayers as well. So purpose, people, pastor and process. The next call to action is consider moving. Consider moving down there with us. So our lives are not our own. And we are not on this earth for our own pleasures. We are not on this earth to live for the weekends. And I want to encourage you to consider moving down there. You might be in a situation where that's something that you could seriously consider. So if that is something that you can consider doing, I would say do that. Think about that and do it prayerfully and do it with much wise counsel. But consider moving down there with us. We would love whatever gifts that the Lord has given you. We would love to see you be able to serve in that way. We would also love your companionship. Moving to and becoming a part of a different culture is difficult. I'm not originally from Orlando. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana. And it was hard moving from there to here. I thought everyone in Orlando was weird, you know? It took a good six months to a year to get used to it. Well, it's going to be even harder going down there. So consider moving. And also to consider giving. This is a work that requires funds to do. I'm going to need to be full-time as a pastor down there. I'm going to need to have money to live and to support my family. The church is going to need money to operate. And that is going to be done by your faithful giving, by your faithful gifts, faithful and cheerful gifts. So consider giving and consider however much it is that the Lord would have you to give. Be prayerful about that. And you can even make that decision through much wise counsel. But consider giving as the Lord has put on your heart and do that again prayerfully and with counsel. So I want to also, too, before I open up the floor for questions, I also want to mention that our next trip is going to be from June 30th to July 6th. That's June 30th to July 6th. And I'm going to call a meeting for any of you who are interested in coming on that trip on April 18th, Sunday, April 18th. We'll have it immediately after morning service and we'll meet in one of the classrooms on the side. So Sunday, April 18th. I'm going to ask Miss Karen to put that in the announcements that you guys will read in your small groups on Tuesday and Wednesday. But the next trip is from June 30th to July 6th. And if you're interested in that trip, come to the meeting on April 18th. And we'll talk about the plans for that trip, the purpose of that trip, and then we'll do our best to get a group of people to actually go and evangelize and work for the Lord in the Havon. But now it's question time. So are there any questions? I'm sure there are some. Andy. So I know that you mentioned recently that there was an update to how we could give in comparison to having some of those commitment cards that we previously filled out. And so for those of us that are here or those of us that are watching online, what's the best way to give? What's the most convenient for you in the ministry? Yeah. Thanks for asking that question because I was supposed to mention that. So you know how we have the table out front and we have these commitment cards that we had on the table and we fill out the commitment cards. You put it in the little box. Well, I've taken away the commitment cards because they just confused everything. So in order to give, go to missions.havon.org. Missions.havon.org. And from there, you can set up your giving, set up your automated giving. It can come from your bank account or credit card and you can set yourself up for automated giving. And that is the best way to give. So missions.havon.org is the way to do that. We'll have a new type of card likely in the future where it'll just have the website on there. And so instead of you filling something out, it'll just be a little call to action and says, hey, go to this website and I'll sign up for giving. So thank you, Andy. Mr. Sixto. This is a follow up on what Andy asked. So is it, because I know I went to global service and set up there. Is that the same thing? That's the same thing. Yeah, that website that I just gave you is just an easier link to go to. It'll redirect straight to the global services website, global service network. Sergio. Let's ask the believers that are there in the Havon. How did they come to faith? Since if there's no church, was that a product of evangelism? How did they come to it? Yeah, very good question. So right now the only believer that we know with a credible profession of faith is a wascard. And a wascard is Pastor Guzman's brother-in-law. And which means that he's Pastor Guzman's wife's brother. Right? So, man, I wish you guys could meet Pastor Guzman's wife. She is the sweetest thing. And she's very fervent in evangelism. She loves her town. And she loves her family. And she, I think you were there one of the times we were out evangelizing with. I think Pastor Mark, you were there with us before too. You should see her going, when we go house to house, she's going to the gates of houses screaming into the neighbor's houses to speak to them. Well, she had, I talked to Wascar on this trip and she had been evangelizing to him for years. And he was a very heavy drinker. He mentioned that he lived in just a lot of sin. Especially sin very common to men. And he had, after having been evangelized to by a sister, he had heard some preachers on the television. And he detailed to me, you know, when he believes that he turned from his sin to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a lot of, you know, mix up in there because, you know, he didn't have biblical teaching available to him. So he had hopped around from church to church with no success. And during that time, he got a lot of instruction from Pastor Guzman, from his sister Clara on what he really needs, you know. And he got to the point where he stopped after having turned from his sin and