A quick trip to Palawan

In this episode of Balancing the Christian Life, I talk about my missionary trip to the Philippines with two of my travel companions, mark McCrary and Wyatt Taylor. Welcome to Balancing the Christian Life. I'm Dr Kenny Embry. Join me as we discover how to view better Christians and people in the digital age. So what would it be like to be a missionary in a foreign land? This is a question I couldn't really answer until this past May. Mark McCrary is a friend and evangelist in the Louisville area. In one episode of the podcast I expressed an interest in doing some missionary work overseas. So when he was visiting in February, he asked me if I was serious or not. Yes, I was. So how about joining him on a trip to the Philippines in May? Okay, but I would need to have the time. I'd need Katie's blessing, I'd need the financing. So yes, but it was still a long shot. While we were eating at the Mexican restaurant, katie said she'd be fine if I went over to the Philippines, mostly because I was already out of work on my summer break. About a week later, I asked my congregation and my parents if they would be interested in financially supporting my trip overseas. My parents said yes and after a quick announcement at the congregation. The financing was all in place. About three months later I was on the first of four plane rides that would take me over 20 hours in the air to the island of Palawan, philippines. It was a hard trip, in many ways not anything I expected. I knew I would have culture shock, but I didn't really understand what that would be like. Nor was I prepared for the people I met. I wasn't expecting to be so impressed. I wasn't expecting to see the generosity or faith I saw and I wasn't expecting how much it would change me. The Philippines was a huge surprise. So after we got back I wanted to reconnect with the people I traveled with. One of the voices you'll hear is Mark McCrary. He and his wife Teresa have been working with the Douglas Hills congregation for over 20 years now. The other voice you'll hear is Wyatt Taylor. He also attends Douglas Hills. I've probably known Wyatt for about 20 years as well. He's been on the podcast a couple of other times talking about digital strategies he'd helped Douglas Hills implement, as well as a class program on grace he put together with Matt Henneke. Both of these are guys I love and respect. I can't be unbiased about either one, but one of the things I think you'll see is we definitely came away with different perspectives on this trip. I want you to listen to what impressed us about the people there and what surprised us about our own Christian walk. The danger here is like someone showing you their pictures of a recent trip. You don't know the people, so it could be boring. I hope it isn't, though. So, mark, let's start here. How did all of this get started?

The genesis of this journey that we went on goes back to the fact that our congregation at Douglas Hills in Louisville, Kentucky, support probably around 10 men on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. I think we support around 30 men in the Philippines altogether, but we haven't had someone go over to the Philippines from our congregation before. We support a lot of men over there. These are men a representative from our congregation has not met. Last year I agreed I would go. I was hesitant because it's a long, arduous trip. If you think about what the Apostle Paul went through, it sounds like a snowflake here. I also wanted to go with Teresa, and then we had to figure out where we were going, because the Philippines, that's a pretty big amount of territory. One of the ideas at one point was there are three major sections of the Philippines and we support men in all of those. In two weeks, go to each one of those, one of those spots, for three or four days, and that just became unreasonable and so finally it became let's just choose one of those. And another one of the big factors in the discussion was one of our primary contacts that we have a great deal of trust in is on the island of Palawan. If anyone's going to help us when we've never been to the Philippines before, go there and do it effectively. We needed him and that's Dario Belves. It's a wonderful gospel preacher. They're all wonderful gospel preachers there on the island. Once we decided, yeah, let's contact him, and he said hey, you, let me figure this thing out and I'll take care of it. That's all I need, right there, right. So that's how we decided upon Palawan. What made you nervous?

A lot of things. The long travel I mean this is the longest trip I've ever taken, a 15 hour flight is just a whole different ball game, and that was just one of the several flights we had to do. So just the discreet of the travel, going somewhere where the language is so different that worried me. The general health. I mean, go to a travel clinic and they shoot you with all kinds of shots because there's so many exotic things you could pick up while you're there. So will my body hold up? How will I adapt? How will the food go? So there were those things that are more physical and obvious type things, and also I've done some speaking at Douglas Hills and other churches in the area. I've done quite a bit of teaching here, Feel pretty comfortable in that sort of setting, but never spoken through a translator and just hadn't done this volume of speaking either. We'll probably talk here in a bit about what the schedule was like. But visiting churches every single day and speaking a couple of times a day was just a big change, step change for me and how much I would be speaking and teaching and stuff. So that was a challenge too.

How about you, mark? What made you nervous about this? Have you had an idea of what some of these things are going to be like? But you'd never been to the Philippines, had you?

No, I'd never been to the Philippines. I've been to Vietnam. I felt relatively comfortable, but still it had been a while. As much as I enjoyed having Teresa with me, going into a completely unknown environment with her and knowing that I'm responsible for her, that was a little bit of it I found the first time I went to Vietnam. You really feel a sense of otherness when you go to a place like that and you really understand how much you stand out. There's an otherness that you feel in the culture. Now, what I found surprising, in a good way, is how that otherness disappears when you're around God's people.

The conceptions I had about the Philippines before I went. I remembered growing up when people would go to the Philippines and then they come back and they talk about the 80 baptisms that they had done over there and that seemed very unreal to me and I felt like this was manufactured at some point or in some way. This was disingenuous. While we were there, we witnessed 106 baptisms and one of the things that I felt like while we were there is this for real. After about a week, I started learning some of the stories, because one of the guys that went to about 80% of the places we went, jason his son, was one of the kids that got baptized. We didn't convert him. His dad converted him and basically I felt like they were being baptized, partially because the Americans were there and partially because I had a very strong suspicion. Every place we went, this was probably the largest number of people they'd had in that building for a while and if they were going to get baptized where their friends and their family could see them, this was the perfect opportunity for that. Just understand that. Do you see what I'm saying?

