Latest / Admonition Podcast / Mission Report - Louis Rushmore - 04-27-2025

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Mission Report - Louis Rushmore - 04-27-2025 · Admonition Podcast

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jungles and throughout the savannas and throughout the mountains in that country.
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And so our team here, on one occasion, the last presentation that we made, we made in Enmore, one of the satellite communities from Georgetown, the capital of the country, and
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there we had two other brethren join us in our presentations.
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On the far left we have Wayne Collins.
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He preaches for a congregation outside of Linden in Guyana.
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Of course, there I am faking it.
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Nobody was there yet when I went like this.
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and Brother Cy Walker there next to the right, and he's gospel preacher for the Burnham Drive Church of Christ in Linden, and then Sheldon Jones, he's the preacher for the
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Blueberry Hill Church of Christ in Linden, and then there's Brother Nigel Milo, preacher for the Amelius Ward Church of Christ in Linden.
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Before the pandemic, there were about 300 attending the Amelius Ward congregation for Sunday morning.
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They have dismissed their evening services because uh
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of the low attendance, somewhat of what we experienced in this country as well.
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They have regular meetings at the Amelius Ward congregation, of course on Wednesday night.
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They have different activities on Tuesday and Thursday or Friday.
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And it's the most evangelistic congregation I've ever seen anywhere.
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He's trained brethren to whether he's present or not, that they will go out in the community and they will go door to door.
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We would say door knocking, but it's gate knocking.
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calling uh inside, inside, inside, and that they're always willing to study with you, but that's not necessarily the trophy right there.
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They've done that before and they'll do it again.
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We're working with those who, though nevertheless, will give us an opportunity to present the gospel of Jesus Christ and then many will also obey the gospel.
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So there's a team overall.
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And then these are the various places in the country to which we went and held our programs.
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The Cotton Tree Church of Christ on the southern coast of Guianum.
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And then Calvert City in Letham um was a place where we had a gospel meeting, or what they call a crusade.
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It's on the Brazilian border, just a river separating the two countries.
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And every time we take somebody up there with us, they have to go see the border.
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They have to go across the bridge that spans the two countries.
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You see, Guyana is a country with no uh infrastructure for traveling from border to border.
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And it has no railroads.
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And so it has only one major airport, the one we fly into from the US.
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And then they have some other little airports.
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It could be anything from uh asphalt to uh tar and chip to gravel.
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First time I landed on a gravel uh landing strip in Monkey Mountain, I thought, well, how in the world?
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We're plowing gravel.
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to land this thing, I don't know where we're gonna get back off the ground.
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But they do it at least three times a week, so I guess they've got a precedent.
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We can go and we can come back as long as everything else works out all right.
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And a massive jungle between the various locations and the coast.
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And then there's the estate congregation on the land at Port Kaituma.
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Port Kaituma made world news a few decades ago with mass suicide murder at Jonestown.
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It was only about four miles from where we used to
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and then the horse of Royal congregation's up on top of a mountain outside of Mabaruma along the Venezuelan border.
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Kaituma mouth is interesting to get to.
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You got to somehow get either to Port Kaituma or to Mabaruma, usually by airplane.
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An airplane could carry any place from seven to 12 or so people depending upon the airplane that's used.
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One time Nigel booked passage on an airplane for us to go to some interior destination.
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And we got there and we found out that when he brought
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the ticket somebody would put a check mark there by his name.
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Didn't count how many seats were needed.
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And they kept selling tickets.
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And we got there and they had more people to get on the plane who had tickets than they had plane to put them on.
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And so we had to wait for two more hours until somebody could come in and fly the bigger airplane to get all seven of us.
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So we're flying various aircraft that are small, Cessnas, caravans, uh islanders or whatever most of the time.
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And sometimes uh we can smell the fresh fish.
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into the mountains because it's in there with us in the cabin where we are.
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Some of the planes are so small that we can stretch like this and we can touch both walls.
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And we can count how many rivets are missing on the wings.
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We can get a free face wash and get our feet washed because the rubber's gone around the door, the gasket's not there anymore.
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So you go through a cloud, the water comes in and washes your feet.
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Because we're flying lower than needed for compression, we'll have little holes in the windows so we have air.
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You fly through a cloud.
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It's a wash, no extra charge.
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And so a lot of interesting things.
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One airplane has, you have to get in the airplane uh at a door that will take care of two rows of seats.
