Well, I just want to start by saying I am thrilled to be here. It has been a real tonic to my soul and encouragement to my heart to hear the work of the Lord around the world. This is what Christ has called us to do, and it is my pleasure and privilege to come before you. I wasn't quite expecting to be here and to present to you, so if it's a little rough, you'll understand. Many of you know me from ARBCA. In 2008, I was designated a national pastor and by several of the churches in this room supported to return to Canada. Our church had been founded by my father, who was converted under the ministry of the Martin Lloyd-Jones in England and came to Canada in 1971. And in 1974, planted one of the first Reformed Baptist churches in the modern era in Canada. And the church continued. And they commissioned me to go to seminary. I went down to Greenville, South Carolina, where I met your brothers Jamie Howell and Pastor Bob Self at Grace Baptist Church in Taylors. And they were very gracious. And I had the opportunity to meet my best friend there, John Miller. We went to seminary together, and the Lord made things work out such that we had the privilege of beginning planting a church in Asheville, North Carolina. And at the end of my seminary, the question was whether we would stay and continue in Asheville or return to Toronto. Our heart was in Toronto. The church had gone through some very difficult times in our absence. My father developed cancer and was unable to manage the ministry load. So we had various visiting ministers and we ended up going through a real challenging period of time. And we were at the point, because we had grown up as an independent church, we had started an association and we'd had to leave over a doctrinal issue, the new perspectives. in the late 90s. We didn't think to look outside of ourselves for support and we were in a bit of a conundrum and Brother Bob Self was gracious to come alongside and offer the support and then the ARCA churches came alongside and very quickly we had the support needed to come back and really continue the work in Toronto. Our church owes a tremendous amount to ARBCA and to the men in this room who were helpful to support us because it's likely our church would not have continued after 36 years in Toronto. It was a cooperative effort that has brought us where we are. So thank you from the depths of our hearts. Canada is, as we were saying, sort of the United States' Samaria. That's the way I like to think of it, from the Acts 1, verse 8. I know, you've heard all the things about Canada. Now it's your turn. Jesus said, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. Now, hopefully that antipathy towards Samaria is as good-natured as I know it to be. But we really do need it. What you may not realize is there is a huge mission field up in Canada. If you are familiar with the work of Raymond Perrault and the Association d'Evangélistique Réformée Baptiste de Québec, they have seven churches. They have two church plants. They're looking at planting another church. They are a healthy Reformed Baptist association. In English Canada, the situation is much There's really a handful of 1689 churches in the country, and there's a real need for an advance of the gospel. So think of us as your Samaria. Our brother was talking last night about the world coming to North America, and Toronto is a case study in that. Toronto accepts roughly 100,000 new people every year. In 2011 it was 112,000. That means we have tons of new immigrants coming into our city. A third of the population of our entire nation is about 33.5 million people. in Canada, and a third of it is within driving distance of the city. So we're in an extremely strategic location. Toronto is now the fourth largest city in North America. Mexico City, New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, and then Chicago. We just surpassed Chicago this past year in growth. In 2011, we had as many condo starts as Beijing, China. It's unbelievable what's going on in the city. In fact, in our neighborhood, They're planning the next 10 years between 20,000 and 30,000, I think, condominiums, just high-intensity housing. The housing market in Canada has never burst. We've just been on a continual rise. My own house, since we arrived in 2008, has probably appreciated almost $200,000. It's just unbelievable. According to the United Nations, Toronto is the most racially diverse city in the world. Over 50% of the city's residents, I think it's like 51 or 52%, were not born in Canada. So there's been a radical transformation in terms of that. There are 150 different languages spoken daily in communities from 200 countries. Now, when you think of Canada, you think of English and French. But in Toronto, French is the 10th most spoken language. The second most spoken language in Canada, in Toronto, is Mandarin Chinese. And after that, we have Italian, Portuguese, Punjabi, and I think it's Tagalog and Spanish are after that. So it's incredibly diverse. You can dial 911 and speak in Swahili and get a Swahili operator. I think it's 120 or 150 languages that are supported through our 911 9-1-1 operator. Now Toronto has radically transformed. It was once known as a really heavily churched city. It had a reputation of Toronto the good. It's been transformed. Bottom corner there, you see that was a Baptist church. It was the first mosque in Toronto in the 1960s. Above that, you see Church Street, which is lined with churches. But it's actually, if you can tell from the colors, it is actually now the heart of our homosexual community in the city. And as far as I know, there's not a gospel preaching church on Church Street any longer. This $40 million