putting his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. He stopped going to the Pentecostal church with a woman pastor that he and his family were going to. And he just didn't have anywhere to go, you know. And he's been very excited that we've been going down there. And I can't tell you like, maybe excitement's not the word. I mean, he has been so excited, working tirelessly to make sure that we get down there safely each time. He's been doing so much work in between times of us going down there. He's showing, not just in his words, but he's showing in his actions that he cares for good gospel preaching, that he desires to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. We see that in the time that he spends in fellowship with us. We see that in the way that he pushes the guys from Santo Domingo like to evangelize on Saturday, like even yesterday, just texting back and forth. You know, he's just pushing them. He wants them to get up earlier and to go out, stay later, you know. So I think he's genuinely converted and he's been a big encouragement. And it got to the point where he didn't want us to go on the last trip, he didn't want us to come home. He was about to cry at the beach. You know, I was about to cry. We're all about to cry, you know. So yeah, he's a good brother. Yeah, as far as learning the language, if you don't know Spanish, do you all have any recommendations as far as, you know, good programs or resources, you know, to prepare, to, you know, to go to Daja Bone, to, you know, so that way, yeah, for preparation? Yeah. So I'm taking classes right now. I take classes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, in the morning with the same language school that my daughter and I attended back in September when I was out for a month. And that's been going pretty well. And we have some, we have some plans, you know, there's interaction here with people who speak Spanish that I get to have regularly. We also have some plans here soon where, I'm not sure exactly how it's going to work out, but we're going to, we're thinking about doing some Spanish language work with some sermons that Pastor Mark has preached in the past and saying about working with the group that's been meeting with Edgar on Thursday nights. So we're getting as much Spanish practice as we can before going down there. And, you know, we'll see what the Lord will bring up, we'll bring up that. What role do Pastor Guzman play in planting that church down there is that church down there is going to help this church financially. I know you say there's pastors that's there now from their church, that's one. And two, if you have no one from here to go down there with you, is there still the same moving date to be down there even though no one from the church is going down? Which if that helps? Very good, two questions. So his role is mainly a support role and that he's already fulfilling right now and sending brothers down there every weekend. And Pastor Guzman's been very clear that he's willing to help in whatever way that we need, even to the point of potentially sending a family to be with us, you know, to help with translation and things if we need that. That's not like none of that set in stone. Of course, that's about, you know, how that depends on if he's able and if there are families in his church that are able to do that. As far as a family moving down with us and the date changing, I think it just depends. There's a bunch of, you know, it would be great to have a family, a Spanish speaking family move down with us similar to how the mudges have the russies. That would be Plan A. But there's a bunch of in-between options even if we can't make that work. So could that change the date? Possibly. You know, if we get to our stated goal of January and we realize, yeah, this isn't going to work, then it could set things back further. Or there could be intermediate options where, you know, maybe we don't have someone living down there, but maybe we have people on a rotation to visit, things like that. Maybe there's, like, again, maybe there's someone from Pastor Guzman's church who'll be able to come so many times a week to help. You know, so it sort of depends on how things look at that time. Ben, you can't walk, can't walk out. You gotta run, man. Are you guys able to follow up any of these folks that you had met before? I didn't know how communication would occur if that would happen. There's just phones. I don't know what people have down there. Yeah, so we've got a bunch of names and phone numbers. From previous trips, we created a WhatsApp group and I added a bunch of Spanish speakers from the church onto that group. And we've had a fair bit of communication and it slowed down, not just from, even from myself, slowed down. But I'm actually in the process of trying to create a better plan for engaging with the people more while we're away. But I think more of that is going to be delegated. So it's gonna, I think a lot more of it's gonna look like giving names and numbers. We'll have a WhatsApp group and things like that. But I think it'll be more of working through WASCAR, working through some of the guys that come from Pastor Hughes Monasterch, they travel there from Santa Domingo and actually having them look for people face to face down there while we're away. I think that'll be a little more effective option. So probably a mix of things to keep in contact with as many. I know also too, like the ladies, Gabby Roussi's helping Anita with this right now. They're really on top of the WhatsApp game. So I think they're already making some separate lady plans too, which is really good. Pastor? Yes. You mentioned a couple of different landmarks, Santa Domingo, the beach. Even the border too with Haiti. Can you share, kind of like distance wise, so we can get a picture of where is the habon and the church in relation to other key landmarks like the coast and