I was not prepared for the number of baptisms either. Coming from our culture, I was a little taken back by that. I think the way you explained it a moment ago, though, is exactly right. We have to understand. We're used to the idea of people being moved by the service or the sermon and making. When they stepped into the building, they did not know they were going to be baptized, and now, after they heard the lesson, they decided to be baptized. That's what we're used to, at least that's what preachers dream about, but I think the environment there, as you put it, the environment is that these people are already ready. They came there because they can't readily travel. Most of the church buildings were near a water source, because they needed a place to baptize. Sometimes there was a water source readily available. There was a baptistry there, but most of the time it's a creek of some kind or the ocean. There were two occasions there were the ocean, but even though it's a long sand island, it's not easy for people to get to a water source where they could be baptized. Most people walked at least the places where we went. Most people walked to get to where they would assemble. One of the things we have to understand is what they did. There is a lot of times they made the decision hey, we're going to get together soon and we're going to make this journey to where the Christians are meeting. Do you want to be baptized? Yes, I do want to be baptized, right, okay, we'll take care of it.

Yeah, I think, like you guys, I wasn't quite prepared for it either. You read these stories, the volume and stuff. My expectation maybe was, as Mark was saying, that it's people who are spontaneously responding to the gospel, and instead it was probably 80 or so percent of those were young people from the family among the families of the church.

Yeah.

And so clearly there had been a lot of background teaching and stuff that had happened long before. It wasn't like just a spontaneous. It didn't feel as spontaneous as we might have expected. But to Mark's point, I think there's some reasons for that, culturally and given the conditions and stuff. So that took a little bit to get my head around. I think Again you're dealing with a different culture.

So we came there with the inherent lens of an American culture. Yes, what we perceived as what almost looked manufactured is still very genuine. These are young people who had made the decision to commit to Christ, and it took me I had to really work through that process. It's just not easy for them to get to where they need to go to be baptized. There are just a few miles away from the ocean. Some of the spots we were at were like 10 or 15 miles away from the ocean, right, but you got to walk. A lot of people walked or you have to walk to the water source, so it's not as easy as jumping in your car and driving to the church building and getting into the baptistry. Yeah, so it was different, but it was still genuine.

Yeah, and I think the other thing that's a little bit different too is just and we'll talk some probably later about the nature of the schedule so we were visiting 17, I think it was different churches, a couple of them a day. It wasn't like we were standing on street corners speaking to the quote unquote, un-churched, it was a different type of audience. So that was another thing I think made it a little in terms of who was likely to be responding Right. It would have been easier, I think, if we'd had time in that schedule to sit down with some of those folks and have some more conversation. But obviously with the language barrier it wasn't super easy to have much conversation with a lot of them and the time made it we were moving from one place to another. It made it a little harder.

The other thing that I walked away from was the realization that Christianity is not difficult either to understand or to obey, and I think one of the things that you guys have talked about the cultural difference, and I could not agree more. But one of the things that I would say is, in this culture, when it comes to religion, we have a very skeptical stance on what it means to be religious. As a matter of fact, I would say many people have a pessimistic stance when it comes to religion. A lot of these were younger. They were 10, 11, 12. But one of the things that I remember and again, we met these people for a very short amount of time, but we would get their back stories, usually at the meal afterwards, we learned that one was the housekeeper of somebody that was there. We didn't know them, but they had been pulling for this girl to be baptized for a while, and every one of these there was a story that I wanted to have, that I wanted to know. I started recognizing each one of them has a story. I'm just a small part of that story. As a matter of fact, I'm just one of the guys that was speaking when they decided to get baptized. We were divided up. Wyatt and I mostly wrote with a guy named Jonathan Sapatula. Mark and Kimberly and Theresa wrote in a card with Dario. I got to know Jonathan's story and one of the things that I asked Jonathan was these seemed like really young kids that are getting baptized and Jonathan said I was 9. And that struck me. One of the things that impressed me while I was there was how committed and how godly Jonathan was. In the United States I think we would probably be a little bit skeptical, Mm-hmm. But while I was there I started Feeling a little bit of shame with the of my skepticism. You see what I'm saying.

Oh, yes, certainly. And how would you say Jonathan? Yes, I would say 50, I.

Asked him and I cannot remember. Uh-huh, I want to say he was close to 60.

Yeah, he was serving as an elder in the congregation. We's where he was at. He was baptized at nine years old and now, at 50 plus, he is traveling around the island preaching the word of God, serving as an elder. It's not our place to question whether someone nine, ten, eleven years old is ready to become a Christian. Obviously, in his case, it shows they very well can be ready to become a child of God.

I suspect as well that the young people there grow up a little bit differently, have a grow up a little bit faster.

Yeah, and they do in the.

US and did they do in our churches today? That would not surprise me at all either.

So, again, there's a recognition that you have to have, if you're doing this type of work, that you're going into a completely Different culture and we cannot bring our American sensibilities with us and view their culture through the lens of our American experiences.

