Brothers and sisters, I bring you greetings from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Haiti, and I'm glad to be here to give you a short update of the ministry. It's a pleasure to me to be back to Second Press. That was my home church when I was in seminary, so I'm glad to be here. It's a pleasure also since the Church in Haiti, the first Presbyterian Church in Haiti was started by Second Press some years ago. And that's that church that I have the pleasure to present to you. I have some pictures that you can see, and I want to be as quick as possible to give you that update. It's a ministry of the word centered around the preaching and the teaching of the gospel, so that's what we do. The picture we have here is Pastor Ben Hoppe, OPC missionary working in Haiti, and we are working together. He's preaching there, and I'm translating for him. But now he's fluent in Creole, and he can preach by himself in Creole. So the church, This year, that was our sixth anniversary. We had a special service, invited people to come so that we can present the gospel to them. That was in October last year. The same service, Pastor Douglas Clawson, He is Assistant General Secretary of the OPC Foreign Mission. He was preaching in that service. That's another Sunday, our worship service in the church in Port-au-Prince. That's the ladies singing in the choir. We have a women ministry that meets once a week. They pray together, they study the Bible, and they have a choir rehearsal every Wednesday. We have the ministry of teaching also. We are training men to be elders and deacons. So we have training sessions for people in the church. That's here, Eric Hausler. Eric is an OPC pastor in Naples, Florida, but he goes to Haiti very often to teach. He's teaching there in First Timothy in a program of discipleship that we have for the men. In my teaching ministry, I share my time with the school. The church meets in the facilities of the school, a Christian school, Adoration Christian School. So I spend my time teaching also the gospel to the students, to the parents, when they have a meeting with their parents. So that means teaching at the chapel of the school. They meet under the tent where the church gathering. Me in the classroom teaching in secondary school, I'm teaching a Bible for them for some hours a week so that I can introduce them to the Word of God. We're trying to cover the whole Bible with them while they are in school, middle school and high school. And it's a mission base for me also to teach them the gospel, invite them to church, have contact with their parents so that I can present them the gospel. And that is going pretty well also. This is another pastor working in the classrooms, and I cannot teach all the classes. So what I do, I prepare the materials for them, and I train other people to do that. Other training sessions, we are doing now the Old Testament. We are studying. This is, again, Pastor Douglas Clawson from the OPC teaching in one of the seminars that we have there. We are doing the Ministry of Translation. We are translating books for the ministry, for the training programs. The book you see there is the... Christian baptism, what Christian parents should know, it is translated and published into French. We have all the standards now published, the confession and catechisms. And we continue to translate other books. We are finishing the systematic theology. We've been working on that for the last three years, and we hope to finish that this year. uh... for the for the uh... school uh... what i do i'm preparing uh... booklets uh... so that they can use in classroom uh... for the elementary school and for the uh... high school so we try to cover the whole bible as i said and i'm preparing those booklets so that uh... the student can uh... use in classroom uh... we want them to have access to reformed teaching uh... from the bible So I spend time doing that. Let's see, baptism that we had last year in the church. Here we had a group of 10 added to the church last year by baptism and profession of faith. We are working with the youth at the church. We teach them so that they can teach others, they can teach the children. And this group of young people that we have, they are very active in the church and they are participating in the teaching of other children. That's the VBS that we have every summer. gather the children together, children from the community, and they come together to be taught in the word of God. Every year, we have about 200 children for one week, and we teach them the word. It's led by people in the church and the youth and the ladies that do that work every summer. That's groups, people that we are training for the ministry. Some of them we hope will be elders and deacons in the church. That's our youth conference that we have every February. We have that conference for the youth at the carnival time. When other people are in the streets with bands and parades, we keep them in the church for the whole day, the whole day, three days during the week, and we teach them in the word of God. I help in the school with the teachers. This is the teachers gathering for a seminar in Christian worldview. So we are teaching them how to bring the Bible, how to bring Christ in the classroom. So we have those sessions with them. Another team from the church who taught VBS last year, last summer, so they gathered together for that picture. This is Eric Hauser again, teaching a class on Old Testament to people in the church, men and ladies who come for this teaching. Every summer we have a big training session for people in the church, but we invite other people also. This is Bernie Van Eyck from Grace PCA, Florida. He comes every summer to teach for us. That's the same training session. It's bigger during the summer. That's me teaching the Bible study in the church in Port-au-Prince. We prepare the young people so that they can serve also in the community. They serve, they do the work of painting, cleaning, they serve in the church, also in the school. So that was a group doing some work last summer. That VBS also last summer. Here, that's a group in Bible study. Another group in Bible study. These are the ladies, they gather for a meal they have together, but also they have singing and they have Bible study. That was a wedding in the church in Port-au-Prince that was in September 2016. She was living with a man, He's not a believer. We visited them, invited them to come to church and encouraged him to get married, and that happened. So that was a blessing for their family. That's the same wedding. Every