We were camped on the edge of a small farm. And when I talk about a farm, it's not what we in Kansas are thinking, huge fields of grains and crops. In that area of the world, a farm was a place in the jungle where a family had gone and had cleared a place and planted all sorts of stuff, root crops, spices, vegetables, fruit trees, and they didn't live there, but they would periodically go to harvest and take what was ripe to the market. We were out of food at this point, as we often were, and were using this farm as our food source. We were stealing the food. We'd been there for a few days. This was a Thursday, and the Abu Sayyaf decided that they would fast that day. When a Muslim fasts, that means they don't eat during the daylight hours. They get up before dawn and they eat a meal. and then they don't eat all day long, and then after the sun goes down, they eat again. Well, they didn't care if Martin and I fasted or not, so they brought us our food before dawn, boiled, unripe cooking bananas, and we had saved it. Along about noon, we decided that we were hungry, and we built a tiny little fire to heat some water so we could have a cup of tea. The evening before, they had allowed us to go to the river for a bath. That was rare in that area because there were civilians around because of the farms, and they were afraid that if we went to the river, someone would see us, and they would tell the military that we were there and there would be another gun battle, and no one wanted that. But that night, they'd allow us to have a bath. When I talk about a bath, we would step into the stream or the river with all our clothes on, and we would get ourselves wet. And if we had soap, we would soap up under our clothes, and we would rinse off and drip dry. That was a bath. This particular day, though, we had a change of clothes. They had ordered clothes for us, so we had something dry to change into. After our bath, we hiked back up on the ridge. We always camped on a ridge, because then if there was a gun battle, they would be firing down. We would have the advantage. We threw our wet clothes over the bushes, and the next morning, the Abu Sayyaf were fasting, our clothes were drying in the sun. We decided we were hungry, built a little fire, and the gunfire started in. The military had found us again. Gun battle number 13. We hit the ground flat. All our stuff was scattered around and Martin, bless his heart, decided he was not going to let our hammock go. And even though bullets were whizzing around, he crawled to one tree and he reached up and pulled the cord, crawled to the other tree, pulled that cord, and he got our hammock and stuffed it in our backpack. And we went running down the trail, crawling, dropping, running. To leave that area that day, we had to wade through waist-high swamps, stinky and awful. As we were going through the swamp, I suddenly had a thought. This is Thursday morning here in the Philippines. That means with the international date line and all that, it's Wednesday night in the United States. And what typically happens on Wednesday night all over America, people gather to pray. And I wonder how many of you in this room might have been praying for us right when we needed it. And I never wanna pass up the opportunity to say thank you for your prayers. Every time you prayed, we needed it and we knew someone was praying. We got out on the other side of the swamp and must have figured that we were okay because we stopped for a rest. They needed to fix up this one kid, this 14-year-old boy who had been shot in the leg during the gun battle. Several guys went out and found certain leaves and started chewing them and spitting them into his wound. I didn't think that was the thing to do. They bandaged him up, and that's when I started bawling. I hated gun battles. They were terrifying, to say the least. And when you are going through it, you just stuff what's happening to you somewhere back there, and do what you have to do to survive. But when the gun battle's over, oh, then here come the tears. And we begged God not to make us go through another gun battle in here. Number 13, and Martin saw how upset I was and he said, Gracia, let's remind ourselves of what is true. If God be for us, who can be against us? I have loved you with an everlasting love. You've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. We quoted verse after verse after verse to remind ourselves that God was with us and I didn't feel like God was with us right then. I didn't feel like he was for us. I didn't feel loved and I certainly didn't feel blessed. But we chose to believe what we knew to be true from God's Word. That night as we stopped and were setting up camp, Martin was trying to find that perfect place to hang the hammock. And I sat with my back against a tree and quietly sang to myself that old hymn. God will take care of you through every day or all the way. He will take care of you. God will take care of you. I love how God gently teaches us. C.S. Lewis said, God whispers to us in our pleasures. He shouts to us in our pain. I've had some things happen in the last few