I see what you're saying, but here's the pushback, which is what culture are we going to bring with us? Otherwise, we only have one. The obvious point that you're trying to make is you need to recognize that we are bringing baggage with us, right, and the thing is, we, of course we're going to bring baggage with us. If they were to come to the United States, they would be bringing Philippine baggage. Yeah, you can't avoid the bias, you can't avoid your, your own culture, you can't avoid culture shock. Just recognize it and appreciate, right, that this is different than what you're used to. You see what I'm saying.

Oh, yes, 100% yeah, no, just the flip side of that, though is I think you mentioned it a bit earlier it's just a universality of the gospel message, to right it's. It caused me to think a little more about what's essential to our faith into the gospel and do a lot more thinking about that than maybe I ever had. Because you walk in, we had church, what we think of as a church service, and you know there's singing and there's prayer, and, and then there's a lesson. The construct of it, the order of it, the formality of it, well, very different than what we're used to in an American setting and Causes you to go yet some at some time raise an eyebrow sometimes to go huh, that's with that, fly back home. Then you realize that what you're bumping against is tradition. It's not the essentials of worship, it's not the essentials of the faith. It just causes you to look at that a lot. It caused me to look at that a lot differently.

We've alluded to the schedule, so let's just talk about the schedule. We were there basically for about ten full days. The first day we got in, we know more than landed than we were on the radio, right? Why don't you explain what a typical day was while we were there?

So we started the first night with the radio program. But really the typical day once we got going and once we got out of the city was we start with. Maybe travel from whatever hotel we were at might take us a little bit. To get to the first church we would have a bit of a service stage, sing a song or two, we'd have a prayer and then Launch into the lessons. So each of us would speak in turn. We were trying to keep our lessons going through. The translators took it to, obviously takes a little more time trying to Keep them to 30 ish minutes or so, and then, once we all three had spoken, we'd have an invitation and that's when folks would come forward. Often that led to us going from that place to wherever the water source was for some baptisms and then we come back for a Bible study. So mark was doing a study at each location about eldership, and so we do that, and then Afterwards we might have a bit of lunch and then head on to the next congregation. Another bit of travel to wherever that needed to be and a similar Sort of process at the next, repeat the same thing and may first some pretty full days, yeah. But and a lot of speaking where we're wearing us out.

I've been blessed on two other occasions to travel Overseas on submission work with a group of Christians. It's extremely enjoyable, especially when these are your brethren, they'll and your love, and On those occasions we would be busy during the day and we brought some cards and stuff to play at night. So we gather in so much room and just play for a while. It just relaxed a little bit and just unwind, and I thought we'll be able to do that again here all of us. That's how we got to the hotel. After we ate supper. Everybody was wiped out. It was every day for ten days. There wasn't a single day where we rested, and I'm not saying which, I wonder if we are. That was the schedule that Dario created for us. Thanks a lot, dario. It was brutal. For ten days we were hitting, except for two days where in the afternoon we were traveling someplace, in the morning we were traveling someplace. For those ten days we were hitting two churches every day and Traveling hour and a half, two hours between those churches, all three of us Speaking for as wide so 30, 40 minutes, and it was by the time the evening came We'd get into our hotel rooms and I'm gonna like, hey, is anyone anyone want to play any cards? And they were just down. I'm glad I don't play cards either.

I'm tired. The reason that we were speaking to so many churches was something you made an illusion to already when I gave the report back to the congregation where I attend. One of the things that I said was these are congregations without parking lots. These are not places where people are driving to church. These are places where people are walking to church. One of the things that I that Dario told me before we got there is there are well over a hundred congregations on the island of Palawan, and that just floored me. I was like, wow, that many. But then when you started seeing what these congregations looked like, these were congregations. That were they. Some of them look like makeshift structures. In other words, they were put together very quickly. Some of them were cement block. We went to one congregation where a corrugated steel roof and a thunderstorm Made it almost impossible for us to hear anybody. Mark and I pivoted. I think you talked about the flood. Is that right? Yeah, no one. The flood, yeah. And I think I talked about Zacchaeus.

We walked into that building and it's just full of kids, yeah, and I'm talking about five, six, seven year old time. Yeah, part of that pivot was the weather, but it's okay we can't talk to them about what we were planning on speaking on because that's maybe a little higher than they're ready.

But we gotta have a like a Bible class level study here this was one of my favorite moments from the trip because I was up first we got to that congregation and Right as we're getting into services starting, the range is opens up. You can't hear anything anyway. And then mark calls me over to where mark and Kenny are sitting and he says look around at your audience. They're all kids know your crowd. Do something basic. And here I am. I had prepared a lesson on the day of the lord and I'm not ready to pit like I'm not as seasoned as you guys are. I'm like I don't have a lesson up my sleeve on Zacchaeus like Kenny did. So I was. I'm just gonna roll with it and, let's face it, they're not gonna hear a lot of it anyway.

I bet he terrified, so it's the right.

Yeah, just scared to death. And then here comes mark with the flood. Actually it's gonna all get a flood.

I Think the nature of the congregations themselves was something that I was not. Again, I wasn't sure what I, what I should be prepared for. The reason that Dario had us go To so many different places is most of those people did not have the means to come to us. These are people who are not driving to church, but Dario has a means of getting to these churches and Jonathan had a means to get to these churches and there were a handful of I would say mostly evangelists who would take their family of four or five and put it on a motorcycle and then go to the next place we went. I think that's the other thing that surprised me a lot. These were roads that you could tell that they had cars in mind, but for every car that I saw, I'd be willing to bet that I saw a thousand motorcycles yeah, maybe more and these are places that the major mode of transportation if you have one, is a motorcycle and that is a family vehicle.