summer, we have a contest with the children. We invite children from the community to learn the Bible. This year, we focus on the children catechism. We encourage the children to memorize the catechism and to come and to recite the catechism. So that was last summer. So we have Bible verses, catechism, and singing during a month. They meet once a week. That's the church. It's Sunday morning. That's from the school, the community. They invite people from the church and other people from the community, and we have a gathering together. It was a special meeting where I present the gospel to people from the community. That's my family there. You can see Collins up front. Collins was injured in the earthquake. Some of you remember that. But now his hand is perfectly well. It's healed and he can use it. And me, my wife, my daughter Farrah, and other youth from the church. These are many men from the church and some teachers from the school in a meeting with the community. These are a meeting with the parents from the school, and they invite me to come and to share the gospel to them. This is a prayer meeting with men from the church. So that's the ministry of the church. We have two worship services, Sunday morning and Sunday night. We have Sunday school, Sunday school classes for children, adults, and youth together. And we have youth group. uh... we uh... have member ship class uh... we continue to teach them so that they can uh... and this from the uh... gospel we continue to teach men in reform theology uh... so that they can be uh... elders and uh... or the leaders uh... in the church so that's what we are doing uh... shortly Please continue to pray for that ministry for the church in Port-au-Prince and the other churches also in the island of Laguna where Pastor Ben is. Teaching and we are working together. Pray that we may continue to teach and preach faithfully the gospel. And pray also that the church may continue to grow spiritually. Pray for the nation of Haiti. It has been hard for the country in the last years. with hurricanes and then earthquake or these other problems and political instability. So we appreciate your prayers for the country and for the work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Octavius. We'll certainly be praying for you and the ministry in Haiti and your family. And we're looking forward to spending some time this weekend with you and worshiping with you Sunday evening. Okay, next on our agenda tonight is we have a couple of videos from the summer missions, about summer missions. First video will be Cherokee and we're planning a mission trip this summer to Cherokee and this video will be something that should get you excited about the work going on at Cherokee. So Nate, if you can start that. One of the great needs that we see in Native America is that, in a lot of ways, they are a people group without hope. I would refer to them not as an unreached people group, but they are a misreached people group. Their sense of worth has been taken away. And so we sense that the only way to provide direction, to provide hope, is through the gospel message. We're Scott and Ruth Hill. We are the Mission to the World missionaries in Cherokee, North Carolina. Cherokee, North Carolina is the eastern band of Cherokee Indians, which are the remnant of the Cherokee that were removed from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and so forth during the removal period in the Trail of Tears. Our purpose and vision in being here is to develop a ministry of outreach and discipleship with a long-term vision of planting a PCA church. We want to reach out to the community, to the individuals that are here in Cherokee with the gospel, not wanting to go after those who are already in churches, but we want to reach those who do not have a relationship with Christ, and so that's why we believe God's called us here. Here at the Kuala Boundary, where the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians live, it's a unique area. because the Cherokee here are still in the land that was once theirs many years ago. They actually purchased this land back from the settlers and were able to stay here. So this is their ancient homeland. They have a connection with the land here. They understand who the creator is. Our goal here is to connect them with how they can communicate with that creator, that the creator sent his son. We also can go into various child daycare facilities here on the reservation. that are open to us where we go in and they teach Bible school, they do crafts with the kids. There are also two senior citizen facilities here. One of the things we really enjoy about Cherokee is the fact that everywhere we go, every facility we're in, they know that we're going to share the gospel and they're open to that and they appreciate that about what we do. Well, I believe it's important because I've seen a lot of people that have at least come to church because of this. I've seen them go down there and have fellowship with the missionaries while they're down there at MTW. I've seen a person pretty close to me whom they have helped that had a marvelous impact on their life. But the Lord wants us to sow the seed. He'll reap in due time. And I think that's really an important reason. You know, we have people here that these mission teams may be able to reach that we can't. God really is at work here in Cherokee. And it's very exciting to see the things that he's doing and to be a part of. So we would encourage you on a couple of fronts. First, we would ask you to pray for us. Pray for the ministry that God has called us to. That we would be faithful servants of his. But we would also encourage you to pray about how God might use you in the ministry as well. There are opportunities here for you to serve and we would love for you to come alongside of us to work with us and to minister with us here in Cherokee. Again, on the back of the bulletin, you see that we are planning a trip July 22nd through the 29th. And so be in prayer about that and also remember we're having an informational meeting on January 29th to talk about Trip to Cherokee. So next, and I know I won't get this wrong, but the next one will be about Peru. Well, dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, I want to announce to all of you that this week, together with the team of Second Press, and some folks from Mint Hill ARP, and some brothers and sisters from Hartsfield Church, we accomplished the work on the site, building the Curitiba church. We made eight columns this week. We were mixing concrete, and cutting rocks, and cutting