months, and I felt like God was shouting at me. Not a harsh shout, like he's mad, but a, hey, see this over here, this really good thing, this good way? Let's go that way. A positive shout, a loving shout. A few months ago I was driving along just really burdened and I told the Lord out loud, okay Lord I'm listening, whatever you want me to do I will do it. Would you just show me what you want me to do? And I just said that and passed a sign out in a farmer's field, a huge billboard that said, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. Oh, that was my answer. I can do that. and I began to rejoice right there in the car. Blessed assurance Jesus is mine oh what a foretaste of glory divine air of salvation purchase of God born of his spirit washed in his blood. Do you know that song? This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long. Isaiah 55 says, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. When we compare God's ways with our ways, well, that's huge, isn't it? A life-changing event would not be my ways, but either I believe that God's good, and He's in control, or I don't. And it's very simple. but it's not easy. And after that billboard episode, I sold my house, I moved into a little apartment in the next town, it's a long story, and I'm listening to what God has for me. And when I'm tempted to worry and think, well, what about this? Well, that's never gonna work. I give it to the Lord and I rejoice. Either he has this or I'm sunk. It's simple, but it's not easy. And I'm so happy to have been invited here today to meet some new friends, sisters. We're family if we know the Lord, aren't we? And I thank you for having me. We're gonna talk today about being transformed by grace. A wonderful subject, don't you think? Many things happen to new missionaries and folks that go abroad, things that cause stress. You've just arrived in this new place and there's the language barrier, the climate, hot and humid in the Philippines, public transportation to figure out what's edible in the market, how do I make that into a meal, the money, how does that work? Then there were the bugs and the lizards. When we first got to the Philippines in my home, I noticed right away there were little lizards living in my house. We called them buddhiches. I didn't think lizards were supposed to be in the house, and I told Martin, I can't live in this house with these buddhichies. And he started trying to rid the house of the lizards, catching them for me. Well, what we didn't know was these lizards had a special ability. When they were in danger, they would drop their tails off. So at the end of the day, we had a house full of tailless lizards and a jar full of lizard tails. And as the sun went down, I saw these lizards eating the mosquitoes that were also in the house. And I realized those were our friends. They weren't our enemies. Lots to learn in a new land. But if that's not enough, there's the electricity. It's 220 everywhere in the world but America, I think. What does that mean? That means the stuff you brought from home can't be plugged into this wall without a transformer. Your hairdryer, your curling iron, your blender, your waffle iron, your mixer, those appliances that work fine back home, and if 110 volts is going through the walls, that's what we have here, right? Those will burn up if you plug it into this overseas outlet where 220 volts is running through the wall. So you buy transformers and you strategically place them all over the house and they cut the 220 to 110 so you can use your things. Except on a Monday morning, you stumble into the kitchen and you start to make coffee. And you plug the percolator into the wall and it goes crazy. and you're suddenly wide awake, you weren't supposed to plug the percolator into the wall. You were supposed to plug the percolator into the transformer and plug the transformer into the wall. We have had horrible things happen to us on the mission field. We have blown up TVs. We have totally melted curling irons. We have burnt out blenders and fried stereos. And when you think you have it all figured out, you have a summer missions group that comes to visit to help you from the United States. These are intelligent people. businessmen, college students, they're here to help. And you explain the problem of the electricity to them and they nod their heads, yeah, they understand. But for the next 10 days, you're snatching the cord out of the wall while your Mr. Coffee starts to hover. or you take the washing machine to town again to get the motor rewound again because you've got 20 people to do laundry for and they didn't use the transformer when they plugged in the machine. Transform is a verb. to change in composition or structure, to convert. And transformation is the act of being transformed. Romans 12, two says, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We know who the transformer is in our Christian walk, don't we? It's the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit does a lot of things in our lives. We are born again of the Holy Spirit. He quickens us and makes us alive when we used to be