the major cities? Very good. Thank you, brother. So obviously you have one big island of Hispaniola. And on that island, on the east side of the island is the Dominican Republic. And on the west side is Haiti. The Dominican Republic is roughly two thirds of the size of the island with Haiti being about one third of the size. Santa Domingo is south central. It's on the coast to the south of the island. Dahabon is right on the border with Haiti. In fact, Dahabon is one of the, I think it's four border crossings that they have in the country. And it's the only border crossing in the north. So from Santa Domingo to Dahabon, it's a five hour drive. And there's also another city, Santiago, which is north of Santa Domingo and east of Dahabon. And it's three hours, two and a half hours if Edgar is driving. And he's saying, it's two hours when I am joking, right? But it's two and a half to three hours depending on traffic. And that's, Santiago has kind of turned into the city that we like to fly into because it's a shorter drive to Dahabon from that city. The beach. There's two beaches, but the beach that we went to this last time is in a town called Monte Cristo. And it is north of Dahabon, about half hour, 45 minutes from Dahabon. It's a very beautiful beach. No tourists at this beach. There's no tourists on this side of the country at all. And Punta Cana is like all the way on the other side. And yeah, there's a beach there. And there's also a beach that is 20 minutes away from Dahabon. Real close. Alex and then Jamila. Yeah, you've been going there like every three or four months for the past year. How fruitful has the evangelism been? Like how many people would you say have been adding to the Bible studies on the weekends? I was just curious about that. Yeah, that's a good question. So, you know, most of our trips in the past have been like preparatory for this last trip. So most of the trips haven't been purely evangelistic. Like the trip we took in September, I wasn't even in Dahabon for most of the time. I was just attending a Spanish language school. The trip in February was a work trip where we were working on the house, you know. So this last trip was actually our very first trip where it is just evangelistic. It was like a big deal for us to get to this point. So this was our first try at a Bible study. I mean, we've had, let me take that back. We've, on prior trips, we've had like, we did invite people out to Bible studies and things like that. But they weren't necessarily the, the purpose of the trip wasn't purely evangelism in each of those trips. There was some work that we had to get done generally. So I think this trip is the model for that. And right now, I think we had two nights with around 21 people showing up. Of those 21, I think about 12 came almost every night. So let me say about 12 would be the safe number. Let me just add one thing. One of the things is we learned a few things, especially talking to Haitians, that as we went around town inviting Haitians, some of them were happy to come, but there were natural limitations. Like they said, they couldn't be on the Dominican side after a certain time, like after seven o'clock. So that's one of the things we learned. And those are not people we crossed over to talk to. Those were people working in the Dominican side, like regular jobs, like mechanics, any kind of vendors. Maids. Yeah, maids. So that, that was another limitation where we couldn't get more of the Haitians to actually join. But we did have a few. Jamila, I think Jamila had a question. Yes, quick question. What is the relationship between the Haitians and the Dominicans? You mentioned that Jason was working on the Dominican side, and it would be odd for you guys to speak to him. And then as far as the border, does it work the same way where Dominicans are crossing over to Haiti, or is it a prosperity thing where the Haitians are coming over to shop and find work and things, or what's the difference there? Yeah, so relationship first. So yeah, there's this misconception that Dominicans just hate Haitians. And that misconception comes from Americans looking at relationships between the Dominicans and Haitians and applying things that have happened in the past in America and assuming it's the same thing in the Dominican Republic. So, for instance, an American would say, oh man, Dominicans, they'll treat Haitians differently based on the color of their skin. And you go through these checkpoints and they'll look in your car and they'll look for a dark skinned person and they'll ask them for their papers. Well, they have a real problem with illegal immigration and how do you tell if someone's a Haitian and that's pretty easy to tell who's a Haitian when you're there is by the color of the skin. But it's not for the same reason that people have hated people here for the color of their skin. So there are issues, there are tensions between Dominicans and Haitians. Some of that has to do with illegal immigration. And there are people, just like there's people everywhere, who are partial to one another, who will hate one another for various reasons because of our sin. So you do see a strain in relationships, but it's nowhere near as bad as what you might see in media or in some documentaries that I've seen. Some of those are contrived things that people have made up because of just foolish thinking. Now, as far as what they travel across the border, you don't see a lot of Dominicans traveling into Haiti. Some do for various reasons. In fact, our landlord does, he's a musician, so he travels into Haiti to play trumpet. But there are a lot of Haitians that cross over into the Dominican Republic to do business, especially in D'Ajavon because there's a big market in D'Ajavon where all those things that people donate to Haiti, what happens is they get donated to Haiti, they make it to those border markets, and they get sold to Dominicans. That's