I think one of the things that really struck me on the trip and why it touched on this a moment ago. We tend to think, because this is our culture, that Christianity has certain checkpoints a church building, air conditioning, a comfortable pews, a paid parking lot, everybody dresses up, everyone comes and watches Just to a sermon was a PowerPoint presentation, and I'm not knocking any of those things, but they're not what Christianity is about. Christianity is about what we saw over there. It's about people living their lives committed to the Lord, struggling sometimes to be faithful, facing challenges that at this present time in our country we don't have. But that's their life, but they're faithful. You said this a moment ago, kenny. I was just amazed, with the exception of maybe a couple of places, whenever we would go, the building which is Cinderblocks, maybe Bamboo, but the building that we met in was filled with people and in several locations locations people were outside the windows. There were 150 people sometimes at these places and they did walk there, some walk with a cane. I'm amazed sometimes that the faith I see in my brethren over here, that's real faith. They don't have all the conveniences that we have, but they're there because they've got faith and that's what humbled me, just the genuineness of Christianity and what it can do to people when they recognize that they serve a God who loves him and Christ dives with them, and what they're willing to go through that quite honestly. Let's be honest, it's that difficult for us. It rains a lot here and some people go. I don't want to get out tonight. It rains there. They just keep walking.

And the thought I had of Mark was talking about. Some of the things we're used to here come along with our faith and the worship, and one of them that I thought, if you didn't mention, is just, you, respect everybody has a songbook and everybody has their Bible out. When you're speaking and you say let's read from this passage, and they all turn there. We're in a lot of Bibles in people's hands at these places. You kind of wonder why that is the first day or so, and then it hits you. There's not a high literacy rate. In a lot of these places, especially outside of the city, some of these village places, I don't think there wasn't exceptionally high literacy rate and that means a Bible would be nothing to them. So the baseline is different. That doesn't mean their faith is any less to Marchpoint Means. It's much more really. But it does change too the way you need to deliver a lesson, and I realized that a lot of my lessons are very focused on individual word and the meaning of words and stuff and so you need to zoom back out to just thinking about the gospel at large.

What was the blessing of all this? I think that's an interesting question and interesting word Brethren sometimes they are always well intended when they say this, but what do brethren oftentimes say when it comes to our time and our assemblies, where we take up the collection, we're a very blessed country. I hear that quite often. The implication is unintentional, but the implication, I think, is still there. If you're not as rich as America, you're not blessed. I started thinking that's not the message when I go to these places and I see these brethren who are faithful. That's not the message that we need to communicate. We are fortunate in America and it's not by chance. A lot of hard work has brought our country and our economy to the point where it is. But God blesses other people in other countries as well, and he blesses Christians in other countries. And one of the things that hit me is I don't want to ever look at brethren who are serving the Lord from other countries imply in any way that they're not blessed by God and that if you come to America then you're blessed by God. No, I had to redefine what it means to be blessed. We're fortunate here. God has, I think, worked in our American experience, but just because people don't have what we have doesn't mean they're not blessed. So that was one thing that I thought about a lot during the course of the trip. I need to read, I need to work on how I speak of what I define as the blessings here, which are blessings, but I need to be careful not to imply in any way that we're blessed and others aren't.

So that's a really good point. I think for me part of the blessing is seeing God's providence and it goes a little bit to my story how I ended up on this trip. Mark and I had talked a little bit about it going back into last year, beginning of the year maybe. At the time I had a lot going on at work and I just thought there's no way I could take that kind of time off. It's just not going to work for me, and so I told him I couldn't do it. I was interested in doing it. Maybe next year we could do it. Then one day in March I found out from my employer that I was being laid off. There was fortunately a bit of a severance package to see me by for a few months and suddenly my schedule head opened up just in the window when this trip was going to be taking place and my wife pointed out that there's some providential timing to that and this is something I had been wanting to do for a while. To try this type of a challenge and experience felt like for my faith it would be good. The fact that the trip could even happen and I could go along felt providential to me. And then, as we talked about at the beginning, there's lots of things I was nervous about, all the physical things I was nervous about. None of those ultimately really became a challenge at all. The food was good, we did good, we were relatively comfortable throughout, considering the conditions. So all that I felt like the good hand of our God was upon. I just felt that in a different way than I ever had. It just felt like we were being. All the travel arrangements basically went to plan, whereas you hear these horror stories about that not happening. So a lot of that. And then just felt like I was in the right place open my eyes to see things in a different way, to see faith in a different way, to see things more stripped down to the core of the gospel, to make myself learn and get comfortable with just a simple gospel message instead of the kind of lessons I was used to doing. So just a lot of it felt providential to me.

And then why tell about the providence of God in your life, with your employment?

I'd interviewed a couple of places, felt a little bit of a risk to take a couple of weeks away in the midst of what should be a job search, but I thought this is where I need to be. God will provide it. It'll be fine. The day we go to leave, I got a text from a former colleague said hey, send your resume to this other former colleague of ours. They're looking for somebody at her company. And so I did and we tried to get together and interview that day. It didn't really work and they said no, it's fine, we're not going to hire anybody, so you get back. So I got back, restarted that conversation. That ended up being where I landed by the end of June. I had a job and it was exactly what I was looking for. So it just ended up like the timing was perfect, that I was available when they needed me. I got to take. This trip felt very providential. The timing of everything.

