His wife has, she's in the process of writing four books about their 28 years, seven years at a time of staying. And she has three of those books back there for sale. He's cleared out his library too. He's unpacking for heaven. So he's selling his library out there. If you want a genuine Ted Mullins book, get him and her to sign it before you leave here. It'd be worth more money, even if you don't read it. Huh? I mean, they can't live forever. So get their signature now. Well, it's worth the money. Or sit there and be stupid and die broke yourself. Well, I don't know if I can sing or dance or do something after all that. I want to teach a little bit tonight. Actually, I want to do that every night before Brother Brent preaches. I got a real burden about teaching missions because we really, I mean, we give, and some of us go, but as far as a deep knowledge of what's going on, most of us don't have that. If you turn to 2 Timothy, chapter four, verse 10, poor old Demas, he's kind of like Peter, he suffers a lot. Demas, yeah, he left Paul, but he didn't, you know, I always had the idea that he started hanging around with Paul and the heat got too much and he decided that he didn't want it anymore. But the fact of the matter is he's willing to do his whole first missionary journey. He was with him in Rome when he was in jail. And so the heat did get on. But nonetheless, some people say he couldn't get past the lure of the grandeur of Rome and kind of went the way of the buffalo. But nonetheless, he talks about Demas. He says, Demas have forsaken me, having loved this present world and has departed under Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, Titus I want to talk today a little bit, for a few minutes, about why missionaries leave the field. All right, isn't that a great subject for a missions conference, isn't it? But things happen, and sometimes we don't know why they happen, but missionaries don't leave the field for the same reasons. But there are some things that are common, and I'm gonna use the term missionary in a very broad sense of anybody carrying a Bible and going somewhere, because the fact of the matter is, to finish the first term. And that's a problem. In our circles, it's not that drastic, but it does happen. And we need to understand that when a missionary leaves the field, he and his family, they don't need rudder fuel. They need a hospital. You all with me tonight? I mean, this is a brother and a sister who have gone and returned and they need some spiritual help with something to get their life back together. Now, if we ignore that, then we'll lose them. Now, the biggest problem that missionaries have when they get to the field is that they look at presentations like this that we saw, God on him. He's doing it and he's doing it right. Now, having said all that, we could go through this missions conference and somebody look at that and say, man, he's winning souls and he's starting churches and got all these preachers going, preaching and surrendering and doing all these things, starting churches, doing all these things. Amen. I'm going to go over there and I'm going to do the same thing. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work quite that way. As I've always said, I think I said yesterday, you know, we just show you the mashed potatoes with gravy. We don't show you how to chop up the potatoes and all the hard work that goes into it. All those churches and all those men trained and all those meals the sister cooked, that doesn't come easy. And so the biggest problem that missionaries as a whole have is self-expectation. They think, I can do that. Or my ministry is gonna be just like that. And I'm gonna do all these things. But when you get out here and get in the work, friend, it can be cold and lonely sometimes. Because it doesn't match what you've seen. with your eye. Brother, how long have you been there? 15 years? Amen. All right. So we got in 15 minutes, 15 or 16 years. All right. So it didn't come easy. So it's difficult when another man goes in and he starts to do these things. He's seen the DVDs, he's heard the illustrations, he's done all these things, but when he gets over there, nobody's getting saved. So he feels the pressure. I talk about pressure a lot in mission work. You'd be amazed at how much pressure there is on a pastor, but on a missionary to succeed. We're raised in a culture where you have to produce. And we think and we're taught, you know, if you work hard and you produce, you're a success. Therefore, when you put that in a different culture and you go as a missionary, if we produce, we're a success, and the opposite of that is, if we don't produce, we're a failure. I know this is not a shouter here tonight, but I'm trying to help you a little bit. As these missionaries get in that pressure-filled environment, and they feel that they have to prove themselves to supporting churches and God and their family and to themselves, then they try to meet those expectations that there's just no way they're gonna do it. So the pressure's off. And a missionary, And the first thing he thinks about is, well, what's the problem? Well, it must be the people. That's what the problem is. They don't want to get saved. They're wicked. They won't do right. I'm preaching the book, and the book's supposed to work, and all we have to do is preach the gospel. The gospel's not instant coffee. You just don't add water to it. It just doesn't work that way. But we get down on ourselves. We get down on ourselves because we're not meeting our own