how a lot of that money is made. So there's market days, Monday and Friday. There's a lot of Haitians in town on those days. There's also, just like Ron said, many Haitians that come across the border on other days during the week to do various jobs, whether that's mechanics, maids. Some people just sell goods. You see a lot of Haitian ladies going around selling sweet potatoes and garlic or whatever's in season during that time of year. So there is a strain, but it's a cooperative strain. And from what I've seen and from what the descriptions of things that I hear, people get along with each other pretty well, especially in D'Ajavon. There's a lot of people with French last names. They know exactly where those French last names come from. It's because they have Haitian blood. So you find a lot of people in D'Ajavon who even speak a little Creole. Have you guys started the transaction for when you move there, would you need a visa to stay, or how does that work? Because I remember from Pastor Marcos and Ashley and the Russes when they moved there that started the paperwork since you guys are US citizens. Yeah. Well, that process, there's a lawyer in Pastor Guzman's church that I'm friends with, and we've talked a bit about that process. We'll likely start that paperwork process after we move there. In the Dominican Republic, you can stay there for a very long time on a visitor's visa and then start to work on becoming a resident from there. There is a possibility of possibly getting that started earlier, and we're going to broach that subject this year. That's part of the things on that long list of logistics. My understanding is that it's a lot easier to get that done in the DR because it's pretty common for people to move from the US to the DR for various reasons. A lot of retirees move there. It's because of the tourist destination, things like that. So they have a system in place to work that out. And then Al Fadal. Yeah, so it wasn't tonight, but there was a previous talk that you had where you mentioned that when you spoke to people over there, they tended to actually come to the service on that same day. What do you think that is? Is that just a cultural thing, or what do you think that is? Some of it could be cultural. One thing that's different there from here is that people have more respect for religious things. So if you walk up to someone with a Bible, they tend to listen to you. We even went outside of a bar, and we were talking to some people sitting on the edges of that bar, and they stopped to talk to us while they're getting drunk. So some of that could be. But just from the responses that we've been getting from people and the fact that they would follow up their responses by actually coming and so consistently, it makes me think that the Lord is working on people's hearts and that he's causing some people to understand that there's something that they're missing and that what they have is a sham. There's a number of people who've mentioned, without knowing the Gospel, just mentioning that they've seen so much hypocrisy in churches and how glad they were to hear just clear teaching from the Bible. So I don't know for sure, but I think to me, the evidence seems to suggest that the Lord's at work, you know? Alfredo. I was curious, are you guys able to or did you guys cross into the Haitians? I believe you're into how about me? We didn't this time. We did in February to get some footage. We couldn't this time because there was an order from the government that Dominicans couldn't pass over into Haiti. Obviously we aren't Dominican, but it would have been kind of tough to cross. So we just kind of went to the border just to show the folks who came, particularly like Gabby, Alex, those who haven't seen the border, kind of get to show them how it looks, but yeah, we didn't cross over. And generally, unless there's a really good reason to cross over, we wouldn't cross. It's because of the, you know, there's potential dangers by the border, there's less rule of law. And so we would, we'll be really cautious about, you know, the reasons why we cross, but there are reasons to cross. And so we might cross sometimes in the future. Brother Ryan. You had mentioned that you had gotten a list of names of people you had talked to this trip. Have you been able to share that with Pastor Guzman? Is it something you would think to do? And will they be able to follow up with those people? Yeah, so the plan is to, we haven't shared that yet. Just, it's on the list. But it'll likely be shared, not necessarily directly with Pastor Guzman, but with the brothers that he's delegated the work of Dahabon too. So Frankele, Margiel, another brother named David, another one Jose. So those brothers will get those names and numbers and will likely work out some system of follow-ups in that way. Any other questions? Sometimes it's hard to tell if someone's got their hand up, all you got, you know, stroking your hair and rubbing your noses. Okay, Oliver. With the planning, I guess that's the last P of the prayer request. Yeah. Part of, I guess, what's going to let you know when you're going to be able to move, if the January date is going to be there. Part of it is the financial, right? Yep. Okay. Can you help us understand where the monthly goal, where that applies or how? Yeah. Where all that is going, in a sense? Yeah, yeah. Our monthly goal is put together, not as like a big number that we kind of came up with, you know, but as we took the things that we need to live on, we created a budget from that. We put money on that. And that's where that monthly goal number, right now, it's $6,500 a month of what we believe we're going to need to live, one, as a family down there, and two, to operate the church. So there's two things there. It's not just my salary, but also the operation of the church. And, you know, there's a, and within that budget, there's a lot of