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Mission SONlight Chatt Ep.5 with Julia O'carey · Mission SONlight CHATT

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  Music
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  Welcome to Mission Sunlight Chat from the Media Missionaries of Network 7 Media Center. We are in not our usual world headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but rather we are in Kansas City, Missouri at the ASI International Convention here in the exhibit hall.
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  We're going to hear exhibitors and friends and members of ASI walking around through the exhibit hall chatting and learning more about what's happening in ministry around the globe and people sharing testimonies and it's exciting to hear them.
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  One of our members of ASI is Julio Carey's ASAP and we're going to talk with her today about what's happening there in her ministry.
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  First of all I want to say my name is Christopher Beeson, our Director of Production and Engineering today is Jordan Wagner and we are thankful that you are part of our online community today.
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  Mission Sunlight Chat is a non-profit organization, a non-profit Christian media production, so if you'd like to know more you can visit us at MissionSunlight.org.
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  If you want to give you can click donate there. Thank you in advance for whatever you are led to give, your prayers, your money, any combination of these things.
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  We're truly grateful for you. We appreciate whatever you would like to do for this work.
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  Now one thing before we get into today's program we need to grow. We want to touch more lives for Jesus.
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  We want to share the story of Jesus and we want to spread the truth as it is in Jesus.
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  So please if you can't give your time, you can't give your prayers, you can't give your monies, would you please give a link?
• 1:45
  Share the link to today's program with a friend or even an enemy. Post it on your social media, text it to a friend right now, you can even snail mail it to somebody if you want.
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  Share Mission Sunlight Chat today. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing.
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  And as I mentioned before Julia we're here at ASI, they're going to hear announcements over the intercom, maybe hear a choir singing in the background.
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  It's great to be here in a live dynamic setting and I am thankful for your ministry ASAP. A few years ago I had the opportunity to travel with you in Asia.
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  It was a powerful experience for me. Tell us a little bit about ASAP and what's happening there.
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  Thank you Christopher. It's such an honor to be here and I just really appreciate this opportunity to share about ASAP and that was such a fun trip.
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  It was.
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  I really love traveling over there too. It was actually a communist country and ASAP works in a lot of difficult places.
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  And it was amazing how God opened doors in that short amount of time and we see that a lot.
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  ASAP Ministries is a ministry that empowers local missionaries to restore and disciple the marginalized with the holistic gospel.
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  And so if you're wondering what local missionaries are, they're people that are from those countries and we work mostly in Asia in the area we call the 1040 window.
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  Where it's mostly Buddhist, Muslim and local missionaries we focus on because they know the culture, they know the language, they're there to stay and they just really get into it and are effective.
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  Amen.
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  Yeah and so ASAP supports by God's grace over 700 of those missionaries.
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  Wow.
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  Yeah and you got to meet some of them when you were over there with us.
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  And ASAP donors are partners right there in there with you with the support for those.
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  Yes, yes without their support we wouldn't be able to do the work and we train them and we empower them and they help the marginalized.
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  And if you wonder who are the marginalized.
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  Tell us.
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  They are the people that when Jesus comes he's going to look at you and smile and say well done Christopher, well done good and faithful servant.
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  What you have done for the least of these you've done it to me.
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  And so the least of these are the poor in our society, the persecuted, the refugees, those who are unreached that nobody seems to really care about.
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  Those are the ones that ASAP gets so excited about helping because that was what Jesus mission was when he was on this earth.
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  And we do it holistically and so what that means is you know how when Jesus came here he didn't just preach, preach, preach at people.
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  But he ministered to their needs.
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  He did he found out man you know they're sick.
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  Let me heal them.
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  So we have medical missionaries.
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  We have schools.
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  And so this has really grown since you traveled over there because we started with just a handful of schools for at risk children.
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  And we saw that that was so impactful for sharing the gospel because it changes the whole worldview of these young people from an early age when they hear the Bible stories and they pray and they see God answer.
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  Let me give you just one little example.
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  Tell us a story.
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  There's a training that I was helping with.
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  It was a growing safe rooted in God's love curriculum because these kids are so at risk of being trafficked in Southeast Asia.
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  So we wanted an intentional curriculum to teach the kids how to stay safe and what to look for and everything.
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  And so I was at one of these trainings and I one of the teachers just happened to tell me over lunch you know we just finished a career week and one of my students I asked her what do you want to be when you grow up and she looked straight at me and she said I want to be a prostitute.
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  And the teacher kind of like set back and she said why would you want to be that.
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  And she said my auntie says I could have pretty dresses.
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  That was the extent of her worldview.
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  And the next year when I went back I asked the teacher Hey how is she doing and she said oh you know this was like her first week in school.
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  When she said that now she wants to be a nurse because she wants to help heal people.