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This side, this door, over here, this door, back here a little bit.
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And so uh the exit would be the doors that you entered.
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And it's in case of emergency exit, there's a propeller outside that door.
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I'm going down with the airplane if it goes down.
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And so over the years I've contemplated, you know, I could die out here.
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In one place I was worshiping on Sunday morning back before I was going to go overseas, I was singing a song that had said, if I should die on a foreign land.
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So hey, that's kind of serious to me.
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But really, every place on the planet is equally close to eternity as any other place on the planet.
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Need to be ready to meet the Lord all the time.
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It could be a health issue, it could be a traffic accident, it could be old age, whatever things
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may be, we need to be ready to meet God no matter where we are on the planet.
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So I said, if I get in a little boat and we get into the river or we get into the ocean and I can't swim, uh how long would it take me to drown?
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Well, think I can handle that.
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uh maybe they've got uh big monsters down there comparable to alligators and crocodiles called caiman.
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oh If one of those got me in the river, how long?
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I can live with that, think.
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I mean, can die with that.
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And then, you know, there's anacondas as big as people and things like that.
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And uh they got other things that grow in the jungle.
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So, well, the airplane could crash, and we did lose some airplanes there where they're carrying cargo, they're carrying people, they're carrying luggage.
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And when they're carrying cargo, they don't normally carry people.
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And so most of the planes that go down was cargo that got away from them or they were too heavy or something like that.
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And when they go down, you think they would be visible to where they went down so somebody could go rest.
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of them but the jungle just swallows them and don't know where they went down.
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So I think, well, you know, if we're going to crash, think I can, know, a crash is all I, I mean, how long would that take?
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And Brother Nigel tells me, he says, they can glide for three miles.
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I could have a lot of panic in three miles.
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But at any rate, anywhere on the planet, be ready to meet the Lord and to share the gospel of Christ.
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The Kildonan is on the southern coast and then west berries across the Esquibo River.
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The Esquibo River is 20 miles wide.
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It has several, 100 inhabited islands and other non-inhabited islands in the river.
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It takes us uh about 45 minutes by a speedboat to go across, carries 25 people.
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and cargo and luggage and it goes like this the whole way across.
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and you're sitting on wooden benches.
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If you're in an open boat, they may give you a tarp for the whole row of five people.
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If you see water coming up over the bow, go like this.
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So it only falls on your head, not on your face.
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And then also, we were life preservers, and the boat has plastic containers filled with air underneath the seats, and I asked about what those were for, and Brother Nigel said,
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if the boat flips, the boat won't sink, just because it's hanging onto the boat.
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And you know what the life preserver said before he said?
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They said, so when you're catapulted from a flip-over boat, they'll be able to find your body more easily.
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So very comforting words from somebody who knows.
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But the brethren, particularly on the other side of the Esquivel River, many congregations there are very uh interested in uh the gospel of Christ and will come together.
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Yuppi Kari is, you go to Letham, and you drive for an hour or two through the uh savannah, through creeks and whatever to get to your destination.
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a lot of different indigenous people from various villages and members of the church will come and gather at that place.
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And so additionally on Sunday once I spoke at the Blueberry Hill Church of Christ in Linden which is kind of like a shelter or a pavilion and then the Amidst Word congregation
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every Sunday and some Wednesdays we were there and I would also speak.
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Now we went to the Cotton Tree Church of Christ and so this is along the southern coast.
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and oh several brethren, a few different congregations were represented there.
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The preacher's there on the right of me pictured.
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Then we have the outside of the building is a top picture.
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Right next door to it is a Hindu something.
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Hindu has all these flags.
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This is a Hindu establishment that represents the enforcers for Hinduism.
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And the Hindus can be as violent and as murderous.
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sometimes we find characteristic of uh Muslim militants and so everybody tries to tiptoe around them right next door to the Church of Christ.
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A very interesting and curious uh location of those two places.
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Calvert City, Church of Christ up in Letham near the Brazilian border.
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The preacher for the congregation is in the green frame there and then we have the flag on the right for the country.
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and then we have a snapshot of the congregation there.
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And we have taken clothes one time down to Guyana because a sister made a bunch of dresses out of pillowcases.
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She wanted to clothe the naked people running around Guyana.
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But you can see in the various pictures that we show, nobody's running around naked.
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If anybody's naked, they just didn't want to put any clothes on or they were bathing or something like that, a rarity.