things that are cheaper than the United States, particularly things that originate in the country are much cheaper. Certain types of foods, certain types of services, certain types of goods are cheaper. But there are some things that are wildly more expensive over there. There's also a number of things in that budget number that wouldn't apply to a Dominican, but does apply to an American moving to the Dominican Republic, particularly a missionary. So when you consider things like return trips to the United States, those things are factored into the budget. For instance, we have the mudges here this weekend. Those types of things need to be factored in. For a family of nine, that could be quite a bit. You have, you know, even simple things like, you know, some of the more expensive things, gas, electricity, wildly more expensive down there than they are here. So there's just a number of things to consider. And that's kind of how we build that number up to where it is. There's also going to be an understanding, too, that the money that's being saved up from now until January is going to be put towards our moving expenses. So there's all sorts of, there's things that we can buy over there, many things that are wiser to have here and to ship. You know, so a lot of things that we buy here are made in America or even if they're not made in America, they're bought off of a pipeline that makes it really cheap to buy them in America. But a lot of imported goods over there, even things like pots and pans, can be extremely expensive. So things like that make the budget number where it is. And that's also one of the reasons why we're encouraging you guys to give now is because that money is going to be used in those moving expenses, Lord willing, when we get to our goal this January next year. Tom. I know this may be a little irregular, brother, but can I ask Mark much a question? Yeah. Thank you. Just give you a break. Yeah, thank you, brother. Hello, brother. This morning in Sunday School, you mentioned that there are some brothers that are coming over from the church, led by Ryan for an evangelism trip later this year. And you mentioned that one of the goals is going to be to travel up north to evangelize in an area where I believe one of your members lives. Is it three or four hours away or somewhere there? And in that, you said that one of the goals of that trip is to consider a church plant up there. And so my question to you is when you go up there to consider the church plant, are you going over there to consider raising up someone from Guatemala to plant that church or to bring in someone from America as an elder there? And I'm referring to Titus and Titus when the apostle Paul describes how to raise up elders from among the people. That's the basis of my question. That's a good question, brother. To be honest, we're a long ways off from any sort of church plant. It's just an idea since we have different people who are traveling from a long ways away many hours to come. So it's a sense that there should be churches out there for them to be able to attend to. So to be honest, I think the Lord could do that in different ways. I think the Lord could raise up people from Guatemala and that's my desire and prayer is that people will be raised up from our church to be able to go there. When you have natives that are going in their own country, it goes faster. It goes cheaper. The people know the language better, the culture better, et cetera. So it's a little faster, the process. That would be a great desire and that's a sign of a healthy church too that's able to send their own people. So that would be my desire and prayer that we're sending Guatemalans to plant churches in Guatemala. But if the Lord could raise up other missionaries, the need is great and the labors are few. So it might be open either one of those possibilities biblically speaking, I think. Anything else, brother? Mike. Do you guys have a, I guess, a desired time frame of when you guys might be streaming, you know, the services and putting them on platforms like Sermon Audio? Do you guys have a time frame, a desired time frame of when y'all would like to get to that point? You know, I would like to have the sermons recorded as soon as we're down there. You know, how that's exactly gonna look and what platforms those will be on. I can't say at the moment what I'll likely do is rely on folks like Edgar who's an expert in that type of category and work that through him but the plan is to definitely record things and to be able to be held accountable in that way for my sermons to be heard. That was another hand. I'd like to ask you a question about the possibility. What was that? I don't know. Kately, what was the hand? Time. You said that on your last update there's a pastor in the Dominican Republic that you talked to. Do you keep in touch with the pastor in Haiti? I think it's Pastor Tony? Yeah, I haven't talked to Pastor Tony in quite some time. Pastor Mark is in contact with Pastor Tony. So our plan is once we're down there is to resume help for Pastor Tony. Right now, the way we're looking at the best way to help Pastor Tony is to get him involved in Pastor Guzman's Pastors Academy. We intend to be involved in that Pastors Academy when we plant the church down there and we think that the best help for Tony is to plant the church in Dajavon and to have someone close by that's able to help him and disciple him and those things. Follow up? Does he visit? I'm sorry? Yeah, the last, does he visit? He hasn't visited... You talking about the Pastors Academy or us? No, Pastor Tony. Yeah, does Pastor Tony visit who? Us? No, but I didn't invite him in the last two trips. I think a trip before, we did have a meeting with him. I think that was the one we visited him. Yeah, so we haven't really kept up communication the last two trips, but mainly because he hasn't been particularly the purpose of those