I just find that remarkable and fake building when I look at how the Lord opened up that opportunity for you. Your severance package covered you through that whole point and God brought in this job. And yeah, it's when Mark started, right when I needed it. So, kenny, what did you?

get out of it. First of all, I began to see that some of the things that we call blessings here can be curses. Some of the things that I was worried about and were things like what kind of toilets are they going to have over there? I was worried about what kind of sleeping accommodations we were going to have over there. I was worried about air conditioning and, let me be very clear, I still am worried about those things. I'm a creature of comfort. We were often living in luxury and that we would visit people and I could not imagine living the way that they do, but they were happy. Not only were they happy, they were thriving. They were generous. I'm a low carb beater. I try to avoid basically all carbs, so every meal that we had was rice, white rice and a little bit more rice with Coca-Cola. One of the things that I remember was how much they had prepared for us. What an extravagance, because most of the places that we went, the people that were there would get box lunches. We got freshly made food from our hosts. Their sense of generosity was overwhelming and they were taking care of us. I think all of us could learn from the generosity to the Filipinos, because I think they really went above and beyond in a way that I could not have foreseen, especially when I came back to the United States and did a little bit of research about the annual income of somebody there and I started recognizing these are people that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, wealthy Not by our standards, not by our standards, no, and not by the world economic standards either. But that said, income did not affect their happiness, did not affect their spirituality and did not affect their generosity. That's something that put me to shame.

I appreciated that. They seemed to really care to make us comfortable. You mentioned the Cokes, like after day one, and Jonathan and his wife realized that I liked, like I appreciated the Coke because it was a taste of home. They made sure they had a cooler stock of Cokes in the back of that trunk and always had one at once. Like the little things like that. They really went out of their way to take care of us.

That brings up another lesson I learned from them the power and the necessity of encouragement, because it costs a lot of money to go over there. Yeah, and we talked about how we're not staying at any one place for very long. We're just basically going in preaching some lessons and believing and set the most effective way to do that and we're bringing again our American sensibilities into them and evaluating it and we're thinking maybe in the future would be more effective if we did something else. I was talking to Dario Belvez later, our contact there on Palau and the main contact we had. Maybe this isn't the most effective way to have. In our case we had six people going over there.

Yeah.

If you're looking at three to four thousand dollars a person, that's a lot of money. Is it worth it? Dario said the people are encouraged when people come to see them. They're strengthened when someone comes over, even if they're there for a couple of hours and while the practical side of me thinks well, that's not really the best way to use that money. If these brethren are encouraged, that was money well spent. Not only are they encouraged, but we're all expressing the fact. We were encouraged by it. My wife and I'll say this now because she was offered the opportunity to be here with us and she declined it. So now I can say whatever I want to about her, because she can't stop me. She taught a ladies class in every congregation that we went to and she made contacts with a lot of these young women and they were taking pictures of her, of themselves with her, at every place and then on Facebook. As we befriended a lot of these young women, she said half the pictures. She made an impact in just a short lesson that she came in, delivered, was kind to them, they were kind to us and then she left, but that made an impact. There are things that we do and we can do every day, that we don't realize how powerful those things are to other people. We're an American, we're in pretty solid churches and we think we've got this whole Christianity thing down. And I go over there and I start thinking, wow, I need to rethink some things.

Yeah, I'm glad you make that point too Just the value I thought we might be bringing when we went over there in terms of we've dairy eucutus gospel messages and so you thought we might be bringing that message to people who maybe who hadn't heard it. But I think in retrospect the value we probably brought as much as anything was just in bringing some encouragement to the churches there. And as the trip went on and we realized that I think the messages that we were delivering shifted a little bit in focus to being just more of perseverance and kind of general encouragement lessons.

The other thing that I was just really blown away by while we were there, one of the preachers lost his 18 year old son. There was a genuine outpouring of emotion, like there always is an outpouring of emotion when somebody loses a loved one. But what I saw happen next was all of the men that we were traveling with would sneak off while we were speaking to go be with him, and they'd come back. There was a tight knit community there that I couldn't help but be a little bit jealous about.

I was thinking something similar. Is you get the sense that the community aspect of their churches was a bit stronger than what? I think that's really been shaking a lot in recent years and the fact that we're so spread across geographies. Everybody drives a good ways to get to church and it's great when we're together, but how much time do we spend together outside of those sort of standard meeting times? I mean, the example you give is a good one because you let you see outside of just the regular worship times how they interact as a community. But I did get the same sort of sense that there's a stronger bond, a stronger bit of sharing life together, than maybe we sometimes see in our own experience here.

I would add as well that it's not just that people aren't willing to step into other people's lives. I saw a willingness to let people step into their lives, and a lot of times I see brethren here who want to help and someone's going oh no, I don't need that. I don't have a need and I'm not judging. I'm just saying that sometimes we don't let other people help us. And there not only were brethren willing to step in, but Brother Suye. He was willing to let people come in that very painful moment and be there and appreciate the strength that they were trying to give him, and they did give him.

Yeah, I think the word you used earlier maybe to describe just the culture in general. It's a generalization, but it felt like it's a very humble people.

I would like to commend you two guys. I went with my wife. I've done this sort of thing before. You guys had not. You guys both were willing to, for 12 days, be away from your family Although, kitty, you're a college professor. Why, as you said earlier, this is not your wheelhouse To step into an environment where you're going to do something very different from what either one of you guys have done before. Teresa is not the type of person who is quick to jump up and assume a public position in any way whatsoever. She's very comfortable doing things behind the scenes, serving people. But when she was asked to teach a class, it was like, okay, I'll do it. And then Kimberly Lambert, who went with us as well. She and Teresa are good friends. That happened because she was over at the house one night and Teresa and she were exercising and Teresa was talking about the trip and she just said, well, could I go? She was just looking for an opportunity to do something and she went at a great deal of personal sacrifice because she paid her own way to go over there. She went over and encouraged the brethren. That meant a lot to me. I'm just expressing it to all you guys. I enjoyed going with you guys on a personal level because we're all good friends, but I appreciate the sacrifice. I'm a preacher sort of what I do and I've been blessed to go to some places that prepared me for this. You guys are full-time gospel preachers but you're just willing to go and I really appreciated that.

Thank you. I'll second the bit about the ladies as well. When you talk about rock stars, they were immediately beloved and I was so glad that we had them with us and that they had an opportunity to do a ladies class. You could tell how much to the women at those congregations. They just loved Teresa. And we got back had dozens of friend connections on Facebook from folks over there and you're right, Teresa shows up in a lot of those pictures. She was very much loved. So, yeah, I mean I'm very impressed with that. And I'll just say about yes, you're a full-time preacher and it's your gig to some extent, but that was quite a chore. You're leading us on this. You were teaching the sermons like we were doing, but also doing that men's study on elders in 15, 16, 17 different locations and doing it with as much enthusiasm every time and you never flagged and you're very adaptable and roll with the punches through a lot of the things that come up on trips like this. So I appreciate it. You made it very easy to travel with you and kind of help us along too. I think I had a lot of questions, followed your lead on a lot of stuff, so I appreciate it having you there Another one of the things I meant to say earlier, just talking about the providence of it. I had wanted to do a trip like this but I never imagined I could have done it with four other people that I know. And to have that sort of support system while we're traveling was just awesome. And, Mark, you and I have known each other for years and it just was so great to have you on that trip to be the front man and to give us some guidance and help us.

If somebody was wanting to help people over there, what would you tell them?

We were greatly benefited by the fact that Dario Belvez, who is a preacher there on Palau and in Porta Princessa City, his presence has shelt throughout the island. He travels all around. Jonathan also, as you mentioned earlier, is another one, but Dario in particular was someone who is so in touch with the people there and so, I mentioned earlier, he took the reins when I contacted him. We're thinking about coming. How do we go about finding hotels to stay in? How do we contact the brethren? He was just like I got it Let me take care of this and having someone who's native to the spot so organizing everything, which is very helpful. So I guess the first thing is you've got to find a Dario Belbez. Okay, you've got to find someone there, because I can't imagine how difficult it would be to go some place and not know somebody there to organize it. So if there's a church that's thinking or a Christian who's thinking about going someplace, if you're thinking about the Philippines, contact me, because we support about 30 different men all around the Philippines on the three major islands. There are a lot of different islands, but it's the three major land masses there I can find someone where you're going. That would be a good contact for you. I've already had one church in the Tampa area, by the way, reach out because they're wanting to do more work in the Philippines and just asking a lot of questions because we've been involved in the work in the Philippines for quite a while. If it's some other place that you're thinking about going, find someone who is going there and talk to them. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.

Not to say that money is not important, but just that the value of the interactions and the encouragement meant a lot. There's definitely a need for and Daria and some of the others expressed this as well even some of the preachers could use more training, more teaching and more guidance and mentoring and stuff. The opportunity is there and that would be something I hope that we can find a way to facilitate in some way. I don't know that it's a matter of necessarily throwing money at it. How can we find ways to encourage? I don't know that. I have any other specific advice. I felt like I was very fortunate that this was laid out so easy. For me, it was basically just booking it and tagging along. So to Mark's point, daria really had it set up well.

I think one of the things that I would say and this is something that came up in my conversation with Alan Malone that really became underscored. I think for many people in the United States, money is the easiest thing for us to give and it's the easiest way for us, in our minds, to make the most amount of good happen. But one of the things that I began to realize while I was over there was how dangerous it is to simply spread a lot of money around. I think one of the things that Alan talked about was that in Acts they talk about sending messengers to take money and really the idea behind that being or at least part of the idea behind that being find your Darius, find your Jonathan's, find the people who are not going to hold on to that money, but to distribute that money in such a way that it will do the most amount of good, because you're not that person, you don't know what's going on in that area. And even then, one of the things that I worry about and this is just me saying this when people get access to a lot of money, it can change them, and I think one of the things that's important to see is that you're giving people, that you're giving money to people of proven character, that people who have already done, and that's the idea of both the parables of the meanest and the parables of the talents the one that was given much, that did the most good, was given more, and the one who did nothing was the one who had everything taken away. I think that the important thing to understand is, first and foremost, the people, and then start talking about finances, because money can be a very dangerous thing. That said, I've sent a little bit of money over there since I've been home, because I felt like I knew some of the guys that would do well with it. We traveled with basically five guys that went everywhere with us. It was Dario and Jonathan Saffatula, and then we had Henry Lim, who was just a hoot. He was one of our translator, and Mark had some story about a chainsaw and Mark did his chainsaw. And then Henry Lim man, he sold it. He sold the chainsaw story. And then we had Brother Manny, who was an older man and a very impish little older man, and then we would usually have Jonathan's wife. Those were the people that were traveling the most with us.