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Everybody's got clothes that are as nice
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nicer than ours, even if they're in a very remote location in the country.
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They don't need clothes.
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They need the gospel of Christ.
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And then this is at the Enmore Church Christ along the coast.
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We also have a children's home there.
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There's Brother Cy Walker speaking on the left.
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There's Brother Wayne Collins in the next picture.
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There's Brother Nigel Milo next, and then Brother Sheldon Jones.
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And somebody has to take the picture, so I'm not pictured in that particular one or location.
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The Estate Church of Christ.
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They had a very nice program made out, songs included, There's Sheldon Jones up there.
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To the right we have another preacher.
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Down the bottom right we have Brother Kishore Edwaro.
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He's a gospel preacher as well.
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Here's a shot of the estate congregation assembled for and others for that particular program or presentation.
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guess we have two of them there.
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This is uh up in Horserow up on a mountain and uh all of these pictured are preachers.
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well.
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There are preachers over there.
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A preacher is somebody who has the responsibility of uh reciting or talking about teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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A preacher is not necessarily somebody who has had a formal education in Bible things.
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He is the individual who is willing and is able to stand up and to uh teach the gospel of Christ.
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And so we want to make sure that the gospel preachers are edified and we provide
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tons of literature and Bibles every year for the congregations throughout Guyana.
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And we sent down a lot of uh outline books.
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uh recently one preacher who had been preaching for 20 years was speaking to Brother Nigel Milo and says, this is the first sermon I've ever prepared.
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20 years into it, relying solely on what he could get out of books or maybe off the internet.
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sometimes when our companion speakers in our program, they researched what they could find that was as close as they could find to what their assignment was, not necessarily on
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topic.
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And so they need to be edified, they need to know God's word more perfectly and to be able to present it well and know the difference between air and truth.
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The Khatuma Mouth Congregation.
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is difficult to get to.
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can only get to it by water.
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There are no roads.
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There are no foot paths, of which I'm aware.
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About 450 people living on the banks of a river, and not far from where the river separates into two rivers.
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And so they have no windows in their building.
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The uh new building is made out of stuff from the old building, and it's on stilts because it's right there on the water's edge.
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Houses are usually on stilts as well.
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water around so that they have a place if there's even no water around, a place to put their ATV or a place to put uh the laundry that they're hanging out to dry or a place to
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store stuff.
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So we're in this moving picture, we're simply trying to get from the boathouse over to the main river and of course there's a little bit of water going that way.
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The roots are very interesting on the trees along water sources.
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In order to get all the water that they want, some of what we would say would be
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is going up or instead our branches going down to get to the water and help the trees thrive.
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Here we have on the river now, you can see a picture, still picture of what it looks like in a boat trying to get to that location and then a little bit of the water as we move
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along and then arriving at our destination.
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There are still a lot of dugout canoes in the country in the interior and there are a lot of aluminum.
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and are lot of boats, and there a lot of river freighters.
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In that country, there are ocean-going freighters as well as river freighters.
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An ocean-going freighter can sail up to 75 miles up a river and turn around in the river and be prepared to load bauxite or some other mineral to come back out of the river.
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So these are deep rivers, they're wide rivers, they have a lot of rivers, and so when they get to a point where the ocean-going vessels can't go any further,
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You have smaller freighters that are river freighters and will take things and people to their various locations in the country by water.
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And then this is uh some of what we see along there, along the river, see some of the structures about which I was talking.
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Again, we see a variety of different kind of boats and different types of propulsion.
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And then we have another preacher there speaking in that oval picture there.
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They've got school desk type set up.
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uh
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Various clothing of modern and familiar to us represented there.
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We have another preacher on the bottom right, brother from Marlboro, and then brother Sheldon Jones is speaking on the top right.
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Kildonan, it looks like an old schoolhouse to us, but in actuality, it's one big, long building, having been divided into some classrooms and having indoor toilets.
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And then you see again the children, you see a little bit of the gathering, uh
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the clothes that are there represented in the flag.
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And then again, we have more of Brother Sheldon Jones in the bottom left and I'm in the middle in the bottom.
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We have another brother up there in the top right, being of African descent.
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He is wearing some African type clothing.
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There are three major ethnicities in the country.
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The largest ethnicity are those who are descendants from uh Indian servants.
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who came along with the British, and they have become the largest example of race in that country.
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The second largest ethnicity are those who descend from freed black slaves.