trips. So we've kind of put things on hold with Pastor Tony until we're going to be down there permanently. Is there another hand? I thought I saw another hand. Is that Alfredo? Or Barbie? Okay, we'll probably do Barbie and I think we'll end it here. I meant to ask you this, but it's probably too early. I know you're studying the language, Spanish and Cleo. Time frame would be what, January 2022? Yeah. My question is how confident do you think you'll be, whether if you might need a translator or would you I don't know, anything's possible, be able to start preaching Spanish, like how can we help you? Yeah, thank you, sister. So it's not too early to ask that question. It might be too early to exactly say exactly how confident. I can tell you what we're doing to work on it. So right now Edgar and I have been working through a plan that Edgar hatched to get me to a point where I can preach in Spanish from a manuscript. So we'll be working through that plan actually starting this week. So we'll see where that goes. There's a potential where we might get there and I'll be able to preach in Spanish and if that's the case, praise the Lord, you know, but I'm also if I need help then I'm definitely going to need help. So I think either way I'm going to need some kind of help. You know what I would, what I what I envision is likely I would hope to be able to preach from a manuscript but I still think that come January I'm still going to need help with things like normal conversations with people counseling things like that. Sometimes it can be very hard. Sometimes it gets easy to say what you want to say and sometimes it's very hard to hear what someone is trying to say. It can be hard in English and you know to judge body language and facial expressions and shifts in tone and when you're talking in another language you can get really really hard and especially nothing against Dominicans but man, Dominicans speak fast you know so it's yeah Cubans too but so I think I'm going to need help regardless but we're doing the best we can to make it easier. Nancy I know you're breaking the rules it's okay, go ahead well let me get you a mic real quick because we have people that are watching we want to make sure everybody's able to be encouraged with whatever you want to say we're going to let Nancy break the rules it's all good, I mess with you Nancy I just, you know how the Lord says that man plans his way the Lord directs his steps how encouraging to see like Pastor Marcos come he's like now thinking okay I'm thinking in Spanish and I got to speak in English but through the years what an encouragement to have you know endured through the years with the same church for many years and seeing the work the Lord has done and how they had plans okay we're going to go at this time it was the Lord's perfect timing that got them there with the Rousses which came up and the Rousses are now there with them and now you're working towards speaking Spanish I'm just encouraged and I want to encourage you it's a bittersweet thought and I'll cry because I love your wife I love you guys the thought of you guys going but like seeing those pictures of you guys out there and the people and knowing as you know believers when we go out and faith and we share the Gospel how Brother Ryan is like God's present you know in the midst of it we know that the Lord is doing the work and seeing those pictures so encouraging and so just wanted to encourage you like right now it's like it's a lot to learn Spanish I know I've tried to learn Spanish as an adult and it's not easy but like Pastor Marcos now you know fluent in Spanish and trying to think English to communicate to us so being encouraged and we love you and praise God for the work that he's doing and has done just even in this time the Gospel that's gone forth so praise God thank you sister, appreciate it you know what you can break the rules anytime to be that encouraging well let's finish off if you guys have any more questions you can come and talk to me I'm an open book I know these brothers are the same as well even if you think of something later on feel free to ask us we're really excited we're very thankful to the Lord for what he's been doing and we're very humbled by it too I am it's a blessing just to work for him but it's a really special special blessing to work for him and then to see some fruit for it it's fine enough to work but to get something to see some fruit for that is major and that's not my work and it's not your work that's his work and so praise the Lord for all of that and may the Lord Jesus Christ may he get all the glory and may he receive the reward for his suffering so let's pray Father in Heaven Lord I am so thankful for what you have been doing in Da Habon I thank you for my brethren brethren like the brothers up here with me who travel to do this work using their own money their own time to work in your vineyard to see people converted I thank you for the brethren here as a whole who encourage and give of their own finances and pray who do all of these things Lord for the sake of your glory for the sake of your name and Lord we thank you for you and your own power your own work all of your mighty deeds and how within within your mighty deeds you decide to use us lowly people full of faults and you decide to do things through us through our preaching you save people and we thank you for that Lord please continue this work in Da Habon please Lord may you glorify the name of your son our Lord Jesus Christ in it please build a core group of people and prepare me a family and even another family to go and mature us and help us through all of the difficulties and please guide us and give us wisdom in every way not for our own glory Lord not for the glory of Cornerstone Baptist Church not for the glory of Antorcha or of Cristo Salvador but for the glory of Jesus Christ and we ask these things Father in Jesus name Amen