dead in our sins. He bears witness that we're God's children. He teaches us. He makes intercession for us. He makes our prayers make sense in the throne room of God. He seals us so we are kept until the day of our redemption. He sanctifies us. He makes us holy. And he transforms us. He changes us. And that's what happened to Martin and me in the jungle. God got our attention and he started to change us. The first change I remember had to do with water. When we were taken from the resort at Dos Palmas, they took us on a speed boat out across the ocean, and for four or five days, we were on the ocean till we finally got to land, and we were so excited because land meant the cell phones would work, and the Abu Sayyaf could tell the government negotiators their grievances, and the government would make concessions, and we could all go home, right? wrong. That first day on land the military found us and we had our first gun battle and we had to start running for our lives from the military and here was this 40 something year old lady who wasn't fit, who was expected to keep up with these young guys who were used to living in the jungle and I couldn't do it. And I especially couldn't do it without water, and there was no water. And as we ran down the trail, I started talking to God about that. God, I really need some water. I really, really need some water. If I don't get some water, I'm gonna have to sit down. And I realized what I was doing. I was nagging at God. And I made a conscious decision to change my prayer. And I began to pray, God, I think you know what I need. Would you help me to be patient until you bring it to me? And then God started answering all sorts of prayers for us. One day Martin prayed, God would you do something special for us today so we know that you know that we're still here and someone brought us a coke. And the miracle wasn't that the coke made its way into the jungle, the miracle was the guys didn't take them all and gave us one. But even as so many prayers were answered, our prayer to go home, it's like it was falling on deaf ears, or it wasn't reaching past the treetops. At almost the year mark of our being held captive, I got really sick of that prayer not being answered. And I thought, okay, if God's not gonna answer our prayer for release, I'm gonna start praying for a hamburger. Because I figured, If I was eating a hamburger, I was out of the jungle. You know, you go around the back door with God. And Martin laughed at me too, but I was serious. And I fervently prayed for that hamburger. Right about Easter time, almost a year into our captivity, someone paid a ransom for us. And you can imagine our excitement when some of the money came into camp. This was it. It's what we'd all been waiting for. We could all go home. And the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf sat down and had a big meeting, and they called me and Martin over. We sat down with them, and they said, someone's paid a ransom for you, but we've decided it's not enough, and we're going to ask for more. And I begged them not to do that. I said, this is not going to turn out well. We are sick of this. You're sick of this. Just take the money and let's go home. But they were greedy. And they asked for more money. But for a while, we had some money. And that very night, they snuck us off of the island of Basilan, which by this time was teeming with soldiers. And for less than 24 hours, they took us to a little Muslim fishing village near a city. And someone went into the city and brought back to us hamburgers, french fries, cokes. They heard Americans like that sort of thing. And it's like God hit me over the head. Can I not supply a hamburger for you in the jungle? I'm God. I can do anything. And when we got the hamburger but not our freedom, we started thinking something must be going on here. God must have a plan in all this. And we really thought that neither of us would go home alive. We thought we would die in the jungle. And our prayers began to change. And of course we kept asking God for our freedom, but our prayer became more, God, you must have something to teach me here. Would you please help me to learn it well? The biggest transformation for me was with my attitude towards my enemies. My natural response towards them was one of hatred. Jesus told us how to handle the problem of dealing with enemies, didn't he? He said, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who despitefully use you. He said, if a Roman soldier asks you to carry his stuff for a mile, because he's got lots of stuff and he doesn't have a horse, you carry his stuff for two miles. Or if he asks you for your shirt, because he's cold, or maybe he's just a jerk and he wants your shirt, you give him your jacket too. Have you ever done something kind for someone who did you dirty? There was Ahmed, one of the guys holding us. He was 14 years old. There were kids there as well as older guys. He was a cute kid. For the most part, the kids did the menial tasks, the things the other guys didn't want to do, like fetching the firewood or carrying the heavy loads. But Ahmad was