And there were a lot of people from other congregations that would travel from congregation to congregation with the group.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. One of the guys I talked about very briefly, jason, and so many of the other evangelists in that area. That was very impressive to me and, granted, it's a two week relationship that I developed with these people and that's not long. I was as impressed as I could be with some of those guys in two weeks. Were they putting on airs? Were they putting on a front? I find it hard to believe that. That would be difficult to believe for me, but I guess it's possible. But I do feel like I would trust them with some, and so I think, if I was going to be giving advice, I would first of all say develop relationships, and once you develop those relationships, then start figuring out how you can help them. And money is only one way you can help them. There are a lot of ways you can help these people. Does that make sense? You see what I'm saying, guys.

Yeah, I think so, and to that point as well, I felt several points. I would ask what is needed here? What do you need? And I don't think anyone ever said money At points. There's some glaring needs, like this congregation clearly needs some song books. Sure, that would really help. Nobody ever really asked for money for those kind of things. It was more they're content with what they got or seem content with what they have, but it was more encouragement, teaching the kind of spiritual things like that. That's what they asked for and I don't think any one of them ever asked me for money.

One of the things that our eldership is trying to do more at Douglas Hills now we support like 60 different men in different parts of the world. We can't send people to all those places, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to learn more and more of men. We're going to some of these places so that we can say, hey, are you going to Guatemala? Yeah, and if we go by and if we support you, someone on your trip or support the whole trip, could you go by and see this person that we're supporting here, because we've never met this person before, even indirectly. Trying to make personal contact with people. Another thing that we're doing is our elders have broken down all the men that we help support between the elders, and so we've got our guys that we're making sure we read the reports for and also it tried to send emails to and try to have some kind of a little bit more of a personal touch there rather than just being. You get this report in the mail and you read it and you move on. So that personal contact. I think it means a lot to the brethren there when you do more than just send money to them.

Jonathan sent me some information about one of the congregations that he's working with. It was the end line and it's just an end line. He said pray for us because we pray for you, and that really struck me, because it's easy to get this I'm going to look down on you as the weaker brother because we financially support you.

That's the wrong way to think about that. That is absolutely the wrong way to think about that.

These are my brothers and sisters and I need their prayers and I didn't know that before I went.

I think one of the beautiful things that comes from doing something like this, and we shouldn't need something like this to remind us of this truth, but it does. It is a glaring truth when you do something like this. The family of God is really big and it is very varied. The first time I went to Vietnam, I was there for a month, and the last several days I was there I was with Alam alone. He had to leave early, so for three days I was by myself. Those were the loneliest three days I've ever had in my life, because I was on the other side of the world in a completely different culture. I didn't know the language, but every night when the brethren would come by, there was a release. They still spoke a different language, but they spoke English enough and they were my brethren in Christ. My wife did not grow up in the church, but she has marveled over the years. She's not seen what she's seen in the Lord's church, in the denomination, that she was a part of the connection that people had with one another, and that's magnified even more when you travel overseas. The only thing you share in common with him is Christ, and you recognize, you walk into this place filled with people that look very different than you, but you realize there's a family feel to this occasion. You're walking in among people who are your spiritual family. That is a huge lesson for me. It reminds me of how beautiful God's plan is to save the world, of which America and the churches here are just a small part.

I feel incredibly fortunate and blessed to have had the chance to take this trip. If I'm realistic, just given where my life is and work and things like this, I'm not sure how many other chances I'll have to do something like this, maybe perhaps until I retire or something like that. The way that this worked out we talked about earlier probably just felt like God was putting the right opportunity in front of me at the right time. One of the things that really drove home for me something unique about the Philippines. It's a place with relative political stability. I never felt unsafe. I helped that we had native folks guiding us about and helping us travel and stuff, but I never felt unsafe. It made me start to think about people who travel to countries where those things aren't the case and who do it not as a one-off, but who do it all the time they're, every year. They're people who travel to the Philippines every year and spend significant time there. They're people who go to much more difficult places in the world and sacrifice a whole lot more than we did to do it. It just makes me really humbled to think about the heart it takes to do that and the devotion to. God. It takes to do that in faith. That's who, obviously, I came away from this praying for the people of the Philippines that we met and the work that they're doing there, but also thinking about those people who have spent a lot more of their life than I have doing this type of thing and took a lot more risks than I would be comfortable taking to spread God's word. What an amuse.

Now, I think that's about it. I know I'm going to go back at some point in the future. Guys, where are you at?

It's about time and opportunity. For me, I would like to do. If I ever had a chance to do something like this, it almost felt like we needed more time. That's one of the questions I'd have is how much time could we spend in country? You want to have an opportunity to grow more relationships, spend a little more time with people while you're there. That encouragement, the benefit of that I felt like the strongest bonds we have with the folks that travel with us. I would have liked to have had a little more time, maybe just not felt so rushed moving from one place to the next To do that. Some of the people one of the gentlemen from the States that travels over there spends a month or so at a time. I don't know. I think it just depends on the time and opportunity. But I hope that there's some kind of opportunity to do something with that again.

I'll be simpler. Yeah, I'll do something like this again, like this time I'll have to make sure that I have the time off and that I have the finances and that I have my wife's blessing, but this was faith changing, and it was faith changing in a very good way. I can absolutely see myself doing this again for another country. Yeah, this fundamentally changed me in a way that I can't go back. So, yeah, yeah.

