Well, good morning. Let's go ahead and begin our Sunday school hour. Great to see you on this sunny but blustery Lord's Day here, the first Lord's Day of March. Looking forward to our gatherings today. In our morning worship service, Pastor McKnight is preaching the word to us. And then in the evening service, Mark Leffert is going to join us from Upper Darby. And so we have a change of routine in our preachers today and excited for our gatherings. Let's turn in our Bibles to Acts chapter 13. Acts 13, we're continuing our little series on an introduction to our church. And today I want to introduce our missionary families, the families and the couples that we as a church financially support monthly. And so I'm going to use the screen and Google Earth to take you to each of their churches today and to show you where they're meeting, where they're worshiping, and introduce you to those missionaries. As we begin, let's look at Acts 13, and here we have the New Testament precedent for local church involvement in foreign missions. And so I want to read from two passages, from 13 and then at the end of 14. So first of all, Acts 13, and the first few verses here. This is the word of God. Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers, as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Menaen, which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, The Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. And then at the end of chapter 14, you have those men returning to that local church to report about their missionary journey. And so looking at verse 26 of chapter 14, this is after their many months in Asia Minor and in Cyprus, Cyprus and Asia Minor. They had preached the word in Paphos and in Pisidian Antioch and Lystra and Iconium and Derbe, planted churches in those areas. And then when they returned at the end of chapter 14, verse 26, and thence sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. And when they were come, and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles, and there they abode long time with the disciples. And so you see how that Antioch church then was very much involved in that missionary work. They're the ones that prayed and sent out the missionaries. Those missionaries came back to Antioch and reported to the believers there what God had done. And so we seek to follow that same kind of model. We have missionary families that have left the United States to go to the foreign field. We support them. We pray for them. We receive them back periodically, and they report to us. And so I thought it would be good as part of our new members class that we're recording here that we would have an introduction to each of our missionary families. So let's seek the Lord and ask his blessing on our time here. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank thee for the work that you have raised up here. This is your church and part of Christ building his church, which the gates of hell will not prevail against. We thank thee for the families that you have gathered in here. and the families that have been sent out that we can pray for and support. And we pray for your rich blessing on each of our missionary families. Some of them have already spent half their Lord's Day. Others are on the same time zone as us and are meeting now. Oh, will you bless the preaching of your word as these men open it on the foreign field today. and make them winners of souls, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so our philosophy when it comes to supporting missionary families is kind of like a quality rather than quantity kind of philosophy. We don't support very many missionary families, but when we do support a missionary family, we support them very generously. And that's a philosophy that I think I picked up on from my uncle, who was a missionary in the Marshall Islands for decades, and a real missionary statesman, and kind of Bob Jones University circles, and taught at the university cross-cultural missions. He always lamented that missionaries have these 30 or 40 different supporting churches and the burden that that is of going to on furlough and say that it would be better if just a small handful of churches supported missionaries Largely, that would benefit several ways. It would benefit the missionary family by freeing them up so they don't have 20, 25, 30 places to visit every time they're in the United States. So they have prolonged, you know, year-long furloughs, which is very difficult to be away from your church for an entire year. It benefits the local congregation because that congregation can get to know their missionaries better when they do visit. It's not just fly through on a Tuesday night or something, show some slides and that's it. But they can remain here for a little while and be a part of the fellowship. You can get to know them better. And so we've sought to really invest in just a few missionary families. So rather than having 20 or 30 missionary families that we support 50 bucks a month, and they're all over the world, we have just five missionary families that we support very generously, over $600 a month for most of these families. And when it comes to missionary support, just as you look around at what other churches are doing and what these missionaries are getting from other churches, for most of these families, that makes our church their number one contributor on a monthly basis, actually. There are a couple of our missionary families that our church is supporting them more than even their sending church is. And so just five families that we support very generously on a monthly basis. I wanna introduce you to them by showing you a picture of them and then going on Google Earth to where their church is and sharing some things that we can pray for for our missionary families. All right, so we have here, here we are at our church, and the first place we're going to go is to the Bixby family. And so here is a picture of the Bixbys. It's a little bit, I think this is about a year old, this picture, but it's the best that I could find without, I thought about emailing them each and asking for photos, but I thought, you know, I'll just I'll try to save them the trouble. So try to find some photos that I had. So this is the Bixby family. So you have Tim and Ruth. and then they have five children, Micaiah, and Micaiah, here I've got my notes here, Micaiah's 21 years old, and then Miriam, she's 19 now, and then Zachary, who is 15, or Zachary, who's 15 now, and Gabriel, who's 12, and Simeon, who's five now, so again, about a year old, this is last Christmas, not this past Christmas, but the Christmas before, before that. And they minister in France. And so let me take you to where their church is in France. We'll take a trip from