SPEAKER_00 0:01

So almost two years ago, I flew to Guatemala with a small team of people here from his hands with a purpose. And the purpose was to find a ministry that we we felt so connected to that we wanted to enter into a long-term partnership with them. As long-term as as it needed to be. I don't know if you've ever known someone who has big ideas, big dreams. If you know someone like that, sometimes it'd be really annoying people, right? Because they'll say things that are just crazy. And Jesus was like that. In fact, when when he gave what we call the Great Commission, right before he ascended to heaven, he told his disciples, this is Matthew chapter 28, he said, Go. Go to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, in our culture today, we have a phrase like going global. And that's a normal thing. Like I ordered something just the other day online, and it just so happened to be in the United Kingdom. And I'm actually sort of frustrated that it's not my house right now, you know? Because I'm like, I mean, guys, how hard is this to do, right? Just put it on a plane, fly it over the ocean, give it to whoever it needs to get to to get it to my house. Like, come on, what's taking so long? It's England, right? It's not even that far away. Because we live in a world where through technology, through everything that's happened over the last several centuries, we can be pretty global. When Jesus said, go to all nations, that concept was insane. What do you mean go to all nations? How in the world was was his group of followers this very small, very, very poor, uneducated, unconnected to anyone important? How in the world is that small group of people supposed to go global? In that culture, in that time, 2,000 years ago, you were unlikely to ever really go more than a few miles from where you were born. You couldn't. You had to work in your field just to have food to eat the next day. How in the world were you supposed to go a long distance, let alone go global? But Jesus told his disciples, I want you to take this message to every nation on the earth. And here we are 2,000 years later. And the name of Jesus is recognized, worshipped on every continent. So Jesus was an audacious dreamer, is an audacious dreamer. But his dreams have become reality. One of the things that blew me away when I met with this amazing group of people in Guatemala, part of this ministry centro that we work with, was the audacity of their dreams. They had dreams that far exceeded their resources. They had dreams that far exceeded what any what any rational person would tell them is possible. How many of us know that God rarely seems rational? There's so many stories in the Bible about that. Like a great one is the story of Abram. Abram's name meant father, and he had no children. And that's something he probably wore as shame. His name meant father, but he was unable to have children. And before he ever had his first child, God told him, I want you to change your name to Abraham, which means father of nations. So now Abraham has to change his name to father of nations, and he still has no children. God's a dreamer. And his dreams to us almost always seem irrational. Because there's no way, there's no way to do it, and there is no way to do it in our own strength. But with him, all things are possible. We went to Guatemala and we met with this incredible young woman named Mimi. That's what everyone calls her, is Mimi. She shared her her vision. And this vision is summed up in the scripture. Zechariah chapter 8. If you guys could put that on the screens, please. It says, the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play. In the part of Guatemala City where they live, in Pueblito, that is not possible. Because the streets are dangerous. There's violence, there's gang activity. Everywhere you turn. But their vision and their dream is to transform their community so that the streets are safe to play in again. So that children can go play. And I remember sitting in in this room, having just been immersed in the Guatemalan culture, some interesting things you'll notice if you ever go to Guatemala City is about every three or four storefronts there will be a man standing in front of it with a machine gun. That's how unsafe everything is. You want to go to McDonald's, there's a man standing in front of the McDonald's with a machine gun. That is McDonald's security. Can you imagine? Like we would call the police in our culture if there was a man sitting outside of McDonald's with a machine gun. But that's their security. Because the streets aren't safe. And they know they know that the way you change is through children. You change a generation. And so they work with hundreds and hundreds of children who live in extremely at-risk situations. I want to make sure before we invite them up on stage to share with us that we all understand the gist. I can't go into the details like they can, but the gist of what they actually do as a ministry. In Guatemala, the average person has about a third grade education in their area. If you make it through middle school, that would be our equivalent of a high school education. You make it through middle school, you could you can go and you know may maybe get a fairly decent job. Very, very few people ever graduate high school. Going to high school isn't free. It costs money. Very few people have the means by which to send their children to high school. They need their kids to go work and provide income. College is a pipe dream for most. But if you don't have an education in their culture, there's there's no way to move up. It just doesn't exist. The only hope that that you would have of of truly changing your family's entire uh history, destiny, would be to have someone that that has an education that can go and make a different life for themselves. But the odds are so stacked against the children in these communities that there's almost no way. See, it starts number one with the school system, very different than than our school system. If you could see the buildings that they call schools, you'd recognize that it's it's totally different than what you're picturing. The schools are incredibly overcrowded, class sizes are 60 plus, and the classrooms are smaller than the classrooms that that our kids are part of. And the way they have to work it out is that the same building is shared by the elementary, by the middle, by the high school. So they break it up during the day. So the elementary kids will be there for just a few hours in the morning, the middle school kids will go in the early afternoon for just a few hours. High school is at night, again, very few people do it, but it's it's in the evening. And what that that creates is this really interesting situation. Number one, it means that the children have the vast majority of their day unsupervised. Very few of them have what we would call normal parental supervision. Their parents have to go work all day long. Very often the children are being raised by teenagers. Adolescent pregnancy is prevalent in Guatemala. A few years ago, 25% of all children born were born to adolescent mothers. 