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And then the smallest of the three ethnicities are the indigenous people.
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Those indigenous people that live somewhat close to the coast have assimilated into whatever, oh
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or races in whatever languages, whatever cultures into which they have assimilated.
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The uh indigenous people in the interior, they're still pretty much tribal in many ways, though that they will have oh whatever they need to get along.
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And they don't miss anything because they've never had it, they don't need it, and so some of the happiest people in the world, we would classify as being very poor.
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And then the Kill Don and Church Christ, we have different
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We have cows in the road bottom right, cows and goats, they roam freely around the country.
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There's Brother Sheldon Jones' top, and then I love going down there in February.
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We chose February trying not to interfere with other programs and other ministries that come from the states that go down there at various times of the year.
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But one of things I like about going down there in the winter, I suffer in the winter with temperatures
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between 70 and 90, and everything's in bloom.
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Flowers everywhere, flowering bushes, fruits and vegetables.
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You can get it right from the source, more or less, or very close to the source.
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Things like pineapple and watermelon and other things I don't even know what are.
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Then we have the Westbury Church of Christ on the other side of the Esquiba.
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The brethren over there on that side of the river are very anxious to come together and to be a part of these programs.
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There's a preacher in the bottom, two preachers in the bottom left in that square picture.
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And this is the building there at that location.
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a picture of those who were in attendance on that day.
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Again, uh more pictures of Westbury.
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And then we're now at Yupocari.
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We go over, we flew to Lettem next to the Brazilian border and then we drive an hour or two to get to Yupocari further into the interior.
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And these are all indigenous people here, not a mix of anybody else, all indigenous.
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And they look like our American Indians.
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They look like the people I would meet in Myanmar or Burma.
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They the same complexions, have the same facial arrangements and so forth.
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Some of them are relatively short.
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And there are several villages around some distance from each other that where the church assembles and they come in and assemble here for our program, come in a van that maybe
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they're paying somebody to uh transport them.
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And then you see various folk there, Yubikare.
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Again, they're very far in the interior but they've got clothes just like we have clothes.
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They've got a good education that's provided by the government.
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And the government provides good medical attention throughout the country.
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Some of the so-called medical missions that we have from time to time are, depending on where you're going, might not be as needed now as perhaps they were in time has passed
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because of the advancements in these countries.
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And then there is the kitchen sink.
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You see the kitchen sink on the far top left?
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And this is characteristic of what I would find in other developing countries.
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In Myanmar, for instance, could be India.
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sure other countries around the world, you have this platform outside your window in the kitchen and everything that would be disposed of, whether water or whatever, goes out that
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window through that bowl right there.
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And then most of the world, most of the population of the world still cooks over an open fire outside.
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And that's the case at the various programs to which we go.
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There's a cauldron or a kettle there.
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Top right there was a pot driving off.
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one of the roads, a pretty good condition going out toward Yup'ikari and other pictures regarding the setup for lunch.
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And then again, we've got chicken in the big bowl there on the top left.
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We've got a couple other preachers, one of whom is Sheldon Jones in the green.
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And then as we're traveling back from there, going back toward Letham, we're traveling a road and we can see the mountains in the distance.
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And we'll come across creeks and so forth that we either have a bridge to go across or we'd go through
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the Ford.
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I talked about Ford one time some place and said Ford, Ford, what do mean by Ford?
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They were thinking about, know, Ford as opposed to Chevrolet.
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No, I'm talking about going down in the water and coming back up the other side, you hope.
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And so that's some of what we find in various countries.
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Outside the International Airport, these two trees on the left were caught my attention.
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I never saw a tree trim like that one in the middle.
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It was kind of interesting.
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I saw it a couple other places in the country that flattened on the top and flattened underneath.
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Kind of neat looking.
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Then one of the snaps from an airplane which we were flying on one occasion.
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Then these are various snapshots.
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We have uh Brother Nigel's garden.
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almost everybody who can afford it has some kind of a wall around the property.
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And they'll have a glass or something sticking up on top of the wall so it'll discourage people from climbing over the wall.
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It'll be locks and it'll be grills over the windows and doors.
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You have your own little fortress.
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And along his fortress on the outside, he's growing in uh cut barrels of various plants for their own table.
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Bottom right is, can't see
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very well from here but it is an ocean going freighter that's come up about 50 miles or so and turned around the river and is going to load block sites at that location.