different. His uncle was the number two man of the Abu Sayyaf, and he carried an M14. And since he had a weapon, that gave him status, even though he was just a kid. And he was very proud of himself. Well, you know how 14-year-old boys are. They're always hungry. And we would go for days sometimes with nothing to eat. And then food would make its way into the camp, and I would watch Ahmad steal our group's food and eat it all by himself on the sly. And I was filled with envy at that boy. I was the lowest hostage. I was an American, and I was a woman. And that was two strikes against me. And Ahmad decided I was someone he could boss around. and we'd be walking down the jungle trail and he would follow me saying one of the few English words he knew. Faster, faster, faster. I couldn't go any faster, we were in a line. One day they allowed me and Martin to go to the river for a bath, and they asked Ahmed to be our guard. Well, he didn't want to do that. He wanted to be out on guard duty or hanging around in his hammock, and he had to take the Americanos to the river, so he had a bad attitude. We were down there, and he started in on me. Passtetter, passtetter, passtetter. So I started going faster, faster. I guess not fast enough for him, because he started picking up rocks, throwing them at me. Passtetter, passtetter. Well, I'd had it with that kid. I wasn't used to being told what to do, especially by a 14-year-old. And I just laid into him in English. I said, Ahmed, if you don't stop that, I'm going to take the longest bath in the history of all baths. And you'll never get back to your hammock. Well, he had no idea what I was saying, right? He just knew Mrs. Burnham was mad again. And the rocks kept coming until Martin finally sternly said to him, stop that. And he quit throwing rocks. A few weeks later, we were in that gun battle I talked about earlier. and Ahmad was the one shot in the leg. We were really in trouble trying to get away from the military who seemed to be everywhere and because of that they couldn't get Ahmad to the medical help he needed and he started to get feverish and talk out of his head a lot. They carried him for weeks. They would have to help him with everything. And one day I could tell he was very upset about something, and I found out he had messed his pants. There'd been no one to help him go to the bathroom. And I thought to myself, this thought came from God. What if that was my boy in that situation? I had a 14-year-old boy back at home. I would want someone to help him. And I went over to him and in my faltering Sibuano, the only language we shared a little bit of, I asked him what I could do for him. And as I took his clothes to the river and washed them out and threw them over the bushes to dry in the sun, in that moment God completely changed my heart towards that kid. He gave me a love for him. And I can't explain it. Ahmed eventually went mad. He went ranting, raving, crazy. The last time I saw him, they were sneaking us off of another island, and we had to go through a fisherman's hut to get down to the pier. And as we went through the hut, I heard noises over in the corner. I thought it might be a big rat or something. I looked over there. There was Ahmad. He was skin and bones. His hands were tied to one side of the hut. His feet were tied to another. There was a sock stuck in his mouth so he wouldn't cry out. A hat pulled down over his eyes so he couldn't see. And I wonder where Ahmad is today. Is he dead? Has he recovered and he's walking down the jungle trail pestering some other set of hostages? Is he still crazy somewhere? I'm so glad I had the opportunity to be generous with that boy because I can look back on him and not have any regrets, but it's because God changed my heart. and gave me the grace to help someone instead of hate them. And God is in the heart-changing business. That's what he does best. And God's still changing me. I came home without Martin, and I used to think of heaven, and I would think of Martin there, you know, pulling on God's shirt sleeve, getting his attention, saying, see, Gratia and the kids, they need a car, or they need a house, and God would just give us one. And then I realized, does the God of the universe need Martin Burnham pulling on his shirt sleeve? The one who made me, the one who purchased salvation for me, and now when I think of heaven, I think of God going and finding Martin, pulling on Martin's shirt sleeve, saying, hey, watch Gratia and the kids. Watch what I'm gonna do for them today. Change is hard. I don't have to tell a bunch of women that, right? Being transformed sometimes stinks. Mark Twain was right when he said, the only person who likes change is a wet baby. We get comfortable with life. Things are going well. Exactly the way we've carefully planned them to go. And we're really good at that, aren't we? Keeping things normal and comfortable, and then whap, this problem hits. And it's not a small problem this time, it's a big one. And we look up and we seek God in a whole new way, because we suddenly realize we can't handle this one. and we come to know him. And I would