dirt out of the site. And with this week of work we have done very much progress for building the Church of Christ up there in Quiritimayo. Each morning we start the day off just focusing our minds on Christ and devoting some time to prayer. And each day we've started with a different question that relates to missions. Our God is a missional God. Christ is the great missionary. He came to earth and so we've just been looking at asking questions basically, what does the holiness of God have to do with missions? What does the Lord's Prayer have to do with missions? What does the fruit of the Spirit have to do with missions? Tomorrow's is what does the resurrection of Lazarus have to do with missions? And so we've just been looking at those and looking at the scripture passages, basically asking four questions. What does it say about God? What does this tell us about God? What does this tell us about us? How does this point us to Christ? And then, what does this tell us about missions and how we're supposed to go about missions? So, it's been a huge blessing to me in preparation and hearing the team come together. There's been just incredible team unity on this trip. Three different churches coming together and working together. It's been incredible. This trip has been one of the best years. The camaraderie between the entire team, it's been a knitting together of fellowship of Christians and believers that it has been really amazing. We've had some definite obvious impact, not only on the local adult Christians in the church that we're working on building, but the kids' lives, the 40 or so that have showed up every day for VBS and that are super involved in the games, super excited for the songs that we're singing and teaching them. It's been a really great year. We've been together and worked in the construction group. It's an effort that's been put forth. It's just amazing. Everybody works full steam, 100%. As far as I can tell, nobody's here for a vacation. They're here to work. The EBS group has been very dedicated. And God has blessed this whole effort from all the work that's been put into it. Por ser buenita conmigo, Rosaura Por eso mucho te quiero, Lindaura Siempre me das la platita, Rosaura Para traer las cositas, Lindaura BBS has been really amazing. All the kids have been so sweet and wonderful and polite and so eager to learn. And that's so exciting and wonderful to work with. And, you know, building Christ in their hearts. And they listen and they sing and they say thank you. And I really love working with the kids here. It's amazing. I would say the harmony between everybody. The peace that everybody's worked with. the relationships that we've formed all in the name of glorifying our father and that's been most meaningful. It's been fun doing some manual labor with the men around me and the Peruvians. SIEMPRE ME DA LA PLATITA, ROSAURA, PARA HACERLAS COCINA, LINDAAURA. MÁS CUANDO LLEGO A LA LIMBA, ROSAURA, QUE RICA, BORRACHERITA, LINDAAURA. MÁS CUANDO LLEGO A LA LIMBA, ROSAURA, QUE RICA, BORRACHERITA, LINDAAURA. Y COMO NO TE DE QUERER, PANCHOLITA, COMO NO TE VOY DE AQUÍ, MAMITA, AL VER QUE TAN BUENA MAMITA FITA, DE JARA TAN REGULAR, With all of this experience of working together with the churches in the United States, I would like to issue once again an invitation for you to come next year, if the Lord wills, and our doors are wide open to receive you and work together here for the Kingdom of Christ. After this hard week over there, I'd like to thank you, all the pastors, the session, and the missions committee of these three churches involved. And I commend them to the Lord for having helped us so much so far. I just wanted to say thank you to this team that came down to Peru this week to serve the Lord in this capacity of construction and serving the children. As a full-time missions missionary, you don't know how encouraging that is to missionaries On the field, many missionaries will not say that they are lonely, are tired, are exhausted. Just continue to need spiritual refilling in their hearts, my Lord. And by you guys being here, it just makes a huge impact, and it just pushes forward, helps push forward the mission that Christ has for all of us. So, thank you so much, and may God continue to bless you and use you wherever He takes you. Namaste. Namaste. Namaste. Satsang with Mooji Okay, you saw the invitation from Alonzo to come back this year, so that's an invitation to us to come back. And we are planning on going back, and the dates of the Peru trip are July 21st through the 29th, so keep that in mind. A little bit of extra news on that. The church you saw working on there, the session approved and I signed a purchase order today to send enough funds to get the roof finished on that church. So now in that church they'll be worshiping the Lord for years to come, we pray. Now I'd like to close our time here and I'd ask that Chad Bailey come up and close our time with prayer. Let's pray. Lord, our God, we come with hearts full of delight and joy as we think of the thought that you have not spared your own son, but gave him up for us, that we might have eternal life. We might have peace with you, our God. How grateful we are, how filled with wonder we are that you would lavish such love upon us. So we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that you did send him. Thank you that you sent someone to preach the good news to us. We love you, the Lord our God. We love the gospel. We know it's because you have first loved us. And we pray, oh Lord, that you might be glorified and blessed. We do desire for your name to be praised to the ends of the earth. We thank you for men like Octavius, and for Stephen, for even Alonzo and others who work in Cherokee and Peru. And we thank you for their ministry. We pray that you would add your blessings to it, whether it be to Haiti or to Israel, to the Jewish people wherever they are, and to the Haitians wherever they are. And we pray, Father, that you might that you might bless the gospel. It might go forth and be honored. We do pray that you would let the nations be glad. They might sing and rejoice. Those who sit in darkness, they might see the light. You might shine it upon them and shine your light in their dark hearts. We pray it might be for their glory that your name and your ways might be known among the nations and to the ends of the earth, that the fear of you might spread far and wide, that Christ might be praised. And Lord, we pray that you would bless our time, our continued time this evening. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen.