As you know, our vision, our heart as a church is to support and to train and to encourage national pastors. And those who are either national pastors or those who are training national pastors. That's why Rio Grande has such a close place in our heart. But also, we have a tremendous heart for Dan Standridge, because Dan, for all purposes, is a national Italian, ministering to national Italians. If you've heard his testimony before, he grew up as a missionary kid on Italian soil, and as a result, that became more of his culture, more of his language, more of his life than anything else. Which I'm familiar with, because I have a couple of nieces and nephews that are growing up on foreign land, and they really, when they come to America, foreigners, they're strangers in a foreign land. As a matter of fact, they don't even like it. They want to get back to their home, you know, in their home culture. And I'm not saying that Dan doesn't like America, but I am saying that he's a national man who knows the language, knows the people, and the Lord is using him in a very difficult place. A place where Catholicism has hardened many, many people, where really secularism has overtaken that. I mean, people are Catholic in name only in many places and there's such secularism. But there's also a tremendous battle for hearts and minds when it comes to Islam. And Milan is really a center of that, and Dan is going to be sharing more about it. So Dan, I'm not trying to steal your thunder. I'm trying to give you a good running start. We welcome you, we thank you for being one of our missionaries, being one of our church family, and using, representing us and serving us as you're serving the Lord in that place. And tonight, we want to find out more how we can serve you, how we can pray for you, and how we can be behind you. So please, brother, come and share more of what the Lord's doing in Milan and your family, and we welcome you to Grace Bible Church. You can thunder all you want. Thank you so much. I have a three-minute tape for 3.40 seconds. Can you play that? Am I already in trouble? Okay, the mic should be on. When Jesus instructed his disciples on how to announce the gospel, he taught them to say, The kingdom of heaven is near. Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person and stay in his house. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home warrants it, let your peace rest upon it. Whoever receives you, receives me. And who receives me, receives the one who sent me. Donniella and Christina opened their home to the gospel just as Jesus had predicted men and women would all over the world. Here's Daniela the day he was baptized, explaining the circumstances on how he came to trust in Christ Jesus. When I was a boy, I cautiously decided to leave God out of my life. God was someone I couldn't understand at all, since He seemed to expect me to do sacrifices for Him. To me, God was someone who I could neither see nor feel. Turning away from God was a freeing experience and for a long time I never felt better. I lived my own life, finished my studies, met my wife Christina and we had two children, Valerio and then Bianca. Everything was fine without God. When my boy went to a new school, Christina met an American family who offered to study the Bible with her. I didn't mind listening in and meeting some of her new friends. I felt good about them and being around them made me feel like a better person. Now all was fine until I started having some serious health problems as doctors were sure I had some form of cancer in my body and decided to run several tests. As I waited for the results, I believed I was going to die soon and would leave behind my wife and children. It was serious enough we told our friends about it and Christina even told some of you here. Christmas holidays were near and we were trying to get out of the house as much as possible. One evening it came down to either spending time with our friends or coming to a party here Christina knew about. Of course I chose to be with our friends but they canceled our date at the last minute so we came here. When I walked in I was surrounded by people who knew of my medical condition but weren't scared of it or running away from me. That evening I felt a sensation almost physical like someone was touching me and specifically telling me relax all will be well I'm here with you. I left quietly and a bit somber that night. I didn't believe my fate would change, but I knew God would be with Christina and the children when I passed away. Well, I'm still here. My condition wasn't related to a tumor somewhere in my body, so I got well quickly. I can only say God wanted me to be with you that night where men and women could turn my hardened and unbelieving heart towards God. In time, I studied scriptures and learned how to ask Christ to forgive my sins and how to be his disciple. When old habits lure me and when I have doubts, when life seems absurd, I remember God's touch and come back to Him. The Apostle Paul told the jailer in Philippi, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. Today, as God is at work in Daniela and Christina's lives, their children and many friends are watching closely how God will personally transform lives. Rejoice with us as we continue to make known God's personal life-saving touch in the greater Milan area, home to over 5 million people. Our task remains the same, to disciple believers by forming a strong network of churches which can keep expanding for years to come. If you are interested in knowing more about this ministry, contact us at daniel.standridge at crossworld.org Take a good look at my new daughter right here. She was born five months ago. She's the surprise of our life, but something that has added great things to our family. People say, aren't you glad to be a daddy? I said, I feel giddy about being a granddaddy. We never expected that God would give us another child, and He has. My second child Lydia, who's 14, who's a teenager, very worried about what people think of us. said, I think we've gone from being a normal family to being a weird family. And she's probably right. I couldn't help that. Well, I'm here to report to you that what our work is, our mission is to help churches like yours, plant churches throughout the world. And I'm so glad that we can report that churches and groups are being planted in Milan through your ministry of prayer, of support, and our presence there. And I would like to explain to you some of the things that we've learned and how we do it. When I went about in 93, like you heard, I was an MK. My mother is Italian. So I'm really part of the system there. Everybody said, Dan, you're going to do great because you're Italian, you know the culture, you've seen it happen. We're so grateful that you're going. You're just kind of a winning horse type of guy. And so I got doing things just the way I thought they should be done. And things were going quite well. As other missionaries came and left, Italy is a very tough country. Italy has a way of seducing you because of the food, the monuments. Everybody thinks, hey, it's going to be happy. and they come and get a real apartment and start eating the food and it's kind of okay but the food doesn't keep you there because it's hard work and many many missionaries have come and left which is very disappointing but we were still taken and I don't know exactly all the reasons we were going but a partner and I were involved in this church plant we were given three groups at first to work with Of course, they told us that they didn't think that one group would ever work because we were not evangelists. And they were right. But God has done great things and we saw God minister through us and open doors. And this is what I want to tell you about. Because one thing that we have learned over the several years we've been there is that it is not us that make things happen. It's God that is active around us and he asks us to join in his work. And the more I looked at the way He was inviting us into new opportunities, the more I started toning down my great ideas of what we should be doing. And I'm here to report to you that after some hard lessons, some things that God has shown us, we have started following His lead. And great and open doors are opening all around us. And I would like to tell you some of this. I would like to take your attention to Luke chapter 10. because as personally I'm getting stripped of all my great strategy and theories of how things work in Italy I'm finding out that scripture and Jesus in this passage had a very good idea of how it should be done and possibly the strategy that he wanted all of the church to follow. If you look at the rest of the Gospels, if you look at his example, if you look at the Apostles going out throughout Acts, you see them enacting this strategy, which is different than what I was doing. And I would like for you to just rejoice with us and with me tonight that the way Jesus taught to do ministry is actually working. Okay, let's read and I'll give you some examples. Okay, when Jesus told the disciples to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, they must have known what he meant. Is that pretty logical? And they must have known what he meant because he had shown them how to do it. And I believe that this chapter shows you how to do some of it. Okay? One of the big problems with missionaries And I know that we have some real experts here. Every missionary sometimes has his own ideas how to do it. Own strategies. And you see it happening here in the States, where everybody has got their gig on how you're going to plant a church and make a church grow. And there's the more innovative ones, the more resistant ones. Everybody's got a theory. Everybody's got an idea. When actually Jesus explained here how his church can grow in an irresistible way. And so we have been following these steps and I would like to point out some features that I think can explain to you what we're doing and probably how to pray for us as we move out through Italy and different opportunities there. Okay Luke chapter 10 verse 1 and I'll read a few verses. After this the Lord appointed 72 others, and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. And most missionaries preach out of this passage. Well, then he told them how to do it. Go, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or a bag or sandals, and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, Peace to this house. If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him. If not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. And when you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Well, this is pretty easy in Italy to just eat what is set before you. I don't think Jesus was telling people to go to Italy where there's good food. I'll get to that later. So here Jesus tells them exactly how to do it. In Matthew 10, there's another passage with very similar instructions are given. And as you look throughout Acts, you see the apostles doing something very similar to this. What are they supposed to do? They're supposed to go into towns and look for open doors. If you look in Colossians chapter 4, you realize that Paul wrote to Colossians and said, we need to pray for each other. You pray for me that we will find open doors. and that we will walk bravely through those open doors and we'll have the courage to proclaim the gospel as it should be proclaimed. And then he said, and while you pray for me for my open doors, I pray for you in your style and strategy of evangelism. We don't have the time to go there, but it is a little different what you guys do in the pews in Colorado Springs to evangelize and to bring the gospel than what we do on a mission field. In three years I'll come back and if you want me to, I can explain that to you. But anyway, Paul says, pray for us that we would have open doors, we would find open doors and we would walk through them boldly. I believe that he was referring to these passages where Jesus told his missionaries to go two by two and look for open doors. What is an open door? An open door is given by a household where a man of peace exists. a man that lives in peace with his surroundings. It doesn't mean that he's a Christian, but it means that he has a life. He's a connected person. He may have a family, he may have business partners, he may have relatives, he may be friends, but this guy is somebody who lives within this town and has a testimony for getting along with others. In Matthew, it kind of spins it a little slightly different. Jesus says, go into the town and inquire if there's a worthy person. Now we're not saying you look for a good person, for a spiritual person, for a Christian. Look for somebody who lives among his peers in a normal, peaceful, connected way. So the person that we look for, or the door that represents, or the person that represents an open door, is a person that lives within his community and has a life. To explain that, I would say that some people live within their communities and are not very well connected with people. Many missionaries will go and start evangelizing, and this is what I did. I started being friends with anybody that would be friends with me. the lady downstairs that was divorced with two kids, the gas attendant, the bread lady, and my wife got to know some moms, and we were working at making contacts to see who we could witness to, and we were. But this is not what it's talking about. It's talking about somebody who is well-placed in their environment, is connected, and has a life. Of course, it says that they need to be responsive to your message and let you in. It doesn't take the... and I'm not talking you go to... you're looking for important people or rich people or influential people. It could be the guy that lives under a bridge but is connected to all his friends. It could be just about anybody that has a network of people. I'll explain why that is so crucial. It's a person also beyond that, that receives your message. Another thing that this person does, he offers you his house, his meals, the chairs, he offers you something to eat. You take care of the message as you go, and he takes care of the logistics. Now I didn't do it this way, because most missionaries go in and try to bring the message and the logistics. This is what we do. We look long and hard for an apartment all over Milan. It took us two years to find an apartment that would work for us. We still live in it. It was a fourth floor, no elevator, no building guard so we could save on some money. You go into an apartment and it has no fixtures. We had to bring a toilet, a sink, everything. If you know bidets, you may want to check into that. The kitchen, you walk into this empty apartment, and the kitchen is different from the other rooms because it has a hole in the wall, which is the drainage pipe. So you put a sink and all your kitchen furniture against that wall. So we looked for an apartment, but when we walked in, we realized that the living room was very large. And you know what we said? We're going to plant a church in this living room. Most missionaries go and buy a big car for their family. I didn't need a big car back then, but they'll buy a bigger van so they can bring, quote unquote, the natives to church. Often as missionaries, we bring a message, but we think that we have to provide also the resources. Jesus said to look for somebody who was connected to his town, had a reputation for having friends or a life, is responsive to your gospel and also will provide the chairs and the logistics and will host you into his home. This is very hard to do. We as missionaries are quite impatient. We go in and again we look for the babysitter, the language tutor, the gas attendant and the girl downstairs with two kids who is just thrilled to have an American family so her kids can play with our kids. But what happens is, as we bring eventually these people for a Bible study, we are the glue of that group that never knew each other. The guest attendant would have never talked to the divorced girl, and the bread lady probably had an argument with my tutor or somebody. But I am bringing these people together, and I provide the chairs, the coffee, my wife is making brownies or something, and I become the glue for that group. Well, what's the problem with that? I will forever be the glue that holds that group together. When I go on furlough, these people really don't know how to get along. If I ever have to leave, they're stuck. And this is one of the big problems that happens with missionaries. They think that they need to provide the message and be the glue to this group. It says here that as you go looking for these people, you should bring no purse, no second set of clothes, you should look pretty light in the way you travel. It says not to talk to anybody on the way. People should get an idea that you are there for a deliberate reason, not to mess around, not to learn the culture in every detail, not to learn how to do lasagna better than an Italian woman. You're there with a mission. And the mission is to find a man of peace that fits the description. Well, you're also to accept whatever logistics they provide. It says eat whatever food they provide. You bring the message and watch what these people will do with the logistics. This is very hard for a missionary. Because we come from a church with nice pews, an organ, an overhead projector, 45 minutes of worship, and then 45 minute message. We make huge mistakes in trying to provide the idea of what church will look like for the natives. What happens, in the words of a friend of mine, is that we come with an idea of a church, of a ministry that looks like a horse. Beautiful animal. And we look at what the natives can do for us, and we assume that they have some ideas, but compared to our horse, they can provide, at best, a donkey. So we honor their donkey, and we provide the horse, and we make a mule. And the mule works pretty good for one generation. It never reproduces. And one of the big problems with mission work is that it works fine for that one generation, but never multiplies. Another problem is that if you are providing the message, and the living room, and the van, and the brownies, and the song books, and the overhead projector, and everything that is involved in the ministry where you think it should look, you never attract people that will take responsibility. Because you never ask them to take on responsibility. And then after 5, 10, 20 years, you come back and say, it's so hard to find good men in Italy. They're all mama's boys. We live in a matriarchal society and our men are really not taking their responsibilities. Well, I believe that that may be true because you never started, like it says here, with some men that would honor the message and take on the responsibility of receiving it. Is all that pretty radical? Very radical. The hard part of all this as a missionary is to pray for that open door. To ask others like you to pray that we will find that open door and walk through it bravely. It's much easier to become involved in manuals, in discipleship books, in all kinds of ministries that we are providing for America that eventually sabotage what we're doing. Well, I can promise you that I've made every mistake that I've described here. My partner, my team partner, my team leader had a master's in piano performance or something. Very good pianist. He could play like anybody and I could preach pretty well because I know the language and I'm pretty articulate and I can tell a good story. And we had a great Danny and Johnny show. It was going great. We were beating the odds. Other missionaries would say, well, what are you guys doing? Boy, it looks like you're going great. But after a few years, we realized that we had a great group. And I said, John, something is not working here. I feel like all we've proven so far is that 60 people will come on Sunday morning on time and listen to us. I'm not sure we're planning a church. And he said, well, Dan, so what's the problem? I mean, we got something good going here. Why mess with it? And I said, well, we got something good going, but I'm not sure we're discipling our people. We're telling you if they can come and we got to, you know, people are getting saved left and right. But are we actually building a church that will multiply? And he couldn't say yes, because we had never thought in those terms. Another thing we were doing, we were making our church bigger and better with more programs, with more activities, and we were looking at our men that were helpful and involved in everything, but none of them would have ever wanted to take over what we were doing. We were two full-time missionaries doing all these great things. I think we would have given them a heart attack if we had we announced now we are working our way ourselves out of a job and you're going to take over. They would have never touched that ministry with a 10 foot pole. You