expectations. So we get mad at the people and then we get mad at our families. If it's not the people, it must be my family. You know, you're always hardest on those you love the most. And so it kind of gets ugly around the house for a while. Again, the problem is the self-expectation. This is the problem. What does God ask us to do? I talked about this a lot yesterday. What is our job as missionaries? Hello? Carry the mail. Thank you. Somebody said it right. Amen. We take the message. That's all we do. We deliver the mail. Brother Jack used to have that message on the Pony Express. Gotta deliver the mail. We don't have to lick the stamp. We don't have to write the letter. All we have to do is go and tell. The success of the missionary is faithfulness. It is not numbers. I understand that numbers are souls and all that stuff. I'm not against that. But I'm telling you, our job, even Shady Acres Baptist Church, as you go out on the street, your job is to be faithful and give them the right message. I had a wake-up call one time, man. I had an old lady that was gonna die. And I went to her, her name was Muratu. I said, Muratu, are you sure? You're saying, have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation? And she said, missionary, I believe what you told me. Brother, you better make sure that the message is right. It doesn't have to be a big theological dispensation chart. Death, burial, resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why did Jesus come? And that's the easiest message in the world to give. But when we start dressing it up with our education, that's where we get into trouble. We get too much self in there. But that self-expectation, missionary, will drive you crazy. The only thing God requires of you is to be faithful. Some of you might win a thousand, God bless you if you do. Some of you might win three or four, and God bless you if you stay on the field. Amen. You pastors of young newborn churches, God bless you if you're staying by the staff and getting up there and preaching every week and doing that job. I know you don't have a house full. I know you have to work a job. I know all these, and you have all the pressure of the ministry, but listen, all you have to do is stay with it. And you're a success in the eyes of God. But we haven't started so far. Amen, we're just messengers, man. And then we start comparing ourselves among ourselves. Brother so-and-so down the road is running 500. And you got mama and three kids, and maybe the dog will show up once in a while. That gets hard, does it not? That gets hard. So what do we say? We say, well, this guy down there, he's running so many, I wonder what he's doing. He's buying them in. He must be giving away, in New Guinea, they call it auction clothes, you know, used clothes. He must be giving them used clothes. A lot of times in missions in New Guinea, we'll give them a bag of rice, so we call them rice Christians. Because that's what they go for. We have these false, we have no clue what that guy's doing over there. And it's really, it's none of our business. You have your own work, man. You've got enough work. Worry about what you've got. You don't need to worry about what this guy's doing down the road. And there's 200, I think Ron Ralph said there's 200 flavors of Baptist. That's a lot of flavors, man. And when they get on the field, they start separating just like they do here. We can't fellowship with them and they can't fellowship with us. I used to tell them the last place that Lynn and I lived was on what's called the Highlands Highway and the highways are misnomer, but y'all go over there and you'll find out. But anyway, I stood up at a pastor's conference and I said, guys, we live on the highway. If you're coming through there, If you're hungry, we'll fix you a meal. If you're out of fuel, we'll give you a few dollars to get on down the road. But I said, if you got a problem, you brought it with you. You didn't get it at my house. Y'all with me? Hey, listen, if they're preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, And I don't care what they're doing other than that. If they're winning souls, God bless them. Amen. If they're successful, God bless them even more. But just keep your nose in your little garden and don't worry about what's going on down the street. Oh, my friend, I guess we better get to point two. The other thing that missionaries kind of get wrong, new missionaries I'm talking about, is the workload. There's a lot of work when you're planting churches and trying to learn a language. Do you know which American English word has the most uses? You can use it in so many different ways. It's this great big word of R-U-N. You can use that. I better check my notes, but I think it's 645 ways. It's difficult to learn a new language. Think about it. Run up the steps, we can run down the steps. We can run for exercise. Here, son, here's the key to the car. Go run around with your friends. Y'all with me? Now you think of, if you're a foreigner trying to learn the language and we say, well, we're going to run somewhere, he's thinking of this. He's not thinking about running errands. and all the other different ways. Okay, what I'm saying is this, when you are trying to start a church, you're trying to win souls, you're trying to learn a new language. You're trying to get accustomed to the culture. And my favorite saying to new missionaries is go learn a language, learn the customs, keep your mouth shut till you learn something. Amen. You all might as well say amen. I think it's true. So all these things are going on. You're not winning anybody to God. You don't know how to speak to anybody. You don't know why in the world these people don't want to come to services on time. And I'm telling you, friend, it will wear on you. Now, during all this, you've got a family to raise. Your wife's trying to do everything from scratch, all this scratch cooking and all this stuff. She doesn't know the language well enough to shop at the grocery store. Besides, it's 35 miles to the grocery store. That's pressure. That's pressure. So the workload gets, so you win somebody, all right? You've won somebody. He knows a little bit of English enough to get saved. You know a few words of his language enough to get him interested anyway. So now you start trying to disciple this fellow or at least have a Bible study with him. So where do you fit that Bible study in that schedule? When do you fit your prayer time, your devotion time into that schedule? The workload is unbelievable. How many of y'all have a day job? You work so many hours every day, eight, 10, 12 hours. Okay, when that's over, it's over. All right. Missionary, you're on the clock 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you can fix anything. They will come sit under your house just to listen what is going on inside your house if they know some English. They used to come to my house at 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning. I thought, what are all this noise down there? I said, what are you guys doing down there? Oh, we're just listening. Depends on what you've been saying, whether that's funny or not. And on top of all that, you have your honeydew list. And if you fellas been married any length of time, that's a very important thing to keep track of. Very important. And then the cultural adjustments. The things that you have to see and hear that are so far out of the American culture. And you think, man, what are these people doing? Why did they do that? I mean, isn't it a shame to sell your daughter as a wife? It is in America. But it's not in New Guinea. Perfectly normal. You can even bargain about it. They'll offer 25 pigs and a bale of rice, and you want 30 pigs and two bales of rice and 200 kin of cash. Brother Fawley would have a field day in New York. But these are just things that are not normal to your cultural orientation. And we think, why won't those people come to church? And why won't this fellow make a decision? Brother, are you going to do this or are you not? And we're thinking, OK, I need this done and this done. And this fellow has to make a decision to do this so I can get this done. And he's thinking, I better go ask my family. How is this decision going to affect the Klan? In New Guinea, what you have to think is, when you talk to somebody, is why is he telling me what he's telling me? What's the little hidden motive behind it? Because there's no such thing as, brother, I just want to help you, amen. When they say that, hang on to your wallet, I'm telling you. So the missionary, He has all these things on him, and these are just a few. I'm going to quit here in just a minute. But he has all these things on him, and it's not working out like we think it should. And now your family is starting to get what we call big head. The kids now are trying to rebel, and they don't want to be here, and they don't feel a part of the work. They feel like you're ignoring them because you're so deep inside this ministry that you have. I know missionaries, man, all their kids are preachers. And if yours are all preachers, glory to God. I only had one and he's not a preacher. I only had one to practice on. So I look at, not me personally, but a missionary in general will look at his children and they're not turning out as cookie cutter, perfect Christian children. And the ministry is not working. And so I'm a failure over here. My wife's mad at me because I've drug her halfway around the world. preachers, let me say this. If you send missionaries out of your church, if that wife isn't 100% sold out to that ministry, don't you dare send them to the mission field. Because what we say is, well, she'll get on there and she will have to adjust. No, she won't. I talked about the pressure here, because this can go where a missionary will come home, look at his life, look at his failed ministry, and take his own life. It's a serious thing. I'm telling those reasons missionaries come home from the field. This is just a few of them. I'll give you some more tomorrow. But my goal this week is to wake you up a little bit and let you see more than this great slide presentation and know a little bit more about what these guys are under, the pressure they're under. I haven't even mentioned governments yet. But I'm telling you, There's a lot more to it than it looks now. Having said all that, it's the most wonderful life in the world. I highly recommend it. The blessings of God and seeing the people get saved and those lives changed. There's nothing better in this world. than being a part of that. And if you're in a little country, listen to me, I get excited about this stuff. If you're in a small country, you are shaping that nation or helping to shape that nation. You are teaching the leaders of tomorrow. And they can go good or they can go bad, depending on how good a job we do. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the time you've given me tonight. I appreciate this wonderful church, and God bless these missionaries. Lord, I know it's a hard work, and Father, I just pray that you bless them.