Hindu temple is the kind of religious buildings that are being built. There aren't churches. Recently, the PCA managed to buy an old Orthodox church. And that's sort of the first large evangelical church transformation in a long time in the city. But most of them are being turned into condos and the like. As I said, our church was founded in 1974. We struggled and through the help of many of the men here, we were able to go back in 2008. And I'm pleased to report, in God's grace, that our church has nearly doubled in size since 2008. God has built our church. He has glorified himself. We rejoice and delight in what he's done. The church moved locations in 2011. I just sat down with our men because we're running out of space in our new location, so we are just giving thanks to the Lord for He is good. We are located in an amazing place in the city. We're right off the subway. The main street in Toronto is Yonge Street. We're one block west of Yonge Street, so we're incredibly easy to find. We're in a historic church. Politicians go to the church in the city that we rent from. We're the Baptists in the basement. We're actually in the yoga studio, because this church is a liberal church, and they tried to bring East and West together. And it didn't work, because we've got actual Eastern people that people can go to if they want Eastern religion. They don't really want to go to white people for their religion. So we meet in the yoga studio. There's a Rekei healing thing down the wing from where we are. But the Lord has given us an opportunity, and we are using this Hall of Tyrannus for His glory. This is some of our congregation. spilling out after a morning service this summer. You can tell just visually. I've stopped counting how many different ethnicities are represented in our congregation, because it doesn't really matter anymore. We are the Church of Jesus Christ, that he has gathered and made enemies friends. And some of our people, English is not just their second language, it's their fourth language. And the Lord has enabled us to overcome a lot of cultural barriers, a lot of linguistic barriers. We speak English in the church, but you also can come and hear Korean or Tagalog or a bunch of other things if you hang around long enough. Our vision is, very simply, Matthew 28, evangelism and discipleship. We really focused on developing relationships with immigrants. One of our newest families that's been converted and its father and mother have been converted are from Japan. And they were Shinto Buddhists and had many conversations about what being Christian means. They thought they had to give up being Japanese and this was impossible for them even contemplate, but through the love of Jesus Christ demonstrated through his saints and through over a two-year period of witnessing and just being part of the church, the Lord saved them. And we baptized them last year. And we've had numerous contacts. We've worked with refugees. And I've had more exposure to our immigration system than I care to delineate. But it is a privilege, privilege to engage in those things. We're developing discipleship relationships as the church has been growing. It's hard for me to get around and to do everything that we want to do. So we are really doing that. And stuff is just springing up. The Lord is just at work in our church. And we just rejoice in that. Done outreach Bible studies. We've gone down to the University of Toronto, which is really a city within the city. 50,000 students right there in the city. Largest university in Canada. We've done outreach Bible studies there. We aren't currently doing one there, but we have a heart to reach that. They're students that just have no exposure to the gospel. They're growing up in ignorance. Their second generation, their parents rejected Christianity. They don't even know what Christianity is. We seek to do public events. We went into Persian Family Day. We're handing out Bibles in Farsi and just having wonderful opportunities there. But our real focus is planting churches. All right. Wow. All right. Don't do that. One of the things that's exciting about what we're doing now is that this year marks the year where we've started the seeds of a cooperative venture with the French Reformed Baptist Association to financially work out a way that we can have a seminary. That's one of our big problems in Canada. So we have a partnership with Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, which has been very gracious. In allowing that, we have our first student going through that, and we have hopes of sending out our first missionary. We've got a leadership training. There's my basement and five men that are meeting monthly and training and preparing for leadership and hopefully deployment. We've been partnering with CERB, which is the French-Canadian education thing. There's Riley, one of our young men, who's going to Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary preaching his first sermon in the church. We also are hoping to send out our first missionaries, the Riddiskars. This is a really neat story. I'll summarize. He was a young guy. He came. The Lord enabled him to plant a church, but he didn't know. And he found out he was a Reformed Baptist, contacted us, moved down the street from me. He's a block away because he wants to be discipled. And we hope to send him out to Barbados because they have to go. And it's a long story, and it's really neat and wonderful. And praise the Lord. We have a couple people in the pipeline. They're coming. Riley and his wife. And this young man, he's Salvadorian, speaks Spanish. We hope to send him out to South America. I'm going. Thank you. Love you. Pray for us.