guys are doing too much. We got youth ministries. You got kiddie ministries. We got Sunday school. John plays like a maniac and you can preach. We could never do this. And they were frankly right. We had painted ourselves in a corner. So we went back to this passage and said, now if I could start all over again, I would do it different. We were fixing a problem. So we went to our people and said, we picked nine people in prayer and very carefully and said, we want you to become in charge of all the logistics of this ministry. Please work with us for 18 years and we want to hand over all the logistics of what we do. We'll pray and preach for this ministry, but you need to become in charge of everything else. Does that sound? Is that 18 years or months? Excuse me, 18 months. Yeah. Well, one month is a year and a year is a month. Anyway, thank you for correcting that. Everybody was kind of getting alarmed. 18 months. So anyway, we explained this whole, and I called it, the messenger and the container, and you're the container, we're the messengers. We worked on that, and one year later, We had a guy that became in charge of the worship, a guy that became in charge, two ladies that became in charge of the Sunday schools. I have two gals that became in charge of the potluck dinners, the networking we called it. They were in charge of greeting the visitors. They were in charge of calling up the people that didn't show up for church. All the stuff that we as missionaries did. We had a maintenance guy. We had a treasurer. My partner, who is not a big financial guy was obsessing every Monday, counting the money and trying to put it into the right boxes and stuff. One thing we did for years, we'd have baptismal services, big time. Me and John would go on Saturday night and put together our baptistry, kind of a collapsible baptistry, fill it with water, and then I would go at about five o'clock in the morning and put a big heater in it to make sure it was hot. We'd have a blast, people getting baptized all day. They all went home, and Monday morning, me and John were bailing out the baptistry and getting rid of it. We were doing the messenger and the container. Well, we found people to do that, and we watched the church mature in ways that we would have never expected. When we handed over after a year, it says, the logistics, you guys are the container. I turned in my keys, and I don't even have the keys to the building. So if you don't show up, we're going to sit on the sidewalk or something. And they've taken over in incredible ways. Now, we've also did something even more radical. We've decentralized some of the activities from the church and let them meet in the homes as churches. We had a campus ministry that was going real well. We had, for instance, a kid from Calabria get saved in the dorm. Calabria is about 800 miles from Milan. got saved, beautiful testimony, got baptized. One more year to train him or whatever, he started to get rid of some of the bad habits he had. Then he graduated, went back to Calabria, 800 miles away. I got an email from him and he said, Dan, things are going great. I led my sister to the Lord. But we started looking for a church and we can't really find a church. There's this little odd group of 10 people in my town So I went there and they insisted that we speak in tongues. And Dan, I don't think I'll ever be able to do that. What do I do? Because there's no churches in this area. And he was absolutely right. There was no churches in a 50 or 100 mile radius. We had made a huge mistake. I said, I'll never make this mistake again. Now I'm in my dorm. with more kids that are getting saved, and I'm saying, I'm not teaching you to be a good Christian. I'm teaching you to plant a church. I want you to go back to your town, if you ever live in Milan, leave Milan, and have a pretty good idea how to plant a church yourself. We've gone to our people in our church and said, you're not people that we just want to come to church and behave like Christians. We want all of you to know how to plant churches in Milan. so they're divided in different groups they meet every week we have only two big events a Sunday morning event which is a fun time and then a during the week event in their homes and I tell them you're not a group of Christians anymore you're a cluster of different churches and that has just revolutionized the way they see themselves and the way we treat them the way they participate in church We're identifying gifts, we're trying to tell them, we are sitting on a cluster of churches that can take over all of Milan. Now you saw the testimony of this Daniele guy, he's a great story. Because when we divided our people into homes, they didn't want to do that. John and I were the glue to this group of 60-80 people. He says, well, how can we be in our homes without you? You're going to come and teach, aren't you? Because when I show up, I've led them to the Lord, and I'm the glue for that little group. They knew they weren't really used to getting along without me or John there. He says, no, you're going to have to figure it out. Some got very upset at us. I don't think we should have a Bible study without our pastors here. Another guy piped up and said, well, you know, the ultimate pastor is Jesus, and if we invite him, I think he'll come. Well, we told them, we said, take these groups and act like little churches. Come on Sunday morning, we'll train you. You don't have to go and start a new sect. But see yourselves as, you know, what it says in in acts that the church of Jerusalem would do, carry on prayer and teaching and fellowship and meals and communion in their homes. Pretty scary when you tell your people to do it. But I remember the day I said, guys, we can't micromanage, we're going to meet, so meet whenever, wherever, with whomever and do whatever. They looked at us like we were absolutely nuts. One family left the church. But this Daniela's wife said, well, if it's the same to you guys, could you please come and have a group in my home? I had never thought of that. The church is going into the world into this lady's house and her husband was there. He listened along and got saved. We never had to pray for her unsaved husband to come to church. You know why? Because the church went to their home. Well, he's gotten saved. Now, the way I look at it, and you pray for us, he is a man of peace. He's got contacts everywhere. He traveled, he and his wife traveled 45 minutes to come to our gathering place on Sunday morning, on Sunday morning with no traffic. During the weekday, he would spend an hour or more. The way I look at it, I don't want him to come to church. I want to help him plant a church in his neighborhood. Now, he lives in a condominium, two buildings that are about 12 stories high, with apartments, full apartments. They have a common area for receptions and for birthday parties. And he's already started inviting people from our church to see all his neighbors and co-workers for potluck dinners. I think that's exciting. He is doing the potluck dinner with his neighbors. I don't have to organize it. Isn't that great? He's very careful. If you look in Colossians, it says, missionaries see an open door, go through like Rambo and just proclaim the gospel. The local yokels do a little difference. They're wise about it. They speak with grace. They're very careful. You remember? They are ready to answer any question that comes their way. They don't blow their wad in one session. You know how that happens. You go and talk to your co-workers and say, Well, I'm a Christian, and I go to Grace Bible Church, and I really believe in the Bible, and I just hope that, you know, God uses me here to preach the gospel. Well, that may be the last time anybody talks to you at work. You know what happened sometimes when you got saved? You went to your family's first Thanksgiving dinner. He says, I got saved. I can't believe you didn't tell me about it. You know, neighbors will never touch you with a ten-foot pole again. Well, it says in Colossians that Christians, the local yokels, work the gospel in a very different way. And Daniel is doing it. He has these potluck dinners. We don't even start, you know, ding, ding, ding, ding, let's have a word of prayer. We have not opened the Bible for a Bible study. But they know his testimony. They know he's a changed man. They're getting very curious of why he keeps having these potluck dinners every two, three months. He's asking us, where did you get these new friends? It's getting to be pretty good. He represents an open door. he's accepted the gospel, his wife is a medical doctor, and they have a network of friends. Frankly, I don't care if he ever comes to my church, because I want my church to go into his network. So pray for us as this is happening all over Milan. Now one of the big open doors, I want to tell you two open doors and I'll sit down. A couple years back we were involved in an Arab ministry. When we went to Milan, they assigned us to a group of seven Italians. They were meeting singles, dejected, no life, no connection. They had been left by another missionary. They told us, Dan, that group will never work because that group is known as the immoral church. Great, you know, great starting point. Another group was Embattagable Cluster of Families. That group took off just like I described. And there was this group of Arab immigrants that needed some guidance, and we gave them guidance. After five, six years of struggling to understand what they were doing, and what they wanted, and what they didn't want, they somewhat graduated us, which means they asked us to go. It was a heartbreak because we had poured so many hours, so many times. Many had gotten saved, but something in their mind had snapped when America went into Iraq and things got pretty crazy. They just decided they didn't want to have the Americans. I called my dad, who was a missionary in Rome. I said, Dad, look, everything is crashing and burning. He said every good missionary should have a mutiny in his career. So that was it. frankly they were so hard to work with I didn't even like most of them Arabs are pretty tough so when they left it was a heartbreak some stayed in our ministry but they all left thinking that we were exploiting them we were somewhat forcing our American ways on them fine I said no more Arabs thank God I'll concentrate on the Italians they were very good at introducing themselves to the Italian women and proposing, I got three daughters, you