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The bottom left picture is the airport we use in country and they have, they take cargo and they take people and of course take our luggage.
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I think that the one on the left I'll probably ought to be framed and put someplace a hundred years from now.
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said, well, look at that pair.
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There's Brother Sheldon Jones on the left and there I am on the right.
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I didn't used to have a beard last time I was here probably, but a few things have changed.
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My hairline has changed.
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I heard something about hairline today.
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And also I had surgery on my neck.
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I had a big polyp or whatever on my neck and it would stick out and it was taken out and it was as big as a fist.
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Most of it was underneath.
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instead of being on top.
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So I had a scar here, still there, and then a uh hole under here was swollen, couldn't shave it.
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That disappointed me so much.
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And so I let it grow, but every two weeks I give myself a haircut and a beard cut with the same clip.
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And then Martha cleans up the edges for me and we go on.
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For a few months, Martha had been away from me, tending to children of her own with health problems, and so I left on my own.
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So when she's not present, there's no clip.
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And I clean up everything I can reach and everything I can see in the mirror.
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uh
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I want to be presentable so I keep it low.
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And then more recently, I know if anyone's noticed, but I stopped trying to make it stop someplace because they didn't want to stop anyhow.
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it's getting up there little bit.
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When I was his age, I had pork chop sideburns.
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But I had more hair too, it big and bushy.
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Then we have different occasions of us preaching, speaking, or getting ready to board an aircraft.
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And then this picture on the top left is for the uh Mahabarama Settlement Church of Christ.
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and their church building looks more like a corn crib.
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has these slats, that's the wall of their building.
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And just a sample of all four walls that they have and have sheet metal on top.
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And then on the right we passed another congregation's building, I've not been to that church before, the Nappy Church of Christ.
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And then the bottom left, they have modern stores in the metropolitan area of Georgetown for groceries and so forth.
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I'm always mesmerized by going in and seeing the bulk food section.
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So I took a picture of the bulk food section.
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We don't have our bulk food sections like that here in the states.
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Now on the right, the moving picture, there's a swamp right there.
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And there were two other roads going to the same destination, but they sank, one of which with a car on it.
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And so I said, well, we're not gonna go on the right, we're not gonna go on the left, we're gonna go right through the middle.
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So they laid logs horizontally, and then they have
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and they have boards on top, we went across the swamp to get to the other side.
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On either end, you have water that has collected, and you had to go through that and hope there's a bottom to it before you even get to the bridge.
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And then, these are some other sites seen while traveling by car in the interior of the country.
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And then that's the last uh slide there of any consequence.
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And it gives a summary of our work.
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Our work is not only in Guyana.
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I used to travel to India and various places in that country, travel to Myanmar, various places in that country, and travel to or through Singapore and work with one congregation
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there of the 25 approximate congregations in Singapore.
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But I'm not traveling to Asia anymore.
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I mean, it's just too hard.
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We're talking about to get to Myanmar would be
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three jet airplanes and a minimum of 30 hours.
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There is not a seat that is comfortable enough to sit in for 30 hours.
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They all feel like uh wooden boards by the time you get that many hours involved in them.
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And getting older, I've got a colleague in Winona, Mississippi, that he's my age and he's still traveling and his wife's still traveling to Africa and various places around the
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world.
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God bless.
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But I'm wearing out a little bit sooner than he is in some respects.
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Martha doesn't travel with me anymore because her mobility is challenged and she has challenged concrete with her head in Myanmar and uh tore up her inner thigh with falling
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down on a threshold going into a shower and stuff like that.
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She was going to go to Guyana with a team to stay in the metropolitan area this year, but she decided that maybe
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that would be best if she did not.
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She wanted to get a puppy.
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He said if she couldn't go with me sometimes, she wanted to get a puppy so that uh she'd have company while I was gone.
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I said no, can't, we travel too much, we can't have a puppy.
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And I know that puppies make messes before they stop making messes.
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And so one day she's gonna have $60 or so on a stuffed dog.
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I said, I'm weakening.
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She said, are you all right?
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I said, yeah, you can have a dog.
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Then I hear something like, I can't go with you, I've got to take care of the dog.
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Sounds to me like that's reasoning and what when my eyes going up, we call it a communist plan.
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But at any rate, the dogs are very great comfort and company to us and they even have a fan page on Facebook.
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But uh some of you might get to see them.
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But we still are active in some degree in those countries.
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Myanmar's having a civil war, not going there.
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We have India.
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You never know if you're gonna get into the country even though you have a visa till you get off the airplane.
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and they don't like you anymore, they put you back on the same airplane, send you home.
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But that cost a whole lot more money to go back home than it to get there, and a lot more hours, maybe 60 hours to get back home.
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That's happened to my colleagues in Winona, Mississippi, and others as well.
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But I still facilitate funds for the Hindi language TV program out of New Delhi, and the follow-up goes along with that.
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We're running out of money for that.
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The next year is the last year.
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year we have money given to us for that.
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We were given $300,000 at one time specifically for the TV program and follow-up work in northern India.
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And finally it started to run out and next year will be the last year for which we have funds.
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If that's to continue through my hands then of course we have to secure that money.
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We spend $25,000, I have a lot of $25,000 a year for the Hindi TV program and follow-up.
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We allot $25,000
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of the year for the program down in South America about which we've been talking for a few minutes.
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And then there's a $6,000 fee for a yearly TV program or weekly TV program for a year down in Guyana, South America covers two thirds of the country.
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And so I got to come up with that money too.
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And then we live off of it as well, of course, to some extent.
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We have other revenues as sources of income.
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But those are some of the things which were involved.
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I also am the editor of the Voice of Truth International Magazine.
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We're one quarter behind.
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And my brethren let me know all the time that we're behind, gotta catch up.
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And I'm trying my best to catch up.
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And even, it's printed in several countries.
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What we get in the States is printed in India, in English.
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And some English are distributed in India.
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Other languages of India are also circulated in that country.
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have uh Nepal.
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has an Apollease edition of the magazine.
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We have a Swahili edition of the magazine.
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We have two or three countries in Africa where it's being printed and distributed across several different...
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uh
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localities in the brethren in Nigeria.
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Won't let me alone.
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Right after they got the leisure, just printed and distributed, when can we have the next in almost every day?
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When can we have the next?
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That's a good problem to have, isn't it?
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The brethren are so interested in having and distributing the word of God that they won't let you alone.
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So I'm a year behind in Gospel Gazette Online Magazine, but I've got this hope of catching up someday.
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We've moved a couple times during the period.
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More recently we just moved uh
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30 miles closer to the church building so we could be more accessible and available to the congregation where we worship and where I serve as one of the elders.
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And so there's been a lot going on in our lives.
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I think one of these days we're gonna catch up and even put stuff on the walls.
31:58
Still working on that.
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I don't have anything else particularly at this moment to tell you about the work, uh but the reason that we have Gospel Gazette online, the reason that we have Voice of Truth
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International Magazine, the reason that we ship tons of Christian literature and Bibles to various places around the world as far as world evangelism is concerned, of which I'm a
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part, the reason that we have programs like we had recently with Rob Whitaker is because uh
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we need to tell somebody something about the gospel of Christ.
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People have only the hope that that outlives our earthly existence through the gospel of Christ if we obey the gospel of Christ, if we continue to obey the gospel of Christ.
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And as we get older, you know, a traffic accident or a health issue could take us at any time in our lives, but we think, well, I've got till I get older.
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uh
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Well, we're getting older, some of us, and we're getting closer to crossing a threshold that we've never crossed before, to meeting a God that's either going to be angry with us
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or welcome us.
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I'd just much rather have a welcome than have somebody tell me that, hey, you, you know what?
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You know where you're going to spend eternity?
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You're not going to be with me.
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I don't want to hear that.
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And so because of all that Christ did for us, all that the Godhead did for us by the sacrifice of our Lord, by the coming of Christ from the heavenly realm down to the earth
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taking on the form of creation instead of representing himself as the creator that he is, the sacrificial death that he died upon Calvary's cross, all that they did for us so that
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we could go home to be with God.
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We need to make sure we're going home to be with God and take as many with us as we can persuade with the gospel of Christ.
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The gospel of Christ gives us hope beyond the grave.
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The gospel of Christ gives us purpose in life.
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What would I do?
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What would my purpose in life be without God?
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the Holy Spirit who gave us the revelation without Jesus Christ who sacrificed to redeem us.
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Have you made the adequate preparation?
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Are you still making preparation?
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Many of us may be of retirement age, but you don't get to retire from the Church of the Lord.
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Keep on keeping on.
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Who can we help make an amendment to their journey from this life to the next as we stand in a moment and sing the song that will be announced or has been announced?