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  And so that just shows the shift in the worldview. So we have 93 schools and 7500 at risk children that we're caring for.
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  And so yeah pray for us because this is a faith ministry.
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  And we see God opening doors and working in so many different ways.
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  Lots of church plants, well projects, like putting clean water in a village that just transforms it.
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  So lots going on.
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  Amen. Wow. That's quite a testimony.
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  I want to hear some more stories but we're going to take a break in a moment.
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  I realize as we began we had prayer offline but we haven't done it here with our audience.
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  So would you lead our audience in a word of prayer?
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  I would love to.
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  And then we'll take a break. Go ahead.
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  Jesus you love those who are downtrodden and you want to advocate for them.
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  Thank you for the opportunity for us to join you in this work.
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  And Lord as I share and as Christopher shares may it not be our words but just may your Holy Spirit be present here.
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  Not only with us but with those who are watching and listening.
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  Lord you know what they need to hear. You know what needs to happen in this special little time together.
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  And so we just dedicate it to you. Thank you Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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  Amen.
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  Thank you Julia. We'll be coming back in a moment.
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  I want to invite our viewers to be sure to click the share button and tell somebody else about Mission Sunlight Chat.
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  We'll be back in just a moment.
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  Welcome back to Mission Sunlight Chat.
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  Our guest from ASAP Ministries, Julia O'Carrie.
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  Thank you so much for joining us.
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  It's great to be here Christopher.
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  It's really interesting to hear that story about the young lady choosing a better life for herself.
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  I know there's some more ministry stories but first just give us a couple minutes background on the history of ASAP.
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  It hasn't always been since the beginning of time so how did it begin and how did you become the leader of the ministry?
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  I'm happy to share that. ASAP actually goes back a little further.
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  ASAP is 30 years old but before that it was 1979 when my mom, Judy Aiken, opened a Time magazine and on the front cover
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  and inside she saw pictures of emaciated refugees from Cambodia that were fleeing because of the Pol Pot regime coming in.
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  And it just touched her heart. She was a nurse and so she thought, how can I help them?
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  I'm in Michigan. And she cried to God and said, Lord please help them.
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  Because the babies were malnourished. It was really sad.
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  She was stay at home mom at that time. My dad was in the seminary.
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  And a week later, Adria made a call for nurses.
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  And so she and my dad sent us to Grandparents Farm in Virginia and they went and were going to be there for just the summer.
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  Just for a couple months.
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  The couple months turned into seven years.
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  During that time, of course we came and followed her.
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  We worked in the refugee camps. And so I grew up seeing the needs of refugees.
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  How they lose relatives. They lose their home, their occupations, everything to flee for their lives.
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  And how open their hearts are to the gospel.
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  And during that segment of time, over 10,000 people were baptized.
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  And interestingly, many of them came to America or had to go back to their own countries.
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  And in their own war-torn countries, there were not very many opportunities.
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  And they had become Seventh-day Adventist Christians and they wanted to share the gospel with their own people.
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  And the work just spread.
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  And my mother, Judy Aiken, saw the need.
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  So she went to the General Conference and she told them about it and said,
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  We need to do some work there because the Adventist Church was not really active because there had been so much war.
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  And so they encouraged her and supported her to start a ministry to find all these refugees
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  and empower them to be church planters for their own people.
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  And it started in Cambodia and then it spread and spread.
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  And so as a little girl, I observed all of this and it was just so part of my life.
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  It was like breathing, like my DNA.
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  And unfortunately, my mother and father, they got divorced.
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  I've never shared this publicly, this part of the story, but I just feel impressed to do that.
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  Because mission life is hard.
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  It's messy.
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  It's messy and it's not always like this perfect video that you see of just a wonderful result.
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  There's a lot of pain and I think it's because Satan attacks missionary families even harder.
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  I appreciate that honesty.
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  And I think our viewers and listeners do too.
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  Sometimes you think, oh, the mission field, oh, it's great, it's wonderful.
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  You need to pray more for missionaries.
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  Absolutely.
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  We really do.
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  And so unfortunately, I came back from the mission field very broken as a teenager
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  and of course confused because we see all these results.
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  But then in our own family, there was all this brokenness.
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  And so God never forgot me.
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  He never left me for a minute.
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  He was my heavenly father and he was by my side and I learned how to go to him for comfort, how to go to him.
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  I got Christian counseling.
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  God put the right people in my life.
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  And I would never be here serving with ASAP today if it wasn't for the mercy of God.
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  And I see how he's used those trials to give me a heart for those who are suffering.
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  And many that we work with suffer and they're going through terrible times.
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  And so I praise the Lord for it, even though it was a hard time.
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  And I just see how so much healing comes in actual ministry.
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  Wow.
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  Yeah.
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  Thank you for that testimony.
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  Happy to share.
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  Praise the Lord.
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  And then my mom started it as a single mom.
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  She started ASAP.
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  She was a nurse working nights at the nursing home, daytime.
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  Starting up ASAP from nothing.
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  Yeah.
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  And I just know that it was miracle after miracle and it was God that just made it happen from just the basement of her house to now ASAP.
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  To a worldwide ministry of how many Bible workers did you say?
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  718.
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  Just 718.
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  It's growing.
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  God is really working here.
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  God is good.
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  She had to be an incredibly praying woman.
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  I did meet her a time or two.
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  Didn't know her well.
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  She had to be praying through that.
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  It was prayer and so many answers to prayer.
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  And I'm sure you were an easy teenager right there.
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  Oh my goodness.
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  I have a teenager now and I look back and I'm like, oh man, I wish I would have treated my mom better.
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  And now I understand.
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  Joya, in a moment we're going to come back and just chat a little bit about the importance and value of ASAP and other ministries here at ASI.
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  We're here.
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  We want to value this location that we're in and just chat about it to close out the program.
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  So we'll come back in a moment to do that.
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  We certainly hope you're being encouraged and blessed by listening to the program today.
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  We have more to come, but we need to take a break.
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  So remember, you can give at missionsunlight.org.
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  You can share the program with anyone right now.
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  So thanks for doing both or either of those.
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  We'll be back in a moment with more Mission Sunlight Chat.
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  We move ahead with our mission objectives, recognizing that we are serving together the Most High God.
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  Welcome back to Mission Sunlight Chat.
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  My guest from ASAP, Joya O'Carrie.
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  Hey, Joya, tell me, why is ASAP here?
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  Just tell me in a nutshell, why is ASAP here at ASI?
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  We're in the exhibit hall.
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  Lots of things happening.
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  We love partnering with other ministries.
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  And just today I met with Joy with Farm Stew, and we're talking about doing a partner project.
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  And that was so exciting.
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  And we had a luncheon with Angel One, another ministry here, to thank our donors.
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  And it's just a wonderful time to network, but also grow spiritually.
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  Amen.
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  And somebody who's not a member of ASI should still consider attending the testimonies, the stories we hear.
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  Powerful.
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  They move us, and sometimes we can give, and they move our wallets, too.
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  Just to be honest.
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  God moves powerfully with these testimonies to help us to extend our reach.
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  Yes.
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  So, hopes and dreams for ASAP coming up.
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  What do you have?
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  We have so many hopes and dreams.
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  There's an area that we work between Myanmar and Thailand, and there's tons of fighting, air raids, bombing.
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  And we have 32 schools in that area for these kids.
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  And they're escaping into caves and hiding.
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  But we want to give them an opportunity to continue their education.
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  And so in the next five years, we want to have a college and a vocational school for them.
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  Because we have elementary schools and some high schools, but nothing like that.
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  And they can't leave. They're stuck.
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  So that's one dream.
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  They also need a medical clinic there.
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  If they get malaria, which is very common, any sickness, they don't have anywhere to go.
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  In Cambodia, we want to close the circle because our motto is,
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  Marginalized to missionary.
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  And so we have the same situation there that we need higher education schools.
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  Not just to help people, but help them to become their full purpose from God.
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  Yeah, to become missionaries.
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  And so we have seed preservation projects.
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  We're starting to help the schools become more self-sustaining.
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  That's kind of maybe a microfinance?
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  Yes. Yeah, similar to that.
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  Our main goal is church planting.
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  And our biggest hope is that Jesus will come soon and that we'll all get to go to heaven and have no more suffering.
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  Shouldn't that be all of our hopes and dreams?
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  Yes.
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  Of Jesus to come soon and do what we're supposed to until then.
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  Yes.
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  Julia, thanks so much for joining us today on Mission Sunlight Chat.
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  It's really been a blessing to hear your testimony.
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  I love your smile. I love your family.
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  I regularly think of and cherish the time that we spent together traveling over in Asia.
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  It's a great time.
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  Yes, thank you. God bless your ministry, too.
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  And it's a lot of fun to hear Julia speak in Thai, but we're not going to make her do that today.
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  I can say, khob khun ka. That's thank you.
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  Excellent. This is today's program for the Media Missionaries of Network 7 Media Center.
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  This has been Mission Sunlight Chat with our guest, Julia O'Carry.
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  I'm Christopher Beeson, your host, and today's engineer, Jordan Wagner.
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  We thank you for joining us. We thank you for sharing our show with your friends via text, email, on your social media platforms.
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  We also thank you for your gifts and your prayers, but especially your prayers.
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  That's all today from our mobile studio here in Kansas City, Missouri for ASI.
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  This is Mission Sunlight Chat.
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  Thank you.