know, maybe this Arab thing that went away is kind of good, you know. No hard feelings, maybe yes, a little hard feelings. So anyway, the Italian group is going great, open doors everywhere. This spring, an Egyptian pastor came to live in Milan on his way to Finland. His wife had friends, family in Finland. with papers and they could get an apartment, they could get medical attention, he's quite sickly, he has diabetes, he wears a sack for some operation, didn't go real well in Egypt. Anyway, she's getting all the papers and getting kind of the Western life all set up for him, but he had to stay out of Egypt to wait for the papers and not in Finland, so he came to Milan to stay with a brother of his, looked at Milan and saw the multitudes of Arabs that roam in our city. and got this incredible call to start a new church. Well, he came to us at the beginning of the summer and said, I think God is leading to us. I first thing said, well, you better talk to your wife to come back from Finland. You know, we have nothing to help you with. You're really missing out on a lot of advantages. He said, Dan, I have such a burden for this city. There are tens of thousands of Arabs that will never hear the gospel. I'm a sick man, I'm about to die, I don't have many years left, maybe I have only months left, but I want to use my last days in something meaningful and I want to stay here in Milan. Well, he linked up with two families of Egyptians that had stayed in our ministry and now they have started a new church. I preached in their first service right before I came back for this trip. In October they started their services and he wants to go after the Egyptians as kind and really witness to Muslims. Now Paul says pray for an open door that we would have the courage to walk to that open door. Now this is pretty touch-and-go with this ministry. I ask you pray for our safety. it drives Muslims nuts for Westerners to go into their country that's why they're so stirred up in Iraq and everything it drives them nuts to see people girls run around in miniskirts but what drives them really crazy is when one of their own gets saved and they have a free pass from their Imam leaders to go after the convert and whoever has led them to the Lord Somebody's asked me, well, do you fear for your family's safety? Well, I don't think my wife and kids will come to the services. There's enough men that can launch a service without my wife doing the brownies or showing up. But we are definitely a target right now in Milan. So pray for us. It doesn't mean that... I don't know. Just pray for us. I don't want to live in fear. I have a beautiful little girl. I really don't know what happens. I think the next step of terrorism as we're going to see it on TV is for the Muslims to come in our countries and slit throats in basements like they do in their country. That's the next step. Pray for us because we have an incredible ministry. We have open doors. We've seen Arabs get saved. This group is starting on a much better step direction. So pray for us. I will report to you what God is doing. Another big open door, and with this I will quit. There's a Swiss mission group that came into Italy 50 years ago and provided the message and the logistics. Like I told you, they built some beautiful buildings and they tried to run a ministry. And after many years of being somewhat of a Swiss-run ministry, pretty stern, I don't know if there's anybody here with a Swiss background, But, you know, pretty straight, pretty square, a lot of good, but always the Swiss way. Well, after many years of fruitful ministry in a way, their director slammed the door left and half their staff left. And the Swiss board decided that it was about time to hand over this ministry into Italian hands with an Italian board and an Italian staff. So last summer, I just happened to be at the farewell for the former director. I was there with five other men and we became the de facto transition board to lead this ministry from a Swiss ministry into an Italian ministry. This gives me access to hundreds, if not thousands, of Italians throughout Italy. It's a conference center that is in central Italy. kiddies camps, it runs family conferences, it runs the Bible school, it's 200 beds so it's a pretty big operation and it's an open door where we can preach the grace of God, the freedom in Christ, walking in the Spirit as we've always lived out in Milan. Pray for us as our influence keeps expanding. Now I've been on TV, on radio, you've heard about these reports in the last few times Now I believe God has opened doors that are a little more stable, like these clusters of churches, like this ministry. So pray for us as we go out and take advantage of what God does for us. I thank you for keeping us there, well supported, well prayed for. The next step is come and visit us. send your pastor, send your leaders to see what we're doing. It is a great encouragement to us to have your eyes kind of look around and come back and tell the rest of the church what you saw. With this conference center, we're in a much better place to accept volunteers, work teams, and have you involved with our ministry. So thank you for this opportunity and come and see us. Or I'll come and see you in three years.