encourage you, never hang a do not disturb sign on your heart's door. Allow God to do what he wants to in your heart, because if we go through life and we're just always comfortable, but we don't learn important life lessons, wouldn't that be sad? We want to be changed, transformed, so we start looking just like Jesus. Isn't that how you want to look? Like Jesus? Well, you guys know the rest of our story, how for months it looked like our release was right around the corner, and then something would happen, and negotiations would break down again, and we would be back to square one again, and how that went on for what seemed like forever to us. And you know how Martin died in the gun battle that rescued me, but I got to come home and raise my children. Can I tell you about the kids? I think we have family photos. The children are grown now. They weren't with us when we were taken hostage. They were on a different island with our coworkers while we went to do some work. And as soon as we were taken, our mission agency in the State Department sent them back to live with their grandparents. in Kansas for that year. They're grown now. Here's the whole shebang. Here's the whole crew. Motley looking we are. And the next one is my grandchildren. And God's been really good to us. And the boys on this side have come to know Jesus as their savior. So I'm a happy grandma. And you know what my big problem is now? Because of my experience, everyone thinks I'm an expert on everything. And I get invited to speak places I don't belong. There was the FBI Victims of Crime Symposium. They gave me the whole morning. And it doesn't take long to say, I was one, and I didn't like it. I spoke at Tyson Chicken a while back when I said, yes, I thought I was going to a chicken factory. You know, people with hairnets and chicken feathers flying through the air, and I had my chicken jokes all planned to tell. Why did the chicken cross the street? To show the possum it really could be done. What is the chicken's least favorite day of the week? Friday. Then I found out I was speaking at the corporate headquarters of Tyson Chicken. Did you know Tyson is the second largest producer of food protein worldwide? So I ditched my chicken jokes. I didn't think they were appropriate for the chief financial officer of Tyson worldwide. I spoke in Parliament in London. When my friends found out they said, Gracia what are you going to say? I said, never mind what I'm going to say, what am I going to wear? But one event I was asked to do, this was ordained by God, and I love telling this story. It sort of starts the rest of the story. Several years ago, I was invited to do a lecture series at a university in Arkansas. Well, I didn't want to do that. I'd never done anything like that before. Of course, I wasn't going to do that. But my uncle lives in that city, and I thought, oh, a free trip to go see my uncle. So I said yes. After I said yes, they sent me the list of the people who'd done those lecture series in years past. Lady Thatcher. Henry Kissinger. The President of Russia. Gorbachev had been there, y'all. I was in big trouble, but God was in this lecture series invitation. The first event of the several days was a banquet given for donors to the school and alumni. And I sat at the head table with the student who'd planned the banquet. And as we began eating our salad, he said to me, my dad and your husband were really good friends growing up. And I thought, this kid is mistaken. Because Martin didn't grow up in America. Martin grew up in the Philippines. Then this student told me how his father had grown up in the Philippines, that he and Martin had been dorm mates together at boarding school at Faith Academy in Manila. Well, that explained that. And that his grandfather and grandmother had done Bible translation for Wycliffe Bible translators. I said, oh, what language did they work in? He said, Taosug. What? Taosug was the language that many of the Abu Sayyaf spoke. And I knew this conversation was meant to be. And I got his grandparents' contact information. And it took several months before I was able to meet with Seymour and Lois Ashley. A dear elderly couple came to visit my home in Kansas. We had the best time talking. They told me stories of living in the southern Philippines where it's not really safe to live. And all the things that they had translated. And the thing that intrigued me right away was a comic book series they'd done. Thirteen comic books on the lives of the prophets. Those men that Muslims believed to be prophets. Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David, on through Jesus. I told him I'd love to see those comic books. Maybe I should order a set just to get a good look. And they said, oh, those are out of print. In fact, many things, most things that they had spent years translating, risking their lives to live on that Muslim island were out of print and I threw a little fit. That was not acceptable. And our foundation made it a priority to get all those things back into print. And the first thing we printed was the comic book series. We were so happy with these. They're colorful. They're beautiful. I have no idea what they say. They're in Taosug. But some of the first people to get a hold of these was an American couple that works in a maximum security prison in Manila, and they gave them out, and the guys loved them. They said, anything else you print, we want to read. But they said, the interesting thing that's happening here is some of these guys found out Gratia Burnham printed these. They're coming to us saying, we're former Abu Sayyaf. We're the ones who held the Burnhams captive. I said, well, ask them their names. Maybe I know them. Here came the names. Zacharias, who on May 27 burst into our room at Dos Palmas with his M16. He was so surprised to find out that our youngest son and him had the same name, Zachary, Zacharias, that we would name one of our children after one of their Muslim prophets. And we just let him think that. Also in prison is Daoud, the guy that used to sit and talk with Martin when we would rest during our long days of hiking. Daoud's wife and child had died in childbirth. And since the economy is horrible in the southern Philippines, he found himself with no family, no means of support. He joined the Abu Sayyaf almost as a career move. It was Dawood's job to carry the solar panels through the jungle. The solar panels would help charge the sat phones and the cell phones so they could talk to the outside government negotiators. Martin and Dawood would discuss all sorts of things from jihad to being shaheed, being martyred. They discussed Dawood's hopes and dreams. Also in jail is Bashir. We called him Bus for short. He was shot in the same gun battle that Martin died in, the one that led to my rescue. Bashir was unable to keep up with the group as they retreated down the river, so they left him behind in the jungle with 500 pesos to fend for himself. Ten dollars. You can't buy anything in the jungle. You can't take care of yourself. And several days later, the military found him. Gangrene had moved into his leg. It had to be amputated. One after another, they told us of these guys that Martin and I lived with, hiked with, starved with, 23 or so of them. My kids and I had been asking God to do something in the hearts of the Abu Sayyaf. But even more than that, we'd been asking for some contact with them, some means of reaching them. But we didn't know, number one, how could I ever find any Abu Sayyaf? Number two, what could I do if I did find some of them? And here, God had just done it. All we did was print some comic books. He did everything else. He's even worked out some ministers to work in the prison. In maximum security are some prison pastors that Will and Joni work with, prisoners who've come to know the Lord and sort of gone through a seminary type training. And Will and Joni wrote and asked if I'd be willing to donate books in the presence of my enemies to those guys, because they sort of knew the story, but not really. And I sent the books. And their response after they read them was, if Gratia can forgive the Abu Sayyaf, after they did such awful things to her and Martin, we should forgive the Abu Sayyaf and begin working with them. Because you see in the prison, the Abu Sayyaf were shunned. Everyone really hated them because they were the really bad guys, the terrorists. And they stayed as far away from them as they could. And these prison pastors began specifically working and praying for them. My friends come to the US every other summer, and we always get together and plan ways to show the love of Christ to them. They sometimes bring me notes from these guys. Could I read the first note I ever got from the prison? We had to get it translated. It was written in his dialect. It says, I am Bas. I, Bas, wrote you to ask you how you are. How about you there, Gratia? I am here now at maximum security and my foot was cut off. Do you still remember the experiences we had? Like, no. Sounds like summer camp, right? I still remember every time I cook food I cook eel good. He did cook eel good. At one point we were starving and we came across a mountain stream that had eel in it and the guys crafted fish traps from stuff they harvested in the jungle and that's what they caught the eel with and that's what we ate for several days and Bas was the cook. Everything you said I will never forget. Even though I'm here in jail, I has no fault. Yeah, right, he's the guy that one day chopped a guy's head off, came up the hill with blood spattered all over his yellow t-shirt. How can he say he has no fault? I also told you, when I'm free, I will go with you to America. But my dreams did not go through. My dream was to become a businessman, but it did not materialize because I'm in jail. It's difficult to be in jail. It's very hot here, and it's pitiful here, and no one visits me here. I want to see you if you have a picture to send me. Take care always. And he signs it, your friend. The letters aren't the only thing that I've received from the guys. I have this shirt that they brought one year, signed by a bunch of the guys there, inmate maximum. I said, Will and Joni, what am I supposed to do with that