Reformation Bible Church and we'll go over to Europe and I'll pinpoint exactly where they meet and even give you a street view of their local church. All right, so they're in a northern suburb of France, and so if I were to zoom out here, this is northern suburb of Paris, and so all that darkened area is Paris. Downtown Paris would be down here, I think south of the river or along the river there. So, a northern suburb of Paris, and Tim is the pastor. of a church that translates into English, Baptist Bible Church of Grand Ricey. And Grand Ricey, I'm probably not saying that right, but that is the community in which they live. So they have been enabled to purchase a building. They purchased this building in 2021. The Bixbys went to France in 2009. and we've supported them from the very beginning, from 2009. In 2013, they moved to Paris. Tim grew up on the mission field. His parents were missionaries in Southern France. They were originally there with his parents' work in Southern France, and then they moved to a northern suburb of Paris, Sarcelles is the suburb, and they began a church here. and they purchased this building in 2021. It is actually the side of a car dealership. And so if I show you what this looks like here, I wanna go street view right about there. And let's take a look at the entrance of their church. All right, so here's across the street. There's a shopping mall over there and a major highway. And then as we turn around, there it is. So there is the Bible Baptist Church of Grand Royce. The rest of this here is a car dealership. In fact, it's a Ford dealership, so it's very familiar to us. But that entrance right there and then the upstairs is where they gather. They have a really nice meeting room up there. I didn't grab any pictures of it, trying to keep this simple, but maybe you've seen them on their prayer letter or remember them from the time that they've visited us. A nice large room up there. And the church here in Assarsels is like the community. Very multicultural people, families from all over Europe and Northern Africa and even the Middle East. I'm worshiping with them. And Tim is, Tim pastors this church here. Let me talk to you about what their older kids are doing so you can be praying for their children especially. Micaiah, he's 21, he's studying. He's studying to be an airplane mechanic and he's earning his pilot license right now. And then Miriam, their 19-year-old, is taking a history degree at the University of Paris right now. And so you can pray for both of them as they're kind of transitioning out of the home. The other three boys are in the government schools. They've made requests to be able to homeschool. Those requests have been denied by the French government. And so they're in the government schools, but we're praying that God would use that for the falling out of the gospel and that there would be more contact with others, more gospel opportunities. because of their having to be in the government schools. All right, so Tim and Ruth Bixby in France. All right, next, let's go to the Boehm family. This is Tom and Stephanie Boehm, and they minister in Italy. Their children's names Start over here, so Daniela, and Daniela now is 14 years old. Again, the picture is probably about a year old. So Daniela is 14, Nino is 13, Angelo is 11, and Gabriela is seven. The BAMES serve with the Gospel Fellowship Association, and they're in central Italy. They have been there since 2015, and like the Bixbys, we have supported them from the very beginning, from their very first days, in fact, during their furlough, before they were even in Italy, we were sending them monthly support. Let me show you where they meet in Deruta, Italy. So, leaving France, And heading south to Italy. Going to twist the world around here. There we go. Okay. Central Italy, De Ruta. And this is called Evangelical Biblical Church is how it translates from Italian into English. And again, I can show you street view to the door of their sanctuary. and where they're renting right now for worship. All right, so there's across the street, and we spin around. Okay, I'm going to go down the road just a little bit so you can see it. It's in this little building right here. It's this door on the right. Okay, so this door here leads into their worship, where they worship. You see that there are some stores out front over here. This door leads back, and their worship, their sanctuary, it seats roughly 40, 50 people. is back in the back corner of the building through that door in Italy. Tom's burden right now is to establish a Bible institute at this location for the training of men in Italy. They have a Christian man who has risen up within this congregation that he feels can pastor this congregation. His name His name is Ilario, it's how we know him as Ilario. Tom is real careful about internet privacy, and so all of the names that you see in their prayer letters are all aliases. None of them are their real names, but the Lord knows what their real names are. And so it's funny, even when I was talking to Tom last summer when he was here, and we were talking on different people, he would whisper to Stephanie, now what's the alias for that person? Because they get mixed up of who, what names they've signed assigned to what people. So, but we know him as Ilario. I think from the website his actual name is Isaac. If you look on, I looked on their website, and of course I couldn't read it, it was in Italian, but I used some Google Translate to kind of figure out some paragraphs on their church website. And I think their, the other pastor's name is Isaac. So, But that man is looking, can pastor the church and free up Tom a little bit to do some seminary training. And so that's the kind of transition they're in right now. Tom is translating some systematic theologies into Italian for use for that Bible Institute. And so Tom has been the pastor of this church. They've been there since 2015. He's pastored this church since 2018. Tom and Stephanie were just with us last summer. They were able to spend 10 days with us. That's one of the benefits, again, of our generous support of them, and that frees them up to be able to spend longer at each church. So they were with us for 10 days. Their children were a part of our camping ministry. Last June, we were able to put them up in an Airbnb locally and treat them, and they were able to be here for several services. And so Tom and Stephanie Boehm in Italy. That's our second missionary family. All right, our third, let's talk about Randy and Charlene Cornelius. And so here's an informal picture, the most recent one I have of Randy and Charlene. This was taken at one of the weddings of their children. And Randy and Charlene operate a radio station in Carriacou in the Caribbean. So let's go there now. So leaving Italy, zooming out. And now we're going to go to Carriacou. You see us in the southern Caribbean, not that far from South America. Let me just kind of zoom out and show you the island here. Where's my cursor? There it is. All right. So here is the island of Carriacou. It's part of the nation of Grenada. Grenada is the larger island here. Carriacou, the smaller island. But you see how very close they are to Venezuela, northern South America, pretty far away from Jamaica over here where we're going to be next, I think. So let me just. It looks good there for me, I think. There we go. All right, so zooming into this radio station, this is a picture taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. So you can see the things just scattered. You probably can't see it from where you are, but from where I am, it's just a pile of trees down here. You can see everything that's laying there and debris. So this picture was taken, it usually says on Google Earth, Yeah, this picture was taken about two days after Hurricane Beryl. This is July 6th, 2024. I think the hurricane came through the second or the third, something like that, of July. So this was right after the hurricane. You see the radio tower is laying there in the middle of the field there. It would have been erected right there. One of the cool things about Google Earth, I need to watch time, is you can go back in time and see other pictures. So in fact, in fact, you can do that for the church here. So you can see what the church looked like before the site development. You can see what it looked like in 2004 when I first got here. and you can see there's no traffic circle, big parking lot, and all this. Anyway, but you can go back in time here too and you can see where the radio tower used to be and everything. So, they operated a radio station here, a radio station that was begun by Randy's father, Arlene Cornelius. And Randy became the station manager in 1997 here. And they have, I think, 19 hour a day radio programming, conservative radio programming. The music is all very conservative, nothing like you would find in a local station around here or something. and all the preaching from various places, Free Presbyterians, and our church has a radio broadcast several times a week. Randy just grabs sermons off of Sermon Audio. He does the editing, pairs them down to either a half an hour, sometimes even 15 minutes, and then they just play it consecutive days. And so if you're interested, our church has a broadcast on their radio station at 5 a.m. on Sundays. every weekday at 8 a.m. and then Friday evenings at 10.30. So, that makes for seven times a week that our church is on the harbor light of the Windward's radio station. Right now, he is going through the series that I preached from the end of Hebrews. So, Hebrews 11, 12, and 13. That's what he's airing, editing and airing right now. And so they also operate a small Christian school in Carriacou. And Charlene, his wife, teaches in that small school. I think it's just like three or four children that are a part of the school. So it's basically like a homeschool co-op more than a Christian school. But that's the ministry of the Cornelius's in Carriacou. You know how we just sent them a gift in the fall for a new radio tower, which should be arriving and getting erected any day now. All right, from Carriacou, let's go over to, I think I have, let's see, I have the Reyes's next. And so, Marcus and Jen Reyes. These are four of their seven children here. We just had a larger presentation on the Reyes's, so I won't give too much detail here for time's sake. But on the picture here, Marcus and Jen. This is Noah. and this is Zoe, and this is Amelia, and this, let's see, Joshua, Josiah, I've got it written down, Caleb, Caleb, okay, so that's Caleb. All right, they have two other children, three other children. One is 19, not in the picture, because he wasn't there when we visited, and then two other children who live in central Florida. You know where they live, because we just did this a couple Sunday nights ago, because Mark and I just visited the Reyeses. So leaving the Corneliuses, going over to central Mexico, and here is the church in Orizaba that Marcus pastors. Again, I'll give you a street view of what their church looks like from the outside. And they rent the back of the former Orizaba jail. And so when you turn around and look, the entrance of their church looks like a jail. It is this entrance right there that they throw open the doors to. The doors are open right now to that. And there are people worshiping there. There are about 80 or 90 folks that worship there at that Orizaba church. And Marcus has a ministry with the unreached people that live in the mountains around Orizaba. And this Orizaba church is centrally located and sending men from It's the city up into the mountains to minister. And so that's the ministry of the Reyeses. Again, it was just a month ago. We had a longer presentation. So I'll move along to our friends in Jamaica. Maggie and Barbara Scott. Maggie and Barbara, of course, are Jamaican national. We support them modestly, not as much as an American missionary for the reasons of American missionaries just have a different need structure than nationals do. And so, but we send monthly supports to Meggie and to Barbara, and Meggie pastors a church in Fern, Jamaica, which I could not find on the map as much as I tried. I went up and down Fern Road over and over again looking for the church, and I just couldn't quite figure out what building it was. I could have picked any building and told you it was the building, but I didn't want I didn't want to lie. So I don't know where the Fern Church is exactly. Hopefully when the team is there in a couple weeks they can pinpoint it for me, get me a latitude and longitude right there so we know exactly where that church is. But I did, I went ahead and pinpointed the Smithfield Church. So for those of you, many of you have been to the Smithfield Church. And the Scotts, Pastor Scott does go down to the Smithfield Church every so often and preaches there. The Smithfield Church is that building right there in southern Jamaica, just real close to the water, as you see, and not far from Savannah Lamar. which is the city over here, or Negril, if you've heard of Negril, that's over to the west as well. So the Smithfield Church is where we have our VBSs once a year, led by Brad and Esther Fleming and a team from our church that have been doing that for about 50 years, about 50 years, maybe 52 years actually, we've been sending a VBS down there. So, and Maggie helps pastor that church, which doesn't have a pastor right now. All right, so those are the five missionaries that we currently support.