25%. And so you have these children that have their entire day, and there's no one watching out for them, there's no one keeping them safe. They live in poverty, extreme poverty, and so eating is not a guarantee on any given day. And and if you're a if you're a five, six-year-old child on your own, and you don't know if you're gonna eat that day, just imagine the mindset that you have. Imagine how vulnerable you actually are, and this provides an incredible opportunity for the gangs in Guatemala. Because, see, gangs can can take a young child who's unsupervised, who's living in survival mode, and they can they can offer a few things that make that child feel safe, make that child's stomach feel full for a moment in exchange for something. And so the gangs recruit heavily among the young people. It's a very, very dangerous situation. And there's there's no help in sight. But God gave Mimi this vision to change that. And so Mimi has built currently four centers in Guatemala City. One of those is the center in Publito, which is the center that we specifically sponsor. And what they do, it's it's amazing. It's brilliant. I got to spend an entire day plus there, and it was it was awesome. Um, in the morning, all these kids will come into the center. And these are the kids who who aren't in school yet. They're gonna be in school a few hours later. And while they're waiting for their school time to start, they're instead of being unsupervised, instead of roaming the streets, instead of being unsafe, they're they're protected. They're they're loved. Guys, they're they are loved so deeply. They're tutored. Again, remember that the average education in Guatemala is third grade. And so if you're a parent, even a parent that's invested in your child, there's not much help you can offer them in school. So the dropout rate is astronomical because kids get behind. But but Centro comes in and they tutor these kids and they feed them. It's often the only meal those children are going to have that day. They feed them, they they educate them, they tutor them, they they do some really incredible extra things. They have like a computer lab, and these children can actually learn skills that they would never have an opportunity to learn, things we take for granted. But imagine being in a third world country and you don't know how to operate a computer, like what hope are you gonna have for a decent job? Things like that. They teach them those skills. They do things like music class, so the children have have a hobby, have something constructive to pour their time into. Something that they can be filled with passion and hope. It's it's amazing what they do. And then when those kids leave to go to school, the kids who just got out of school, who who would otherwise be unsupervised, vulnerable, hungry, they come to the center and they get fed and they get tutored and they get they get loved on, they get taught the word of God. They get poured into, they get protected. And so they're no longer on the streets. The high school students play a really interesting role because they're often the most educated in their community. If you're a high school student in Publito, you are one of the most educated people in your community. And so they actually give scholarships to high school students to tutor the kids during the day. So the high school students, they're not on the streets either. They've got something to do all day long while they wait for school to start. And through those sponsorships, they're able to pay for some of the school costs that allows these high school students to stay in high school because very often they can't afford to. Their families don't have the money. And they may want to graduate high school, they may have dreams for a better future, but if their family doesn't have the money to send them to school, they just have to let that go. But Central comes along and says, no, no, no, we will sponsor you and provide you with a scholarship so that you can stay in school, just tutor our kids during the day and go to school at night. And so they're seeing their tutors graduate, they're seeing some of their tutors go on to college, which is unheard of. I mean, it's unheard of in their community. They're changing things. There's there's over 200 children just at the Publito Center alone that come through their doors on a daily basis. And it's absolutely unbelievable. When our missions team went down there recently, they had hamburgers. That was their food that day, and they were like over the moon. Because this is this is like something that these kids never never get stuff like this. And that's because there's hundreds of you here who are currently sponsoring children in Guatemala. In fact, if you're a sponsor, would you mind raising your hand for just a moment if you're sponsoring a child in Guatemala? Can we hear it for everyone who's sponsoring a child? Awesome. It's awesome. They have a dream, and it's it's audacious. It doesn't match their resources, it doesn't match the history of their community, but it matches the heart of God. And so it's an honor for us to partner with them. Now, here in a moment, what I'd like to do is I'd like to bring some of them up on stage and have a few minutes for us to be able to hear directly from them, because remember, this is family. And we'll we'll talk together. But before they come on stage, and really as they do, they they brought a video with them that helps explain some of the things that I just talked about. That'll give you a little bit fuller of a picture of what it is they do every single day. And so if we want to play that video, and while that's happening, you guys can go ahead and make your way up here. Let's take a look at that. So there's this part in that video, every time I see it, I tear up. And it's just seeing a tree of life shirt at their center every single time. I don't know why it's a small little detail, but I first watched that, and there's this purple tree of life shirt on Lorena, and I'm like, man, that's it's amazing what God has done. And so we have some very special people here with us. Let me introduce you to uh a couple people you just saw on the video. Um, this is we call her Mimi. This is Mimi. Um say hey to Mimi.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

Hola, Jelista. Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And this is William. Everyone say hey to William. So William's a pastor and he uh is connected to the center. He's actually Mimi's brother-in-law and works very closely with the children and the community and the youth. Mimi's actually who runs all of the centers. Um, there's a woman you saw at the end of that video, Lorena. Lorena was not able to make it on the trip, but Lorena is who directly runs the center that we partner with. And so Mimi's her boss, basically. Um and we have a couple other people up here. We have Wendy, who uh works with Children's Hope Chefs, which is the missions organization in Guatemala. Um Wendy is from Guatemala, lives in Guatemala, and is directly on the ground there helping uh administer everything that we're doing with them, and she's gonna be translating for William, and then we have Jen, who you all have met, and Jen's gonna translate for uh for Mimi. All right? So here's what I'd like to do. I just want to ask you guys a few questions uh because they're all used to hearing me talk and uh and very often you know check out when I do. So um what I'd like is for them to hear directly from you. I did my best to explain the situation of your community and the children, but I think hearing it from you would be even more powerful. And so, Mimi, would you tell us a little bit about the challenges that your community faces and the challenges of the children?

SPEAKER_03 16:05

The families there, the children, 90% of the time they're by themselves. Because the parents have to go to work, so the oldest children, but when I say the oldest child, it could be a child of seven year old or eight year old, it has to be in charge of all their his or her siblings, so if somebody is sick, there's an accident, they need food, the brother or the sister has to figure it out what to do if he's a good sibling, but there's a lot of violence, and there's very lack of food, there's a lot of lack of food and then live in very small rooms. So there's a lot of challenges in their lives.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

So meanwhile we are trying to provide different good and healthy alternatives of life for our kids. Gang members are recruiting to our kids. So many of these kids uh go to one of the gang members because they provide protection to them and they feel they give them the love that they don't have in home. But all these uh favors that they receive for the gang members, they will need to pay for them. How can he be a pastor for all the staff that is part of uh the centers, uh the outreach centers?

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Mimi is in carga de todo lo logistico and administrativo.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

So Mimi is uh on charge about all the logistics and all the administrative parts. But my wife told me you need to be a pastor for all the staff. You need to be a pastor for them. And sometimes I need who be my pastor too. So that is a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Um Mimi, whenever I first met you, you you shared about a time where you almost you almost quit. Where it got it got too hard. I know that you faced tremendous challenges to do what God's called you to do. Could you tell us about some of the challenges that you have personally had to deal with?

SPEAKER_03 20:42

We've seen our little kids grow up, they're better, and then the gang kills them.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

But I say, God, I'm sure they're in heaven.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

So I thank you that they're not in jail but in heaven. And the transformation, we can see the transformation. There was nothing to give them to for food, there was no food to give. And I prayed to God and I said, God, you have to provide us with food. Because if I love them, I know that you love them even more. And God's answer arrived. There was one time there were little kids that live in a very dangerous area. And in the afternoon they have a celebration for the children's. Day. And then they played and then they ate. And that night there was a mud slide that fell on them. And somebody told me, Miss, your children are dead. And he didn't want, she did not want to go and stand where she where that happened. And they asked me to go recognize all the children's the bodies of all the kids. And that has been one of the hardest times in my life. And I said, God, I can't do this anymore. I don't have the strength to continue. The pain is too hard. I've always understood they're your children and you love them. And I just wanted to leave it all. And I remember in that prayer, Pastor Justin and Tessa and other members of the group came. And God gave me strength. And he showed me that we're part of the body of Christ. And there are no borders so we can work together. Thank you, Pastor Justin.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

So we we've had a really uh fun weekend with everybody. Um William, can you tell everyone what you did yesterday, yesterday evening?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Long, long time ago.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

But it was long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yes. So I was in Guatemala watching the TV. And I was watching how they did it in the stadium. And I looked the stadium so full of people. People were so excited with this. There are crazy dreams that God gives us. So dreaming, I said one day I will be there in that stadium doing this. So yesterday afternoon we had chance to go to the stadium and I had like this all the time. So even your more crazy dream, God is going to give you.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

And so I have complete faith that there will be no children left. In fact, um you guys can make it so that the second service feels horrible that they didn't come to the first, because there's no children left. All right. There's also some artwork outside, little little canvases that the children in Guatemala actually painted and brought to us. And if you want to buy one of those, it's $10. All that goes to them. But um but also as a church, we we give every month to their ministry. So, you know, in his hands, over 10% of what you give, we give away. Like we ask you, here's the truth. If this is your church, we ask you to give a percentage of your income to us every month. And we live that out. So like we don't we don't have access to 100% of our church income. We give over 10% of that away every single month. Part of that percentage giving is to Publito, and we're funding their vision plans and their ministry plans. On Friday night, we had an event called Canvas. And uh, quick show of hands, who was at Canvas on Friday night? All right, quite a few of you, but not everybody, and that's okay. Those of you not raising your hands, you're good. You're part of this, we're all part of this. And so Canvas this year was a fundraiser specifically for Publizo because they have some big dreams. They have dreams, like I said, that exceed their resources. And we felt very compelled at the beginning of the year that we needed to come alongside them in a big way. And so, Sheila, who's our care and outreach pastor and I, we had a meeting, man, this must have been five months ago. And you need to understand, and for context, the most we had ever raised at a Canvas before this was $20,000. But that's no joke, right? Like $20,000, when you can hand someone in need $20,000, that's to be celebrated. But God had given both Sheila and I the same number, and it was $50. We were praying for $50,000. And uh I want you guys to know that through Canvas on Friday night, we raised $100,000. And William and Mimi, there's a scripture in Luke, and we'll have it up on the screen, where Jesus says this, if you guys could put that up for them. They're probably crying in mish control. So but Jesus teaches, and it's a parable, and he's talking about these servants that are given an amount by their master. And the servants who do well, he says this he says, Well done, my good and faithful servant. Right? You've been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate together. And this is not the end of our support of Centro. And we're just a couple years in, but I believe you have been so faithful with what God has given you that this experience we're having this weekend is a chance for you to hear from God. Well done. Let's celebrate together. William, right? We're gonna celebrate. Oh, right. We are we're so proud of you, your family here. And we can't wait to have you back. Can we hear it? Big round of applause for William for Mimi for everybody. Actually, stoolman's a really bad nickname, so let's not do that. Um man, we have just a few, just a few minutes left. But I I was so impacted by my time with with William and with Mimi that I just wanted to share a few things. It I don't think it's a coincidence that they're here in the series at the time we're doing the series that we're doing right now. If you haven't been here for the last few weeks, we just started a series called A King in His Kingdom. And what we're doing is we are studying the central theme of Jesus' teachings. We're Jesus followers. And so we gotta we gotta be just as familiar with what Jesus said as we are with what he did. And he taught all the time. The teachings of Jesus are precious. They're literally the word of God. Like as literal as that could possibly mean. That's that's the teachings of Jesus. And the central theme of his teachings is the kingdom. He was always talking about it. Matthew 4.17, it says, from then on, which is early in his ministry, Jesus began going around and preaching, repent of your sins and turn to God, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He's always talking about the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is like this, the kingdom of God is like this. It's just constant. The kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom. One of the interesting things about this amazing group of people from Guatemala is it's taught me how different cultures can be.

unknown 31:23

Right?

SPEAKER_00 31:23

They have a different culture. Their culture values different things. Their culture has different celebrations, different experiences that we don't have. And it's been an honor to learn their culture. What Jesus is doing when he's teaching us about the kingdom is he's trying to teach us what the culture of the kingdom of heaven is like. It's a different culture. It has very different values, values so different that it's almost like upside down to us. And he spends all this time teaching us because we actually have to acclimate ourselves to a totally different culture. The kingdom of heaven has its own culture, its own values, its own language. We raised $100,000 through Canvas, but in their currency, that's about 720,000 Qs. Okay? That's that's what their currency is called, Qs. And so one of our dollars is a little over seven Qs. And so, you know, as far as their economy goes, it's it's like we we gave them $720,000 in our economy. And so, you know, Qs, it's a whole whole different currency, different cultures, they not only have different values, different celebrations, different languages, they have their own their own currency. And it got me thinking this weekend, like, what's the currency in the kingdom of heaven? And I don't I don't know if there is like an actual official currency, you know. I don't know if you get like a pouch of coins or something like that when you get there, but like But what I what I do know is that when you when you look at the life of Jesus, there are certain things that move him. If you wanted to think about it like currency, currency, money, it it purchases things, it gets things done. You can you can buy shares in an in a company, in an organization with money. Well, what what was it that bought shares in the heart of Jesus? Faith. Amen. That's exactly what it is. That man knows what he's talking about. If if there's a currency in the kingdom, it's faith. Jesus was moved by faith. In fact, there's only two times in Scripture where it says Jesus was amazed, which is a crazy thing. I've talked about this before. Like the idea of amazing Jesus. Can you imagine Jesus looking at you and saying, I'm blown away? He only did it twice, both connected to faith. Once was a negative. He was blown away. Scripture says he was amazed at the lack of faith that a community had. And because of their lack of faith, he was only able to do a few miracles there. You know, just a few miracles. There's another time where he's amazed at the amount of faith that this man has. And it's a man who actually has no business having faith in Jesus at all. It was a man that was an outsider, he was a Roman centurion, was not from the region that Jesus was from, had no reason to put his faith in anything connected to the Jewish faith, their Messiah, none of that. But but he had a person in his household who was sick. And he was probably stationed in the area that Jesus lived and heard about Jesus. So he went to Jesus and he said, I need you to heal my servant. And Jesus said, Okay, I'll do that. It's a very significant moment. The first time Jesus actually does something for someone beyond his community, giving us a picture that his mission was far, far greater than just his area. And so this man says, Great, thank you. And Jesus says, Take me to your home and I'll heal your servant. He says, Oh no, you don't have to go to my home. I know who you are. All you have to do is say the word and it's done. And Jesus was blown away. He says, he was amazed at the man's faith. He hadn't seen faith like that in all of Israel. Faith, it moves Jesus. It moves him. There's a story of Jesus coming down from a mountaintop. He took his three closest disciples up this mountain, had an incredible experience with them. Comes back down to find this huge group of people. People would always amass where Jesus was. They would bring their sick, they would bring people who were paralyzed, they would bring people who were demon-possessed. And if that's a weird thing to you, we just finished a series all about spiritual stuff like that. Encourage you to listen to it. But in their culture, that was really normal. That was normal language. Hey, this person's possessed. Sometimes I wish it was more normal in our language because there's people I've met who I'm like, I wish I could just tell people they're possessed, but I'm not allowed to say that. Everyone's gonna look at me weird, but I think they're possessed, but whatever. Like, you know, Jesus comes down and there's this person who's possessed, and the disciples who were at the bottom of the mountain were trying to get this thing gone and they couldn't do it. And then Jesus comes down and he's like, I got it. And just does it like it's nothing. You know, like it's nothing. And the disciples look at Jesus and they're like, Why couldn't we do it? And this is in Matthew, and here's what Jesus says. They say, Why couldn't we do this? It says the disciples, okay, yeah, where we go. No, no, go to uh Matthew, I think it's Matthew 16. So sorry, guys. You can never trust that I'm gonna go in order. That's just never gonna happen. Um, afterwards, Matthew 17, afterwards the disciples asked Jesus privacy privately, why couldn't we cast out that demon? And his answer is so interesting. You don't have enough faith. I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it would move. Nothing would be impossible. Nothing is impossible with faith. And what I want us to understand this morning, and what I, Mimi, William, want you to understand is that you are two of the wealthiest people I have ever met in my life. You are wealthy in the currency of the kingdom, you are rich in faith. And it's a challenge to me and to all of us. And my prayer from for my church, because these are my people, is that we would grow the kind of faith that you have. Because if you want to be wealthy in God's kingdom, what you need is faith. We have this tendency to dream in relation to our resources, and we have more resources than almost any group of people have ever had, but we dream and we allow our resources to be the limits of our dreams. They don't do that. William had the audacity to go to a person who owns a piece of property that they want to build a building on. And it's something that I believe we're gonna see happen in our partnership with them over the years. And they want to they want to build a building, they need land to do that. And so William had the audacity to go to this person who owns the land and ask for it and say, I know we will buy it from you, but I need you to not sell this land to anyone but us, to reserve it for us. And the person looked at William and said, Okay, well, what do you do you have any collateral? He said, Oh, I have nothing. And the man agreed to it. But they don't have nothing anymore. See, the faith came before the resources. And I believe for us, and I'm gonna wrap up with this, but I believe for us that there are many of us in the room who are waiting on a resource to appear so that we can take a step of faith. Maybe you've been saying for years that, hey, God, once you do this, then I'm gonna do this generous thing. I'm gonna do this big thing. I'm just waiting, God, for you to give me the resources so that I can do the thing that's on my heart. I want you to understand that that is not how the kingdom works. That is not how God's economy works. Faith comes before sight. And when you live by faith, and when you have the audacity to step out in faith and to act on your faith, before you see the resource come in, before it feels perfect, before it's comfortable, you will see God do things you could never imagine him doing. You could never imagine him doing. If you want to be wealthy in the kingdom, you want to have a lot of that currency, it's faith. And Mimi William, thank you for challenging my faith in the best possible way. And my prayers that all of us would would have faith like you. So thank you so much. We have two people that are about to be baptized, so that's exciting. And so, what I'd like to do right now is is to pray, and we're gonna we're gonna hang together and celebrate with them because God's kingdom keeps growing. Will you guys pray with me, please? Jesus, thank you so much for this special day. Thank you for every person that's here. Lord, thank you especially for our friends from Guatemala being with us for a chance to hear their heart directly from them. Lord, thank you for their passion. Thank you for the fact that despite facing so many challenges and having so much heartache, they refuse to quit growing and building your kingdom. God, make us like them. Lord, you've you've given us this community to minister to. This is where we are, this is where you've put us here at His hands. And we're gonna be just as faithful and just as diligent to grow your kingdom here in Cherokee County, Georgia, as they are in Publizo. And right now, Lord, we have two people that are saying yes to you, going all in. And that is uh that's something that that stirs our hearts like nothing else. And so, Lord, we commit as a church to pray for these people, to surround them with the support they need, to be here for them when challenges make their way known. We pray all this in your name, Jesus, amen.