Having been on two trips where I went for a month. Each time you do get to slow things, that pace down quite a bit. You get to drink the moment in. Another thing that you get to do that we did not do and I mentioned this earlier is you get to rest for a day by the end of the 10 days of going every day. I know I was saying this ago oh look, how much we worked. But by the end of the trip I can't think as well as I did in the first part of the trip because I'm physically, mentally and in some way spiritually just worn out. And I think about God's wisdom in the Sabbath day that you need a day of rest. If you paste this out where you had a month, then you could take a day where obviously you're not traveling overseas, so you can have a vacation. But everybody needs to rest sometimes. That doesn't mean that you're taking a vacation, it just means your body is just worn out and you've got to chill out for a day and then you're ready to get back up. That was one thing that hit me as we were coming to the end of it. I just needed to decompress somewhere once we got back to the States.

Actually, I'm glad you brought that up, because I did notice that your thinking was a lot more garbled at the end of that.

You're very gracious not to say something at the moment.

One of the other great regrets that I had and I said this while we were over there and I think all of you echoed exactly the same thing which was we did a lot of talking but we didn't do a lot of listening.

We spoke basically twice a day, every place we went, but we never heard anybody else preach and we never heard anybody else's other story or anything like that we did hear the guys that we spent time traveling with, but no, you're exactly right, the people literally in the pews, on the benches that we were visiting. There are a few of them. I'll tell you something else, though, that hit me the first time I went overseas. This reminds me that there are people around me that I need to try to be talking to. You go overseas and you recognize, you're in the moment and you're there to teach and people are coming, but there are people here and I have to remind myself there are people right now. There are visitors who are coming to our assemblies. There are people that I'm meeting. I need to look at them in the same way, because I can't always be in the Philippines, but I go to my bank every month. I go to the grocery store every week. I see people walking in my neighborhood that I need to flag them down and say hello and speak to them and try to build a relationship. We can do that in other places and that's wonderful. I can't overlook where I'm at right now.

I end all of my podcasts with Be Good and Do Good. What was good about this trip?

I saw the people that I met, that I had sent some emails to before, but to sit down face to face to spend time with them traveling, to enter into some of their homes to see brethren.

They're just trying to live in a challenging country sometimes but they're keeping the faith people, 106 souls we saw obey the gospel, people that we saw at 17 different churches just trying to serve God. What would you say, kenny?

This is a tried answer and it's a good Sunday morning answer, but I think it is the answer that I have, which is it reminded me how good God is. These were people that loved the same God I do, and they loved Him in a different way than I do, and they helped me see a side of God that I don't see. They taught me about reliance. They taught me about generosity. There were so many lessons that I learned from them that I'm very grateful for. They kept on turning the attention back to God, and I think that was something that was well worth learning. I appreciate you all doing this. Thank you for what you do, thank you for who you are, thank you for not getting on each other's nerves as much as we possibly could have. I know that we did a little bit, but I know that no.

I tell you, I'm awful grateful that your snores are several states away from me. Now I can almost not hear that when I go to say that, All right guys, thank you very much.

I appreciate it. Love you too. Let me throw one more thing in.

You can work in if you want to. One of the things I picked up was and I've done this a couple of times now when someone's baptized, the Filipino brethren walk up to the person and shake their hand and they say Happy Birthday. Yeah, I thought that was so cool. I started saying that's people, because that's what it is it is. It's really the birthday, but I thought that's a cool thing Happy birthday when someone's baptized.

Yeah, the other thing that I will never forget the dogs, the chickens, and always finding a spoon, but rarely finding a fork. Yeah, yeah.

All right, you guys All right. Thanks, brother.

We are definitely three different guys and I appreciated both how our differences played so well off each other. I also appreciated what God had to teach us about our brothers overseas. The people I'd still love to talk with are Dario Balvez, brother Manny, jonathan Sapatula and Henry Lim. They were the people who accompanied us to all these congregations. They were kind, patient and helpful to us and I'm very grateful to know them. I also want to thank Alan Malone for the conversation we had before I went over there. One of the pieces of advice he gave me was to listen to what was truly needed and to clarify what I could realistically do while I was there. As Wyatt said, I think the short trip was one of my biggest regrets, as well as not getting to know more people better. But I was grateful for what I was able to do and I hope it was helpful. But I also hope I was able to give some encouragement. As Jonathan said, pray for them, because they already pray for you. As for the good thing I'm thinking about, I'm grateful for God's providence. You could hear that in Wyatt's employment journey. You heard it in how well our travels went, and I still see in the lives of the Filipinos I met, who have become friends and brothers who I talk with mostly on Facebook now. This was a huge blessing to me. I'd also like to thank those who financially support the podcast, like Kevin Hansen, george Sanchez, ann Hoover, don Nici, barbara McQueen and my parents. You make all of this possible. If you would like to financially support the podcast as well, please check out the show notes, where you can see the link to Patreon. I also need to make some announcements about the conference book. Adam Schenks and I have just started talking and pulling together the resources to get this done. My school year has started, which means I have more responsibilities, but this is something that we are working on and I anticipate that we'll have something to announce in another month. So I will tell you exactly how you can get your book. For those of you who bought the higher price ticket to get the library of books, I will be sending those out in the next week or two, so look for those, and if I do not have your address, please make sure that I have it. So until next time, let's be good and do good.