shirt? You can't wear it to the mall. I could spend an hour telling you this story, but awesome things are happening in that prison. The guys are reading the scriptures in their own dialects. Some of them are going to Bible studies. Sometimes when we come up with ideas, we don't even know if they're good ideas. Maybe they're stupid ideas, but we're just asking God to bless our meager efforts, and he has. To make a long story short, so far, four former Abu Sayyaf have come to know Jesus as their Savior. One of them, that's worth a clap, isn't it? One of them, a very violent man with over 20 counts of murder against him. A new person in Christ, a brother in the Lord. And we really can't believe what God's doing, and we just keep praying. And I wonder if you would want to pray as well. When you think of me and my story, pray for those guys in the prison, especially for Zacharias. Zachary, who's very hard and resistant towards anything having to do with the gospel. God can do anything, can't he? And it's not over till it's over. And I think God's let me be a small part of what's happening in the prison just to encourage my heart, because he loves doing good things for his children. Had I known while we were going through our hard year in the jungle that one day even one of those guys would come to know Jesus because of our experience, I think the days would have been easier to bear. And I could kick myself now and say, would it not have been enough to trust a good God with the days of my life? Can we begin to believe that God takes us into hard situations not to crush us, but so that we can learn to see his hand and learn to trust him when he's doing a good work. And God's work is good, it's always good. And I've been encouraged that there can't be a harvest without seed planters. And maybe planting seeds isn't always fun. Maybe planting seeds for you is downright uncomfortable and you don't see any fruit for your labors. You might wonder why you were called to plant seeds because you're not even good at it. but all of a sudden you see what God's doing. And I've been reminded that the seed we planted in the jungle wasn't wasted. Others are reaping what we sowed ever so long ago. God's almighty, he can do anything, so keep planting those seeds of the gospel, my friend. Keep on when it's hard, when you feel like giving up, when you don't see any fruit, when you don't know what you're doing. Just keep on. It's God that's going to do the work on down the road. Could I invite you to stop by the table out there? Of course, my books are out there. But Martin and I were members of New Tribes Mission for 17 years. Our organization has recently changed their name. Did you know that? We are Ethnos 360 now. ethnos, ethnicities, people groups, and 360, the 360 degree circle around the earth. We needed not to use the word mission anymore because people work in restricted nations and tribes. Well, that's a derogatory term in some places in the world, so we're ethnos 360, and I'm trying to get used to saying that. Working in hard places is what Ethnos 360 does. For 75 years we've been working in isolated villages and there's still a lot to do. The job has to be done. The last man and the last tribe. And we need quality people to help us take the gospel there. And I wonder if some of you might be willing to start praying for Ethnos 360 all around the world. We need it. God is building his church in remote areas. So I have some magazines with some good prayer ideas back there that you could pick up. If you're a prayer warrior, we need you on our team. If you would like to keep up with me and what our foundation is doing, sign up there on the sign-up sheet. Pick up one of these. This is a little story. This is a mailing that you'll get if you sign up. In October, late October, I was speaking near Chicago and who should show up at the event but the lead FBI investigator in charge of our case and also the Filipino head of the special forces that rescued us. They had never met before and they showed up at the same thing and I got to get their picture and so that's that little story. Stop by, sign up, talk with me. I would love to talk with you. Getting a new heart and being transformed isn't instantaneous, is it? Our being transformed is progressive. We're new creatures positionally before God, our sin problems taken care of, but Christ-likeness is not developed in a day, but with time we will see growth and progress in our life of faith by God's grace. And sometimes God puts us in crazy, uncomfortable, unbelievable circumstances to test our faith and to change us. And I bet, ladies, we would be shocked if we knew the circumstances that some of you face today. paths that God is allowing you to walk down to transform you. We can't underestimate the time that we spend in God's Word if we want to be changed. I know that you know this. We've learned it from when we were in Sunday school when we were little kids. Read your Bible, pray every day, pray every day, pray every day. Read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow. But sometimes we forget or we're just lazy. Spending time in God's word is key to spiritual transformation. When we give ourselves to a life of faith and learning and application, we prove what the will of God is. We discover God's perfect will and we begin to look more and more like Jesus. So we march on through life asking God to transform us. I noticed something interesting the other day as I was reading Luke 2 51 and 52. Jesus grew in wisdom in stature and in favor with God and man. Those verses tell us that even Jesus God's perfect son grew, he learned something. That kind of freaked me out a little bit. The perfect person learned something and he grew in favor with God and man. What would it look like if we put our names in those verses, in verse 52? And Gratia increased in wisdom and knowledge and favor with God and man. What would that look like? How would you gain more wisdom? Read more good books? Watch less Netflix? Attend events with speakers who tell you about Jesus? Get to know someone different from you? How would you increase with favor with God? Resolve to read through the Bible in a year? Teach Sunday school? Join a Bible study. How would you increase in favor with other people? Do you have some unresolved issues with someone? Have you been putting off spending time with that person you don't really like? How's your marriage? Are you working so hard to give your children things that you don't spend quality time with them? Put your name in that verse. Ask God to help you set some goals to determine a plan of action, but mostly invite God to do new good things in you. today you might be thinking well you know you have a great story life in the jungle how you made it through okay but there's a lot of things i don't really understand today you're talking about being transformed accepting christ uh... i don't even really know what that means i think i know right from wrong i have a bible but i don't really understand it the only time i pray is when i can't handle things myself, and that's not all that often. It seems like it's so simple when you talk about it, but I'm not even sure I understand it all. Well, we've all been there, haven't we? The things I'm talking about are things that a person who doesn't know God, they can't understand them. When you're dead in your sins, that's how the scripture describes a person who isn't a Christian. When you're dead, you can't think, you can't move, you can't do anything about the fact that you're dead. But the spirit of God gives life. If you would like to be transformed, your first step is to be saved. And if you would like to understand salvation from sin, talk with me today, talk with someone who knows that well, or there's several pages in the program that I see explains that super well. God will make himself real to you. If with all your heart you truly seek me, you will surely find me, says the Lord. And if God is tugging on your heart today to become a Christian, to be one of God's children, visit with us. And if you make that decision, as soon as you make that decision, tell someone. They will be so glad to hear that. that you've become a Christian. They'll rejoice with you. You'll never regret it. To those of you who know the Lord, could I encourage you to be Jesus to somebody? There are countless people here in America who don't know who Jesus truly is. All they know is that they carry heavy burdens and they don't know where to turn. And it's gonna take a person, you know, like you and me, nobody special, to show them kindness and point them to Jesus. So determine in your heart that you're gonna find some friends and point them to Jesus. Open your mouth. That's what we need to do. Open our mouths and talk about what God's done in our hearts. Some of you may say, well, I dropped out of presenting my body a living sacrifice a long time ago. I've been basically living for myself. I've let the world pretty much dictate how life is for me. I've done a pretty good job of conforming to the world rather than being transformed. If you're serious about growing in your walk with God, let's just go back to the basics, the gospel. The gospel's the answer for those of us who already know Jesus as well, isn't it? Just like you can't save yourself from your sin, you can't live the Christian walk by yourself either. God lives through us by His Holy Spirit, so if you're Serious about that just tell him pray in faith believing that God can transform you begin again Running the race looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. It doesn't matter if you've fallen down Or slacked off or stopped by the side of the road or started chasing rabbits just tell God that You want to be made new. You want to be changed. Study God's Word so He can talk to you. Pray so you can talk to Him. Being transformed is what God does as we yield to Him. I'm going to turn this over to Tori. In our next session, I'm going to do a jungle fashion show. I have some of the clothes that I wore in the jungle that I'm going to show you. And I'm going to talk about what Muslims believe. It's very interesting. And I want to tell you about a trip that I made back to the Philippines. So thank you for having me.