[MUSIC]
Turn to song number 224, the end of the book, song number 224.
There Shall Be Showers of Blessings, song number 224.
[MUSIC]
So there are flip boards out there in the lobby, and there are six different groups because they want to see groups of 30.
So some of the groups are already filled up.
So what you're going to want to do is get one of those flip boards and fill out your name for everyone in your party.
Like put a different line for each person of your party.
Don't put like Anderson times six or something, or six people, because we want to make sure we know when the 30, when that has been hit.
So maybe even, you know, maybe even right now you might want to just get out of your seat right now and just walk out there and say your name on one of those flip boards if you haven't already.
Because you don't want to forget to do that, but we want to make sure we get those roots figured out and make sure that we're prepared for tomorrow morning.
So if you're going to the Visible History Museum, be there by 945 at the latest, be there on time, because we're going to start the tours at 10, so we have to get organized at 945.
And we're going to meet out in the parking lot, fix you in your groups, and so forth, okay?
And then, of course, every day we're going to have soul winning at 5 o'clock, if you show up at 5 o'clock any of the days in the conference, we will sing about soul winning.
We can give you maps to send you out other times too if you have nothing to go on with any other time.
And then also, this is not on the schedule, but tomorrow at 3 o'clock, make sure to write this down, there's a wedding tomorrow at 3 o'clock.
Everyone's invited to the wedding tomorrow at 3 o'clock, so just show up, don't be shy.
That's not on the schedule in the whole thing because this is the last minute add-on.
I've got one of those for the moment things, you know? Long story, long story.
But anyway, 3 o'clock. And then also, hopefully you got one of these little lanyards out in the lobby, you put your name on it and where you're from.
And then you have this lanyard, well on the back of that has the schedule for the whole conference too.
And the only thing that's missing on that schedule is again the wedding tomorrow at three,
but everything else is on your little deal here. And so we got musical instrument museum,
we got pastor Shelley preaching tomorrow night, and then you know we got all the other activities
there so be aware of that. All right and then on the back of the bulletin, chili cook off,
that ship already sailed, birth announcement for the Martin family, congratulations to them.
That's really about it for announcements. Just remember if you do go to the museum tomorrow,
they don't want us to bring any water or food and they don't want us to touch anything so you're
just gonna have to fill the hump before you get there and eat and drink and and do all that. I'm
sure there's drinking fountains okay but you know when I was a kid anyway we didn't carry water
bottles with us everywhere we go and then we just we didn't even know what a water bottle was.
A water bottle was like a canteen that a cowboy would have. That's the only water bottle we'd
ever seen in our lives literally and people that are my age and older they know I'm telling the
truth. A bottle of water did not exist. I know that's hard for you to believe but it's true.
There was no I remember when bottled water came out. I remember when bottled water first dropped
when it was first released and I was like this is the stupidest product I've ever seen. Why
would anyone pay for water? Water's free. If I wanted water I'll drink out of the garden hose
of my neighbor or of other random strangers. That's how we grew up. So anyway you're gonna
have to experience that 1980s lifestyle of not having a water bottle for two hours of your life
and so yeah that's about it for announcements. I did want to have brother Cooper are you prepared
to come and speak a little bit on the Philippines? So brother Cooper is going to be preaching more
about the the cruise mission strips and things that we've been doing this year. He got to
participate on one of those cruise mission strips and so I'm going to give you the microphone. I'm
going to give you this one. But he also spent a bunch of time this year doing missions in the
Philippines. So right now he's just going to briefly tell us about his missions in the Philippines
then we'll sing another song and then he's going to come back and preach to us about the cruise
missions. So here you go just go ahead and click that on. All right so once again my name is brother
Raymond Cooper and it was about this time last year that I kind of announced and we started
planning for me and my family to move to the Philippines for a little while. And you know
I want I wanted to go to the Philippines because you know I love missions you know I love you know
mission trips I love so many important countries and you know I've always wanted to go on kind of
more of an extended mission trip before you know more than just like a week or two you know me and
my good friend Daniel Ryder we talked about it before you know Daniel he spent like four months
before in Malawi and he spent four months before in Jamaica. I just always thought that was a super
cool idea and so anyway you know we had some savings my wife had just gotten her US citizenship
so she could freely come in and out of the country and so we decided that um early this year back in
February was a good time for us to you know head out to the Philippines and um and uh it was either
going to be the Philippines or Africa but uh and because I love Africa so much that's like my
favorite place but we decided on the Philippines because it makes you know a lot more sense because
my wife is Filipino you know we're both very familiar with the Philippines a lot more so and
there's also a lot of new IV people already there you know several churches and lots of
lots of people already there and so yeah we decided to go to the Philippines. Now I did this you know
or I wanted to do this just kind of you know of my own volition you know I just wanted to go out
there so it wasn't like I was being sent out or anything uh from church I wasn't being ordained
and I wasn't being funded at all either and so we kind of had two two goals in mind of course
to do lots and lots of soul winning lots of lots of mission work but we were also going to try to
start a business while we were out there as well to kind of fund us and let us stay there long term
um you know as long as as long as we wanted or as long as we could uh so those were the two things
that we wanted to do but uh the you know starting a business absolutely did not work out just you
know 100 uh i did not realize this before going there but apparently the philippines is in the top
20 uh most difficult countries in the world to start a business in so it's very uh difficult
with all the government regulations and stuff it was an absolute nightmare and so sunk a bunch of
money into that didn't work out and yeah it's all it's all good because the because the soul winning
was awesome you know and that was the part that was really great and so anyway we uh but you know
with this business idea in mind you know I was looking at different places that we can move to
in the Philippines and we decided to go to this island called the island of Palawan and for people
who are not familiar with the Philippines this is you know one of their most beautiful islands is
like the Hawaii of the Philippines or whatever which you know it's kind of silly to say because
you know all the Philippines is you know kind of like Hawaii just very beautiful lots of nice
beaches but Palawan is like way more so and they get lots of tourism coming in and so I figured
that you know having like a tourism related business would be a good idea because from
personal experience I know that the tourists there spend lots of money because I've spent
lots of money there whatever so I just figured that'd be a good spot to go to and Palawan has
about a million people that live on this island it's very long and skinny if you look at it on
a map so it's a very large island from one side to the next it takes about 12 hours to drive but
then going from east to west it takes about an hour and a half so it's it's very long very skinny
and we went to the big city that's there called Porto Princesa has 350,000 people there and before
we went we made sure that there were some good churches there and we found two good churches that
you know we listened to some preaching online it seemed really great we found one that was called
the Porto Princesa Fundamental Baptist Church and we found another one that was a Bible Baptist
Church which those are kind of hit or miss if they're good or not but but anyway we went there
and we visited both of these churches and at first both of the churches were really really good we
liked them but after you know about a month of being there the fundamental Baptist Church they
were preaching some really you know weird heresies and stuff they they not only talked that like
saved Christians if you're safe if you're truly saved then you'll have good works but they went
like way beyond that and they were like you're truly saved then you're never going to do any
bad works and if you do anything bad then you were never saved and that's in whatever so anyway we're
just like no we're not we're not going back to this church so we started we went full uh you know
we went full on into the Bible Baptist Church and I'm really glad that we did because that one turned
out to be a fantastic church really wonderful we went there for the full six months that we were
there and uh and um they never preached anything wrong as far as I could tell you know the whole
time we were there was really great uh they have soul winning twice a week there um on Tuesdays
and Thursdays and out of a church of about 100 people they had you know 20 to 30 people going
out soul winning every single week at their soul winning time so it was actually really cool
i like the pastor there pastor Jehu Kenoy but the thing that i like the most about this church
you know i mean faithful word is like my favorite church in the world i think we have we have the
best church ever but i'm not gonna lie though i think that this church in plowin had like the
best church name out of any name that i've ever heard of before there the name of their church
was what the bible says baptist church and i thought that was cool that was a that was cool
and um and it was a great church and you know we really enjoyed our time there um the people were
nice and everything and unfortunately this was this was kind of bad though about it is that the
day after we left the day after we we flew back and i flew back to america and everything uh the
church building had some electrical issues and actually burned down like literally the day after
we left it was pretty crazy there were a lot of people inside thankfully nobody was hurt or
anything but as of right now they're kind of meeting in their parking lot and stuff so
i mean yeah just be praying for them that they get that fixed and whatnot but um but overall
it's a great church and i was i was happy to be a part of that church for the six months that we
were there and and then also too about like a month and a half or two months into our stay there
there was this guy named alexander barquez and this guy's a great guy you know he's he's an uip
guy he's been you know in our movement for many years now and and i had actually met him many
years ago back in 2019 whenever i was going to pastor logan robertson's church there and he's
from the island of mindenel which is where my wife is from anyway this guy basically came out
to palawan where we were at to basically come and help me do soul winning and to try to start
that business i was talking about and so i was really nice to him and i was and i'm really
thankful for him and and him coming out there to help us and so for the last like four months
i was there i was there with alex and we were going soul winning all the time and he was going
to and you know we were trying to start that business and whatnot we also started a youtube
channel as well that you guys should check out it's called the gospel for all nations
and i'm trying to keep it active but i've been pretty busy lately but anyway we talked about
you know all the soul winning that we were doing there and all that good stuff and and so we went
soul winning together for four months until i left and then you know i left because of financial
issues whatever came back to america but even after i left alex continued going soul winning
full time for the next two months after i even left and in fact he had one of his close friends
named elijah fernandez fly out there from minden now as well to go soul winning with him so he
didn't have to go soul winning by himself and they were continuing to try to work on that business
and stuff like that and so that happened for the next two months until the end of september
and then yeah we kind of gave up on the business and then they went back home and now they're
doing you know secular their secular job and just going soul winning whenever they can
and so that's great too but i want to talk about you know how many salvations we got so for the
time that i was there and then for the two months after i left and then they continued soul winning
all together we counted 1113 salvations for the entire time and so you know i'm really thankful
for this opportunity to have gone out there it just kind of seemed like it was the you know right
time in my life to go and try this and you know it was kind of just like a big experiment you
know i just wanted to see you know if we could just kind of make it work in a foreign country
for a little while and you know i'm thankful and i'm thankful for how it turned out i'm thankful
that the business actually failed and everything because i was i'm i'm 100 serious you know in
july we were ready to come back to america we were kind of we were kind of done out there you know
my wife she was like she was like oh i want to go back to the philippines and stuff then once we
got there you know it didn't take very long and she's like you know i miss america i want to go
back and uh and me too i was ready to come back uh even what even one of my daughters uh priscilla
she was like daddy i missed the arizona church i want to go back whatever you know and so yeah
we were all very ready to come back and so i'm really glad that everything worked out the way
that it did and i'm glad that we got all the salvations and everything and you know i i just
got back here to uh to church a couple of months ago and you know i left for six months i came back
and i think that our church right now is like the best that it's ever been you know i love our church
and um you know i came back and it just seems like we have such a great spirit now and we got
a lot of new people here and everything so i'm just super thankful to be back i'm super thankful
to be back for good and uh and then yeah it's really great to be back and so yeah thank you for
you know listening to what i had to say about us going to the philippines and in a few minutes
you know i'll be talking about um our cruise mission trip that we just took a couple weeks
ago so thank you so just uh real quick uh we're just going to count up the salvations and then
we'll sing a song and move on with the service here so just going back to monday and he's still
winning to report from monday all right i gotcha let me write that down okay anything else from
monday how about tuesday anything from tuesday gotcha anything else from tuesday uh there we go
is that is that a three all right anything else from tuesday and then today i don't think we got
a total at all so let's just go individual salvations from uh today okay got it so i don't
think we had any totals so if you got anybody save so okay i got the two there one one one okay
hang on one second okay so we got a one and a three and then a one in the back gotcha all right
any help me out because i'm not good at seeing sometimes so point or i still don't see it i
already got it guys all right anybody else that i'm missing all right very good keep up the great
work on soul winning are you leading our next song come on up as the plates go around we
will turn our bibles to first john chapter three and as brother dan comes to read the scripture
also i just wanted to say out in the lobby we've got a lot of great swag out there as far as the
sweatshirts water bottles visors hats all kinds of cool stuff bookmarks keychains you name it it's
out there now of course everything in our church is always free nothing's for sale so help yourself
to that just just only one per person right don't get like oh i got to get one of every color
you know so you know one sweatshirt per person one whatever and so obviously there's a limited
amount out there but it's all free so be sure to help yourself uh yes yeah and and uh the lanyards
are for all ages at first they were just giving them to adults but now at this time every man woman
boy and girl should get a lanyard did i lose the mic all right sorry but uh yeah every man woman
boy and girl gets a lanyard it's got the schedule uh and and so you can get those today tomorrow
whenever uh let's give a hand to all of the ladies who worked on the decorating what a great job they
did on the decorating so fantastic job with the decorations everything looks awesome and so yeah
get get your get your faithful word gear be sure to you know you know wear it for those pictures
to burn up social media with with all those pictures of you with your faithful word swag
and be sure to take your pictures up here in front of the cruise ship and everything and
for a split second people will think that you went on a really cool vacation
before they realized that it isn't real but actually you did go on a really cool vacation
to arizona to the missions conference so i think that that's about it so let's go
ahead and read our scripture first john chapter 3 the bible reads behold what manner of love the
father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of god therefore the world
knoweth us not because it knew him not beloved now are we the sons of god and it does not yet
appear what we shall be but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall
see him as he is and every man that hath this hope in him purified himself even as he is pure
whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law for sin is the transgression of the law and
you know that he was manifested to take away our sins and in him is no sin whosoever abideth in
him sinneth not whosoever sinneth has seen not have not seen him neither known him little children
let no man deceive you he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous he that
commits sin is of the devil for the devil sinneth from the beginning for this purpose the son of
god was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil whosoever is born of god
does not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of god
in this the children of god are manifest and the children of the devil whosoever doeth not righteousness
is not of god neither he that loveth not his brother for this is the message that she have
heard from the beginning that we should love one another not as cain who is of that wicked one and
slew his brother and wherefore slew he him because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous
marvel not my brethren if the world hates you we know that we have passed from death unto life
because we love the brethren he that loveth not his brother abideth in death whosoever hateth his
brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him hereby perceive
we the love of god because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the
brethren but whoso hath this world's good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his
bowels of compassion from him how dwelleth the love of god in him my little children let us not
love in word neither in tongue but in deed and in truth and hereby we know that we are of the truth
and shall assure our hearts before him for if our heart can condemn us god is greater than our heart
and knoweth all things beloved if our heart can condemn us not then have we confidence toward god
and whatsoever we ask we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that
are pleasing in his sight and this is his commandment that we should believe on the name of his son
jesus christ and love one another as he as he gave us commandment and he that keepeth his
commandments dwelleth in him and he and him and hereby we know it that he abides in us by the
spirit which he hath given us we just come before you tonight and we just lift up this service to
you lord and we just thank you that you've given us this time for this missions conference and we
just thank you for bringing everyone here safely lord we ask that you would just give them a
great time while they're here everyone that's visiting out of town and we just lift up brother
raymond cooper as he preaches to us tonight and shares with us about the bahamas and we just ask
you to guide him in the holy spirit and let us be those that would go where you want us to go lord
and be who you want us to be in your name we pray amen amen and once again i just want to say thank
you of course the pastor for this opportunity to preach at the missions conference for the third
year in a row now and so that's a great blessing and a great honor to be here and thank you all
for coming and and and showing up and everything and you know what i'll be preaching about tonight
is you know this big cruise mission trip that a few of us just did just a few weeks ago about
three weeks ago now we just went on this cruise mission trip you know and i want to start off by
saying you know in the same way that this conference is kind of like or a large part of this conference
is dedicated you know to our good friend kevin rove you know who passed a couple of months ago
you know in the same way you know this this cruise that we went on was you know we also were really
thinking about him and stuff because i want to point it out to you know maybe not everybody in
here knows this but you know the cruise mission trips was a hundred percent kevin's idea you know
kevin came up with this and and on it and you know this is kind of a funny story but i remember
whenever kevin came up with this it was about a year and a half ago i remember he came in to the
wednesday night church service he was just really excited about it he was talking about the cruise
mission trip idea and and he was telling me about it and i and i was just like i don't know about
that i was i was kind of i was kind of skeptical i started out kind of skeptical it just i don't
know i just didn't click you know in my brain yet and so i was like i don't know about this
but you know i am so thankful that i was wrong though you know i'm so thankful that we tried it
you know we've done these cruise mission trips for about a year now and they've just been nothing
but a huge success and we've gotten hundreds of people saved as a result of it and a hundred and
it was all you know kevin's idea and so you know and and i'm really thankful that kevin kind of
pushed me to sign up for one of these mission trips you know before he before he passed and
and this was in this cruise that we went on was actually the very first mission trip like right
after you know his passing and everything so it's a very emotional trip obviously you know we were
thinking about him a lot and you know it's supposed to be five of us who went but there were four but
there ended up being four of us so it was me and brother jimmy wright and of course lola and little
baby phoebe so it was us four that went on the trip and and this was my this was me and brother
wright's very first cruise mission trip and and for me it was just my first cruise in general i've
never been on a cruise brother brother wright's been on a cruise before but i had never been on
one and i want to ask i want to get a raise of hands who here has been on one of these cruise
mission trips over the past year or so okay so a few people but you know the majority of people
in here have not yet and so that was me as well i had no idea what to expect going into this cruise
mission trip and there were a lot of surprises you know mostly good surprises you know there
were a couple of things that you know um you know i didn't realize what's going to happen and stuff
and that's totally fine and so that's what i'm going to talk about in this uh sermon tonight
i'm uh the title of my sermon is an introduction to cruise missions an introduction to cruise
missions and this is primarily going to be you know aimed towards people who have not been on
a cruise yet or a cruise mission trip yet and so and i want to talk about you know some of the
details um some of the things that surprised me and i just kind of want to tell our story of
this cruise mission trip well it was an 11-day cruise and we went to seven different ports so
we went to seven different stops along the way and um but i will say this just just right off the
back i love cruise mission trips now so this was an amazing trip i am hooked i and i want to do a
lot more cruise mission trips in the future i started out skeptical but now man i love this
so um so anyway i want to start out by reading this bible verse here you're there in first john
chapter three and this verse really jumped off the page i mean a couple of months ago um you know
and it made me really think about these cruise mission trips that we've that we've been doing
lately because i was just reading this and it really stood out to me but look down if you would
at first john chapter three and verse number 17 and this is what the bible says it says but who so
hath this world's good and seeth his brother have need and shut it up his bowels of compassion from
him how dwelleth the love of god in him my little children let us not love in word neither in tongue
but in deed and in truth and i want to point out a couple of things in this verse first of all
you know god is not against us having good things you know in this life you know god is not against
us you know having nice things or being able to participate in nice experiences or to even use
you know the terminology here to have this world's good you know god is not against us
you know having this world's good and and you know a cruise if a cruise is not having this
world's good i don't i don't know what is you know what i mean because it's so nice it is
luxurious they give you you know all this food and you can just keep eating and eating and you
just eat for you know as much as you want and uh and you have nice lodging you know every single
morning you wake up and you're in a new beautiful country i mean it's really cool and so yeah i
mean if if that's not having this world's good then i really don't know what is um but you know
in this verse though you know we see that god doesn't mind us having this world's good you know
but there's a big caveat to that and it says that you know we still need to have compassion
on people who are you know are don't have you know the same things that we have right and have
compassion on people and you know to love and deed and in truth and the reason that this just
instantly made me think of the cruise mission trips that we're doing is because yeah you know
we've got this world's good we're going on this really nice super nice super luxurious cruise and
everything but you know we're not just doing it for a vacation or whatever we're going there to
preach the gospel to the people at those ports you know what i mean and we're there showing
compassion to the lost that are in these these locations and so you know i think that's a really
good way to look at this verse and again that just made me think of these cruise mission trips and
and so let me get into our story here so we all met in fort lauderdale when we left out from
florida this was about three or four weeks ago so this is very fresh this is this is new stuff here
and our trip was actually going on at the exact same time as the steadfast bahamas trip that we're
going to hear more about tomorrow and so that's going to come in later in the sermon so i just
want to point that out but um but we were let's see but we were on a princess cruise and what we
heard from this lady named penny and i'll talk more about her later is that princess is like top
of the line so out of all the cruises that you could go on you know it's like princess cruises
and celebrity cruises but according to penny princess is like much better than celebrity so
i mean i started out at the top you know i started out at the very best cruise that you can possibly
get is kind of what i thought and even though we were in we were on the smallest and oldest of
their ships that they got but hey that's okay you know it was it was awesome and i have nothing to
compare to anyway but but it was awesome and uh and and you know i learned i learned a lot of a lot
of cool stuff about sailing and things you know some of my favorite books that i read uh are like
old books about you know sailing and shipwrecks and pirates and stuff like that and so it was
just so cool to learn all these new vocabulary words like port and starboard and aft and gangway
and stuff i mean i've always read these books and i had no idea what they were even talking about
but now i know because i went on this cruise so that was kind of cool but anyway we left out from
fort lauderdale and our first full day on the on the cruise ship we woke up the next morning on
the cruise ship and the first day was a full day at sea and so you know we didn't we didn't land
anywhere we were just sailing for the entire first day and i will say this that would probably for me
you know never going on a cruise mission trip like this that probably wasn't like uh you know my
favorite way to start out this mission trip because you know i'm thinking about traditional mission
trips and usually you know as soon as we land you know hey we're soul winning or you know maybe the
very next day we're soul winning but here we had to wait for like two days after we landed uh in
order before we started soul winning but you know later on in the trip i started to really appreciate
those days at sea and i'll talk about that later but you know just starting out uh remember you
know at this time i was still kind of skeptical about these i don't like i don't know about this
i don't i don't like this day at sea or whatever there's no free wi-fi or whatever you know it's
probably going to be a boring day but it ended up being a great day you know we did they have all
kinds of different activities on board so we did like an origami class we did lots of trivia
trivia nights or whatever and um and we even saw a show there that was talking about life on board
and stuff so it was really cool and we ate a lot so we ate a lot of food and it was great and uh
and so you know not a boring day at all it's great a day at sea um go ahead and turn it over if you
would to Acts chapter 16 Acts chapter 16 but again that was kind of an adjustment coming from
you know like a regular style mission trip but the next day we arrived in our first location
which is the Turks and Caicos Islands and I've done a lot of research on this place before
um this is a territory of the UK and uh and the Bahamas you know is I believe it's the most
Baptist country in the entire world the Bahamas is with like 30 percent of their population is
Baptist or you know it's it's one of the like the top five you know most Baptist countries but Turks
and Caicos actually has a higher percentage of Baptists they have like 35 percent Baptist so
you know and we actually met a lot of Baptists that day so that was pretty cool but we landed
there and we landed on the island of Grand Turk and uh let me tell you you know there was there's
nothing grand about it you know it was it was a it was a very tiny island it was not a very cool
island there were donkeys everywhere we called it donkey island because there were just donkeys
everywhere and like everybody there either well a lot of them didn't speak English so there was a
lot of like Haitians there and Spanish speakers that had immigrated there but out of the people
who did speak spoke English uh the majority of them were just kind of drunk and they just didn't
really want to talk to us whatever and so it was kind of a rough day a rough first day you know um
it was and it was also kind of hard to find anybody too i think there's like 2 000 people
that live on this island it's a tiny island and there just wasn't a lot of people there um
but you know there were some cool things that happened i got a haitian guy saved i've never
gotten anybody from haiti saved before so that was pretty cool he spoke just enough english to
get saved and so we were talking about haiti we also met a haitian baptist pastor there as well
but he did not speak any english so we don't know what he said we don't know if he's saved or not
but haitian baptist guy okay a pastor and uh and then the funniest thing that happened that i have
to bring up is that we met this one crazy guy named gregory and uh and this guy was pretty crazy
so he was just this like this old black guy and he was like this tall and he was just following
us around as we were solding and um yeah this guy had lost his marbles you know this guy was
this guy was fried for sure so but you know but anyway basically you know he was he just really
liked lola he really wanted to talk to lola he just really liked her he was just like obsessed
with trying to talk to lola but lola was preaching the gospel over here so i was trying to distract
him and stuff so i was talking to him and um and then he wrote down his phone number and he's like
here give this to lola make sure she gets it whatever and i'm like okay dude whatever you know
but anyway i was like okay well while i'm trying to distract this guy i might as well try to preach
to him so i tried to get into the gospel but i did not get very far because i was about to quote
john 3 16 i was like you know john 3 16 says i was about to quote it but this guy he knew john 3 16
and he really knew john 3 16 because as soon as i said you know john 3 16 he just he just stops
everything he's and he just starts screaming it from the top of his lungs he's just like for god
so love the world that he was just so excited he was just like man and i was just like okay
this guy's crazy anyway but i eventually i left him and i went to go try to approach somebody else
and this made me mad and this is why we're in act chapter 16 we'll look at this in a minute
but you know i approached this one young lady she was like a teenager or whatever and i tried to
hand her a card you know did the whole thing and i asked her you know are you sure that you're
going to heaven and she said no i'm not sure and all of a sudden gregory shows up from like
10 feet away he just runs up and he's like what do you mean you don't know how to go to heaven
for god anyway he freaked out that lady that lady left and she didn't she won't talk to us anymore
and uh that made me really mad that reminded me of this of these verses in act chapter 16 look
down if you would at verse at verse number 16 act 16 did it blow up okay sorry yeah there you go
got gregory in here now i'm sorry anyway but you're there in act chapter 16 look down if
you would at verse 16 the bible says this and it came to pass as we went to prayer a certain damsel
possessed with the spirit of divination met us which brought her masters much gain by suesing
the same followed paul in us and cried saying these men are the servants of the most high god
which show unto us the way of salvation and this did she many days but paul being grieved turned
and said to the spirit i command thee in the name of jesus christ to come out of her and he came out
the same hour and so this is like the exact same situation that we were in where this guy you know
he's saying good stuff you know we all like john 3 16 but he's just being super annoying about it
he's just like messing us up as we're trying to preach to people and stuff and so yeah this
definitely reminded me of him and i'm not saying that the guy was you know demon possessed maybe
he was just drunk i don't know but you know he was he was yeah he was crazy and so this was not our
favorite spot and oh and i'll say this too so that guy the crazy guy gregory uh his brother did get
saved so that was the guy that lolo's preaching to was his brother and his brother was cool his
brother was normal his name was emerson so they get on their bicycles and emerson's like come on
gregor we got to go home and he's like no you can't tell me what to do or whatever you know
and he just kept he just kept following us around it was just it was very comical it was very funny
but um but anyway this was uh so so we kind of got off on a rough start this was not our
favorite location so you know we went sewing all day and we got four people saved today
which you know praise the lord for the people that got saved honestly hopefully it stays but um but
anyway we got four people saved so that was good but it was a full day of sewing and it was hot it
was sunny i got the worst sunburn of my entire life like a part of my nose fell off and stuff
it was really bad and because i'm i don't use sunscreen or whatever because i never get a
sunburn here in phoenix but you know i don't know if we were just closer to the equator and that's
why or whatever but anyway if you go on a cruise mission trip make sure you bring sunscreen or a
hat because that was very important but um but anyway this place was probably our least favorite
place for brother right specifically this was his least favorite spot for soul winning on the entire
trip because he preached he tried to preach this one lady who was like a repent of your sins lady
and as soon as he said that you don't have to repent of your sins to go to heaven she just
freaked out and just started yelling at him and cussing him out and stuff so um so this was his
personal least favorite spot for soul winning but it was also his favorite place for recreation as
well because they had a nice beach so we hung out at the beach a little bit but um but overall yeah
so not a great start now that night we went back to the ship and we ate at this fancy restaurant
called both the cellies that was on board on the ship and so how this works because i was confused
about this before going on the cruise but they'll have like the um the big buffet that's open you
know all day long and it's open till like 10 p.m at night then you could just go in there and grab
food anytime you want but they also have like free restaurants that are kind of fancy or whatever that
you can have for dinner and so we ended up going to this place Botecelli's every night and it was
really nice and we and we had the same waitress every night Miss Chona so she was very nice to us
and and that's one cool thing about Cruises too that I didn't realize is that you really get to
know these staff members that are there so you get to know them you know you talk to them every day
you kind of get to know their story a little bit and so it's kind of cool to um to be able to get
them get to know them uh because they're all from all around the world as well and uh and Lola
actually got a lady saving Jessica who is an English-speaking Nicaraguan lady so she's from
Nicaragua but she speaks English and uh Nicaragua is in Central America they mainly speak uh Spanish
but all up and down their Caribbean coast they they speak English there and so we actually had
several uh English-speaking Nicaraguans on our on our cruise ships so that was pretty cool to
to learn more about that and everything. Speaking of English speakers in uh Spanish-speaking countries
the next day we went to the Dominican Republic and this was one of my favorite spots this was
really cool but you know going but going into it though I had zero hope for me and brother Wright
because neither of us uh speak any Spanish whatsoever you know we don't speak it and uh and
you know the Dominican Republic is you know as Spanish-speaking place so but so anyway we arrived
we and I just figured we were going to be babysitting all day we're you know we were
going to be babysitting uh baby Phoebe while Lola's you know preaching or whatever anyway we get there
and we get to this big plaza area with lots of people around and Lola starts preaching the
gospel and I'm holding the baby and everything and I see brother Wright he's just walking over here
and I'm like okay cool you know you know he can go try yeah dude that sounds great but in my mind
I'm thinking we're not going to find anybody who speaks English here but anyway he walks up he
he approaches three different people and all of a sudden I see him pull out his Bible and he starts
preaching the gospel I'm like okay that's cool so he found an English speaker so I'm like okay well
let me see what I can do so I start looking around I see like a young young boy over here like 13 14
years old and I'll walk up to him and I just approached him in English you know didn't try
any Spanish and the kid spoke perfect English I mean it was perfect and and his name was Nathaniel
and he was extremely receptive and you know he got saved super easy but as I'm preaching to him
there's like an older lady that walks by and he waves at her and he says that's my English teacher
that's that's how I know English right now or whatever so I'm like amen thanks for that
English lady anyway after that so me and brother Wright we got two people saved an English parent
when we were pumped we were ready to go so we were like okay let's go over here to the university so
we went over to a big university and we were hanging out outside and we were catching students
as they walked by and the first person I walked up to boom English speaker got saved and then
you know we were we were talking to a lot of people and then we and then we made the mistake
me and brother Wright made the mistake of walking inside of the university and we walked inside it's
a big lobby with like 40 kids in there and then an angry teacher walks up to us and starts
basically kicking us out uh but in Spanish and you know I don't want to get kicked out or whatever
and so I'm just I'm just like no hablo espanol I don't know what do you want
and so she's frustrated she makes like an announcement hey does anybody here speak
English and so these two uh college you know students these two guys walk up and and they're
like yeah we speak English whatever and I give them the card and I tell them what we're doing
and he's like oh cool I'll watch your video but you know she's kicking you out right and I'm like
yeah I know we'll leave or whatever so anyway we walk out and me and brother writer just hanging
out outside and then 10 minutes later those two students that just kicked us out the two English
speakers walked up to us and they're like hey we just watched your video and it was really cool
and and man boom we preached them the gospel and they got saved as well so um so that was really
cool that that lady who kicked us out kind of filtered through the students to help us find the
English speakers so that was really cool and so anyway out of the 11 people that we got saved in
the Dominican Republic five of those were in English so that was really cool a great experience
there and I'm going to throw out some numbers here these are not um official or anything these
are just based off of what we saw but I would say that out of the young people